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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's

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Speaker 2: Charles W. Chuck, Wayne Bryant. Jerry's not here, but all

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Speaker 2: of these lovely people are here at the State Theater

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Speaker 2: in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Speaker 1: Wow. Him.

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Speaker 2: Not bad for a Thursday, Not bad at all. Thank

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Speaker 2: you guys for that feeling good. We'll edit that part out,

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Speaker 2: so tonight we're going to talk to you guys about

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Speaker 2: a little town you may or may not have heard of.

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Speaker 2: It's called Mattoon, Illinois. Has anyone ever heard of Mettun

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Speaker 2: a few of you? Is anyone from.

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Speaker 1: Mattoon any tunes out there? Really?

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Speaker 2: Okay, we'll try not to be mad at us because

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Speaker 2: the show starts like this. Mattoon is in a kind

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Speaker 2: of a triangle between Chicago to the north, Saint Louis

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Speaker 2: to the south, Indianapolis to whatever's over here, and it's

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Speaker 2: just far enough away from all of them to not

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Speaker 2: really get any of their reflective interestingness. Right, I'm sorry,

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Speaker 2: but there are two things that Mattoon lays claim to. One,

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Speaker 2: it calls itself the Begel Capital of the World because

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Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, Lenders Begels opened a factory there.

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Speaker 2: That is it.

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Speaker 1: New York has no problem with this. Montreal has no

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Speaker 1: problem with it.

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Speaker 2: Number two, Mattoon is world renowned for having been terrorized

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Speaker 2: by a mad gasser who went from house to house,

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Speaker 2: spraying residents with a noxious paralytic gas while they were

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Speaker 2: tucked safely away in their homes. Yeah right, Either that

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Speaker 2: or the town of Mattun went through one of the

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Speaker 2: best documented cases of mass delusion that has ever happened.

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Speaker 2: And the world's actually divided on what went down in

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Speaker 2: Mettune in nineteen forty four, and we're going to dive

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Speaker 2: into that here tonight.

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Speaker 1: What it wouldn't be funny After reaction, they're like, oh

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Speaker 1: my god, amazing. If you're like, so this is about

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Speaker 1: Linderspagels and sponsored.

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Speaker 2: We'd like to thank Lenders.

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Speaker 1: You should google that other super interesting story though.

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Speaker 2: Chucks full of beans tonight.

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Speaker 1: Everybody bullow what beans it means?

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Speaker 2: You're like, I'm full of it?

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Speaker 1: Where I come from, I've never heard that. I thought

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Speaker 1: that means we're party. No, I don't full of beans

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Speaker 1: the musical fruit.

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Speaker 2: All of these kay.

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Speaker 1: I can tell No, of course not well, nevermind.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, keep moving on.

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna take you back in time and hop

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Speaker 1: in the way back machine and go back to nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty four when it took place. Ok, wow, wayback machine.

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Speaker 1: This is the wayback machine. By the way, it's it's

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Speaker 1: in the mind. So we're all there together. I suddenly

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Speaker 1: just sound like a cult leader. So Matune in nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty four was a pretty small town of about sixteen thousand.

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Speaker 1: I think it's still a pretty small town if I'm

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Speaker 1: not mistaken. And it's populated back then with people with

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Speaker 1: some great names. So you're gonna hear some nineteen forty

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Speaker 1: four names tonight, like Bertha and Elmer and.

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Speaker 2: Hebrew Hebrew's my favorite, and Beulah.

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Speaker 1: And Urban, like great nineteen forties names that you just

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Speaker 1: don't hear anymore unless you are like a super hipster

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Speaker 1: and you name your kid Beulah. Yeah that's my great grandmother,

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Speaker 1: I promise. It was surrounded by fields corn and soybean,

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Speaker 1: so a lot of farming went on there. They did

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Speaker 1: have a couple of railroad junctions that still went through

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Speaker 1: the town, which was good because that also provided work.

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Speaker 1: And then there were a few factories we looked up

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Speaker 1: to see what was interesting, and there was a shoe company,

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Speaker 1: the Brown Shoe Company there, which seemed pretty cool.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we couldn't get to the bottom of whether it

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Speaker 2: was named after the owner or they just made brown shoes.

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Speaker 1: When I was nineteen forty four, I bet it was both.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit from column May, a little bit

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Speaker 2: from columb But long way of saying, if you lived

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Speaker 2: in Mattoon, you probably were a farmer.

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Speaker 1: You may have worked on the railroad although livelong day,

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Speaker 1: or you might have worked at one of those factories.

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Speaker 1: It's what they call the pre bagel era.

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Speaker 2: That's right. There's one other thing you need to know

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Speaker 2: about Mattoon in nineteen forty four. A significant portion of

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Speaker 2: its young men had left town and were off fighting

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Speaker 2: the World War two at the time, so it was

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Speaker 2: an anxious place to be back then. And this whole

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Speaker 2: thing that we're going to talk about tonight, the mad

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Speaker 2: Gasser of Mettune. It all started, depending on how you

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Speaker 2: look at it, on the night of Friday, September first,

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Speaker 2: at the home of mister and missus Burt Kearney. And

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Speaker 2: that is how they described women back then. They didn't

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Speaker 2: use their first names. Because what else do you need

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Speaker 2: to know? She's married to Burt. She took his last name.

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Speaker 2: Who cares about anything else? Well, we care, So we

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Speaker 2: went to great links to find the first names of

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Speaker 2: the women who were attacked. I'm a bit of a

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Speaker 2: thank you. Chuck has more stamina than me. I'm a

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Speaker 2: bit of a quitter. So I gave up with like

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Speaker 2: three or four, laughed, and he's like, no, and we

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Speaker 2: got it down to one. There's only one woman whose

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Speaker 2: first name. We couldn't find this whole thing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't find it. I've spent a lot of

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Speaker 1: time on ancestry dot com and find a grave dot

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Speaker 1: com because sometimes literally the only way you could find

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Speaker 1: out a woman's name is by standing over her grave

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Speaker 1: and looking at her gravestone, which is very sad. But

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Speaker 1: we got almost everyone. Yeah, so what was her name?

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Speaker 2: Her name was Aileen missus Kearny's first name was Aileen,

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Speaker 2: and at the time, her sister, Martha Reedy was staying

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Speaker 2: with her because Martha's husband was off fighting in World

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Speaker 2: War two overseas, and so that's why they let Martha

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Speaker 2: use her first name temporarily.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, he was.

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Speaker 1: Very generous. So about eleven PM. In this house, Aileen

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Speaker 1: retired to bed with her toddler daughter Dorothy at eleven PM.

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Speaker 1: I can only imagine this because Dorothy had just gotten

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Speaker 1: home from working at the factory that day, and Aileen

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Speaker 1: noticed a strange smell in the house, like a really

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Speaker 1: sickeningly sweet guardinia kind of smell. They got stronger and stronger,

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Speaker 1: and as the smell grew stronger, she noticed that she

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Speaker 1: was losing I'm laughing, it's not funny, losing power over

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Speaker 1: her legs and arms, like it was paralyzing her. Her

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Speaker 1: mouth and throat got really dry and were burning. Little

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Speaker 1: Dorothy became ill. Don't worry, she would be okay, and

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Speaker 1: she called out for her sister because she was rightfully scared.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, her sister and in the room and was like,

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Speaker 2: what the hell is that? Smelling through the window open

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Speaker 2: and ran next door to Earl Robertson's house. No trouble

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Speaker 2: finding his name, right, He was the next door neighbor,

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Speaker 2: and he ran over to see what was going on.

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Speaker 2: And he went and searched the yard to see if

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Speaker 2: he could find anything, and he found absolutely nothing. They

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Speaker 2: called the cops. The cops came out. They searched and

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Speaker 2: they didn't find anything either, And everything's kind of settled

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Speaker 2: down for about an hour after that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so Alien's husband, the aforementioned Bert, is a cab driver.

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Speaker 1: Was a cab driver, and he was driving around in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty four. When you're a cab driver, there's no

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Speaker 1: way to get in touch with anyone unless you stand

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Speaker 1: on the corner and pretend like you need a ride.

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Speaker 1: No radios in the car or anything like that. And

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Speaker 1: they finally got in touch with Bert about an hour

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Speaker 1: and a half later. He rushes home at twelve thirty am,

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Speaker 1: and this is very key. When he pulls in an

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Speaker 1: hour and a half later, after the cops have gone,

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Speaker 1: he sees a tall, shadowy figure, tall, thin, athletic build

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Speaker 1: in the backyard, wearing what was described as a watch cap.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know what that was, but it's just like

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Speaker 1: a toboggan, like a beanie. I don't know which regionally

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Speaker 1: you call it here? What do you call it here? Beanie? Okay,

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Speaker 1: we'll go with Beanie. I didn't know if you were

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Speaker 1: close enough to Canada to call it a tuke. Are

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Speaker 1: you close to Canada? Where are we? I'm sorry, I

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Speaker 1: woke up from a nap and came straight here.

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Speaker 2: So did you really?

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Speaker 3: Oh?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I woke up and I was here thirteen

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Speaker 1: minutes later. Wow with a shower.

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Speaker 2: That's impressive and a tooth brush. Did you take a

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Speaker 2: shower on the way?

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Speaker 1: I did. You just got to select uber shower.

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Speaker 2: You don't share those though, right now?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they'd be fun. So he saw this figure, He

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Speaker 1: chased this prowler. The prowler runs away, gets away. They

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Speaker 1: call the cops, back out, the cops come back out.

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Speaker 1: Of course, there's nothing there still, And that was about it.

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Speaker 1: About ninety minutes after onset, Aileen was able to move

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Speaker 1: her arms and legs. Little Dorothy was feeling fine. The

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Speaker 1: next morning, went off to the factory to work and

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Speaker 1: everything was okay.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was the end of that. But the

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Speaker 2: story continues. The next day, a guy from the local paper,

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Speaker 2: the Mattoon Journal Gazette. His name was John Miller. He

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Speaker 2: was one of their writers, He was an editor. He

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Speaker 2: kind of did it all. He found out about this

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Speaker 2: story and he investigated it, and that night's paper, Saturday's

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Speaker 2: paper had a huge headline across the front page, took

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Speaker 2: up six of the eight columns on page one anesthetic

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Speaker 2: prowler on the loose.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. The other two headlines we like to do our research.

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Speaker 1: We went on the micropiche big headline there, Bagel's Breakfast

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Speaker 1: to the Future. They were trying to build up some buds, sure,

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Speaker 1: forty years earlier.

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Speaker 2: So there was a sub sub headline too, missus Kearney

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Speaker 2: and daughter first victims. And so keep in mind, this

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Speaker 2: one incident happened. This is the lone incident as far

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Speaker 2: as anyone knew, nothing else had happened. And yet they

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Speaker 2: were described as the first victims of the anesthetic prowler

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Speaker 2: that's now clearly on the loose. This is what the

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Speaker 2: paper said to everybody the day after the attack.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think even speculated about what it might be.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot of speculation early on, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So you have to keep in mind

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Speaker 1: the Matune Journal gazette was received by ninety seven percent

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Speaker 1: of the town, which I thought was hysterical because even

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four there were the three centers who

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Speaker 1: was like mainstream media, no better not throw that paper

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Speaker 1: on my front porch. But it was a little paper.

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Speaker 1: It was almost like a church bulletin. It was very sweet.

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Speaker 1: It was about six or eight pages long. Typically it

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Speaker 1: did not publish on Sundays. Well, I guess it's not

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Speaker 1: like a church bulletin or holidays, and this was Labor

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Speaker 1: Day weekend, so the story runs on Saturday, Sunday followed,

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Speaker 1: and then Labor Day Monday followed. So the story is

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Speaker 1: lobbed out there about this mad gasser. First victims, and

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Speaker 1: people are just sitting around waiting for news to roll

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Speaker 1: in for two.

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Speaker 2: Days, right, And then they weren't just sitting around though.

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Speaker 2: Some people came forward. They'd read the story and were like,

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Speaker 2: this happened to me too. There was one woman named

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Speaker 2: missus Olive Brown who had suffered an attack a few

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Speaker 2: months before, and the local softball commissioner too, Yeah, this is.

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Speaker 1: This guy's name is Urban Raife what in nineteen forty

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Speaker 1: four name? That is? He and his wife Pauline we

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Speaker 1: got her name, said that they experienced the same thing

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Speaker 1: just one night before Aileen and little Dorothy. And I

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Speaker 1: guess Urban thought it might be a gas leak. So

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Speaker 1: even though he was literally paralyzed, he somehow asked his wife,

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Speaker 1: woke her up and asked her if she had left

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Speaker 1: the gas on. I'm not sure how that happened. She

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Speaker 1: had not right, so they noticed the smell. After about

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Speaker 1: ninety minutes, it wore off and they chopped it up

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Speaker 1: to eating bad hot dogs.

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Speaker 2: They were paralyzed for ninety minutes, and they just chalked

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Speaker 2: it up.

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Speaker 1: To the hot dogs, you know that, saying, Yodo Twins game,

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Speaker 1: have a hot dog from like the fifth inning on.

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Speaker 1: You can't move.

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Speaker 2: They're like, I can't do the seventh inning stretch.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they thought it was that. We've all been there.

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Speaker 2: So there's another family. All these people are coming forward

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Speaker 2: now from the Saturday's article, the family of Patrice Ryder

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Speaker 2: and her kids. They were also ill. They were struck ill.

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Speaker 2: She became kind of lightheaded. She found her kids vomiting,

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Speaker 2: and Shirley said, oh, it must be the hot dogs.

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Speaker 1: Tuesday was also the day we got our first physical evidence.

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Speaker 1: There was one Beula Cordis, who came home on that

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Speaker 1: night and found a piece of pink cloth that was

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Speaker 1: not hers on her front porch, and she picked it up.

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Speaker 1: She noticed it was moist, and she did what you do.

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Speaker 1: She put it in her face and inhaled deeply. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and what happened to her.

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Speaker 2: She described as like coming into contact with a strong

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Speaker 2: electrical current. By the way, she immediately regretted, huffing, this

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Speaker 2: is a strange pink rag. Yeah, she said. Her knees

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Speaker 2: went wildly, and then it gets worse. Her lips cracked,

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Speaker 2: her mouth went dry, they started to bleed. She began

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Speaker 2: bleeding from her mouth, and again she regretted, huffing that

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Speaker 2: pinkregg basically right off the bat for sure.

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Speaker 1: The same night, about an hour later, there was a

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Speaker 1: woman named Marjorie Burrell. She was stricken, but and this

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Speaker 1: is also key, in the same house her eighteen month

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Speaker 1: old son, fresh known from the factory, completely unaffected.

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Speaker 2: Right, So now it's clear there's something weird going on.

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Speaker 2: This wasn't just one incident. People are coming forward and

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Speaker 2: now they're also finding physical evidence of stuff. Right. So

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Speaker 2: the next night, it was Wednesday, September fifth, and there

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Speaker 2: were four more attacks, One on Laura Jenkin, the owner

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Speaker 2: of the Big Four restaurant. From what we can tell,

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Speaker 2: she was unaffiliated with any man. There was another one

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Speaker 2: about an hour later on missus Viola Spangler, and then

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Speaker 2: about an hour after that, eleven year old Glenda Hendershot

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Speaker 2: was attacked and she was the daughter of a mister Hendershot.

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Speaker 1: Right factory manager by the.

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Speaker 2: Way, she was the little girl.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, eleven.

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Speaker 2: Almost cigars.

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Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned too that the cops took

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Speaker 1: hold obviously took the evidence into hand at pink cloth,

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Speaker 1: and I guess it managed to avoid the urge to

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Speaker 1: breathe deeply into it because it's it's moist. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: what you do. Let me see what that is. I mean,

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Speaker 1: at the worst, it's a cat urine.

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Speaker 2: That would be pretty bad.

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Speaker 1: It'd be terrible, a snoop.

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Speaker 2: Full of that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, a sixty year old man named Fred Goebel

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Speaker 1: was stricken about an hour after that. And this is

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Speaker 1: also key because this was the second spotting of an individual,

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Speaker 1: another tall, thin prowler fleeing the scene.

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Speaker 2: And we did the math. Fred Goebels was sixty and

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Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, which would make him roughly eight hundred

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Speaker 2: years old today.

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Speaker 1: The Josh math. I love it.

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Speaker 2: It works out sometimes.

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Speaker 1: All right. So by Thursday night in Mattoon, Illinois, it

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Speaker 1: is on like Donkey Kong, even though that wasn't a thing,

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Speaker 1: and the town were pretty scared. People were you know, rightfully.

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Speaker 1: So they were locking their doors, they were locking their windows,

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Speaker 1: which is not something you really did back then.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the town paper wasn't helping things either. On

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Speaker 2: Thursday's paper, there was another headline, another six columns of

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Speaker 2: eight columns, Mad and Nestetist strikes again with an exclamation

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Speaker 2: point this time. So there is pulling out all the stops.

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Speaker 1: That's right, if you're curious. The other headline bagels colon

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Speaker 1: like an unsweetened donut. So another thing started happening on Thursday,

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Speaker 1: which is these gentlemen and their sons in the town,

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Speaker 1: the Anti Theft Association, got their guns, got some makeshift weapons.

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Speaker 1: These are those three percent. I think I need to

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Speaker 1: point that out. They start roaming the town like you know,

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Speaker 1: the vigilantes, like there were quasi deputy. I think they

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Speaker 1: were supposed to, you know, like the cops would get

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Speaker 1: help from them for cattle wrestling and like chicken thieving

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Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But they knew this was a

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Speaker 1: big deal, so they grabbed their guns and gut in

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Speaker 1: their trucks and did their thing.

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Speaker 2: Yes, so after only a couple of newspaper reports the

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Speaker 2: course of a few days, the town of Mattoon is

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Speaker 2: really high strung. The police commissioner, the guy in charge

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Speaker 2: of all of the police for Mettun, was quoted in

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Speaker 2: the paper as saying that he wouldn't walk across his

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Speaker 2: own backyard at night for ten thousand dollars. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 2: the guy in charge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, as we do. We did our financial

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Speaker 1: conversion because we love those. You knew it would feature

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Speaker 1: a financial money conversion, so we went to our TRUSTe

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Speaker 1: west Egg calculator and that would be one hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy six, three hundred and six dollars per day. So

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Speaker 1: he's not helping matters that would walk through any backyards

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Speaker 1: for that kind of day, for sure.

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Speaker 2: So they also issued a PSA to citizen which said, hey,

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Speaker 2: if you're going to shoot somebody looking through your window,

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Speaker 2: take care because there's these vigilantes out wandering around looking

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Speaker 2: through your window. So we don't want you guys shooting

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Speaker 2: one another.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, good. So this was sort of a busy

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Speaker 1: time for the cops obviously, right, because they didn't usually

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Speaker 1: get calls like this, right.

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Speaker 2: No, and they weren't set up for crime. The Mattsom

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Speaker 2: Police Department wasn't certainly not for a spiking crime. So

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Speaker 2: politically the police force was in disarray. You had Thomas Wright,

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Speaker 2: the guy wh wouldn't walk through his own backyard, the

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Speaker 2: police commissioner. Ostensibly he's in charge, he's calling the shots.

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Speaker 2: But they also had a police chief. His name was

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Speaker 2: ce Cole, and he seems to have been totally comfortable

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Speaker 2: undermining Thomas Wright's authority at every turn. And to make

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Speaker 2: matters worse, the police force was split down the middle,

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Speaker 2: with some loyal to Thomas right and some loyal to

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Speaker 2: Chief Coal. And that's not a good thing when you

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Speaker 2: only have ten people on your police force.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was about half of what they should

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Speaker 1: have had. They were understaffed. They should have had around

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Speaker 1: twenty cops only had ten. And as a result of this,

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Speaker 1: over the previous months there was you know, sort of

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Speaker 1: a spike and crime that didn't have anything to do

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Speaker 1: with this, like robberies and stuff like that. There were

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Speaker 1: army checks rolling in. A lot of the young men

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Speaker 1: were off fighting. Like we said, everyone knew that. So

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Speaker 1: there was a spike and crime for a Mattoon. I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's anything you know, to worry about like

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Speaker 1: today's big cities. Sure, but for Mattoon. It was a

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Speaker 1: spike and crime right.

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Speaker 2: So the understaffed, resource strapped Mattoon police department took to

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Speaker 2: ignoring and covering up crimes that it didn't have the

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Speaker 2: resources to investigate.

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Speaker 1: That's right. The cops are hard at work. They're freaking

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Speaker 1: out a little bit. They started working, you know, double

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Speaker 1: shifts because they were down half of what they should

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Speaker 1: have been. Like we said, they also didn't have two

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Speaker 1: A radios in the car. Yet they did exist, but

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Speaker 1: they couldn't afford that kind of thing in such a

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Speaker 1: small department. So when calls came in, they came into

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Speaker 1: city Hall and there had to be a cop there

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Speaker 1: with a car that said, well, well where are we

365
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Speaker 1: supposed to go? And that's how they got police out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not the best way to run the police force.

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Speaker 2: And then even worse, the vigilantes from the anti Theft Association.

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Speaker 2: They figured out that if they hung around city Hall

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Speaker 2: and when the cops peeled off, they were going to

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Speaker 2: a call, so that any theft association would tear off

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Speaker 2: after him, ostensibly with bluegrass music playing them on. And

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Speaker 2: eventually the police department was like, we're going to arrest

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Speaker 2: you if you keep following us to calls to shoot

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Speaker 2: whoever's there.

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Speaker 1: So things are getting a little crazy, just like a

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Speaker 1: movie would happen, or I guess what would happen to movie?

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Speaker 1: What a weird way to say that. The states that

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Speaker 1: two investigators one Richard Piper and Francis with an I

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Speaker 1: Barry from the Illinois Bureau of Crime, Identification and Investigation. Yeah,

380
00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:01,359
Speaker 1: it's a little where it doesn't even spell anything, it

381
00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:08,160
Speaker 1: spells ye. So yeah, good point. So they arrived on Thursday,

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Speaker 1: and that was when these vigilantes had kind of hit

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Speaker 1: the streets. Things are getting a little crazy. They take

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Speaker 1: possession of that pink cloth from Bula Cordis again managing.

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Speaker 1: I think it probably was harmless by this point, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't press it into their face, thankfully, because they're

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Speaker 1: real pros. And then the FBI also showed up, supposedly

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Speaker 1: just to observe, but there were a couple of Feds there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Mattoon's small police force ended up being

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Speaker 2: supplemented eventually with some state patrol officers. The police force

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Speaker 2: ended up being doubled, and even better, the state patrol

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Speaker 2: officers brought two way radios with them, which the police department.

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Speaker 1: Was very happy about Can you imagine what that was like?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so now they didn't have to just hang around

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Speaker 2: city Hall all the time, and they could coordinate out

396
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Speaker 2: in the field. It was like a whole new day.

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Speaker 1: Basically, They're like, we're like real cops now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I feel like this is going pretty well.

399
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Speaker 2: You guys too, Yeah, okay, okay, Well then that means

400
00:22:09,359 --> 00:22:11,560
Speaker 2: we have to put a message break in right about

401
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:14,679
Speaker 2: here in case we released this as the episode. Okay,

402
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:17,879
Speaker 2: so if you'll bear with us, we'll be right back.

403
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Speaker 1: By stoff with the jowshhh, stop your sure. Okay, we're

404
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 1: back everybody. So, I'm not sure if you remember where

405
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 1: we were when we left off and had fifteen minutes

406
00:22:55,280 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: of ads. Things are a little out of hand in Mattoon,

407
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:05,240
Speaker 1: so again like a movie, a profile of the gaser

408
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,680
Speaker 1: emerges from one of these state investigators from the from

409
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:15,520
Speaker 1: what that suggested that he, of course it wasn't a

410
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:20,760
Speaker 1: woman doing this, He was mentally imbalanced, intelligent, possibly brilliant,

411
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:26,800
Speaker 1: and then said the man is a nut got decidedly

412
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Speaker 1: less forensic. I guess at that point.

413
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Speaker 2: I could see somebody reading the paper and being like, yeah,

414
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:38,080
Speaker 2: sounds about right. So they also figured that the mad

415
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:41,879
Speaker 2: gasser was probably a well trained chemist. They assumed that

416
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Speaker 2: either he was creating known paralyzing or noxious chemicals like

417
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,520
Speaker 2: chloroform or chloropicrin, which is also known as vomit gas,

418
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Speaker 2: or he had created his own paralytic agent that he

419
00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 2: had designed himself.

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Speaker 1: I heard ten people say you, yeah, that's correct. So

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00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:05,679
Speaker 1: in general, though, like, despite all this going on, the

422
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: cops didn't seem like super super concerned about the crimes.

423
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Speaker 1: I think they were worried about the perception of them.

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Speaker 1: But Chief Cole said it was basically a case of nerves.

425
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Speaker 1: So he's the first one to kind of plant that

426
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Speaker 1: seed that it might just be a bunch of hysterical

427
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: women in town who missed their husbands.

428
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Speaker 2: Right, And there actually was a case of that. This

429
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 2: is the one woman whose first name we could not find,

430
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Speaker 2: Missus Fitzpatrick. We're sorry, Missus Fitzpatrick. And she was at

431
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Speaker 2: one of the movie theaters watching a movie when she

432
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 2: smelled something and shouted that she'd been gassed and caused

433
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Speaker 2: a stampede of the other four hundred people out of

434
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 2: the movie theater. So she was taken to the hospital

435
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,200
Speaker 2: and examined, and she was found not to have been gassed,

436
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 2: and she was sedated forever.

437
00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you imagine being in a theater I've.

438
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 2: Been gassed, you pull a his stanza, you're just crawling

439
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:05,879
Speaker 2: over little kids, and hey, maybe your husband's full of beans.

440
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:15,719
Speaker 2: So that's a good calls three stars. I give it seven?

441
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,480
Speaker 1: How many stars? Oh wow? Okay, never mind, I don't

442
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:19,280
Speaker 1: want to know what you think.

443
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 2: Seven stars.

444
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: I'll take it. The police chief, also, Chief Cole, tried

445
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: to pin it on carbon tetrachloride fumes from the local

446
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: Imperial I'm sorry, the Atlas Imperial diesel engine company. They

447
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:35,360
Speaker 1: were not too fond of this theory, obviously as a company,

448
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:39,439
Speaker 1: and so they had a press conference, well press conference

449
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: they talked to like the one person that had, you know,

450
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: ran the newspaper and said, you know what, the comps

451
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 1: didn't even bother to come by here and check on anything.

452
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: And you look around, all these kids working here are

453
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: just fine. Nobody is bleeding from the mouth today and

454
00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: everything's good. And not only that, but we hired a

455
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: PhD Health Apartment inspector to come by and they said

456
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: that was impossible for any carbon tetrichloride vapors to escape

457
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 1: the plant in any amount of concentration that would even

458
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 1: closely approximate a toxic condition, and everybody in the town

459
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: went defensive much.

460
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 2: And Chief Coal was quoted as saying whatever.

461
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

462
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 2: So that day, Friday, September eighth, the Journal Gazette finally

463
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,240
Speaker 2: took off the gloves and wrote an editorial escathing one

464
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 2: that just raked Chief Coal across the coals, as it were,

465
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 2: that was unintentional. I'm sorry for that, four stars, And

466
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:39,159
Speaker 2: it's from the editorial that we found out that the

467
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 2: Matoum Police Department liked to cover up crimes that it

468
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,280
Speaker 2: couldn't investigate. So they definitely put it on the chief

469
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 2: for not taking this seriously. From the outset.

470
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: If this gets released as a live episode, we don't

471
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: release the opening bit. That's only for y'all. Is everyone

472
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 1: going to wonder what the hell I'm talking about with

473
00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: these stars? Never think about that stuff, and I don't care.

474
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 2: No, it's just our secret.

475
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: Oh okay, did you do that bark yet?

476
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 2: No?

477
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back everyone.

478
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 2: I think they can do.

479
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,959
Speaker 1: So. The cops weren't completely blowing this off, obviously, they

480
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: had an obligation. They did look into about thirty people

481
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: by the end of the case total, and that what

482
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,879
Speaker 1: they did was they examined records of like the State

483
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: Mental hospital to see like if anyone had escaped that

484
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: might fit the profile and terrorizes the town with a

485
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:41,879
Speaker 1: paralytic noxious gas.

486
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 2: Turned out no, nothing, and word began to spread about this.

487
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,120
Speaker 2: So first it started being published in the Chicago papers,

488
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 2: the Saint Louis papers, and then it literally started to

489
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,119
Speaker 2: spread around the world, and the press just descended on

490
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 2: the town, and the story actually made its way around

491
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 2: the world, and the Metoon journal Gazez ran a story.

492
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:03,479
Speaker 2: This is confusing, but bear with me. They ran a

493
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 2: story about the story being read about by Mettune residents

494
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 2: fighting World War two as far away as Papua and

495
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:15,119
Speaker 2: New Guinea, and the soldier fighting in Papua and New

496
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 2: Guinea was quoted as saying, what the heck and heck

497
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 2: is going on back there?

498
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: So at one point one of the Chicago papers printed

499
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: an off record statement by Chief I'm sorry, not Chief Coal,

500
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: but Commissioner write that said that they had zeroed in

501
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: on a suspect, a mad scientist, and they quickly denied

502
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: this and said no, no, no, we're looking for four people actually,

503
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: two home chemists and two crackpots.

504
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 2: That's a quote. It is a quote. So on Sunday,

505
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 2: September tenth, this thing's been going on for about ten days, roughly,

506
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 2: Chief Cole announced that he had an idea, a new policy.

507
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 2: If you call in a mad gaser, call, if you

508
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 2: called them a tomb police department and said I've been

509
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 2: attacked by the mad gasser, the cops would come. They

510
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 2: would show up, and they would give you a choice.

511
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 2: You could either go to the hospital with them and

512
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 2: get examined to see if you happen gased, or you

513
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 2: could refuse to go to the hospital and spend a

514
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 2: night in jail. This was the choice that you were

515
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 2: given if you called the police for help, right, And

516
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 2: it's even worse than it sounds on its face. Back then,

517
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 2: if you wanted to see if somebody had been exposed

518
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 2: to a chemical, you had to sample the stomach contents,

519
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 2: their stomach contents. So either you chose a night in

520
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 2: jail or taking the hospital, have a tube jam down

521
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 2: your throat and some poor nurse like priming it just

522
00:29:44,320 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 2: to get it going. Come on, yeah, it just goes

523
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 2: on like that until it ends badly.

524
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: Oh man, oh it happened to it.

525
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 2: Just be projectile vomit right back on. The person with

526
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 2: the tube down their throats.

527
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 1: Stop saying the word a.

528
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 2: Circle of life.

529
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: Basically, you know, we follow the two maxims of live performance,

530
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 1: say moist and vomit in the same vomit no less

531
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 1: like thirty minute fear.

532
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 4: You're a little mustard on it all right, so uh,

533
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 4: Almost immediately the calls started dropping off because people were like,

534
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 4: I know, this sound very fun.

535
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:37,960
Speaker 1: The last recorded attack came on September eleventh, which was

536
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: a Monday night at the home of one Bertha Bentz,

537
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 1: not Beulah, but a Bertha. This was and this one

538
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: isn't very key as well. This was a third time

539
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: a prowler was spotted, but Minneapolis St. Paul. This was

540
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: not a tall, slim, athletic figure. This was a short,

541
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: stout figure.

542
00:30:56,760 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 2: Heavy set, you might say.

543
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: Heavy set, you might say. And there was a slashed

544
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: window where this prowler was spotted window screen. Can't slash

545
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: a window. And beneath that slash window screen an impression

546
00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 1: in the dirt below of a woman's high heel, Yes and.

547
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 2: Not today's sexy high heels. These are nineteen forty four

548
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 2: steel toe work high heels, basically old brown shoe factory.

549
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 2: They were definitely brown, for sure.

550
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 1: Every high heel needs a steel toe. So what happened

551
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 1: after that?

552
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 2: So as the calls started to drop off the state

553
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 2: patrol they went home, they took their two way radios

554
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 2: with them. Man, the tune cups are like, yeah, so sweet.

555
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 2: For a couple of weeks, and the Journal Gazette too,

556
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 2: it started to kind of clam up on the whole thing.

557
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 2: It printed fewer and fewer articles about it. And it's

558
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 2: not like the Journal Gazette was actually hurting for column

559
00:31:56,720 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 2: space at the time. We read a lot of the

560
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 2: journal gazettes from this era just to kind of get

561
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 2: the story straight. And one of the articles we found

562
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:07,719
Speaker 2: on page one around this time was a report that

563
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 2: the local bus company had examined a proposed extension to

564
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 2: one of their lines the previous week and they planned

565
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 2: to do it again next week. That was a page

566
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 2: one article.

567
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 1: That was it and more bagel follow ups of course. Yeah,

568
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: So after September fifteenth, only a few other mentions of

569
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:29,760
Speaker 1: the whole thing appeared in the paper at all. The

570
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: most notable was an editorial on September twentieth where nearby Decatur, Illinois.

571
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: The only way to described this is a bit of

572
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: a newspaper flame war between these two small towns, a

573
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 1: real Springfield Shelbyville type of situation. Sure, yeah, you're gonna

574
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: I mean me or you you? Okay? Oh wait, it

575
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 1: does say Chuck Colin speak. Now what is that we're doing?

576
00:32:59,320 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 2: Right?

577
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:02,479
Speaker 1: That's tight we are. So they got into a bit

578
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: of a flame war, started writing editorials, you know, kind

579
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 1: of making fun of one another. Decatur was making fun

580
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: of Mattoon. Mattoon would make fun. We would get very defensive, obviously, yeah,

581
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: and say, you know what this article overlooks then indisputable

582
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 1: fact that there was a mad gasser at large at first,

583
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: and that a failure by the police here to take

584
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: care of the case seriously at the outset allowed the

585
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: mass hit hysteria that followed to overrun any investigation. And

586
00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 1: also the odor probably came from Decatur.

587
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:34,480
Speaker 2: That's not a joke.

588
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 1: No, you stink, you stink.

589
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 2: That was how they wrapped up the editorial. And then

590
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 2: after that the journal who's at the town's voice is

591
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,720
Speaker 2: pretty much clammed up on the matter. And in the end,

592
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 2: how many attacks were there, Chuck.

593
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 1: I think there were twenty four different attacks that effected

594
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 1: between thirty six to over one hundred if you count

595
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: when seventy of those three percenters and their pickup trucks

596
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 1: said I smell something, So I don't like to count that.

597
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 1: So I think about twenty eight people ish were affected.

598
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 2: Okay, And so the town just kind of moved on, shaken,

599
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 2: weirded out. No one died though, no no one died,

600
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 2: no one was injured long term, miraculously, but it had

601
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 2: a serious impact on the town, and it continued on.

602
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 2: The story continued on because shortly after the whole thing ended,

603
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,799
Speaker 2: a young student, a probably eighteen nineteen year old from

604
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 2: the University of Illinois named Donald Johnson, showed up in

605
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 2: town and he was there to document this as a

606
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 2: case of mass illusion, which he clearly thought it was.

607
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 2: The thing was. The town by this time had been

608
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 2: made a butt of international jokes like Time Newsweek, people

609
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 2: just teeing off on a tune like you guys really

610
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 2: went crazy, and we think that's hilarious. Basically, so the

611
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 2: people who are the victims of the Matt Guesser had

612
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 2: learned to just keep quiet about it.

613
00:34:58,000 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there were a lot of skeptics in town

614
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: on obviously, including still Chief Coal. The attacks dropped off

615
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: pretty sharply, and he was quoted as summing up summing

616
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 1: it up by saying it was a mistake from beginning

617
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,719
Speaker 1: to end. I don't even know what that means, like

618
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: a mistake, Yeah, that it happened, or that they took

619
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 1: part and investigating, I don't even know what that well.

620
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 2: Chief Cole was known for his very cryptic quotes his

621
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:23,919
Speaker 2: Sphinx liked.

622
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 1: So when Johnson showed up to study the victims, he

623
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,320
Speaker 1: was able to get like hard information from them firsthand

624
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: about like the actual gassing. But he's doing a psychological

625
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 1: research paper, so he needs data about who they are,

626
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 1: their level of schooling, and their socioeconomic level, and he's

627
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 1: got to have all the like personal data and they

628
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: no one would give that up. So he devised his

629
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:46,319
Speaker 1: own system.

630
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he came up with a really clever workaround.

631
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 2: There was something called the ABC Socioeconomic Skill that had

632
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 2: been created for broadcasters, but confusingly not specifically ABC. It

633
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 2: was like ABC, like the alphabet that you sing, and

634
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:04,759
Speaker 2: it was a socioeconomic skill where you don't go to

635
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 2: the people who you're categorizing, you just go learn stuff

636
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 2: about them, like by looking at census records and things

637
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 2: like that. So Donald Johnson came up with his own

638
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 2: and it was like this. It was based on the

639
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 2: victim's level of schooling, their age, their sex, And we

640
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 2: ran across a really interesting little known fact. This is

641
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 2: the first time in history someone answered yes please when

642
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 2: they were asked their sex by a surveyor and then

643
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 2: their occupation and income.

644
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:43,239
Speaker 1: And that person was my father in law. Let's cut

645
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: that part out, Jerry, all right, just in case. So, ah,

646
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 1: that's a great joke. What are you talking about? He

647
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: sounds just like that, by the way. So for occupation,

648
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 1: he looked at the census records. He looked at the

649
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 1: nineteen forty census, which was the closest one kind of

650
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 1: gleaned what he could. But back then they had really

651
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:06,040
Speaker 1: broad labels for CENSUSI since I censuses.

652
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 2: Since I I like that, Since I all right.

653
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: I just made that up. I can say that now

654
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: because I'm a whole human being without a big hole

655
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: in the front of my mouth. I did this show

656
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 1: earlier and the yeah you're clapping because I have all

657
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 1: my teeth. Earlier in the year, it was like, and

658
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,759
Speaker 1: this this is sen It was not good.

659
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 2: Your dental word just got a round of a plug.

660
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:27,839
Speaker 1: I know.

661
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:30,919
Speaker 2: That's pretty neat.

662
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:32,720
Speaker 1: I have to tell doctor Presley.

663
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 2: I was like, is that the one who swears?

664
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 1: No? No, no, that wasn't my dentist. That was a

665
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:41,759
Speaker 1: listener that wrote in. Yeah, it was great, Denis. But

666
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 1: Dennis that drops f bombs while you're in the chair

667
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:45,759
Speaker 1: kind of my kind of guy.

668
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 2: That would make me uncomfortable. Really, yeah, it'd be like,

669
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 2: do your job. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know that

670
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 2: there's children here and I'm sorry.

671
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:00,759
Speaker 1: Oh no, you never hear us? Guy? Are their kids here?

672
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:01,279
Speaker 2: Yes?

673
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:03,160
Speaker 1: Right there?

674
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:06,799
Speaker 2: And she does not look happy with me. I'm sorry, dear,

675
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 2: just waving Hi.

676
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 1: How old are you ten?

677
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 2: Ten?

678
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: You've heard that word? If you haven't, I'm gonna call

679
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:29,360
Speaker 1: child Services and report your parents. Ten so cute? Uh?

680
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: Oh man, that threw me. My daughter's nine. She knows

681
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: that word. Where are we okay? So for income? He based,

682
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: Oh no, we're talking about the SINSI It was a

683
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: little vague back in those days. Right, that's where it was.

684
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:48,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they had they had labels like a laborer comma,

685
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 2: except farm. But the good thing for Donald Johnson was,

686
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 2: in my tune, if you didn't work on a farm,

687
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 2: you worked in a factory, or you worked on the railroad.

688
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,680
Speaker 2: That was it. The big challenge was age because you

689
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 2: couldn't really tell from their occupation whether they were like

690
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:08,600
Speaker 2: eight or right, So he relied on what he wrote

691
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 2: in the paper acquaintances of the victims. That's how we

692
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 2: found out their level of schooling and their age. And

693
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:17,320
Speaker 2: what we gleaned from that is he asked the cops

694
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:20,839
Speaker 2: who investigated it, because the Matomb Police Department was very

695
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 2: very cooperative with Donald Johnson in his paper.

696
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally anything that was a great distraction for them, right,

697
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: Like sure paper great for income. He based it on

698
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:32,240
Speaker 1: And this is actually the only part of the ABC

699
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: scale that I thought was like pretty smart. He would

700
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:36,319
Speaker 1: go to their house and he would look around because

701
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: it was nineteen forty four for like household conveniences or

702
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: luxuries at the time, which could really tell you a

703
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: lot about your income as a household, which at the

704
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: time was electricity in the house, a mechanical refrigerator, a telephone,

705
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 1: and a radio.

706
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 2: Yes, And so he took all this, mixed it all together,

707
00:39:56,400 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 2: shook it up in a bag. Little fairy dust, pixie.

708
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 1: Dust, don't forget salt pepper.

709
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 2: He threw a moist pink rag in, massed it all together,

710
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 2: and he came up with four not a BC, ABC D.

711
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 2: He's a bit of a show off. And he found

712
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 2: that all of the victims fell within BC or D.

713
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 2: There were no a's, and they were almost all C

714
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:24,520
Speaker 2: or D. And when you kind of pull everything out

715
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:27,280
Speaker 2: of that, it means that they were almost all women

716
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 2: ninety three percent, and most of them were between the

717
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:32,719
Speaker 2: ages of twenty and twenty nine. And compared to the

718
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 2: population of the town as a whole, the victims of

719
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 2: the mad Gasser, they were more likely to be females

720
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 2: in their twenties with below average education, below average income,

721
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,719
Speaker 2: which is exactly back in the day the kind of

722
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 2: person you thought would be very suggestible to something like

723
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 2: mass hysteria.

724
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: That's right, it's not us talking everybody, right, nineteen forty

725
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: four people. So inian Johnson concluded that it was entirely psychogenic.

726
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 1: That's a quote that was birth from a case of

727
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:07,839
Speaker 1: nerves experienced by a link Kearney to begin with, which

728
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:10,279
Speaker 1: resulted in that first call to the police that ended

729
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: up in that night's blotter, spotted by the reporter from

730
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 1: the Journal Gazette the next day, who concocted out of

731
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: thin air this idea that there was an anesthetic prowler

732
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 1: on the loose, which you know, ninety seven percent of

733
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: the town is reading this thing. So the German fear spreads.

734
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:27,919
Speaker 1: I forgot where I was with my fingers and set

735
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: off other case of nerves which were attributed to that

736
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 1: same prowler, further supporting the existence of the prowler, which

737
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:36,720
Speaker 1: may or may not have been a thing, which produced

738
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 1: even more cases. So it was like what you call

739
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:39,800
Speaker 1: that thing.

740
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,840
Speaker 2: Like getting stomach contents in your face and them projectile

741
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:48,879
Speaker 2: vomiting back in a person's stomach. You remember, yeah, that thing.

742
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:52,760
Speaker 1: But he got published, right, he got published.

743
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 2: Everybody, remember this is an eighteen nineteen year old kid

744
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 2: who showed up to Talent to document a case of

745
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 2: mass illusion, and it was published in the January nineteenth

746
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 2: forty five issue of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,

747
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 2: a very well respected peer reviewed journal. Little Donald Johnson

748
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 2: got his paper.

749
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: Published, Little Donald Johnson.

750
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when it was published, the whole thing, the

751
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 2: entire case of the mad gas or metun became irrevocably

752
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:24,359
Speaker 2: a case of massisteria. That's what science said. It was masssterian.

753
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 2: As time went on and Johnson's paper became cited, it

754
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 2: became a circle of sorts and it became a textbook

755
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:41,600
Speaker 2: case of mass hysteria. Nice job, thanks, should we?

756
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:43,960
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like this is going pretty good story.

757
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:45,879
Speaker 2: Oh wait, there's one more line I forgot. Oh wait,

758
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 2: but decades on, it's far from clear whether it was

759
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:58,320
Speaker 2: a case of mass hysteria. And that explains what Chuck's

760
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 2: about to say.

761
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 1: I think he's still going pretty good. You guys, We

762
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: have to take another ad break in cases gets released,

763
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: so we'll be right back Minneapolis.

764
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 2: Stoffing the jawshon? Should stoff your Okay? So we're going

765
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 2: to give both cases. We're going to lay both cases out,

766
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 2: the case for massissaria and the case against massteria, meaning

767
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 2: that there was an actual mad gasser. And we're going

768
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 2: to start with the case four mass hysteria. And there

769
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 2: were a lot of factors present in Matune in September

770
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 2: of nineteen forty four, that could help support the idea

771
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 2: that this was just a case of massissaria, not the

772
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 2: least of a lot of the men in town were

773
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:03,600
Speaker 2: off fighting the war, and so the people in town

774
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 2: had caused to feel anxiety and worry about their loved

775
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 2: ones every hour of every day during this time.

776
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:11,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And as a cherry on top of

777
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: all that, on August twenty ninth, like right before this happened,

778
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 1: newspaper headlines nearby told the story of a Nazipow, like

779
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: a real Nazpow, not those fake ones that they you know,

780
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:27,040
Speaker 1: I don't know why I said that a Nazpow had

781
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 1: escaped from prison from an army base where he was

782
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: being held about one hundred and fifty miles from Mattoon.

783
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: No one tried to pin it on this, but it

784
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: just sort of lent itself to the air of paranoida.

785
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You can also make a pretty good case

786
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 2: that the Journal Gazette played a prominent role in this

787
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 2: whole thing, because remember the very first headline said that

788
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:52,439
Speaker 2: there was an anesthetic prowler on the loops. Just said it,

789
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 2: And whether the anesthetic prowler was real or not. Now,

790
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 2: the concept at least was real, was in reality. And

791
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,680
Speaker 2: then also the idea of saying that Aileen and Dorothy

792
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 2: were the first victims makes it sound like that there's

793
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 2: going to be more. What was the anesthetic prowler being

794
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:09,719
Speaker 2: on the loose and all?

795
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. This is also a time when people

796
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 1: worried about you know, like Saren gas and Mustard gas.

797
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: It was just a period of our history where gassing

798
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:21,319
Speaker 1: was in the air.

799
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:27,320
Speaker 2: You get negative four stars.

800
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, okay, friend.

801
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:35,640
Speaker 2: I love you, but that was terrible. Okay, don't like counts?

802
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: No, no, no, don't don't compliment sandwich me great, I love you.

803
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 1: Terrible joke. And you also look good tonight.

804
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:46,359
Speaker 2: That's how you do it.

805
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 1: Oh, hello, miss you like Tubby Old guys Emily would

806
00:45:56,520 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: think that's hysterical, by the way, I know, just just

807
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:02,399
Speaker 1: to be clear. Uh oh, man, I got thrown because

808
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:10,719
Speaker 1: she hit on me. Oh here's the other thing. No

809
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 1: motive ever emerged, and no one was ever like, thank goodness,

810
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: no one has ever robbed or assaulted or anything like that.

811
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: It was just these random, sporadic gassings, and that is

812
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: a decidedly weird thing to happen.

813
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the gas itself provided evidence in that

814
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 2: it provided no evidence whatsoever. No chemical was ever isolated

815
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 2: from the pink cloth. In a lot of cases, the

816
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:36,320
Speaker 2: gas dissipated so quickly somebody running into help didn't detect

817
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,239
Speaker 2: it at all. Don't forget. There was at least one

818
00:46:39,320 --> 00:46:42,320
Speaker 2: case where somebody was affected by the gas, but somebody

819
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:46,240
Speaker 2: else in the same room was not. That's unusual behavior

820
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 2: for a noxious gas.

821
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, So not a lot of uh, that's good. Not

822
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: a lot of physical evidence is happening at this point.

823
00:46:58,400 --> 00:46:59,840
Speaker 1: It was also a pretty peculiar.

824
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 2: That word it's getting pad everybody.

825
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: It was also a peculiar. It was strange, porky big,

826
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: It was good pequila, piguila, pequilo. Strange that the whole

827
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:18,240
Speaker 1: thing ended when the police announced they were gonna start

828
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: sticking the tube down the throat.

829
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, either go to jail or be medically assaulted.

830
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 1: Right.

831
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 2: So, as Donald Johnson put it in his paper, which

832
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 2: again he said, this was all just a case of

833
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 2: mass hysteria, he said the fact seemed to evaporate as

834
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 2: rapidly as the agent that produced them. He was a

835
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:42,279
Speaker 2: real bastard. No one like Donald Johnson, if you haven't

836
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 2: picked up on that, he was like, yeah, real self satisfied.

837
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:52,399
Speaker 1: And he looked around. Nobody was there because no one

838
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: wanted to be.

839
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:56,600
Speaker 2: So the thing about this is, though, yes, you can

840
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:59,240
Speaker 2: make a pretty good case that it was just Massstari's

841
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 2: a lot of good, circum substantial evidence, but you can

842
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 2: look at that same evidence in different ways, and no

843
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 2: matter how you present the whole thing, there's still some

844
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,440
Speaker 2: stuff left on the table to be explained. And so

845
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 2: here we present the case against Massssaria, the concept, the

846
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 2: idea that there actually was a mad gasser man.

847
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: What a setup.

848
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 2: You're a real pro, thanks, sure, I've been doing it

849
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 2: for a while.

850
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:28,280
Speaker 1: So though there was not a lot of physical evidence,

851
00:48:28,400 --> 00:48:30,799
Speaker 1: there was a little bit. You can't discount that you

852
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:34,920
Speaker 1: had that moistpink cloth that everyone could not help but

853
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 1: put in their face. People did bleed from their lips

854
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:42,239
Speaker 1: and mouth like children vomited, like all that stuff really

855
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 1: did happen. There was that slashed window screen, There was

856
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: that high heeled steel toed boot footprint in the dirt.

857
00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: So even though there wasn't a lot of stuff, and

858
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: I don't think we said they did test the rag obviously,

859
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: but by the time they got it, I think it

860
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 1: was like a few days later. You know, back in

861
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:01,320
Speaker 1: those days, there was nothing that they could like isolate

862
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: from the rack.

863
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that doesn't mean there wasn't anything on and

864
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:06,200
Speaker 2: things sat around for three days. It's possible it just

865
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:09,800
Speaker 2: totally evaporated, for sure, and then cheap Coles policy. Yes,

866
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 2: it did bring an abrupt end to the whole thing,

867
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:16,080
Speaker 2: but that doesn't necessarily mean that it was because the

868
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,839
Speaker 2: mad Gasser was just totally made up. It can also

869
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,840
Speaker 2: have been like a huge widespread loss of faith in

870
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 2: the police. And in fact, there were two hundred and

871
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 2: thirty two calls to the police of any kind in

872
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 2: September of nineteen forty four, the month that the town

873
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:34,640
Speaker 2: of Mettune was supposedly in the grips of a text

874
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 2: bookcase of mass hysteria, and that was well below the

875
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:41,840
Speaker 2: average of three hundred. So it's possible people just stopped

876
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,160
Speaker 2: calling the cops no matter what was happening to them.

877
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cops also had a motive for just wanting

878
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,440
Speaker 1: this to go away. Like we said, they had a

879
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:55,439
Speaker 1: pinchonk for covering up crimes, asything like that I did

880
00:49:56,520 --> 00:50:00,800
Speaker 1: pinch in covering up crimes or you know, kind of crimes.

881
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 1: This let them off the hook because they had nothing basically,

882
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: so it totally let them off the hook. And we

883
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 1: know that they were comfortable in covering up crimes from

884
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 1: the Journal gazette, so it wasn't too far batch.

885
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then let's talk about Donald Johns's paper, shall we.

886
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 2: It turns out he cherry picked data like a mofo.

887
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 2: He essentially excluded all of the men, almost all the men.

888
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 2: He excluded all the children victims, and just focused almost

889
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 2: exclusively on the women victims, which sets things up pretty

890
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:32,880
Speaker 2: nice when you're trying to prove a case of female

891
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:39,280
Speaker 2: mass hysteria that makeshift ABC socioeconomic scale. It was inspired, true,

892
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 2: but it would not pass peer of you today because

893
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 2: it's egregiously fabricating data. And the fact that he concluded

894
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 2: the entire event with psychogenic is pretty rich because he

895
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 2: couldn't get a single victim to submit to a psychological

896
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 2: panel or test or question. Yeah, so he's kind of

897
00:50:57,960 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 2: full of it.

898
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: I'd say, Yeah, there is one little and to me,

899
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:04,280
Speaker 1: this is sort of the biggest one. If you're making

900
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:08,160
Speaker 1: this case, which is despite all of these cases that happened,

901
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: I think what there was over thirty of them or

902
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: twenty something. None of them overlapped like geographically or time wise,

903
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: Like if this town had been in the grips of

904
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: mass hysteria, there would have been a call saying I've

905
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:22,879
Speaker 1: been gassed, and five minutes later on the other side

906
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:25,800
Speaker 1: of town. At some point during this ten days, somebody

907
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: would have made it geographically and physically impossible because they're

908
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:31,320
Speaker 1: all freaking out and calling the cops. But every single

909
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 1: incident could be explained, like geographically speaking, someone could have

910
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:38,640
Speaker 1: gone from one place to another in the amount of

911
00:51:38,640 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: time that had occurred.

912
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:40,800
Speaker 2: Curious piece of data.

913
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 1: Curious.

914
00:51:42,719 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 2: So we probably should have said this at the outset,

915
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:46,919
Speaker 2: this is an unsolved mystery. We're not going to solve

916
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,839
Speaker 2: it here tonight. Be sorry for that if you were

917
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 2: expecting that.

918
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:51,280
Speaker 1: Sorry.

919
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:55,800
Speaker 2: Sorry. No one knows who the matt Gasser Mettune was. Seriously,

920
00:51:55,920 --> 00:51:59,320
Speaker 2: but there was a guy is a guy named Scott

921
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 2: Marona who was a high school chemistry professor, and he

922
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 2: grew up in Charleston, about twelve miles away from Mattoon,

923
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:08,600
Speaker 2: and he decided to go to Mattoon a few years

924
00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 2: back and talked to some of the locals, and he

925
00:52:10,560 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 2: put together a book about the subject, The Mad Gasser

926
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:21,839
Speaker 2: of Mattoon. Yeah, dispelling the hysteria. Very nice everybody. Yeah,

927
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 2: And he interviewed a bunch of residents who lived through

928
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:25,719
Speaker 2: the whole thing.

929
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:29,319
Speaker 1: Amazing to have two thousand people scream colon at you.

930
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:32,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally uncoached, unprompted.

931
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, never felt so much power.

932
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,400
Speaker 2: Sorry, go ahead, you were overwhelmed by the colon.

933
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:47,279
Speaker 1: It really was full of beans. Is that three?

934
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:47,919
Speaker 2: Yeah?

935
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: Okay?

936
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 2: First, oh yes, please clap as Jeb Bush said. So

937
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 2: Maruna doesn't think it was hysteria at all, does he?

938
00:53:03,239 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 1: No. In fact, Marna names an individual. Oh man, you

939
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:14,759
Speaker 1: guys are the best. This is this is probably gonna

940
00:53:14,760 --> 00:53:15,439
Speaker 1: be the one you guys.

941
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:29,279
Speaker 3: Okay, Oh yeah, it's kind of really right there.

942
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 2: That just pushed it right over the line.

943
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: He names an individual, a local man named Farley Llewellen,

944
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 1: a trained chemist and the college dropout from the University

945
00:53:42,040 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: of Illinois who built a professional chemistry lab on his parents'

946
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:50,840
Speaker 1: property that blew up about a week before this all happened.

947
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 1: And he was tall and had a slim, athletic build.

948
00:53:55,160 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 2: Yes, so Scott Maroona found from talking to the local

949
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 2: that people considered Farley llewell and strange. John Miller, the

950
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 2: guy from the Journal Gazette who wrote about all this stuff,

951
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 2: he later said that Farley Llewellen had been picked up

952
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:14,839
Speaker 2: once as a peeping tom. He was known to drink ruinously,

953
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,719
Speaker 2: and he was thought to have been gay in a

954
00:54:19,000 --> 00:54:23,560
Speaker 2: time in a town where you just weren't that. So

955
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 2: he was kind of considered a weird outsider essentially by

956
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 2: the town.

957
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:30,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And everyone tolerated this in the town

958
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 1: because he came from a prominent family. His family owned

959
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:36,880
Speaker 1: back when individuals own grocery stores and it wasn't just

960
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: some monolith corporation. His dad was a grocer and a

961
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:44,080
Speaker 1: very beloved grocer who would do really genuinely great things

962
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:47,520
Speaker 1: like take food by Christmas if people didn't have a

963
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: lot of money, and gifts to children and stuff like that.

964
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:51,680
Speaker 1: So he was a beloved individual.

965
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:52,919
Speaker 2: He was a real chuck type.

966
00:54:54,520 --> 00:54:59,000
Speaker 1: Come on kidding me, those are my gifts that didn't

967
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:03,280
Speaker 1: go over well? Cut that part Adam in the palm

968
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:06,279
Speaker 1: in my hand. I know it's ruined. Yeah, I know,

969
00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: I saw what I was here, So we're back everybody.

970
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:19,280
Speaker 1: And yeah, they were a belovedge family. Everybody loved these people,

971
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:21,239
Speaker 1: so they overlooked their weird son.

972
00:55:21,560 --> 00:55:25,960
Speaker 2: Yes, and Scott Marina actually even names the gas that

973
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:30,160
Speaker 2: he thinks it is nitromethane, and it actually checks pretty

974
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:32,800
Speaker 2: much all the boxes for the symptoms that were reported

975
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 2: by victims of the mad Gasser. Nitromethane produces limb weakness, cough, drowsiness, headache, nausea,

976
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:44,840
Speaker 2: sore throat, vomiting. Do not take nitromethane if you're pregnant

977
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 2: or planning or become pregnant. Do not take nitromethane if

978
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 2: you're allergic to nitromethane. And it also counts for the

979
00:55:53,000 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 2: sickeningly sweet smell because nitromethane is described as unpleasant comma fruity.

980
00:56:01,719 --> 00:56:04,359
Speaker 1: Here's the thing though, with nitro methane is it's known

981
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:10,319
Speaker 1: more as an exploding thing than a paralyzing thing. So

982
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:14,319
Speaker 1: the leap that Marna took was that, Hey, I think

983
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: that this guy was trying to blow people up. I

984
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:20,560
Speaker 1: think he didn't fit in because he was a gay,

985
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: smart chemistry loaner in this town. In nineteen forty four,

986
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:26,800
Speaker 1: where you couldn't be that, and so he took revenge

987
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:29,319
Speaker 1: on the town by trying to blow them up one

988
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 1: bedroom at a time.

989
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:34,560
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of things wrong with Farley Llewellyn

990
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:38,080
Speaker 2: being the mad gasser. The first one is he seems

991
00:56:38,120 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 2: to have been the mad scientist that Thomas Wright was

992
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:44,040
Speaker 2: quoted as saying the police had zeroed in on, and

993
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:50,719
Speaker 2: tangentially to that, we know that the mad scientists the

994
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:54,239
Speaker 2: police were watching was under twenty four hour surveillance and

995
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 2: that during that time other mad gaser attacks had happened,

996
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:01,280
Speaker 2: which makes it hard for it to and Farley Llewellen.

997
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 2: But Scott Marna has an answer for this, that's right.

998
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: It is.

999
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:09,719
Speaker 2: He says that the first three attacks were Farley and

1000
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:11,799
Speaker 2: that after not being able to blow any of his

1001
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:13,839
Speaker 2: neighbors up, he just gave up. He was a bit

1002
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:17,919
Speaker 2: of a quitter apparently, and that later texts either were

1003
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 2: actual cases of mass hysteria or suggestibility, or Farley's two

1004
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:27,720
Speaker 2: older sisters, who were described as short and have you said,

1005
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 2: actually carried out more crimes to cover up for their

1006
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 2: little brother, which is sweet in a psychotic kind of way. Right.

1007
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:42,520
Speaker 1: The second problem in that Marina's book, he got a

1008
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 1: lot of his information, basically all of it by talking

1009
00:57:44,680 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: with townspeople. And this is many, many years later, right, Yeah,

1010
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:50,560
Speaker 1: and they were not able to verify a lot of

1011
00:57:50,600 --> 00:57:54,440
Speaker 1: the claims. There's a lot of speculation going on this

1012
00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:56,720
Speaker 1: whole idea that like, he was gay, so he was

1013
00:57:56,760 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 1: an outcast, and so he wanted revenge on the town

1014
00:57:59,240 --> 00:58:02,160
Speaker 1: and wanted to kill people by blowing them up, and

1015
00:58:02,640 --> 00:58:07,520
Speaker 1: then they stopped happening because his grosser families. That sounds

1016
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:11,440
Speaker 1: so strange. His family had the kind of money to

1017
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 1: send him away to the state hospital, where he was

1018
00:58:14,200 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 1: never heard from again, and that's why the gassing stop.

1019
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: And this is problematic for a bunch of reasons, obviously

1020
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:24,160
Speaker 1: through today's lens, because local saying he was weird and strange.

1021
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:26,760
Speaker 1: It could have been that he was just just a

1022
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:31,200
Speaker 1: regular gay guy who was into chemistry and maybe sort

1023
00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:34,520
Speaker 1: of a brainiac and was doing his thing like doing

1024
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: chemistry in the basement. It's kind of coded in a

1025
00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 1: big way. It's also possible that he could have been

1026
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: the mad gasser. We don't know, but there was so

1027
00:58:43,520 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 1: much speculation going on. We tried to find records from

1028
00:58:47,720 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: the state hospital, like did his parents have them have

1029
00:58:50,840 --> 00:58:53,960
Speaker 1: them sent away? And we couldn't even like find that unfortunately,

1030
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:56,200
Speaker 1: because they just don't keep records like that. It's also

1031
00:58:56,240 --> 00:58:59,360
Speaker 1: a time in history where a prominent family with some

1032
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,600
Speaker 1: money could have your child's in a way just because

1033
00:59:02,680 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 1: they were gay so.

1034
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:06,440
Speaker 2: Or because they kept trying to blow up their neighbors.

1035
00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to go to bad a little bit

1036
00:59:09,240 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 1: for Farley Llewellen, but it seems like he might have

1037
00:59:11,760 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: been the guy.

1038
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 2: It's possible, but again we don't know. No one knows,

1039
00:59:16,640 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 2: and neither do you now. So there's a lot to

1040
00:59:22,200 --> 00:59:24,520
Speaker 2: read on the Mad gas ermatune. Even though it's kind

1041
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:27,400
Speaker 2: of an obscure case. There's a lot of rabbit holes

1042
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 2: you can go down, and if you really get into

1043
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:32,760
Speaker 2: it like we did, you can go on to eBay

1044
00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:36,200
Speaker 2: and buy one of Matchbox Toys Monster in my Pocket

1045
00:59:36,400 --> 00:59:41,880
Speaker 2: series I think four figures. The Mad Gaser a metune

1046
00:59:42,520 --> 00:59:46,280
Speaker 2: which Chuck bought. Do you want to describe it, Chuck?

1047
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:49,920
Speaker 1: Sure? For those people that can't see this tiny, tiny

1048
00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 1: thing that I'm holding, I went on eBay. It is green,

1049
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:57,840
Speaker 1: it is does not look anything like Farley Leewellen. I

1050
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 1: should point out it's a monster and has like lobster

1051
01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:05,760
Speaker 1: pincers and these a gas tank with an orange gas mask,

1052
01:00:06,120 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: and also these strange tentacles coming off of his back.

1053
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:12,760
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. I love having this little fella. Sure,

1054
01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:15,479
Speaker 1: but again I don't see Farley Lewellen when I look at.

1055
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:21,840
Speaker 2: This, and Matchbox Toy on their evilness scale gave the

1056
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:26,480
Speaker 2: Mad Gaser an eighty out of one hundred, and Matchbox

1057
01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:29,520
Speaker 2: Toy's evilness scale is at least as legitimate as Donald

1058
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 2: Johnson's ABC socioeconomic Scale.

1059
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:32,960
Speaker 1: That's right.

1060
01:00:33,200 --> 01:00:34,680
Speaker 2: That is the Mad Gasser of Mad too.

1061
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:44,840
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Thanks everybody, Thanks you.

1062
01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 2: Thanks due.

1063
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:57,240
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

1064
01:00:57,360 --> 01:01:01,520
Speaker 1: more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts,

1065
01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:10,000
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. MHM