539 - It Keeps Getting Ruined

On today’s episode, Karen covers America’s first high-profile murder and Georgia tells the story of the Kentucky Meat Shower.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstars,
that's Karen Kilgarriff, and we've got some surprises in store
for you today. Bloody vacation nail he oh, those are
the longest I've ever seen. Your name, not mine.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
They're like literally vacation nails that I'm obsessed with.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Will you throw up those nails to your camera as
we are on Netflix and show the world.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
They're gel x and they just make you feel like.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
A grown up. Yeah, they look really nice.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
My nails have always been like junior high school and
now I'm like in my thirties working at a law firm.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Oh my god, congratulations, when'd you get that job? When
I got that, they came with the nails exactly wow,
because my nails are the manicure I gave myself at
the last minute because I couldn't somehow get to the
manni petty salaun. Show your camera, well, no, because it's
it's just dire because it now looks like a French manicure.

(01:09):
But that's not how it started. That's how kind of old.
I also always immediately smudged my right thumb. Always so irritating.
Life is hard. Yeah, are you having any since you've
been back from your trip to Italy? Which, now that
you're a travel influencer, I think we should discuss all

(01:30):
of your opinions and likes and dislikes. Finally, thank you
can let me. Is anything staying with you that you
miss about being on that trip or like your Italian experience?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
You know what I miss which was really nice, which
probably gets old after a while, but it's only two weeks.
Is dressing for dinner because they have that period between
the afternoon and the evening where nobody does anything. You
take a nap, and then you have to put on
like a dress for dinner. You can't wear tennis shoes,
and it's just like made everything feel so much more special.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah. I loved that.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, but yeah, it was incredible at a really good,
beautiful time. Milan is like incredible. I'd go back there immediately. Yeah,
we stay with My mom texts me a thing of
like don't wear your Star of David again.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
She texted me these things.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
If I've ever had a jewelry, Yes, she said, don't
wear your Star of David, like keep it low key
that you're Jewish, as if that's not what I already do.
But then we found out we were staying at a
hotel where Mussolini had stayed before.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, so it's like I can't tell her that that.
You're like, look, I'm seeing their side of things. No,
that's not good. But also, you can't get away from
a city's history. You can't. You know, it's not your fault, right,
but the really nice hotel was also his way. My
fault was lots of things are my fault in my mind.
World War two, though, I don't you can let yourself

(02:52):
off the hook for that one. I mean, it must
be a huge relief, it is. What's up with you?
I've just been wearing a star David around. See what
I can kick? Not much? You know. We went on
vacation obviously, you know, at the same time, but I
did a staycasion and truly just tried to do nothing.
Literally lay on the couch and pull a blanket up
to my chin, like it was the middle of winter.

(03:13):
Any chance I could? I love it? Did you bringe
Widow's Bay? Oh? Yeah, And now I'm in the watching
people react to how much they love Widow's Bay on
social media, which is such like it's becoming this new
way that we all watched TV. Yeah, where it's just
as satisfying for me to watch people get excited to go.
Here's what I think that it.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Was my favorite. I fucked the whole thing up there.
Here's the negative side of that. I watched a spoiler
on accident and knew that last bit, that last exciting
bit I accidentally watched a fucking like it's the whole
turning point of the show.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
But when you went in knowing it, when.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
She goes about you know I was pregnant. Yeah, I
knew what happened. And at the beginning of that episode,
before even halpened, I go, I get why that matters
because I thought it was just like a regular random
scene that I was to laugh at. It was the
whole point of the fucking show. Yes, and I knew,
and I was so bummed, like Vince gasped and I
wanted to.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Guess to And also the danger of when we get
all this stuff through social media, you can't control that
someone's about to give you a spoiler, as we do
on this show constantly.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
That wasn't a spoiler and you should totally watch it.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
But but I mean, like you that there's a backwards
way that like I always seem to end up consuming
like a TV show. The way I hate the most,
which is you know all the big moments before you
go in, then you're kind of judging. You have to
see them at that point you know the story, right.
But I would argue that with Widow's Bay, they're doing
so much. They work so hard to easter egg and storyline.

(04:42):
I watched a woman lay out this whole idea, and
we will in our social media, we'll post her video
and we will give her the full credit because it's
a really brilliant thing she noticed, which is that time
is all screwed up in Widow's Bay, like the calendar
as a car accident on us, and that in her theory,
she's like, actually, lead, these three episodes all happened in
one day, but you don't realize it. If you think

(05:04):
about it, you can't tell when a thing is actually happening.
You're not sure. And she introduced all these kind of
doubts about, oh, that's right in the time where he's
got the wolves calendar, but then he opens the month
that they're in and it's the car accident, so random,
like there's so many easter eggs about you assume you
think you know what's going on and how, and it's

(05:24):
going to start like it's what's the comedian's name who
plays the shaman?

Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's just like the best, Oh, Chris Fleming, it's just
the best, you know, five minutes of TV.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
It's so good, Chris Fleming, He's so perfect. It's okay,
just drink it slowly, he goes. I just understand.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
This is not it should be a Widow's Bay Rewatch podcast.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Just for the next four years we turn it into
you have a true crime update. There's a true crime update,
and it's just plain good news, which when in the
ten years we've been doing this podcast, as that ever happens. Rex,
the Gilgo Beach murderer, on Wednesday, June seventeenth, was sentenced
to life in prison without the possibility of parole for

(06:08):
the murders of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy Amberlyn Costello, Maureen
Brainerd Barnes, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Cristia and Karen Vergatta.
And he initially denied these charges and he was set
to go to trial, but basically he changed his plea
to guilty in April, and now he is in jail.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
So yeah, I'm glad that is over with and he
can go rotten.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Hell. Yeah. Wow. It's always strange when it ends and
you know the reality and it is the big ghost,
the big monster, that mysterious monster is just some horrible man.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Some small little man, the coward. Yeah, that's why I
love cold cases. It's like, let's not make them this big,
you know, powerful being.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
It's just some fucking dad.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
From Long Island who sucks you know.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, yeah, not good. Okay, should we get into it?
You mean talk about our network? Sure?

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Hey, we have a podcast network. It's called exactly right Media.
Here are some headlines.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Let's here's some headlights. Nope, here are some highlights. Here's
some highlights. This week on our podcast Bananas Curtain, Scottie
discuss whether all the water on Earth has already been
peed in. They talk about a world cut trophy bong
that landed a headshop in legal trouble and everything between
and then over.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
On Ghosted, Roz is joined by comedian and Taro queen
our friend Lizzie Cooperman. They shuffle the cards while discussing
Yes No Later, manifestations, hermit Crabs, and one lingering question,
when will Roz.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Become more famous? Well, we kind of have the answer
to that right because Roz just released her new audio book.
It is her memoir and it's entitled Peeing in an
Empty Bottle and Other Glamorous Shenanigans of an almost famous
transgender comedian on the Road, and that book is out now.
It blends stories obviously from her cross country comedy tour

(07:54):
with exclusive stand up and behind the scenes audio. So
if you want to support Roz, she is an incredible
stand upcomic, hilarious podcaster. We love her obviously member of
our family here, but also just like an entertainer to
beat the.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Band, Rosca is gonna be great, ros Hernandez find it then.
This week on trust Me, Lola and Megan are joined
by doctor Christine Marie, Lola's mom.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Who was also the podcast's very first guest.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
She shares how she went undercover with the FBI to
help bring down self proclaimed profit Sam Bateman. So if
you watch Trust Me on Netflix, this is what we're
talking about. And you can also watch the full video
episode now at YouTube dot com. Slash exactly right.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Media. Karen goes first. So my story today begins on
March first, seventeen seventy eight. Are you ready? No, so
long ago, so long ago. We're talking about an area
that I truly and literally know almost nothing about except
for this story, which is the Revolutionary War era of America.

(08:57):
Got it. I know that you can't correct me in it,
any of these mistakes I'm about to make right now.
That's why we do this podcast together again. My excuse
is that I changed schools fifth to sixth grade. Well,
that's got it. Yeah, that's hard. They learned about stuff
like that in the fifth grade at my new school
and in the sixth grade at my old school. We're
preaching to the choir Roman numerals. I was sick that day.

(09:19):
All the presidents not my business, none of my business,
not really never brought up. I didn't vote for them.
I didn't get to see pictures of them all around
the walls all year long. Okay, So March first, seventeen
seventy eight, we are in Brookfield, Massachusetts, west of Woosta,
and it's a snowy night around nine o'clock. Most of

(09:39):
the locals in Brookfield are either at home sitting in
front of the fire, or they've already gotten into bed
under their thick quilts and blankets because it's so cold outside.
But a local, wealthy, local businessman, thirty seven year old
Joshua Spooner, he's outside in the elements because he spent
the last few hours at the local tavern and now

(10:00):
he's making the quarter mile walk home down Brookfield's main road.
It's dark outside, almost no moonlight. He's holding a lantern
because this is old fashioned times and that's required at night.
So choky, right man, Hello, Hello, And first the beginning
of his walk, he is with his friend, doctor Jonathan King,

(10:21):
who is the town's physician. The doctor splits off in
the direction of his house when they come to the
fork in the road, and then Joshua continues on by himself,
eventually making it to his very stately two story home,
which is one of the nicest in Brookfield. He climbs
a set of stone steps that take him from the
street up onto his property. He unlatches his front gate,

(10:43):
and then he heads back toward one of the back
entrances of the house. He never makes it inside. Instead,
Joshua Spooner's body will be discovered, beaten, strangled, and stuffed
down his well. What Yes, this is the story of
the murder of Joshua Spooner, which is one of the
very first high profile murder cases in America. Dude, seventeen

(11:09):
seventy eight, at that vintage murder, right, happy fourth of July,
eary budd, that's right. While we are lighting off firecrackers
and trying to dissociate, let's remember how this country started
with extreme violence on a day to day basis. True
crime isn't new now. The main source of today's story
is the research and writing of Deborah Novice, and the

(11:31):
rest of the sources are in our show notes. So
it's seventeen seventy eight. Only two years have passed since
the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We're in deep
early history for us, kind of nauseating. It feels like
you haven't eaten lunch, but you have to listen to
the teacher, keep talking. The Revolutionary War has continued and
will continue for five more years. It's been going for

(11:53):
about two and a half three So the American Revolution
is the backdrop for this whole case. The colonies are
fear divided at this time between patriots and loyalists, and
Joshua Spooner, this murder victim, was a supporter of the
Patriot cause. That cause is especially strong and well supported
in New England. At this point in the Revolutionary War,

(12:15):
British leadership has been driven out of Massachusetts. The colony
is now governed by Revolutionary leaders. One of the highest
ranking officials is Joshua's stepbrother, a man named John Avery Junior.
So the problem is, Joshua has a prominent loyalist in
his family. His father in law, Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles

(12:35):
cute right, little Timmy Ruggles Kins. His father in law
his wife's Bathsheba's father. So Bathsheba Ruggles is the woman
that Joshua's married. Joshua Spooner, bring that name back, Bathsheba,
You're in witch. You're immediately a witch. You're a witch
er your Bible lady, congratulations, like one of two things
in this story which so before the revolution, Timothy Ruggles

(12:59):
was a very powerful man. He held a bunch of
important political posts in Massachusetts while under British rule. So
when the revolution started, colonists began to embrace the Patriot cause.
Timothy Ruggles stays committed to the British Crown. Huge mistake
in Worcesta. So in the mid seventeen seventies, Timothy Ruggles

(13:20):
goes to New York to join the British Army.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's how much he commits, literally wrong side of history.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Bra read the fucking room, dude of Massachusetts. It's a
room as wide as Massachusetts. So obviously bad for his
reputation in New England. So soon Timothy Ruggles is considered
one of the most despised political figures in revolutionary massachuests
who so would you compare him to these days? Donald Trump?

(13:46):
May sounds right? So this was that a little too fast.
So all of this has created serious tension in the
Spooner household between Joshua and his wife, Bathsheba. She is
very very close with her father, Timothy Ruggles, and there
are four Ruggles daughters, but Bathsheba has always been known
to be her father's favorite. She's also suspected of sharing

(14:08):
his political leanings. So when he leaves town basically to
join with the British, Joshua forbids his wife from having
any communication with her disgrace turn coat father, and of
course she is devastated you.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Got have discussed politics before you get married. I mean,
I can get on the same.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Page before you get Well, here's the real gossip about
this story is that this relationship has never been good. Okay,
it was basically engineered in seventeen sixty six as a
political arrangement hashed out by their wealthy fathers. Timothy saw
the political writing on the wall and he knew his

(14:45):
loyalist sympathies could someday cause harm to his beloved Bathsheba.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
And I was kidding about that because women don't get
to choose their politics or their husbands back then. So
discussing politics before you get married, he designing if you
want to marry them or not is not an option?

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Not being serious, No, no, no, it's not only not an option.
It was literally like, how dare you? You couldn't suggest
that you would be backhanded and told to go make
a sandwich, right and then you have sliced bread. So
imagine that. I mean back before the internet, they were
still doing that. So when Bathsheba was around twenty years old,
she was married off into the Spooner family, who were

(15:22):
wealthy Boston merchants. Because basically Timothy ruggles knew his daughter
would be protected socially and financially. But both Joshua and
Bathsheba grew up incredibly privileged in aristocratic families. They both
had generational power, and Bathsheba is roundly described to be
exceptionally beautiful. Josh meanwhile, is a successful lumberman. So there's

(15:44):
on paper they were supposed to make a perfect couple, right,
she brings all the gorgeousness, he's money. In reality, they're
just a miserable pair because despite the gender norms dictating quiet,
dutiful wives of the time, Bathsheba is headstrong. She's rash,
and she is free spirited, and she's said to have
quote passions that have never been properly restrained. Same and right. Yeah. Meanwhile, Joshua,

(16:12):
her husband, is described in old records as quote frequently drunk.
There you go, right. He's also unfaithful to his wife.
He is suspected of being physically abusive to his wife.
And one of the few surviving direct quotes we have
from either spooner is one where Bathsheba describes her feelings
about her husband with just two words utter aversion.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
So she would have said same after always drunk, like
I would have been soaked. Do it again, go again.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
And he is described in old records as quote frequently drunk.
Same by seventeen seventy thank you, thank you for indulgent. Yeah,
it's fun. Yet the couple has, as were the practices
of the times, the couple has four children together, bummer.
Only three of those children survive to adulthood, and years later,

(17:03):
one of the adult spooner sons will be heard calling
his father quote old bogus, ooh, yeah, she's like such
an insult back then, such an eighteenth century dig that
historians say suggests his children did not respect him very much.
So by seventeen seventy seven, it's been more than a
decade into this miserable marriage, and the relationship is as

(17:27):
bad as it will ever be. They detest each other.
But on top of that, Bathsheba is struggling terribly personally.
She's isolated because she has to hide at home because
her father is such a pariah.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
But then hiding at home, she's there with this miserable marriage,
no support, you know, so many kids, so many kids.
So in March of that year, a stranger is passing
by the front of the spooner home, and it's a
Continental soldier who's just completed a year of service in
George Washington's army. And this is how cinemax start. That's
the first cinemax kick in those saxophones from the Revolutionary

(18:04):
or Derek Pictures? Was he hot? We don't have pictures
of the Continental Soldier. I'm about to tell you this
picture who Jacob Alordie. Let me give you a little
more information, okay, and then we're going to cast him
because his name is Ezra Ross and he's sixteen years old. Okay, everyone,
how old is? She's just grown? He's thirty two. Okay,

(18:26):
that's illegal. It is illegal. I'm not sure a colonial law.
So as we go, you can maybe think about who
could be cast as a sixteen year old? What do
you know?

Speaker 2 (18:35):
He's aa, I feel like he would be. He's casting everything. Yes,
he looks like a teenager, very true, But.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Like, how old are your nephews? Who's Mike is sixteen? Yeah? Okay?
Oh gross? Right? Oh gross? Yeah? The reality of a
sixteen year old no as opposed to a shalome? Right,
So it's so funny. Okay, So he's on break between
military duties walking by. He was in a new here's
the army encampment, and he has to walk home to Ipswich, Massachusetts,

(19:05):
which is essentially a three hundred mile walk round trip.
Bro Hitchhiking wasn't invented yet because the cart's right, it's
too slow, right, they just knock you off. Also, it's
the winter, right, so it's worst case scenario for this
young soldier. And to complicate it even more, he's dealing
with the lingering effects of what was probably the flu

(19:26):
that he caught at camp. So he's on a long
winter walk kind of getting over a bad flu. It's
unclear whether he approached the Spooner House out of desperation
or whether somebody in the Spooner House saw him passing
and realized he needed help. Either way, the Spooners welcome
Ezra into their home. The sick young man is put

(19:47):
to bed Bathsheba begins to nurse him back to hell,
feeding him and tending to him.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
In what side is he and he's not on the
British side.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
He's the American side, right, yeah, So it's like it's
like forbidden for her too, because like her dad is
super and the British. Yeah, you know, she's like, not
what sixteen? Fuck man, it just keeps getting ruined. It's
so ruined. But it also it's like it's a sixteen
year old. She's just being asked to live like a man.
So there is that might help it a little more,
that he is actually taking on the horrors and responsibilities

(20:16):
of being in the army and fighting a war. If
only he were twenty. But he does have the lama
curl at the front of his hair, the way all
the sixteen year olds do these days.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Okay, Oh so sorry, wow, really pop that so loud?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Okay. Taking in soldiers who are walking long distances after
military stints is not uncommon in revolutionary war times. What
sets this encounter apart is that that time it takes
for Ezra, almost said Timothy Chalamey. That time it takes
for Ezra to recover. We don't know exactly how long
it is. We can assume it was at least a
couple of weeks, because he has to, you know, fully

(20:55):
recover whatever. But in that time, thirty one year old
Bathsheba Spooner, this adolescent soldier, develop what a tasteful person
would call a uniquely strong bond. But what we can all,
maybe in our Bravo minds, assume, was fucking so the
age difference. We don't want to be calling things affairs

(21:16):
like that. Yeah, right, And also just let's not spend
the time getting into all that discussion. Here's what we know.
It's unclear if they start by having a physical affair.
They have definitely started an emotional affair though, and it's
a secret, which makes it even hotter. No one has
any idea what's going on, especially Joshua Spooner, who has
actually developed his own friendship with Ezra. So Ezra playing

(21:40):
both sides, that's right, and getting some soup while he
on his long journey home doing what he's got to do.
At some point, Ezra's health improves enough so that the
Spooner send him back on the road to Ipswich, but
he never forgets Passheba within a month, thirty one year
old woman, some hot milf. That's like, let me take care.

(22:00):
He's like, I'll be seeing you within weeks. I'm sorry.
Within months, he's called back to military service. But then
when he gets leave, he comes and visits the Spooners
in Brookfield. So it's a little less than a year
later now January seventeen seventy eight, and Bathsheba has news
for Ezra. On his next visit, he comes to see

(22:21):
the spooners and she pulls him aside and is like,
I bregged it. Oh shit, uh huh, Now I wanted
to act that up for I loved it. She yanks
him into the pantry and then has to push him
Ba out because they have to act normal. So it's
assumed by historians that given her like on the record
utter aversion with her husband, that they weren't probably having sex,

(22:44):
and that probably Ezra is the father of this baby.
Bathsheba's definitely panicked, and writer Debora Novas puts it this
way quote divorces were all but impossible for women in
revolutionary America, and adulteresses were stripped to the waist and
publicly whipped Jesus, so she is truly panicking. During one

(23:05):
of Ezra's visits, Bathsheba asks him to poison her husband
with aquafortis or also known as nitric acid. It's an
extremely corrosive acid used to dissolve tough materials like metal,
and unlike other poisons from these old stories like arsenic
Aquafortis has an incredibly strong and very terrible taste, so

(23:29):
it's a bad idea to use to begin with. But
Ezra's just a sophomore in love with having sex with
an old lady, so he does it. He's like, sounds
good to me. He poisons Joshua's drink. So problem is,
when Joshua takes a sip of that drink, it's literally
like who put gasoline in my tea? He immediately tastes

(23:49):
the poison, spits out the mouthful, dumps the drink. So
then basically, for the rest of Ezra's stay, he keeps
trying to poison Joshua and can't get it done. Oh folly,
I mean right, the hilarious back and forth of all
the things that Ezra has to spit out and be like,
I this taste is driving me crazy. So basically, by

(24:10):
the end, Ezra gets cold feet about this whole scheme.
His visit ends without a poisoning taking place, and he
leaves Bathsheba to carry out that plan for herself. So
a few weeks later, February seventeen seventy eight, Joshua is
away on a business trip. Bathsheba spots two British soldiers
passing by the front of the house. They are Private

(24:33):
William Brooks, who's in his late twenties and Sergeant James Buchanan,
who is in his mid thirties. Okay, so we're age
appropriate now now, yes, we're getting into some adults involving adults.
Basheba sends out one of her workers basically to intercept
them and offer them a place to sleep and food
to eat, and they're very grateful to come inside. And

(24:55):
when they do, Basheba learns they're British deserters who are
trying to get home by way of Canada. So basically
they're just trying to escape America alive to get home. So,
sensing her opportunity, Bathsheba offers them clothing in cash if
they kill her husband when he comes back from his
business dresses. Some sources say she offers them one thousand

(25:18):
dollars wow, which in today's money from seventeen seventy eight
to twenty twenty six, twelve thousand, twenty five thousand, there's
a lot of money. That's a lot of money. So
they accept, and when they do, Bathsheba writes to Ezra, hey,
when you graduate from High School come back here because
the plan is afoot So by the time Joshua Spooner

(25:42):
gets back from his business trip to Brookfield, these British
soldiers have been staying in their house in the Spooner
House for more than a week, sleeping in nice beds,
eating great food whenever they want, running up an enormous
tab at the local tavern under Joshua Spooner's name the
whole nine. Joshua finds this out. He's irate at his
wife for letting these British soldiers into their home. He

(26:04):
kicks them out, but William and James don't go anywhere.
They just hang around town lurkin laying low, waiting for
the opportunity to strike. And then, on February twenty eighth,
Ezra Ross quietly arrives back in Brookfield and joins up
with the two British soldiers. This and now we're back
to the day this all started, which is the cold
dark knight of March first, and thirty seven year old

(26:27):
Joshua Spooner just arriving from home from the tavern around
nine o'clock that night, he goes on to his property.
He approaches the back entrance and that's where Ezra, William
and James appear out of the darkness and ambush him.
They beat him and they strangle him to death. Jesus.
Then they carry his body over to the well and

(26:48):
they throw him down into it headfirst. And the idea
is that because Joshua has a reputation for heavy drinking,
people will think he accidentally stumbled and fell into the well.
I'm sorry, from a fall. It just all of it
in our forensic files. I know how these days it's
like U Rubes from the Revolutionary War. You don't know

(27:09):
how to murder. But also I love the idea of
like the odds of a drunk person stumbling and falling
into a hole smaller than really their own shoulder probably
or the same size. Don't go toward the hole you're falling, Okay.
So before they do drop Joshua's body into the well,

(27:30):
they take his fancy watch, his ring, his silver shoe
buckles which have his initials engraved on them, and like
basically keep it for themselves. Then when they're done, they
go into the house where Bathsheba Spooner is waiting. James
Buchanan will later testify that she seemed quote utterly confused,
which could imply a state of shock, or some historians

(27:52):
have wondered the throes of an undiagnosed mental health crisis.
That's basically kind of like at its apex with this
you know, horrible event. She gives the men a thick
stack of cash as well as a few pieces of clothing.
Not so confused that she doesn't pay them off from
killing her husband. She's not catatonic, Yeah, exactly, She's like,
I can't deal with this. Nine to ten, that's it

(28:15):
for you. And she also gives them clothes from Joshua's closet,
so she's in on the on the cover up so confusing.
You can take his vest and his boots. At around
eleven o'clock, Ezra, William and James, all wearing Joshua's clothes,
riding his horses or the Spooner's horses, skipped town had
twenty miles out toward of course, the star of this

(28:38):
show Wista. They arrive at an inn around four am.
Of course, the innkeepers immediately sent somethings off. Yeah, don't
go at four am, wait till nine in the morning,
middle of the night, with big silver bubbles on your
fucking my clothes that don't fit you correctly? What, yeah,
like streaks of mud on your cheeks. Yeah, and of
course acting very very strangely.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
I'm gonna say, paying in cash, but they didn't have
any other way to pay back then.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Back then there's no cards, no gift cards, no tabs, right,
hanging dirty dirty cash. Yeah, I guess gold. Do they
pay gold? Yeah? But I think that would count as cash,
it wouldn't stand out as much. So. Writer Debora Nava
suggests that all of these actors in this murder are
dealing with their guilt and their regret, and then it's

(29:24):
just coming out in their own ways. So Ezra's despondent,
he refuses to give the innkeepers his name. He immediately
isolates himself in a bedroom church of just the funniest
eye roll to me, like she hates Ezra so much. Sorry,
of course he does.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Like you fucking did the crime, yep, and now like
it doesn't matter how horrible you feel afterwards.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yes, you got all high on like being in the
murder group, right, and then.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Like they could have probably done it without you, bro,
but she wanted to prove your sixteen year old ass
to your fucking thirty one year old lover.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Yes, he had a hot milk lover. He was willing
to to go the distance, but now he's despondent and listener,
we're just telling you that's how it always goes, whether
it's murder or just taking people to weddings. Yeah, it's
on your permanent record, that nerd and you spending time
with them. He's in the photos. Your family talks about it. Okay.

(30:17):
William and James, on the other hand, immediately go to
the inns tavern by alcohol and just start drinking their
way into the early daylight hours.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
That's the way to deal with your regret, except for
an adult.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Except for they wear the silver shoe buckles and the
jewelry and the clothing, so they couldn't be drawing more
attention to themselves as they're trying to have a nice
escape from reality drink. So the average person in the
colonies would just never have the wealth to afford silver
shoe buckles with their own engraved initials on them or whatever,
especially not a pair of British deserters, which I'm sure

(30:50):
it's kind of pretty obvious right away. So by the afternoon,
the men have raised so much suspicion, the authorities are notified. Meanwhile,
back in Brookfield, there's all ready a swirl of suspicion
around Bathsheba because she, of course, the very next day
had morning visitors because she's the lady of the you know,
of the elite. And when they show up and ask

(31:10):
where Joshua is, she just burst into tears. So they're
just kind of like, are you okay? And they start
looking for him, and they find his body in the well.
Ladies who were just there for some nice tea and
tiny sandwiches and suddenly they're like, we just found your
husband dead. They're like, is mercury and retrograde or what?
I'm having a bad day. So Joshua's body is pulled

(31:32):
from the well. Doctor Jonathan King, his friend who was
walking home with him the night before from the tavern.
He shows up to examine the corpse, and he notes
the signs of strangulation and injuries consistent with being beaten.
He testifies later that Joshua hadn't seemed all that drunk
when they left the tavern and walked home together. Pretty
crucial element to this story, and that's of course in

(31:54):
direct contrast to the idea that Joshua was so drunk
that he walked in big circles and fell down a well,
almost impossible unless he sat down and then started singing
and maybe fell backwards. But you just kind of folds
like that right stop.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
And then start screaming, yeating out of here.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
I don't know. So less than twenty four hours after
Joshua Spooner's murder, his wife Bathshiba, the young soldier Ezra Rass,
Private William Brooks, and Sergeant James Buchanan have all been
arrested as suspects in his murder. The joint trial begins.
So now you're on trial with two strangers and your
teenage lover.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
God.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, that's quick. That begins late April seventeen seventy eight.
It becomes, of course, a huge sensation. First of all,
it's the wealth that's the scandal, the violence at play.
But it truly is one of the first times, like
in the official newborn two year old America, there has
been a murder trial. The prosecution is led by a

(32:49):
man named Robert treat Payne. He's one of the signees
of the Declaration of Independence. I knew that maybe you've
heard of it. Ask your friend Nicholas Cage if you
know now and then the defense is led by a
man named Levi Lincoln, no relation, but he would later
serve as President Thomas Jefferson's attorney general. So it's not
only one of the first capital murder cases tried in

(33:09):
the United States, but because Levi Lincoln will attempt to
paint Bathsheba Spooner as mentally unwell at the time of
the murder, it's also believed to be one of the
first times the insanity defense is used. Yeah interesting given
the patriotic backdrop of Massachusetts at the time, the involvement
of two British soldiers, and the infamy of Bathsheba's loyalist

(33:29):
father makes this trial inherently political, and of course everybody
has big opinions about it. Levi Lincoln urges the jurors
to look past their quote political feelings, but the evidence
is overwhelming. The trial quickly ends and four guilty verdicts
are turned in. All of them are sentenced to death
and their schedule to hang on June fourth, seventeen seventy eight,

(33:53):
and this is when Bathsheba begs the court to delay
her execution to spare the life of our unborn child. Right,
the gallery gasps, that's not true. I put that in.
I don't know when she told them or how could
have been in a letter. I bet there was a gas.
I bet someone gassed, even if it was just someone
somewhere the secretary of the person that opened that letter.

(34:14):
So at the time, common law protects fetuses if there
have been signs of what they used to call the quickening,
which is basically when the mother can feel the baby.
It happens usually between the fourth and fifth month of pregnancy.
So if she really did get pregnant sometime in January,
which is when she told Ezra that she was pregnant,
this would put her in the correct timeframe. And there

(34:35):
are theories that Bathsheba is lying about being pregnant just
to buy herself time, but either way it works. The
execution date gets pushed to July second, and then in
the interim she is examined, and she's examined many times
to determine whether she's pregnant by a panel of midwives
that the court puts together. Wow, it is as bad

(34:56):
as you are anticipating. Humiliating, also, needless sleep, painful, it's
as gross as you can think of it to be,
and it's described by one contemporary as quote indecent and cruel.
In the end, the panel concludes that she is not pregnant,
but Bathsheba appeals and she hires her own midwife to

(35:17):
conduct her own exam, and then that midwife concludes she
is pregnant. So the court sides with their own panel. Surprisingly, no,
it's been like this all along, and they reject Basheba's
pregnancy claims. So on July second, seventeen eighty eight, seventeen
year old Ezra Ross, twenty seven year old William Brooks,
thirty six year old James Buchanan, and thirty two year

(35:39):
old Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner are brought to the gallows. Bathsheba
demands that they perform an autopsy on her body after
she is hanged, to prove the existence of her unborn child,
which is like, I'll be looking down at all of
you as you martyr me. Okay. So outside of that discussion,
which I imagined to have in a darkened tunnel but

(36:01):
probably didn't, five thousand people have gathered to watch this hanging.
You guys. A small town has gathered, which is funny
because that what was that at the beginning, was that
Widow's Bay at the beginning when all the people are
there and they're cheering for the hanging. Or is that
just another movie? I was watching Wuthering Heights wathering. Molly

(36:24):
is dialed in. She knows well, because we've been talking
about Wuthering Heights, and I mistakenly thought that Molly like
loved it, and so then we watched it to be
like other people hate it, but Molly seems to love
it less check it out, and then we were like, oh,
this is good. We like it. Yeah, I really liked it.
People love their books, they really do. The children love

(36:46):
the books. Okay, So outside, five thousand people gather to
watch this hanging. The man who signs the execution warrant
is John Avery Junior, who was Joshua's stepbrother. Testimony from
the execution describes the one set of quote one of
the most terrified thunderstorms that occurred within the memory of
anyone living end quote. And they say that that that

(37:09):
storm quote came up and darkened the heavens, conspiring to
produce a scene of most dreadful horror. So as they're
walking to the gallows, black cloud rolls in. Yeah, my god,
God is pissed. Shortly after the executions, an autopsy is
performed on Bathsheba's body and the physician finds a quote
perfect male fetus of the growth of five months completely correct.

(37:35):
The panel led, damn. The panel led, the clouds told you,
but you wouldn't listen. Okay, When word gets out that
Massachusetts has just executed a pregnant woman, the public is horrified,
and over time this is a plot twist I did
not see coming, right, yeah, because you're kind of like, oh,
she's bad, she's bad, this is the crime. They killed him,

(37:55):
and here's the execution. It's like, yeah, but wait, oh,
but hold on one second. So the real controversy most
associated with this case over like history because in the beginning,
of course, it was the usual moralizing about the risks
of adultery and evil women having their way and being
free spirited and loud and all the things that are
so terrible about sexually a music as child, but don't yeah,

(38:18):
that is very seen, the risks of adultery and evil
women using dumb men. But it's actually lived on as
a cautionary tale about how the biases around politics and
gender seep into the justice system. Bathsheba herself has increasingly
been treated with more and more empathy as the years pass,
and sympathy, I should say, but no one doubts she

(38:39):
wanted her husband dead or that she conspired to kill him,
But contemporary historians all over the extreme circumstances of her
life that led up to the crime. Her marriage was
stifling and it likely involved domestic abuse, the double standard
and how who commit adultery are treated versus the men
who commit adultery, Not to mention Bashiva's grief around being

(38:59):
basically cut off from her father, him being going from
being an incredibly respected man to an all out pariah,
and then that reverberating into her life, people judging her
and her being socially isolated because of all that. In
the end, the Spooner's children end up being adopted by relatives,
and it seems they most likely escape all the notoriety

(39:21):
that is around this case. A few years after his
daughter's execution, Bathsheba's father, Timothy Ruggles, dies in exile in
Canada in his early eighties, and the well that they
put Joshua Spooner's body into is actually still standing in Brookfield, Massachusetts,
according to the Brookfield Historical Commission, although they say it's

(39:41):
obscured by thick poison ivy much of the year. AKA
stay the fuck away from the well. And that is
the story of the first murder in America, the murder
of Joshua Spooner. Wow, that's crazy, that's heavy. Good job,
thank you, that's a great one. The four July. Right,
it's coming up. Do your homework, everybody.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
They don't tell you this shit at cool mine is
they had one hundred years later? Only okay, a little later.
I think right after the Civil War? When did the
Civil War end? Its ion might be lying.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Eighteen fifty three, six eighteen sixty five. We were both right?
So should we get our high school diplomas? Again? No?

Speaker 2 (40:33):
On the show, I don't want to take that test
in front of everyone. We're gonna fucking fail. Are you
kidding me? To be humiliating? It's a fan cult video
of us trying to pass the GED get our ged. No,
I'd rather talk about my modeling photos.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Come on, Oh my god, the people love the fucking
modeling photos. We have to talk about that. People are
going crazy for that entire thing. They really met you
at that vulnerability that you revealed for them. That's really nice.
That is nice. So here we go.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
We're getting into the country's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
as you know right now.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Definitely now we're going.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
To go back to the centennial, which is eighteen seventy six,
and we're going to be in Kentucky.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Great. Today's story is.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
An unexplained phenomenon that's straight out of an episode of
Bananas Weird News. Great, and this one is in the
genre of weird stuff falling from the sky, like when
I covered the Oakville Blobs in episode four twenty nine,
where unidentified goo fell out of the sky in the
eighties and Washington State. But today, in our story, there's
a bit more progress made in identifying the stuff that

(41:39):
actually fell from the sky as big of a mystery.
This is the story of the Kentucky meat shower.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Oh I've heard of this. Oh no, meat shower. Meat shower.
Let's meditate on meat shower. You're just out in a
Kentucky field, roaming through hip high grass and love life
and then splat boom, right on your face. There's a
Prime rib.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
The main sources for the story are articles from Scientific
America and Atlas Obscura, and the rest of the sources
can be found in our show notes and Cooks Illustrated
and Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Falls. So it's
March third, eighteen seventy six, and we're an Olympian Springs, Kentucky.
It's a small rural community in Bath County, about fifty

(42:27):
miles east of Lexington, Kentucky. Great a woman named Rebecca
Crouch is in the front yard of her family farm
making soap as you had to do back.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Then, mixing some lye with some tallow.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
That's right, which is a time and labor intensive chore
done by boiling rendered animal fat on an open fire
and combining it with lie.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
How do you think I used to spend my summers?
That's right.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
You're a farm girl, country girl. Have you read the
book Yesteryear yet?

Speaker 1 (42:55):
No?

Speaker 2 (42:55):
It's great, you should read it, Okay, But there's a
soap making scene in it.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
That's all I know about it. Is it sexy? No,
forget it, very not sexy.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's about a trad wife blogger who gets taken back
into the time when she would have to actually work
as a trap, like had to do the things like
make so like and make bread fresh instead, and like
that's genius, so good yesteryear. It's getting made into a movie.
It's like that's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
So, as missus Crouch is working, she begins to see
what she'll later describe as a substance that looks a
bit like snowflakes falling out of the sky.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Snowflakes is fine, it's so fun. It's not big deal.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
But it's sunny and warm out. There's no snow. This
isn't snowflakes. It's a cloudless day. And some of the
flakes are very big. She describes them as being quote
as long as my hand and about half an inch wide,
so well as long as my hand, the big ones
and like half an inch wide.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Okay, take some big pieces of meat. I'm sorry, it's meat.
I already's meat. Spoiler, it's fucking meat. It's me meat flakes,
meat flakes.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Oh, there's a really great drawing of the whole thing,
if you just don't have the imagination for it.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Great. I love this so much. Let's take a look.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
The artist is James Fossdyke, brilliant and it's just James sausag.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
You sure can draw Gristle. I don't like the look
of those meat clumps that are falling on her.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
It looks like a children's book. Yeah, so if you're
watching on Netflix you can see this. If you're not,
you should be.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
It's good.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
So, as everything gathers on her yard and she inspects
them further, missus Crouch realizes that they look not unlike
the stuff she's making her so bad of animal flesh,
like meats or bits of fatty connective tissue. She said,
quote it looked gristly, as if it had been torn from.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
The throat of some animal. Good Lord.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
The Crouch family cat and dog are fucking stoked. They
come a run in and they start going to town.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Do we know the names of those pets? Oh no,
Well let's name them now for history's sake. Snowflake, Snowflake
and gristle, Peaty Grizzle who I had a friend whose
dog was named grizzled. That's a great name for a
dog that I just made up or was it in
like a movie? Probably both?

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Okay, So they're losing their minds eating all of this.
The family hogs and chickens get in on the action too,
and eat.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
A lot of what was falling and cannibalize themselves. Well,
we don't know exactly what the animal is. Okay, okay,
it's human meat, right, Oh, it's not cannibalism, it's human.
The chickens are like, finally we get our say, I've been.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Feeding the crows freeze ried chicken hearts. Oh, which feels bad,
but they love it.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
They're going to take over. They're going to take the
keys to your home. Fine they can, Okay.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
A few days later, just by the bye, the dog
does get a bit sick, but we don't know if
it's connected, and it doesn't seem like any of the
other animals do either.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
So right, because the dog ran over and bit like
ate some grizzle, and then they ran over there and
to eat a big cow pie exactly.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
So in all, about two hundred pounds of this meat
substance falls for about.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
A minute a grown man's worth. So true. Oh the
sound of the slop and just one lady trying to
make some soap. What the fuck Jesus?

Speaker 2 (46:13):
It seems like this event is pretty much limited to
the area around missus Crouch's house, and she says that
the meat smells fresh when it had just fallen, but
throughout the day it starts to go off, and by
the next day the little flakes are all dried out.
So it does what meat does. The event attracts national
media attention and several samples are saved. One is sent

(46:33):
to Louisville for analysis, while another is sent to Washington, DC. Also,
a correspondent for the New York Herald goes to visit
the Crouch farm. This reporter goes all around town interviewing
people about the phenomenon, asking if missus.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Crouch is full of shit basically fit.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, but no, everyone is like, this is not a
woman who like she's making soap. She doesn't have a
lot of time for joking around and like pranks. She
handles live, yeah, with no glove.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
She's a fucking farm. Like she's not making shit up? Yeah,
do not even. And while there is some.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Investigation going on in the article, it does seem like
a lot of it is just a reporter making fun
of the members of this very rural community. He's kind
of a dick about it, and it's probably pissed that
he got sent all the way out there.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
So what are you saying like people are kind of dumb?

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Or yeah, okay, or he's making stuff up because some
of the conversations in the article are just don't seem
like conversations people have. But yeah, you know, it was
the eighteen seventies, so what do I know?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Fill it up? Fill up that article, rusty.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Exactly, we need two thousand words. So he bargains with
a railroad laborer named Jimmy Welsh to eat a dollar's
worth of the meat. No, like, just so we could
get some fucking color for his article.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
So he's saying, if you eat this lump of gristle,
I will pay you.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
A dollar that fell how many days ago?

Speaker 1 (47:48):
And also, sorry, but can we do a doult? What
is a dollar worth? Back?

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Then?

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Oh shit, one dollar? Eighteen seventy six? One dollar going
to go?

Speaker 2 (47:57):
You go first, and then Molly will okay would that be?
I'm gonna guess too, I guess too, you can too.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
We're all in this now. I'm going to say thirty
one dollars. Okay, I'm going to say fifty. Karen is
just ai overview, but it says thirty one dollars. No, yeah,
I had to add that looks like I set this
whole thing up because I demanded it. No, come on,
I don't believe that you would do something. Have we
ever had a dead on one?

Speaker 2 (48:23):
I think once? And this is yours. Congratulations drop the
streamers hiding up.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Well, I guess I've tried so hard for so long
to guess the numbers. I'm really bad at it. I
couldn't have done it without Elvis his necklace. I'm always like,
could you please do your job? No, I love it.
This is your job. This is my joy. This is
your job. Good job getting this job. Thank you making

(48:52):
this my god, thank you creating the job. I applied
and then I called back two weeks later and I said, hey,
I am a bad interview, but I know I can
do this. Okay.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
So we're in the moment when he's given thirty one
dollars for this poor guy named Jimmy to eat this meat,
which is probably a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
He's a railroad laborer. That's a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
At this point, it's been about a week after the
meat first fell from the sky.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
This Jimmy's got a tummy agg.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Well, journalist writes quote the article was ordered and placed
before him the meat. He then hesitated and said he
was not hungry. I then told him I would give
him three dollars to gulp it down.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Ninety then ninety three. Right.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
He then suddenly remembered that it was the season of
lent and backed out on moral principles.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
So he Jimmy chicken out, Jimmy chicken out or muttoned out.
We don't really know. You know what he did, He
dumbed his way into a thing that right, Why were
you ever sitting at that table? It's disgusting and risky.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Don't do it drinking alcohol. There's no way alcohol wasn't involved.
Just meant some guide the bar.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
So the meat is sent to several different agencies for
testing in Kentucky and also out of state. There's a
man named Leopold Brandeis whose qualifications are on clear same.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Well, he has his own college. Does that count, does
he Brandish? Yeah, university.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
He analyzes a sample that's been preserved in glycerine, and
he publishes his findings in the Scientific American because I
guess anyone could throw anything in there now, saying he
believes the substance is something called gnostic.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Have you heard of gnostic only in the Bible or
gnostic gno nostoc No, I've never heard of that. Basically,
it's a bacteria that swells up into a jelly like
substance when it rains.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
I went to Wikipedia and it said that quote. The
word itself is a combination of the English nostril and
German nason loch, which means nosehole or nostril.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Because basically, because it looks like not that's disgusting.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, and when it lands on the ground.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
I have a photo of it. Great, here we go. Oh,
it just looks like seaweed kelp. He looks like kelp.
It looks like Oh. I have a photo of Missus
Crouch too. Oh perfect.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
We're all guessing she's fifty, but that's in today's money.
She's probably twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Great, I know. Also, listener, Missus Crouch took a photo
smartly with a parasol parasol and her hand on her
fucking hip. She's doing it. Yeah, she's making it happen.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Yeah, come at me, she says, this is Crouch.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Now she has to use an umbrella because there's fucking
gnostics falling all over the place. I bet that was
the journalist's ideas.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
That's so true, okay, But the problem with this theory
is that, of course the weather was fine and clear,
so it's not that other testers believe that the meat
is lung tissue, either from a horse or a human infant,
which is fucking insane, and everyone just moves on.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
From that statement. Please now, like nobody is like, what, well,
because there was two hundred pounds of it.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Right, And actually, when missus Crouch first sees it falling,
she had said she'd had quote a vague idea that
my husband and son who were away had been torn
to pieces and their remains were being brought home to
me in this way by the wind end quote, So
she needed some xanax before this even fucking happened.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Well, and after the Civil War, so maybe she saw
some stuff that she was like, this reminds me of
human good point tragedy.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah, and then they probably still believe in God back then,
so the like that God works, that guy works in
mysterious ways, absolutely, like throwing meat through the weather.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
As a punishment go to church, Missus Crouch. That's very
weird though, because I think that idea of looking at
something completely foreign and immediately attributing it to a certain
place is meaningful because it's like.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
And also that like you're being punished in some way
for something. Yeah, that's like, we understand how that works.
But multiple testers believe the meat might be human. And
this is so dumb. People think that two or more
men may have killed each other somewhere in a nearby
knife fight, and then the wind picked up all that
remains and tornado dropping.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
It's just like, yeah, stupid, they slash each other to
ribbons and then without bones. Those car those car dealership.
You can set one of those car dealership guys that
dances around to any song and I will laugh my
ass off. So funny, really good. Okay.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
So a humor writer back then named William Livingston Elden
writes in The New York Times that the meat might
have come from space and maybe exploded animal matter from
another planet. Let's stop talking about dumb theories.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Let's not ask any old fourth grader what they think.
Here's a dumb theory that is probably true. Okay.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
The theory that most locals arrive at, and that most
people still believe to this day, is that the meat
had been eaten by vultures, so we're far off partially digested,
and then when vultures get scared, they vomit their contents
of their stomach out. Okay, so the vultures maybe had
eaten something, they were in flight, something startled them, and
they barfed all the meat onto this one spot. Yeah,

(53:41):
the only that's to me, that's the only solution that
isn't paranormal.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
That makes sense, It makes perfect sense. Man introduced the
idea that they got scared by a pterodactyl, a leftover dinosaur.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
You know what, if they got scared by a ufo,
then we're back.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
If they got scared by the Lugno's monster, now I'm
interested in that story.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
So we actually you're right, that might be the reason,
but we don't know why and what scared them, and
it's probably sci fi.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
It feels good, though, that there's something normal that you
can tell me that possibly could happen because the agitation
I feel not being able to think of even how possibly.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
This is now, because your brain goes to airplane and
then your brain is like, that's stupid, it's eighteen seventy six.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, and then you start going but I saw a
show on Netflix where they actually rolled those things over.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
The enduring mystery, though, is that Missus Crouch was standing
right in her yard. She didn't see any of these vultures.
But who knows, or might it could have flown that way?
She might not have seen them. They were very high.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Who knows what? I just I would love to keep
that list going. She had bad vision. She was a liar,
so blinded her.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
She had eaten some fucking magic mushrooms from her phone.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Thing was fake.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah, so here's the fun part. In the early she though,
there's an art professor named Kurt God who takes a
job at Kentucky's oldest university.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Kentucky University of Ancient History. So close Transylvania.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
Your University of Lexington, Kentuck' not in Lexington, Kentucky.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
No, No, there is not a vampire college.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
There's Vampire College and he's an art professor there. And
right around that time that he starts this job, he
reads a book about strange weather phenomenon and is thrilled.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
This guy's like an adorable weirdo.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Great, he's like an art teacher, but seems like the
kind of like high school science teacher that like makes
you interested in science and you become a scientist and
you're like, the only reason is because mister God told
me that I could be anything, and so I did,
and that women are in science too, and so I
did you know, Like he's just one of those. He
also he's kind of like Evince had an older brother
who is a professor. He kind of looks like him.
Actually have a photo of him. Oh, he's kind of

(55:50):
got a hot Zaddi vibe. Oh hell yes, right, so
we love him. He reads a book about this thing
happening and he's shocked to learn that like nobody from
there knows about the meat showers, and he's like, this
is exciting, and it kind of becomes an obsession of
his just by luck. A few years later, in two
thousand and four, he is cleaning out a storage university

(56:11):
at Transylvania University when he happens upon a small, clear,
very old vial filled with yellowy liquid. In the liquid
is suspended a white hunk of something and the faded
label reads Olympia Springs. Kurt has found at this fucking
college that he started teaching at, the last known sample
of the meat and he's overjoyed. I have a photo

(56:31):
of it, and I have one.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
For you right here, I'll dry Actually the thing behind
you kind of looks like it. For thirty one dollars,
get a little bit of that.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Here's a photo of the vial with the like gross
tendery looking.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
How much to drink that liquid? I guess for me
right now in my life, it would have to be
roughly three million dollars. Yes, yeah, but how much would
I have to drink? How about a zip.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Chew that shit in the bottle or drink chew and
spit out in the bottom in the swallow or drink
the liquid?

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Pick one, drink the liquid? No, because in you're yeah,
the chewing is it's just going to give you true
trauma because you're going to be like, yeah, remembering any
time you chew anything, and then like infants and stuff.
But also wouldn't you just die? You also don't have
to do either of those things. Well now I want
to I am not even drinking. Okay.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
He's so excited because he's a nerd, and he so
he works with a professor in the biology department to
try to test the sample. But it's too degraded and
they can't find a conclusive finding. It's two thousand and four,
so it's like the Dark Ages. But Kurt is an artist,
and he's more interested in the multisensory experience of the phenomenon.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Drinking and eating it, rather than continuing to pursue clear
cut answers.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
So he sends the vial to a lab in Cincinnati
that analyzes flavor compounds. Oh okay, and then he uses
that flavor information to make jelly beans that essentially tastes
like whatever it was, to have people help him figure.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Out what the meat was. I feel like that's a
very art teacher solution. That's exactly what it is. I
feel like if I was involved with that, it would
be on par with the first time I had a
popcorn jelly belly. Have you ever eaten that flavor? The butter? Yeah,
buttered popcorn?

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Any like the weird jelly belly flavors that came out
in the like nineties the kids today, I don't know,
Like that wasn't a thing for it was just like
fruit flavored jelly beans. God, I sound so old, but really, really,
when jelly Belly came out with these like crazy flavors,
we were our minds were blown. Yes, and then he
like mixed the coconut with the popcorn one and that
book yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
In third grade, saying I just had tried to my tie. Yeah.
But also there was some flavors that were so upsetting
that like he's basically walking people into come and eat
and upsetting thing right with me?

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Yeah, because I want to learn for science for learning sake,
So it's like adorable, okay, Okay, So he actually passes
them out. There's a big festival called Kentucky Court, and
in two thousand and seven he passes them out. Responses
are varied. Multiple people said the beans tasted like bacon.
Another person said it was like a strawberry pork chop.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Oh, he's trying to do like everybody gets to have
a vote to figure out what this is. Yeah, like
what kind of meat is this? I see? Sorry, I
was thinking he was doing it scientifically, but also through
jelly beans.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
I'm just like, I don't know, She's okay, kind of
fun with the whole thing, love it, but nobody wanted
to try a second jelly bean to find out how
bad they were. Yeah, and I think he still has
some leftover too. Almost twenty years later. So fast forward
to now and Kurt is still obsessed with the Kentucky
Meat Shower, and in fact, just last this February that
just happened in twenty twenty six. It was the one

(59:42):
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Kentucky Meat Shower, and
he celebrates with a little festival in town which includes
there's a meat fall toss, there's hot dogs, of course,
and a blowney throwing contest.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Like he's just having fun with.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
His great So this whole festival that he create, it
culminates in the second ever Kentucky Meat Shower. He has
a small airplane, oh drop eighteen hundred and seventy six,
which is the year it happened, individually wrapped pieces of
beef jerky from the sky.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
I love this man.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
There's a video of it. They look like snowflakes the
way he wraps them when they come down. It's so
it's so whimsical.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Yes, right, and fun yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
And each package has a number on it and then
the people who pick them up can go to his website,
which is called Fleshfalls dot com and claim prizes based
on those numbers, including a gift card to a local
cafe nice like get me out of la is what
I think? That's what this is a plea yes me
exactly and a necklace by a local artist, as well
as a signed book by humorist, author and journalist Dave Barry,

(01:00:48):
who wrote about the event in his sub stack assumed
charmed by it. So the specimen is now housed in
Transylvania use Monroe O Sick Medical and Science Museum.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
If you work at the Monroe Medical, Music and Medical
Science Museum, will you please reach out to us because
we want to hear Are you real? Is Transylvania reel?
Is any of this real?

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Can we have a private tour? And will you send
us merch? And will you send us meatsticks?

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Will you send us merge? I wan't worch Transylvania College
sweaters please.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Dave Barry writes about it that the museum quote houses
many nineteenth century scientific and medical artifacts, including a hairball
fourteen inches in diameter that was removed from the stomach
of a cow, uh huh, and a quote tobacco smoke clister,
which is a device that doctors once use to try
to revive drowning victims by blowing tobacco smoke.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Up their butts. No, and then he writes, I am
not making any of this up. That sounds like it's
the Muture Museum or the Yeah, I don't know, but
like a medical history museum is a fascinating for sure,
especially a small one.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Yeah, specialized and Dracula and Trendsylvania. I'm going to end
on a quote from Dave Barry that he has defined
a sense of humor as quote, a measurement of the
extent to which we realize that we are trapped in
the world, almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how
we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Yes, Dave, And that is the story of the Kentucky meat.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Shower fuck on a True crime murder podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Hell, yes, you're ten. You're ten. In the fall of fascism,
when the world around us has turned to living hats.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Right, when women are getting imprisoned for taking out We're
not going.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
There, I mean Jesus, but we are there. We don't
have to go anywhere. We're fucking here. Yes, We've been
talking about it for a while, and in the meantime
of all this bullshit, we're going to tell each other
about delightful things, Right, and horrible things. Yeah, and things
we feel we need to know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
As of yesterday, we are no longer the only true
crime podcast, so you're welcome to listen.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Did that just happen? Yeah, there's a couple more popped up. Yeah.
We had a great run. Yeah, being the only ones. Yeah.
Now we're going to be doing this weird shit. Yeah,
so we buckle the fuck up. People are like we are.
We listened to the end of this episode. You want
us to do? Why are you mad at that? How
much more do we have to listen to you? Oh?
We love you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
If you've listened to this point, you're a real one
and here we fucking appreciate the shit out of you.
You're the realist one and we're all trying and you're
doing great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Good by, Elvis. Do
you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo. This episode was mixed by
Leona Squalocci. Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your pope.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
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Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Goodbye,