Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
Speaker 1: to remind you that my brand new book is coming
Speaker 1: out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
Speaker 1: order it right now at snaffoodashbook dot com. Trust me,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
Speaker 1: just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
Speaker 1: and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
Speaker 1: turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
Speaker 1: to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
Speaker 1: and check out all the tour details and dates, or
Speaker 1: just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffou Season
Speaker 1: three Formula six last time on Snaffou, the temperance movement
Speaker 1: swept America. Every abolitionist was a teetotal Mabel Walker. Willebrandt
Speaker 1: was hired to lead prohibition enforcement.
Speaker 3: There's one way it can be done, get at the
Speaker 3: source of supply.
Speaker 1: And much of prohibition enforcement falls strangely to the US
Speaker 1: Treasury Department, which.
Speaker 4: Is another way of saying we're going to use it
Speaker 4: for political payoffs.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighteen in France, the Western Front. Yep, we're
Speaker 1: a long way from the speakeasies of New York, but
Speaker 1: we're here in the rolling French countryside to meet a
Speaker 1: new character in our He's sitting inside a combat tank
Speaker 1: clattering across the bloody battlefield. His name George Cassidy, and
Speaker 1: he's under attack. The tank rolls down a slope as
Speaker 1: shells explode around it, and then it sinks into a
Speaker 1: crater of mud. Its steel armor shields George and his
Speaker 1: crew from the bright yellow bursts of artillery flame, but
Speaker 1: it can't protect them from the mist that's engulfed the field.
Speaker 1: World War one's most insidious weapon, mustard gas. On the battlefield.
Speaker 1: Poison gas was turning war into a new kind of nightmare.
Speaker 1: Both Germany and the US were experimenting with lethal gases
Speaker 1: that were quickly becoming the deadliest instruments in the history
Speaker 1: of warfare. The Great War had a nickname the Chemist's War,
Speaker 1: and now Mustard gas seeps into George Cassidy's tank and
Speaker 1: into the eyes, noses, and lungs of the tankers. George
Speaker 1: and his two crewmates choke at the controls as the
Speaker 1: machine grinds to a halt. The deadly mist causes the
Speaker 1: tankers to go blind, vomit, and start losing consciousness. The
Speaker 1: other two men pass out. George holds on, but poisoned
Speaker 1: by the gas. George is too weak to move, blinking
Speaker 1: and struggling to breathe while the battle rages around him.
Speaker 1: His crewmates have fallen silent. Finally, footsteps approach the tank.
Speaker 1: George hears hands banging on the outside, shouts shadows over
Speaker 1: the viewport as men peer inside. George's heart stops. Is
Speaker 1: it the enemy? The door swings open, and thank god,
Speaker 1: it's the Yanks. George is rescued, carried up out of
Speaker 1: the crater in the pool of gas. George makes it
Speaker 1: off the battlefield alive, but He's devastated to find out
Speaker 1: he's the only survivor from his crew. In nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: when a million American soldiers in France begin the journey home,
Speaker 1: George is among the troops packed like sardines into fleets
Speaker 1: of liners and cargo ships, leaving the blood soaked trenches
Speaker 1: of the Western Front behind them. As he gazes across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, George coughs. His lungs are pocked with chemical burns.
Speaker 1: For the rest of his life, every cough reminds him
Speaker 1: of the horrors he'd faced in the war, horrors that
Speaker 1: showed how scientific advancements could be co opted to create
Speaker 1: weapons of mass murder. But now George is heading home,
Speaker 1: and soon he'll be starting a new life. As the
Speaker 1: shores of the good old us of A come into view,
Speaker 1: George is pondering a very important question, Where the hell
Speaker 1: can he get a drink back home? That question was
Speaker 1: at the center of another raging war, one in which
Speaker 1: he would soon find himself smack dab in the middle.
Speaker 1: I'm Ed Helms and this is Snaffo, a show about
Speaker 1: history's greatest screw ups. This is season three, The story
Speaker 1: of Formula six. How Prohibition's war on alcohol went so
Speaker 1: off the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people.
Speaker 1: Today we're riding shotgun with the bootleggers, because men like
Speaker 1: George Cassidy didn't come home from the fight in France
Speaker 1: just to take the new laws laying down. As Mabel
Speaker 1: Walker Willebrandt became prohibitions champion, George Cassidy would become one
Speaker 1: of its greatest defires, and the two sides they represented
Speaker 1: were about to clash. In nineteen twenty two, two years
Speaker 1: into Prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was settling into her gig
Speaker 1: as head honcho of Prohibition Enforcement to get a sense
Speaker 1: of how the new US Assistant Attorney General approached her job.
Speaker 1: There are a few things about her you should know.
Speaker 1: Little Mabel grew up crisscrossing the Great Plains in a
Speaker 1: nine by twelve foot tent pitched in the fields of Kansas, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and Oklahoma. Her family was always on the move, fleeing
Speaker 1: the latest natural disaster, tornadoes, ice storms, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Mabel's earliest memory from childhood was of a flash flood
Speaker 1: rushing through their tent, her mom taking the kitchen table
Speaker 1: and using it as a raft to keep her daughter
Speaker 1: Afloat alive. A little like that time my cub scout
Speaker 1: trip got rained out, except I had a home to
Speaker 1: go back to. That experience had quite an impact on
Speaker 1: young Mabel.
Speaker 4: She was a very serious woman.
Speaker 1: You don't say, Daniel, okrint. She woke up every day.
Speaker 4: The first thing she did was taken an ice cold bath,
Speaker 4: which gives an indication. I think of how tough she was.
Speaker 1: Cold lunging is all the rage these days. I guess
Speaker 1: Mabel was just ahead of the curve. In any case,
Speaker 1: the Ice Queen didn't get to become the highest ranking
Speaker 1: woman in the United States government by waking up each
Speaker 1: day to whistling birds opening her bedroom shades and the
Speaker 1: soft glow of the morning sun. No, she woke up
Speaker 1: every morning with her goddamn game face on. For starters,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just Satan's last stronghold, New York City that
Speaker 1: was flouting the law. In Mabel's backyard, the supposed Dry
Speaker 1: Citadel speakeasies were popping up on every corner. By some estimates,
Speaker 1: there were three thousand in the nation's capital. But Mabel's
Speaker 1: headaches extended well beyond the metropolises. Of the Northeast. Also
Speaker 1: thumbing its nose at Prohibition was the fine city of Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 1: which had turned into an unofficial headquarters for illegal drinking.
Speaker 1: Booze was flowing, and so were the criminals delivering it. Bootleggers,
Speaker 1: as they were called. The term goes back to the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, when traders slid their flasks of liquor into
Speaker 1: their boots. During Prohibition, bootlegging became a household term banks
Speaker 1: in no small part to the notorious Georgia syndicate, the
Speaker 1: Savannah Four. Their leader was a guy named Willie Harr.
Speaker 1: Willie owned and controlled a fleet of ships that transported
Speaker 1: liquor from Scotland and France to another British territory, the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: From there it was shipped to a dozen different states
Speaker 1: in the US, often hidden in secret man made caves
Speaker 1: up and down the US coast. Willie Harr didn't exactly
Speaker 1: keep a low profile. His nick name was the Admiral
Speaker 1: of Bootleggers, and his Savannah Four had a recreational baseball squad.
Speaker 1: Their team name presumably slapped across their uniforms, the Bootlegger Team.
Speaker 1: I assume they were part of an all criminal baseball
Speaker 1: league along with the tax Dodgers. Sorry, I had to
Speaker 1: go there. Mabel was determined to bust them up and
Speaker 1: even sent a dozen Prohibition Bureau agents to Savannah to
Speaker 1: do the job. But Willy Harr's ring had judges politicians,
Speaker 1: and it turns out prohibition agents on its payroll, and
Speaker 1: those agents, convinced to look the other way, came back
Speaker 1: from Savannah empty handed. I hope they at least brought
Speaker 1: back some bootlegger team swag for Mabel. Willie Harror would
Speaker 1: have a future run in with Mabel. Put a pin
Speaker 1: in that for a second. But as brazen as Horror
Speaker 1: in the Savannah four might have been, the most brazen
Speaker 1: bootlegger of all was operating right under Mabel's nose, which
Speaker 1: brings us back to good old George Cassidy.
Speaker 2: On the ship coming back, they had a poll about
Speaker 2: who was in favor of prohibition, and out of the
Speaker 2: two thousand, five hundred guys on the troop carrier, only
Speaker 2: ninety eight wanted prohibition.
Speaker 1: After George got off the ship from France, he headed
Speaker 1: home to Virginia, and he had plenty of stories for
Speaker 1: his pals.
Speaker 2: He was just so damn gregarious.
Speaker 1: That's Fred Cassidy, George's son.
Speaker 2: He didn't give a shit who you were, where you were, from,
Speaker 2: what you did, or any of that stuff. Come on up,
Speaker 2: have a drink with me, you know, and we'll have
Speaker 2: a good time. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: George party then style.
Speaker 2: He was a dapper dude. If you ever saw him
Speaker 2: in his Irish War Veterans' National Commander's uniform, you would
Speaker 2: have thought he was a general of the most powerful
Speaker 2: army in the world or something.
Speaker 1: George also had a signature greenfelt hat that gave him
Speaker 1: an unmistakable look. A snappily dressed party animal with a
Speaker 1: trove of war stories, Georgie was one of a kind,
Speaker 1: but he struggled to transition back to civilian life. Why
Speaker 1: poison The mustard gas George had sucked in destroyed his lungs,
Speaker 1: which made it hard for him to find work. Before
Speaker 1: the war, George had been a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Speaker 2: When he came back, he couldn't pass their physical to
Speaker 2: get rehired.
Speaker 1: George couldn't find a steady gig anywhere else either. He
Speaker 1: put his body on the line for his home country,
Speaker 1: and now it was letting him down. When he finally
Speaker 1: did find work, it wasn't the kind of job that
Speaker 1: had his parents bursting with pride. You see, George didn't
Speaker 1: grow up in a household of drinkers, really the opposite.
Speaker 1: George's Irish American father had been sober for decades. His mom,
Speaker 1: a brit made herself at home in the USA by
Speaker 1: becoming a proud card carrying member of the Women's Christian
Speaker 1: Temperance Union. But none of that rubbed off on George.
Speaker 2: He liked to imbibe. Everybody around my dad liked to imbibe.
Speaker 1: Which isn't a surprise given George was from the moonshining
Speaker 1: capital of the world.
Speaker 2: There was a ton of moonshining going on in Virginia.
Speaker 2: A lot of the Virginia farmers have their stills out
Speaker 2: in a discrete.
Speaker 1: Area in Appalachia. Moonshining had been prevalent since the Civil War,
Speaker 1: when moonshiners distilled illegal liquor at night, and then drivers
Speaker 1: or bootleggers smuggled it across the region. When prohibition passed,
Speaker 1: this was all supposed to get shut down right. Well,
Speaker 1: turns out it ain't so easy. To change an entire
Speaker 1: culture overnight. But that was essentially the task facing the
Speaker 1: prohibition agents under Mabel Walker Willebrandt a tall order in
Speaker 1: a place like Franklin County, Virginia, nestled in the beautiful
Speaker 1: Blue Ridge Mountains, where ninety nine out of every hundred
Speaker 1: people were connected to the moonshine business. One agent reported
Speaker 1: back to DC on the pointlessness of even bothering the rests.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry to report that at this time it is
Speaker 5: almost impossible to get a conviction.
Speaker 1: In any case.
Speaker 5: Juries are in sympathy with the bootlegger and the moonshiner.
Speaker 1: And you know when the moonshiners themselves included judges, politicians,
Speaker 1: and the local police, how are you supposed to stop that?
Speaker 1: People like George came back from the war looking for
Speaker 1: work and saw an opportunity. Here's one American artillery captain
Speaker 1: who was in the Reserve Corps writing to his fiance.
Speaker 5: It looks to me like the moonshine business is going
Speaker 5: to be pretty good. Some of us want to get
Speaker 5: in on the ground floor. At least we want to
Speaker 5: get in there in time to lay in us alive
Speaker 5: for future consumption.
Speaker 1: That's thirty four year old future president Harry Truman. Fellas
Speaker 1: Like Harry saw bootlegging as a lucrative investment opportunity, George
Speaker 1: Cassidy saw it as something else, a lifeline. You see,
Speaker 1: George was running out of options. He was a disabled
Speaker 1: veteran out of work, which is why ship liquor from
Speaker 1: his neighborhood to money drinkers across DC felt like a
Speaker 1: necessary career choice. He started small, just a couple of
Speaker 1: bottles for friends and friends of friends, then a few more,
Speaker 1: and a few more. His Blue Ridge Virginia product must
Speaker 1: have been pretty good, because pretty soon the orders were
Speaker 1: flowing one way, and George kept the moonshine flowing the other.
Speaker 1: George's lifeline was becoming a gold mine because George's clients, well,
Speaker 1: they were the kind of people who liked to meet
Speaker 1: at the Hotel Varnum in Washington, d C. The Varnum's
Speaker 1: a grand old hotel at the corner of C Street
Speaker 1: in New Jersey Avenue, a meeting place. Outside, George sees
Speaker 1: two well dressed white men. He gets out and shakes
Speaker 1: their hands, then heads around back to make a delivery.
Speaker 1: He hands off a small paper package for his next delivery,
Speaker 1: George grabs two bags out of his trunk, one in
Speaker 1: each hand. George walks along New Jersey Avenue, nodding and
Speaker 1: smiling to passers by. He was the friendly sort. George
Speaker 1: then crosses the street at Independence Avenue towards his next stop,
Speaker 1: a white building with a very large, very conspicuous dome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably the one you're thinking of. That would be
Speaker 1: the US Capitol building. George's delivery route doesn't take him
Speaker 1: into the Capitol itself, but rather into the surrounding buildings
Speaker 1: where members of Congress have their offices. Stepping into the
Speaker 1: House Office building, George gives a nod to the security
Speaker 1: fellaws at the door, and with his bags full of booze,
Speaker 1: walks right in. That's right. Among the buyers for George's
Speaker 1: top quality of Virginia hooch are the nation's lawmakers. His
Speaker 1: clientele are powerful men of every political party and persuasion.
Speaker 1: You see, George isn't just any bootlegger. He's become the
Speaker 1: go to bootlegger for Congress. And Congress well they're pretty thirsty. Now.
Speaker 1: Mabel's not blind to this. She makes regular visits to
Speaker 1: the Capitol. Sometimes she even sits in the gallery of
Speaker 1: the Senate Chamber room to hear the nation's lawmakers present
Speaker 1: their plans.
Speaker 3: During the closing days of a recent session, a senator
Speaker 3: objected to and prevented the passage of important legislation while
Speaker 3: in such a condition of intoxication that he had to
Speaker 3: hold his desk to keep himself upright. I have become
Speaker 3: well acquainted with the fact that many Congressmen and senators
Speaker 3: who vote for the bills designed to aid prohibition enforcement
Speaker 3: are persistent violators of the law.
Speaker 1: As people across the country were now drinking more than ever,
Speaker 1: and bootleggers across the Eastern Seaboard were running wild, Congress
Speaker 1: was too shitfaced to even pretend that they were going
Speaker 1: to do something about it. Mabel's corrupt bureau agents were
Speaker 1: proving to be just as worthless. It was time for
Speaker 1: Mabel to take things into her own hands.
Speaker 6: The early twentieth century is a uniquely poisonous time for
Speaker 6: a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: That's historian Deborah Blum. She says that everywhere across the country,
Speaker 1: from Mabel's DC to New York all the way to
Speaker 1: San Francisco, industrial chemistry was becoming more and more a
Speaker 1: part of everyday life for everyday Americans.
Speaker 6: We're seeing the rise of industrial chemistry, and there's a
Speaker 6: telluge of new chemical compounds created by industries in the
Speaker 6: United States, which is, you know, one of the countries
Speaker 6: that really takes the forefront of the industrial manufacturing age chemistry,
Speaker 6: figuring out that they can take all of these poisonous
Speaker 6: substances that occur in nature and recreate the mental.
Speaker 1: Laboratory arsenic mercury, chloroform, carbolic acid. I would go on,
Speaker 1: but the last time I had a close encounter with
Speaker 1: a beaker, I was watching the Muppets. No no, no, no, Beaker.
Speaker 1: I told you never to talk to me like that,
Speaker 1: because I can't understand it. That's a little shout out
Speaker 1: to my eighties kids out there. Point is, products of
Speaker 1: rapidly advancing chemistry were everywhere in pharmacies, doctors' offices, grocery stores, kitchens,
Speaker 1: and of course also in bars, where speakeasy back rooms
Speaker 1: were starting to look a lot more like chemistry labs.
Speaker 1: The reason classy clubs were hiring actual chemists to make
Speaker 1: sure that the illegal liquor they were serving to high
Speaker 1: end customers wasn't toxic and was only going to fuck
Speaker 1: you up the right way. This is the prohibition, you know,
Speaker 1: the razzle dazzle of the flappers under the electric lights,
Speaker 1: where the big band served up bouncy rhythms and the
Speaker 1: bartenders served up potent cocktails. At least that's the front room.
Speaker 1: But the back room it was all chemistry.
Speaker 2: Baby.
Speaker 1: Remember, clean and legal alcohol had all been poured into
Speaker 1: the sewers at this point what was left could be dodgy.
Speaker 1: So to keep their customers safe, top speakeasy managers would
Speaker 1: turn to chemistry.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm here to interview for the chemist position.
Speaker 1: I require one dollars payment. Oh, wise guy, A, so
Speaker 1: you want your patrons dead?
Speaker 5: I'll take you to the bus.
Speaker 1: But what if you were running a bar and couldn't
Speaker 1: afford the high fees of a newly in demand chemical brainiac,
Speaker 1: Or if you were a drinker who didn't have pockets
Speaker 1: deep enough to order your cocktails in the main dining
Speaker 1: room of the Cotton Club and plenty of New York
Speaker 1: neighborhoods back alley liquor was flowing just as freely, But
Speaker 1: no lab coated expert with a safety checklist was looking
Speaker 1: out for you. As Deborah Blum says America's poorer drinkers
Speaker 1: would rather overlook the dubious origins of their booze and
Speaker 1: literally stomach the risk. People were seemingly so eager for
Speaker 1: a drink that they just didn't care there was a
Speaker 1: chance it could land them in the hospital.
Speaker 6: Unless you're rich, you're drinking whatever you can get your
Speaker 6: hands on. So one of the cocktails of the Bowery,
Speaker 6: which is a really poor neighborhood in New York, was
Speaker 6: called smoke, and that was fuel, alcohol and water.
Speaker 1: You could get your smoke in the back of drug
Speaker 1: stores or paint stores. I know the scene in Lower
Speaker 1: Manhattan has always been a bit edgy, but even without
Speaker 1: the spiky hair and the dog collars, this was grizzly stuff.
Speaker 1: There was also the infamous ginger jake.
Speaker 6: You see ginger Jake, which was another formula genda by
Speaker 6: bliggers that actually mimics the symptoms of Parkinson's. Or you
Speaker 6: see the cocktail called d Rail in which they were
Speaker 6: siphoning off some of the industrial alcohols from the railroads
Speaker 6: and serving it up in drinks.
Speaker 1: These drinks could kill during one stretch over a few months.
Speaker 1: Debts from Smoke averaged one a day. When prohibition agents
Speaker 1: managed to track down the suppliers for the deadly cocktail,
Speaker 1: they discovered the drinks were served straight from cans stenseled
Speaker 1: with the word poison on them.
Speaker 6: This acceptance of risk that came with prohibition at these
Speaker 6: levels is kind of horrifying, but it was there, and
Speaker 6: it was real.
Speaker 1: It's that risk big spenders were paying to avoid pay
Speaker 1: the cover charge to get into a big club. You
Speaker 1: were betting the owner had paid a nerdy chemist to
Speaker 1: make damn sure your gin and tonic was not a
Speaker 1: gin intoxic. These back room chemists were clearly breaking the law,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them actually saw themselves as humanitarians.
Speaker 1: Every time they caught a dangerous tocsin and a gallon
Speaker 1: of hooch and kept it out of a drinker's mouth, Well,
Speaker 1: what'd you get.
Speaker 6: That under the seat?
Speaker 1: Can you believe it? It's still half full. They had
Speaker 1: done some good, and in part because they were so
Speaker 1: successful at keeping the party going in New York City
Speaker 1: and state officials started to ask themselves, why don't we
Speaker 1: just stop pretending here?
Speaker 4: New York repealed its version of the amendment in nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty two, so from that point forward, New York officially
Speaker 4: was not supporting prohibition.
Speaker 1: So yeah, under the eighteenth Amendment, any state could just
Speaker 1: stick their middle finger up to prohibition if they had
Speaker 1: the votes to repeal it, which is exactly what New
Speaker 1: York state lawmakers did. They weren't going to do any
Speaker 1: cracking down. New York cops weren't going to be making
Speaker 1: any arrest and even if they did, New York judges
Speaker 1: weren't going to throw the book at any club owners.
Speaker 1: Better a law or no. There was simply too much
Speaker 1: money in the liquor game. So in effect, New York
Speaker 1: became a sanctuary city for American drinkers. And if you
Speaker 1: were a chemist in the city breaking the law on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, you could rest easy knowing that your
Speaker 1: community had your back, not only that they were downright
Speaker 1: grateful to you for saving them from ginger Jake and derail.
Speaker 1: Even the cops, the mayor, and the governor were on
Speaker 1: your side. And the good liquor it was still there
Speaker 1: for the drinking if you had the right chemists in
Speaker 1: your pocket.
Speaker 2: Bobby, just believe of worries on the whole move and.
Speaker 6: World may go dry.
Speaker 1: Her dad made as well.
Speaker 6: As they left the old sales to the bootlegger.
Speaker 1: Daughter down in Washington. When news reached the office of
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice that the Big Apple was flipping
Speaker 1: on off prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrant was you guessed it pissed.
Speaker 1: A Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn, I can picture our pal
Speaker 1: Alexandra Getler in his favorite living room chair, dressed in
Speaker 1: a suit and tie. Of course, the number one song
Speaker 1: from the most famous band in America, the Paul Whiteman Band,
Speaker 1: is buzzing in the background. Gettler's smoking a stogie as
Speaker 1: he scans baseball box scores from the morning paper, knowing
Speaker 1: Hew he probably had some skin in the games too.
Speaker 1: A bit of a gambler, Getler couldn't resist a juicy
Speaker 1: over under, and he had a regular card game with
Speaker 1: his pals. His other second home besides the lab was
Speaker 1: the horse track. Getler was also a ruthlessly competitive bowler,
Speaker 1: a spirit also brought to his work at Bellevue. When
Speaker 1: a new mystery arrived at his doorstep. He couldn't stand
Speaker 1: the idea of a poisoner outwitting him and his sleuthing partner,
Speaker 1: Charles Norris. On this beautiful spring afternoon. Perhaps Alexander is
Speaker 1: scribbling down his latest betting card, when all of a
Speaker 1: sudden he gets a call from Norris. There's a new case,
Speaker 1: and oh is al gonna love this one. In nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, our Sherlock and Watson have been a very
Speaker 1: busy duo, solving all kinds of crimes, and many of
Speaker 1: them having nothing to do with the hooch on the streets.
Speaker 1: But each mystery Getler solves, he learns a little more
Speaker 1: about the poisons permeating American life. On this day, when
Speaker 1: Getler arrives at his lab, two dead bodies are waiting
Speaker 1: for him. He scans the police report. Here are the facts.
Speaker 1: Inside an apartment in Brooklyn, police had found a couple
Speaker 1: in street clothes lying on the floor of their bathroom.
Speaker 1: Their faces were blue, their lips covered with blood. The couple,
Speaker 1: according to the following day's New York Times, was quote
Speaker 1: dead from poison. Gettler reviews the report. The police on
Speaker 1: the scene had suspected suicide, but there was no corroborating
Speaker 1: evidence of any kind in the apartment. Gettler takes one
Speaker 1: look at the dead bodies and quickly suspects something else
Speaker 1: is at play here a chemical substance that was now
Speaker 1: seemingly everywhere and was frighteningly lethal. Cyanide, like mustard gas,
Speaker 1: cyanide was used in World War One as a chemical
Speaker 1: warfare agent. It had long been known as a dangerous poison,
Speaker 1: but little did the public know it was also becoming
Speaker 1: a killer in households. Fumigators used it to disinfect apartment buildings,
Speaker 1: emitting gas that could, say, suddenly kill an unsuspecting couple
Speaker 1: eating breakfast. Gettler's sure cyanide is the cause of death,
Speaker 1: even though he hadn't found any signs that cyanide had
Speaker 1: been ingested and the police had found no empty bottles
Speaker 1: of cyanide anywhere in the apartment. But he checks back
Speaker 1: with the police, and soon investigators realize that Getler was right.
Speaker 1: Pest control folks had just spent an afternoon Spryan's cyanide
Speaker 1: gas around the apartment. They realized the dead couple hadn't
Speaker 1: swallowed cyanide, they had inhaled it. Case closed, but Getler's
Speaker 1: work isn't quite done.
Speaker 6: Gettler goes on to write the fundamental paper on cyanide
Speaker 6: and its toxicity and how we find it in a
Speaker 6: body it's still cited today.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, this guy is a true badass. It
Speaker 1: was impossible for the newly invented science of toxicology to
Speaker 1: keep up with the deluge of modern poisons, but Getler
Speaker 1: was doing his damnedest, and the New York City Medical
Speaker 1: Examiner's Office was beginning to earn nationwide respect for their
Speaker 1: work uncovering the hidden poisons endangering public health, and they
Speaker 1: were doing so with virtually no support from the government.
Speaker 1: The office's staff under Norris was in fact smaller than
Speaker 1: what it was under the New York Corner who preceded him.
Speaker 1: Their office at Bellevue was still a ramshackle quote unquote
Speaker 1: country club. All the labs new equipment was still paid
Speaker 1: for by Norris himself. Norris and Getler were working around
Speaker 1: the clock, but they sure weren't making bootlegger chemist money.
Speaker 1: Gettler was making three thousand bucks a year, which today
Speaker 1: would be equivalent to a fifty five thousand dollars salary
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. No wonder he lived with his in laws.
Speaker 1: So as poisons in the air were becoming more sophisticated,
Speaker 1: the case load of the Medical Examiner's Office was getting
Speaker 1: bigger and in nineteen twenty two, one particular case caught
Speaker 1: their eye, the case of Robert Doyle. Doyle was a
Speaker 1: veteran of World War One, like the tanker turned bootlegger
Speaker 1: George Cassidy, and like so many of them who came
Speaker 1: back from Europe, Doyle found jobs were scarce in his
Speaker 1: hometown Boston, so he left his wife and daughter and
Speaker 1: came down to New York City, the biggest city in
Speaker 1: the world, the thriving metropolis where it seemed like everyone
Speaker 1: was making money, and he tried to get a job,
Speaker 1: but no one hired Doyle. He didn't have George Cassidy's gregarious,
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial spirit, I guess, or his smoky Mountain liquor hookups.
Speaker 1: He didn't have Alexander Getler's brains or his bustling Brooklyn
Speaker 1: community to rely on. In New York, Doyle found himself
Speaker 1: turned away from every job, be it bartender, garbage collection,
Speaker 1: even cleaning the sewers, away from his loved ones, and
Speaker 1: getting desperate. Doyle had reached for some chemical comfort to
Speaker 1: drown his sorrows, buying liquor in an unfamiliar city. He
Speaker 1: didn't know who to trust, He didn't know whose libations
Speaker 1: might be toxic, but he bought a drink anyway. One night,
Speaker 1: neighbors in and his boarding house heard shouts coming from
Speaker 1: his locked room. Someone or something was killing Doyle. They
Speaker 1: forced the door and rushed inside to help him, but
Speaker 1: found him crawling on the floor, rubbing his eyes and moaning,
Speaker 1: I'm blind, I can't see. First, they sent for a doctor,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have any answers, so they bundled Doyle
Speaker 1: into a car and sent him to the hospital Bellevue.
Speaker 1: Doyle was wheeled into the er. This would be the
Speaker 1: part of the Gray's Anatomy episode where you'd hear the
Speaker 1: heartbeat monitor beeping until it slowly fades and flatlines. But
Speaker 1: this is the nineteen twenties. There's nothing quite that fancy yet.
Speaker 1: Just Doyle didn't make it. When he died at Bellevue,
Speaker 1: they moved him out of the line of patients waiting
Speaker 1: for treatment and into the line of corpses waiting for analysis.
Speaker 1: Analysis by Alexander Gettler. Now it was up to Getler
Speaker 1: to determine who was behind this. For years, he had
Speaker 1: worried home distillers would accidentally poison themselves with their moonshine.
Speaker 1: But these deaths were stacking up in a way that
Speaker 1: didn't add up. Gettler knew about all the brain power
Speaker 1: in advanced chemistry that was going into making industrial alcohol
Speaker 1: drinkable and not kill you. In theory, the supply was
Speaker 1: becoming safer, and yet the body count was only growing.
Speaker 1: Robert Doyle's death occurred as poison alcohol deaths rippled across
Speaker 1: the country, from New York to Washington, d c. To Toledo, Ohio.
Speaker 1: This was proof people like Robert Doyle weren't dying simply
Speaker 1: because of their own reckless thirst for alcohol. No, these
Speaker 1: people were dying from poisons, and their deaths, now in
Speaker 1: the hundreds and very soon to be in the thousands,
Speaker 1: were no accident. Next time on SNAFU.
Speaker 4: Harry Doherty, the Attorney General who was the immediate boss
Speaker 4: to Mabel Willebrandt, he was a a drunk and be corrupt.
Speaker 1: One of the craziest stories here man like an incredibly
Speaker 1: successful defense attorney becomes the biggest bootlegger ever.
Speaker 4: The fact that there were only twenty six hundred prohibitionations
Speaker 4: covering the entire Canadian border, of the Mexican border and
Speaker 4: both coasts It's Ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl
Speaker 1: Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Nevin Kalapoly,
Speaker 1: Albert Chen and Carl Nellis, with additional writing and story
Speaker 1: editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from
Speaker 1: Stephen wood. Tory Smith is our associate producer. Our story
Speaker 1: editor is nicki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Callapoly
Speaker 1: and a kimmedy A. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our
Speaker 1: creative executive is Brett Harris, Editing, music and sound design
Speaker 1: by Ben Chug Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley
Speaker 1: Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. The music by
Speaker 1: Dan Rosatto. The role of Mabel Walker willa Brandt was
Speaker 1: played by Carrie Bische. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel
Speaker 1: Welsh and Ben Rizak.