Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of Iheartradiozaren Burnette.
Speaker 2: Yo, Lizabeth Dutton, what's up, Claude?
Speaker 3: Not much. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Doing pretty well, doing pretty well? Thanks for asking? How
Speaker 2: are you?
Speaker 3: I'm great as always. I'm just great.
Speaker 2: So happy to hear that.
Speaker 3: Listen. You know it's ridiculous. Yes, I do, give it
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: Okay, Elizabeth, all right, I'm not I want to preface this.
Speaker 2: I'm not making fun of the front part. I'm making
Speaker 2: front of the back part. Okay. Last year, there's this
Speaker 2: news story about this guy, Christian Montenegro, okay, and he
Speaker 2: married a rag doll. Like, that's not I'm not casting
Speaker 2: aspersions on this person. No, no, like his wife, Natalia
Speaker 2: is a rag doll. And he broke up with his
Speaker 2: ex girlfriend, right, and so then he started dating Natalia
Speaker 2: the rag doll. And then he decided, well, I'm happy
Speaker 2: with her. We can make a good life of this.
Speaker 2: So then he got married to the rag doll. And
Speaker 2: people are like this, this is not right. People are like, no, no,
Speaker 2: he's it's fine. So they're debating, right anyway, This is
Speaker 2: the part that it gets me because I don't whatever
Speaker 2: you've been marry what bridge, marry a building out? Okay, right,
Speaker 2: there was a video last year of him going to
Speaker 2: the doctors in which he's called paramedics because he was
Speaker 2: worried that his rag doll had fallen. Ill keep in
Speaker 2: mind they have three rag doll children, so he was
Speaker 2: worried he was going to be a single rag doll
Speaker 2: father to their rag doll kids.
Speaker 3: Where where is this?
Speaker 2: And it goes long enough that I do not think
Speaker 2: it's a prank. I have to believe that this is
Speaker 2: a compulsion. It is into South America. Why are you
Speaker 2: being like, what does it matter?
Speaker 3: Where he and slap them.
Speaker 2: It takes place in the land of magical realism, Colombia.
Speaker 3: Oh, Colombia, Columbia. So there you go, ridiculous, right, and
Speaker 3: just the last part, guess what three rags ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Three rag doll kids, a rag doll wife. And when
Speaker 2: he gets sick he goes to a people a people hospital, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: and he needs to go to a rag doll hospital.
Speaker 3: I'm all progressive. Where is.
Speaker 2: It not fine taking a rag doll to a human hospital?
Speaker 2: It's like taking me to a vent that we come on,
Speaker 2: do you want to save your wife or.
Speaker 3: Not the event, because we got the cops on her too.
Speaker 2: That's why, honestly that I recommend it.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be like, you know, if he
Speaker 3: wants to leave a red No.
Speaker 2: Three or something together, I think we can afford another conversation.
Speaker 2: He sewed another kid.
Speaker 3: You don't get to do that kind of like, come on, now,
Speaker 3: come on now, that is ridiculous. That's ridiculous. Do you
Speaker 3: know what else is ridiculous? No, but I'm here for it,
Speaker 3: escaping and then escaping and then escaping some more like
Speaker 3: the spirit This is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd
Speaker 3: and outrageous capers. Heycin Cuns, it's always ninety nine percent
Speaker 3: murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: No, you heard that.
Speaker 3: You've talked about escape artists.
Speaker 2: Before once or twice. Yes, I'm a fan those.
Speaker 3: Who break out of lock up and make it an
Speaker 3: absolute art.
Speaker 2: Yes, a statement multiple attempts.
Speaker 3: A commentary on man's isolation amid the masses and desperate
Speaker 3: need for liberation. You know something high falutine like that?
Speaker 2: That?
Speaker 3: Ta? I like that you focused on more recent ridiculous escapermen.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the ridiculousness of the artist.
Speaker 3: A postmodern analysis completely. I want to take us back.
Speaker 3: You heard I want to take his way back.
Speaker 2: Please lay back.
Speaker 3: I got two ogs for you to Oh wow, oh jeez.
Speaker 3: All right, let's start in the seventeen hundred. This is
Speaker 3: like you starting everything going back to Dracula. Dracula.
Speaker 2: I'm always Yeah, when Memed the second could have killed Dracula,
Speaker 2: Draca could have killed the second, go back to and
Speaker 2: then he failed. Yeah, when Gladly and Paler failed to
Speaker 2: kill Memo the second you get America, that's when.
Speaker 3: You're like, what caused the Cuban missile crisis? You're like, okay,
Speaker 3: well it starts with me.
Speaker 2: You know, Meed the second in the Fall of Constantinople
Speaker 2: in fourteen fifty three.
Speaker 3: Now every time, so I'm taking to the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to mangle any French or Italian pronunciations.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 3: Not because I've worked hard on my diction and my focus.
Speaker 3: It's because there aren't any nice raw Okay. So the
Speaker 3: first dude is a fellow named Jack Shepherd. I can
Speaker 3: say that nice you got that Jack Shepherd. He is,
Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna screw hard. He's known as the eighteenth
Speaker 3: century's most notorious robber and thief. That's saying a lot.
Speaker 3: Is it purely in his home country of England, Likely
Speaker 3: because he wasn't a global.
Speaker 2: Phenom, kind of a highwayman.
Speaker 3: Not really, you'll see. He was also referred to as
Speaker 3: the most glamorous rogue in London.
Speaker 2: One of those kind of guy, yes, jigglob with deep pockets,
Speaker 2: he drops things in.
Speaker 3: He was born. He was born on March fourth. Did
Speaker 3: you ever when when I was in high school, we
Speaker 3: used to say to the nuns, like, you'd raise your
Speaker 3: hand and be like, what's today's date, and they'd say
Speaker 3: March fourth, and we'd all get up and walk forward.
Speaker 2: You're making that up. You did not really do that?
Speaker 2: Did you guys actually get up out of your seats?
Speaker 2: You really did? Multiple kids?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just one time one March wow. And then we
Speaker 3: looked at each other and we're like, oh god, I.
Speaker 2: Love that for you know, do you actually have that?
Speaker 2: That's so precious and dear he was.
Speaker 3: But this was March forth.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's coming back, mourning coming back.
Speaker 3: Well, it's like better than when May the fourth, when
Speaker 3: people do the whole star. No, no, no, March fourth
Speaker 3: so his family was terribly poor.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: They lived in Spittlefields in London, in the East End.
Speaker 2: Spitfield.
Speaker 3: Well, No, the location gets its name from the fact
Speaker 3: that many of the original inhabitants had both poorly formed
Speaker 3: dentician and severe allergies.
Speaker 2: I don't leading them.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it led them to like produce abnormally large
Speaker 3: quantities of saliva, and those were expelled as they yelled
Speaker 3: at outsiders who crossed the area's large open meadow. Thus
Speaker 3: Spittlefields pollen rich meadow.
Speaker 2: They gaps in their teeth.
Speaker 3: And they yelled at And do you think this is funny?
Speaker 2: Do you think this is funny.
Speaker 3: Because it's not true. The land actually belonged to Saint
Speaker 3: Mary's Spittle, a hospital built in eleven ninety seven. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so spittle is a corruption of the word hospital. Okay,
Speaker 3: but I think my explanation is way better.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, to so much better. So they dropped the
Speaker 2: hoe and made spittle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, drop the hoe made so. An earlier name for
Speaker 3: the area was Lallsworth. Lol, like laugh out loud, You
Speaker 3: did not you made that's true. That's true. So in
Speaker 3: Jack Shepherd's time, it was an area notorious for highwaymen,
Speaker 3: as you said, bad men and prostitutes and so Jack
Speaker 3: he stayed away from all that. When he was fifteen
Speaker 3: he got an apprenticeship with a carpenter. Five years later,
Speaker 3: he's twenty years old. Because I can do math and
Speaker 3: I also had to be hooked on phonics. He was
Speaker 3: an accomplished craftsman, of course, twenty years old. He was
Speaker 3: a small fellow.
Speaker 2: They don't have TV. No, he was all the time
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 3: He was too poor for it. Everyone else had it.
Speaker 2: I was on your candle light. You can be working kid.
Speaker 3: He was a litland He was five four spine bone slight,
Speaker 3: but he had like this dazzling smile. He didn't have
Speaker 3: the Spittlefields dentician. He had a dazzling smile and a
Speaker 3: magnetic personality, okay, And so that made him really popular
Speaker 3: in the neighbor especially in the pubs. And it was
Speaker 3: in those taverns that he fell in with the wrong crowd,
Speaker 3: the shady underbelly of Spittlefield. And so most notably was
Speaker 3: a prostitute named Elizabeth Lyon aka Edgeworth Best Edgeworth, Edgeworth,
Speaker 3: Best District Best Best was a big, beautiful mama whole
Speaker 3: lot of rosa very popular with the fellas, and Jack
Speaker 3: was sprung hubba hubba. And so the more time and
Speaker 3: money he spent with best, the deeper into that dark
Speaker 3: side of things he got. Lots of drinking, lots of carousing.
Speaker 3: This wasn't good for woodworkings.
Speaker 2: Are no will be selling his tools?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, as a one time man of the trades,
Speaker 3: you know that you have to be able to focus
Speaker 3: and show up on time and get the work done.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and you have to tell your tools you.
Speaker 3: Can't send things just you can't like send things to
Speaker 3: voicemail and ignore the inbox. So his income took a
Speaker 3: dip and he wasn't getting the work he once was
Speaker 3: because he was spending all this money on booze and
Speaker 3: on yeah, and so he had to make ends meet.
Speaker 3: He needed cash. He started stealing. In the spring of
Speaker 3: seventeen twenty three, he got busted for the first time shoplifting.
Speaker 2: Taking other people's tools.
Speaker 3: Shoplifters of the world unite and takeover, he yelled, Did
Speaker 3: he really that's no, that's a smith's lyric.
Speaker 2: Oh. I thought that they pulled it from him like
Speaker 2: it's an old British story. I just have never.
Speaker 3: Heard he had. He was Spinhall over.
Speaker 2: The I'm not going to believe anything.
Speaker 3: So soon enough, he starts hanging out with a very
Speaker 3: bad ombre named Joseph Blake aka Blueskin.
Speaker 2: William Blake's little brother. Blueskin. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: No, one's really sure how he got that name.
Speaker 2: Colloidal silver, that's how he got that name.
Speaker 3: He had like a really swarthy complexion. He was also blue,
Speaker 3: super hairy, Okay, especially in the facial region, So maybe
Speaker 3: that was it. This is what they're speculating. Okay, some
Speaker 3: thought maybe had a port wine birthmark.
Speaker 2: Okay, maybe he's more sense, lot more sense.
Speaker 3: He could have been part smurf.
Speaker 2: That's I'm going with that one. Smurf from the waist down. Okay,
Speaker 2: be like a mermaid or something. Yeah, it's like fish
Speaker 2: for the waist down. He's smurf from the waist down.
Speaker 3: Blueskin something. He doesn't wear pants a lot because everyone
Speaker 3: can see.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, but I thought his feet he can't hire that,
Speaker 2: yeah blue foot. Well his legs, they see his ankles,
Speaker 2: they go out, they go all the way up.
Speaker 3: Any blueskin, Blueskin, he shows Jack Shepherd the Ropes takes
Speaker 3: him from an amateur shoplifter to a professional thief. He's
Speaker 3: good at it, but he's also not good at it.
Speaker 2: He's an interesting line there, professional thief amateur SHOPLIFTERA when
Speaker 2: someone else pays you.
Speaker 3: Enough, did you get you get sponsorships?
Speaker 2: Okay, there you go. You're a factory rider exactly.
Speaker 3: So he gets arrested and imprisoned five times between seventeen
Speaker 3: twenty three and seventeen twenty four. Of those five arrests,
Speaker 3: he got out four times. The poor folks in Spittlefields
Speaker 3: loved this, of course they loved it.
Speaker 2: They had no TV, they had no TV.
Speaker 3: But the rich people in town did. So. Let's take
Speaker 3: a look at his first escape. Seventeen twenty three. He
Speaker 3: got sent to Saint Anne's Roundhouse for pickpocketing. That's where
Speaker 3: they invented the roundhouse.
Speaker 2: They had the roundhouse just for pickpockets.
Speaker 3: It's where they invented it.
Speaker 2: Like all the cut purses go here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bess came to visit him, and that was a
Speaker 3: bad idea because the jailers recognized her as a lady
Speaker 3: of the night and then she gets arrested.
Speaker 2: No, just in some position.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she wasn't out. I think she had like warrants.
Speaker 3: And so she and Jack they're sent together to new
Speaker 3: prison in Clerkenwell, and it was there that they were
Speaker 3: locked in a cell known as the newgate Ward.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I think I've heard of.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Somehow Jack gets a hold of a file these things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so the couple they'd only been locked up overnight,
Speaker 3: but it was too much for Jack. He's like, I
Speaker 3: can't take this with Jack, he filed his way through
Speaker 3: his shackles. Then he used the file to gouge a
Speaker 3: hole in the wall right under the window, Not like
Speaker 3: a big hole that went all the way through, just
Speaker 3: one that like it was placed as such that he
Speaker 3: could loosen one of the iron bars that blocked the
Speaker 3: wig window and wiggle it out of place. So they
Speaker 3: got the window open. Bess and Jack tied sheets and
Speaker 3: blankets together and did the old cliche rope out of
Speaker 3: the window escape. They lowered themselves to the ground, and
Speaker 3: then they climbed over a twenty two foot high wall.
Speaker 2: Wow, freedom, how are you going to do that?
Speaker 3: They did it.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty two feet. If they're standing on one shoulder
Speaker 2: and you get one up the other one has to pull.
Speaker 3: The other one five foot flour exactly. He's not. She's
Speaker 3: a she's a big lady. Yeah. I don't know how
Speaker 3: they did.
Speaker 2: She she threw them over and rope back over.
Speaker 3: Let's say that's how it happened. All right, let's just
Speaker 3: say it. I'm going to go ahead and say it.
Speaker 3: She threw him over the wall.
Speaker 2: Like it like, rope back over exactly, she climbed up
Speaker 2: and got a baby.
Speaker 3: They went in prisons. No more.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of filing too, and you were trying
Speaker 2: to file through metal that Can we just say.
Speaker 3: Cute couple alerts? Oh my god, go to jail together.
Speaker 2: Oh dude, ship them forever.
Speaker 3: Seventeen twenty four. A year later, Jack's twenty two. He
Speaker 3: was still on his thieving bs. He gets caught. He
Speaker 3: was convicted of burglary and sentenced to death. It seems
Speaker 3: like a lot for theft. Yeah, So back to Newgate.
Speaker 2: What did he steal?
Speaker 3: I don't know. He stole the Declaration of Independence before
Speaker 3: it was written. The cell for the Condemned at Newgate
Speaker 3: was at the end of a dark passage, and to
Speaker 3: get to the passage you had to go through this
Speaker 3: hatch that was like ringed with huge iron spikes.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: No, So that's true. August thirtieth, seventeen twenty four, Jack
Speaker 3: filed away at one of the spikes Nice so that
Speaker 3: with a little push it would just snap right off. Okay,
Speaker 3: he got it almost through, and once again Best comes
Speaker 3: to visit Nice, and I'm guessing she didn't have warrants
Speaker 3: this time. She just like, I'm good.
Speaker 2: She brought the rope, and then she.
Speaker 3: Brought another prostitute with her, a gal named mal Maggot,
Speaker 3: mall maggot, m o l l oh mall like Molly Maggot. Okay,
Speaker 3: And now I'm not of that world, but I would
Speaker 3: imagine that's not a name that drums up a lot
Speaker 3: of business.
Speaker 2: Very specific type of business. Maybe she's like going for
Speaker 2: the goth guys and she wants them to know, like
Speaker 2: perhaps you know a dead girl.
Speaker 3: Oh be sick. Okay, So Bess and Maul they waltzed
Speaker 3: to visit Jack on death Row and they managed to
Speaker 3: distract the guard. How okay, magic trick, I you know,
Speaker 3: I can't imagine how. And so while the guard was
Speaker 3: otherwise occupied, Jack snapped off the spike and then he
Speaker 3: was able to squeeze through the space and make a
Speaker 3: break for it, and the girls helped him run off,
Speaker 3: and then they all went together. Maggot time, maggot so.
Speaker 3: But he only tasted freedom for a couple months then
Speaker 3: he gets locked up. His last escape was his most
Speaker 3: famous one. It was October fifteenth, seventeen twenty four, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of footage of the escape available online.
Speaker 2: You keep doing that, you know.
Speaker 3: So the location was once again Newgate Prison. The jailers
Speaker 3: cuffed him while he was in the cell, hoping that
Speaker 3: would prevent him from getting out sometime again with cheese.
Speaker 2: What are they cuffing him with?
Speaker 3: He just always rope, like loosely woven hemp rope. So
Speaker 3: at some point he managed to get his thin wrists
Speaker 3: out of the shackles, and then he pulled a loose
Speaker 3: nail out of the wall. Which is why maintenance is important.
Speaker 2: So important. It's the little things. Yeah, broken window policies,
Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: So he used the nail to pick the lock on
Speaker 3: the chain that connected his ankle to the floor, and
Speaker 3: then he used the nail to pick the lock on
Speaker 3: the door. Oh yeah, And then he used the nail
Speaker 3: to pick the lock in the area outside the block
Speaker 3: where he was kept, and then another lock and another lock.
Speaker 2: This is like the TV shows I watched, like The Musketeers,
Speaker 2: Like this is so the medieval escape plane. Totally get
Speaker 2: a nail, work it out of something.
Speaker 3: And you know, he's on the roof of the prison.
Speaker 2: I love this for him.
Speaker 3: He still had a shackle around his ankle, and oh
Speaker 3: I forgot Then he's like, oh man, I forgot something.
Speaker 3: So he runs back to the cell and he grabs
Speaker 3: a blanket.
Speaker 2: He breaks back into the prison.
Speaker 3: Where's the staff? Where's the staff? Anyway, he runs back
Speaker 3: up to the roof with the blanket and he uses
Speaker 3: it to slide over to the roof next door, and
Speaker 3: then he pops into a top floor window. This place
Speaker 3: was someone's home and snuck around and then out the
Speaker 3: front door. And he waited until the morning, and he
Speaker 3: went to a cobbler. Smart so being the local folk here. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: he was able to convince the cobbler to cut off
Speaker 3: the leg. Iron I feel like I would have gone
Speaker 3: to a blacksmith, but like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, any port similar tools.
Speaker 3: So he swanned around for two weeks just partying it up.
Speaker 3: And then the law caught up with him, and when
Speaker 3: they went to make they went to arrest him. Dude
Speaker 3: was hammered. What Yeah, he was wasted. So he didn't run,
Speaker 3: he didn't resist, he's just all how dry.
Speaker 1: Jack.
Speaker 3: Of course, he gets arrested, he's convicted and once again
Speaker 3: sentenced to death. I told you he was a folk hero, yes, already.
Speaker 3: When it was time to take him to the gallows,
Speaker 3: the road leading there was lined with women crying and
Speaker 3: like wailing and throwing flowers at his speak. Ladies, man
Speaker 3: to the end, you know. Daniel Dafoe, author of Robinson Cruiser,
Speaker 3: not personally but yes, big fan of Jack's. Earlier in
Speaker 3: the year, Jack Shepherd had written an autobiography, What a
Speaker 3: narrative of all the robbery's escapes, et cetera of John Shepherd.
Speaker 3: That was his book, except Jack didn't write it. Daniel
Speaker 3: Dafoe did. Yeah. They're pals, and it's called Ghost Road,
Speaker 3: he writes book. Yeah. So, and they were such pals
Speaker 3: that Daniel Dafoe and his publisher came up with a
Speaker 3: plan to wait fifteen minutes after Jack got the rope
Speaker 3: and then grabbed the body, and they wanted to revive him,
Speaker 3: which they heard had worked a couple of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, back then, sometimes hangings you'd hear about this.
Speaker 3: It's the old equival of like one hack. They don't
Speaker 3: want you to know, like you can wait fifteen.
Speaker 2: Well sometimes that's the next.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my cousin knows a guy who knows a guy
Speaker 3: who brought a handman back to life. That kind of
Speaker 3: thing totally works. They saw it on the hit ABC
Speaker 3: show nine one ps nine one one got even campier
Speaker 3: from Fox to ABC. It's amazing and I love it,
Speaker 3: but I don't watch TV anyway. Jack, he didn't make it,
Speaker 3: and Daniel Dafoe is unsuccessful. This is like my one
Speaker 3: percent where it's murdered by the state. Yeah, it's up
Speaker 3: for debate anyway, Rip to that man. Plays were written
Speaker 3: about Jack and performed after his death. In eighteen forty,
Speaker 3: William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel called Jack Shephard and
Speaker 3: it was crazy popular, and the authorities didn't care for that,
Speaker 3: so much so that they refused to license any plays
Speaker 3: in London with Jack Sheppard in the title for forty
Speaker 3: years after the publication. That takes it to one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty years after his dath.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's take a break.
Speaker 2: Dude. Wait before we take a break, Harry Styles, get
Speaker 2: on this. You can get back from Timothy Shallame all
Speaker 2: the ris he's stolen from you.
Speaker 3: This is it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now get it, and also a David Bowie soundtrack.
Speaker 3: It's perfect. When we come back. I'm going to tell
Speaker 3: you about a guy who was often compared to old Jack. Yeah,
Speaker 3: escaper boys, Yes.
Speaker 2: I'm digging this, dude, That Jack Shepherd was dope. What
Speaker 2: else you got?
Speaker 3: Well, we're having a lot of fun, yes we are.
Speaker 3: And I've already killed a.
Speaker 2: Man off you table the state, no less so this news.
Speaker 3: Henry Moore Smith is his name, Henry Morris Smith, m
Speaker 3: O r E. Like just how much Smith Morse? Yeah,
Speaker 3: Henry Moore Smith. He was the North American Jack Shepherd,
Speaker 3: an escape artist, sort of a folk hero. O. This
Speaker 3: all goes down about like one hundred years after Jack
Speaker 3: Shepherds eighteen thirties, twenties eighteen, early eighteen teens. Smith is
Speaker 3: a con man, horse thief, burglar, and most importantly an
Speaker 3: escape artist. He had a bunch of aliases. Frederick, Henry Moore,
Speaker 3: Henry J. Moon, William Newman, you know whatever those.
Speaker 2: Are good forgettable but sounding really good names exactly.
Speaker 3: So eighteen twelve, he arrives in Halifax.
Speaker 2: Nova Scotia, Canadian.
Speaker 3: He was vague about where he'd come from or like
Speaker 3: where he was born. There are no records of him
Speaker 3: prior to this time. He was well dressed and polite
Speaker 3: in his mid twenties. He said he was a tailor,
Speaker 3: and then he'd just arrived from England.
Speaker 2: Okay, so one local, pretty good story, because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a local said quote. He was perfectly inoffensive, gentle
Speaker 3: and obliging, used no intoxicating liquors, refrained from idle conversation
Speaker 3: in all improper language, and was apparently free from every
Speaker 3: evil habit.
Speaker 2: That's weird, correct me if I'm wrong, But they you
Speaker 2: be describing me?
Speaker 3: Oh, I know you never said a bad word in
Speaker 3: your life?
Speaker 2: No, I mean is that where we were reading it?
Speaker 3: You no intoxicating liquors, doesn't smoke weed. Yeah, never like
Speaker 3: the Zaren Burnett story.
Speaker 2: I never bad language, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Smith though. He said he went to Cambridge and so
Speaker 3: just like you. Of course, fancy is what I'm trying
Speaker 3: to He also said he said he could speak five languages.
Speaker 3: It's basically the Zaren Burnette. He said he had a
Speaker 3: small fortune held in the Bank of England. Bingo. Here's
Speaker 3: one where it's like I was reading this and I
Speaker 3: was like, is this Zaren or is this this Smith.
Speaker 3: That's because he carried a Bible with him all the
Speaker 3: time and he could recite whole chapters of scripture.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and you want to hear Ruth. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you right now, lays Ruth the whole thing. And they
Speaker 2: have some kings to next maybe judges, what do you
Speaker 2: got how much time.
Speaker 3: You They would ask this guy by his spiritual pass like,
Speaker 3: tell us about your spiritual that's the question, right, I'm
Speaker 3: going to start asking Pew And he said he ran
Speaker 3: a Methodist prayer meeting back in England just like you.
Speaker 3: Here's one that actually I could see you doing. One
Speaker 3: time someone asked him where he was from, and he
Speaker 3: just laughed and pointed at the full moon.
Speaker 2: That's very I'm gonna in the act.
Speaker 3: And so you know, all these people like they're kind
Speaker 3: of captivated by him. One person was John Bond, not
Speaker 3: John Bond, Jovie John Bond, John Bond exactly, uh double
Speaker 3: o six. He thought that Smith was the Beasknees, so
Speaker 3: he hired him to work on his farm near Windsor,
Speaker 3: just northwest of Halifax, and Smith he fit right in
Speaker 3: with the family. He joined them for meals and prayers.
Speaker 3: He was like, hold on, I need to pray before
Speaker 3: I eat this rule. So he also romance the daughter.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of Elizabeths going on here today.
Speaker 2: God's a big fan of and so ministers.
Speaker 3: As was the custom of the day, Smith married Elizabeth
Speaker 3: within the year.
Speaker 2: There you go, hey, quick, dude. It happened.
Speaker 3: The couple moved out and Smith started his own tailor shop.
Speaker 3: He's like, you know what, I'm just going to go
Speaker 3: out on my own here. Things were blissful, and until
Speaker 3: they weren't. In Halifax at the big fancy mansions, things
Speaker 3: started going missing. Someone was slipping in during the night
Speaker 3: and stealing silver, jewelry, anything else of values, virtues. And
Speaker 3: it wasn't just palatial homes. Offices and stores got it,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't just expected high ticket items. The Chief
Speaker 3: Justice of the British Colony of Nova Scotia, Samson Salter Blowers.
Speaker 2: That's a hell of a name.
Speaker 3: Samson Salter Blowers.
Speaker 2: Or Salter Blowers yeah, he had.
Speaker 3: Three law books taken from his chambers. To the judge,
Speaker 3: He's like, I kind of need those, you guys. He
Speaker 3: offered a reward for their return, and a few days later,
Speaker 3: Henry Moore Smith shows up. He's like, I'm here to
Speaker 3: take the reward.
Speaker 2: He heard the book.
Speaker 3: He's like, I bought these from a stranger, you know,
Speaker 3: as you don't. I don't practice the law, but I'd
Speaker 3: like these expensive law books please. You know, he's like
Speaker 3: sitting minding his own business, sitting on a bench reading
Speaker 3: the Bible, just like sunning himself. Dude comes up. You
Speaker 3: look like you're into big books. You want to buy
Speaker 3: some lawbooks. So the townsfolk weren't fools, so like where
Speaker 3: Smith is living in Windsor, they start thinking, like, hold
Speaker 3: on a second. He goes to Halifax a lot, and
Speaker 3: he leaves early in the morning, and he doesn't come
Speaker 3: back to like the next day he returned those books.
Speaker 3: Why would he buy them when he comes back from.
Speaker 2: Before?
Speaker 3: And he always has stuff with him when he gets
Speaker 3: back from Halifax, like random stuff and sometimes a lot
Speaker 3: of cash. And then there was a break in the case.
Speaker 3: Man got pinched for stealing a coat. But He swore
Speaker 3: up and down that he'd bought the coat from Smith,
Speaker 3: so the authorities issued an arrest warrant. They headed out
Speaker 3: to pick Smith up in Windsor, but he was already
Speaker 3: in the wind That was his first escape, with many
Speaker 3: more to come. He disappeared for almost two years. There
Speaker 3: you go, yeah, and so what of Elizabeth, Right, She's
Speaker 3: just probably go back to the farm. I feel for
Speaker 3: the Elizabeths of the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, you do.
Speaker 3: So. Two years later, eighteen fourteen, he popped back up
Speaker 3: in Saint John, New Brunswick, and he was making friends.
Speaker 3: So he buddied up with an officer of a local regiment,
Speaker 3: Colonel Daniel and All. Danny wanted a horse, but not
Speaker 3: just Danny horse. He wanted a black horse that would
Speaker 3: match the team that pulled his carriage. It was all
Speaker 3: about the esthetics of it, you know, you know, you
Speaker 3: might as well be.
Speaker 2: Get the horse you can get.
Speaker 3: So his new pal Smith is like, look at me,
Speaker 3: I'm coming to the rescue. I know exactly where you
Speaker 3: can get one. That's exactly what you want. Daniel gives
Speaker 3: him the money, go buy the horse for me, like
Speaker 3: you know, orders him around. That's your new friend. You
Speaker 3: make him go to your military. And so Smith gets
Speaker 3: the money and you can guess what happened.
Speaker 2: He took off never see him again.
Speaker 3: He took the money and ran no horse, no horse.
Speaker 3: So he still wanted a horse for himself though. Smith
Speaker 3: got it in my head when someone's like, you know,
Speaker 3: they suggest something, you know.
Speaker 2: Do you want a burrito? And you're like, I didn't,
Speaker 2: but now I do.
Speaker 3: Now I think I could go from now.
Speaker 2: I got the money for a burrito exactly.
Speaker 3: So he wants a horse. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: he didn't want to use all this cash that he had,
Speaker 3: so he stole one that belonged to Will's Frederick Knox,
Speaker 3: a magistrate, and he likes sticking it to the legal establishment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so why not go right to the man who's
Speaker 2: gonna bust you.
Speaker 3: Will's Frederick kna the magistrate. He was the son of
Speaker 3: a British Undersecretary of State, and he really loved his
Speaker 3: horse and he wanted it back. So he gets word
Speaker 3: of this and like a description of Smith, and he
Speaker 3: chased after Smith for four days trying to catch him
Speaker 3: and get the horseback. Like he wanted justice. He cold justice.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised he didn't hire like some Scottish clan to
Speaker 2: hunt him down or something.
Speaker 3: He found Smith four days later, three hundred miles away
Speaker 3: and picked two Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2: And I will take old Nova SCOSTI. Oh not pick two? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought I just take any two Nova Scosts you
Speaker 2: were offering. Sorry, go on.
Speaker 3: So they he gets arrested. He tries to escape a
Speaker 3: handful of times from this, but he's eventually brought back
Speaker 3: to New Brunswick for trial. So while he's locked up,
Speaker 3: Smith meets a guy who will change his life. And
Speaker 3: the man was named Walter Bates, and he was the
Speaker 3: county sheriff. They actually wind up changing each other's lives.
Speaker 3: Bates became obsessed with Smith. Wait what the sheriff. The
Speaker 3: sheriff fascinated.
Speaker 2: He's not behind bars, He's not a dirty sheriff. He's
Speaker 2: running this person.
Speaker 3: Running the prison. He's like a straight ahead. He later
Speaker 3: wrote about Smith quote as a character singular and unprecedented.
Speaker 3: He was just fascinated by him.
Speaker 2: Really yeah.
Speaker 3: So as the trial approached Smith, he keeps moaning about
Speaker 3: a pain in his side. Real bad, he said, like
Speaker 3: real bad, it hurts.
Speaker 2: I got big bad booboo.
Speaker 3: Bates is like, how did that happen? That's how he talked. Yeah,
Speaker 3: We've heard tapes, I've seen video. He's like, how did
Speaker 3: that happen? And Smith told him that when Knox caught him,
Speaker 3: he hit Smith in the side with the butt of
Speaker 3: his pistol and that whether he broke a rib or
Speaker 3: damaged an Oregon, who knows, but he's just in complete agony.
Speaker 3: Baits is like, oh my god, that's terrible.
Speaker 2: You got busted guts man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he gets worse and worse, and they Bates
Speaker 3: brings in a bunch of different doctors to look at him,
Speaker 3: but they couldn't seem to make it any better. And
Speaker 3: when it got to the point where he could like
Speaker 3: hardly lift his head, he asked for someone to come
Speaker 3: and take down his will as he was going to
Speaker 3: dictate it to so Bates he wrote to call on
Speaker 3: Smith's lawyer. He said, quote, I fear we shall be
Speaker 3: disappointed in our expectations of the trial of the prisoner
Speaker 3: more Smith at the approaching court. I presume from his
Speaker 3: appearance he will be removed by death before that time.
Speaker 2: Death is a coming on a coling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not going to make it to trial, and
Speaker 3: that afternoon Smith screams out in pain and he asks
Speaker 3: the guard to heat up a brick and bring it
Speaker 3: to warm his feet.
Speaker 2: Okay, brick, you know they put it in like a blanket, and.
Speaker 3: Like the tender hearted guard, he's like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Of course he ran to get him the brick, and
Speaker 3: then he accidentally left the cell door open, and like
Speaker 3: the guy can barely move. You're not thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: he's just his eyes are rolled back and he's on
Speaker 3: his steathbed. The guard comes back with the brick and
Speaker 3: Smith is gone. He played the long game. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was a long so Ba and the brick toning guard.
Speaker 3: They wound up facing charges of negligence for allowing the
Speaker 3: prisoner to escape, and New Brunswick's Attorney General, Thomas Wetmore,
Speaker 3: he put up a reward for Smith's capture.
Speaker 2: I want more.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like he was laying low and hiding out there.
Speaker 2: Where is?
Speaker 3: He started burgling on the regular. He lifted a silver watch, cash,
Speaker 3: like a bunch of other stuff from a house near
Speaker 3: the jail.
Speaker 2: Oh, go off again.
Speaker 3: He's like, I know where I need to go. I'm
Speaker 3: going west to Maine. Oh right, So He's like he
Speaker 3: stopped for food at a tavern, and while he was there,
Speaker 3: he stole a bunch of silver teaspoons. I just can't
Speaker 3: control himself. He stayed at an inn near Fredericton, the
Speaker 3: colony's capital, Oh, of course, and stole a bunch of
Speaker 3: expensive clothes out of someone else's luggage. Like he went
Speaker 3: into their roomins zink my hands.
Speaker 2: Everything stickies to him, what kind of things?
Speaker 3: Like the fellow travelers, they didn't suspect him of anything.
Speaker 3: They he told him he was a businessman of one
Speaker 3: of them. He's like, I'm a bounty hunter chasing an
Speaker 3: army deserter. Here's the best. He's like, I'm a law
Speaker 3: man on the trail of a notorious horse thief who
Speaker 3: broke out of Kingston jail chasing myself. All of his
Speaker 3: tall tails and small sifts caught up with him. He
Speaker 3: was busted just as he was about to enter the
Speaker 3: United States. They locked him up ankles and wrists, and
Speaker 3: they sent him back to Kingston to stand trial. The
Speaker 3: whole wrists and ankle thing wasn't enough, though, because like,
Speaker 3: once again, he slips the shackles and he finds sweet,
Speaker 3: sweet freedom. He'd only been in custody a few hours
Speaker 3: when he took off into the night. So he heads
Speaker 3: back to Fredericton and once he's there he steals choice.
Speaker 3: He steals another horse. It's like the hot wiring of
Speaker 3: the day. He steals him from stables at night. But
Speaker 3: it'd be funnier if he horse jacked him. Like you know,
Speaker 3: someone's riding up and they get a stop, he shoves
Speaker 3: him off his saddle and rides off plates to so
Speaker 3: remember New Brunswick's Attorney General, Thomas Whatmore, the one who
Speaker 3: announced the rewards leading to his capture. So on the
Speaker 3: run this time Smith broke into his house and while
Speaker 3: Wetmore was having a dinner party.
Speaker 2: Yes early dinner gang energy completely.
Speaker 3: And so he didn't crap on the drapes like that.
Speaker 3: Instead he grabbed a bunch of the guests coats and
Speaker 3: scurried away like that'll show them.
Speaker 2: I love in Canada. Stealing coats is the mood.
Speaker 3: Like this time the cops found him, they hauled them away.
Speaker 3: Where was he hiding in a barn?
Speaker 2: Okay, I.
Speaker 3: Think he was probably All his loot, including the coats,
Speaker 3: was hidden under the hay in the law and so
Speaker 3: you know. They like, He's like, fine, fine, you got me,
Speaker 3: you got me. Let's take a break. We come back.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you about his next adventure. And
Speaker 3: it's a doozy.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Zarin, Hey, I got first time you did?
Speaker 3: You came in first, good job. So Henry Moore Smith?
Speaker 3: How much Smith?
Speaker 2: More Smith?
Speaker 3: Smith? They brought him back to Kingston, the one in Canada,
Speaker 3: not in Jamaica. Ah, and they locked him up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one has not as good as music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Jamaican So back with he's back with Sheriff Bates.
Speaker 3: He loves him and Bates. Yeah, Bates is fooling around
Speaker 3: this time though. They well, they gave Smith the full
Speaker 3: body search and then they chained him to the floor
Speaker 3: by the leg. So it wasn't long before a sound
Speaker 3: was heard. Not Smith crying in agony over a created ailment.
Speaker 3: It was the sound of filing metal, of course. So
Speaker 3: the guards run to the cell and they find him
Speaker 3: halfway out the window.
Speaker 2: Just liked Baker working for him.
Speaker 3: I get that for you. Baits baits Baker. So they
Speaker 3: they find him hanging halfway out the window, They grab
Speaker 3: his legs, they ink him back into the cell. They
Speaker 3: demanded that he hand over the tools that he'd used,
Speaker 3: and so he passes them this little saw that he
Speaker 3: made out of a knife blade. He's like, oh shucks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I don't know how he got that one in there,
Speaker 3: but he did.
Speaker 2: Don't want to know.
Speaker 3: I don't want to know. Like maybe he started sporting
Speaker 3: a huge pompadour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably was probably.
Speaker 3: So the guards they got a new chain and they
Speaker 3: locked him up again, and then they heard a noise,
Speaker 3: the same metal filing noise. Now you and I have
Speaker 3: learned that modern day bank employees would probably assume it
Speaker 3: was rats or a short in the candle scorners. They'd
Speaker 3: shrug it off and then they get cleaned out.
Speaker 2: That can't be filed.
Speaker 3: We took the file, so luckily these guards were on it.
Speaker 3: So they dashed back to the cell and they find
Speaker 3: Smith sitting there kind of like a kid who is
Speaker 3: just doing something and then ran back to the bed
Speaker 3: to sit on it like a good god seeing child.
Speaker 2: He's absolutely nothing, absolutely just sitting there staring back at
Speaker 2: you totally.
Speaker 3: So the guards tell him stripped down.
Speaker 2: Oh and so he's like, what is this?
Speaker 3: Three doors? So he obeyed, and the guards discovered a
Speaker 3: ten inch saw blade tied to his thigh with a string. Wow,
Speaker 3: that's comfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah sounds wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, Sheriff Bates outraged. He's just livid.
Speaker 2: I thought I could trust Yeah, he's always been through.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm not about to be embarrassed again. So
Speaker 3: he calls a blacksmith and he orders the guy to
Speaker 3: craft an iron collar oh for Smith, and leg irons
Speaker 3: and handcuffs, and then he wants each of those chained
Speaker 3: to the floor. The whole get up wound up weighing
Speaker 3: forty six hounds. Wow. Can you imagine that?
Speaker 2: I know who hired the kinkster to run the prison?
Speaker 3: Like ca can you picture it? Zarn?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I can.
Speaker 3: Close your eyes. Oh, I'm gonna have you picture it.
Speaker 3: You are a jailer at the lock up in Kingston,
Speaker 3: New Brunswick. You're sitting in your quiet office at the jail,
Speaker 3: reading the paper and softly whistling to yourself. You started
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago, and it's not a bad gig.
Speaker 3: You've heard lots of stories though about Henry Moore Smith.
Speaker 3: He's a thief, but more importantly he's an escape artist.
Speaker 3: He really got sheriff bates good last time, and the
Speaker 3: sheriff didn't take kindly to that. But you've also noticed
Speaker 3: that the sheriff talks about Smith in weirdly reverential tones.
Speaker 3: He's kind of in awe of him and is for
Speaker 3: sure fascinated by him, and is desperate to know what
Speaker 3: makes this guy tick. Smith is back now, and you've
Speaker 3: been told to keep a tight eye on him. Yesterday,
Speaker 3: the blacksmith came and locked it up like you've never
Speaker 3: seen before. Chains, shackles, cups. He looks afright, and you
Speaker 3: can what it would feel like to be bound like that.
Speaker 3: Last night they had to call the locksmith back to
Speaker 3: shorten the chains after he tried to wrap the ones
Speaker 3: he had around his neck. Suddenly you hear a commotion.
Speaker 3: It's Smith, for sure, and he's shouting chains rattle. Smith
Speaker 3: calls out Bible verses in between screeches and moans. He's
Speaker 3: off his rocker, you think to yourself as you run
Speaker 3: to the cell. He's in the cell, bashing his hand
Speaker 3: against the walls, slamming the chain into the bricks. With
Speaker 3: a clink, the chain snaps. Smith stops and you stare
Speaker 3: at each other in silence. The broken link clatters to
Speaker 3: the ground. You tell Smith to stay right there while
Speaker 3: you shout down the hall for someone to get the
Speaker 3: blacksmith again. You're thankful for the four other chains that
Speaker 3: hold Smith there against his will, although no one would
Speaker 3: get hurt if he escaped again, just Sheriff Bates' pride
Speaker 3: in your career. You walk into the cell and you
Speaker 3: sit on the floor beside Smith. His hands and ankles
Speaker 3: are bloody. He has a crazed look in his eye.
Speaker 3: You've seen that before. Once you were in the woods
Speaker 3: with your father and you came upon a wolf with
Speaker 3: its leg caught in a trap. The wolf snarled at you,
Speaker 3: but its eyes showed deep terror. You asked your dad
Speaker 3: if he was going to shoot the wolf put it
Speaker 3: out of his misery. He assessed the beautiful beast's leg
Speaker 3: from afar and determine it was something that could heal
Speaker 3: if it were free. He got a big stick and
Speaker 3: approached the wolf. The wolf lashed out and snarled some more,
Speaker 3: but its eyes just showed desperation. Your father was able
Speaker 3: to ledge the stick into the trap and free the wolf.
Speaker 3: It sprinted away from you without a second glance. No
Speaker 3: limp or yelp. As pained as it was, it wasn't
Speaker 3: interested in hurting you. It just wanted to be free,
Speaker 3: even if it meant to die in the woods on
Speaker 3: its own terms. That's what you see as you look
Speaker 3: into Henry Smith's eyes. He is raving, he is shouting,
Speaker 3: he is quoting the Bible and flailing against his shackles,
Speaker 3: but his eyes showed terror. He just wants to be free.
Speaker 3: You go to the corner of the cell and you
Speaker 3: get a wet rag from a bucket. You softly wipe
Speaker 3: the blood from his arms, from his neck. He rises
Speaker 3: against you, but you can see in his eyes that
Speaker 3: he you mean him no harm, and you don't fear him.
Speaker 3: You have nothing but compassion for him. Society and circumstance
Speaker 3: have driven him to this state, just like the wolf.
Speaker 3: So Smith's horse theft trial kicked off May eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2: That was beautiful. I mean, I gotta say honestly, Normally
Speaker 2: they're pretty darn funny, but that one was beautiful. I
Speaker 2: loved my father.
Speaker 3: The wo.
Speaker 2: Oh I was deep, and the snow I was there, Yes,
Speaker 2: I was there, And then I had compassion for my
Speaker 2: fellow human.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just amazing, went threw a lot together.
Speaker 3: I'm a better person.
Speaker 2: That was a journey.
Speaker 3: He's humane. So Smith's horse trial, May eighteen fifteen. He
Speaker 3: gets brought into the prisoner's dock for trial, and he
Speaker 3: kept up this wild behavior. He like ripped his shirt
Speaker 3: and snap his fingers.
Speaker 2: I've waited on people like that before. I know that vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah so and he like at one.
Speaker 3: Point he kicked at the wooden railing until they had
Speaker 3: to bring leg irons and buying him up again, just
Speaker 3: flailing around. The prosecutor was Attorney General Wetmore, the guy
Speaker 3: whose dinner party guests the coat. I will not recuse
Speaker 3: your honor. I have a personal interest in this. I
Speaker 3: don't think they had an insanity defense.
Speaker 2: Then that's what I was just about, asking when that comes.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and I was too lazy to look
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 2: I don't really know if they even would acknowledge it's
Speaker 2: the same thing we recognize it as.
Speaker 3: Then I looked it up, and I wondered to myself
Speaker 3: today did they have it? And I thought, should you
Speaker 3: look it up? And I thought, yeah I should? Am
Speaker 3: I going to know?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 3: Who knows? Who cares?
Speaker 2: If you want to find it out.
Speaker 3: There's Google exactly exactly. Cheese. So but the lawyer he's like,
Speaker 3: I've got it. He points out that when Smith was arrested,
Speaker 3: he wasn't on the horse. He was just so there's
Speaker 3: no way to prove possession. He's just near it. It
Speaker 3: seems like a sound, argued.
Speaker 2: Man, He's gotten the law worked out exactly.
Speaker 3: H So it went to the jury and they discussed
Speaker 3: it for two hours, and then they came back guilty
Speaker 3: and him to be hanged. Damn right. So Attorney General
Speaker 3: Wetmore he asked for a report on Smith's state of
Speaker 3: mind and behavior before he could set a date for
Speaker 3: the execution.
Speaker 2: Not the century to be stealing horses, No.
Speaker 3: And so Bates he goes to Smith's cell to try
Speaker 3: to talk to him about the whole situation. But apparently
Speaker 3: Bates said quote he paid no attention, patted his hands,
Speaker 3: saying and acted the fool as usual.
Speaker 2: Bits is real hard.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't talk.
Speaker 2: All the time, he plays.
Speaker 3: And he's just slapping himself. In what were to be
Speaker 3: his final days, he made a bunch of puppets using
Speaker 3: fabric from his clothes, sock puppets, straw from his bedding,
Speaker 3: and then he called them his family man. He would
Speaker 3: put on puppet shows for the staff or like any
Speaker 3: visitors that would come in.
Speaker 2: Did he marry one of them because he's very.
Speaker 3: And then he was, oh, my wife. So by August
Speaker 3: things are looking bleak that they're looking and then they
Speaker 3: weren't because his lawyer had been working around the clock
Speaker 3: to save him and it worked. He was pardoned. He
Speaker 3: was crazy, but was like, yeah, they were like, look
Speaker 3: at this behavior. He does not know anything about what's going.
Speaker 2: On, so they would rather feed him than put him
Speaker 2: in the rope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I suppose.
Speaker 2: I just don't understand it. That type of morality sometimes,
Speaker 2: like what you're gonna punish him this way? Like keeping
Speaker 2: him alive.
Speaker 3: They took pity on him and compassion. Bates goes to
Speaker 3: Smith in the cell and is like, homie've been pardoned.
Speaker 3: Smith doesn't understand or care. He's just like what he
Speaker 3: said something about wanting potatoes for dinner. Okay, So one
Speaker 3: condition not breaking and they're not going to actually have
Speaker 3: to pay for his upkeep because one condition of the
Speaker 3: release was that he had to get the h double
Speaker 3: hockey sticks out of wondering about someone else's.
Speaker 2: Probably be crazy down in Newfoundland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to go to the United States. They got a
Speaker 3: lot of you guys down there, So baits Bates was
Speaker 3: sad to see him. Bates is like, we've spent a
Speaker 3: year together. Of course I feel bad, really like Bates
Speaker 3: is like trying so hard to connect with him. He can't.
Speaker 3: So he buys Smith a whole brand new outfit, like
Speaker 3: a first day of school outfit, and buys him a
Speaker 3: ticket on a ship headed for Nova Scotia. Wow, and
Speaker 3: like he mubbles and shuffles. Smith mumbles and shuffles, and
Speaker 3: he looks all dazed as he gets on the boat.
Speaker 3: And like Bates stands there and watches the boat sail
Speaker 3: away with his little wounded wolf on board, and I'm
Speaker 3: sure he is like a hanky. So the boat docks
Speaker 3: in Novas Goosha, and Smith made like Kaiser sosay and
Speaker 3: lost the limp on his way off the boat walked
Speaker 3: off a fully seen man.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was Kaiser.
Speaker 3: When straighten up, it straightens out at Nova Scotia, the
Speaker 3: act worked. He weaseled his way to Yeah. A few
Speaker 3: years went by. He really is willing to commit a long,
Speaker 3: long game every time.
Speaker 2: Incredible.
Speaker 3: He a few years later, he's going by the name
Speaker 3: William Newman. He gets arrested in new Haven, Connecticut for
Speaker 3: stealing jewelry silver. Oh yeah, he's like stealing from innkeepers
Speaker 3: at this point. And then he worked the oh my
Speaker 3: side is killing me con there for a bit, but
Speaker 3: like striking out with that gambit. He then decided to
Speaker 3: saw his way through the cell door. He gets recaptured.
Speaker 3: He was convicted of burglary at trial and he got
Speaker 3: three years of hard labor and investigators discovered his previous
Speaker 3: identity and contacted Sheriff Bates and Bates rushed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes down there. Bates goes to his cell
Speaker 3: and Smith acts like he's never seen Bates before in
Speaker 3: his life. Wow, He's like, who are you?
Speaker 2: Would you love to see like Matt Damon and Philip
Speaker 2: Seymour Hoffman play that scene, right? I know we can't
Speaker 2: get that, but wouldn't that be amazing?
Speaker 3: Oh god?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Bates he's baffled, but he's like a little crushed
Speaker 3: and so after doing.
Speaker 2: He's devastating.
Speaker 3: Is so he you know, Smith does his time and
Speaker 3: he gets sort of lost in the shuffle. He's hard
Speaker 3: to track in this era, but that didn't stop Bates.
Speaker 3: He spent the rest of his days trying to track
Speaker 3: Smith down. He said that he could connect Smith to
Speaker 3: thefts in Boston, New York, Connecticut, Ontario, Canada. Bates heard
Speaker 3: about a preacher named Henry Hopkins in the South who
Speaker 3: got arrested in eighteen twenty seven and was sentenced to
Speaker 3: seven years in prison. He was sure that that was Smith,
Speaker 3: but he couldn't make it down there, and he wasn't
Speaker 3: able to physically confirm it. But basically, any time there
Speaker 3: was a report of a clever thief, Bates was like,
Speaker 3: it's Smith. It's my boy, It's there. He goes, there's
Speaker 3: that beautiful boy. I want to buy him another suit,
Speaker 3: and Smith sous his eye. Smith so captivating him that
Speaker 3: Bates joined the Ridiculous Crime Book Club, and he really
Speaker 3: a corker of all time. Called The Mysterious Stranger, or
Speaker 3: Memoirs of the Noted Henry Moore.
Speaker 2: Smith Guess what You're Getting for Your Birthday?
Speaker 3: It was published in Connecticut, then it gets republished in England.
Speaker 3: The Halifax newspaper, The Acadian Recorder.
Speaker 2: A great Acadian paper.
Speaker 3: Serialized it in eighteen seventeen, and they sold the book
Speaker 3: for a shilling a copy. And The Mysterious Stranger had
Speaker 3: seven printings.
Speaker 2: I bet it did.
Speaker 3: The last one was in It appeared in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 3: That was one hundred years after Smith.
Speaker 2: Got to un of money.
Speaker 3: Christ's Cloud Story certified hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The combined sales at that time topped forty thousand copies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I can make this into hit today.
Speaker 3: That's a lot even today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can make this into a movie and have
Speaker 2: it hit immediately.
Speaker 3: A new edition of it was published in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So. At the end of The Mysterious Stranger, Bates wrote, quote,
Speaker 3: in all the adventures, we are not called upon to
Speaker 3: witness any acts of violence and blood. And it is
Speaker 3: perhaps owing to the absence of this repulsive trait, that
Speaker 3: we do not behold him in a more relentless light.
Speaker 3: So basically, he didn't hurt nobody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally your rule.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, and that's what makes him a ridiculous criminal, perfect, ridiculous, totally.
Speaker 2: The only person you hurt was Baits, really, my man, Baits. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it hurt his heart, Yes, he just bruised it.
Speaker 3: Im Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2: Oh, man, I I can't. I gotta admit I think
Speaker 2: we should dip our toes more into the Canadian waters
Speaker 2: because some of the crimes up there are just so
Speaker 2: filled with a bizarre passion. You know, it's like it's
Speaker 2: not like that. I don't I'm not trying to like
Speaker 2: fall into like the Oh it's the Great White North
Speaker 2: and they're cold and lonely. But I think they're cold
Speaker 2: and lonely up there in the Great White North, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: because we always hear that these stories of like couples
Speaker 2: going across the country, people being committed to like even
Speaker 2: in Canada is always he's very big and grand and
Speaker 2: long lasting, and like this guy commits to the bit.
Speaker 2: There's something about it that has like a Texas quality
Speaker 2: of bigger than life, but but but the old but humble.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a humble and kind version of
Speaker 2: the we're bigger than life but Canada. So anyway, that's mine.
Speaker 2: What's yours, Elizabeth? What's your ridiculous takeaway? Thank you for asking,
Speaker 2: of course every time you know why I got your
Speaker 2: back for.
Speaker 3: Once you asked me. I I'm just into the long
Speaker 3: game of it all. Like if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 3: commit like wow, And that's that's putting a lot of
Speaker 3: trust in your your your long game.
Speaker 2: Totally and that all things would go out and work
Speaker 2: out your benefit. Also, he didn't take the moment to,
Speaker 2: like when the boat's pulling away, to break down and
Speaker 2: kind of wave, because then someone could chase the boat down.
Speaker 2: He waited until the boat got to the next nation.
Speaker 2: Then he's like, Okay, I think I'm free.
Speaker 3: I know me too, all right, that's what I have.
Speaker 3: Oh oh you know what we do need I talk about?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, when you queue that up?
Speaker 3: Oh god, I love ge.
Speaker 4: Heyes, Aaron and Elizabeth. I wanted to update you on
Speaker 4: something totally ridiculous going on on the internet right now.
Speaker 4: If you need any industrial glraade glycine, uh dong Hua
Speaker 4: gene long is your man. You see, there is a
Speaker 4: manufacturer of industrial grade glycine in China that made a
Speaker 4: TikTok advertising their product and it has gone absolutely by
Speaker 4: And I think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I don't have the TikTok no, but glycine.
Speaker 2: That is this is I like that someone can go
Speaker 2: viral pushing glycine.
Speaker 3: I know right. That's now I want to know what
Speaker 3: ridiculous that is certified. I gotta find the video. Don't
Speaker 3: send us the video. The interns will find it.
Speaker 2: Send the video.
Speaker 3: That's all I have for today. You can find us
Speaker 3: online at ridiculous Crime dot com. You can find us
Speaker 3: on social media, but not TikTok. Do you have TikTok?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get rid of all of them, one
Speaker 2: at a time. One or two I think I've gotten
Speaker 2: I think I still have accounts, but I only look
Speaker 2: at like, yeah, one or two of the.
Speaker 3: Man I don't have the TikTok. Email ridiculous Crime at
Speaker 3: gmail dot com, but most importantly, leave us a talk
Speaker 3: back on the iHeart app reach out did it? Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Sarah Burnett, produced
Speaker 3: and edited by Traveling Shackle salesman Dave Cousten. Research is
Speaker 3: by horse Borrower Marissa Brown and horse Ad Jason Andrea
Speaker 3: Song Sharpened Hear. The theme song is by Fired prison
Speaker 3: Guards Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided
Speaker 3: by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 3: and Mister Andrea Executive producers are Coatless Dinner guests Ben
Speaker 3: Bolan and Noel.
Speaker 1: Brown Disquime Say It One More Time Crime Ridiculous Crime
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