March 12, 2026 • 52 mins
On today’s episode, Karen covers a trio of Bad Bridgets and Georgia tells the story of Mohammed Islam’s teenage day trading hoax.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar,
that's Karen Gilcaratt.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And it's Saint Patrick's Day. Everybody, welcome to our Saint
Patrick's Day party. I noticed that whoever got these balloons
very Protestant based. The orange represents Northern Ireland. I just
want to say right now, I didn't know that there'd
be a lot more green in here. If I was
the one in the shamrock balloon situation.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
They didn't float. I'm sorry, Oh, is that true?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, we had a balloon fiasco earlier. No, did I
just uncover it through politics?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I'm highly political.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Send us your hey, email my Favorite Murder at Gmail.
What side are you on of the Irish Civil War?
Let us know, let us know. Should we just get
right into the network stuff?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Let's do it all right?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So we have a podcast network, and here's some highlights
and stuff that's going on there.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
This week on Buried Bones, Kate and Paul head to
Long Island in nineteen fifty five to kick off part
one of the Shooting of the Century. Some of America's
wealthiest socialites gather for a glamorous party, but before morning arrives,
a murder is committed.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Also, the final episodes of our two newest series, to
Face John of God, dropped last week. You can binge
the entire story in both English and Spanish. We expect
you to listen to both.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And I said no gifts, Bridgert graciously looks the other
way when Stephanie Courtney from The Goldbergs Madmen barges in
with a gift and then the two get into CD Changers,
Evil Crystals and Claire Danes's stress level.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Here's a fun fact. Stephanie Courtney is Hello from Professive Amazing.
And if you're preparing for the Oscars this Sunday, Dear Movies,
I Love You is here to help. Milli and Casey
are breaking down the predictions, snubs, and the most baffling
nominations from this year, so you can walk into your
oscar pool feeling extremely confident. Plus, the hilarious Paul Rust
(02:18):
joins them talking about his area of expertise, which is
John Hughes Movies.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And in the merch corner, a limited number of MFM
collegiate unisex crew necks are available. I had mine on
this morning. It's so cozy and comfy. Karen's holding it
up now. It's like you didn't have to go to college.
It turns out all I have to do is buy
this sweater, grab yours. Well, they last at exactly rightstore
dot com. And that's what's going on in our network,
(02:44):
exactly right Media.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
And I go first today. So Maren, I believe, suggested
this after reading a book, and the book is Bad
Bridget Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Immigrant Women
by doctors Elaine Ferrell and Leanne McCormick. Fitting So, of course,
as we are heading into Saint Patrick's Day, we do
love to celebrate the holidays here my favorite murder.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
It's what we do.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
But I'm going to zoom in on a very specific
corner of the Irish diaspora, which is Irish girls and
women who emigrated to North America in the late eighteen
hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds. We remember them as tireless, resilient,
selfless women who worked their fingers to the bone to
build a better life for their families. It's very true,
(03:30):
being very related to some irishwomen of this era were distinct,
they were diverse, they were complex, and regardless of whether
history remembers them individually as saints or sinners. Their stories
are always filled with an incredible amount of humanity and
of course humor. So here's a few of the cases
unearthed by the Irish historians Elaine Ferrell and Leanne McCormick
(03:53):
for their book Bad Bridges. There's also a deep dive
podcast that they made called Bad Bridget So if you
want to hear more of these stories, because they've got
a bunch of them, because it's basically like the crime
records of the day, so you can go and listen
to that. So these women basically are referred to as
bad Bridgets because Bridget is a very common Irish name
(04:16):
at the time, and in the nineteenth century, bridget was
a catch all, kind of shitty nickname for Irish women
in general because there were so many domestic workers who
had emigrated to America, so they were the Bridgets were everywhere.
So this is roughly between the years of eighteen fifty
and the early nineteen hundreds where Irish immigrants have arrived
(04:36):
at ports in these cities around the country in huge numbers.
They are mostly poor, they're mostly Catholic, not Protestant, and
they're done and they're deeply unwelcomed by the white Protestant establishment.
So the people that came over in the Mayflower, those
are the Protestants. The Catholics were the ones that were
(04:57):
being persecuted in many places, so that that's why some
Catholics came over. Many people, though, were starving from the
Irish potato famine, which was in fact the British government
with holding food from the Irish. We're just getting everything
real clear here on Saint Patrick's Day, got it. So
when these immigrants arrived, there were signs in shop windows
(05:17):
that said no Irish need apply. There was a lot
of what now seems kind of like really Irish racism,
but it was part of the across the board racism
that I think every immigrant probably dealt with coming into
America at the time. So Irish immigrants were shut out
of decent paying work. They are packed into tenements, they're
(05:38):
over surveilled, they're over policed, and that means they're disproportionately
represented in the prison systems. It sounds familiar because it
is familiar. Early eighteen sixties in New York City, Irish
women account for four out of every five women in
the jails or prisons that are there. Yeah, in turn
of the century Boston, Irish women and girls make up
(06:00):
nearly forty percent of the prison population, despite the city's
overall population being less than twenty percent Irish. And of
course these numbers are used to justify ugly stereotypes that
Irish women are inherently criminal or morally corrupt. But the
second you dig into the actual stories behind these stats,
(06:21):
of course, things are much more complex. So that brings
us to our first Bridget that I'm going to be
talking about. A woman named Bridget McCool. In eighteen oh four,
she arrives in Massachusetts as a teenager. She finds work
as a laundress and in a mill. Then she marries
a guy named Thomas, but it's not a good relationship.
He abandons her within two years and he leaves her penniless.
(06:45):
And because she's a poor Irish Catholic woman, divorce is
basically off the table. It's stigmatized by the church like
it especially back then, it just never happened. But on
top of that, it was expensive and it was time consuming.
And yet a woman abandoned in like a major city
who has no idea where her next meal is coming
from needs a husband for a shot at financial stability.
(07:09):
So Bridget gets remarried without first divorcing Thomas. So she's
a big a mist. When Thomas catches wind of Bridget's
illegal second marriage, he reports her to the point just
go away. I mean, how do you prove better that
you should have been divorced than to be that kind
of guy?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Hey, I left her, Now she's remarried.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm a dush anna nark. What a combination. More so,
he's remarried at this point on, so he basically shoots
himself in the foot because they both wind up being
arrested because they're both adulterers and bigamists. Bridget spends two
years in prison, but when she gets out, her personal
(07:49):
life doesn't improve over the next couple decades. When she
serves out her sentence, she tries to pick up the
pieces of her life. She gets married a third time
again still hasn't gotten that initial first divorce, So she
gets sent back to our reformatory. And once she completes
this sentence, and after her relationship with husband number three DS,
she goes ahead and illegally marries a fourth time. Okay,
(08:11):
good god, she just doubling tripling quadrupling down. This one's
actually a remarriage to her second husband, who financially supported
her after Thomas' husband Number one left. But then once
she's in this marriage, the twist is that Bridget McCool
finds out that her current husband, so number two and
(08:32):
number four one guy, he's been lying this whole time
about being a widower. A woman he'd married years earlier,
who he's no longer with but hadn't divorced, is in
fact still alive.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
This is really romantic because yesterday was mine in Vince's
ten year anniversary.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
That just feels like a great story for this time.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
To show you how it could be and that how
it is not. Yeah, that's exactly I would imagine a
lot less lying from our man, Vince.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Less lying prison time. He is no fucking narc I'll
tell you that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Right, He's certainly no narn No, that is very true.
And you know what, he wouldn't call himself a widower
unless he really was a widow, thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Of course, this betrayal is what finally pushes Bridget to
seek and obtain illegal divorce on the grounds of cruelty.
And finally that story like wraps up. But it's that
kind of thing where it's like, thinking about the immigrant experience.
You are left, you're sent away from your family, often
alone or with maybe one or two other people, trying
to make it in a place like New York City,
(09:33):
Boston wherever, and one thing goes wrong and then.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It all goes totally.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And as much as I want to be like, why
did she keep doing that, it's like, because you'll never
know how fucking difficult life was and is for other people,
So I'm not gonna.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Right, And this idea that especially back then women it
was like you can be a laundress and touch everybody's
shit stained sheets, right, or you could be a sex worker,
Like but that's the worst thing, morall Lee that the
man in the skuy thinks. Okay, So even though Bridget mccool'
is technically a criminal in the eyes of the law,
she's clearly not a bad woman's It basically just drives
(10:11):
home this truth that the law punishes the people who
are just trying to survive the worst usually, and that's
a common theme for sex workers from this era, and
there were a lot of them at the turn of
the twentieth century. In New York City in eighteen seventy,
for example, the New York Times reports that there are
more than ten thousand sex workers at the time when
the city's population is just under one million people, And
(10:34):
that means this is the new how much in today's money,
That means one sex worker for every one hundred New Yorkers.
As doctor Verel and doctor McCormick point out in their book,
the past Irish women and girls take into sex work
is not monolithic. Some are vulnerable, some have no connections
or legal protections in the US. Some are exploited by
(10:55):
bad men right after they arrive. I think I've told
you the story, But my grandmother came here when she
was seventeen with her two sisters. They land in New
York City, they go through Ellis Island, and then they're
supposed to meet a sponsor, and the sponsor is the
person that set them up with work, which is the
reason they were able to come. And sometimes they come
on a loan and the sponsor's like, I fronted you
(11:17):
this money, now you're going to go work here. It's
not great. So they landed and this man meets them
at the docks or whatever, and he's like you know.
My grandmother described it to my aunt, who described it
to me that he was just kind of some blow
hard with like you know, in white linen. And he
drives them into it to a tenement house on the
(11:38):
Lower East Side and walks them up and puts them
into this apartment that's one room basically, and he's like
and I'll be here in the morning and you better
be ready, and da da da, and the door shuts
and he leaves. And my grandmother, who's seventeen years old
at the time, turns to her older sister and her
younger sister and goes, I don't know about you guys,
but I'm getting out of here. And they had a
postcard that they used to have in their head in Longford, Ireland.
(12:03):
Relatives sent them a postcard of this of San Francisco.
So my grandma said, let's go to San Francisco. The
streets are really clean.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
There, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And that's how like our family came to be.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Was like across the entire country.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I'm seventeen seventeen, you to this place and like basically
like fuck this shit, this ain't me it happen.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I want to go somewhere else. Yeah, it's so crazy.
So that idea that like the amount of money and
trust people were putting into the hands of like basic
strangers to say, please take care of my teenager, please
take care of my family member once you get here.
Obviously a whole different story. So many intersex work because
it's preferable to low pay, taxing labor, long hours of
(12:46):
domestic or laundry work. I mean, that's there's some people
who just make that choice, but oftentimes people were forced
into it, and of course there's all the risks that
come with that decision, which is of course disease, infection,
unwanted pregnancies, male violence, and then incarceration. So this brings
us to our second bad bridget, a woman named Marian
Canning who arrives in New York City in eighteen ninety.
(13:09):
When she's eighteen years old. She moves into a tenement
on Mulberry Street in the notorious Five Points neighborhood of Laura, Manhattan.
So my grandma story would be twenty five thirty years later.
Oh wow, Okay, but not crazy far, which is the
weird things. Marian's building has a reputation at the time
(13:31):
that she lives there, multiple stabbings and murders are reported inside.
It's also thought that a brothel is operating out of it,
which is probably how she came to live there. So
fast forward a year after her arriving in the city
is July eighteen ninety one. Marian's heading to her home
one evening when a firefighter named Richard bronk Bank approaches
(13:52):
her outside propositions her for sex. She brings him inside,
and then later on he ends up accusing her of
stealing his water and some of his money. Someone calls
the police. We're not sure which one of the two
of them. Richard claims he calls the police to report
the theft. Marian says she called the police because she
wanted a CoP's help because she was being falsely accused.
(14:15):
Either way, Richard's watch and cash are not found on Marian,
but she's charged with theft and carted off to jail. Anyway,
we'll never know if she was innocent or if she
did rob Richard and high his possessions, some are in
her apartment. What we know is that many sex workers
of this era do pick through their client's pockets, knowing
(14:35):
that the stigma of them hiring a sex worker is
going to keep them from being reported. But even if
Marian is innocent of this crime, which she very well
might be, she's guilty by her association with sex work
in the eyes of the people that they're reporting to,
and she pays the price for it. She's sentenced to
seven years in prison for this unproven theft. Fortunately, her
(15:00):
parents in Ireland find out that she's in prison. They
don't know why, though, and her father ends up writing
a letter to a judge, the judge from Marion's trial,
and to the governor of New York, begging to have
his daughter back and promising to write her course and
asking for clemency for her and the gut. It actually works.
The governor's sympathetic and Marian, who's now twenty one, gets
(15:23):
a pardon, and after less than a year of serving
her sentence, she's freed from jail. Marian's father sends money
for her trip back to Ireland, so she goes back
home and gets married not long after, and as Leanne
McCormick writes, quote, it's unlikely that anyone in her hometown
ever knew the exact details of what had happened to
(15:45):
her in New York. The disgrace attached to being in
prison would have been enough to prevent a marriage taking place,
never mind the additional shame of having been involved in
sex work. So she's incredibly lucky because she has the
kind of family that's like, wait, we can take her
back and we can do something with this. But most
people were like leaving in totally the end, and she
(16:07):
lived a quiet life after that. So both Bridget McCool
and Marian Canning are punished and criminalized for trying to
make their way in a foreign land without money, connections,
or protection. And there, of course are countless stories like this,
but not every bad bridget fits this mold. The next
Bridget I'm going to tell you about seems to commit
crimes because she's really good at it, not because she's desperate.
(16:30):
That sounds fun, right. So we're back in New York
City nineteenth century and the police are doing something revolutionary
for the time, which is they're photographing criminals and compiling
their images into big books that are basically our early
mugshot databases. This is really helpful because so many criminals
take on aliases and basically it's easy to evade the
(16:53):
low as they're just kind of like, no, it's me
Jerry Seinfeldt.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
You know, no, wait, that's Jerry Arcia and you know
I know it, and you know we can't prove it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Oh, so of course mugshots are like such scientific advancement
because now suddenly they can it's not based on memory.
It's like, it's this guy right here. They assemble one
book in eighteen eighty six that features two hundred and
four criminals at large in New York City, and one
of those criminals is old mother Hubbard. No, well, not
the real one, got it, Not the not the one
(17:25):
who started Feeder Dog, got it? No, this is this
was the nickname that this woman got because she just
looked like an unassuming little old lady. Her name is
actually Margaret Brown. Okay, but she's not the Margaret Brown
from the Titanic, the Unsinkable Molly Brown that I've talked
to you.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
About, Bridgets and Margaret's and Brown's and fucking green green
and orange and green and orange.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
We've taken over, we've we've we've been under the skin
of this country for such a long time, the Irish.
So this Margaret Brown, which is I think like being
named Jim Smith probably. There's a lot of unknown about her,
and of course she does have many other names besides
Margaret Brown. We don't even know if that's her real name,
it's just one of the names. She claims her legal
(18:08):
name is Elizabeth Haskins. We don't know if that's true.
She also goes by Eliza Burnham, Jane Hutchinson, and missus
Arthur Young, which I'm taking that one. We don't know how.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Old she is.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Some of the best historical sources place her anywhere from
her sixties to her eighties. Can we see that mug
shot in here, Molly.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
She's another one of those. Is it an old hat?
Is it a young lady? Turn it upside down and
it's a vase for real?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Also is it a wig and a hat?
Speaker 1 (18:40):
I feel like if I hadn't started getting botox at
thirty three, that's what I would look like right now.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, you know. I mean, it's dead on. It's so
youry me, you and your big hats, and you're down
to I love it when people's expression is like literally
fully downturned, where it looks like Margaret can't smile if
she wants to, No, if only she knew she was
surrounded by beautiful balloons. This is where you get to Margaret. Okay,
(19:06):
so I think in that picture, I think she was
If it's eighteen eighty six, I bet you she was
in her late fifties. Yeah, it's one of those.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
What she is is a superstar street thief who's operated
in a large number of cities like Boston, Philly, Saint Louis,
as far away as Texas. Local newspapers have described her
as quote one of the most successful and notorious pickpockets
and shoplifters in the country.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I mean, can we just say, how fun right life? Sorry,
don't fucking steal from people.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
But look, she's like, I stole that hat. I stole
it right off with dummy's head.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So here's what we can piece together about Margaret's life.
She's born in Ireland, she emigrates to the US, she
takes on legitimate domestic work, and she eventually falls in
with a woman named Frederica Mendelbaum or or Mother Mandelbaum.
And we've actually talked about Mother Mandelbaum on this show before.
She's a legendary fence. So remember that the lady that
(20:10):
used to sell stuff like the criminals would come to
her and she was like the middleman.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
No, but it sounds right.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
It's a Mandelbaum, missus Mandelbaum, and she's basically made her
own way with the criminals and by the criminals. She
moves stolen goods and she becomes a maternal figure for
the gang of burglars and thieves and con men and
women on the Lower east Side. Margaret Brown is one
of those people Maren very clearly said no to. Karen
(20:40):
Mandelbaum is Jewish, not Irish. Yeah, and also you covered
her right, that makes sense, all of it. The name
of the episode you covered her and is called is
episode four fourteen Weather Influencers. Remember that hit.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
No, but I'm on so much suit fed right now,
So it's okay, we'll just focus.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah. Is going fast helping or would it be better
to go slow?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Margaret's specialty is pickpocketing, which at the time is mostly
left to children and sex.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Workers, little grubby hands.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, get in there. It's like the best thing about
for me, the musical Annie is just the idea that
it's like, but there's orphans, but there's also children on
the street urchins that are out there just like make
it it work well. Margaret, who has a kind face
and pretty hazel eyes, of course, has a real neck
because she looks like a sad little old lady. Never
(21:34):
expect an old lady to do anything, so she develops
her own signature em O. It's complete with a costume.
She always wears these long calico dresses like Little Bo
Peep or Mother.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Goose picturing my cat.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
For some reason, calico, there's a lot of fur on
the outside patches, okay, basically doing grandma drags, so it
really looks like she's unassuming and right. She targets busy
shops and department stores, where she is her quick, agile
hands to lift things off of oblivious customers. So she's
shoplifting off the shoppers, got it, which is kind of smart, Yeah,
(22:08):
because they're watching the goods, not the people's pockets.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Sure. So one officer describes her as having quote a
specialty of opening handbags, removing the pocketbook, and closing them again. WHOA,
that is as bad.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Acause that's like unnecessary. You're showing off at this point.
You don't need to do that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I didn't notice. Also, I'm thinking back then, but I'm
thinking of like forties fifties, perses those ones with the
big ball, classic snap.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Loud ass class. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
She stashes the stolen loot in a waist bag that
she's wearing under her dress.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
She's also known to use a long wire, which she
might stick out of her pocket or through a shopping basket,
and after identifying her mark the person she's going to
steal from, she'll position the wire so that it gets
tangled in that person's clothing. As Margaret, with all her
grandmother sweetness, apologetically works to untangle the wire, she does
(23:03):
a slide of hand move into the pockets of the
mark and steals their value plits, Oh, I'm so sorry
you okay, over here, yeah, love it. In one documented theft,
Margaret steals two hundred and sixty dollars from a man's satchel.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Okay, nineteen eighteen, ninety eighteen ninety two hundred and sixty.
I'm gonna go twenty one thousand, twenty thousand.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
It's thirty two hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Sorry, did I mean I'm tired? I'm tired.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Also, I won't stop playing this game.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I know you're just like I won't stop letting you
play it and doing it.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Sorry, why would a guy be carrying Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, yeah yeah. She just basically makes bank off one man. Great,
but she keeps going and as skilled as she is
said to be, she does get caught several times. After
one of her arrests, police discover she's wearing an expensive
silk dress under her cheap dress.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
She's got a layer.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Kind of awesome where she's like, I'm actually very stylish.
This is merely a costume. In a criminal career that's
said to span four or five decades, Margaret will serve
time in Chicago, Boston, and New York, including a stint
at Blackwell's Island just a few years before trailblazing journalist
Nellie Bly goes undercover there. Wow, she's seen all the
(24:25):
bad shit. If you want to know the story of
trailblazing journalist Nellie Bly, which is it's pretty good, it's
in episode four oh one. Keep a lid on it,
you know that one. So during a different incarceration at
Joliette in Illinois in the eighteen seventies, this or early work.
Per some sources, Margaret would be in her seventies, but
(24:48):
she tries to escape, which I don't buy it because
I think.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Her, yeah, she probably wanted to look older than she
actually was right and was.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Lying to people.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
They wrote in the book that she was intersect right,
she probably wasn't. And here's baby proof of this theory.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Do you just call me baby? Hey?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Baby? I think I said here's maybe yeah? Did I
What am I on? She reportedly tries to escape from
jail by jumping out of a third story window.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Now just hang out.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
She falls to the ground and almost dies from her injuries,
but she doesn't die from those injuries. She recovers, She
completes her prison sentence, and she continues creating a paper
trail of arrests as she keeps it up into the
eighteen eighties. Her documented arrests stop somewhere around eighteen eighty five.
Whether this is when she dies, when she retires, or
(25:40):
if she just stops getting caught altogether is a mysterious
piece or her story. By the early twentieth century, the
number of Irish immigrants arriving in North America starts to
slow down, discriminations softens, Irish Americans begin seeing real upward mobility,
as Lane Ferrell and Leanne McCormick write in their book
Bad Britain quote. The dominant narrative of Irish immigration to
(26:03):
North America became focused on those who came from humble
beginnings in Ireland and made a better life for themselves.
They or their children went on to become pillars of society.
They became the Kennedys, a political dynasty, or the Eatons,
who established Canada's largest department star chain. But as the
Irish became more upwardly mobile, establishing themselves within North American society,
(26:24):
there was no appetite on either side of the Atlantic
to face up to the reality that many Irish female
immigrants did not succeed, and that many ended up on
the wrong side of the law. Telling the stories of
these women is crucial to our understanding of the Irish
past end quote. And so today as we celebrate Saint
Patrick's Day, we are honoring the Bridgets of all kinds,
(26:45):
and the Margarets and the Marians, and the Annies and
her two sisters, who, as poor women, belonged to a
demographic that is so often omitted from history books. But
now thanks to the tireless efforts of Ferrell and Kormick
and all of the historians that are keeping all of
this history alive for all of us, and the history
(27:06):
of the Bad Bridge it's a live specifically, the stories
are finally being told. And of course there's a movie
in the works starring Daisy Edgar Jones from Normal People
and it's going to be directed by the director rich Pepiat.
But I don't know if you ever saw the twenty
twenty four movie Kneecap about the Irish rappers and they're
(27:27):
super political and it's amazing and their documentary or is
it it's scripted? It seems like what do they call that,
it's like a pseudo doc where it's like scripted, but
it's based on their real lives and how they basically
busted out as these kind of like Irish I guess rappers,
but they like their shit is about like freeing Palestine
(27:48):
and stuff. Like they're hyper political global it's very very
cool and the movie's great and got a lot of
a word. So the Bad Bridgets movie is going to
be made by the Kneecap guy, which is nice deserved,
very on theme, and that's the story of the Bad
Bridgets of early America.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Wow, I love that term bad Bridgets, Like that's just
encapitulates so much to have pictures.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
The Lower east Side. That's five points. There's a tenement house.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Look at that house.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Picture My grandma going, I don't know about you guys,
but I'm not staying here.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Absolutely not, she said.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
She said, no, way too much.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Cletter.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
God, that's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
There's the mugshot database. It wasn't a book. Wow, that's
why Maren called it a database. It literally looks like
mini x rays.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
It does like an X ray board there it is.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Oh my god, if I find one of those in
an estate sale my life.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Could you complete in the basement of a Lower east
Side old tenement.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
House that's in there, just go in, ah, because the
individual pictures in that thing are incredible, I bet you.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean there's like, there's her, and then there's.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
That's like the find someone. Let us know.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
That's like remember in the very beginning of the podcast,
and I was like, oh, always wanted one of those
Dare drug suitcases they would bring to Dare and show
you all the different kinds of drugs. And someone went
in their dad's fucking ex cop garage and sent me that.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
We got it. So we're asking for this now.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Ships we wanted its rare antique. We'll just hang it
there and then when we have pictures for our stories,
we'll put them in that I love it and light
them up.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
We'll use it for good, we promise. Yeah, great job, Yeah,
bad bridgets.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
If that's not a fucking punk band yet, then come on, oh,
lady punk ban.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Let's talk to the kneecap boys about it.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
It's right, all right, Well, mine's actually like a kind
of scammy similar in scam, you know, the scam world,
allthough very different and a little more not a little more,
very more current day. So this story is about a
bright teenager who got caught up in a tall tale
(29:55):
and wound up telling an elaborate hoax that fooled it.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Is it me.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
That fulled half of the media industry in New York
during a time when the media industry in New York
was substantially bigger and you know, more impressive, I think
than it is now. This is the story of Mohammed Islam.
The main sources used for the story are reporting from
The Guardian and The New York Observer, and the rest
of the sources can be found in the show notes.
So it's the fall of twenty thirteen. Take us back,
(30:26):
and we're in Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan. Stuyvesant
is one of New York City's nine specialized high schools,
So they have these high schools. Admission to these schools
is determined only by a single academic entrance exam, which
is all eighth graders take.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's really difficult to get into these schools.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
It's an incredibly competitive environment and the pressure is very high.
If you get in, you still fucking better perform. And
actually that's how school is.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, not that test.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
No, Fame is one of those schools, Like the school
where Fame came from is one of the schools. It
happens to just be performing arts that one. All the
other ones are based more on Sorry.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
No, no, I just when you said that about the schools,
I thought of the Fame High School. But then I
was like, don't try to change the subject to what
you like talking about. So that's kind of exciting that
it is.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Kate went to that high school Stysant. You bet am
I saying it right?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
She says, it's right.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
What the fuck? God damn it, I'll walk out there.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
That's great, Like hot lunch jam you stood on the
table in the cafeteria and stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Not the fame one, this one, oh, this one. Math
and science school. Yeah, not fame.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Not fame.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
She could have done both, but the fame of math
and science.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah whatever that for really nursical.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
That musical is the musical we want to see.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, these are some of the best high schools in
the country, and it's generally agreed upon that among these schools,
Stuyvesant is the best in the city. I know. These
schools draw from all over the city, and Stuyvesant especially
has a high proportion of students who are first generation Americans,
often the children of immigrants who have made tremendous sacrifices
(32:11):
for their children's education. So there's a lot of children
of immigrants. However, there's just obviously, you know, a history
of racism going on because it's a hard test to take,
and a lot of students who don't go to these
schools that are you get it.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well, you know what it makes me think of is
the thing that happened where there was testing like that
and they discovered, you know, like the systemic racism of
that time, where it would be word problems in math,
and it'd be like, if so many people can sit
on this length of sofa and so many people can
sit in link of sofa, how long does the sofa
have to be to fit this family? I've totally made
that up something like that. But the fact that they
(32:50):
were using the word sofa instead of couch, so a
bunch of kids who are culturally I never heard the
word before, were like, I don't even know how to
work on this problem, right, realize that certain and I
think this study was being done about black students that
were taking these tests, and like, why do none of
them do well? And it's like, yeah, because that no
one's used the word sofa in their household.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Ever, that's a systemic racism issue.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Okay, So these kids who make it into these very
difficult to get into schools often grow up with a
huge amount of pressure to perform very well academically.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
So there's a lot of pressure going on.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
They're very smart, but you know, they can't be like
me and just not go to half of your high
school period time. So the fall of twenty thirteen, a
lot of pressure.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
If you're an immigrant child whose parents gave everything up
to bring you to can you imagine to go to
high school.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
It's the fall of twenty thirteen, and Mohammed Islam is
one of these such students. He's a soft spoken sixteen
year old whose parents immigrated from Bangladesh. Mohammed is a
junior in high school, and he's known around school to
be brilliant in a school where everyone is pretty much brilliant,
so that's high achievement.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
He runs the school's investing club.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I was in that.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I was the secretary in which kids who are interested
in the stock market makes simulated trades with fake money,
just testing, just for fun the waters. But then it
starts to get around the school that on the side,
Mohammed Mo, as he's known, is actually making real investments
with real money, so it's not simulated. Turns out, the
rumor is that he's doing very well with these investments.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I don't mean to press you, but is that legal
for like a high school student to be day trading.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I would assume you have to be eighteen? Yeah right, yeah,
but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Maybe I'll learn something new as you tell me.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
In November twenty thirteen, Mo appears in Alistical remember those
on Business Insider of kid investors. It's like a twenty
under twenty, So I guess you can do that. Yeah,
I guess I can gambling.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Right, It does or like something that should be more official,
but I guess it's like regulated. I guess under twenty
can still be over eighteen or under twenty, but doesn't
seem likely.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
No. He tells Business Insider that he had gotten his
start in penny stocks and then worked his way into
higher stakes securities. He says, quote, my main markets now
are crude oil futures and gold futures, and I trade
small to mid cap equities when the futures don't present
a good trade. It just makes me think of trading
(35:29):
places which Vince and I watch every Christmas. All I
know about stocks and that's what he knows about, So
it's just stuff like that that I know nothing about.
It's unclear how Moe first connects with the reporter of
that Business Insider story, but at that point he hasn't
told anyone that he's made a serious amount of money
with his trades. But somehow, over the course of the
(35:49):
next year, rumors begin to swirl around Stuyvesant that mo
has made a staggering amount of money, and people seem
to believe somehow, the number that gets thrown around, that
gets tied to him is seventy two million dollars that
he has made in some casual day trade. Yeah, which
is an outrageous and basically unheard of profit for anyone
(36:12):
who's been trading for just a couple of years, let
alone a high school student. So it's wild, it's big.
A whole year goes by, and then in December of
twenty fourteen, New York Magazine includes an article about MO
and its annual Reasons to Love New York issue Money
of Money, Kids Money, Kids Money Kids opening for bad Bridget.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And Zebulan this weekend.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
It sounds like what happened is a parent of another
student at Stuyvesant heard about MO and then pass the
story along to his colleagues at the magazine. Just how
rumors start and continue, and then a reporter named Jessica
Presler is assigned to cover the story. So Jessica's story
unquestionably categorizes the seventy two million figure as a rumor.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
She's like a journals, She's not going to be like
it's true, she writes. Quote.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Rumors on Wall Street can be powerful. A whisper can
turn into a current that moves markets, driving a stock
price up or sending it tumbling. There may only be
one other place where gossip holds such sway, and that
is high schools school.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I was going to see that.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
It's so clear that it's like I heard he made
seventy two million, seventy two millions, seventy It sounds like
a joke amount, Yeah, because it's absurd.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
She writes that Mo is shy about confirming that exact number,
but says that his net worth is in the quote
high eight figures, okay, quote, so he's kind of confirming it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
In the article, Jessica writes about sitting down with Mo
and two of his friends who act as his spokesman.
I think they're a lot more gregarious and outgoing and
most pretty shy, most miles at the reporter and one
of his friends, a boy named Patrick, says, quote, he's
quiet today and like they're almost just like talking for him.
(38:00):
The other friend, a teen named Demir, adds, quote, this
is our third meeting of the day. We saw a
real estate agent, a lawyer, and you end quote, and
Jessica writes that they have a meeting with a hedge
fund guy next. So they're like acting like movers and
shakers there.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
But it's like, you're young, you have your whole life
to do boring shit like that, like that idea where
it's just making money, make money, but also just kind
of like, hey, listen, we've got to go meet with
a really state agent. It's like, well, enjoy your meeting.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
It's almost like that's like thirty somethings real'll do, and
it's like annoying, like that makes more sense for a
teenager to do it, to.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Get into where it's like we're going to spend money
in that.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, it's a little less disgusting, but still. The three
say that they plan to launch a hedge fund up
their own when Moe turns eighteen, once he's old enough
to get a broker dealer license, so maybe he can deal,
but he doesn't can't get a license. This whole interview
takes place at a downtown cafe where the boys eat
caviar and drink cold pressed apple juice.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
No, they're babies, what a combo?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
H that can't be. Yeah, it's really that's disgusting.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Mo Hint said he's he's shopping for a BMW and
apartments and even though his parents won't let him move
out until he's eighteen. And at the end of the interview,
Demir says, quote, my father has a quote.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
It's really dope, says the teenate.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
You can rob a bank with a gun, but you
can rob the whole world with a bank.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I kind of fucking love.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Oh shit, Yeah, I think we've really learned that here
in twenty twenty six, that that is, you sure have
absolutely not an exaggeration.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Now, before the article is published, New York Magazine's fact
checkers get in contact with Mo asking for a proof
that his claims of an income in the high eight
figures is true. The fact checker winds up going down
to Stuyvesant so that Mo can provide a bank statement,
and Moe gives the magazine what appears to be a
Chase Bank statement confirming an eight figure balance. So they
(39:59):
did do fair dude, diligent, jude, jude diligence.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
You can't say that, not on Saint Patrick's day.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yes, so many drugs.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
The day the article is published, it completely blows up
everyone who sits at a desk in twenty fourteen, who
spends some of their workdays scrolling on Twitter, reads this
article let's say goes viral. Yeah, it gets picked up
by other outlets. The New York Post, of course, runs
the story and puts that seventy two million dollar number
in the headline, kind of being you know, they're not
(40:33):
the biggest fact checkers of all times, so they're just like.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Because you said it was like the twenty teens, right, fourteen, Yeah,
so it's people are getting into clickbait exactly. People love
a clickbait headline click.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Sure do, doesn't matter if it's true, and it's picked
up by many other sites, and like kind of then
treat it as fact in a way.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yes, I have a little experience with that, as do
you sure do.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
But then pretty quickly, like a bunch of people, stop
and really think about the details. A return of seventy
two million dollars in just a couple of years of
investing is basically basically impossible, like not even just unheard of,
It's not possible. Business reporters immediately start to have doubts,
as Ken Curson from The New York Observer will later write, quote,
(41:18):
even if this working class kid had somehow started with
one hundred thousand dollars as a high school freshman on
day one at STY, he'd have needed to average a
compounded annualized return of something like seven hundred and ninety
six percent over the three years since then.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
He says, come on, man, end quote.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So Mo and Demir are invited to appear on CNBC
to talk about this their investment strategy because they're fucking
wiz kids.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Hey man.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
But while they're on their way to the studio, you know,
as the story is blowing up, the Business Insider reporter,
who've had featured Mo on the list of the kid
investor story, calls and starts asking them some follow up questions.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Late.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
At this point, Demir confirms to the reporter that that
seventy two million dollar number is a rumor, but he says,
quote pretty sure Mo is a great trader and a
genius end quote like su what's it called dialing it back? Oh?
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, having to walk it back.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah. The CNBC studios are across the Hudson River in
New Jersey, so by the time the boys get there,
they're pretty rattled because clearly people are onto them.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Mo at first doesn't.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Want to get out of the car even which is
my god, I've been there. Eventually, some producers coax the
boy into the building and they're brought to the office
of CNBC's editor in chief. Like so now adults are
like asking them more questions and that you might get
in trouble now.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Also just the idea of coaxing them out of the car,
just like, look, we got Capri Son's Atari or whatever.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Caviar and apple, fresh pressed apple juices.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
What kind of video games do you like? Boys? All
the fresh press cold press apple juice you could drink.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
And this man who's the CNBC's editor in chief used
to be an editor at the Wall Street Journal, so
he knows.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
What questions to ask.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
He starts asking Moo explain his strategy and say exactly
how much money is involved, you know, like don't throw
out rumor numbers. Motrice is best to answer. And then
the guy says it isn't seventy two million, is it?
And Moe confirms that it is not and claims that
he's made a profit closer to three million, which is
a lot less than seventy two million.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Still impressive for a teen.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Some would say it's sixty nine million less, That's what
I would say, but who are we to say? It
is such a hilarious lie. And also I feel like
I remember reading that story when it was thealistical story. Yeah,
we're just like, what are these kids doing?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Totally?
Speaker 2 (43:48):
The kids know what's going on.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Right, maybe I could do it, No, you can't.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And then the boys decline to go through with the
on air interview, which is smart, but CNBC reports what
they have learned, So the fucking is up that very evening,
Demir and Mo both seventeen years old, mind you hire
a crisis PR firm and then head straight from CNBC
to their offices to the crisis PR's office because they're
(44:13):
like fuck, But like they never It's like they were
just kind of nudging this thing along that the adults
were all offering them. They were seventeen years old, and
they're like, let's just tell them we did this, Let's
tell them we did that. Like it's kind of funny,
and let's pretend like we have, you know, the s
bravado that we don't have.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, like we're exceptionally successful, right, but like the second
you go seventy two million dollars on penny stock, right,
or whatever. I mean, that's the thing that sticks out
to me of like, remember you're playing penny machines, you know.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I think penny machines are like how you get to
hang out and oops, get free drinks all night.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah that's right, but you probably wouldn't get the Jackpodectly
of seventy two million off pennies.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
To No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
So once they get this PR firm, they sit down
with a reporter from the New York Observer and the
whole truth comes out. They tell them we were lying.
That the three million dollar profit that Moe claimed later
to have is also a lie, and that Muhammad has
only been placing simulated trades.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
There's no money at all.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
But I feel like they were just giving the adults
what they were asking for.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, you know what I mean, we're extraordinary, we get
good grades, we go to this rat school, we can
do anything.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
We just lied about dumb or shit when we were
in high school. They lied about something that adults cared about.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah. They like instead of being like, I'm going to
be at Georgie's house, right, and then you're like I'm
going to be at Karen's house and then the big
lies we're drinking behind the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Those aren't my cigarettes. Those are Karen's cigarette. She asked
me to hold them for her.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
You know how Georgia loves clothes, mom, She does it
every time I have to hold them.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, so he hasn't made any money at all, and
Mo does say that if he had been investing money,
he would have done really well.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
But it doesn't Yeah, I know me too. Mo tells the.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Reporter that his parents are furious with him about his lies.
He says, quote, Honestly, my dad wanted to disown me.
My mom basically said she'd never talk to me. Their
morals are that if I lie about it and don't
own up to it, then they can no longer trust me.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
He's a fucking teenager.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
He adds that he's been sleeping over at a friend's
house because his parents are so upset with him. He
doesn't want to say who, but it seems like Demir
is the one, and it seems like they're having a
great time and just like being teenagers. Yeah, and kind
of like reveling in this. It's like this thing that
keeps moving forward even though it shouldn't have a long
time ago.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah, they made themselves a story, right, and the adults
fell for it. And there is a victory in that
if you're a seventeen year old in high school.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Totally like these fucking actual, like business people believed you. Meanwhile,
on Twitter, Jessica Presler, remember the journalist who wrote that
original story, saying not saying it was true, but saying
these are the rumors. She defends her story, saying that
she saw the bank statement and that the New York
Magazine is in a financial publication anyways, so it's not
(47:10):
like a Wall Street journal where the questions would have
been asked about the actual earnings. But that's a misstep
because Jessica had been hired to work on a new
investigations team at Bloomberg, which is a financial publication, and
Bloomberg winds up we're sending the job off for I
think she kind of gets some egg on her face
from it. But Jessica does stay at New York Magazine
(47:32):
and goes on to report some very juicy stories in
the future, and she does have a redemption arc. She
will later say that she had a funny feeling about
the story and asked her editor to check it out
before running it, which is what they're supposed to do,
and that that didn't happen. New York Magazine changes the
headline on the story to take out that seventy two
million dollar number and adds a note at the top
(47:54):
explaining the situation.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
The note says, quote, we were duped.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Ali wrote a note to me saying I was a
CUB reporter at Bloomberg when all of this was happening.
Whoa Alli, my fucking incredible researcher. Yeah, there was a
she said there was a commotion. Jessica Pressler does fine.
In the end, she writes the article that becomes the
basis for the movie Hustlers. Yes, right, and later winds
(48:20):
up reporting the Anna Delvi story.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Oh so she does Okay, she is fine. Yeah, she
like proves herself well.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
And I think doesn't that kind of point back to
that's the kind of journalism, like you were saying, it's
not finance journalism.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
It's grabby personality based.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yes, it's very internetty, like can you believe this is real? Whatever?
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (48:40):
And that is like it's almost like human interest of
did you even know there was a person like this?
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Right? Right?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
So the New York Observer reporter Ken Curson wraps up
his article like this quote. No one asked for my opinion,
but I'm going to provide it anyway.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Love that cool.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Having sat with these kids for a good bit on
a tough day, they got carried way. They're not children,
but they're not quite adults either, And at least mister
Islam was literally quaking as we spoke. So I feel
like his like boisterous friends were like, you know, say it, dad,
and like it just became bigger than it was supposed to.
(49:15):
And it just so happened that they were in fucking
Manhattan and so it became huge.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Also, don't you think that not his name is Mo,
Mo's friend. There's one guy in there, and you know
the type, and he's mister big personality. He's the personality figh,
he's so fun, energy, energy, energy, ideas, ideas, good times.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah, he's the he spread that rumor. I bet hell, yes,
you know what my friend?
Speaker 3 (49:39):
Did you know? My friend?
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Like you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna eat
fucking caviar and apple juice all day? Do you want
to come with us? Like? Yeah, there's that where the
guy that has the goods. Yeah, they're like, we're going
to do a bunch of stuff because of you.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
You're our smartest friend. We're going to spread a rumor
about you.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I'm the loudest friend.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I'm the loudest, you're the smartest.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Let's do this. Now, there's a third guy, because there's
always a third guy always.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
So yeah, they should have known better. But New York
and the New York Post probably should have as well.
This story smelled fishy the instant it appeared, and a
quick dance with a calculator probably would have saved these
young men and a couple of reporters some embarrassment.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Oh that's his quote. A quick dance with a calculator
is such a funny way.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yeah. Yeah, that's the part of Ken's quote.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
And that is the story of a rumor that swept
the halls of Stuyvesant High School and briefly fooled the world,
or at least some of the world story of Mohammed Islam.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
As you were kind of like wrapping it down, It's like,
these are kids at an incredibly competitive high school. Yeah,
we're excelling at anything. You have to do it, and
you're used to being top three in your class now
right bottom twenty right, it makes sense that you'd be well,
maybe this will make me special, maybe this will make
(50:54):
me stand out.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Let me spread this rumor. It goes a little too far.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
We got money, baby, We're getting invited a party.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
My parents are mad at me. Oh shit, I.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Have to talk to a reporter and it's making me shaite.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah, but I'm bringing my friend, so he's going to
do it.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
He's going to mouth off. She there's your podcast right there. There,
you go there it is.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well, thank you and for listening everyone, and thank you
for you know, Saint Patrick.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Do you think maybe we thank Saint Patrick for getting
rid of all the snakes. Oh that's what he did, right,
I think?
Speaker 3 (51:29):
So? Okay, I have Wellvince will like that he hates snakes.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, I should go over there.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Okay, we're in green celebrate thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
I couldn't blar I found this. The green I had
on was such a non green color, and I was like, oh,
I don't really have anything, and then all of a sudden,
I look over.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
You have to wear yeah, you have to wear it,
have to represent definitely, well you did it, and thanks
for representing here everyone.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
We appreciate you guys listening.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
Hey, and just remember you can do anything if you
have two sisters along with you, because that's really the
that's the magic of all of this.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
My right, you are, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis.
Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 2 (52:14):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Our editor is Aristotle Lascevedo.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Our researchers are Mayor McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
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Speaker 3 (52:43):
That's the best way you can support our show. Goodbye,
Hello, and welcome to my Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar,
that's Karen Gilcaratt.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And it's Saint Patrick's Day. Everybody, welcome to our Saint
Patrick's Day party. I noticed that whoever got these balloons
very Protestant based. The orange represents Northern Ireland. I just
want to say right now, I didn't know that there'd
be a lot more green in here. If I was
the one in the shamrock balloon situation.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
They didn't float. I'm sorry, Oh, is that true?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, we had a balloon fiasco earlier. No, did I
just uncover it through politics?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I'm highly political.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Send us your hey, email my Favorite Murder at Gmail.
What side are you on of the Irish Civil War?
Let us know, let us know. Should we just get
right into the network stuff?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Let's do it all right?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So we have a podcast network, and here's some highlights
and stuff that's going on there.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
This week on Buried Bones, Kate and Paul head to
Long Island in nineteen fifty five to kick off part
one of the Shooting of the Century. Some of America's
wealthiest socialites gather for a glamorous party, but before morning arrives,
a murder is committed.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Also, the final episodes of our two newest series, to
Face John of God, dropped last week. You can binge
the entire story in both English and Spanish. We expect
you to listen to both.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And I said no gifts, Bridgert graciously looks the other
way when Stephanie Courtney from The Goldbergs Madmen barges in
with a gift and then the two get into CD Changers,
Evil Crystals and Claire Danes's stress level.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Here's a fun fact. Stephanie Courtney is Hello from Professive Amazing.
And if you're preparing for the Oscars this Sunday, Dear Movies,
I Love You is here to help. Milli and Casey
are breaking down the predictions, snubs, and the most baffling
nominations from this year, so you can walk into your
oscar pool feeling extremely confident. Plus, the hilarious Paul Rust
(02:18):
joins them talking about his area of expertise, which is
John Hughes Movies.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And in the merch corner, a limited number of MFM
collegiate unisex crew necks are available. I had mine on
this morning. It's so cozy and comfy. Karen's holding it
up now. It's like you didn't have to go to college.
It turns out all I have to do is buy
this sweater, grab yours. Well, they last at exactly rightstore
dot com. And that's what's going on in our network,
(02:44):
exactly right Media.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
And I go first today. So Maren, I believe, suggested
this after reading a book, and the book is Bad
Bridget Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Immigrant Women
by doctors Elaine Ferrell and Leanne McCormick. Fitting So, of course,
as we are heading into Saint Patrick's Day, we do
love to celebrate the holidays here my favorite murder.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
It's what we do.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
But I'm going to zoom in on a very specific
corner of the Irish diaspora, which is Irish girls and
women who emigrated to North America in the late eighteen
hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds. We remember them as tireless, resilient,
selfless women who worked their fingers to the bone to
build a better life for their families. It's very true,
(03:30):
being very related to some irishwomen of this era were distinct,
they were diverse, they were complex, and regardless of whether
history remembers them individually as saints or sinners. Their stories
are always filled with an incredible amount of humanity and
of course humor. So here's a few of the cases
unearthed by the Irish historians Elaine Ferrell and Leanne McCormick
(03:53):
for their book Bad Bridges. There's also a deep dive
podcast that they made called Bad Bridget So if you
want to hear more of these stories, because they've got
a bunch of them, because it's basically like the crime
records of the day, so you can go and listen
to that. So these women basically are referred to as
bad Bridgets because Bridget is a very common Irish name
(04:16):
at the time, and in the nineteenth century, bridget was
a catch all, kind of shitty nickname for Irish women
in general because there were so many domestic workers who
had emigrated to America, so they were the Bridgets were everywhere.
So this is roughly between the years of eighteen fifty
and the early nineteen hundreds where Irish immigrants have arrived
(04:36):
at ports in these cities around the country in huge numbers.
They are mostly poor, they're mostly Catholic, not Protestant, and
they're done and they're deeply unwelcomed by the white Protestant establishment.
So the people that came over in the Mayflower, those
are the Protestants. The Catholics were the ones that were
(04:57):
being persecuted in many places, so that that's why some
Catholics came over. Many people, though, were starving from the
Irish potato famine, which was in fact the British government
with holding food from the Irish. We're just getting everything
real clear here on Saint Patrick's Day, got it. So
when these immigrants arrived, there were signs in shop windows
(05:17):
that said no Irish need apply. There was a lot
of what now seems kind of like really Irish racism,
but it was part of the across the board racism
that I think every immigrant probably dealt with coming into
America at the time. So Irish immigrants were shut out
of decent paying work. They are packed into tenements, they're
(05:38):
over surveilled, they're over policed, and that means they're disproportionately
represented in the prison systems. It sounds familiar because it
is familiar. Early eighteen sixties in New York City, Irish
women account for four out of every five women in
the jails or prisons that are there. Yeah, in turn
of the century Boston, Irish women and girls make up
(06:00):
nearly forty percent of the prison population, despite the city's
overall population being less than twenty percent Irish. And of
course these numbers are used to justify ugly stereotypes that
Irish women are inherently criminal or morally corrupt. But the
second you dig into the actual stories behind these stats,
(06:21):
of course, things are much more complex. So that brings
us to our first Bridget that I'm going to be
talking about. A woman named Bridget McCool. In eighteen oh four,
she arrives in Massachusetts as a teenager. She finds work
as a laundress and in a mill. Then she marries
a guy named Thomas, but it's not a good relationship.
He abandons her within two years and he leaves her penniless.
(06:45):
And because she's a poor Irish Catholic woman, divorce is
basically off the table. It's stigmatized by the church like
it especially back then, it just never happened. But on
top of that, it was expensive and it was time consuming.
And yet a woman abandoned in like a major city
who has no idea where her next meal is coming
from needs a husband for a shot at financial stability.
(07:09):
So Bridget gets remarried without first divorcing Thomas. So she's
a big a mist. When Thomas catches wind of Bridget's
illegal second marriage, he reports her to the point just
go away. I mean, how do you prove better that
you should have been divorced than to be that kind
of guy?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Hey, I left her, Now she's remarried.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm a dush anna nark. What a combination. More so,
he's remarried at this point on, so he basically shoots
himself in the foot because they both wind up being
arrested because they're both adulterers and bigamists. Bridget spends two
years in prison, but when she gets out, her personal
(07:49):
life doesn't improve over the next couple decades. When she
serves out her sentence, she tries to pick up the
pieces of her life. She gets married a third time
again still hasn't gotten that initial first divorce, So she
gets sent back to our reformatory. And once she completes
this sentence, and after her relationship with husband number three DS,
she goes ahead and illegally marries a fourth time. Okay,
(08:11):
good god, she just doubling tripling quadrupling down. This one's
actually a remarriage to her second husband, who financially supported
her after Thomas' husband Number one left. But then once
she's in this marriage, the twist is that Bridget McCool
finds out that her current husband, so number two and
(08:32):
number four one guy, he's been lying this whole time
about being a widower. A woman he'd married years earlier,
who he's no longer with but hadn't divorced, is in
fact still alive.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
This is really romantic because yesterday was mine in Vince's
ten year anniversary.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
That just feels like a great story for this time.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
To show you how it could be and that how
it is not. Yeah, that's exactly I would imagine a
lot less lying from our man, Vince.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Less lying prison time. He is no fucking narc I'll
tell you that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Right, He's certainly no narn No, that is very true.
And you know what, he wouldn't call himself a widower
unless he really was a widow, thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Of course, this betrayal is what finally pushes Bridget to
seek and obtain illegal divorce on the grounds of cruelty.
And finally that story like wraps up. But it's that
kind of thing where it's like, thinking about the immigrant experience.
You are left, you're sent away from your family, often
alone or with maybe one or two other people, trying
to make it in a place like New York City,
(09:33):
Boston wherever, and one thing goes wrong and then.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It all goes totally.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And as much as I want to be like, why
did she keep doing that, it's like, because you'll never
know how fucking difficult life was and is for other people,
So I'm not gonna.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Right, And this idea that especially back then women it
was like you can be a laundress and touch everybody's
shit stained sheets, right, or you could be a sex worker,
Like but that's the worst thing, morall Lee that the
man in the skuy thinks. Okay, So even though Bridget mccool'
is technically a criminal in the eyes of the law,
she's clearly not a bad woman's It basically just drives
(10:11):
home this truth that the law punishes the people who
are just trying to survive the worst usually, and that's
a common theme for sex workers from this era, and
there were a lot of them at the turn of
the twentieth century. In New York City in eighteen seventy,
for example, the New York Times reports that there are
more than ten thousand sex workers at the time when
the city's population is just under one million people, And
(10:34):
that means this is the new how much in today's money,
That means one sex worker for every one hundred New Yorkers.
As doctor Verel and doctor McCormick point out in their book,
the past Irish women and girls take into sex work
is not monolithic. Some are vulnerable, some have no connections
or legal protections in the US. Some are exploited by
(10:55):
bad men right after they arrive. I think I've told
you the story, But my grandmother came here when she
was seventeen with her two sisters. They land in New
York City, they go through Ellis Island, and then they're
supposed to meet a sponsor, and the sponsor is the
person that set them up with work, which is the
reason they were able to come. And sometimes they come
on a loan and the sponsor's like, I fronted you
(11:17):
this money, now you're going to go work here. It's
not great. So they landed and this man meets them
at the docks or whatever, and he's like you know.
My grandmother described it to my aunt, who described it
to me that he was just kind of some blow
hard with like you know, in white linen. And he
drives them into it to a tenement house on the
(11:38):
Lower East Side and walks them up and puts them
into this apartment that's one room basically, and he's like
and I'll be here in the morning and you better
be ready, and da da da, and the door shuts
and he leaves. And my grandmother, who's seventeen years old
at the time, turns to her older sister and her
younger sister and goes, I don't know about you guys,
but I'm getting out of here. And they had a
postcard that they used to have in their head in Longford, Ireland.
(12:03):
Relatives sent them a postcard of this of San Francisco.
So my grandma said, let's go to San Francisco. The
streets are really clean.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
There, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And that's how like our family came to be.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Was like across the entire country.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I'm seventeen seventeen, you to this place and like basically
like fuck this shit, this ain't me it happen.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I want to go somewhere else. Yeah, it's so crazy.
So that idea that like the amount of money and
trust people were putting into the hands of like basic
strangers to say, please take care of my teenager, please
take care of my family member once you get here.
Obviously a whole different story. So many intersex work because
it's preferable to low pay, taxing labor, long hours of
(12:46):
domestic or laundry work. I mean, that's there's some people
who just make that choice, but oftentimes people were forced
into it, and of course there's all the risks that
come with that decision, which is of course disease, infection,
unwanted pregnancies, male violence, and then incarceration. So this brings
us to our second bad bridget, a woman named Marian
Canning who arrives in New York City in eighteen ninety.
(13:09):
When she's eighteen years old. She moves into a tenement
on Mulberry Street in the notorious Five Points neighborhood of Laura, Manhattan.
So my grandma story would be twenty five thirty years later.
Oh wow, Okay, but not crazy far, which is the
weird things. Marian's building has a reputation at the time
(13:31):
that she lives there, multiple stabbings and murders are reported inside.
It's also thought that a brothel is operating out of it,
which is probably how she came to live there. So
fast forward a year after her arriving in the city
is July eighteen ninety one. Marian's heading to her home
one evening when a firefighter named Richard bronk Bank approaches
(13:52):
her outside propositions her for sex. She brings him inside,
and then later on he ends up accusing her of
stealing his water and some of his money. Someone calls
the police. We're not sure which one of the two
of them. Richard claims he calls the police to report
the theft. Marian says she called the police because she
wanted a CoP's help because she was being falsely accused.
(14:15):
Either way, Richard's watch and cash are not found on Marian,
but she's charged with theft and carted off to jail. Anyway,
we'll never know if she was innocent or if she
did rob Richard and high his possessions, some are in
her apartment. What we know is that many sex workers
of this era do pick through their client's pockets, knowing
(14:35):
that the stigma of them hiring a sex worker is
going to keep them from being reported. But even if
Marian is innocent of this crime, which she very well
might be, she's guilty by her association with sex work
in the eyes of the people that they're reporting to,
and she pays the price for it. She's sentenced to
seven years in prison for this unproven theft. Fortunately, her
(15:00):
parents in Ireland find out that she's in prison. They
don't know why, though, and her father ends up writing
a letter to a judge, the judge from Marion's trial,
and to the governor of New York, begging to have
his daughter back and promising to write her course and
asking for clemency for her and the gut. It actually works.
The governor's sympathetic and Marian, who's now twenty one, gets
(15:23):
a pardon, and after less than a year of serving
her sentence, she's freed from jail. Marian's father sends money
for her trip back to Ireland, so she goes back
home and gets married not long after, and as Leanne
McCormick writes, quote, it's unlikely that anyone in her hometown
ever knew the exact details of what had happened to
(15:45):
her in New York. The disgrace attached to being in
prison would have been enough to prevent a marriage taking place,
never mind the additional shame of having been involved in
sex work. So she's incredibly lucky because she has the
kind of family that's like, wait, we can take her
back and we can do something with this. But most
people were like leaving in totally the end, and she
(16:07):
lived a quiet life after that. So both Bridget McCool
and Marian Canning are punished and criminalized for trying to
make their way in a foreign land without money, connections,
or protection. And there, of course are countless stories like this,
but not every bad bridget fits this mold. The next
Bridget I'm going to tell you about seems to commit
crimes because she's really good at it, not because she's desperate.
(16:30):
That sounds fun, right. So we're back in New York
City nineteenth century and the police are doing something revolutionary
for the time, which is they're photographing criminals and compiling
their images into big books that are basically our early
mugshot databases. This is really helpful because so many criminals
take on aliases and basically it's easy to evade the
(16:53):
low as they're just kind of like, no, it's me
Jerry Seinfeldt.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
You know, no, wait, that's Jerry Arcia and you know
I know it, and you know we can't prove it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Oh, so of course mugshots are like such scientific advancement
because now suddenly they can it's not based on memory.
It's like, it's this guy right here. They assemble one
book in eighteen eighty six that features two hundred and
four criminals at large in New York City, and one
of those criminals is old mother Hubbard. No, well, not
the real one, got it, Not the not the one
(17:25):
who started Feeder Dog, got it? No, this is this
was the nickname that this woman got because she just
looked like an unassuming little old lady. Her name is
actually Margaret Brown. Okay, but she's not the Margaret Brown
from the Titanic, the Unsinkable Molly Brown that I've talked
to you.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
About, Bridgets and Margaret's and Brown's and fucking green green
and orange and green and orange.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
We've taken over, we've we've we've been under the skin
of this country for such a long time, the Irish.
So this Margaret Brown, which is I think like being
named Jim Smith probably. There's a lot of unknown about her,
and of course she does have many other names besides
Margaret Brown. We don't even know if that's her real name,
it's just one of the names. She claims her legal
(18:08):
name is Elizabeth Haskins. We don't know if that's true.
She also goes by Eliza Burnham, Jane Hutchinson, and missus
Arthur Young, which I'm taking that one. We don't know how.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Old she is.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Some of the best historical sources place her anywhere from
her sixties to her eighties. Can we see that mug
shot in here, Molly.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
She's another one of those. Is it an old hat?
Is it a young lady? Turn it upside down and
it's a vase for real?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Also is it a wig and a hat?
Speaker 1 (18:40):
I feel like if I hadn't started getting botox at
thirty three, that's what I would look like right now.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, you know. I mean, it's dead on. It's so
youry me, you and your big hats, and you're down
to I love it when people's expression is like literally
fully downturned, where it looks like Margaret can't smile if
she wants to, No, if only she knew she was
surrounded by beautiful balloons. This is where you get to Margaret. Okay,
(19:06):
so I think in that picture, I think she was
If it's eighteen eighty six, I bet you she was
in her late fifties. Yeah, it's one of those.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
What she is is a superstar street thief who's operated
in a large number of cities like Boston, Philly, Saint Louis,
as far away as Texas. Local newspapers have described her
as quote one of the most successful and notorious pickpockets
and shoplifters in the country.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I mean, can we just say, how fun right life? Sorry,
don't fucking steal from people.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
But look, she's like, I stole that hat. I stole
it right off with dummy's head.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So here's what we can piece together about Margaret's life.
She's born in Ireland, she emigrates to the US, she
takes on legitimate domestic work, and she eventually falls in
with a woman named Frederica Mendelbaum or or Mother Mandelbaum.
And we've actually talked about Mother Mandelbaum on this show before.
She's a legendary fence. So remember that the lady that
(20:10):
used to sell stuff like the criminals would come to
her and she was like the middleman.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
No, but it sounds right.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
It's a Mandelbaum, missus Mandelbaum, and she's basically made her
own way with the criminals and by the criminals. She
moves stolen goods and she becomes a maternal figure for
the gang of burglars and thieves and con men and
women on the Lower east Side. Margaret Brown is one
of those people Maren very clearly said no to. Karen
(20:40):
Mandelbaum is Jewish, not Irish. Yeah, and also you covered
her right, that makes sense, all of it. The name
of the episode you covered her and is called is
episode four fourteen Weather Influencers. Remember that hit.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
No, but I'm on so much suit fed right now,
So it's okay, we'll just focus.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah. Is going fast helping or would it be better
to go slow?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Margaret's specialty is pickpocketing, which at the time is mostly
left to children and sex.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Workers, little grubby hands.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, get in there. It's like the best thing about
for me, the musical Annie is just the idea that
it's like, but there's orphans, but there's also children on
the street urchins that are out there just like make
it it work well. Margaret, who has a kind face
and pretty hazel eyes, of course, has a real neck
because she looks like a sad little old lady. Never
(21:34):
expect an old lady to do anything, so she develops
her own signature em O. It's complete with a costume.
She always wears these long calico dresses like Little Bo
Peep or Mother.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Goose picturing my cat.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
For some reason, calico, there's a lot of fur on
the outside patches, okay, basically doing grandma drags, so it
really looks like she's unassuming and right. She targets busy
shops and department stores, where she is her quick, agile
hands to lift things off of oblivious customers. So she's
shoplifting off the shoppers, got it, which is kind of smart, Yeah,
(22:08):
because they're watching the goods, not the people's pockets.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Sure. So one officer describes her as having quote a
specialty of opening handbags, removing the pocketbook, and closing them again. WHOA,
that is as bad.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Acause that's like unnecessary. You're showing off at this point.
You don't need to do that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I didn't notice. Also, I'm thinking back then, but I'm
thinking of like forties fifties, perses those ones with the
big ball, classic snap.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Loud ass class. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
She stashes the stolen loot in a waist bag that
she's wearing under her dress.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
She's also known to use a long wire, which she
might stick out of her pocket or through a shopping basket,
and after identifying her mark the person she's going to
steal from, she'll position the wire so that it gets
tangled in that person's clothing. As Margaret, with all her
grandmother sweetness, apologetically works to untangle the wire, she does
(23:03):
a slide of hand move into the pockets of the
mark and steals their value plits, Oh, I'm so sorry
you okay, over here, yeah, love it. In one documented theft,
Margaret steals two hundred and sixty dollars from a man's satchel.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Okay, nineteen eighteen, ninety eighteen ninety two hundred and sixty.
I'm gonna go twenty one thousand, twenty thousand.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
It's thirty two hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Sorry, did I mean I'm tired? I'm tired.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Also, I won't stop playing this game.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I know you're just like I won't stop letting you
play it and doing it.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Sorry, why would a guy be carrying Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, yeah yeah. She just basically makes bank off one man. Great,
but she keeps going and as skilled as she is
said to be, she does get caught several times. After
one of her arrests, police discover she's wearing an expensive
silk dress under her cheap dress.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
She's got a layer.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Kind of awesome where she's like, I'm actually very stylish.
This is merely a costume. In a criminal career that's
said to span four or five decades, Margaret will serve
time in Chicago, Boston, and New York, including a stint
at Blackwell's Island just a few years before trailblazing journalist
Nellie Bly goes undercover there. Wow, she's seen all the
(24:25):
bad shit. If you want to know the story of
trailblazing journalist Nellie Bly, which is it's pretty good, it's
in episode four oh one. Keep a lid on it,
you know that one. So during a different incarceration at
Joliette in Illinois in the eighteen seventies, this or early work.
Per some sources, Margaret would be in her seventies, but
(24:48):
she tries to escape, which I don't buy it because
I think.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Her, yeah, she probably wanted to look older than she
actually was right and was.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Lying to people.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
They wrote in the book that she was intersect right,
she probably wasn't. And here's baby proof of this theory.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Do you just call me baby? Hey?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Baby? I think I said here's maybe yeah? Did I
What am I on? She reportedly tries to escape from
jail by jumping out of a third story window.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Now just hang out.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
She falls to the ground and almost dies from her injuries,
but she doesn't die from those injuries. She recovers, She
completes her prison sentence, and she continues creating a paper
trail of arrests as she keeps it up into the
eighteen eighties. Her documented arrests stop somewhere around eighteen eighty five.
Whether this is when she dies, when she retires, or
(25:40):
if she just stops getting caught altogether is a mysterious
piece or her story. By the early twentieth century, the
number of Irish immigrants arriving in North America starts to
slow down, discriminations softens, Irish Americans begin seeing real upward mobility,
as Lane Ferrell and Leanne McCormick write in their book
Bad Britain quote. The dominant narrative of Irish immigration to
(26:03):
North America became focused on those who came from humble
beginnings in Ireland and made a better life for themselves.
They or their children went on to become pillars of society.
They became the Kennedys, a political dynasty, or the Eatons,
who established Canada's largest department star chain. But as the
Irish became more upwardly mobile, establishing themselves within North American society,
(26:24):
there was no appetite on either side of the Atlantic
to face up to the reality that many Irish female
immigrants did not succeed, and that many ended up on
the wrong side of the law. Telling the stories of
these women is crucial to our understanding of the Irish
past end quote. And so today as we celebrate Saint
Patrick's Day, we are honoring the Bridgets of all kinds,
(26:45):
and the Margarets and the Marians, and the Annies and
her two sisters, who, as poor women, belonged to a
demographic that is so often omitted from history books. But
now thanks to the tireless efforts of Ferrell and Kormick
and all of the historians that are keeping all of
this history alive for all of us, and the history
(27:06):
of the Bad Bridge it's a live specifically, the stories
are finally being told. And of course there's a movie
in the works starring Daisy Edgar Jones from Normal People
and it's going to be directed by the director rich Pepiat.
But I don't know if you ever saw the twenty
twenty four movie Kneecap about the Irish rappers and they're
(27:27):
super political and it's amazing and their documentary or is
it it's scripted? It seems like what do they call that,
it's like a pseudo doc where it's like scripted, but
it's based on their real lives and how they basically
busted out as these kind of like Irish I guess rappers,
but they like their shit is about like freeing Palestine
(27:48):
and stuff. Like they're hyper political global it's very very
cool and the movie's great and got a lot of
a word. So the Bad Bridgets movie is going to
be made by the Kneecap guy, which is nice deserved,
very on theme, and that's the story of the Bad
Bridgets of early America.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Wow, I love that term bad Bridgets, Like that's just
encapitulates so much to have pictures.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
The Lower east Side. That's five points. There's a tenement house.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Look at that house.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Picture My grandma going, I don't know about you guys,
but I'm not staying here.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Absolutely not, she said.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
She said, no, way too much.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Cletter.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
God, that's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
There's the mugshot database. It wasn't a book. Wow, that's
why Maren called it a database. It literally looks like
mini x rays.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
It does like an X ray board there it is.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Oh my god, if I find one of those in
an estate sale my life.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Could you complete in the basement of a Lower east
Side old tenement.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
House that's in there, just go in, ah, because the
individual pictures in that thing are incredible, I bet you.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean there's like, there's her, and then there's.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
That's like the find someone. Let us know.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
That's like remember in the very beginning of the podcast,
and I was like, oh, always wanted one of those
Dare drug suitcases they would bring to Dare and show
you all the different kinds of drugs. And someone went
in their dad's fucking ex cop garage and sent me that.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
We got it. So we're asking for this now.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Ships we wanted its rare antique. We'll just hang it
there and then when we have pictures for our stories,
we'll put them in that I love it and light
them up.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
We'll use it for good, we promise. Yeah, great job, Yeah,
bad bridgets.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
If that's not a fucking punk band yet, then come on, oh,
lady punk ban.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Let's talk to the kneecap boys about it.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
It's right, all right, Well, mine's actually like a kind
of scammy similar in scam, you know, the scam world,
allthough very different and a little more not a little more,
very more current day. So this story is about a
bright teenager who got caught up in a tall tale
(29:55):
and wound up telling an elaborate hoax that fooled it.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Is it me.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
That fulled half of the media industry in New York
during a time when the media industry in New York
was substantially bigger and you know, more impressive, I think
than it is now. This is the story of Mohammed Islam.
The main sources used for the story are reporting from
The Guardian and The New York Observer, and the rest
of the sources can be found in the show notes.
So it's the fall of twenty thirteen. Take us back,
(30:26):
and we're in Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan. Stuyvesant
is one of New York City's nine specialized high schools,
So they have these high schools. Admission to these schools
is determined only by a single academic entrance exam, which
is all eighth graders take.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's really difficult to get into these schools.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
It's an incredibly competitive environment and the pressure is very high.
If you get in, you still fucking better perform. And
actually that's how school is.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, not that test.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
No, Fame is one of those schools, Like the school
where Fame came from is one of the schools. It
happens to just be performing arts that one. All the
other ones are based more on Sorry.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
No, no, I just when you said that about the schools,
I thought of the Fame High School. But then I
was like, don't try to change the subject to what
you like talking about. So that's kind of exciting that
it is.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Kate went to that high school Stysant. You bet am
I saying it right?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
She says, it's right.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
What the fuck? God damn it, I'll walk out there.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
That's great, Like hot lunch jam you stood on the
table in the cafeteria and stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Not the fame one, this one, oh, this one. Math
and science school. Yeah, not fame.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Not fame.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
She could have done both, but the fame of math
and science.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah whatever that for really nursical.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
That musical is the musical we want to see.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, these are some of the best high schools in
the country, and it's generally agreed upon that among these schools,
Stuyvesant is the best in the city. I know. These
schools draw from all over the city, and Stuyvesant especially
has a high proportion of students who are first generation Americans,
often the children of immigrants who have made tremendous sacrifices
(32:11):
for their children's education. So there's a lot of children
of immigrants. However, there's just obviously, you know, a history
of racism going on because it's a hard test to take,
and a lot of students who don't go to these
schools that are you get it.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well, you know what it makes me think of is
the thing that happened where there was testing like that
and they discovered, you know, like the systemic racism of
that time, where it would be word problems in math,
and it'd be like, if so many people can sit
on this length of sofa and so many people can
sit in link of sofa, how long does the sofa
have to be to fit this family? I've totally made
that up something like that. But the fact that they
(32:50):
were using the word sofa instead of couch, so a
bunch of kids who are culturally I never heard the
word before, were like, I don't even know how to
work on this problem, right, realize that certain and I
think this study was being done about black students that
were taking these tests, and like, why do none of
them do well? And it's like, yeah, because that no
one's used the word sofa in their household.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Ever, that's a systemic racism issue.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Okay, So these kids who make it into these very
difficult to get into schools often grow up with a
huge amount of pressure to perform very well academically.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
So there's a lot of pressure going on.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
They're very smart, but you know, they can't be like
me and just not go to half of your high
school period time. So the fall of twenty thirteen, a
lot of pressure.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
If you're an immigrant child whose parents gave everything up
to bring you to can you imagine to go to
high school.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
It's the fall of twenty thirteen, and Mohammed Islam is
one of these such students. He's a soft spoken sixteen
year old whose parents immigrated from Bangladesh. Mohammed is a
junior in high school, and he's known around school to
be brilliant in a school where everyone is pretty much brilliant,
so that's high achievement.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
He runs the school's investing club.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I was in that.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I was the secretary in which kids who are interested
in the stock market makes simulated trades with fake money,
just testing, just for fun the waters. But then it
starts to get around the school that on the side,
Mohammed Mo, as he's known, is actually making real investments
with real money, so it's not simulated. Turns out, the
rumor is that he's doing very well with these investments.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I don't mean to press you, but is that legal
for like a high school student to be day trading.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I would assume you have to be eighteen? Yeah right, yeah,
but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Maybe I'll learn something new as you tell me.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
In November twenty thirteen, Mo appears in Alistical remember those
on Business Insider of kid investors. It's like a twenty
under twenty, So I guess you can do that. Yeah,
I guess I can gambling.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Right, It does or like something that should be more official,
but I guess it's like regulated. I guess under twenty
can still be over eighteen or under twenty, but doesn't
seem likely.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
No. He tells Business Insider that he had gotten his
start in penny stocks and then worked his way into
higher stakes securities. He says, quote, my main markets now
are crude oil futures and gold futures, and I trade
small to mid cap equities when the futures don't present
a good trade. It just makes me think of trading
(35:29):
places which Vince and I watch every Christmas. All I
know about stocks and that's what he knows about, So
it's just stuff like that that I know nothing about.
It's unclear how Moe first connects with the reporter of
that Business Insider story, but at that point he hasn't
told anyone that he's made a serious amount of money
with his trades. But somehow, over the course of the
(35:49):
next year, rumors begin to swirl around Stuyvesant that mo
has made a staggering amount of money, and people seem
to believe somehow, the number that gets thrown around, that
gets tied to him is seventy two million dollars that
he has made in some casual day trade. Yeah, which
is an outrageous and basically unheard of profit for anyone
(36:12):
who's been trading for just a couple of years, let
alone a high school student. So it's wild, it's big.
A whole year goes by, and then in December of
twenty fourteen, New York Magazine includes an article about MO
and its annual Reasons to Love New York issue Money
of Money, Kids Money, Kids Money Kids opening for bad Bridget.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And Zebulan this weekend.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
It sounds like what happened is a parent of another
student at Stuyvesant heard about MO and then pass the
story along to his colleagues at the magazine. Just how
rumors start and continue, and then a reporter named Jessica
Presler is assigned to cover the story. So Jessica's story
unquestionably categorizes the seventy two million figure as a rumor.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
She's like a journals, She's not going to be like
it's true, she writes. Quote.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Rumors on Wall Street can be powerful. A whisper can
turn into a current that moves markets, driving a stock
price up or sending it tumbling. There may only be
one other place where gossip holds such sway, and that
is high schools school.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I was going to see that.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
It's so clear that it's like I heard he made
seventy two million, seventy two millions, seventy It sounds like
a joke amount, Yeah, because it's absurd.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
She writes that Mo is shy about confirming that exact number,
but says that his net worth is in the quote
high eight figures, okay, quote, so he's kind of confirming it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
In the article, Jessica writes about sitting down with Mo
and two of his friends who act as his spokesman.
I think they're a lot more gregarious and outgoing and
most pretty shy, most miles at the reporter and one
of his friends, a boy named Patrick, says, quote, he's
quiet today and like they're almost just like talking for him.
(38:00):
The other friend, a teen named Demir, adds, quote, this
is our third meeting of the day. We saw a
real estate agent, a lawyer, and you end quote, and
Jessica writes that they have a meeting with a hedge
fund guy next. So they're like acting like movers and
shakers there.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
But it's like, you're young, you have your whole life
to do boring shit like that, like that idea where
it's just making money, make money, but also just kind
of like, hey, listen, we've got to go meet with
a really state agent. It's like, well, enjoy your meeting.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
It's almost like that's like thirty somethings real'll do, and
it's like annoying, like that makes more sense for a
teenager to do it, to.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Get into where it's like we're going to spend money
in that.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, it's a little less disgusting, but still. The three
say that they plan to launch a hedge fund up
their own when Moe turns eighteen, once he's old enough
to get a broker dealer license, so maybe he can deal,
but he doesn't can't get a license. This whole interview
takes place at a downtown cafe where the boys eat
caviar and drink cold pressed apple juice.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
No, they're babies, what a combo?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
H that can't be. Yeah, it's really that's disgusting.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Mo Hint said he's he's shopping for a BMW and
apartments and even though his parents won't let him move
out until he's eighteen. And at the end of the interview,
Demir says, quote, my father has a quote.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
It's really dope, says the teenate.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
You can rob a bank with a gun, but you
can rob the whole world with a bank.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I kind of fucking love.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Oh shit, Yeah, I think we've really learned that here
in twenty twenty six, that that is, you sure have
absolutely not an exaggeration.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Now, before the article is published, New York Magazine's fact
checkers get in contact with Mo asking for a proof
that his claims of an income in the high eight
figures is true. The fact checker winds up going down
to Stuyvesant so that Mo can provide a bank statement,
and Moe gives the magazine what appears to be a
Chase Bank statement confirming an eight figure balance. So they
(39:59):
did do fair dude, diligent, jude, jude diligence.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
You can't say that, not on Saint Patrick's day.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yes, so many drugs.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
The day the article is published, it completely blows up
everyone who sits at a desk in twenty fourteen, who
spends some of their workdays scrolling on Twitter, reads this
article let's say goes viral. Yeah, it gets picked up
by other outlets. The New York Post, of course, runs
the story and puts that seventy two million dollar number
in the headline, kind of being you know, they're not
(40:33):
the biggest fact checkers of all times, so they're just like.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Because you said it was like the twenty teens, right, fourteen, Yeah,
so it's people are getting into clickbait exactly. People love
a clickbait headline click.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Sure do, doesn't matter if it's true, and it's picked
up by many other sites, and like kind of then
treat it as fact in a way.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yes, I have a little experience with that, as do
you sure do.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
But then pretty quickly, like a bunch of people, stop
and really think about the details. A return of seventy
two million dollars in just a couple of years of
investing is basically basically impossible, like not even just unheard of,
It's not possible. Business reporters immediately start to have doubts,
as Ken Curson from The New York Observer will later write, quote,
(41:18):
even if this working class kid had somehow started with
one hundred thousand dollars as a high school freshman on
day one at STY, he'd have needed to average a
compounded annualized return of something like seven hundred and ninety
six percent over the three years since then.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
He says, come on, man, end quote.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So Mo and Demir are invited to appear on CNBC
to talk about this their investment strategy because they're fucking
wiz kids.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Hey man.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
But while they're on their way to the studio, you know,
as the story is blowing up, the Business Insider reporter,
who've had featured Mo on the list of the kid
investor story, calls and starts asking them some follow up questions.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Late.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
At this point, Demir confirms to the reporter that that
seventy two million dollar number is a rumor, but he says,
quote pretty sure Mo is a great trader and a
genius end quote like su what's it called dialing it back? Oh?
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, having to walk it back.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah. The CNBC studios are across the Hudson River in
New Jersey, so by the time the boys get there,
they're pretty rattled because clearly people are onto them.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Mo at first doesn't.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Want to get out of the car even which is
my god, I've been there. Eventually, some producers coax the
boy into the building and they're brought to the office
of CNBC's editor in chief. Like so now adults are
like asking them more questions and that you might get
in trouble now.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Also just the idea of coaxing them out of the car,
just like, look, we got Capri Son's Atari or whatever.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Caviar and apple, fresh pressed apple juices.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
What kind of video games do you like? Boys? All
the fresh press cold press apple juice you could drink.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
And this man who's the CNBC's editor in chief used
to be an editor at the Wall Street Journal, so
he knows.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
What questions to ask.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
He starts asking Moo explain his strategy and say exactly
how much money is involved, you know, like don't throw
out rumor numbers. Motrice is best to answer. And then
the guy says it isn't seventy two million, is it?
And Moe confirms that it is not and claims that
he's made a profit closer to three million, which is
a lot less than seventy two million.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Still impressive for a teen.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Some would say it's sixty nine million less, That's what
I would say, but who are we to say? It
is such a hilarious lie. And also I feel like
I remember reading that story when it was thealistical story. Yeah,
we're just like, what are these kids doing?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Totally?
Speaker 2 (43:48):
The kids know what's going on.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Right, maybe I could do it, No, you can't.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And then the boys decline to go through with the
on air interview, which is smart, but CNBC reports what
they have learned, So the fucking is up that very evening,
Demir and Mo both seventeen years old, mind you hire
a crisis PR firm and then head straight from CNBC
to their offices to the crisis PR's office because they're
(44:13):
like fuck, But like they never It's like they were
just kind of nudging this thing along that the adults
were all offering them. They were seventeen years old, and
they're like, let's just tell them we did this, Let's
tell them we did that. Like it's kind of funny,
and let's pretend like we have, you know, the s
bravado that we don't have.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, like we're exceptionally successful, right, but like the second
you go seventy two million dollars on penny stock, right,
or whatever. I mean, that's the thing that sticks out
to me of like, remember you're playing penny machines, you know.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I think penny machines are like how you get to
hang out and oops, get free drinks all night.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah that's right, but you probably wouldn't get the Jackpodectly
of seventy two million off pennies.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
To No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
So once they get this PR firm, they sit down
with a reporter from the New York Observer and the
whole truth comes out. They tell them we were lying.
That the three million dollar profit that Moe claimed later
to have is also a lie, and that Muhammad has
only been placing simulated trades.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
There's no money at all.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
But I feel like they were just giving the adults
what they were asking for.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, you know what I mean, we're extraordinary, we get
good grades, we go to this rat school, we can
do anything.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
We just lied about dumb or shit when we were
in high school. They lied about something that adults cared about.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah. They like instead of being like, I'm going to
be at Georgie's house, right, and then you're like I'm
going to be at Karen's house and then the big
lies we're drinking behind the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Those aren't my cigarettes. Those are Karen's cigarette. She asked
me to hold them for her.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
You know how Georgia loves clothes, mom, She does it
every time I have to hold them.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, so he hasn't made any money at all, and
Mo does say that if he had been investing money,
he would have done really well.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
But it doesn't Yeah, I know me too. Mo tells the.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Reporter that his parents are furious with him about his lies.
He says, quote, Honestly, my dad wanted to disown me.
My mom basically said she'd never talk to me. Their
morals are that if I lie about it and don't
own up to it, then they can no longer trust me.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
He's a fucking teenager.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
He adds that he's been sleeping over at a friend's
house because his parents are so upset with him. He
doesn't want to say who, but it seems like Demir
is the one, and it seems like they're having a
great time and just like being teenagers. Yeah, and kind
of like reveling in this. It's like this thing that
keeps moving forward even though it shouldn't have a long
time ago.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah, they made themselves a story, right, and the adults
fell for it. And there is a victory in that
if you're a seventeen year old in high school.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Totally like these fucking actual, like business people believed you. Meanwhile,
on Twitter, Jessica Presler, remember the journalist who wrote that
original story, saying not saying it was true, but saying
these are the rumors. She defends her story, saying that
she saw the bank statement and that the New York
Magazine is in a financial publication anyways, so it's not
(47:10):
like a Wall Street journal where the questions would have
been asked about the actual earnings. But that's a misstep
because Jessica had been hired to work on a new
investigations team at Bloomberg, which is a financial publication, and
Bloomberg winds up we're sending the job off for I
think she kind of gets some egg on her face
from it. But Jessica does stay at New York Magazine
(47:32):
and goes on to report some very juicy stories in
the future, and she does have a redemption arc. She
will later say that she had a funny feeling about
the story and asked her editor to check it out
before running it, which is what they're supposed to do,
and that that didn't happen. New York Magazine changes the
headline on the story to take out that seventy two
million dollar number and adds a note at the top
(47:54):
explaining the situation.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
The note says, quote, we were duped.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Ali wrote a note to me saying I was a
CUB reporter at Bloomberg when all of this was happening.
Whoa Alli, my fucking incredible researcher. Yeah, there was a
she said there was a commotion. Jessica Pressler does fine.
In the end, she writes the article that becomes the
basis for the movie Hustlers. Yes, right, and later winds
(48:20):
up reporting the Anna Delvi story.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Oh so she does Okay, she is fine. Yeah, she
like proves herself well.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
And I think doesn't that kind of point back to
that's the kind of journalism, like you were saying, it's
not finance journalism.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
It's grabby personality based.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yes, it's very internetty, like can you believe this is real? Whatever?
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (48:40):
And that is like it's almost like human interest of
did you even know there was a person like this?
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Right? Right?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
So the New York Observer reporter Ken Curson wraps up
his article like this quote. No one asked for my opinion,
but I'm going to provide it anyway.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Love that cool.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Having sat with these kids for a good bit on
a tough day, they got carried way. They're not children,
but they're not quite adults either, And at least mister
Islam was literally quaking as we spoke. So I feel
like his like boisterous friends were like, you know, say it, dad,
and like it just became bigger than it was supposed to.
(49:15):
And it just so happened that they were in fucking
Manhattan and so it became huge.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Also, don't you think that not his name is Mo,
Mo's friend. There's one guy in there, and you know
the type, and he's mister big personality. He's the personality figh,
he's so fun, energy, energy, energy, ideas, ideas, good times.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah, he's the he spread that rumor. I bet hell, yes,
you know what my friend?
Speaker 3 (49:39):
Did you know? My friend?
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Like you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna eat
fucking caviar and apple juice all day? Do you want
to come with us? Like? Yeah, there's that where the
guy that has the goods. Yeah, they're like, we're going
to do a bunch of stuff because of you.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
You're our smartest friend. We're going to spread a rumor
about you.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I'm the loudest friend.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I'm the loudest, you're the smartest.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Let's do this. Now, there's a third guy, because there's
always a third guy always.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
So yeah, they should have known better. But New York
and the New York Post probably should have as well.
This story smelled fishy the instant it appeared, and a
quick dance with a calculator probably would have saved these
young men and a couple of reporters some embarrassment.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Oh that's his quote. A quick dance with a calculator
is such a funny way.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yeah. Yeah, that's the part of Ken's quote.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
And that is the story of a rumor that swept
the halls of Stuyvesant High School and briefly fooled the world,
or at least some of the world story of Mohammed Islam.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
As you were kind of like wrapping it down, It's like,
these are kids at an incredibly competitive high school. Yeah,
we're excelling at anything. You have to do it, and
you're used to being top three in your class now
right bottom twenty right, it makes sense that you'd be well,
maybe this will make me special, maybe this will make
(50:54):
me stand out.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Let me spread this rumor. It goes a little too far.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
We got money, baby, We're getting invited a party.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
My parents are mad at me. Oh shit, I.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Have to talk to a reporter and it's making me shaite.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah, but I'm bringing my friend, so he's going to
do it.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
He's going to mouth off. She there's your podcast right there. There,
you go there it is.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well, thank you and for listening everyone, and thank you
for you know, Saint Patrick.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Do you think maybe we thank Saint Patrick for getting
rid of all the snakes. Oh that's what he did, right,
I think?
Speaker 3 (51:29):
So? Okay, I have Wellvince will like that he hates snakes.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, I should go over there.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Okay, we're in green celebrate thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
I couldn't blar I found this. The green I had
on was such a non green color, and I was like, oh,
I don't really have anything, and then all of a sudden,
I look over.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
You have to wear yeah, you have to wear it,
have to represent definitely, well you did it, and thanks
for representing here everyone.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
We appreciate you guys listening.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
Hey, and just remember you can do anything if you
have two sisters along with you, because that's really the
that's the magic of all of this.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
My right, you are, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis.
Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 2 (52:14):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Our editor is Aristotle Lascevedo.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Our researchers are Mayor McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
the remind me buttons.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
That's the best way you can support our show. Goodbye,
Hosts And Creators
Georgia Hardstark
Karen Kilgariff
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