Thinking Sideways: Death of Mary Anderson

In 1996, a woman named Mary Anderson paid cash for two nights in a hotel in Seattle. Three days later, when she didn't check out, hotel staff found her peacefully dead by apparent suicide. Problem is, Mary Anderson doesn't exist.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:10):
I don't know stories of things we simply don't know
the answer to. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of
Thinking Sideways, the podcast. I am Devin, joined as usual
by Joe and Steve. We got another mystery for you
cool not quite to the cooking show phase yet. This

(01:32):
week we're going to talk about a mystery um that
we are calling officially the death of Mary Anderson, but
is actually Jane Doe one nine u f w A.
No one of those is her real name. Yeah, one
of them is not her real name. Both of them aren't.
Probably it's probably neither of them. Um, So quick overview

(01:53):
of the case as we do. On October nine, a
woman named Mary Anderson checked into room to fourteen of
the hotel Vintage Park in Seattle, Washington. She paid cash
for two nights day and it wasn't really a cheap hotel,
but she paid cash. And then on Friday morning, when

(02:13):
chuck out time had come and gone and she didn't
check out as expected, the hotel staff you know, tried
to gain access to her room and then couldn't, so
they it was it was dead bolted, so they had
the emergency override to get into her room and found
her dead on the bed. Electronic block. Yeah, I mean
they had some sort of a way. You have to

(02:35):
have some way to get into these rooms, right, and
there's always dead bodies, and it was a lot. Yeah,
So they found her dead. She had left a note,
and then she when they tried to notify next of
kin or the police trained to notify next of kin
based on the information she had left, it turned out
that um, not only was Mary Anderson a fake name,

(02:57):
but the phone number and the address that she had UM,
the address was non existent and the phone number didn't
belong to her. UM, and she's still unidentified. Yeah, she
appears to have made the name Mary Anderson maybe up
on the spot. Apparently there's hesitation marks in her signature
or writing of the names in the note. No, no,

(03:18):
on the on the stuff of the hotel when she
signed in. And I canna say on the note there's
no hesitation, but you know you have to you have
to fill your paperwork out when you when you Yeah,
that's where the hesitation marks were. And and just remember
this is pre nine eleven, So when we're talking about
trying to track her via flights or anything like that, Um,

(03:39):
that doesn't really happen. And then UM, I presume that
they since she paid cash upfront, they didn't really care
if she had a night record or anything. Yeah, Yeah,
so let's back up a little bit, although there's not
much backing up to be done because we literally don't
know anything about where Mary was before she checked in,

(04:00):
and then once she checked in, she pretty much didn't
leave the room. She put the do not disturb sign
up on her door. As far as we can tell,
like as soon as she checked in dead bolted herself
in there and just never came out by the time
they found it. Was she kind of ripe or she like,
you know, she immediately committed suicide or no, I think

(04:20):
it was fairly recent. I mean, I don't the room
wasn't warm or anything like that, and there's no mention
of her being pungent composing, and it was only two
days a stable environment like that, I don't think that
she would have been experiencing any massive degradation, would assume. So, um,

(04:41):
let I have a copy of the note that she
left a copy. I have just the note that she left.
You don't have the actual note. I don't have the
copy of I just have the words that she wrote. Uh,
and her note said to whom it made concern, I
have decided to end my life and no one is
responsible for my death. Mary Anderson, PS, I have no relatives.

(05:01):
You can use my body as you choose. So what
they do with your body? Um, they held it, they
didn't sell it. No, they held it in the morgue
for eight months. I think. Well, they were trying to
identify her and then finally embalmed her and buried her
in an unmarked grave. But there's a grave number and
all of that stuff. So if you want to go
visit your grave, yeah, yeah, she's buried um at Seattle's

(05:25):
Crown Hill Cemetery and she's in grave number one nine
seven A. So if you want to go visit Mary Anderson,
Seattle listeners get on that, would you. Yeah? And also
Seattle listeners if you wouldn't mind swinging by the hotel
A vintage. I want to know if they still have
room to fourteen or if that's permanently closed off of time.
It's my it's actually um my understanding it is closed off.

(05:49):
Read an article from just a couple of years later,
and the the investigative reporter said he wasn't able to
gain access to it, although I'm not sure if that
means that he was just trying to break into the
room or if he was trying to rent it, but
the hotel won't talk about or maybe he was just
lazy and he wasn't able to gain access because he
never tried. No, I think he'd tried. Um. Well, this

(06:10):
is one of the ones that will post um. You
have to weigh back machine it. But it's an incredibly
thorough investigation of what happened, I guess. I mean that's
the frustrating. Yeah, that's the frustrating thing about this case.
And we'll just talk about everything that we know and
then we'll talk about everything else. So the note that
we're talking about that was handwritten, It was handwritten on

(06:32):
it was I'm sorry, it was quote unquote scribbled on
a piece of hotel stationary. You know they give you
those little notebooks or whatever and a pen. So Mary
was estimated to be between thirty three and forty five
years old. And we will talk about this later because
I presume you guys looked at the pictures that she
does look a little old than that. But we'll talk

(06:52):
about that in a second. She was about five eight
five ft eight inches I think it was five eight, Yeah,
but I didn't transfer that into international units. Sorry, that's
about That's about seventeen kilos and about half a kilometer
or something like that. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, and

(07:14):
then she weighed two hundred and forty pounds, which I
think is like two stone maybe I don't know, like
five thoms. Yes, I'm pretty sure that's accurate. She had
reddish brown hair and brown eyes, and metric again, that
is what just kidding, reddish brown and brown. I think

(07:34):
I think it translates pretty pretty significantly accurately. Significantly, yeah, accurately.
She had a copper i U D inserted, which is
birth control for those of interuterine device. She had had
some sort of breast surgery at some point which produced

(07:54):
scars on both of her breasts um and then also
around the nipple area, so it was like from the
under side um. Her hair was combed, her nails were
neatly trimmed and painted like a white cream pearl color.
She had makeup on, she had a dental plate in
her mouth um, and she was wearing black leggings and

(08:16):
a black top wa dental plates, so that's basically dentures. Okay, Yeah,
making sure I understood what that, man, I suddenly realized
that it wasn't sure she was laying on top of
the bed. I guess. I don't know if there were
two beds or one bed in the room, but she
was laying on top of it. The sheets were turned
down neatly underneath her, so she had, you know, turned

(08:38):
the sheets down so that she wouldn't get them dirty,
and laid on top of them. She was propped up
against a you know, a bunch of pillows. The top
are ones, not the ones that you sleep on, the
decorative ones. They were like a dark print. Um, so
it seems like, you know, she was trying to be
as as convenient as possible. What was going to happen after? Yeah? Yeah,

(09:01):
she had a large Bible open, face down on her
chest to Psalms twenty three, not the hotel Bible. I know.
I don't think it was the hotel. The impression that
it was her own bible, somebody's Bible, but it wasn't
the hotel one. Yeah, and you for those of us
who don't know, can one of you guys read this

(09:21):
this psalm? For us? It's pretty normal. This is one
you've heard. I mean, if you ever watched any TV
show or any movie where somebody gets killed and they
cut to the funeral scene, you're hearing one of two songs.
You're hearing this one or the other one that goes
ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So this one goes three.
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want He
maketh me to lie down the green pastures. He leads

(09:43):
me beside the still water. She restores my soul. He
leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yeah,
though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
I Rod and the staff, they comfort me, that prepare
state table before me, the president us of mine enemies.
And this is totally channeling Shatner. Uh. That annoys just

(10:04):
my head with oil. My cup runneth over uh shore.
The goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life, and I will doll in the house
of the Lord forever. Okay, and Shatner Uh. The one
thing about everybody talks about Psalm twenty three, which may
or may not mean anything. If you're looking at any
standard Bible, there's a number of psalms on each Yeah,
So if she could have been reading Salm twenty two,

(10:26):
I mean, which you know immediately precedes it. Sal twenty
two is a little bit darker. But you know, actually,
if you got Joe has a Bible in the studio,
it's a smaller Bible than the ones that I haven't.
Well that's not true. I have a couple at my house.
But you know there's the study Bibles, which are usually
those like really big ones, and often they just have

(10:47):
like one or two psalms on a page. And actually
the copy that I have just has one full psalm
on a page. Um and sometimes you know, a couple
of lines from the previous one make it onto the page.
But I think it's possible. It just depends. There's so
many different Bibles, you don't know, there's so many different
but it is possible to get a copy of the
Bible where it's basically just one full text of one

(11:11):
full psalm on a page and then you know a
couple before and after of others. Yeah, on this on
this one, essentially they all run, you know, page, they'll
run back to back, so that the tenor of the
song twenty two is a little different. Starts out like this,
my God, my God, why hast forsaken me? Why arn't
thou so far from helping me? From the words of
Mike groaning, Oh my god, I cry by day but

(11:33):
that dost not answer? And by night but find no rest,
not that, and on and not from there, A little darker,
much darker. Yeah, but some who knows, not that it
means much of anything, but it is a little bit
more despairing than Psalm twenty three, where she was maybe
at I don't know. It's hard to tell. Everything seems

(11:54):
really meticulous with her. It seems very prepared, almost like
the KGB and like laid the whole table out a
little bit, and we talk about that, and there's actually
let's talk about the things she had in the room
and kind of the overall everything, and then you know,
when we get into theories, I guess we can talk
a little more about how we feel about her. You know.

(12:16):
The problem with this case, and I'm sure I know
that Steve and I talked a little bit about this,
and I know he'll talk probably a little bit more
about this later, is that this case has like there's
almost no information. I think, you know, I bulked out
a page on this of like actual known facts on
this case, and that's with a heat with an entire
psalm in it up. Yeah, I'm just like totally like

(12:40):
sound half that day. I do. Yeah. But there's a
lot of a lot of talk about this, and a
lot of people have seemed to infer a lot of things,
a lot of stuff stuff sculus. There's like a forty
four page long web sleuth thread dedicated to this case

(13:00):
and sist, yeah, I know it is. That's why you
don't do these guys. Okay. So she did have a
number of miscellaneous items with her in the hotel room.
She had, um the lord jumpsuits plural, but I don't
know how many. I think maybe two would be my guest,
but I don't actually know they actually I think they.

(13:22):
I mean, you know, the track suits not jumpsuits, sorry,
track suits is the word that I meant. The tops
in the bottoms of the zippa putty um and either
depending on the account that you read, even they were
packed neatly in her luggage or hung neatly in the closet.
But it's always like neatly and orderly. She had a

(13:43):
pair of shoes. She had a pair of size ten slippers,
which is what she was. She had a nice pair
of black leather gloves, which I understand were maybe from Nordstrum's,
but I don't know where people may have picked that
up from. I think it was a brand. Um. She
had a nice leather purse. She had some I stay
Lauder cosmetics, toothpaste, perfume, meta mucil, packs of dry crystal

(14:07):
lite pantyhose, and iron and a kitchen bowl. Not totally
clear on the bowl or I guess I would. I
guess add the iron in there too. But everything else
seems totally normal for a trip. Actually, you know, it
sounds to me like if you're a regular hotel goer. Um,

(14:28):
most hotels have a fridge and things like that, and
they usually have like little plastic disposable captain glasses. They
usually don't have bowls. So so if you like to
save money and just eat a little cereal for breakfast
in your room, for example, having a bowl is a
handy thing. It's the iron is the same thing. You
can get an iron from the front desk. Typically, all
I've ever stayed in has a has a. I've been

(14:49):
in many hotel rooms where you have to go to
the front desk to get the iron. Really, yes, you
must be staying in a crappy hotel. Hotel, I mean
there in the room. Yeah, this is a nice ho tell.
So they would have had an iron. I wouldn't make
that presumption. But the point is, I'm following what Joe saying,
is that if you're if you're traveling frequently, that's something

(15:09):
you would have just in case you don't have to
try and find somebody at the office at five am
when you need to iron something. I guess I'll just
point out, however, that um leggings, uh T shirt and
blower jumpsuits are not exactly do not support the need
to iron. Yeah, I will agree. Yeah, maybe it was

(15:30):
an interrogation device. Maybe yeah. And I'll just mention that
the lead investor on this case, I've read a couple
of interviews with him, and he has said over the
years that there was a newspaper that was open that
had a couple of maple leaves on it, and said
that he and the other investigators at the time just

(15:54):
saw it, and I think they just assumed that they
would find out. I mean, you know, by all accounts,
this should have been an open and shut case. They
had her name, they had her address, they had her
phone number, they should have been able to figure out
who she was. Um. And so they didn't really pay
attention to these things. UM and he thinks there may

(16:15):
have been some significance in that, or that she left
a clue or something like that in that that arrangement,
but that they never actually paid much attention to it.
So I will mention that, and that is that maybe
the clue that's lost to the ages. But on the
other hand, I don't necessarily think so, you know, it
could be as simple as it's October in Seattle, or

(16:37):
and and she saw some good looking leaves, or it
could mean she was a Canadian secret agent or something
else or just Canadian. Yeah, or it could be nothing.
Yet she paid, as I mentioned, in cash for both
nights ended up being about three and fifty dollars. It
was a hundred and seventy five dollars a night cash,

(16:57):
which is not significantly less than it is out. But
it's like five hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and
that's not that's nothing. That's not nothing. And she didn't
have a whole lot of money with her. I think
she maybe had like thirty four dollars in her wallet,
but no idea or anything like that. Um. She reportedly

(17:17):
when she checked in, she didn't speak with an accent
or anything like that. The police, you know, when they
were called and they were searching the room, they did
find uh empty glass on the nightstand next to her
that was found to have traces of cyanide in it um,
which is the way that that was her cause of
death is she killed herself by cyanide poisoning. And that's it.

(17:39):
That's literally everything we know about Mary Anderson. Much has
been written about her, but nobody knows what the hell.
Nobody knows anything. Yeah, they did. I think they did
check out like East Coast, just to see if she
was from New York, which is where the address was.
But the address was non existent, and actually it does,
it's not non existent, exists, but it just it's just

(18:00):
the street address exists in New York. But she gave
the wrong ZIP code to go with it. Yeah, and
she just wrote new York, New York, which a lot
of people from New York have mentioned. You don't say
New York New York, you say like Queens New York. Right. Well,
if you're if you're from one of those places and
then the area code of the of the phone number
that she gave was also totally the wrong area code

(18:23):
for that area, but apparently it was a fairly limited
areas like New York number though it is, but I
think it was like upstate New York or something. Um.
I probably could have googled this and found out, but
it's all just kind of it's all wrong. So I
guess for me, I don't put a lot of stock
and interest into oh, this address, she like thought a

(18:46):
lot about it. I don't think she did. And then
in terms of Mary and actually indicates something though it might, yeah,
might it indicates to me she's not from New York.
Oh yeah, I would agree with that, Yeah, totally. I
would also say that if she were from the East Coast,
most people from the East Coast speak with an accent,
and a hotel clerk in Seattle would have said, yeah,

(19:07):
she spoke with a I don't think no accent doesn't
pertain just to no heavy European or you know, English
wasn't her first language accent. I think it equates to
no no accent whatsoever. Yeah, But I mean there's also
she could have had a very slight accent. I have
a friend who's from New York, and I don't ever
notice an accent until she takes a trip back to

(19:30):
New York and she shows up at the office and
suddenly she sounds like she's from like she's from New York.
It comes and then it bleeds away slowly over time.
Maybe that's what accents do. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Did
you want to talk about we gotta we gotta talk
about the New York stuff at any time? Or should

(19:50):
we talk about it now? We talk about it now? Well,
you got the thing about New York is that's great
if you're on the West coast. Is it's like clear
across the continent. It's a really huge city. So if
you run into somebody it was from New York, you
need to say, oh great. But everybody's from New York,
so not surprising. We don't know each other obviously. And
but what is kind of clever? I don't know if
she was clever at that's just purely accidental. The address

(20:11):
was like one thirty two weeks Third Street and there there.
That address is in two places. It's in Lower Manhattan
and it's in Brooklyn. And so she was that clever
in picking her alias in her legend. Then that's really awesome.
She can stay from me a third Street and they say,
oh my god, I used to live right around the corner.
And then she said, oh, well, I lived on the
one in Brooklyn, or vice versa. I mean, maybe she

(20:33):
did that, she was that clever. I mean, I guess
I don't think she, to be honest, I don't think
she put that much thought into I mean, right, what
it's it's one second. I mean like it's just like
one to three Northwest Third Avenue. I mean, like if
there's not a that's not a made up address, I

(20:56):
really don't. I don't know what it is, you know. Yeah,
but think, well, the other thing about New York is
that um and you can't appreciate it this if you're
not from the Northeast, you can't really appreciate this. But
everybody in the rest of American knows all about New York,
and so it's a natural pick if you're from If
you're not from the Northeast and you're looking for just
a fake city to throw out there, this big well

(21:17):
in New York, it obviously comes to mind for everybody
in America. Yeah, yeah, pretty much that New York of course. Yeah, obviously,
that's why I think she's probably from the West. Yeah,
I think New York is a I mean, yeah, totally
it is. Um and then, uh. The other thing that
people have mentioned, which is actually probably true, is that

(21:37):
at the time, there are two major soap operas that
were on Both of them had leading characters who were
named Mary Anderson. On them, there were um and So
I think Days of Our Lives and that other one,
which is the one that has the it doesn't matter
too popular. I was looking at you like you're you're

(22:01):
asking me, I know my children? Yeah, been, um so,
there were there were some major characters that were, you know,
popular at the time that were named Mary Anderson. Not
that Mary Anderson is like a hard name to pull
out of a hat anyway. But on top of that,
there's really after the whole Luke and Laura thing. Oh,

(22:25):
it's time for Steve to making references that Devon doesn't
get perfect. I'm trying to remember Luke and Laura. I
don't remember that either, but you can google it. I
remember Jack and Jennifer from Days of Our Lives. I
got kind of tedious after a while. I have never
ever watched soap opera, though I don't know what either
of you are talking about. So here's a couple of
we'll do the bullet point things and then we'll get

(22:47):
into theories that work for you guys. Okay, So, people
a lot of times mentioned that she looked like she
was European, which is accurate. I would. She's a very
distinct kind of like Greek look to her. What you're
looking at me like, I'm insane? I mean, I didn't.
I didn't pick up that. That's all. She looks European

(23:09):
to me. But again, she didn't speak with an accent,
so I think she was American or maybe Canadian, but
maybe the accent or something the middle of European. Is
that what you're thinking? I'm sorry? Was it maybe the hairstyle?
I don't know what it is about her. She just
has that kind of look about her. But but I mean,
people look like I look Italian and I'm not actually

(23:31):
from Italy. It's just my heritage. So it's not unheard
of too. We should make a quick note here for
everybody is as far as I'm aware, all we have
is drawings of her face. You know, I've seen references
to Morgue photos, but I have not been able to
I didn't see it either. Yeah, they were. They were

(23:51):
all either photoshops or pencil sketches by you know, the police,
artists or somebody, and you know, an attempt to identify her.
But I haven't ever seen an actual verifiable photograph of
this woman. So yeah, might bring a little bit on
soft information. It might have been that her her work
photo was kind of gruesome. I mean, I don't know

(24:12):
what dying from sinide is like, but I imagine it
could be nasty, you know. Actually that's the thing is
um When the hotel staff initially came in, they literally
thought she was just taking an app They thought she
was just a really heavy sleeper. They thought she was
just asleep, and then they tried to wake her up,
and they were like, oh, oh, I thought she was
just asleep. And then she did normally slept with this
horror hideous grimace on her face. No, I think she

(24:34):
I think she literally just felt. I think that's maybe
how sanide does it. Is you just you fall asleep
and you never wake up. I don't know, but that's
what it looks like apparently, is she was just asleep
peacefully asleep. All I know about sinides what have learned
in movies, and I don't trust that. Yeah, that's probably
h Yeah, so she had those scars on her breasts,
and uh, I've read a lot of stuff that people

(24:57):
online have said where they're like, well, obviously it was
a boob job. No, there was nothing in there. Yeah,
there was no implant, There were no implants or anything.
It could have been a lift. It could have been
a reduction. A lift is kind of well, I mean
all of them are kind of boobed. I mean, you
get your accept your deviated septum in your nose fixed,
and it's still a nose job, right, even though like

(25:18):
you're it's just so you can breathe. I mean, any So,
I mean, yeah, it was a boob job technically, but
she it wasn't an augmentation. I've heard a lot of
people say that they thought that it was a reduction,
and that's certainly possible. Although the couple of people that
I know who have gotten reductions, and this I mean
no offense by this at all. The people who I

(25:38):
know who have had reductions have had to have been
on um like really strict weight loss regimes. For whatever reason.
I don't know why, but they've had to be maintain
their weight within a certain amount of weight. Typically it's
because reductions are done because it's a strain on the
lower back based on the side of the breast higher back,

(25:59):
but well it's on the it's a backstraight and so
if you're able to reduce your weight, there is the
potential that the rest will not be as large. Therefore
were reduced the strain. But I will say is that
when I read the description of the scarring, it matches
up with this what I have. I have friends who

(26:20):
have had had reductions, and it matches the style, especially
from kind of that day and age, and then in
the nineties. I don't know if they well, I don't
know if they leave the same kind of scarring today
because have advanced. I don't think they do. I don't
they do pinholes right, and I think they do something
that's much less invasive. My point is is that scarring

(26:42):
match up with what I am aware of is the
aftermath of a reduction in that era. I would agree
with that might have reduced your way and then just
like started like towards the end of your life. Yeah.
The other thing that I saw, I threw you, Jenny Gregg.
I mean the other thing that I saw that I
thought was a really interesting suggestion was that um that

(27:06):
maybe she had breast cancer and that there were some
lump removal things. I think that the Emmy would have known,
like would have been other signs in her body. That
doesn't that doesn't add up. I don't, I agree, but
I thought it was an interesting theory. It is interesting.
But yeah, I don't think they do both sides. I've
never heard of them trying to balance him out, like

(27:27):
you know, like like cutting up in one taking out
a certain amount of material. Well, I mean if if
she had tumors in both, I mean that's certainly possible.
I mean a double most sect to me is a thing. Yeah,
they weren't trying to balance her, Joel, they were just
taking stuff out of both of them. Yeah, the whole
thing is screwy. Yeah. And then one of the other

(27:47):
things is she did have that copper I U D
and so UM the serial number was partially off, which
doesn't surprise me at all, having had I U D
s like they're in you for ten years. Um, stuff
just degrades while it's in your body. That just happens,
so they were unable to track it that way, which
again isn't surprising at all. But also, you know, a

(28:10):
copper i U D it's good for ten years, so
situations change. But your doctor usually isn't going to give
you a copper i U D unless you have a
stable partner and you're still in your child bearing years,
which she was if she was thirty three to five,
which is why I think. Also they did a cross

(28:32):
section of her rib to find her age, which I
think is probably fairly accurate, but I she does look
much older than that, so I think people get a
lot really caught up in that. But I I think
that the fact that she had an i U D
does speak more towards she was the age that the
Emmy said she was. The One of the things about

(28:54):
it is that her hairstyle definitely makes her look older, yeah,
And her makeup yeah makes her look older, but that
hair really definitely yeah. I mean, I think those and
she's running around in Juicy Cotur. Well, I don't think
it was Juicy Cotur. I mean I think they would
have mentioned maybe if it was Juicy Tour. I don't know,
maybe they wouldn't have if I. I don't know, but

(29:15):
I think you know that's that's the age, particularly when
some women are used to wearing makeup the way that
they did in their twenties and it just ends up
aging them more than making them look younger, you know,
and you're like late thirties, early forties if you haven't
evolved your makeup process and your hairstyle. And I am

(29:35):
yep ye. So you know. The funny thing that I
find about this and there's several points in this story
where this could pop up, but people make very large
presumptions his story. And one of the things that sparks
that is the fact that she has the U D.
It's going to call it you I D, which isn't

(29:56):
a thing. Well it is, but it's an unidentified I'll
tell you, okay, but no. The point is is that,
as you said, they're good for ten to twelve years.
It's old technology ten years. Take it out at the
ten year mark. It's not as if the thing starts
ticking inside of you and an alarm goes off. That says,

(30:20):
a board, a board, a board that you know, like
people can keep them. It has happened. Well, I suppose
that's true. But but you know, I mean, who knows.
But you know, the important thing is is why did
Why the hell didn't they look at the serial numbers?
Anyway I would have taken a little bit of work.
But you know, they didn't have a full serial number
they looked up they had half them. That's you know

(30:42):
that they still should they still should have been able
to find something. No, not at all, Are you kidding me?
It's like, so it's a part I mean, it's like
a part number. It's like a batch number. Say it's
an eight digit number, and you only have four of
the digits, Well, that just cuts the stock that they
have sold in the least ten years and half. That's
still a giant pie. Well but but the point that

(31:05):
I was getting out about that is that people say, well,
she had to be a lady of means to have
had that or two have afforded that. I her the
scars on her breasts and the belief that it is
a reduction that she had to have some means and
good insurance. They say that about the I U D.

(31:25):
But my point is the iu D has been around forever.
It is cheap technology, and it is readily available everywhere,
so just it. I find it funny that that is
one of those things that people leap frog from. She
had an I U D too, she must have been
at least someone's not. It's not cheap technology, first of all,

(31:48):
especially if you're paying for it out of pocket to
actually get one. It's not. It's not cheap, but there
are clinics that do it for free if you need it,
so it can be cheap. That's that. And then and
then I think to your point, I think I see
people if they say it was a lift, they say
it was she's a woman of means who cared about

(32:09):
her appearance, and he did make up blah blah blah.
But a reduction, like your insurance will cover that if
if you mean, because it's right, I don't think your insurance.
I don't think your insurance pays for a lift, But
I think your insurance will pay for a reduction. So again,
you don't you Yeah, you probably have to be insured,
but you don't have to be of great means. No,
it's not that fantastically expensive. But the thing about it

(32:30):
is is you're not going to pay ten grand to
get a hangnail fixed. But when it comes to the boobs.
I mean a lot of people place huge importance on
the boobs. Well that's been good coin on it. But
you have to have But that's the point is you
have to have that extra ten grand laying around. Well yeah,
but when you say someone of means, what does that mean?
I mean ten grand is a lot of money to me.
Well yeah, but I mean some of the somebody means,

(32:51):
I mean that's I'm thinking, like somebody's upper middle class.
I'm just got you know, kind of yes, yeah, yeah,
that's what means. But but I mean there are people
who are far below the upper middle class who get
this kind of worked out. Well okay, but there's always outliers.
And I mean I've been to I've been to Argentina
where everybody gets it. Every woman gets it, and you

(33:12):
know there's lots of people who really can't afford it
and they do it anyway. And so yeah, people will
get it. You don't have to be a means. So, Um,
what I'm learning from this is that we need to
start a Kickstarter for Joe's boob job. Yeah you So
the other point about this I U D thing is, um,
the Emmy also was able to conclude from her autopsy

(33:35):
that Mary had never had children, so that is also
an important fact. Um. Okay, so I heard I'm not
sure if this is true or not. Actually I've heard
both ways. But I've heard that she mixed the metal
mucil with her cyanide. Well that's good, I mean, she's
going to have, you know, regular poops. Yeah, but I
also heard that she had mixed crystal light with her

(33:58):
metal mucil, and that she had mixed just the crystal
light with the cyanide or maybe all three. There was
something to cut the flavor essentially, but we don't know
us sure. Yeah, I can imagine that metamusel would make
sanide go down much easier. And I have heard that
crystal light makes meta musel go down even easier. So

(34:22):
I wonder I wonder she was older it memusel and
crystal do kind of associate with like kind of older people. Yeah,
but you have to remember this is ninety six crystal
Like everybody drink crystal light, you know, like we're talking
like right now. Yeah, that's like old people behavior because
it's the behavior of people when they were in there,
like late thirties, early forties, and you know, twenty years ago,

(34:45):
so old people looking at you, Joe, I mean that
So for me, that's again you know it is yeah
right now I'm like, that's an old person behavior. But
I'm trying to remember back to the midnight panties and
think like, oh no that was MEO is still around
using MEO in my water? Was ever really the in thing?

(35:09):
Oh no, no, no, crystal light the crystal light part
of it. But hey, Meta Musel, sometimes you just gotta you,
you know, especially if you're traveling, you kind of want to.
She could have had intessal issues. She could have like ibs.
Some people who have ibs they back up very easy,
and so it's kind of a general regiment. You're always
taking something that's going to keep the floor. But I

(35:31):
will tell you seriously, you know, when I travel, you
get so dehydrt on airplanes that like sometimes you just
once you're there, you gotta like take a little some
to please tell me when we go to crime Con,
I'm going to see that in your carry on pointed
out you will not know, I think, just kidding. Um okay.
So also cyanide, how did she get the cyanide? Good question,

(35:55):
jewelers can get cyanide. They use it. That's how his
name got it, you know that's his name. Who famous
guy who poisoned people with cyanide. Well, they're not the
only ones that have access to cyanide. They're not the
only ones. It's just like a pretty easy jump. Apparently
nail text sometimes have access to cyanide. Miners have access

(36:19):
to cyanide, though I don't think she was a miner.
Process uses cyanide. You can also make it. I heard
you can make it from like apricot seeds, so that
takes a long time. I would say she probably bought it. Yeah,
it would be much easier to just go acquired through
an industrial means. I think it actually at one point
though it was Amazon around in Google wasn't even around there.

(36:44):
You could up until I think around two thousand or
two thousand five, there were some ways to buy it
on the internet. Okay, let's be fair. There are still
ways to buy it on the internet. You through Amazon
one point until Amazon cotton dawn and stopped the whole
thing and it got much more, much more rigorous. Um.

(37:10):
She also had a prescription pill bottle that the label
had been torn off of so there was no name there,
but she did have a prescription. I figured that I
don't know, I don't know it was in there. They
just talked about it, but maybe it was the cyanide.
And also the other thing is that we uh don't
I haven't seen anywhere what kind of form the cyanide

(37:34):
was in, because I think that would have given us
some more clues into liquid yeah, or potassium cyanide or
you know, like stuff like that. And then last, but
not least, is that people have suggested that she returned
to this specific hotel in this specific room because it
had sentimental value to her. But she didn't make a

(37:56):
reservation or anything. She's walked off the street. People said
the room might have had significant she didn't request the room.
Did She didn't request the room, She didn't make a reservation.
She just walked in off the street and got a room.
So I don't think that's That's not one of those
things that people make up people. Yeah, a lot a
lot of people on the on the inner webs, etcetera,
like to turn these into big set and soap opera stories. Yeah.

(38:20):
I was gonna say, this is again another example of
people just reaching for anything and then that being parodied
and becoming part of the real story quote unquote real story.
So you guys want to talk about theories about whom
Mary Anderson might be really quickly. So let's take a
break first. Oh yeah, I want a sandwich. Yeah, Henry

(38:46):
doesn't like his neighbors. It wouldn't be going too far
to say that his neighbors hate him as well. And uh, yeah,
he hates his neighbors. So Henry is not a very
happy guy. He says, they're always making way too much noise,
and he just knows one of these days they're gonna
come into his den and take it all away from him.
This not so little Taxi day at Texas sits out

(39:07):
at his house for hours on end, just in case
someone tries to come along and take it from him. Yeah,
Henry has a bad attitude and it shows. Sitting there
all day long really doesn't help. Protecting your home should
be a heck of a lot easier, right, and you
shouldn't have to sit out there all day long. I mean,
do you want to have more of a life than
Henry the Badger? Yeah? I thought so. Well, we'd simply safe.

(39:31):
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Protecting your home means you no longer have to badger anyone. Okay,

(40:14):
we're back that ham sandwhich was awesome? Yeah was it? Yeah?
I wouldn't. I wouldn't either, So first up, just because
I didn't bring it up to share. So you've got
a few people that I have a couple of people
that have been that have been suggested as potential suspects

(40:36):
suggested by who the internet? Um, but we yeah him, Um,
but we're going to breeze right through these because there's
lots of problems with every single one of them. Um.
So the first one is Sandra and Suley. She went
missing in May from New York. She was last seen

(40:59):
at a shopping plaza and then she was reported missing
a week later after she was seen. She had a
black poodle like that, you know that was remember that
was popular in the nineties in the early two thousand's
to have little dogs. I guess it's still kind of
little dogs. She's a black poodle that went missing with
her um and I. As far as I know, they

(41:20):
didn't ever find anything. They found a couple of people
using her credit cards a little later, but uh, nobody
really knows anything about her. Apparently she probably left with
somebody she knew or of her own volition, and she
was reported missing after she missed a couple of doctor's appointments.
That's kind of went through the red flag. Yeah, because
she just lived alone in her apartment. She didn't have

(41:42):
a significant other or anything like that. Yeah, murdered. Well,
so she was only five five, so she was a
little short. She had dark brown hair, not reddish brown hair,
and it didn't die. Die is a thing, but but
you can tell when people die there, like in an autopsy,
you can tell if that hair's died or not. She

(42:03):
had a birthmark on her abdomen and a scar on
her upper lip are our Mary Anderson had no birthmarks
or scars, and then um, Sandra was like seven months
pregnant when she disappeared, and our Mary had never had
a kid, had a little kid. She did not know.
So I mean, the way that this goes, people are

(42:23):
willfully ignoring that she's too short and had no scars
and didn't ever have a kid, and saying, oh, Mary
is Sandra, and she had to give the kid up
for adoption, and then she was sad and every and alone,
every Yeah, I think it could have been one of
the rhymes sisters. They picked their own desks and yeah,

(42:44):
maybe that wasn't well, you know, and people are going
to say, okay, so we have to talk about this
at least briefly. People are saying, well, she never had
a child, she was seven months pregnant. She may have
never actually given birth to a live child. But if
there had been some kind of sea section or something
like that, we should have known about a scar. And
I don't I don't know enough, but I would imagine

(43:08):
that even if it hadn't been a live birth, there
would have been the same evidence in you know, in
the is it. What's the it's your hips hips, thank you,
and I'm pretty sure that your hips at like and
this is different, like by seven months, her whole body

(43:30):
should have already gone through. Yes, okay, so that one's dumb. Okay,
that doesn't work. She had a baby and much too short.
Next up is Elizabeth Mary Allen. She's got marrying her name,
so maybe the last name star. She went missing from
Oak Harbor, Washington in UM three. She was five and

(43:56):
a d fifty pounds. She had blue eyes. Mary Anderson
had brown eyes. She had a scar on her left elbow.
Mary Anderson had no scars. I don't know why people
think that it was her, except for that her picture
kind of does resemble an age progressed potentially what Mary
Anderson looked like. Carb Washington is not too far from Seattle.

(44:20):
It's not but it's I mean, it's not her. It's
not her. Kind of doubt it. It's not her. Yeah,
there's serious issues there, unless like somehow they figured out
how to change eye color and make her tallerant without scarring.
They think, yes, you right, just not her. This isn't Gattica, Yeah,
exactly right. And he used contacts in that anyway, So

(44:42):
and a lot of other really good tricks. Yeah, lots
of them. Okay. So next is Mary Karin Amos again,
another Mary with an aim. So she went missing in
UH seven in from her home in San Bernardino, California.

(45:05):
And she was fifty four years old when she disappeared.
So no, Also she had green eyes. Also, she had
a vertical scar on her abdomen um, so she's way
too old. She did have, she did have, she did

(45:25):
have the upper dental plate. She's also five seven, so
about the same height, but way too old. Not necessarily,
she would have been like sixty three, Amery could have
been sixties, Marie, and could have been sixties. Why would
she have an I E D. Maybe she got to
put in way back? Why don't she just forgot? I
think they would have noticed if it was like really old,

(45:47):
because it's copper, so it's degrading in your body. And
I think if it had been like a twenty year
old I U D. They would have known. It was
also the brand. It was actually the brand Paraguard that
came out in the like early nineties, because you know,
the ones in the eighties were like kind of dangerous
and like ruined some women's systems, and so they pulled
them from the market. And then in the nineties they

(46:07):
released the Paraguards. Were those the copper ones, were those
the ones that had the hormone. They were the copper ones,
and they were the ones that were called the copper Cross,
that's what they called them. And then they rereleased this
one called paragraph. It doesn't really matter, but I think
they would have noticed if it was a much older
I think so too. Although the one sad thing about

(46:31):
poor Mary Amos is there was a twelve year delay
in her being reported. How does that happen? That happens
a lot. Actually, yeah, I think it probably has some
willful stuff going on in there. That's a case for
a different story. Yeah, all right, next week, okay, next
week covers. Yeah, and it's going to be married months. Yeah.

(46:55):
I should have held off on my Mary. You should
have yeah, um, okay, so we're done with the named. Yeah.
So some ideas of who she could have been is
like the wife of a jeweler. And I saw I
saw this one story that somebody had created on web
slues and it was just like, oh my god, how

(47:16):
did you get there? It was crazy Yeah. This person
said that she was obviously the ex wife of a
wealthy jeweler who was well kept, was used to caring
about herself. Um, but I mean she was like she
was on the bigger side, and her hairstyle certainly didn't

(47:37):
make me think that she cared a whole lot about
the way that she looked at Remember twenty years ago too, Yeah,
but were a little different. Have you seen hairstyles from
the nies, by the way. Yeah, But so the theory
was that, you know, she she was a kept wife
and she was used to this life of luxury, and
she had gotten a breast lift. There we go, thank you,

(47:59):
that's her figured the handlett to signify the word list.
She'd gotten a lift, and um, she you know, was
she was well kept. And then she had found out
that her jeweler husband was actually having an affair, so
she decided she didn't want to live anymore, so she
stole some cyanide from his jewelry shop and went and
killed herself. I think this is right out of a

(48:19):
Daniel Steel novel, but changed the ending. Yeah, it's crazy. Well,
you know, life does imitate art. Yeah, but yeah, that
sets again, that's a bit of a stretch. I mean,
the whole wife of the jeweler things hilarious and why
wy couldn't she have been a jeweler. Well, she could
have been a jeweler, yeah, or again, a nail tech. Apparently,
she could have been a pharmacist. She could have been Yeah,

(48:40):
she could have been married to a pharmacist, or a photographer.
She could not have been a photographer doing that kind
of work based on the way her hands looked. Yeah,
but otherwise, well, but that's actually why people suggest and
I actually think it's not the worst suggestion ever, is
that she was a nail technician because her nails were
very well kept and she seemed to really care about
her appearance, though it wasn't like on a Yeah, I mean,

(49:06):
it's like the way that a working woman cares about
her appearance. She her nails were done really really well,
and then she would have had the access to the cyanide.
I'm not really sure the one of the other questions,
the whole cyanide nail tech thing, but I don't really know.
I know somebody will email us and they'll they'll write
a dissertation on it, So I'm not going to go
just great, I the other thought, and I think this

(49:28):
is probably true, is that I mean, I at least
I think it's a pretty solid theory. And the theory
is that her husband had recently passed away and so
they had no kids. She probably didn't have any you know, family,
which is would be why nobody ever identified her. Or
that's where it's not outlandish, and that she just decided,

(49:48):
you know what, I don't really want to be here anymore.
I the love of my life is gone. I don't
have really anything keeping me going. And the picture that
the people painted for this one was, you know, it
kind of fit. When you look at her, you can
hear like I understood this story totally. It was, you know,
the kind of woman who sells the house and closes
all the accounts and you know, leaves everything neat and
orderly and then goes away to somewhere where nobody will

(50:11):
know who she is, and you know, just very neatly
and quietly takes her own life, and then you know,
hopes that her body will be used in some science
some way, although she should have probably explicitly said like
I would like my organs to be donated, not do
with my body what you will. And also I'm pretty
sure that if you kill yourself with cyanide, that probably
ruins a lot of the stuff in your body. She

(50:33):
probably could have gone to a body farm. And that
was about it. Yeah. Yeah, med school, Yeah, no, couldn't
go to med school. Things would have been messed up. Well,
maybe she could have gone to med school for like dissection.
I don't know, I don't know what they do ye
section yeah. Um oh. And the other thing that I
did see when they were talking about whatever her name

(50:56):
was that um had the pet that was that went
missing was that somebody suggested that maybe the kitchen bowl.
Because nobody's seen any pictures of the kitchen bowl, somebody
suggested that it was maybe a small yeah, yeah, that
it was maybe a small bowl that like she carried
with her because she had been used to traveling with
a pet, like a small dog or something. Yeah. She

(51:18):
could have also just mixed everything together in that bowl.
She could have. This was so planned out to actually
grind up to see a cyanide pillar or or the
water in the crystal w Yeah, and then washed the
bowl too, because she was that kind of person. Totally,

(51:38):
people who just automatically do I am not one of them,
but I live with one, and the world will end
before they will not get that bowl washed right away. Yeah,
oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Another theory that people had, and
I'm just throwing this out here. I'm not gonna expand
on it at all, really, is that she was there

(52:00):
to be a witness, a witness to what is that
like in a criminal Yeah, and she didn't want to
do that, or she had because she was afraid to testify,
so she killed herself instead. Yeah, but it seems like
they would notice if the witness didn't show up. Yeah.
I think that that would have put somebody would have
put two and two together. Yeah. That was that a
web special there. That sounds more like webs louse and

(52:22):
read it. Yeah. And then the last theory was that
maybe really do have ane think it's a little different. Yeah. Yeah.
And then the last theory is that maybe um Mary
Anderson was a spy. Of course, she had been as
by her whole life, and then you know, her usefulness
had had withered and she just decided was not long
after the Soviet Union folded. Yeah. Did you get that

(52:44):
from an email Joe sent you? Because it sounds it
sounds a lot like they don't. Yeah, actually, it's not
my theory at all, I think, I mean, the only
reason I think people associate this with her being a
spy because of the cyanide, and so it's really for
that reason, really absurd. I think it's a cyanide and
the unidentifiability of her. I mean, she's she has covered

(53:05):
her tracks pretty dang. Well, man, how did he he
died from cyanide? Didn't he you? Okay, but just this
is but other people have I mean, there's some connections recently,
there are some connections to other cases where other people
have killed themselves under pseudonymes with cyanide. So I mean overall,

(53:28):
we literally don't know. We literally don't know anything about
this case. We don't know anything about Mary Anderson. We
don't have any leads whatsoever. Um, so you've just wasted
like an hour of our time. I have nothing about
I feel like that's like literally every single episode of ours.
Well you know, actually, you know it might be we're
putting the word out there might be one of our
listeners knows that Mary Anderson will crack the case, you know,

(53:51):
so it might not have been a complete waste of
your time. Yeah, okay, yeah, but on the spying thing,
I think I do think though that say, if she
had been some sort of a sleeper agent, she probably
just would have gone back to the Soviet Union or
Hungry or wherever she came from, probably family back. There
no reason to kill yourself just because the Soviet Union

(54:12):
went away. Um, and and to point out because I
know somebody will say, well, maybe she was too sick
to travel. She, according to her autopsy, was perfectly good health.
She didn't think she was overweight. But yeah, but no cancer,
no like massive obvious things going wrong, like she was fine. Yeah. Yeah,

(54:32):
she might have just realized that, well, you know, I'm
just kind of in middle age right now. It's only
gonna be downhill from here. It's not gonna get any better.
What the hell her own terms? Yeah, going out in
the high note, I guess, But that's what I mean.
There there are people in that situation. I mean there are,
it's on my terms or not, and I prefer my terms.
There are. I just would hope that at forty five

(54:53):
that's not the case. But there you gom. Yeah, I
don't think we need to go any deeper in that
because this whole subject there is a deep well of
information about it and we don't need to rehash that. Okay,
well that's unsatisfying. We're gonna put some links um and

(55:14):
obviously her picture um up on our website and if
you want to see those links or the picture, or
listen to this episode because you haven't just listened to
this episode. Yeah. Um. We also have an episode list
so you can see every single episode that we've ever done,
which can be helpful because we're starting to get some
suggestions of things we've covered because we covered them like

(55:35):
four years ago. Yeah. I update that about once a month. Yeah,
so um. That can be found on our website, which
is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com dot com. You can
download and listen to us you know where, I mean
pretty much everywhere. If you're doing that on iTunes or
you're doing it on Stitcher or someplace where you can

(55:57):
subscribe and leave a comment or um, leave a review,
you in a rating. Please do that. It helps other
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you know how you're finding us. I don't know why
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(56:17):
You can find us on Twitter We're thinking sideways. Um.
And then we've also got a subreddit which is just
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And then if you want to buy merch there's a
link on the website. We do that through Zazzle and

(56:39):
red Bubble both stuff. Um, really cool new shirt that
Steve designed. Yeah. Yeah, they suggested a lot of different
things forward Yeah. Yeah, so go ahead and check those out.
Um yeah, and I think that's it. All of that

(56:59):
having been said, we're gonna go ahead and get on
out of here. Let's say something funny. Well, but this
just isn't funny. Okay, I'm gonna say bye bye instead.
We'll talk to you guys next week. A