387 - Cocaine Shark

On today’s episode, Georgia covers the death of actor George Reeves and Karen tells the story of Glacier National Park’s “Night of The Grizzlies.”

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Last hellllo and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.
That's Karen Kilgariff. Did you get the slurp?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
It?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
It was my sip of water right before your line.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Was it loud enough? Or should I do it again
with a louder slope of water?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
You know AMDR What is it called AMDR? No, that's
electronic dance music ASMR ASMR.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
You know what if you just were changing the topic.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
You know the Electric Daisy Festival where I love to
do all my speakers ray you're dancing. I went to
that in like nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Just give us a couple of the pictures that you've
captured in your mind and tell us about it.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I don't remember which one it was because it's been
so long, but I definitely had vinyl pan that's on.
I probably had crimped hair, tons of body glitter, but
like everyone had body glitter on in the nineties, so
it wasn't like that big of a deal. Right just
to go to Gelson's. You would do that totally, and
like you know, Raver Jewelry. That was little Georgia. I mean,

(01:18):
speaking at a time, what a time to be alive?
You did you also wear white eyeliner? Yeah, that definitely happened.
That was a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Because and I think this is the gen X millennial
distinction is we run a marketing meeting and everyone was
talking about when they used to wear white eyeliner, and
I was like, God, I really hate this feeling of
not knowing what people are talking about. And then Aaron
actually showed a picture of that era. Wow, and it
was I was completely out of that, like you didn't

(01:48):
even know what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah. That and then the like bright pink, littery, wet
and wild lip gloss was my absolute like that's all
I wore, Like that was my thing always. Did they
go together? Yeah? I mean yeah, because I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I was high.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
I'm not sure speaking of being high, let's get right
into it. Have you heard that there is a cocaine
shark and sharks going on?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well? I have, And the only reason I have is
because our audience knows the news we want to know,
and immediately retweets and forwards us all of that kind
of information.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
That's fucking ryan. We appreciate it. The Guardian says. Experts
say cocaine sharks may be feasting on drugs dumped off
of Florida. Of course, of course Florida.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, wait, maybe should we put together a theory, a
very fact based theory right now that that's the only
definitely issue that sharks actually have, and if it wasn't
for the drugs, they'd be chill.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
What if that's the only issue that Florida has, and
if it weren't for the drugs.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Everything chilled, they would all go back to normal and
stop becoming a fasci estate. That would be I mean, yeah,
it's actually just like it's just like Jaws.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's just the movie Jaws.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
But if you can catch a cocaine shark, it solves
the country's problems.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Oh my god, we all come together hand over rehabbing
those sharks.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Being here for sharks instead of for ourselves for once.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Can we please get those sharks some fucking compassion our
message we've always sent.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
This is what this podcast has always been about. And
start acting like we were never a marine biology slash
drug rehab.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Based podcast, because we have been since day one. Yeah,
and you know that, and that's why you send us
these stories.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Did you ever see and this is a TikTok thing
because I don't know how recent it is, but there's
a video on TikTok of a woman who studies whales
and she's in the water swimming next to this blue
whale and it's really amazing. And then they look over
and here comes a great white shark and she knows

(03:59):
she can't swim away, yeah, because then it'll just chase her.
And so she's kind of near the whale and the
whale's doing this thing where it is swimming blocking the
sharks so she can get back to the boat. But
at one point she swims out and she just basically
stands her grown and pushes the shark away by the nose.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Like it's a badly behaved dog.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Like those things as they swim at you. It's all
those teeth. That's all you can see is those sea huh.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Oh my god. It's it's pretty break. They have bad
breath sharks, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (04:36):
No, because it's like a constant saline solution rinse that
they're doing across their teeth. That's true every episode. Now
I'm going to verbally describe a TikTok.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
The worst way.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
To experience a TikTok, which is someone retelling you.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
But it's the only way I can experience I don't
have TikTok anymore. I like, I had it for like
a month and then I just recently went back on
and it's like, you don't have an account anymore, like
deleted it. Fuck you. So which is good. I'm glad
I don't need it and I don't want it.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
But they're just like, Okay, if you're not gonna be
here with us every day, day and night, then you
don't get it.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Oh you're not a team player. Then you don't get
to fucking oh play on this team.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, then you don't get to watch ring videos of
people falling down in their own icy driveway.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Sorry, oh my.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
God, there was one to day and the funniest look.
I couldn't handle living in anywhere near ice. No, just
absolutely not prepared. It makes me laugh really hard though,
because you know these people have been living like with
icy driveways their whole lives, but they still is like
a girl walking this is a ring video walking out
and the second she steps she starts the forward like

(05:44):
her feet are going forward in front of them.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
She's like, oh, is there like sound with them? Like
on them?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Can you hear them normally no, but this one may
not have been a ring because you could hear the
noises she was making before she hit the ground, and
it was just apps chef's kiss perfection.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Really good. It's like you're weaponizing your security camera, you
know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
I mean also, and I think we've talked about this.
We're all always on camera now for real.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
I don't like it, but yes, ring a doorbell, they
have you.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
I was actually thinking about that walking my dog's in
the neighborhood because it makes me so mad that people don't
pick up their dog shit and it happens a lot
on my street, and I just thought, the next time
anybody there's a neighbor email, I'm going to be like,
by the way, can we start collecting up all the
ring cam footage of people just letting their dogs free
range shit on the sidewalk.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
It's kind of a bummer. That's insane. Well, it's even
somehow more insulting when they put it in a bag,
a poop bag, and then leave the poop bag there.
Do you foresee that people do that? Yes? And my
neighbor people fucking do that. Or it's like there's one
more step dude.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
No, I have not seen that. Have you been watching
anything you like lately?

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I have a podcast, if you can believe it. I'm
watching a ton of stuff. True crime one. I love
that one. I have a podcast. Did I tell you
about my podcast?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
No?

Speaker 1 (07:08):
I found a podcast, uh recently because I started following
this guy on Instagram who was like, makes these hilarious
like Midwestern mom videos and his name is Zachariah Porter,
and he and his friend Jonathan Carson have a podcast
called Camp Counselors. It's basically them like just talking and

(07:31):
telling you funny things like they did like a like
recently a beach day rundown of like must haves, and
then they're just hilarious. You really feel like you're hanging
out with your camp counselors that are like way cooler
and you want to be buds with them. I love it.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
And are they is it like a long sketch like
they're pretending like, Hey, we're about to go to the canteen,
but before we go.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, it'd be like canteen corner and then they'll just
talk about what snacks are actually eating right now sort
of Oh got it? I made that up. But yes,
exactly got it? Is it? It's camp Themed's camp theme
like camp counselor themed. Yeah, that's hilarious really and they're
just so both so funny and tell great stories and
so yeah, camp counselors highly recommend between like true crime

(08:11):
documentaries and podcasts, get yourself a little.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Humor, get yourself a little light and light and airy?

Speaker 1 (08:19):
What have you got?

Speaker 2 (08:20):
I tried to find remember that old guy from Australia
that had the like interesting Mysteries podcast and we met him. Yes,
it's not on anymore, and I couldn't remember the name. Yeah,
So I was like in the search thing forever and
I can't tell you how many things are named paranormal,
unexplained or mystery, Like there's so many. And then eventually

(08:44):
I just found a Reddit thread that said there was
a lovely old guy in Australia that used to read article,
and I was like, yeah, one and it was it
was like mysteries abound.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Mystery is abound. That's it. I can hear him saying it.
In this world mysteries about mysteries bound. They found a
small statue in the desert.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's the one that got me where I was like, oh,
you're gonna read US national geographic articles like Hell, yes.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
You don't need to have like a fucking MPR podcast.
You can just fucking read other people's articles as long
as you give the sources and give them credit. Just
read a fucking mystery article.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yes, everyone needs a little Yeah, everyone needs a little
like let me disseminate this for you, let me shorten
this for you, just in this moment on this podcast.
I mean, that's that concept built this podcast. God's bless
I survived truly.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Are you watching, speaking of true crime, are you watching
the HBO documentary Last Call? And it's made by front
of the podcast, Liz Garbus, who's so talented. No, I
haven't heard of it. It's Last Call, when a serial
killer stocked Queer, New York, and it is I didn't
know the story. It's from the early nineties, and it
talks a lot about homophobia in New York at the time,

(09:56):
and you know, all over the fucking country and there's
a serial killer praying on gay men in New York City,
like infiltrating the club scene and the night like the
gay bar scene, and serial killing and like dismembering and stuff.
It's wild. I read.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I read that book because we were sent that book
and I recommended that book, but it was probably two
years ago or so long ago. So as you were
just describing it, I was like, yes, that sounds familiar.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
That's called Last Call. Great, it's good.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Oh, that's I'm in an I'd love to watch that,
and you don't have to read Yay. My family came
to town, so I wasn't really doing anything. But then
one night we watched a movie called Polite Society. That's
really it's a British movie and it's featuring like a
British teenage girl whose family.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Is Oh is it like the superhero kind of one?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Oh my god, is it the best? Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
It's like she wants to be a stunt woman and
it's made like a karate or a stunt movie or
something like that.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Like she did's so good.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
It's such a grit compelling way to make a movie
about girls who are just like going through it in
high school.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, it's really it. She did.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
And then of course I fell asleep. What I realize
is when there's people at my house, I will fall
asleep because it's almost like I'm like a weird feral
animal where it's like, oh, they're here now, so I
can go to sleep.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, like you can. You can like you're off the clock.
You're off like duty of like making sure nothing bad happens.
Someone else has it.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, they'll turn the lights out. And so then I
just like thirty minutes into anything, I'm like. So the
next morning, I was like, Hey, how the end.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Of the movie goes? And she just like rolls her
eyes at me. It was so funny.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Did you go see Barbie? No, I can't wait to
see Barbie. Oh but I didn't see. I didn't do
anything because it's that thing of like having family at
your house.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Oh right.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
I needed a recharge from just simply talking to other
people for several days in a row, did.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
You Yeah, it was good. I liked it a lot.
It was fun. It was fun watching in the theater
because everyone was laughing a lot, and you know, and
I never do that, but I enjoyed it a lot.
Oh that's right. You don't like movies.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
The way people got into it dressed up. There was
a of course, a TikTok I saw where women walking
into the movie. As people were walking out, they kept
saying Hi Barbie to anybody, anybody that was wearing pink
and leaving the theater, and it was like women, dudes, it
was anybody that passed by, Hi Barbie, and they'd.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Go like, Hi Barbie. And it was the funniest, cutest.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Just I think people need something positive to focus on
and yes, be together in.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
And it has a positive message. So that's like you,
we need to that. Great. It's not just like fucking mindless,
like pretty drivel. It's actually really well acted. It's got
really great storylines and I liked it a lot. Yeah,
and the outfits are great. I wore a pink dress
to it, of course, with strawberries on it. Did you
do that? Of course I did you. Yeah, those girls
said Hi Barbie to you if they saw you walking out.

(13:03):
But the Americana is full of a bunch of fucking fascists,
so I guess that doesn't happen in Glendale, California.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Down here, people, everyone's pretending to be too cool to
say Hi Barbie.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
You have to get that somewhere else in a different town.
All right, fine, but I love that. Should we do
exactly right corner and then get into our stories? Sure,
all right. We have a podcast network called exactly Right
and here are some upstates from it.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Okay, this is breaking news. Not only is the hilarious
comedy podcast Adulting with Michelle Buteau and Jordan Carlos back
from their summer break, but Adulting is now a weekly
show you can listen every single Wednesday, which is great.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
And then on this week's episode of our newest show,
Ghosted by Roz Hernandez, Roz is joined by none other
than Lacey Moseley and she's the incredible host of the
awesome podcast Scam Goddess. So like, I feel like Roz
Hernandez and Lacey Mosley together is like a power power team.
You know, that really is.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And I'm sure everyone's listening to Scam Goddess, but if
you haven't, that is like one of the best scam podcasts.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
There is out there.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Definitely also an infectious disease news on this podcast will
kill You. Erin and Aaron are going over toularimia, which
is also known as what rabbit fever, which typically infects
humans through tick and deer fly bite.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Can we get rid of tics? Let's save the sharks,
and let's fucking get rid of ticks. They're the biggest dicks.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Here come the emails. What you don't know is tics. Hey.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
And lastly, you're invited to head over to my Favorite
Murder store, which is at my Favorite Murder dot com
and you can check out a collection of enamel pins
for this and other exactly right podcasts. Everyone loves enamel pins.
Get them for your leather jacket, you know. Look cool? Yeah,
are your first this week?

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay? Yeah, I mean what I mean you are as
a fact? Oh not like you're not offering it, not
like you go, that's not how we do it. No,
all right, Well, today I'm going to tell you about
a mysterious death of an actor. It's TV's first Superman,

(15:19):
George Reeves. Ooh you know about.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Selling Well, I kind of knew about it a little
bit because it's one of those ones where if you
ever look up like creepy Hollywood blank, it'll always come up.
But then there was that there's a Ben Affleck.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Movie Hollywood Land. That's right. Yeah, it's Ben Affleck who
plays George Reeves. It's a good movie, two thousand and six,
is it? Yeah? I liked it.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
I feel like it's I've found it midway through on
regular TV and you know, oh yeah, for sure, I've
never done the comprehensive title to title viewing.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well I'm going to do it for you today. It's
also in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries from nineteen ninety,
so you can check that out as well. You know,
tour de four s Ben Affleckx not in that one, though,
unfortunately they should have got him for it. Definitely that
was a mistake. So my main source is that Unsolved
Mysteries episode and a two thousand and six article from

(16:15):
the La Times by Robert Wilkos called who Killed TV Superman?
And the other sources are in our show notes. All right,
so let me tell you about George Reeves in his background. Okay,
he's born George Keefer Brewer because actors don't have their
real names as their acting names. Yeah, it's a chance
to change and be new. Yeah. He's born in January

(16:35):
of nineteen fourteen in Woolstock, Iowa, and his parents separate
shortly after he's born, and he is and his mom
moved to beautiful Pasadena, California. What's up nice? His mother
remarries a man named Frank Joseph Besseolo, and Frank adopts George,
and I guess George is really little because he's brought

(16:56):
up to believe that this dude, this new stuck dad
dude is his act actual biological father, So he takes
his name George Keefer Besselo. And then the mom, Helen,
and her husband, Frank, divorced when George is a teenager,
and it was while George is out of town visiting relatives.
They just fucking divorced, huh. And when he gets back
from visiting, instead of telling him the truth, George's mother

(17:18):
tells him that Frank, who he thinks is his father,
died by suicide, rather than telling him that they just divorced,
like somehow that's better. Sorry?

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Is this what years is like? The twenties or the thirties?

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Probably it looks like the twenties. Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
People had bad ideas back then. They all went unchecked,
and the way anybody ever handled anything was the worst,
it seems, truly. And it's like it says later that
she did it because she was doting and overprotective, like
divorce is somehow worse than He's just not alive anymore.

(17:55):
I mean, it's one way to interpret it, but I
would say that that's being incredibly self centered to not
care the effect, right, It would have to not only
lie that your adoptive father is your real father, but
then say now he's dead totally. That seems like taking
his own life.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah it does. Yeah, it's a nightmare. Okay. So one
time George is going through some pictures, finds a picture
at his home of a good looking guy, big dude,
and asked his mom who that was, and she off
handily said, oh, that's your father, and then stopped dead
because she realized what she had just fucking said. It
was like not the dad, And he said, quote, I

(18:34):
thought I was Italian, little George Bessolo, who talked Italian
and Spanish with the other bessloes and ate spaghetti and
all of the rest of it. And then I found
out that I was Irish, all Irish. Sorry, sorry, it's
called twenty three and me check it out.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
That's the old version of twenty three or mirror was
like someone comes and takes your plate of spaghetti away
and then puts a just big bottle of whiskey in
front of you and says, get to drink in junior,
Boiled cabbage is what you eat now.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
No food tastes good after this. So as a teenager,
George likes to sing and act. He also likes boxing,
but he gives that up because his mom is overprotective
and is like quit and so he focuses on acting
and he performs at the Pasadena Playhouse for about five
years and is discovered there by a casting director. This
leads to him signing a contract with Warner Brothers. And

(19:22):
this is when Hollywood is still operating under those studio
systems where like, you get hired by a studio and
you're contracted to a specific amount of you know, movies
or whatever. So his film career gets off to a
great start. One of his very first roles is in
nineteen thirty nine when he is on a little picture
called Gone with the Wind? What, yeah, was he? Can?

(19:44):
I guess? Yes?

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Was he one of the partygoers at the very beginning
opening scene party?

Speaker 1 (19:49):
I think? So there's twin redheads trying to woo her.
I think I knew that.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Sorry, I think I tried to get credit for knowing it.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
I think I knew that already, but I didn't know.
And does he play twins with another actor, Do that?
I think? So?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
No, No, well, I don't know. Here is what I
need to learn to say. I don't know for sure,
but I'm pretty sure that they didn't have that technology
back then and it was him and another guy.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, okay, that's my That's a pretty big fucking deal, right. Yes.
At this point, George is twenty five and the studio
is like betting on him and they want to change
his name, so they change it from George Besslo to
George Reeves Classic, and there's some ali, my researcher said.
Other name changes of this era include Carrie Grant, who

(20:40):
was born Archibald Leech Classic, Lauren Bacall was born Betty
Joan Persky. Just cute, and that is cute. So in
nineteen forty George Mary's a woman named Eleanora Needles, which
is the most punk name I've ever heard in my life.
That is pretty badass. She's a fellow actor from the
Pacady in a playhouse and after gone with the win,

(21:02):
he works steadily but doesn't really break through until nineteen
forty three, when he's about twenty nine and he lands
a starring role in the World War II film, so
proudly we hail. The film is a success and it
might have launched George's career, but it also inspires him
to enlist, which is like noble and shit. So around
thirty years old, Georgie enlists under his real name instead

(21:25):
of a stage name in order to avoid special treatment,
but they find out that he's an actor, and he
winds up getting special duty assignments in the entertainment Corps
where he performs for the troops. So what if you're like,
I want to go fight the good fight and they're like,
get on stage and tap dance. You know, that's kind
of embarrassing. That was like, especially because he's a big guy.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
So I'm sure he was like, yeah, this is I'll yeah,
you know, I'll pull my weight. I'll get in there
and do my duty like everybody else in this country
seems to be doing.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
And then they're like the entertainment coreps. But I think
you imagine that the amount of actual like just you know,
everyday soldiers who were like I would kill for that
fucking position. Yeah, how dare you like shit on it?
You know? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (22:07):
That's and I wonder if there was like pull from
the studios where like, we've invested in this guy, so
let's get him in the entertainment core please, right, little
envelope with some cash in and.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
That's that's a good point. So George gets back from
the war and his career has lost momentum. He's not
booking as many roles. And the director of the movie
he had been in the so proudly we hail, had
promised to make George a star. But he dies while
George is overseas, so like, that's your ticket and that sucks. Yeah,
he takes roles in a series of B movies and

(22:36):
struggles to pay the bills, which I feel like is
so many actors actual stories here.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
In La especially now that there's a horrible strike which
did you hear that?

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Who was it the Rock?

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Like the Rock made this gigantic donation to the SAG
strike fund.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
So basically people don't have to worry about losing everything
in the first six months type of things. Now there's
actual benefits set up for SAG actors who might need
support while they go through that. I mean, just like
stuff like that that's happening. People are supporting each other,
is really beautiful.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Support unions everyone. Yeap. So then, because it's just in
B movies, struggling to pay the bills, he finds a
day job digging cesspools. Oh, do you want to know
what a cess pool is? Exactly? Sure. It's an underground
holding tank for sewage, a precursor to a modern septic tank.

(23:30):
It's not glamorous. I mean, that's truly humbling.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
It's like, it's me the star of so proudly we hail,
and they're like, pick up that shovel right over there, right.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
But the thing is he's making one hundred dollars a hole,
which in today's dollars would be you want.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
To guess five thousand dollars a hole? No, oh to
one thousand, five hundred dollars a hole.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
One thy twelve hundred eighty two. Nope, one thousand, two
hundred eighty two.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Okay, that's that. It's a ton of money.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Pack for a whole, a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, great, okay,
And I guess it's like a whole takes like two days,
so that's that's fucking's great. Yeah, ain't no shame in
the paycheck, as Marty likes to say. In nineteen fifty one,
when Georgia's thirty seven. He's cast as Superman in the
movie Superman and the mole Men, and then he's cast

(24:22):
in the same role in the TV series The Adventures
of Superman, which to us is like a huge fucking deal, right, Like,
you got cast as Superman, like the biggest hero in
fucking comic book history, and it's starring TV role right right.
But it wasn't as big of a deal back then
because it's nineteen fifty two and TV is only just

(24:43):
become common an American household, so TV's not a big deal.
It's like next to movies, it's kind of looked down upon,
So it's actually not that big of a deal, right,
It's less prestigious, I guess it is. Yeah, And it
doesn't pay nearly as well either. The hours are long,
the work is grueling, and the pay isn't great. But
George feels proud of the show as a quality product

(25:03):
for children, and he wants to be a good role model,
so he even stops smoking in public because he doesn't
want kids to think that Superman smokes cigarettes. Oh, I know,
which probably was real hard back then because everyone was
like a packa.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Day, literally, like you're in the doctor's office and the doctor's.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Like, would you like a cigarette?

Speaker 2 (25:20):
As I tell you your Diagnosis's just like it never stopped.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
No, So he did that, and he says in one
interview in Superman, we're all concerned with giving kids the
right kind of show. We don't want to go for
too much violence. And then he adds quote, we even
try in our scripts to give gentle messages of tolerance
and distress, that a man's color and race and religious
beliefs should be respected. Wow. But as time goes on, though,

(25:46):
George becomes disillusion with the role. In a nineteen fifty
six interview, he says, quote, the only rub in playing
Superman is that I have a tough time finding other roles.
Most movie producers feel I'm too closely identified with Superman,
so they won't use me. So typecast tale as old
as time. So he's unable to get other work. But
he needs to find ways to make more money when

(26:07):
the show isn't shooting, so he appears in advertisements as Superman.
He books wrestling events as Superman oh yeah, and he
also does promotional appearances like early versions of conventions. Essentially,
so George and his first punk rock wife, Eleanora Needles.
They divorced in nineteen fifty, ten years after their marriage

(26:27):
and right before George starts playing Superman and George starts
dating a woman named Tony Mannix, who is eight years
older than him and used to perform in the Zigfield Follies.
The thing is Tony's married. Her husband is MGM Vice
president Eddie Mannix, and you won't remember him from the
movie Haile Caesar. Yes, the movie is a fictionalized version

(26:49):
of his life and career as MGM's fixer. Oh Josh
Brolin's part. Yes, I'm saying that, and I think so, yeah,
got it? Yes, No, you're right, We're all right, toget. Yes.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
I love Hail Caesar. That's why I answered so fast.
So that movie, and I love the concept of it
where it's like this is of course it's the Cohen
Brothers version. Yeah, it's so like those are the people
that made Hollywood go totally. The behind March Colooney is
that it's yeah, he's the guy that gets kidnapped by
the Yeah, Bolsheviks or whatever.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
I gotta watch that again. It's been so long. So
this dude is the husband of his new girlfriend. It's
his job to do things like bail actors out of jail,
pay off the victims of their drunk driving accidents, cover
up sexual assaults, and arrange illegal abortions for actresses who
are under contract. So he's like in the underground scene, right.
And when Eddie needs to bring actors in line and

(27:43):
can't do it himself, he reportedly has mob contacts from
his childhood in New Jersey who act as his enforcers. Yeah,
all of Hollywood is the mob? Really? Definitely?

Speaker 2 (27:54):
I mean not anymore, yes, but back then that's really
how it was.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
So hearing all this, you're like, George, why why are
you sleeping with this man's wife. Don't fucking do that?
It's dangerous. But actually Eddie and Tony have an open marriage,
and Eddie encourages the affair because he has a mistress
of his own. Oh and he wants his wife to
be you know, happy and entertained. And the two couples
actually go on double dates together. Sexy and then so

(28:19):
Tony she helps subsidize George's comparatively low income. She buys
him a car and a house in Bennette Canyon, which,
of course we know is a nice la neighborhood, very fancy,
and she also helps pay some of his bills. So
she's fucking doing it. She's a great girlfriend to him. Yeah.
So in late nineteen fifty eight, George breaks up with
Tony though hold it in order to pursue a relationship

(28:42):
with another woman named Leonora Lemon. So. Leonora is the
ex wife of a penniless Vanderbilt relative, which is such
a bummer and has a reputation for getting into fights
in the New York club scene. Oh. Leonora is also
much younger than Tony was, and Tony is dead, is
stated by George breaking up with her. George and Leonora

(29:04):
get engaged shortly after a meeting, which causes Tony to
spiral even further, and she harasses the couple, sometimes calling
them twenty times a day. Okay, but she's still married, right, Yeah,
but that was her boyfriend boyfriend. Yeah, but you can't.
I don't think you get to lay that claim. Yeah,
there's it's complicated. It's definitely complicated. That's why the button

(29:26):
up gets complicated. Wait, is this Eleanora Needles side? Maybe? Maybe? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I'm I'm on Leonora Lemon's side because it's that's
Liz Lemon's grandmother.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Oh amazing, Is that true? That's her name? No, I'm joking, goodbye,
it's just a name. I thought you like knew so
much about thirty Rock that you were like in the
In the TV show thirty Rock, Liz Lemon's grandmother is
named Leonora Love impressed now, so she's harassing the couple
and shit, and like really devastated and up set about

(30:00):
all of this, and then her husband's upset because his
wife's upset. You know, they're both upset.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
And it's not okay. Also, just think about back then. Ugh,
No answering machines, Yeah, no, anything.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
High pitched fucking rattle, the telephone ring.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
You call twenty times a day, that phone's ringing fifty
times minimum.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
No, it's just ringing. Take the phone off the hook,
unplug it. No thanks, you just have to leave your house.
So on the night of June sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine, George,
at this point is forty five years old. He and
Leonor are entertaining a writer named Robert Condon who's staying
over in their downstairs bedroom. Around midnight, George excuses himself
and goes upstairs to bed, and while he's up there,

(30:44):
two neighbors come over, which is it's like one o'clock
in the morning and two neighbors stop by, which to
me is fucking bananas and like, especially like he's forty five,
Like what is he doing up so late? And shit like,
But that's crazy. I guess it's kind of a party
atmosphere at his house, So that's kind of pretty normal.
I feel like in the fifties and sixties it was
like late night drink, all night key party hangouts, right, yeah,

(31:09):
so it's not odd for them to have drop by.
Sounds like it on this particular evening, though, George is
not stoked about the late night visit, and so he
goes downstairs in his bathrobe and gets into an argument
with the due to stop by, William and in the end,
though both men apologize, George goes back up to his
room and the guests stick around. Robert Condon, the house guest,

(31:30):
later tells police that George seemed despondent that evening, but
didn't seem like he was about to kill himself. Dun, dun, dun. Oh.
Of course, we now know that people can outwardly appear
fine and actually be suffering inside. That's just life. According
to Leonora's own retelling of the events to police, when
George goes upstairs, she says to one of the guests, quote,

(31:51):
in a moment, you will hear a gun. And then
the group hears George open a drawer upstairs, and then
she says, quote, now you will hear a shot, and
then the group appears a gunshot. What yep? So leon
Or herself tells police that she said this, but by
the group's account, William, the neighbor, then goes upstairs and

(32:12):
they find George's body on the bed dead. Leonora tells
police that she was kidding with her commentary and didn't
really believe that George was going to take his own life,
and later she says that she didn't actually make those
comments at all. So it's really weird.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
I mean, the odds of the coincidence of narrating yeah,
your boyfriend's suicide is just crazy. I mean, yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
But they were probably really shit faced too at the time.
I mean, they're drinking like straight fucking martinis and whiskey
probably at that time.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Right, and so it seems unlikely they're all shit faced.
But then like, why would you say that at all?

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Totally? They later denied ever saying that right, which then
makes me go they definitely said it. Yeah. So for decades,
many of George's close friends and colleagues fiercely maintained that
George did not and would not have killed himself. They
point to several details in George's death that don't line
up with suicide. First, and foremost, forty five minutes elapse
between when the gun goes off and when Leonora calls

(33:11):
the police. Everyone is very drunk, but this is still
a very long time. George is killed by a gunshot
wound to the head. That bullet creates a hole in
the ceiling above George, but police find two additional bullet
holes in the floor under the rug. Leonora tells police
that she made one of those holes days earlier when

(33:32):
she was quote fooling around with the gun. Hmmm, uh uh.
The other hole goes unexplained completely. Huh what does that mean?
Fooling around with the gun, like.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Fooling around and then discharging a gun, which would be
like a whole thing, because if they're living in an apartment, is.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
There a house, Oh, it's a house, like the Benedict
Canyon House. Yeah, oh a house right right, Oh, sorry.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
For some reason, I'm for some reason I pictured it
in those real like forties looking apartments, yeah, in that
are like central Hollywood that have like almost the stucco,
you know, fancy out outside where it's like well, then
they would shoot it downstairs, neighbor like I just built
a whole thing that doesn't exist. But yeah, forty five

(34:16):
minutes between. Imagine if a gun went off in your house,
even if you knew a gun was there, people would
freak the fuck out and pick up the phone immediately,
even before you knew what was going on.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
You call the police. Absolutely, I think why, yeah, why exactly?
Someone runs up to see what happened. Someone else caused
the police and says, I heard gun shots upstairs, Please
come immediately immediately.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
That's a bad amount of lag time, in my opinion,
in your doctoral position, in my thesis speech that I'm
going to be giving next week.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
That's right. So George is found lying on his bed
on his back with his legs dangling off and his
feet close to the floor, like he you know, fell
back when he allegedly shot himself. The gun is a
luger pistol and it's found between his feet on the floor,
which would be an odd place for the gun to
have fallen if he had shot himself, but it's not impossible.
One bullet casing is found underneath George's body, which is weird,

(35:12):
and there's some debate over whether or not a casing
would wind up there if George had shot himself, But
no casings are found from the other two you know,
bullet holes, which is weirder. Yeah, totally. Here's what I think.
It's very weird. The gun is clean. There's no fingerprints
on it at all, and they say that the gun
had been recently oiled, so it might not hold fingerprints,

(35:35):
but like to have not a single person's fingerprint on it,
like hers from when she was allegedly fooling around with
it the other day. His on the gun like he's
probably if you were going to shoot yourself, I'd imagine
you're like sweaty and you know, nervous and stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
I mean, who knows, but I think there'd be fingerprips.
Wouldn't be clean, that's for sure. It wouldn't be without
any anything.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
If the gun is clean, it's because someone fucking wiped
it off before Yeah, they ran out of the window. Allegedly,
there's also no powder burns or residue on George's hand
or on his head, which you would normally see with
a shot at such close range. They're explained away, and
the coroner only examines George after his body had been washed,

(36:18):
and he also had several unexplained bruises on his face
and chest. What's up? Red flag? Like welcome to.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
The point you just read like five red flags in
a row where it's like, I'm not going to stop
you every single time, But like.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
What what? What? What?

Speaker 2 (36:35):
All of that Maybe singular instances wouldn't add up to much,
but all of those together is very suspicious totally.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Some people say the fact that George was found naked
and the fact that he didn't also leave a note
point away from suicide. John Field, a television historian who
was part of a push in the nineties to get
the case reopened, says in a nineteen ninety one article
that thee did not look like a suicide. Field says, quote,
the body of George Reeves was found naked in his

(37:05):
upstairs bedroom. The shower was running, fresh clothes were laid
out as if you were preparing to go out and party,
which he was known to do. End quote. Other accounts
of the evening say George was not going back out
and was getting in bed, so like convoluded. The shower
running is that a fact? Is that like a shower
running and clothes laid out on the bed is like

(37:27):
I'm getting my clothes back on to go downstairs.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Or be like whatever and keep hanging out. He was
like at first mad, like I have to get up early,
I'm going to bed. Then it's like, oh, sounds like
they're having so much fun. I'm going back downstairs.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Totally. Totally. Despite the strange crime scene and the fact
that Leonora waited forty five minutes to call the police,
the police immediately ruled the death of suicide and don't
investigate any alternative possibilities. So let's get into theories. There
are two main theories besides suicide. The first is that

(37:58):
Leonora and Joe George got into an argument and that
leonor his fiance shot him, And the second is that
Eddie Mannix, the MGM studio boss from the Hail Caesar movie,
was angry about George breaking up with his wife and
had him killed, which he has resources to do, so,
you know, right. So George and his fiancee, Leonora's relationship

(38:20):
was stormy. By some accounts, they were supposed to get
married just a few days after George's death, though some
people say they were never going to actually get married.
It was just like too complicated. They were also struggling financially,
and without Tony Mannix subsidizing George, the bills were piling up.
They were known for getting into fights, and she admitted
she had played her out with the gun and some

(38:42):
believed that she may have shot him by accident drunkenly.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
H So she had an accident a couple of days
before into the floor and then oh no, another accident
into human head.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
In nineteen ninety nine when I was wearing white eyeliner
and went in wild lipstick. A Hollywood publicist named Edward
Losey goes on the TV show Extra Fucking Extra Extra
and claims that he was with Tony Mannix, the ex girlfriend,
when she was on her deathbed in nineteen eighty three,

(39:16):
and they had become close towards the end of her
life and she was dying of Alzheimer's and Lozy claims
that Tony confessed to a priest that she and Eddie
had had George killed. Oh wow, this is deathbed confession.
Deathbed confession. Everybody loves one everybody. He repeats his claim
on Court TV. Oh remember that one in two thousand

(39:39):
and six when the movie Hollywood Land comes out, and
on that appearance, he says that Tony had a shrine
to George in her house and would routinely say prayers
for him, So she was kind of like obsessy. I'm
guessing is the point sounds like it. These claims made
by a Hollywood publicist on Extra and Court TV about
a woman with Alzheimer's are of course taken with a
great of sulk by everyone. You know, right. Yeah. As

(40:03):
for the theory that George took his own life, people
go back and forth talking about how the circumstances of
his life could or could not point to suicide. Being
typecast as Superman and feeling like he would never make
it in the way he wanted to as an actor
was devastating to him. At the same time, he was
beginning to direct episodes of the show, and friends say

(40:24):
he was looking forward to doing more of that. In
the next season, so he did have, you know, stuff
he was looking forward to doing. But again, of course,
we know that it can be so hard to tell,
like who's suffering and who's not. Right, John Field, the
television historian, says, quote, with the death of George Reeves,
a lot of children thought that Superman himself had died,
and a lot of their hopes and dreams died with him.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Oh, I know, right, how about a follow up message
of that that's not what happened, right, Like, somehow can
you somehow add a little footnote there for the message
so that parents tell your children.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
It's like the same message his mom gave him that
his father had died. Oh he was a teenager. Oh,
just like everyone has to go through it. Yeah, that's right.
In nineteen sixty, a year after his death, George is
awarded star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A cgi
version of him as Superman appears in the new The
Flash movie that I guess just came out. He became

(41:22):
a big deal, and I don't think he realized what
a big deal TV and Superman were going to be
in the future. No, right, So, George's Superman co star
Jack Larson said that George worried that his career wasn't
meaningful because his work didn't resonate with adults, and Jack says, quote,
he didn't have the opportunity to see all the adult
fans grow up and recognize that people of all ages,

(41:46):
even in the nineteen fifties were watching the Adventures of Superman. Yeah,
and that is the tragic and mysterious death of George Reeves. Man.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Here's only one theory that I thought of as you
were like the end part, which is those forty five
minutes before being before calling the police, maybe was someone
else called? Did they ever look into it to see
if somebody else was called?

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Because if the.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Current girlfriend knew that he went out with Eddie Mannix's wife, right,
the fixer they call a fixer before they call the
police to get like to say, can someone come over
here and clean this up and make it so that
I don't get in trouble or that whatever just happened, Right.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
There's a big mess, like not mess, but like, yeah,
something crazy's happened over here. Can you come tame it somehow? Yeah,
that's true.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Tame it for his memory? Fry is because this guy
like maybe it isn't as sinister as I was first thinking,
and maybe there was a piece of it that's like, say,
if it was suicide, there's something involved that was nobody
wanted anyone to hear about it.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
I know they didn't want it to come out, so
they're trying to make it look more simple than that. Yeah.
Something that's a good point is this is why, Wow,
deathbed confessions are so necessary.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
But I gotta tell you, not believing in a deathbed
confession from someone who has Alzheimer's and is dying of Alzheimer's, yeah,
because then your brain's like Swiss cheese and you're just
kind of staring around. But I mean not in a
way where you can make a coherent, reliable confession, right right.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Wow, that's I'm going to be thinking about that a lot.
So sad, It's so sad.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And also it's just like back then when you were
in the studio system, you were playing.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
By totally different rules. It was like you.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Were in the mafia essentially, and you were covered in
certain ways. So there's just so many possibilities that it
could be where people were like if it was an
accident and you got murdered and covering it up, like
what what is the best optics for the situation.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Exactly and we'll never know what, like what the starting
point was? Yeah, do you have a U turn or
a right hand turn?

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Or oh yes, I do right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
I'm gonna take us on a one forty five.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
I love that freeway. It's not.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
To the the five to four or five to two times.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
The one point if I don't do it.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
This story I'm going to do for you today was
suggested by a listener Beck's Solidarity on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Now X they really that's today. They changed the name
to X.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
They not only changed it, but I bookmarked this tweet
and then when I went to find the bookmark, I
didn't know where it was because I was looking for
the Twitter symbol and it's now an X.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
This is news to me, and I am horrified.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Truly, so truly, truly dumb. But all that aside. What's
beautiful is that we have listeners that suggest great story
ideas to us constantly. And Beck's Solidarity is their account name.
The handle is at beck Underscore ah Underscore LA and

(45:13):
they wrote and said, Karen Gilgareff, have ever heard of
the Night of the Grizzlies would be a great story
for my favorite murder.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
I checked the wiki and don't think y'all have covered it,
so like did their research. I love it exactly.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
They were like, I'm not going to suggest a repeater,
and thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Beck's or beck Allah.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
And the other interesting thing is in planning this out,
Alejandra and Hannah saved it for this record because the
anniversary of this event, of the Night of the Grizzlies,
happened August thirteenth, which is just around the corner. This
episode goes wide August third.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
So today I'm going to be telling you the story
of Glacier National Parks Night of the Grizzlies, and the
sources used for the retelling of this story is a
nineteen sixty nine book by an author named Jack Olsen
called Knight of the Grizzlies. There's a PBS documentary that
Maren our researcher highly recommends people watch she really enjoyed

(46:11):
it called Glacier Parks Night of the Grizzlies. And there's
also a twenty seventeen Outside magazine article by a journalist
named Ben Goldfarb called the fifty year legacy of Glaciers
Night of the Grizzlies, and you can find the rest
of the sources in our show notes.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
So to paint a gorgeous Bob Ross.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Style picture for you, this story takes place in Glacier
National Park in Montana, and it is apparently I've never
been there, but it's apparently an absolutely stunning place. They
have alpine lakes and beautiful meadows, mountains, and of course
glaciers that you have to go see now because they
are vanishing, essentially. So a biologist and conservationist named Douglas H.

(46:56):
Chadwick told PBS in their documentary Glacier Parks Night of
the Grizzlies, quote, Glacier Park is heaven honors.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
I've heard of Montana's super beautiful.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yeah, it's supposed to be incredible. So of course that
wilderness is teeming with all the wildlife you'd imagine and
the big ones. Some of the big ones include mountain lions,
big horn sheep, elk, and the star at the top
of that food chain, the grizzly bear. So when I
say grizzly bear, you're just probably imagining like a bear

(47:28):
in your head or pictures from the film Cocaine Bear
that we all enjoyed, But that Cocaine Bear, I actually
looked it up. Cocaine Bear was a brown bear, and
the grizzly bear is only slightly different than a brown bear.
So I found a graph that looked like a police
lineup where there's a man standing there and he's six

(47:49):
feet tall. A brown bear is also six feet tall.
A grizzly bear is seven to eight feet tall. No,
and a polar bear's nine feet tall.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Fuck, why do I think I could take a six
footer but not a fucking they want no part of
any of these, I don't. That's why I stay very
far away from the fucking forest, stay.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
In La La Central. Well, also, when I was looking
at these pictures, because you can go and look at
the difference between a grizzly and a brown bear, and
it's just so scary to look at bears imagining the
story I was about to tell and what the interactions were.
Another small difference brown bears they have kind of point
to ears that stick up, and grizzlies have round ears

(48:34):
like teddy bears.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
It's just funny.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
But another difference is that brown bears have like roughly
four centimeter long claws, which is a little short ones,
and grizzly bears have five to ten centimeter long claws,
which are on average the length of an adult human's fingers.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
So too big now, no, no, Also.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Grizzlies can weigh up to eight hundred pounds suck okay,
And despite that size, they can sprint thirty five miles
an hour, They can swim for hours. They eat everything,
including other large mammals.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
So here's what's crazy.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Hearing all of that information and knowing what we know
about bears. Grizzly bears used to live all over North America,
but by the beginning of the twentieth century, their population
plummets because of human beings, because of overhunting, because of
land development. They lose roughly ninety eight percent of their
original habitat on this continent. But kind of in opposition

(49:35):
to that, during the first half of the nineteen hundreds,
due to the invention of the teddy bear, which was
because of Teddy Roosevelt. Really, the teddy bear was invented
because of Teddy Roosevelt. He was a big hunter and
he he loved the outdoors, and they made those and
they were incredibly popular still are to this day.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
As we well know.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
And then there was this onslaught of like child based
bear entertainment or no, I'm sorry, bear based child entertainment.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
No, I want it the other way around.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
So I'm talking about things like we need the pear. God,
damn it, WINNI the pear.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
It's just rude. It's pear shaped.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
A little he is and he's beautiful, Winnie the Pooh,
Yogi Bear, Paddington, Corduroy, Smokey the bear. Bears are just
emerging in popular culture as friendly, cuddly animals their staples
and circus acts. They become roadside attractions Oh shit, that's right, yeah,

(50:39):
along with being prized hunting trophies where people stuff a bear,
have a bear skin rock or whatever. So basically Glacier
National Park starts to adopt this bear fuel tourism. There's
a ranger named Bert Gildart who remembers in the sixties
that quote drivers would regularly pose their kids alongside bears.

(51:01):
One motorist even tried to coax a bear behind the
steering wheel for a photo op. And also Glacier National
Park staffers would bait bears to come close to the
lodges with food scraps, basically just to put on a
show for the guests. So if you had made a
reservation at a lodge in Glacier National Park, you're essentially
kind of guaranteed to see a bear come really close

(51:23):
to you. And that was like a rass for you.
It's on the amenities list, and I want to fucking
see it, right, So with a few exceptions, there is
not a lot of fear around grizzly bears in this era.
The rangers aren't worried about them, park staff isn't worried
about them, and because of that, the visitors are not
worried about them. And this is another kind of interesting,

(51:45):
like the way all this came together in this one night.
So I didn't understand this, but our national parks kind
of went into decline during World War Two, and the
people who worked like for the national parks in the government,
they had to fight to keep national parks from being
stripped like laggers wanted to go in. They wanted resources

(52:06):
out of the national parks to help with the war effort,
and they had to fight to keep everybody away from them.
So basically, once the war was over and everything kind
of got settled again. The National Parks Director Conrad Worth
proposed an ambitious tenure program to improve and staff our
national parks. And then kind of simultaneous to that, the

(52:28):
same year actually that that program was proposed, it was
in June of nineteen fifty six, Congress passes the Federal
Aid Highway Act, which approves the creation of a forty
one thousand mile highway system. So suddenly by the time,
you know, four years later, by the time it's the sixties,
there's these national parks all over the country that are

(52:50):
fully staffed, that are fully maintained, and there's all these
highways to get you there. And now camping gear is
being made more lightweight, inexpensive. National parks are easy to
get to, so suburban Americans have every reason to start
going to and exploring our nation's national parks.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Cute.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
So Glacier National Park gets exponentially busier in the sixties,
and that same program that I talked about enabled the
park to build out its seven hundred mile trail system.
So Glacier National Park now welcomes an unprecedented one million.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Visitors a year. Wow.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, and that means that more people than ever are
regularly hiking through Glacier's grizzly territory.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
That's obviously risky, but these.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Parks they don't know to do anything to mitigate that risk.
And the anti litter campaign in America won't hit its
peak until the seventies, so many park visitors consider it
totally normal to just throw their garbage along the trails
or leave it at their campsites, like littering is celebrated. Yeah,

(54:00):
that's one of my favorite scenes in Mad Men. Remember
that scene where they're having a picnic by the road
and then just get up and they snap out their blanket,
throw the litter everywhere and leave.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah, they're real like, littering is so bad. I just
can't imagine.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
You were just like, well, yes, well I think it
was someone else will do it. So that's somebody else's
job to pick up our litter. Like you can't even
be expected to just walk over to the garbage cannon
throw it away, you see, And they were doing it
in National Park. So people are just walking along, just
go wherever and throwing garbage. And of course the bears
can smell that that's food, that's something that they can

(54:39):
come and eat. So before long, these naturally timid animals
lose their shyness and they start gravitating toward the populated
spaces where human garbage is being left behind. It's kind
of an unholy combination. Visiting national park starts to rise
in popularity, and we're basically drawing the bears out of

(55:00):
their natural environments to come and steal our pick neeck basket. So,
although the numbers are still tiny, there's an increasing number
of visitors who start to report encounters with aggressive bears.
Some of these escalate to actual bites or slashes, but
none of the encounters are fatal, and they're kind of

(55:20):
just written off as flukes. As journalist Jack Olsen points
out in his book Night of the Grizzlies, quote, the
park's animal safety record was vastly better than any zoos
in the country.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Yeah, it's safer to go to a national park and
just witness a bear in the wild than it is
to go see.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
One in a cage. That is crazy.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Olsen even quotes an unnamed ranger who in nineteen sixty
seven tells him, quote, if you set up a danger
index ranging from zero to ten, where the butterfly is
a zero and the Rattlesnake is a ten. The grizzlies
of Glacier Park would have to rate somewhere between a
zero and a one.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Okay, buddy, right.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
The rattlesnake kills about ten Americans a year, the grizzly
kills about none. So it just hadn't happened yet. Yeah, yeah,
And they were basically saying, Hey, we've got our toys.
We like these guys. Ye, bears aren't going to hurt you, right,
chill out. So it's interesting that he said that in
nineteen sixty seven, because that's the year that people begin

(56:22):
to notice that something is off with the bears at
Glacier National Park. In June of nineteen sixty seven, at
a residential part of Glacier National Park called Kelly's Camp,
where families own private seasonal residences, a woman named Joan
Barry sees a bear rifling through her trash can in
broad daylight. Jone's taken aback by how weird this bear looks.

(56:44):
It has an oddly shaped head, its face looks all
smashed in, its fur is raggedy, and it looks like
it's starving. But the strangest thing about this scrawny bear is.
When Joan tries to shew it away by screaming out
her cabin's windows, the.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Bear just stares back at her. Hey, yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Grizzlies are typically very shy and skittish around people, not
this one. The bear eventually leaves, but only after it's
had its fill of garbage, and that's hard in garbage.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Shoot Georgia. Get away from that dip nineteen sixty seven. Garbage.
So it's like leftover meat. Low yeah, a lot of
mashed potatoes.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Lots. So a few days later that same bear comes
back for more trash, and a few days after that
it comes back again. Within a week or so, the
sickly bear gets bolder. Instead of just hanging around garbage cans,
it starts looking inside Joan's house. It seems like the
bears increasingly interested in Joan and her family.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Especially very yappy dog.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Before long, the sickly bear's behavior escalates into outright aggression.
According to Jack Olsen quote, whenever the grizzly was at
the garbage cans, Joan would counsel everyone not to move
between the light and the window, and if someone would
forget and commit this error, the bear would crash into
the side of the house with all its weight, smashing

(58:10):
against the walls with its heavy paws one night, sending
a saw flying halfway across the room from the intensity
of the impact. Someone's exaggerating, Well, the weird thing is
normally the food was enough, but now this bear is
kind of like, there's more and I want it. So

(58:31):
it turns out this bear is a female bear, and
it was being reported by several other people staying in
Kelly's camp throughout the months of June and July. And
in all of these incidents, the bear seems completely unafraid
of humans. In fact, she seems drawn to them. One afternoon,
the bear arrives during a dinner party on one homeowner's

(58:51):
raised deck, and this scrawny bear starts climbing the steps
up the deck and it only goes away when the
panic part members start just throwing a.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Bunch of stuff at her.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Oh my god, and this is like, no one's seen
stuff like this before. So more complaints about the bear
come in, saying that it's swatted at cabin windows, that
it slash screen doors, it was even stalking children.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Oh dear.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
So the week's pass, nothing's done. About the Grizly bear,
and Joan Barry gets pissed off. She gives park rangers
a piece of her mind, saying, quote, we've got a
sick bear, a crazy acting bear around. I wish you'd
do something about it. I'm sure that he's dangerous and
somebody's going to get hurt.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
So this executive ranger reportedly tells Joan, Oh, Joan, is
it really that bad? Kind of a baffling reaction for
several reasons, especially because park policy at the time explicitly
stated that aggressive bears should be killed period. But nothing's
done about this bear. In August, Kelly's Camp residents are

(59:55):
informed by a ranger, quote, you shouldn't be having any
more trouble your A bear's at tr Lake tearing up camps.
So it's basically like, don't worry about that bear. It's
somebody else's problem now. No, uh huh okay. So, aside
from the park rangers, there are about eight hundred and
fifty on average, college age people who seasonally staff the kitchens,

(01:00:16):
the laundry rooms, and the gift shops of Glacier National Park.
It's a great summer job for young people who actually
like enjoy camping. Not you not weirdos. So this summer
there's a group of young people working at the park
and they all become friends.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
At the East.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Glacier Lodge, there's Roy Ducat, eighteen years old from Ohio.
He's working as a bus boy. Julie Helgeson is nineteen.
She's from Minnesota. She's working in the laundry room. Paul
Dunn is from Minnesota also, but he's only sixteen years
old and he's working as a bus boy alongside Roy
and Paul had actually been on vacation at Glacier National

(01:00:53):
Park with his parents, but when it came time for
them to go home, he loved it there so much
he wanted to stay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
So he applied to get a job there, which is precious.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
So along with those guys, there's nineteen year old Michelle
Coons of San Diego. She works in the park gift shop.
Brothers Ray and Ron Nosek from Arizona. They are both
in their early twenties. Ray works as a service station manager.
Ron's a waiter at the lodge. And rounding out the
group is Denise Huckle from Arizona. She's twenty and she

(01:01:23):
works as a room clerk. So this group of friends,
like most of the other people working in the park
that summer, they like to plan weekend excursions together. So Michelle, Denise, Ray,
and Ron they all decide they're going to be camping
at Trout Lake this weekend and they invite Roy, Julie
and Paul to go with them. But Roy and Julie
had just been to Trout Lake the weekend before, so

(01:01:46):
they tell those guys they're going to go to somewhere new.
They want to go up to the Granite Chalet, which
is a lodge at the end of Glacier's highline trail.
After weighing those two options, Paul decides to go with
the larger Trout Lake crew instead of with.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Roy and Julie.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
So on the morning of Saturday, August twelfth, Roy and
Julie load up their hiking gear, they put on their backpacks,
and they head out from the employee bunk house.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
They get a ride in.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
The back of a pickup track to the trailhead, and
then they set out on a hike for Granite Park Chalet.
This hike takes several hours and when they get there,
there's bad news.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
It's overbooked. No uh huh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
It's so packed some guests have to sleep on the floor.
So Roy and Julie decide they're not going to sleep
on the floor inside the crowded chalet. But since it's
already sunset, it'll take them hours to get back home
to the bunk house, so they settle on a happy medium.
They walk about four hundred yards away to the nearest
campground and decide to stay there for the night.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
So Roy and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Julie knew that bears regularly rummaged through the dumpsters at
the chalet. They've heard the chalet employees actually bait the
bears with food so that in the evening guests can
see bears. Yeah, so the two of them knew it
was not ideal to have any animal poking around their
campsite at night. So they think it over and they

(01:03:10):
decide the campground is far enough in the opposite direction
of the chalet that they would be out of a
bear's footpath. But the problem is Roy and Julie thought
they'd be sleeping at the chalet, so they didn't pack tents.
They'd just have sleeping bags. So the two start a fire.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
They heat up.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Some food from their packs and Once they're done eating,
Roy takes the leftovers far into the woods, you know,
to keep animals away. Yeah, and just hucks them into
nature because that was the time that we got to
live in. So it's like, I'll take care of this
garbage and then you just go and throw it into
a lake or something. Then he comes back, they put

(01:03:48):
out their campfire, they go to sleep. Roy says quote.
Being out in the wilderness was I don't know, it
felt great. I had no qualms with sleeping. Neither did she.
As far as camping in the middle of nowhere with
a sleeping bag, no tent, under the stars, I always
felt fairly safe. I never had any fear of wild
animals or anything. Typically wild animals stay away from people,
and that's pretty much the way we felt. There was

(01:04:10):
just nothing to be afraid of in our minds at
the time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
I endquote.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
So meanwhile, the group that went to Trout Lake spent
their afternoon about eight miles away, also in a grizzly
bear hotspot. Trout Lake had it all access to water, fishing,
waist high foliage, including lots of berry patches where grizzlies
can hide out and fill their stomachs. With strawberries, huckleberries, raspberries,

(01:04:34):
and by August of nineteen sixty seven, the trail up
to Trout Lake is accommodating as many as seven hundred
daily visitors. Holy shit, those people are leaving their garbage
along that trail and around the lake, which is again
another draw for hungry bears. So the Trout Lake group
knows what they're walking into here. It's well established that

(01:04:57):
bears are all over this area. So on the trail
up they actually run into two hikers who are heading
back down the trail and they tell the kids that
they had been treed by a strangely aggressive grizzly while camping.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
At the lake. Let's treat.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Oh, they had to climb trees to get away from
this bear.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Treed.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
That's what camping people. That's a verb camping people use.
Got it and I was pretending to use it, but
I learned it when I was putting these together. The
bear is described as skinny, scrawny, female grizzly with an
oddly shaped head who's now been involved in a handful
of incidents at Trout Lake. She's ripped up campsites, she's

(01:05:37):
chased fishermen halfway around the lake shore and she's sent
multiple hikers rushing up trees for safety. But this story
does not deter the group and they decide to keep going.
They find a place to set up camp. Paul goes
out to the lake with his fishing rod and catches
a few rainbow trout. Then the group sits around a campfire.
They cook fish and hot dogs for dinner, and as

(01:05:58):
the sun is setting, Michelle points to the brush and says,
here comes a bear. So before the grizzly can get
too close, the group decides to ditch that campsite and
basically move to a different spot on the lake, and
they leave most of their supplies behind. And as they're leaving,
they see a large grizzly bear barreling into their camp
and start gobbling down all their food, and Paul says, quote,

(01:06:21):
there was a discussion about whether we should leave, but
it was getting late in the day and we had
to go back through that berry patch in order to
get up to the trail ridge, so there was a
decision that we would stay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
And tough it out end quote.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
So for added protection, the campers put up a log
barrier around their new campsite and they leave their remaining food,
which at this point, because they left so much behind,
now all they have is a box of cookies and
some crackers, but they leave that far away from their
sleeping area, and then they all do their best to
fall asleep, but it's difficult because throughout the night they

(01:06:55):
can hear bare noises in the bushes nearby. Every can't
this night night?

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Go to sleep?

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Yeah, do your best. Every so often, a grizzly walks
near the campsite. One grabs a box of cookies before
going back into the woods. And then for the next
several hours it's just an ebb and flow of bear
grunts and total silence, then wolfing sounds, more silence than
splashing in the nearby lake, then silence, but eventually everyone

(01:07:23):
manages to fall asleep. So back at the camp near
the chalet, it's after midnight and Roy wakes up to
Julie whispering to him play dead cool.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
As Roy begins to process this, a bear picks Roy
up inside his sleeping bag and tosses him six feet
away and then attacks. Oh my god, the bear basically
bites him all over on his shoulder, in his back,
on his legs. Roy will later say quote, I remember
that his breath was very bad. It was the most

(01:07:59):
horrible stun I've ever smelled.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
After a few very long moments, Roy feels the bear
pull away, but it doesn't leave. Instead, Roy listens in
horror as the bear begins to attack Julie. Oh, Roy remembers, quote,
she started screaming, yelling, and then he picked her up.
I heard her screams going down the mountain side. He

(01:08:23):
carried her off end.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Quote, Oh my fucking god. It's so horrible.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
So Roy is totally injured himself, but now he's like,
I have to get up and get help for Julie.
So he gets up and somehow is able to start
going back up the trail toward the chalets because he
knows if he tries to chase the bear he's going
to he could find the bear.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
That's not going to help anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
So as he heads back up the trail toward the chalet, luckily,
he runs into a solo camper named Don Gullet, and
when Don sees Roy's wounds, he knows the boy is
losing a ton of blood.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
He stops.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
He wraps Roy in his own sleeping bag. He grabs
his flashlight and signals SOS up to the chalet. So
at this point some of the chalet's guests have been
awakened by the screaming oh fuck. They see Don's signals,
several of them come down the mountain side to help,
but by the time they get to Don and Roy,
Roy has gone into shock. So here's the most incredible

(01:09:24):
twist of fate. Among the guests at the chalet that
night are a nurse, three doctors, including a surgeon, and
a priest named Father Connolly. So when the guests bring
Roy back up to the chalet, he is put on
the dining room table and immediately operated on using the
first aid supplies that are kept on site at the chalet.
Wow And as the doctors try to stabilize Roy in

(01:09:46):
these imperfect conditions, a park's official signals for help on
the radio, so now a helicopter is on the way. Meanwhile,
some very brave guests form a search party and are
combing the woods look for Julie. But when they find her,
the situation is very bad. She has been mauled. She
has horrible injuries all over her body, including large puncture

(01:10:10):
wounds on her chest and this is awful. Much of
her right arm has been chewed off.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Incredibly, she's still alive, though, So one of the men
runs to a nearby crew cabin, grabs a camping mattress,
and they very delicately put Julie on it and carry
her back up to the chalet. When this group arrives,
the triage team gets to work, but they realize it's
too late for Julie. She's lost almost all of her blood.

(01:10:40):
Her puncture wounds are too large to steal shut in
any way. Jack Olson, author of Night of the Grizzlies, says,
quote the surgeon doubted that the problem could have even
been solved in the operating room of a major hospital,
so she just had mortal wounds from the attack. As
Julie struggles to make shallow breath's father Conally holds her hand.

(01:11:01):
He tells her quote, you know that God will watch
over you and take care of you, and Julie manages
to whisper back, yes, I know he will. When it's
clear that Julie is slipping away, father Connolly baptizes her
with a cup of water from the chalet sink and
recites the Lord's prayer, which Julie seems to be mouthing
along with him until her grip on his hand weekends
and she passes away. The death of nineteen year old

(01:11:24):
Julie Helgeson at four to twelve am on Sunday, August thirteenth,
nineteen sixty seven marks the very first bear related fatality
in the fifty seven years of Glacier National Park's existence.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
So, now there's this helicopter on the way and it's
being piloted. This is another like unbelievable twist. It's being
piloted by a man named John Westover who is a
combat pilot in Vietnam, and he's not only having to
navigate the peaks and valleys of Glacier National Park in
complete darkness, but there have been recent wildfires, so there's

(01:12:01):
also smoke and haze, and basically Westover manages to fly
land and then take off again completely blind.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Like he just gets it done. And because of him,
eighteen year old Roy Ducot is transported to the nearest
hospital and saved. Wow. But this horrible night isn't over
yet because now at the Trout Lake campsite, it's four
thirty in the morning, and sixteen year old Paul Done
is startled awake by the sound of a large animal

(01:12:34):
coming toward him, and when it stops, it's standing directly
over him. He later remembers, quote, I could hear the
bear breathing, and that was probably one of the most
frightening moments of my life, having this gigantic creature directly
over my sleeping bag while I'm laying down, and at
the advice of everyone in the campsite, I was playing
dead end quote. So Paul hears a noise and then

(01:12:57):
he feels a pull on his shirt and he realized
as the bear's biting down on him. So instinctually, Paul
shoots out of his sleeping bag, dashes across the campsite,
and basically climbs up a tree as fast as he can.
Aka being treedy. This sudden movement actually seems to startle
the bear and it heads back into the woods, but

(01:13:18):
not for long. When the bear comes back, it comes
towards Ron and Denise, but like Paul, both of them
jump up, run down toward the beach, and each climb
a separate tree. Again, the bear heads back into the woods,
So now Paul, Ron and Denise from their separate trees
start yelling down to Michelle and Ray to ditch their

(01:13:39):
campsite and climb up into trees before the bear comes back.
So Ray hears them, he darts out of a sleeping bag.
He runs up a tree in no time. But just
like in a horror movie, Michelle tries to get out
of her sleeping bag and the.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Zipper is stuck. No.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Yes, so she's panicking. She can't get free. She has
no choice but to play dead as this bear comes
back into the campsite.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Can you imagine being one of the friends like watching
this fucking happen.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
I don't have to imagine because it's on this piece
of papers. So this shit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
From his position up.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
In the tree, Paul the sixteen years, the youngest one
of all, Yeah, he can see Michelle, dimly lit by
the campfire, stuck in her sleeping bag, playing dead. Can
he watches as it all happens? He watches as the
bear comes back out of the woods and heads straight
for her. Michelle is laying entirely still, and then they

(01:14:40):
all hear screaming. Michelle is screaming, he's got my arm.
My arm is gone.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
So Paul is watching as the bear drags Michelle inside
her sleeping bag back into the woods, and he then
just starts screaming, She's dead.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
She's dead.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
So so horrifying to imagine these young people in the dark,
paralyzed with fear and shock and grief, just trying to
hold onto the branch of a tree. They end up
staying up in these trees for more than an hour
basically until dawn breaks and they can finally actually see
what's going on around them. So when they can finally see,

(01:15:16):
they climb down and they run to the ranger station
to get help. When they enter the ranger station, all
four of them are visibly shaking as they tell the
rangers Leonard Landa and Bert Gildart, who was the ranger
who had given that quote of that bears were zero
to one percent danger. They basically start telling those two

(01:15:37):
rangers as a story that their friend has been mauled
by a bear and is still somewhere out in the
woods with this bear. So Ranger Landa knows this group
of kids, he sold them a fire permit the day before,
and he cannot believe what they're saying because both of
these rangers have already been alerted that there have been
these attacks up at the chalet, So in one evening

(01:16:00):
they have to go from thinking bears are a zero
to one danger to oh, there's been a bear attack
up at the chalet, and now these kids come in
there's been a second bear attack.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
What are the chances that they would know each other
the two groups? That's so wild, right, Well, they're all
it's all employees. Yeah, that's wild.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
So it's yeah, exactly, it's not random people too. It's
like it's crazy. So these two rangers grab their guns
and a medical supply bag and they head out toward
the campsite. How horrifying is that. It's like now you're like, oh,
this is actually a monster and we have to go
solve this problem. So it's even worse than that because
as they're walking toward the campsite, they come upon a

(01:16:40):
detached human ear, and then they come upon a ripped
up sleeping bag, And when they finally find Michelle's body,
it's mutilated beyond recognition. They have to call an emergency
crew to come in and retrieve her remains. Michelle Koon's
is only nineteen years old. Nice The remaining four campers
are told at the bear attack at the chalet involving

(01:17:02):
Roy and Julie, So now they have to learn that
they're same friends that they went to two separate places from.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
Also were attacked by bears.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Roy will later say, quote, when I finally pieced it together,
the Granite Park chalets incident involved two other friends of
mine that I had intended to go camping with. There
was a shudder through my being that still remains to
this day. Somewhere, somehow, I was meant to be in
an experience that night with a grizzly bear, and I
was just lucky to be a survivor.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Yeah, like he's saying, no matter what choice he made,
the same thing would have happen, and there's a chance
he made the better choice because.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
He was able to live through his totally.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
So now Glacier National Park officials, of course snap into action.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Trails are closed, guests.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Are escorted out of the back country by gun toting rangers,
and any grizzly bear that feeds near the attack sites
is ordered to be killed. This includes the bear that
have been habituated to come and take food near the chalet,
so rangers end up killing three adult bears near the chalet.
One is a female with dried blood on her paws.

(01:18:13):
Park officials believe that this bear, who might have been
particularly aggressive because she did have cubs, is the one
who killed Julie, but it's impossible to prove that. And meanwhile,
over at Trout Lake, rangers Landa and Gildart do the same.
They bait the lakeside campground and then they lay in wait,
and when they see a weird looking, skinny bear approaching

(01:18:35):
from about forty feet away, they realize it's the Kelly's
Camp bear. This bear walks straight toward them, Landa and
Gildart take aim fire and shoot her dead. Later that day,
when an FBI agent and a park biologist examine this
bear's body, they find that she has broken glass embedded
in her molars, which is almost certainly a result of

(01:18:58):
her feeding on garbage from dumbs and trash cans. This
glass would have left her in constant pain, making her
agitated and unable to eat normally inside her stomach. The
biologist also finds a clump of blonde hair, which was
the color of Michelle's hair, so they conclude that the
Kelly's Camp bear that had been reported countless times that

(01:19:20):
summer is the bear that killed Michelle? So yeah, but
like the irony of the idea that that bear and
what was wrong with that bear was human related once again?
Is that kind of thing of like it's a starving
bear with glass in its teeth and so much pain
and horrifying. News of the fatal bear attacks at Glacia

(01:19:44):
National Park sweep the nation and cause widespread panic and
a new found fear of grizzly bears. The story is
featured on Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News. The tragic deaths
of Michelle Coon's and Julie Helgeson shocked the nation. People
demand answers. They want to know why, after decades with
no attacks, these grizzlies would suddenly kill two humans on

(01:20:05):
the same night.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
I mean, mind blowing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
Some theorize that recent lightning storms, wildfires, or even the
late summer heat could have caused the bears to become
particularly agitated that weekend, But as Jack Potter, chief of
Science and Resources Management at Glacier National Park says, quote,
I think it's just sheer coincidence.

Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Conservationists and biologists are immediately concerned that there will be
a devastating backlash against grizzlies. In his Booknight of the Grizzlies,
Jack Olsen warns the quote, the grizzly will almost certainly
be banished into Canada and then perhaps into Alaska to
live out his last years as a species, and all
the goodwill and understanding in the world will not alter

(01:20:47):
his eventual fate. So that seemed to be so possible,
because after Jaws came out and then they were just killing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Great white sharks all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
That that kind of fear and people decide that this
is a fear, this is a concern, and a danger
that we need to do something about.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
Is very threatening.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
So by the nineteen seventies, a mix of all of
those factors lead to this critical situation, and it does
look like grizzly bears might go with extinct. And then
something amazing happens. Human beings in positions of authority actually
make a series of excellent decisions.

Speaker 1 (01:21:22):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
In nineteen seventy three, the Endangered Species Act is passed,
which outlaws unauthorized hunting of grizzly bears. Then new policies
are passed at the state level, which aim to preserve
wildlife habitats and keep humans and grizzly bears as far
apart as possible, so basically saying, hey, let's not just
go where they live and then blame them for what happens.

(01:21:46):
At the same time, many national parks rethink their policies
around human interaction with bears. Journalists Ben goldfarbrights that quote. Altogether,
Glacier's bear management plan expanded virtually overnight from three pages
long to a round fifty wow end quote. Many parts
of this plan are now considered common sense measures, so

(01:22:07):
they didn't even have the most basic stuff in place
about these dangers, like.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
Don't make an extra sandwich for a bear.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
No, don't talk to a bear, don't try to put
it like a little fake collar and a green tie
on a ball, just describing Yogi bear. So now, of
course we bear proof garbage cans, cooking areas are kept
away from tents and cabins, and of course that tradition
of baiting bears with food so you could be entertained

(01:22:34):
by them, of course now not done. Also, the advice
to just play dead in a grizzly bear encounter has
been updated. The recommendation now is avoid eye contact, be calm,
speak in a low, steady voice. Don't make any sudden movements.
If the bear is stationary, just very slowly move sideways,
ideally to higher ground, because being taller will make you

(01:22:58):
seem bigger to the bear. You always try to seem
bigger than the bear. And now the National Park Service
actually warns against climbing trees because bears can climb trees too.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
That's what I thought, but I was like, don't say
that because maybe they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Oh no they do, and actually grizzlies with their long,
crazy claws can climb them pretty easily.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
Yeah, so those guys just got fucking lucky.

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):
They got super lucky that they just didn't bother to
They were just going for kind of the easy food
on the ground. But they also say that if a
bear doesn't go away, if it's like worst case scenario,
either lie flat on your stomach or curl up at
a ball and lay on your side and be as
quiet as possible until it leaves. And if you're already
standing up and a bear charges you, they say stand

(01:23:46):
your ground because you can't outrun a bear. Sure that
makes me think of there is an amazing video that
was going around. I think it was like in quarantine
and it's a little kid walking down a trail, downhill,
down a trail toward I think it was in Italy somewhere,

(01:24:08):
because the father is saying be quiet and be calm
on video and the little kid is walking and going
be calm, like, mom, it's fine, be calm, and there
is a huge bear walking behind this kid and the
mother is like, can barely control herself because you're like whoa,
and they're like, you have to be quiet, you have

(01:24:29):
to be quiet.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
It's one of the scariest videos I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
And the amazing part is that little kid was clearly
educated about this kind of stuff, because the kid was like,
don't do mom, be quiet, don't do anything.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
I mean, like the calm one. Yeah, and just.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):
Like walking normally, which is like how I think that's
like if you have a certain type of personality, you're
not going to.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
Be able to do that. Yeah, totally totally, and by
that I mean my personality. Okay. There is a.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
Silver lining and the horrifying story of the night the Grizzlies.
It basically put an end to our illusion that a
wild animal is harmless, that idea. It's so funny to
hear it now, but that was a thing that people
really kind of believed and didn't care about. And the
National Park's immediate policy changes save the lives of countless

(01:25:19):
human beings and countless bears over the years. But as
many viral videos do show us, people still have a
lot more to learn. You see those videos constantly have
people trying to mess around with like bison at Yellowstones seriously,
and I think a guy got killed recently, Yeah, trying
to take a picture near a bison, and it's like

(01:25:42):
they don't, don't do that, don't just don't, like, please
have some respect. As conservationist Douglas H. Chadwick told PBS, quote,
a bear is what it's born to be, and it's
what it learned to be. The most distant place in
the lower forty eight States from the nearest road twenty
three miles, which would take a bear a morning to

(01:26:04):
walk out of whow there is no big wild left
out there. And these guys are going to have to
learn to live with us, which I think they're doing,
and we're going to have to learn to live with them.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
And that's the story of Glacier National Parks Night of
the Grizzlies.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
Holy fucking shit. I have never heard of that before.
That is bananas same. I never heard it until Beck
suggested it. That's a mind blowing story. Wow, good job.
That was great. Thank you. It was great. I'm terrified. Yeah,
that's great. I'm terrified. That's why we all came here today.
I stay in hotels. I saw true Beverly Hills recently

(01:26:44):
on a at Vidiots you know Intel, Yeah, yes, and
they they're supposed to be camping. It starts raining. They
go to the Beverly Hills Hotel to do their like
Kumbaya camping, and I'm like, that's where I learned it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
Yes, that just to a hotel, you can still have
a lot of similar fun totally. I you know, just
while we're here, I really can't wait to go to Vidiots.
I haven't been there yet, although I have bought tickets
multiple times and just not shown up for certain things
that I wanted to go to and forgot about or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
But there's a lot of people who.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
Ask what can be done during a strike when writers
and actors are striking, because nobody wants to like break
a rule, people are very careful to be like, oh,
if we mentioned this, does that mean that we're promoting it?

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
And we don't want to do.

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
That all that kind of concern. I think one of
the best things you can do is support places like vidiots,
places where you can see the brilliance of filmmakers and
writers and actors and appreciate it, and support like local
businesses around your town or wherever you live and understand
that like, that's not something some computer program can replace.

(01:27:55):
You can kind of go sit and absorb it and
understand how cynical and kind of ugly and disrespectful that
attitude is that these studios are taking that like all
of that talent is replaceable, when the truth is they're
the ones that are replaceable.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
So replaceable. Well, how's two hours for you guys? That
long enough? Jesus almost?

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Is there anything else you want to discuss? Real quick?

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
So we can round it out to a to a
solid two hours?

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
I have to pee so bad, so no, then let's
just say stay sex and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis.
Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah
Kyle Crichton. This episode was edited and mixed by Leanna Scolacci.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashan and al.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
Email your hometowns and fucking horays to My Favorite Murder
at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite
Murder and Twitter at My favor Murder Gidbye,