July 9, 2026 • 49 mins
Using the nooks and crannies of Puget Sound as cover, Roy Olmstead ran a massive bootlegging empire during Prohibition. He was nonviolent, creative, and a whole lotta fun. And on top of that, he managed to have a lasting impact on the US legal system. Not bad for a former cop.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zarin Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm doing well.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
How are you pal? I'm good good.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
How is your heart good?
Speaker 3 (00:10):
My heart is pumping full, it's working, it's full, it's rhythmic,
full of beans, full of vinegar. How's your heart?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
None of those apply to hearts, But I like it.
You're creative.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I am full of it. I'm full of everything.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah. My heart's just steady, working and trying to lay low.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
My heart overflows.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It doesn't want to get an attitude like my kidneys.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, it's good. Our organs are all operating in good
working order.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's what the doctor's say.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Congratulations, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm so glad you asked I do Oh good?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Please share.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Have you ever watched the TV show Webster, Yeah with
the Little Kid, Yeah, yeah, Manuel Lewis, Yes, yes, yes,
So do you know anything about the final episode of
that series? Final episode it was a crossover event The
Very Fast.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
With Homicide Life on the Street.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Practically, no, no, it was not. But the last episode
of the sixth season was called web Trek because Webster
gets beamed aboard the US as Enterprise. What and there
he is the new one, the new like the new
Star Trek Next Generation Picard totally with Lieutenant Wharf, the
(01:26):
klingon with the wrinkled head. So Webster's chilling with him.
And yes, it's like a wait.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
So that those universes overlap.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Apparently, so Webster is part of the official Star Trek
cannon because he was like there on like the bridge,
like he's not just like they don't come down to
visit him.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
He goes, and then just the rest of his family
is like, I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And then he gets like a featured like in the
Next Generation episode essentially because there's also it's like a
whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Well then they just kill them off. What happened after?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I don't know what happened. I want to know what
web because remember they're also in different centuries. So this
is like the second time Star Trek has gone back
to the eighties, because they do it in Star Trek
four with the Whales with the original cast and then
the new cast, like we're also going back to the
eighties and we're picking up a small black orphan.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
You have to find this episode.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
There you go. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
That is ridiculous. That should be an episode us watching
that episode. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Please?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
The illusion of privacy? That's ridiculous. This is is ridiculous
(03:00):
crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and
cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one
hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I know you heard that.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
I know I told you recently about Popcorn Sutton. I
loved him down in Dirty Bootlegger Moonshine, Oh, I love it.
He was the best. He was a rascal went through
and that's par for the course when it comes to
like the bootlegging type. Sure, yeah, but not always all
always for book counts. I have a guy for you
today who runs that full Vonnegut story arc on the
(03:35):
chalkboard that used to do. His story is a roller
coaster and a study in human nature and redemption. Today,
I'm going to tell you all about Roy Olmsted So.
He was born in eighteen eighty six to a good
family in Beaver City, Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Beaver City, Nebraska, beaver City, population fourteen Salt.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Of the Earth nineteen oh four. He's eighteen years old
and he picked up stakes, and he moved to Seattle. Why,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
The railroad went there, sure.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
And once there, well, I mean it was like he
was going to start the grunge movement. Yeah, he gets
there and he becomes a police officer, as you do.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So Seattle, which has a notoriously like suspect police department
at the time.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
He was a cop in Seattle around the same time
my great great grandpa was a cop in San Francisco.
And so while my police organization, well my ancestor was
as crooked as they come, Olmsted was a straight arrow.
He worked his way up to lieutenant or as they say,
across the pond lieutenant. I just love saying that.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Also, by the way, on West coast police departments, you
ever wondered why there's not a lot of big mob
organization on the West Coast because the police were doing
They were in charge of the squad, in charge of
the vice.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yes, we got lock exactly. They're like, this is our turf.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer had this like later profile of him,
and they said he had quote a knack for police work,
and he impressed superiors with his professionalism and intelligence. He
dutifully participated in busts and raids of rum smugglers and
(05:17):
noted when members of the quote Dry Squad were arrested
for stealing from the confiscated goods or taking bribes, were saying, yeah,
so he squealed on his coworkers.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Well you know he got it, Rye squad.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I see who you are. He's a snitch. This is
before prohibition, mind you, because in nineteen sixteen Washington State
banned alcohol.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Early, they were early on.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
The three years ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So because those boomtowns, you know, they were.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Suffering through heavens. Yeah, So then prohibition kicked in nationwide
and that became Olmsted's like primary focus is a big job.
And sharing a border with Canada meant that Washington and
Seattle were a main point of entry for booze as
it made its way into the state.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
All those waterways. Oh yeah, you can imagine.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
So Olmsted saw what he was attempting to dismantle. So
there's this huge market willing to pay above top dollar
for liquor, and then the bootleggers are like kind of
disorganized and almost bumbling, and so we have this huge
treasure trove of high quality alcohol just miles away. He
couldn't help but see the situation and the opportunity. He
(06:25):
was organized, he's driven, he's creative in his thinking, like
he's the man for the job.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
He's like, wait a minute, on the wrong.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Side of this, So he figures like I'm a dip
my toe in per the New Yorker quote. In nineteen twenty,
with the onset of prohibition, the thirty three year old
married father of two ventured to the other side of
the law, making midnight runs to retrieve imported Canadian liquor
from tugboats in the Puget Sound.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Oh there you go, so woo.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
He's off to the races until he March twenty second,
nineteen twenty two months.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
After prohibition at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Into effect, he got busted.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Three months he had.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Managed to like skip around all these roadblocks that were
set up by the cops. But then he was eventually spotted, recognized, arrested.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Early because I mean, he's busting other people, and then
they make it officially. He's like, okay, let me get
in on this.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And now that it's a federal crime to get busted.
So he lost his job obviously, and he wound up
pleading guilty, had to pay a five hundred dollars fine,
and he may have lost his job and some cash,
but he gained the respect and admiration of the public
and he became a folk hero.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Really.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Everyone loved the fact that this cop flipped over and
was running booze. They're like, this is great. Yeah, and
a folk here working for us, Yes, and he can't
just abandon his calling, like what makes him the celebrity
he is, So he went all in. He headed up
to Canada to do some deals. Okay, so, thanks to
(08:02):
prohibition and like other economic forces, Canada and Mexico were
starting to establish trade relations and Olmsteed won it in
on that kind of He went up to Canada under
the pretense of buying liquor for import into Mexico. He
was going to be a middleman.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So they're cutting out the US and it'd be like,
we both still drink.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
We're civilized, we can where adults were grown. Yeah, we
can handle our whiskey and tequila, right, And he's like, guys,
I'll be your import export dude, Like I'm your middleman
and I'm just trying to get Canada's quality stock to
the good folks down Mexico Way, and the Canadians are
like capital idea, let's do it. And then they all
high fived and signed the deal is amazing. So Olmsted
(08:46):
bought his cargo, had it loaded onto ships with manifests
indicating Mexico as the destination. And what I would imagine
was probably like port of Lazaro Cardenas in Machoicon. That's
like the big dog one down there. So as the
ships were heading out to the Pacific Ocean via the
Salish Sea, they made a detour and they would slip
(09:07):
into the Puget Sound under cover of darkness, never making
it to the open water the Pacific, never making it
south of Washington State, never went down to Mexico. The sound.
Puget Sound is full of islands and inlets and coats,
and some more difficult to access than others. So he
had crews at a bunch of locations all along the sound,
(09:30):
tucked in where like nosy, lookie louse couldn't see it.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it's like gray skies,
it's like lots of day.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
And so they were there to intercept that Canadian liquor
for sale. And distribution right here in the US of A.
So Olmsted had this whole network of guys, rum runners
in their fast boats. He had heavies to carry the
boxes of booze from the boats to waiting cars and trucks,
drivers to speed down back roads. Workers on a farm
(09:59):
that served as a storage facility, loading and unloading the
disguised payload in the barns.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
His distribution centers.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Say, insiders at bars and restaurants and speakeasies like get
up one to pay.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah. He had lawyers, dispatchers, clerks. The ships had skippers
and navigators. There were bottlers for the wholesale purchases. He
was a systems loaders, drivers, deliveryment, bill collectors, salesmen, all
part of the Olmsted machine. And as Shirley Manson saying
in Garbage, I'm only happy when it rains. That was Olmsted, like.
(10:33):
He loved bad Seattle weather. That's his favorite, yeah, because
that's when the Coastguard was least likely to be on patrol.
And so one location he loved to use when the
weather was bad was Darcy Island, and it's in this
strait right off Vancouver Island. It was used as a
leper colony for Chinese immigrants up until nineteen twenty four,
(10:57):
and that's around when he's using it. So we call
leprosy Hanson's disease today. Yeah. In other words, a lazaretto
is what this was. And when they closed it, they
moved the last remaining five or so afflicted to another island,
and that one was tending to an outbreak of Hanson's
among duke Bores. You ever heard of them? No, you're
(11:21):
curious like I was when reading about this in an
old newspaper. Thanks to newspapers dot Com. Check this out.
So the duke Bors translates to spirit wrestlers, and they
are spiritual Christian ethno religious group of Russian origin, strict pacifists.
They believe in egalitarianism, They reject institutional church authority.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Were were they the Newdists?
Speaker 3 (11:44):
No? No, So they ran from religious persecution in Russia
made their way to Western Canada around the turn of
the twentieth century. But they refused to take an oath
of allegiance to the British crown, and they didn't believe
in individual land ownership, just communal living. So they made
their way to the west coutine and boundary regions of
(12:05):
British Columbia where people would just leave alone. So then
they had this outbreak of leprosy of Hanson's disease, and
they had to be isolated and put on a lazaretto
on an island in the Sound. So back at Darcy Island,
I think Olmsted was using the island in the final
days of the colony and then after it shuttered, so
(12:26):
there would be all these row houses along the shore,
newly empty and like makeshift graves still fresh. Wow, and
these loading and people. I was reading up on the
island as part of my dedication to side Quest, and
I found this really interesting article in British Columbia magazine
about it. It's like it's a tragic place, obviously, and
the author even admits that it carries like a strange,
(12:50):
ominous energy to this day. But for our purposes here today,
this bit I found helpful. Quote. Below, the water around
the island's shores lurk numerous hazards, while above it erratic
moody currents break on reefs and shoals. George Mercer, who
was an ecologist with Parks Canada for more than three
(13:10):
decades before retiring in twenty twelve, knows Darcy Island. Well,
it's notorious. When there's a tide, you can see it
from the air, and it's just wild. You have ripped
tides all around, submerged rocks and powerful tides and currents.
Boaters and kayakers have to really choose their time. Mercer,
who has since retired, has now turned his hand to
(13:30):
writing popular mysteries based on some of these parks. Yeah, okay,
so that's so Darcy Island. It's super treacherous. But he's
got all these guys who know everything like the back
of their hands, and they're willing to go on to
this spooky island with terrible conditions.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Oh and it's not like the wet leprosy like there's bandages.
It's all past. So it's just no real danger to
the people.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
At this point in the papers when I was looking
it up, they're like they had hit like a treatment
for it. Okay, And so that was what made a
big change why they were able to kind. But you
know the at Darcy Island when it was the Chinese
immigrants there, they people went once a year to give
them or twice a year something you had to supplies,
and then when they finally got a treatment, then they
(14:13):
dropped doctors and treated them, and then like you know,
we're able to kind of move forward. And like I said,
they took the last remaining people put them over in
the other lazaretto. But so we got Darcy Island and
there's Olmsted's gang unloading four thousand sacks of whiskey at
a time onto the shore, waiting for quick boats to
take smaller loads into Puget Sound. So everyone from his
(14:35):
fellow crooks to the federal agents pursuing him called Olmsted
quote the good bootlegger. Yeah, because he was as honest
a criminal as there could be. So he never watered
down his whiskey or blended it with cheap or like
poisonous filler. He stuck solely to running alcohol. More than
once he was offered entrance into other criminal enterprises drugs,
(14:59):
prostitution always declined. And what puts him in the ridiculous
crime Hall of Mummayhn is that he was never violent.
He told his men that if they were caught, they
needed to use bribes. No violence, It's like economic violence.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Okay. So he was just like Johnny applesy for liquor.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yes, and he wouldn't let any of his organization carry weapons.
And he was known to say, quote, no amount of
money is worth a human life. That's what you would
tell him. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So here here, mummy, yeah right.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
So it's the early nineteen twenties. His business is booming.
Guys making two hundred grand a month. Do you want
me to blow your socks off, Sarian, that's almost four
million today a month a month.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Drug dealing, zim, Yeah, it is so drug deal.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It wasn't Harlem exactly. It wasn't surprising then that he
was one of the biggest employers in all of Seattle.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh magine, Washington state. Other than logging.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
He had the mayor Doc Brown in his pocket. He
was buddies with the chief of Police Brown, Doc Brown. Yeah.
He could pretty much conduct business out in the open.
It was no big deal. And it got to the
point where he could like unload whiskey in the middle
of the day from trucks marked fresh fish. It didn't matter.
According to according to Seattle's NPR station k u o
(16:26):
W quote, he was very approachable if you saw him
on the street and wanted to talk to him. You
could stop and take a picture with you, or shake
your hand, chat with you for a bit.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Just a nice guy, an amiable officer, friendly who's now
a run runner.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
No one got in his way, and not because he
was a tough guy. He was just charismatic, straightforward. He
knew what people wanted. Both booze and a legendary figure
to talk about. Back to k U O W quote.
The founders of a major airplane manufacturer were customers reputedly
at a prominent gentlemen's club in downtown Seattle. Was a
(17:02):
customer of Olmsted, as were speakeasies all over town, from
those in the central district to those in the city's
most exclusive neighborhoods. It really was. Olmsted really served a
clientele that covered the demographic bases of our city. Seattle
was a boomtown in the nineteen twenties. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Have you ever seen the president of Seattle before it
was a town? These spikes of hills and they're not
like hills, are like.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Crazy, exactly exactly. Let's stop for a second. Imagine what
Seattle in the twenties must have been like spikes of hills, boomtown.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Log roll like the actual skid row. They had an
actual skid row.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
So let's daydream a little and when we come back,
more of the Olmsted machine. Sarah Elizabeth, where was I?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Where were you?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I was Roy Olmstead. So he is a big deal
running a big operation. He had an office in downtown Seattle,
one block from the Federal Building.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
M hm uh.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And there were three telephone lines installed in his office,
which was like a big deal totally. According to the
New Yorker quote, one of his men, a former taxi dispatcher,
sat during business hours at a roll top desk, taking
and making calls, keeping meticulous records of each transaction. If
a serious matter arose, such as an employee's arrest, Olmsted
(18:40):
himself called a friend on the Seattle Police Force to
have it squashed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Of course, he's got tons of friends on these Yeah,
he is a former coworkers. I mean yeah. So it's
like and he didn't go out badly.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, well yeah, I got I like fire on police.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
He didn't like beat anybody up. He didn't take anybody
down with him.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And you know they're all thinking the same thing, like
this is easy money.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, it's just like there's some pool money.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So at this point he's only interacting with Seattle PD.
But then the Feds got window. There was just too
much alcohol flowing through Seattle like something had to be done,
and the FEDS loved busting guys like him, so the
Feds descended on Seattle. They had developed quite a wiretap
(19:23):
system by this point, and sometime in nineteen twenty four
they wired Olmsted.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Oh so we're still prehover.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah, So a guy dressed in the uniform of a
telephone repairman went into Olmsted's office building. He got the
place all wired up and slipped out and they started
listening and listening, and then Mayor Doc Brown went out
of town for a week. Perfect opportunity. So the Feds
they got to acting Mayor Bertha Landis and pulled her
(19:52):
in on the operation. She fired the corrupt chief of
police and tried to close every single speakeasy.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I says, he's a real tea total I'll give you
the warrants.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah. Then the Feds swooped in and went after every
illicit operation they could. Seattle's prohibition director, William Whitney, he
hired this freelance wire tapper, Richard Fryant, that's a job
to say you have freelance wire tapper. So after a
couple days, Fryant goes up to Olmsted, holds out this
(20:24):
heavy stack of paper and he's like, these are the
pages of verbatim transcripts of conversations from your office phone.
And Fryan's like, you can have them. This is the
only copy for ten grand. So it's like two hundred
thousand dollars today, and so he lets Olmsted flip through
to make sure they're the real deal. This is from
The New Yorker. A call from a cop to a
(20:46):
worker at Olmsted's headquarters down under Fifth Avenue Bridge is
a car with seven gallons of moonshine in it, and
I was wondering if it's yours. No, I don't think
it's ours, because we don't handle moonshine. A call from
Olmsted to the police station. Hello, Roy, what's on your mind?
One of your fellows picked up one of my boys.
I don't give a damn what they do, but I
wanted to know before he's booked. I'll take care of
(21:09):
it for you, Roy. A joking stange between Olmsted and
the dispatcher. The Federals will get you one of these days. No,
those sons are too slow to catch cold Olmsted equipped,
so he keeps as cool, right, he's reading on, reading on.
He's not ruffled because he'd been a cop. He knew
about evidence, and he knew what was admissible, and wire
(21:30):
tapping was illegal in the state of Washington. Oh really,
none of this would stick. Yeah, So he told Fryant
to kick rocks. Just get out of here, dude.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
But it's not gonna be stayed charges, right, It's gonna
be federal charges.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
So he gets back to the office and he's like,
I don't know. I still not feeling good about this.
He shouldn't, so he hires a telephone guy to come
search the building for bugs. The guy finds three taps,
temporary ones, not like hardwired soldered in two in the basement,
one in the ladies room, and so they disconnected them
from the lines that were running through the ceiling. The
(22:02):
next day, Olmstead goes back and checks again. The taps
are back. Oh yeah, yeah. So he used a payphone
from then on to coordinate the arrival of boats and
Puget Sound, and like sometimes he would still use the
office phone, but he would do it to like fake
arrangements and insult the Prohibition director, William Whitney. So finally
(22:24):
it's like, yeah, get a load of this, write this
one down, Mayor. Doc Brown returns, right, he's only gone.
He's been a heck of a week. He reinstated the
police chief. Everything went back to normal. He's just like, no,
he knock this up, like interim mayor. Think was going
to go down, like she was going to win over
the city, the temperance movement. I guess, I don't know.
(22:45):
So Roy had been married to a woman named Viola,
and things were on the rocks. They divorced in August
of nineteen twenty four, and then he turned around and
married a woman named Elise Campbell. And it all happened
so fast that you can see why the marriage was
on the rocks.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Oh right, she Canadian with her last name Campbell.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
No, she she was originally from England.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh what about her?
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, England. In nineteen twenty two, she got a job
as a bookkeeper for Olmsted twenty two two, and then
she also at the same time became an informant for
the government against his bootlegging operation. But then she fell
in love with him. She quit her informant gig, the
divided loyalty, and they got married. They moved into this
(23:29):
place that they called snow White's Palace. That's not to
be confused with snow White's Cottage in Seattle, and that
was built after that and is like a novelty Disney
house that I think might be like an Airbnb. Now, okay,
Now this was his was a big house in the
posh Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle. Four beds, three baths,
(23:49):
forty three hundred square feet. I found it on Zillo,
but there aren't any pictures because it hasn't been on
the market in the ages. So the couple, they're living
the dream. They even started a radio station called KFQX
in a spare room of their residence, okay, and it
was only on for four hours every evening. They did
(24:10):
news reports, weather stocks, that sort of thing. But the
most popular element was a show called Aunt Vivian. And
this is where Elise Olmsted would read children's bedtime stories
out loud. So Sarah, close your eyes, Oh yes, I
want you to picture it. You are a five year
(24:35):
old girl. An only child, you are doted on by
your parents. Your bedtime is seven pm, but on some
nights you're allowed to stay up a little later. On
those nights, at seven point fifteen, a show that you
love comes on the radio. Your papa likes to listen
to it too. It's Aunt Vivian. She tells the most
wonderful stories in such a gentle English accent. It may
(24:58):
kind of sound like a woman from California fighting for
her life to do. An English accent that's all over
the place and not grounded in any true location. An
accent that is offensive to the ears, if not the sensibilities.
I mean, that woman would know she's terrible with accents
and should just skip it. But yolo, baby, what does
all this chatter in your head? What does any of
(25:18):
this mean? Whatever? Your radio shows about to start, You
curl up on your father's lap as he sits in
his chair in the living room. He turns the knob
on the radio and a signal.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Comes to you.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
The tinkling of the piano tells you that Aunt Vivian
is about to begin. Your father grabs his notepad and
pencil from the side table, like he always does. He
loves writing down bits from the story, the parts that
he really likes. He says he reads them back later
when he wants to remember what a good story it was.
You can't wait until you learn to read and write
so that you can do the same thing. Right now,
(25:51):
you can only pick out some of the words and numbers,
but you don't know how to write them yourself.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Hello, children, Tonight I have for you a story about
a beautiful maple tree. It is a story of hope
and delivery. Once there was a strong maple tree standing
mighty in the north. This was a special tree, for
its syrup was magical and very expensive. It was prized
(26:22):
throughout the land. The woodsmen would collect the syrup in
bottles and pack them up and send them out to
the people. But sometimes the evil wolves would swoop in
and grab the bottles of syrup, leaving nothing for all
the creatures in the forest. The otters got tired of this.
They'd heard that the bears who lived in the south
(26:43):
wanted some syrup. They said they would be brave and
fight the wolves. They just needed help on the waterways
from the otters and the cranes.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You close your eyes and envision these animals, each with
their own job and talent. Get on with it, your
dad mutters.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
On this day, a beautiful autumn evening, the third Sunday
in September, the woodsmen stacked their bottles of syrup into
crates before the wolves could come and steal them. The
otters slipped four cases down to the water's edge.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Your father's scribbles on his pad. You can't read much
of it, but you do see the number four and
two zero's.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
Pulling the crates onto their bellies, the otters glided through
the water on their backs, transporting the crates past a
harbor of oaks, a bank of green, and finally to
a beach filled with sunlight.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Beside you, your father's scribbles furiously on his notepad. Oak harbor,
green bank, sunlight beach.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
At this beach, the bears were waiting in a big
green boat. They jumped to the shore and ran to
the otters. Oh how they gamboled and skipped. They took
the crates from the otters and gave them five large
cabin in return. The otters waved goodbye and headed back home.
The bears loaded everything into their boat and made their
(28:08):
way through the dark waters, careful not to be seen.
They knew that there were wolves that hide by the lighthouse.
The bears asked themselves, is there a point? No, there
is no point, But they took the boat ride anyway.
Those bears are so silly.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Your father scratches into his pad. Point no point, lighthouse sads.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
When they got to land, the bears shared the syrup
with all of the creatures and the children. They threw
a big pancake breakfast to celebrate evading the wolves. Every
bear who helped save the syrup was rewarded with six
silver dollar pancakes.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Your dad raises his eyebrows and whistles. Is that a lot?
You ask him? Sure is, darling, And now.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Children are time is up. Go to sleep, little dreamers,
and remember to be good little boys and girls. Mind
your parents and always do the right thing.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Good Night, you tell the radio lady goodnight. Your mother
comes and tells you it's time for bed. Daddy has
to work now. Your father comes to kiss you on
the forehead as he shrugs into an old weather coat
that smells of salt and sea air. Be a good
girl now and go to bed, he tells you. You
pad to your room, visions of bears and syrup in
(29:26):
your head, the heavy footfall of your dad's work boots
stopping out the back door, and that zaren is how
Olmsted and his wife sent coated messages to the rum runners.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I absolutely love this. I mean, using children's bedtime stories
to pass your rum running bootlegging plans to your confederates
and like having bears.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
And all around Seattle. Kids are listening to these stories,
but so are the rum runners in there bus, and
the stories told them when and where to drop the
alcohol shipments. Now, there aren't any existing tapes of her recording,
so it's not known exactly how the coded messages were done.
I just took a stab at it. But it did inspire,
(30:12):
thank you. I should try that for real. But it did.
What if? What if most of what I say this.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Was actually a code?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Maybe we'll never know. It did inspire the Feds to
broaden their net and then tap the phones at the
Olmsted house, so they couldn't really figure out what was
going on in the broadcast, but the radio stations at
the house so they figured and.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
They didn't learn from any confederates who got caught that,
like you need to check the radio that stuffs tanky
as well.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well, no, everyone zips it. Let's take a break when
we come back. More wire tapping, all right, zaren Elizabeth
(31:07):
roy Olmstead. So the Feds tapped his house and his
office one more time, and I need to make it
crystal clear that they never got a warrant for any
of these wire taps. Wait, they also they found that
farm that he was using for storage, distributing center rated it.
They came away with one hundred and fifty one cases
(31:28):
of whiskey, gin and champagne.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Oh they didn't just break it open the axis.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
And they may have, but that's how that's how much
they found there. Okay, a couple months later, which again
is so wasteful to see those Why.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Can't you just sell that to people who do drink
him braise a little money for the crime fighting or whatever.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Correctly, how about just abandon the whole effort. All it did.
All prohibition did was like create more criminal networks in
this country. It created new ones and it reinforced existing ones.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
It's generally what happened. And he tried to legislate morality.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Exactly because exactly people are going to work around and.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Where there's a will, there's going to be away. So
now you just incentivized the word.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Well, since the dawn of time, people have been fermenting
making drinking.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I think we made beer a thousand years before he
made bread.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, So I mean here's the thing, Like, you know,
I don't drink, and I know people where the drink
has ruined their lives. Oh yeah, figuratively and literally.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
But in all cases the dose makes the poison.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
But exactly. And you can't, like I also know people
who my brother makes the livelihood out of it in
his bar and like you can be enjoyed and be
a wonderful thing, moderation and whatnot right because you can't.
Oh god, it just irritates.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Men into problem or just like I can't say.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
No, it's all about the middle path, zon.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
What do we like a couple of Buddhist hit the.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
No.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
But I mean it's every time we do one of
these prohibition stories, it irritates me because it was just
like everything so much, so much waste in like the
time of federal employees, and then what happens is that
then okay, then we lift it and now you have
all these criminal networks that are like well, let's do
other stuff's really lean into the old hair earning exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
And then also people you're like, okay, that was silly,
and then what are you supposed to just like forgive
everyone people don't get all let out of jail and everything.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I mean, what they're doing with marijuana exactly, Zam and
I could go on and I'm all right, so what
were we? Oh? So the Feds they raided the barn,
and a couple months later they show up at Olmsted's
house while he's having a party. There wasn't any booth,
no booze there, but they did find like paperwork, keys, receipts,
(33:43):
like they're like, you know, raiding the joint. I think.
So one of the FEDS, the assistant Prohibition director for
Washington State, this guy named William Whitney, along with his wife.
He brought his wife and they pretended to be the
Olmsteds and they called some of Roy's buddies and were like, hey,
come over with whiskey right now. And they arrived and
(34:04):
they were just arresting the guys who would show up.
Oh wow, yeah, so Olmsted he got caught in nineteen
twenty four by the Prohibition Bureau thanks to surveillance informants
wiretap information. January nineteen twenty five, the federal grand jury
returned a two count indictment against Olmsted and eighty nine
other defendants. Huge so the case was referred to as
(34:28):
the Whispering Wires case, and this was the first time
the then new technology of wiretapping was used as evidence
in a trial. Really, Yeah, it's a long way from
there to Anthony pelicanum so per Seattle's Museum of History
and Industry quote. The trial began in nineteen twenty six
and was the largest in the country's history of liquor violations,
(34:51):
with forty seven original defendants. Elise was eventually acquitted, but
Roy was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison
and find dollars. He appealed his conviction in a nineteen
twenty eight landmark case on the grounds that wire tapping
was unconstitutional based on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Oh okay,
it went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Olmsted versus the United States Taste Law Yeah, was decided
in February of nineteen twenty eight. It was a five
to four decision. The court upheld Olmsted's conviction. Per the
New Yorker, quote, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, speaking for
the majority, recognized the murky morality of wire tapping. Nevertheless,
(35:35):
he argued that the practice served a greater good. A
standard which would forbid the reception of evidence, if obtained
other than nice ethical conduct by government officials, would make
society suffer and give criminals greater immunity than has been known. Heretofore,
he wrote, he rejected the heart of Olmsted's case, insisting
that the amendment does not forbid what was done here.
(35:59):
There was no search, there was no seizure. The reasonable
view is that one who installs in his house a
telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice
to those quite outside.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So it's kind of like the writes about your trash.
Once you put your trash out, it's now public exactly,
and you people cops can come along and gather your
trash from right in front of your house.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Right right. So Judge Lewis Brandeis, Oh wow. Brandeis wrote
the Descent, and here's an excerpt from it. When the
fourth and fifth amendments were adopted. Quote the form that
evil had thereto fortaken end quote had been necessarily simple.
Force and violence were then the only means known to
man by which a government could directly affect self incrimination.
(36:44):
It could compel the individual to testify, a compulsion affected,
if need be, by torture. It could secure possession of
his papers and other articles incident to his private life,
a seizure affected, if need be, by breaking an entry.
Protection against such invasion of quote the sanctities of a
man's home and the privacies of life end quote was
(37:07):
provided in the Fourth and fifth Amendments by specific language.
But quote time works changes brings into existence new conditions
and purposes end quote. Subtler and more far reaching means
of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery
and invention have made it possible for the government, by
means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to
(37:30):
obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
So, essentially, the fourth with its search and seizure like provisions,
he's saying like technology is caught up, and sometimes the
government has to do bad to do good. Essentially, so TAFT.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Is being like an originalist saying we have to go
exactly by the letter, and.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Also that you can occasionally do a little bad to
do good any kind.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
And brand is saying this is a living document and
this has to evolve as the way with the technology.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, yeah, because we didn't used to be able to
do this now exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
And I have to say the Descent is so well
written and beautifully constructed that like it's fascinating reading. So
with his appeal lost at this point, Almsted served his
time at McNeil Island Penitentiary and he was released May eleventh,
nineteen thirty one. While he was inside, he found religion.
(38:25):
He converted to the Christian Science faith. He came to
believe that alcohol was purely destructive. I mean it had
been for him, and not in the way that we're
used to seeing.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
He spent the rest of his life in service, though,
so he counseled people, He taught Bible study, He set
up rehab services for inmates in the Puget Sound area.
He got a job as a fumigator like pest control.
He taught Sunday school. He visited prisoners every Monday morning
at the King County Jail.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
You think being locked up. He was with a bunch
of like criminal drunks in a.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Sense, I saw what it was, I think so and.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Then he realized, oh, I'm part of this.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, exactly exactly. And so once again he's a fixture
in the community, but not as a folk hero, just
a hero, you know, and he's just service is his
big thing.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
He goes being a cop essentially a public service pretty.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Much, yeah, what you really should to protect and serve.
He became friends with the judge who sent him to prison,
Jeremiah Netterer. They had this like lighthearted back and forth.
They palled around, but they would also have these really
deep philosophical discussions about the nature of man and the world.
Who's a deep thinker? Olmstead. You know, he served a sentence,
(39:38):
but he was later granted a presidential pardon by Franklin
Delano Rosevel FDR. Christmas Eve of nineteen thirty five, and
that restored all of his rights as a citizen and
canceled the fine that he still owed. And so, you know,
FDR was really impressed by his redemption. Arc was this
whole thing, so Roy Olmstead. He died April thirtieth, nineteen
(40:00):
sixty six at the age of seventy nine. But then
there's this. Just one year later, the Supreme Court heard
a case Cats versus the United States. Charles Katz was
convicted of illegal gambling after the FBI recorded his phone
conversations from a public telephone booth using an electronic listening
device that was attached to the outside of the phone booth.
(40:22):
So Katz argued that the recordings were obtained in violation
of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. Sure,
so the Supreme Court here's his case. They ruled seven
to one in Katz's favor, holding that the warrantless wiretap
was unconstitutional. Because the FBI didn't get a warrant, the
evidence couldn't be used against him. In Olmstead, the Supreme
(40:46):
Court ruled that wiretapping telephone lines didn't constitute a Fourth
Amendment search. And then that's what Chief Justice Taft's majority
opinion rested on. He's like two pillars. There was the
physical trespass requirement, said, the Fourth Amendment only applied when
there was an actual physical intrusion into like a constitutionally
(41:07):
protected space, you say, like a house, paper person. Yeah,
And because the FBI had tapped wires outside of Olmsted's
home without physically entering it, no search had occurred, according
to Tap, and then his other pillar in his majority
opinion was that there was the tangible property focus. Since
(41:27):
only intangible conversations, not physical items, were seized, the Amendment
didn't apply. And stuff yeah was like, hey, no trespass,
No Fourth Amendment problem grew. So Cats, though dismissed both
of those pillars. It rejected the trespass doctrine, and they
held that the Fourth Amendment is not limited to physical intrusions.
(41:50):
The FBI and Cats never touched the phone booth, but
a constitutional violation still occurred. It extended protection to intangible
things like spoken words conversations, not just physical objects. And
it shifted this whole framework from places and property to
people and like reasonable expectations of privacy, There you go.
(42:12):
Justice Brandeis had presently dissented in Olmsted, and his arguments
were that the Constitution has to adapt to new technologies,
that we're saying like it's a living thing, and that
the right to be let alone was the most fundamental
of rights. So forty years after that, Katz essentially vindicated.
Roy Olmsted Katz remains the cornerstone of modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
(42:40):
It's routinely applied to contemporary things like digital surveillance, cell
phone tracking, internet privacy. Now, whether internet privacy actually exists anymore,
who's to say, but by law, we have a right
to it. Okay, so zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Ah, the presumption of our rights at this point, I
try to presume them in good faith, but so often
you find they're like, oh, those don't apply unless you're
the president. I'm like, oh, I don't get rights.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Well, I think too with Like when we talk about
internet privacy, we sign away that right all the time.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
In agreements we never read.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
We never read them. So, you know, you get your phone,
Like I just got a new phone because my other
one got I'll bust it up. And so I'm setting
these things up and it's like, do you want to
read this agreement? I'm like, not really, And I know
as I'm clicking, except I'm like, you're a dumb, dumb
lawyer's daughter. Yeah, here, open my life to you. There
you go, And like all these websites that we use,
(43:37):
you know, those social media ones. We have a contract
with them, and they have all this small print that
they own images, they own, statements, what you produce every time.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
People, Is it co own or do they own?
Speaker 3 (43:51):
They own a lot of these things. It's like once
co owner. Probably No, I don't think it is. But
you know everyone uploads those photos onto websites to like
see what you look like as you were aged or whatever. No,
because all that is is just gathering your information. That's
how they train and like facial recognition stuff. It's like
(44:13):
we hand it over to them. So I don't think
that there's any privacy because we've just opened it up
to them, like here, take it.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
Well.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I think the presumption of privacy has shifted with technology
to the being. As I said earlier, come on, you
don't really presume you have that type of presice.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
You and I have both experienced recently a lot of
friends who have where there's something that you speak to
someone about, only you don't look it up on the
online on your phone, you don't stumble across it somewhere.
It's just spoken and then it starts popping up in
like your algorithm.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Oh yeah, at this point, I do it to make
your Instagram algorithm go weird does when I see you,
I say things that I know you haven't looked up,
that I haven't typed into anything online, just to make
it pop up. Like I'm like, this is gonna be
fun and this tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
But that's the thing is we sound like we're paranoid
weird like you.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
But it's true.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Loan Gunman, Yeah exactly. But I feel like that all
the time now because I'm just like, yeah, everything's in operation.
Everything is like.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
No normies say this stuff to me and they're not
just like wackos like you and me.
Speaker 5 (45:22):
Don't.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I don't trust anybody or anything. And that's that's my take.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
This is you being raised by a lawyer, me being
raised by a gangster. We're both.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
I don't trust, don't trust anybody, that's right. Do you
want to talk back because I think I need to
talk back.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
Oh my god, I want you, Darren Elizabeth, producer Dave Interns, Hello,
I have a funny, quick.
Speaker 6 (45:54):
Story to tell you. Junior year of high school, I
was I'm an Alta with my.
Speaker 7 (45:59):
Mom and the song love Fool by the Cardigans came
on and I love that song, and my mom was
having a pretty rough day, so I decided to cheer
up by awkwardly dancing and singing in the Alta, and
a woman who worked there came up to me and said,
excuse me, ma'am, there's no dancing in the store.
Speaker 6 (46:16):
And I thought that was ridiculous. Hello, it's me again,
the awkward dancing girl from Alta. Just wanted to say, sence,
this goes by so fast, only thirty seconds. Really loved
the show.
Speaker 7 (46:31):
My brother and I.
Speaker 6 (46:31):
Listen to you guys all the time and we always
quote the.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
Bobbing up whenever we're making a phone call or have
a story that involves a phone call. So thank you
so much for bringing so much joy into our lives.
Speaker 6 (46:45):
And really love the show.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Oh thank you, Hey, you're giving me joy. First of all,
I'm sorry there's no dancing in the Alta. Like you're
a knockoff Sephora step back, like it's all twelve year
old girls using the lipstick. Don't give me started on Alta.
I love that you were first of all. I love
that you were cheering your mom up. Yeah, dance brilliant, amazing,
(47:07):
perfect thing to do. And now I need to go
down to the Alta and just like bust to move
and see if I get told to stop, and then
I'm like, uh uh no, I'm gonna dance like nobody's
watching live, laughlove, and then kick over like a like
a sparkly powdered spline. Oh my gosh, you guys are amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Your dudes are amazing.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yes, yes, all right, So that is it for today.
You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.
We're at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram. We
do have that YouTube account, Ridiculous Crime Pod, but they've
put a little pause on it, so there are no
new episodes coming on there, and we apologize for that,
(47:51):
but it's out of our hands. You can email us
at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. You can leave
a talk that please like that on the I heart
app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by King of the
Bootleg Bootcut Jeans Dave Cousten. Our ridiculous assistant is Sea
(48:14):
Otter carrying a load of seagrums to the party. Terry Maldonado.
Fong research is by Suspicious lighthouse keeper Marisa Brown. The
theme song is by Selfless Maple Tree, Thomas Lee and
Bear covered in syrup. Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided
by Botany five hundred producer Dave Coustin's wardrobe by Mister
Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
(48:36):
and mister Andre. Executive producers are Ruthless Federal Agents Ben
Boleen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
Reds Quime Say It One More Times Crime.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zarin Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm doing well.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
How are you pal? I'm good good.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
How is your heart good?
Speaker 3 (00:10):
My heart is pumping full, it's working, it's full, it's rhythmic,
full of beans, full of vinegar. How's your heart?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
None of those apply to hearts, But I like it.
You're creative.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I am full of it. I'm full of everything.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah. My heart's just steady, working and trying to lay low.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
My heart overflows.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It doesn't want to get an attitude like my kidneys.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, it's good. Our organs are all operating in good
working order.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's what the doctor's say.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Congratulations, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm so glad you asked I do Oh good?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Please share.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Have you ever watched the TV show Webster, Yeah with
the Little Kid, Yeah, yeah, Manuel Lewis, Yes, yes, yes,
So do you know anything about the final episode of
that series? Final episode it was a crossover event The
Very Fast.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
With Homicide Life on the Street.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Practically, no, no, it was not. But the last episode
of the sixth season was called web Trek because Webster
gets beamed aboard the US as Enterprise. What and there
he is the new one, the new like the new
Star Trek Next Generation Picard totally with Lieutenant Wharf, the
(01:26):
klingon with the wrinkled head. So Webster's chilling with him.
And yes, it's like a wait.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
So that those universes overlap.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Apparently, so Webster is part of the official Star Trek
cannon because he was like there on like the bridge,
like he's not just like they don't come down to
visit him.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
He goes, and then just the rest of his family
is like, I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And then he gets like a featured like in the
Next Generation episode essentially because there's also it's like a
whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Well then they just kill them off. What happened after?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I don't know what happened. I want to know what
web because remember they're also in different centuries. So this
is like the second time Star Trek has gone back
to the eighties, because they do it in Star Trek
four with the Whales with the original cast and then
the new cast, like we're also going back to the
eighties and we're picking up a small black orphan.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
You have to find this episode.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
There you go. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
That is ridiculous. That should be an episode us watching
that episode. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Please?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
The illusion of privacy? That's ridiculous. This is is ridiculous
(03:00):
crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and
cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one
hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I know you heard that.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
I know I told you recently about Popcorn Sutton. I
loved him down in Dirty Bootlegger Moonshine, Oh, I love it.
He was the best. He was a rascal went through
and that's par for the course when it comes to
like the bootlegging type. Sure, yeah, but not always all
always for book counts. I have a guy for you
today who runs that full Vonnegut story arc on the
(03:35):
chalkboard that used to do. His story is a roller
coaster and a study in human nature and redemption. Today,
I'm going to tell you all about Roy Olmsted So.
He was born in eighteen eighty six to a good
family in Beaver City, Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Beaver City, Nebraska, beaver City, population fourteen Salt.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Of the Earth nineteen oh four. He's eighteen years old
and he picked up stakes, and he moved to Seattle. Why,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
The railroad went there, sure.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
And once there, well, I mean it was like he
was going to start the grunge movement. Yeah, he gets
there and he becomes a police officer, as you do.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So Seattle, which has a notoriously like suspect police department
at the time.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
He was a cop in Seattle around the same time
my great great grandpa was a cop in San Francisco.
And so while my police organization, well my ancestor was
as crooked as they come, Olmsted was a straight arrow.
He worked his way up to lieutenant or as they say,
across the pond lieutenant. I just love saying that.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Also, by the way, on West coast police departments, you
ever wondered why there's not a lot of big mob
organization on the West Coast because the police were doing
They were in charge of the squad, in charge of
the vice.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yes, we got lock exactly. They're like, this is our turf.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer had this like later profile of him,
and they said he had quote a knack for police work,
and he impressed superiors with his professionalism and intelligence. He
dutifully participated in busts and raids of rum smugglers and
(05:17):
noted when members of the quote Dry Squad were arrested
for stealing from the confiscated goods or taking bribes, were saying, yeah,
so he squealed on his coworkers.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Well you know he got it, Rye squad.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I see who you are. He's a snitch. This is
before prohibition, mind you, because in nineteen sixteen Washington State
banned alcohol.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Early, they were early on.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
The three years ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So because those boomtowns, you know, they were.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Suffering through heavens. Yeah, So then prohibition kicked in nationwide
and that became Olmsted's like primary focus is a big job.
And sharing a border with Canada meant that Washington and
Seattle were a main point of entry for booze as
it made its way into the state.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
All those waterways. Oh yeah, you can imagine.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
So Olmsted saw what he was attempting to dismantle. So
there's this huge market willing to pay above top dollar
for liquor, and then the bootleggers are like kind of
disorganized and almost bumbling, and so we have this huge
treasure trove of high quality alcohol just miles away. He
couldn't help but see the situation and the opportunity. He
(06:25):
was organized, he's driven, he's creative in his thinking, like
he's the man for the job.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
He's like, wait a minute, on the wrong.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Side of this, So he figures like I'm a dip
my toe in per the New Yorker quote. In nineteen twenty,
with the onset of prohibition, the thirty three year old
married father of two ventured to the other side of
the law, making midnight runs to retrieve imported Canadian liquor
from tugboats in the Puget Sound.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Oh there you go, so woo.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
He's off to the races until he March twenty second,
nineteen twenty two months.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
After prohibition at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Into effect, he got busted.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Three months he had.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Managed to like skip around all these roadblocks that were
set up by the cops. But then he was eventually spotted, recognized, arrested.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Early because I mean, he's busting other people, and then
they make it officially. He's like, okay, let me get
in on this.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And now that it's a federal crime to get busted.
So he lost his job obviously, and he wound up
pleading guilty, had to pay a five hundred dollars fine,
and he may have lost his job and some cash,
but he gained the respect and admiration of the public
and he became a folk hero.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Really.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Everyone loved the fact that this cop flipped over and
was running booze. They're like, this is great. Yeah, and
a folk here working for us, Yes, and he can't
just abandon his calling, like what makes him the celebrity
he is, So he went all in. He headed up
to Canada to do some deals. Okay, so, thanks to
(08:02):
prohibition and like other economic forces, Canada and Mexico were
starting to establish trade relations and Olmsteed won it in
on that kind of He went up to Canada under
the pretense of buying liquor for import into Mexico. He
was going to be a middleman.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So they're cutting out the US and it'd be like,
we both still drink.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
We're civilized, we can where adults were grown. Yeah, we
can handle our whiskey and tequila, right, And he's like, guys,
I'll be your import export dude, Like I'm your middleman
and I'm just trying to get Canada's quality stock to
the good folks down Mexico Way, and the Canadians are
like capital idea, let's do it. And then they all
high fived and signed the deal is amazing. So Olmsted
(08:46):
bought his cargo, had it loaded onto ships with manifests
indicating Mexico as the destination. And what I would imagine
was probably like port of Lazaro Cardenas in Machoicon. That's
like the big dog one down there. So as the
ships were heading out to the Pacific Ocean via the
Salish Sea, they made a detour and they would slip
(09:07):
into the Puget Sound under cover of darkness, never making
it to the open water the Pacific, never making it
south of Washington State, never went down to Mexico. The sound.
Puget Sound is full of islands and inlets and coats,
and some more difficult to access than others. So he
had crews at a bunch of locations all along the sound,
(09:30):
tucked in where like nosy, lookie louse couldn't see it.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it's like gray skies,
it's like lots of day.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
And so they were there to intercept that Canadian liquor
for sale. And distribution right here in the US of A.
So Olmsted had this whole network of guys, rum runners
in their fast boats. He had heavies to carry the
boxes of booze from the boats to waiting cars and trucks,
drivers to speed down back roads. Workers on a farm
(09:59):
that served as a storage facility, loading and unloading the
disguised payload in the barns.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
His distribution centers.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Say, insiders at bars and restaurants and speakeasies like get
up one to pay.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah. He had lawyers, dispatchers, clerks. The ships had skippers
and navigators. There were bottlers for the wholesale purchases. He
was a systems loaders, drivers, deliveryment, bill collectors, salesmen, all
part of the Olmsted machine. And as Shirley Manson saying
in Garbage, I'm only happy when it rains. That was Olmsted, like.
(10:33):
He loved bad Seattle weather. That's his favorite, yeah, because
that's when the Coastguard was least likely to be on patrol.
And so one location he loved to use when the
weather was bad was Darcy Island, and it's in this
strait right off Vancouver Island. It was used as a
leper colony for Chinese immigrants up until nineteen twenty four,
(10:57):
and that's around when he's using it. So we call
leprosy Hanson's disease today. Yeah. In other words, a lazaretto
is what this was. And when they closed it, they
moved the last remaining five or so afflicted to another island,
and that one was tending to an outbreak of Hanson's
among duke Bores. You ever heard of them? No, you're
(11:21):
curious like I was when reading about this in an
old newspaper. Thanks to newspapers dot Com. Check this out.
So the duke Bors translates to spirit wrestlers, and they
are spiritual Christian ethno religious group of Russian origin, strict pacifists.
They believe in egalitarianism, They reject institutional church authority.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Were were they the Newdists?
Speaker 3 (11:44):
No? No, So they ran from religious persecution in Russia
made their way to Western Canada around the turn of
the twentieth century. But they refused to take an oath
of allegiance to the British crown, and they didn't believe
in individual land ownership, just communal living. So they made
their way to the west coutine and boundary regions of
(12:05):
British Columbia where people would just leave alone. So then
they had this outbreak of leprosy of Hanson's disease, and
they had to be isolated and put on a lazaretto
on an island in the Sound. So back at Darcy Island,
I think Olmsted was using the island in the final
days of the colony and then after it shuttered, so
(12:26):
there would be all these row houses along the shore,
newly empty and like makeshift graves still fresh. Wow, and
these loading and people. I was reading up on the
island as part of my dedication to side Quest, and
I found this really interesting article in British Columbia magazine
about it. It's like it's a tragic place, obviously, and
the author even admits that it carries like a strange,
(12:50):
ominous energy to this day. But for our purposes here today,
this bit I found helpful. Quote. Below, the water around
the island's shores lurk numerous hazards, while above it erratic
moody currents break on reefs and shoals. George Mercer, who
was an ecologist with Parks Canada for more than three
(13:10):
decades before retiring in twenty twelve, knows Darcy Island. Well,
it's notorious. When there's a tide, you can see it
from the air, and it's just wild. You have ripped
tides all around, submerged rocks and powerful tides and currents.
Boaters and kayakers have to really choose their time. Mercer,
who has since retired, has now turned his hand to
(13:30):
writing popular mysteries based on some of these parks. Yeah, okay,
so that's so Darcy Island. It's super treacherous. But he's
got all these guys who know everything like the back
of their hands, and they're willing to go on to
this spooky island with terrible conditions.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Oh and it's not like the wet leprosy like there's bandages.
It's all past. So it's just no real danger to
the people.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
At this point in the papers when I was looking
it up, they're like they had hit like a treatment
for it. Okay, And so that was what made a
big change why they were able to kind. But you
know the at Darcy Island when it was the Chinese
immigrants there, they people went once a year to give
them or twice a year something you had to supplies,
and then when they finally got a treatment, then they
(14:13):
dropped doctors and treated them, and then like you know,
we're able to kind of move forward. And like I said,
they took the last remaining people put them over in
the other lazaretto. But so we got Darcy Island and
there's Olmsted's gang unloading four thousand sacks of whiskey at
a time onto the shore, waiting for quick boats to
take smaller loads into Puget Sound. So everyone from his
(14:35):
fellow crooks to the federal agents pursuing him called Olmsted
quote the good bootlegger. Yeah, because he was as honest
a criminal as there could be. So he never watered
down his whiskey or blended it with cheap or like
poisonous filler. He stuck solely to running alcohol. More than
once he was offered entrance into other criminal enterprises drugs,
(14:59):
prostitution always declined. And what puts him in the ridiculous
crime Hall of Mummayhn is that he was never violent.
He told his men that if they were caught, they
needed to use bribes. No violence, It's like economic violence.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Okay. So he was just like Johnny applesy for liquor.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yes, and he wouldn't let any of his organization carry weapons.
And he was known to say, quote, no amount of
money is worth a human life. That's what you would
tell him. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So here here, mummy, yeah right.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
So it's the early nineteen twenties. His business is booming.
Guys making two hundred grand a month. Do you want
me to blow your socks off, Sarian, that's almost four
million today a month a month.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Drug dealing, zim, Yeah, it is so drug deal.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It wasn't Harlem exactly. It wasn't surprising then that he
was one of the biggest employers in all of Seattle.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh magine, Washington state. Other than logging.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
He had the mayor Doc Brown in his pocket. He
was buddies with the chief of Police Brown, Doc Brown. Yeah.
He could pretty much conduct business out in the open.
It was no big deal. And it got to the
point where he could like unload whiskey in the middle
of the day from trucks marked fresh fish. It didn't matter.
According to according to Seattle's NPR station k u o
(16:26):
W quote, he was very approachable if you saw him
on the street and wanted to talk to him. You
could stop and take a picture with you, or shake
your hand, chat with you for a bit.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Just a nice guy, an amiable officer, friendly who's now
a run runner.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
No one got in his way, and not because he
was a tough guy. He was just charismatic, straightforward. He
knew what people wanted. Both booze and a legendary figure
to talk about. Back to k U O W quote.
The founders of a major airplane manufacturer were customers reputedly
at a prominent gentlemen's club in downtown Seattle. Was a
(17:02):
customer of Olmsted, as were speakeasies all over town, from
those in the central district to those in the city's
most exclusive neighborhoods. It really was. Olmsted really served a
clientele that covered the demographic bases of our city. Seattle
was a boomtown in the nineteen twenties. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Have you ever seen the president of Seattle before it
was a town? These spikes of hills and they're not
like hills, are like.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Crazy, exactly exactly. Let's stop for a second. Imagine what
Seattle in the twenties must have been like spikes of hills, boomtown.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Log roll like the actual skid row. They had an
actual skid row.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
So let's daydream a little and when we come back,
more of the Olmsted machine. Sarah Elizabeth, where was I?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Where were you?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I was Roy Olmstead. So he is a big deal
running a big operation. He had an office in downtown Seattle,
one block from the Federal Building.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
M hm uh.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And there were three telephone lines installed in his office,
which was like a big deal totally. According to the
New Yorker quote, one of his men, a former taxi dispatcher,
sat during business hours at a roll top desk, taking
and making calls, keeping meticulous records of each transaction. If
a serious matter arose, such as an employee's arrest, Olmsted
(18:40):
himself called a friend on the Seattle Police Force to
have it squashed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Of course, he's got tons of friends on these Yeah,
he is a former coworkers. I mean yeah. So it's
like and he didn't go out badly.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, well yeah, I got I like fire on police.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
He didn't like beat anybody up. He didn't take anybody
down with him.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And you know they're all thinking the same thing, like
this is easy money.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, it's just like there's some pool money.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So at this point he's only interacting with Seattle PD.
But then the Feds got window. There was just too
much alcohol flowing through Seattle like something had to be done,
and the FEDS loved busting guys like him, so the
Feds descended on Seattle. They had developed quite a wiretap
(19:23):
system by this point, and sometime in nineteen twenty four
they wired Olmsted.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Oh so we're still prehover.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah, So a guy dressed in the uniform of a
telephone repairman went into Olmsted's office building. He got the
place all wired up and slipped out and they started
listening and listening, and then Mayor Doc Brown went out
of town for a week. Perfect opportunity. So the Feds
they got to acting Mayor Bertha Landis and pulled her
(19:52):
in on the operation. She fired the corrupt chief of
police and tried to close every single speakeasy.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I says, he's a real tea total I'll give you
the warrants.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah. Then the Feds swooped in and went after every
illicit operation they could. Seattle's prohibition director, William Whitney, he
hired this freelance wire tapper, Richard Fryant, that's a job
to say you have freelance wire tapper. So after a
couple days, Fryant goes up to Olmsted, holds out this
(20:24):
heavy stack of paper and he's like, these are the
pages of verbatim transcripts of conversations from your office phone.
And Fryan's like, you can have them. This is the
only copy for ten grand. So it's like two hundred
thousand dollars today, and so he lets Olmsted flip through
to make sure they're the real deal. This is from
The New Yorker. A call from a cop to a
(20:46):
worker at Olmsted's headquarters down under Fifth Avenue Bridge is
a car with seven gallons of moonshine in it, and
I was wondering if it's yours. No, I don't think
it's ours, because we don't handle moonshine. A call from
Olmsted to the police station. Hello, Roy, what's on your mind?
One of your fellows picked up one of my boys.
I don't give a damn what they do, but I
wanted to know before he's booked. I'll take care of
(21:09):
it for you, Roy. A joking stange between Olmsted and
the dispatcher. The Federals will get you one of these days. No,
those sons are too slow to catch cold Olmsted equipped,
so he keeps as cool, right, he's reading on, reading on.
He's not ruffled because he'd been a cop. He knew
about evidence, and he knew what was admissible, and wire
(21:30):
tapping was illegal in the state of Washington. Oh really,
none of this would stick. Yeah, So he told Fryant
to kick rocks. Just get out of here, dude.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
But it's not gonna be stayed charges, right, It's gonna
be federal charges.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
So he gets back to the office and he's like,
I don't know. I still not feeling good about this.
He shouldn't, so he hires a telephone guy to come
search the building for bugs. The guy finds three taps,
temporary ones, not like hardwired soldered in two in the basement,
one in the ladies room, and so they disconnected them
from the lines that were running through the ceiling. The
(22:02):
next day, Olmstead goes back and checks again. The taps
are back. Oh yeah, yeah. So he used a payphone
from then on to coordinate the arrival of boats and
Puget Sound, and like sometimes he would still use the
office phone, but he would do it to like fake
arrangements and insult the Prohibition director, William Whitney. So finally
(22:24):
it's like, yeah, get a load of this, write this
one down, Mayor. Doc Brown returns, right, he's only gone.
He's been a heck of a week. He reinstated the
police chief. Everything went back to normal. He's just like, no,
he knock this up, like interim mayor. Think was going
to go down, like she was going to win over
the city, the temperance movement. I guess, I don't know.
(22:45):
So Roy had been married to a woman named Viola,
and things were on the rocks. They divorced in August
of nineteen twenty four, and then he turned around and
married a woman named Elise Campbell. And it all happened
so fast that you can see why the marriage was
on the rocks.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Oh right, she Canadian with her last name Campbell.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
No, she she was originally from England.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh what about her?
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, England. In nineteen twenty two, she got a job
as a bookkeeper for Olmsted twenty two two, and then
she also at the same time became an informant for
the government against his bootlegging operation. But then she fell
in love with him. She quit her informant gig, the
divided loyalty, and they got married. They moved into this
(23:29):
place that they called snow White's Palace. That's not to
be confused with snow White's Cottage in Seattle, and that
was built after that and is like a novelty Disney
house that I think might be like an Airbnb. Now, okay,
Now this was his was a big house in the
posh Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle. Four beds, three baths,
(23:49):
forty three hundred square feet. I found it on Zillo,
but there aren't any pictures because it hasn't been on
the market in the ages. So the couple, they're living
the dream. They even started a radio station called KFQX
in a spare room of their residence, okay, and it
was only on for four hours every evening. They did
(24:10):
news reports, weather stocks, that sort of thing. But the
most popular element was a show called Aunt Vivian. And
this is where Elise Olmsted would read children's bedtime stories
out loud. So Sarah, close your eyes, Oh yes, I
want you to picture it. You are a five year
(24:35):
old girl. An only child, you are doted on by
your parents. Your bedtime is seven pm, but on some
nights you're allowed to stay up a little later. On
those nights, at seven point fifteen, a show that you
love comes on the radio. Your papa likes to listen
to it too. It's Aunt Vivian. She tells the most
wonderful stories in such a gentle English accent. It may
(24:58):
kind of sound like a woman from California fighting for
her life to do. An English accent that's all over
the place and not grounded in any true location. An
accent that is offensive to the ears, if not the sensibilities.
I mean, that woman would know she's terrible with accents
and should just skip it. But yolo, baby, what does
all this chatter in your head? What does any of
(25:18):
this mean? Whatever? Your radio shows about to start, You
curl up on your father's lap as he sits in
his chair in the living room. He turns the knob
on the radio and a signal.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Comes to you.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
The tinkling of the piano tells you that Aunt Vivian
is about to begin. Your father grabs his notepad and
pencil from the side table, like he always does. He
loves writing down bits from the story, the parts that
he really likes. He says he reads them back later
when he wants to remember what a good story it was.
You can't wait until you learn to read and write
so that you can do the same thing. Right now,
(25:51):
you can only pick out some of the words and numbers,
but you don't know how to write them yourself.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Hello, children, Tonight I have for you a story about
a beautiful maple tree. It is a story of hope
and delivery. Once there was a strong maple tree standing
mighty in the north. This was a special tree, for
its syrup was magical and very expensive. It was prized
(26:22):
throughout the land. The woodsmen would collect the syrup in
bottles and pack them up and send them out to
the people. But sometimes the evil wolves would swoop in
and grab the bottles of syrup, leaving nothing for all
the creatures in the forest. The otters got tired of this.
They'd heard that the bears who lived in the south
(26:43):
wanted some syrup. They said they would be brave and
fight the wolves. They just needed help on the waterways
from the otters and the cranes.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You close your eyes and envision these animals, each with
their own job and talent. Get on with it, your
dad mutters.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
On this day, a beautiful autumn evening, the third Sunday
in September, the woodsmen stacked their bottles of syrup into
crates before the wolves could come and steal them. The
otters slipped four cases down to the water's edge.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Your father's scribbles on his pad. You can't read much
of it, but you do see the number four and
two zero's.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
Pulling the crates onto their bellies, the otters glided through
the water on their backs, transporting the crates past a
harbor of oaks, a bank of green, and finally to
a beach filled with sunlight.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Beside you, your father's scribbles furiously on his notepad. Oak harbor,
green bank, sunlight beach.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
At this beach, the bears were waiting in a big
green boat. They jumped to the shore and ran to
the otters. Oh how they gamboled and skipped. They took
the crates from the otters and gave them five large
cabin in return. The otters waved goodbye and headed back home.
The bears loaded everything into their boat and made their
(28:08):
way through the dark waters, careful not to be seen.
They knew that there were wolves that hide by the lighthouse.
The bears asked themselves, is there a point? No, there
is no point, But they took the boat ride anyway.
Those bears are so silly.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Your father scratches into his pad. Point no point, lighthouse sads.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
When they got to land, the bears shared the syrup
with all of the creatures and the children. They threw
a big pancake breakfast to celebrate evading the wolves. Every
bear who helped save the syrup was rewarded with six
silver dollar pancakes.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Your dad raises his eyebrows and whistles. Is that a lot?
You ask him? Sure is, darling, And now.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Children are time is up. Go to sleep, little dreamers,
and remember to be good little boys and girls. Mind
your parents and always do the right thing.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Good Night, you tell the radio lady goodnight. Your mother
comes and tells you it's time for bed. Daddy has
to work now. Your father comes to kiss you on
the forehead as he shrugs into an old weather coat
that smells of salt and sea air. Be a good
girl now and go to bed, he tells you. You
pad to your room, visions of bears and syrup in
(29:26):
your head, the heavy footfall of your dad's work boots
stopping out the back door, and that zaren is how
Olmsted and his wife sent coated messages to the rum runners.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I absolutely love this. I mean, using children's bedtime stories
to pass your rum running bootlegging plans to your confederates
and like having bears.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
And all around Seattle. Kids are listening to these stories,
but so are the rum runners in there bus, and
the stories told them when and where to drop the
alcohol shipments. Now, there aren't any existing tapes of her recording,
so it's not known exactly how the coded messages were done.
I just took a stab at it. But it did inspire,
(30:12):
thank you. I should try that for real. But it did.
What if? What if most of what I say this.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Was actually a code?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Maybe we'll never know. It did inspire the Feds to
broaden their net and then tap the phones at the
Olmsted house, so they couldn't really figure out what was
going on in the broadcast, but the radio stations at
the house so they figured and.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
They didn't learn from any confederates who got caught that,
like you need to check the radio that stuffs tanky
as well.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well, no, everyone zips it. Let's take a break when
we come back. More wire tapping, all right, zaren Elizabeth
(31:07):
roy Olmstead. So the Feds tapped his house and his
office one more time, and I need to make it
crystal clear that they never got a warrant for any
of these wire taps. Wait, they also they found that
farm that he was using for storage, distributing center rated it.
They came away with one hundred and fifty one cases
(31:28):
of whiskey, gin and champagne.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Oh they didn't just break it open the axis.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
And they may have, but that's how that's how much
they found there. Okay, a couple months later, which again
is so wasteful to see those Why.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Can't you just sell that to people who do drink
him braise a little money for the crime fighting or whatever.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Correctly, how about just abandon the whole effort. All it did.
All prohibition did was like create more criminal networks in
this country. It created new ones and it reinforced existing ones.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
It's generally what happened. And he tried to legislate morality.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Exactly because exactly people are going to work around and.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Where there's a will, there's going to be away. So
now you just incentivized the word.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Well, since the dawn of time, people have been fermenting
making drinking.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I think we made beer a thousand years before he
made bread.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, So I mean here's the thing, Like, you know,
I don't drink, and I know people where the drink
has ruined their lives. Oh yeah, figuratively and literally.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
But in all cases the dose makes the poison.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
But exactly. And you can't, like I also know people
who my brother makes the livelihood out of it in
his bar and like you can be enjoyed and be
a wonderful thing, moderation and whatnot right because you can't.
Oh god, it just irritates.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Men into problem or just like I can't say.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
No, it's all about the middle path, zon.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
What do we like a couple of Buddhist hit the.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
No.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
But I mean it's every time we do one of
these prohibition stories, it irritates me because it was just
like everything so much, so much waste in like the
time of federal employees, and then what happens is that
then okay, then we lift it and now you have
all these criminal networks that are like well, let's do
other stuff's really lean into the old hair earning exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
And then also people you're like, okay, that was silly,
and then what are you supposed to just like forgive
everyone people don't get all let out of jail and everything.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I mean, what they're doing with marijuana exactly, Zam and
I could go on and I'm all right, so what
were we? Oh? So the Feds they raided the barn,
and a couple months later they show up at Olmsted's
house while he's having a party. There wasn't any booth,
no booze there, but they did find like paperwork, keys, receipts,
(33:43):
like they're like, you know, raiding the joint. I think.
So one of the FEDS, the assistant Prohibition director for
Washington State, this guy named William Whitney, along with his wife.
He brought his wife and they pretended to be the
Olmsteds and they called some of Roy's buddies and were like, hey,
come over with whiskey right now. And they arrived and
(34:04):
they were just arresting the guys who would show up.
Oh wow, yeah, so Olmsted he got caught in nineteen
twenty four by the Prohibition Bureau thanks to surveillance informants
wiretap information. January nineteen twenty five, the federal grand jury
returned a two count indictment against Olmsted and eighty nine
other defendants. Huge so the case was referred to as
(34:28):
the Whispering Wires case, and this was the first time
the then new technology of wiretapping was used as evidence
in a trial. Really, Yeah, it's a long way from
there to Anthony pelicanum so per Seattle's Museum of History
and Industry quote. The trial began in nineteen twenty six
and was the largest in the country's history of liquor violations,
(34:51):
with forty seven original defendants. Elise was eventually acquitted, but
Roy was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison
and find dollars. He appealed his conviction in a nineteen
twenty eight landmark case on the grounds that wire tapping
was unconstitutional based on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Oh okay,
it went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Olmsted versus the United States Taste Law Yeah, was decided
in February of nineteen twenty eight. It was a five
to four decision. The court upheld Olmsted's conviction. Per the
New Yorker, quote, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, speaking for
the majority, recognized the murky morality of wire tapping. Nevertheless,
(35:35):
he argued that the practice served a greater good. A
standard which would forbid the reception of evidence, if obtained
other than nice ethical conduct by government officials, would make
society suffer and give criminals greater immunity than has been known. Heretofore,
he wrote, he rejected the heart of Olmsted's case, insisting
that the amendment does not forbid what was done here.
(35:59):
There was no search, there was no seizure. The reasonable
view is that one who installs in his house a
telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice
to those quite outside.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So it's kind of like the writes about your trash.
Once you put your trash out, it's now public exactly,
and you people cops can come along and gather your
trash from right in front of your house.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Right right. So Judge Lewis Brandeis, Oh wow. Brandeis wrote
the Descent, and here's an excerpt from it. When the
fourth and fifth amendments were adopted. Quote the form that
evil had thereto fortaken end quote had been necessarily simple.
Force and violence were then the only means known to
man by which a government could directly affect self incrimination.
(36:44):
It could compel the individual to testify, a compulsion affected,
if need be, by torture. It could secure possession of
his papers and other articles incident to his private life,
a seizure affected, if need be, by breaking an entry.
Protection against such invasion of quote the sanctities of a
man's home and the privacies of life end quote was
(37:07):
provided in the Fourth and fifth Amendments by specific language.
But quote time works changes brings into existence new conditions
and purposes end quote. Subtler and more far reaching means
of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery
and invention have made it possible for the government, by
means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to
(37:30):
obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
So, essentially, the fourth with its search and seizure like provisions,
he's saying like technology is caught up, and sometimes the
government has to do bad to do good. Essentially, so TAFT.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Is being like an originalist saying we have to go
exactly by the letter, and.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Also that you can occasionally do a little bad to
do good any kind.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
And brand is saying this is a living document and
this has to evolve as the way with the technology.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, yeah, because we didn't used to be able to
do this now exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
And I have to say the Descent is so well
written and beautifully constructed that like it's fascinating reading. So
with his appeal lost at this point, Almsted served his
time at McNeil Island Penitentiary and he was released May eleventh,
nineteen thirty one. While he was inside, he found religion.
(38:25):
He converted to the Christian Science faith. He came to
believe that alcohol was purely destructive. I mean it had
been for him, and not in the way that we're
used to seeing.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
He spent the rest of his life in service, though,
so he counseled people, He taught Bible study, He set
up rehab services for inmates in the Puget Sound area.
He got a job as a fumigator like pest control.
He taught Sunday school. He visited prisoners every Monday morning
at the King County Jail.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
You think being locked up. He was with a bunch
of like criminal drunks in a.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Sense, I saw what it was, I think so and.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Then he realized, oh, I'm part of this.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, exactly exactly. And so once again he's a fixture
in the community, but not as a folk hero, just
a hero, you know, and he's just service is his
big thing.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
He goes being a cop essentially a public service pretty.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Much, yeah, what you really should to protect and serve.
He became friends with the judge who sent him to prison,
Jeremiah Netterer. They had this like lighthearted back and forth.
They palled around, but they would also have these really
deep philosophical discussions about the nature of man and the world.
Who's a deep thinker? Olmstead. You know, he served a sentence,
(39:38):
but he was later granted a presidential pardon by Franklin
Delano Rosevel FDR. Christmas Eve of nineteen thirty five, and
that restored all of his rights as a citizen and
canceled the fine that he still owed. And so, you know,
FDR was really impressed by his redemption. Arc was this
whole thing, so Roy Olmstead. He died April thirtieth, nineteen
(40:00):
sixty six at the age of seventy nine. But then
there's this. Just one year later, the Supreme Court heard
a case Cats versus the United States. Charles Katz was
convicted of illegal gambling after the FBI recorded his phone
conversations from a public telephone booth using an electronic listening
device that was attached to the outside of the phone booth.
(40:22):
So Katz argued that the recordings were obtained in violation
of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. Sure,
so the Supreme Court here's his case. They ruled seven
to one in Katz's favor, holding that the warrantless wiretap
was unconstitutional. Because the FBI didn't get a warrant, the
evidence couldn't be used against him. In Olmstead, the Supreme
(40:46):
Court ruled that wiretapping telephone lines didn't constitute a Fourth
Amendment search. And then that's what Chief Justice Taft's majority
opinion rested on. He's like two pillars. There was the
physical trespass requirement, said, the Fourth Amendment only applied when
there was an actual physical intrusion into like a constitutionally
(41:07):
protected space, you say, like a house, paper person. Yeah,
And because the FBI had tapped wires outside of Olmsted's
home without physically entering it, no search had occurred, according
to Tap, and then his other pillar in his majority
opinion was that there was the tangible property focus. Since
(41:27):
only intangible conversations, not physical items, were seized, the Amendment
didn't apply. And stuff yeah was like, hey, no trespass,
No Fourth Amendment problem grew. So Cats, though dismissed both
of those pillars. It rejected the trespass doctrine, and they
held that the Fourth Amendment is not limited to physical intrusions.
(41:50):
The FBI and Cats never touched the phone booth, but
a constitutional violation still occurred. It extended protection to intangible
things like spoken words conversations, not just physical objects. And
it shifted this whole framework from places and property to
people and like reasonable expectations of privacy, There you go.
(42:12):
Justice Brandeis had presently dissented in Olmsted, and his arguments
were that the Constitution has to adapt to new technologies,
that we're saying like it's a living thing, and that
the right to be let alone was the most fundamental
of rights. So forty years after that, Katz essentially vindicated.
Roy Olmsted Katz remains the cornerstone of modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
(42:40):
It's routinely applied to contemporary things like digital surveillance, cell
phone tracking, internet privacy. Now, whether internet privacy actually exists anymore,
who's to say, but by law, we have a right
to it. Okay, so zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Ah, the presumption of our rights at this point, I
try to presume them in good faith, but so often
you find they're like, oh, those don't apply unless you're
the president. I'm like, oh, I don't get rights.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Well, I think too with Like when we talk about
internet privacy, we sign away that right all the time.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
In agreements we never read.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
We never read them. So, you know, you get your phone,
Like I just got a new phone because my other
one got I'll bust it up. And so I'm setting
these things up and it's like, do you want to
read this agreement? I'm like, not really, And I know
as I'm clicking, except I'm like, you're a dumb, dumb
lawyer's daughter. Yeah, here, open my life to you. There
you go, And like all these websites that we use,
(43:37):
you know, those social media ones. We have a contract
with them, and they have all this small print that
they own images, they own, statements, what you produce every time.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
People, Is it co own or do they own?
Speaker 3 (43:51):
They own a lot of these things. It's like once
co owner. Probably No, I don't think it is. But
you know everyone uploads those photos onto websites to like
see what you look like as you were aged or whatever. No,
because all that is is just gathering your information. That's
how they train and like facial recognition stuff. It's like
(44:13):
we hand it over to them. So I don't think
that there's any privacy because we've just opened it up
to them, like here, take it.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
Well.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I think the presumption of privacy has shifted with technology
to the being. As I said earlier, come on, you
don't really presume you have that type of presice.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
You and I have both experienced recently a lot of
friends who have where there's something that you speak to
someone about, only you don't look it up on the
online on your phone, you don't stumble across it somewhere.
It's just spoken and then it starts popping up in
like your algorithm.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Oh yeah, at this point, I do it to make
your Instagram algorithm go weird does when I see you,
I say things that I know you haven't looked up,
that I haven't typed into anything online, just to make
it pop up. Like I'm like, this is gonna be
fun and this tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
But that's the thing is we sound like we're paranoid
weird like you.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
But it's true.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Loan Gunman, Yeah exactly. But I feel like that all
the time now because I'm just like, yeah, everything's in operation.
Everything is like.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
No normies say this stuff to me and they're not
just like wackos like you and me.
Speaker 5 (45:22):
Don't.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I don't trust anybody or anything. And that's that's my take.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
This is you being raised by a lawyer, me being
raised by a gangster. We're both.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
I don't trust, don't trust anybody, that's right. Do you
want to talk back because I think I need to
talk back.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
Oh my god, I want you, Darren Elizabeth, producer Dave Interns, Hello,
I have a funny, quick.
Speaker 6 (45:54):
Story to tell you. Junior year of high school, I
was I'm an Alta with my.
Speaker 7 (45:59):
Mom and the song love Fool by the Cardigans came
on and I love that song, and my mom was
having a pretty rough day, so I decided to cheer
up by awkwardly dancing and singing in the Alta, and
a woman who worked there came up to me and said,
excuse me, ma'am, there's no dancing in the store.
Speaker 6 (46:16):
And I thought that was ridiculous. Hello, it's me again,
the awkward dancing girl from Alta. Just wanted to say, sence,
this goes by so fast, only thirty seconds. Really loved
the show.
Speaker 7 (46:31):
My brother and I.
Speaker 6 (46:31):
Listen to you guys all the time and we always
quote the.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
Bobbing up whenever we're making a phone call or have
a story that involves a phone call. So thank you
so much for bringing so much joy into our lives.
Speaker 6 (46:45):
And really love the show.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Oh thank you, Hey, you're giving me joy. First of all,
I'm sorry there's no dancing in the Alta. Like you're
a knockoff Sephora step back, like it's all twelve year
old girls using the lipstick. Don't give me started on Alta.
I love that you were first of all. I love
that you were cheering your mom up. Yeah, dance brilliant, amazing,
(47:07):
perfect thing to do. And now I need to go
down to the Alta and just like bust to move
and see if I get told to stop, and then
I'm like, uh uh no, I'm gonna dance like nobody's
watching live, laughlove, and then kick over like a like
a sparkly powdered spline. Oh my gosh, you guys are amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Your dudes are amazing.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yes, yes, all right, So that is it for today.
You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.
We're at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram. We
do have that YouTube account, Ridiculous Crime Pod, but they've
put a little pause on it, so there are no
new episodes coming on there, and we apologize for that,
(47:51):
but it's out of our hands. You can email us
at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. You can leave
a talk that please like that on the I heart
app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by King of the
Bootleg Bootcut Jeans Dave Cousten. Our ridiculous assistant is Sea
(48:14):
Otter carrying a load of seagrums to the party. Terry Maldonado.
Fong research is by Suspicious lighthouse keeper Marisa Brown. The
theme song is by Selfless Maple Tree, Thomas Lee and
Bear covered in syrup. Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided
by Botany five hundred producer Dave Coustin's wardrobe by Mister
Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
(48:36):
and mister Andre. Executive producers are Ruthless Federal Agents Ben
Boleen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
Reds Quime Say It One More Times Crime.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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