Speaker 1: Hello and welcome.
Speaker 2: It's my favorite murder.
Speaker 1: That's Georgia Hardstar. That's Karen kil Gariff, and today we're
Speaker 1: going to beautiful Italy.
Speaker 2: I've been practicing my horrible Italian on Karen since I'm
Speaker 2: going Oh.
Speaker 1: Yes, she's pulling out the chef's case Italian corner the chefs,
Speaker 1: did you preparado? Yes? I made coffee for you. Gratzi,
Speaker 1: You're gonna do great.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm flashing back to pictures of very patient
Speaker 1: waiters waiting for me to do that, and then being like, Madame,
Speaker 1: I was speak English with you. I was like, thanks
Speaker 1: so much, thank you.
Speaker 2: I just they just want to see you sweat a
Speaker 2: little bit. Yes, put some effort into it.
Speaker 1: Please have some respect for the country you're in.
Speaker 2: Yes. And also we're supposed to say we may say, O,
Speaker 2: where are you from? You say I'm from the Republic
Speaker 2: of California instead of the US.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm cool. That's right.
Speaker 2: Speaking of I feel like obligated that we have to
Speaker 2: talk about this real quick.
Speaker 1: Do I move this off?
Speaker 2: Yeah? This is getting serious. Okay. We have a lot
Speaker 2: of listeners that live in LA and that are over
Speaker 2: eighteen and I think we need to make sure we
Speaker 2: tell them that they have to vote for mayor. Oh,
Speaker 2: and they cannot vote for Spencer Pratt. And I know
Speaker 2: that they you're eighteen, You're like, I don't give a shit,
Speaker 2: it doesn't bother me. You have to vote, so you
Speaker 2: cancel out the people that are stupid that are voting
Speaker 2: for him, because we know our listeners aren't stupid.
Speaker 1: You're not going to vote for him, that's right, but
Speaker 1: they might not go vote that day. True, That's a
Speaker 1: great point to me. Yeah, I also think I will
Speaker 1: say I believe in the children who are so much
Speaker 1: smarter and more active than we ever had to be. Yes,
Speaker 1: the privilege of a political from the nineties I think
Speaker 1: about and shiver with how disgusting it is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how much I'd never helped or did anything. And I
Speaker 1: think these kids today know what's what. Also, speaking of which,
Speaker 1: I'm a real believer in Nitya Rahman. She's also running.
Speaker 1: You know, she's amazing because they do everything they can
Speaker 1: to keep her down. They do everything they can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's a debate all on its own. Yeah,
Speaker 2: vote for someone.
Speaker 1: You believe in.
Speaker 2: It's not going to be him.
Speaker 1: We've played around with democracy too much and we are
Speaker 1: now actively doing damage and harmed people every single day
Speaker 1: with non action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, that's I felt like we had to
Speaker 2: say that just.
Speaker 1: Because and now and we're back because this is the
Speaker 1: crazy world we've had to live in where we simultaneously
Speaker 1: deal with the fall of democracy and then hey, Georgia's
Speaker 1: excited to go on vacation to the wonderful world of Italy.
Speaker 2: I feel like there might have been a glitch in
Speaker 2: the matrix and it's freaking me out a little bit
Speaker 2: right the second Yeah, well, before we walked in this room,
Speaker 2: maybe this room is a time machine who the fuck knows,
Speaker 2: or time capsule or something. But the hot Dog phone
Speaker 2: box is upside down and it's freaking me out.
Speaker 1: You know what it is? The other podcasts that shoot
Speaker 1: in here, they take our stuff down and put other stuff.
Speaker 2: Someone's fucking with us. Who did that bridge?
Speaker 1: You specifically Paula were on that. That's really funny. Wait,
Speaker 1: was this like an easter egg that he put in
Speaker 1: to say? Hey?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think paul did, but it just happened
Speaker 2: on It doesn't clean up after himself.
Speaker 1: Ill, I was in here, not that long ago.
Speaker 2: Someone turned the hot dog phone upside down and blew
Speaker 2: my mind.
Speaker 1: Seriously, there's three people crying in the control room right
Speaker 1: now because it's the intensity, which you know.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. I went to the desert this past
Speaker 1: weekend for a last minute birthday trip hot springs, yes,
Speaker 1: because I didn't plan anything. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not just going to sit here, and
Speaker 1: I might as well go and sit in some yes,
Speaker 1: thinner magnesium watery. Man, I'm a believer. You look glowy.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you? Well, I really Also, I think I've
Speaker 1: gone over the I went over the Stress waterfall, and
Speaker 1: for a while I was churning down in those the
Speaker 1: white water at the bottom of the Stress waterfall.
Speaker 2: See you in a barrel, just like an old tiny barrel.
Speaker 1: Right, I was down there, water straight down on my
Speaker 1: head for a while. I popped straight back up and
Speaker 1: I landed in a hot spring out by the desert. Also,
Speaker 1: it was one hundred and like three or four. At
Speaker 1: one point we just sat by a pool like I
Speaker 1: was a person that gets tan and just like laid
Speaker 1: around by the pool for like hours, so nice. It
Speaker 1: was great. I like less self help books and more
Speaker 1: like just go just go sit in the sun, or
Speaker 1: just go bake and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get the dopamine, yes, somehow actively Yeah, but like
Speaker 2: good for you dopamine, not like alcohol.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, do something that immediately have an effect on
Speaker 1: your nervous system, which that really does. I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that place.
Speaker 1: I'm a real desert lizard.
Speaker 2: Should get into it? Or do you want to hear
Speaker 2: about jump roping? Nope, let's get into it.
Speaker 1: But it's jump roping.
Speaker 2: I just started a new personal challenge. If you want
Speaker 2: to join me, jump the rope five minutes a day. Yes,
Speaker 2: though it's great, I'm going to turn it into content
Speaker 2: because nothing can happen without turning into content.
Speaker 1: Or you can learn to double dutch eventually. Are you
Speaker 1: going to build up to a skill.
Speaker 2: I'm going to learn to jump rope first because it's
Speaker 2: harder than I remember.
Speaker 1: But do you feel like you might be able to
Speaker 1: get skip rope? Yeah? That bang the idea?
Speaker 2: Right then then I'm a jump rope influencer.
Speaker 1: Yes, then you can go to New York City where
Speaker 1: I watch tiktoks of people jumping into those double dutches
Speaker 1: that pop up in a square as a kid, you could, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I could do it a little bit.
Speaker 2: I can know I could do it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: That's how cocky I am and how much I don't
Speaker 2: know how old I am. I bet I could get
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: I'll immediately break your hip the second you do like,
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's really good. I'm totally down for that.
Speaker 1: Do you have to check in and stuff?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yes, we don't do it.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll never talk about it again. I mean that
Speaker 1: is our way, truly. But it's fun to dry things. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know. I have a mini trampoline that I jump
Speaker 1: on all the time.
Speaker 2: I do too. I'd never jump on it, it's so hard.
Speaker 1: What about this, I'm going to get on my mini trampling.
Speaker 1: You do your jump rope, yes, and we'll do parallel
Speaker 1: jumping therapies and then report back.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, my favorite jumping apparatus.
Speaker 1: This is not an integration of any kind. I'm not
Speaker 1: being paid by Big Jump Blue at all. It's not
Speaker 1: what's happened I am.
Speaker 2: She didn't get that, did you see, Katie even Buskirk
Speaker 2: right before we started recording. No, she's our incredible integration person.
Speaker 2: AD sales ad sales manager. She texts us and said,
Speaker 2: I was looking through where your listeners are across the world,
Speaker 2: and then she wrote with a fucking gift Vatican City.
Speaker 1: That's not true, it's true inside the Vatican.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have listeners in Vatican City.
Speaker 1: Okay, then may just for one second.
Speaker 2: We are trying it all the way back to Italy.
Speaker 1: Please get it back up, for get it it?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: What uh? Hello? Every every citizen of Vatican City that's
Speaker 1: listening to us right now, you're putting it over the
Speaker 1: Maybe please go into your archives that you don't let
Speaker 1: the public into, so we can see the dragon eggs
Speaker 1: and the ghosts that are caught in a draggedy an.
Speaker 1: All we want to see.
Speaker 2: It all has to be a listener who just does
Speaker 2: the archives. Gotta be just like a custodian.
Speaker 1: A custodian, a file folder. Ten to tour.
Speaker 2: We'll give you some merch.
Speaker 1: You can have any sweatshirt you want if you tell
Speaker 1: us the secrets of the Vatican and let us look inside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: either soon. I have watched the secrets of the Vatican. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they don't tie you in good secrets like it's
Speaker 1: like Mary Magdalene is actually the one.
Speaker 2: No, nobody knows the good secrets, but the people who
Speaker 2: hate them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2: It's if you're going to talk about fucking time travel,
Speaker 2: cities and places, that's obviously.
Speaker 1: That's the number one port right. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of old crazy shit there. We did go on. We
Speaker 1: went on a tour of the Vatican because Paige Hurwitz,
Speaker 1: our friend an Ep, made us go there, a person
Speaker 1: who was born and raised very Jewish. Yeah, She's like,
Speaker 1: we have to go to the Vatican. And it was
Speaker 1: me Janet and Adrian were like, we don't want to.
Speaker 1: It made us go. Yes. It was incredible, except for
Speaker 1: I did get in trouble for filming inside the Assistine
Speaker 1: Chapel and I was doing it for my dad, where
Speaker 1: I was like he's going to lose his mind, and
Speaker 1: the man like put my hand down and he was like,
Speaker 1: be respectful of other people's religions, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I think we're the number one of the classic Catholics
Speaker 1: in this religion. Like my grandparents paid for this fucking thing.
Speaker 1: They gave you all kinds of money they didn't have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Vatican City, here we go.
Speaker 1: What here's the thing you're flipping through Netflix, You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: look there's a true crime podcast. Let me click on
Speaker 1: here and see what they're doing. Are they talking about this?
Speaker 1: What is this? Why is this?
Speaker 2: This is so dominant? Why those two women? I can't
Speaker 2: stand women.
Speaker 1: Listen to their voice. I think their opinions matter. They
Speaker 1: can't even speak a telling you even to go into
Speaker 1: the kitchen and be tradwives. And really, meanwhile, meanwhile, we're
Speaker 1: not going to we refuse. Meanwhile, that's not in the plans.
Speaker 2: Okay, real quick, let's do some case updates.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we are true crime podcasts, let's talk
Speaker 1: about because big things have actually been happening in the
Speaker 1: true crime space that's true we're in. And the craziest
Speaker 1: one is that the convictions in the Murdoch murders have
Speaker 1: been overturned. Alec Murdoch convicted for the murders of his
Speaker 1: wife Maggie and his son Paul. That guilty verdict has
Speaker 1: been tossed by the South Carolina Supreme Court, citing shocking
Speaker 1: jury interference by a woman named Becky Hill, a court
Speaker 1: clerk who managed jurors during his twenty twenty three trial.
Speaker 1: What'd she do? They say, she improperly influenced the jury,
Speaker 1: among other things, by advising them not to trust the
Speaker 1: defense's evidence. Can't do that, Well, that's egregious, I mean
Speaker 1: absolutely not. The South Carolina Supreme Court seems to agree
Speaker 1: with this, saying in its recent decision, Hill had quote
Speaker 1: placed her fingers on the scales of justice. But we
Speaker 1: should say Becky Hill has denied influencing the jury, although
Speaker 1: she did. What would you do? She pled guilty to
Speaker 1: misusing public funds and using your job for personal gain
Speaker 1: and specifically to promote her book about the trial. Oh
Speaker 1: so it's a wash. That's no good. Yeah, because here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I think they get her on this crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: justifiably so. And then it's like and perfect because now
Speaker 1: we undo the whole sweater right, totally unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, I have a quick update on you know,
Speaker 2: the case that it's nearest to my heart, which is
Speaker 2: the Yoworkshop murders. Yeah, I covered in episode seventy Live
Speaker 2: at the Moon Tower. And so they have finally found
Speaker 2: the actual killer based on DNA it's clearly this person.
Speaker 2: So the City of Austin is expected to pay thirty
Speaker 2: five million in restitution to the four teenage boys who
Speaker 2: were arrested and convicted of this. So Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott,
Speaker 2: Forrest Welborn, and the family of Maurice Pearce who died
Speaker 2: in twenty ten. So thirty five million. Yeah, it's taken
Speaker 2: a long time, but they're at least getting some justice.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, is it justice or just like, at least
Speaker 1: they're getting some relief from the difficulties that being convicted
Speaker 1: for this crime is probably created in their lives.
Speaker 2: And you can if you watch the documentary that was
Speaker 2: on HBO. I think they're in it and they're clearly
Speaker 2: struggling still.
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh that all case.
Speaker 2: All right, God, well we have podcast network.
Speaker 1: It's time to be positive. Okay. So this week on Ghosted,
Speaker 1: Ross is joined by the scrumptiously spooky drag sensation Pineapple Honeydew.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, are you familiar with pineapples work?
Speaker 2: No, I'm not enough.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to watch. They get into apple atch
Speaker 1: and superstitions, dreams and Pineapple's own uncanny manifestations.
Speaker 2: And then on I Said No Gifts, bridger Or avoids
Speaker 2: a full blown argument when writer comedian Chloe Radcliffe arrives
Speaker 2: with a gift. Then the two discussed Craigslist killers, bed
Speaker 2: bug immunity, and dating delicate men.
Speaker 1: It's like a conversation just for us. Then over on
Speaker 1: this podcast Will Kill You Aaron and Aaron dive into
Speaker 1: his toe plasmosis, which is among the most widespread fungal
Speaker 1: infections in North America.
Speaker 2: What is it about me and them that makes me
Speaker 2: so excited about that?
Speaker 1: Because you know you're now going to listen to that
Speaker 1: episode and now you'll be an expert on the widespread
Speaker 1: fungal infections in North America.
Speaker 2: Love Fungus.
Speaker 1: They also discuss baths bird's tuberculosis and the surprising history
Speaker 1: behind this disease is discovery. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gonna be good. Finally, on Hollywood Land, Jake
Speaker 2: and Zeth tell the story of the legendary Steve McQueen
Speaker 2: from Beers with Elvis to Charles Manson's hit List. This
Speaker 2: story never takes its foot off the gas.
Speaker 1: That's our graceland, Hollywood Land vibe over there, and just
Speaker 1: for everybody to know, in the merch corner, we have
Speaker 1: looked around this terrible world of ours and decided to
Speaker 1: officially restock that this is terrible. Keep going mug. You
Speaker 1: asked for it. There.
Speaker 2: It is blue on blue and it's on both sides now,
Speaker 2: which I really love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that color combination. It's very nineteen eighty one, totally.
Speaker 1: I love it. That's a good mug.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Also, don't forget my Ontario mug from touring in like
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. I probably got it at a Starbucks's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Starbucks for sure, or it was given to us.
Speaker 1: If you gave this to us and you're seeing this
Speaker 1: right now, please write in and tell us what it
Speaker 1: was like. Okay, all right, you're first. I'm first today. Wait,
Speaker 1: it's December eighteen sixteen, so a while ago, a baby
Speaker 1: girl named Elizabeth is born in Massachusetts in a comfortable
Speaker 1: household by two parents who can afford to educate their children.
Speaker 1: Her two brothers are sent to all boys schools, while
Speaker 1: Elizabeth will eventually be trained with other young girls to
Speaker 1: someday become school teachers. She is a curious, driven, and
Speaker 1: exceptionally bright young girl. These are all qualities that would
Speaker 1: be celebrated if they were displayed by her brothers, but
Speaker 1: we're talking about eighteen sixteen. An intellectually gifted girl invites
Speaker 1: scrutiny and criticism and screams of kill the wit Elizabeth
Speaker 1: will learn the hardest way she can. Society prefers their
Speaker 1: ladies to be nice and to be quiet, and when
Speaker 1: they're not, when they dare to use their brains to
Speaker 1: question authority or their husbands, that intelligence will be used
Speaker 1: against them and they will be deemed too dangerous for
Speaker 1: their own well being. And that usually back then meant
Speaker 1: being institutionalized. When Elizabeth is forcibly committed to a psychiatric institution,
Speaker 1: she witnesses and experiences genuine harm, but it also radicalizes
Speaker 1: her and she will begin to keep a diary, writing
Speaker 1: down everything she sees. And when she finally gets to
Speaker 1: tell her story, she will not be nice or quiet
Speaker 1: about it. She will change the world. Wow, this is
Speaker 1: the story of Elizabeth Parsons.
Speaker 2: Where Packard Elizabeth Parsons.
Speaker 1: Where Packard Packer. She has three last names like a
Speaker 1: modern day lady. Maren. Read the book The Woman They
Speaker 1: Could Not Silence by author Kate Moore who wrote The
Speaker 1: Radium Girls. Oh wow. Yeah, and that's the main source
Speaker 1: that was used today. Any other source is listed in
Speaker 1: our show notes, but it's mostly the work of Kate Moore.
Speaker 1: So Elizabeth Parsons Ware grows up very religious. Her father,
Speaker 1: Samuel Ware, is a minister with Calvinist leanings, so pretty
Speaker 1: bleak lens of Christianity that says all humans are inherently sinful,
Speaker 1: and salvation isn't determined by you making good choices or
Speaker 1: being a good person. It's just kind of randomly what
Speaker 1: God decides based on like I like you, you'll be saved,
Speaker 1: you won't. Sucks pretty fear inducing at all times, so
Speaker 1: you kind of can't do anything right. You're always apologizing.
Speaker 1: We've all better there. So the Wares run a very
Speaker 1: god fearing, theologically strict household, and yet they're very progressive
Speaker 1: about their daughter's educations. For a girl of her era,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's education is an unusually rigorous one, and it also
Speaker 1: probably helps that they live near Amherst College, which kind
Speaker 1: of provides this intellectual backdrop, so that influence is the
Speaker 1: way she sees the world. Of course, by the time
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty five rolls around, nineteen year old Elizabeth is
Speaker 1: working as a teacher until her career is interrupted by
Speaker 1: what doctors will refer to the doctors of the time
Speaker 1: will refer to as brain fever. Her symptoms include headaches, chills, fever,
Speaker 1: and confusion. Today, she would likely be diagnosed with a
Speaker 1: viral or a bacterial brain infection like encephalitis or meningitis. Wow,
Speaker 1: those are fully treatable with modern medicine. But it's eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, So doctors theorize that Elizabeth's job as a
Speaker 1: teacher has overstimulated her female brain. Hysterical, She's hysterical. She's
Speaker 1: just fucking lost it, which is manifested in these physical
Speaker 1: symptoms that she has now. Cut to my sister Laura, going,
Speaker 1: it does drive you insane, Like that's all I can
Speaker 1: think about. Where it's like, it's true, they were right,
Speaker 1: but she's wrong. So oh that felt great. I've never really,
Speaker 1: I've never really taken that to the public station.
Speaker 2: She's never going to hear it.
Speaker 1: You're wrong, Laura, Yeah, she doesn't. She's not a fan
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Laura, you guys are wrong.
Speaker 1: You guys have always been wrong, right, Okay. So when
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's father hears about this diagnosis, he requests that his
Speaker 1: daughter be admitted to the local asylum, believing that the
Speaker 1: root of her illness is that she's quote used too
Speaker 1: much mental effort end quote in her line of work,
Speaker 1: too too much mental effort. The hot springs really hard?
Speaker 2: Should do this from a hot spring?
Speaker 1: Ooh, we absolutely should. There's two ducks that just hang
Speaker 1: out the whole time with you, and they're not scared
Speaker 1: of you because they're filled with lithium.
Speaker 2: I want ducks to be my friends. Now, that's my
Speaker 2: new like yeah, bird obsession.
Speaker 1: It's guygirl duck couple.
Speaker 2: And they're like cool with everyone.
Speaker 1: They don't care. They're just so relaxed and filled with
Speaker 1: magnesium and all the minerals you need for your nervous
Speaker 1: system to be Okay, I sold this to me completely. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: we'll get your little gift certifically. So this, of course,
Speaker 1: will be entirely against her will, obviously, and according to Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: she will later write a needless and unkind decision. She
Speaker 1: will spend six weeks in this asylum, subjected to all
Speaker 1: kinds of archaic treatments, including at one point blood letting.
Speaker 1: Oh so it's not any kind of like hospital that
Speaker 1: we would know today.
Speaker 2: Right, they didn't have lobotomies yet, right.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I would love to Everything in
Speaker 1: me wants to say no. Of course not, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I want to ask if they had electric shock therapy,
Speaker 2: but I don't even know if they had electricity.
Speaker 1: I don't, so I shouldn't. I think it was like
Speaker 1: the fresh new thing around town, electricity, But I don't
Speaker 1: know either. What we know is that she does not
Speaker 1: write about this first time she's hospitalized in any way,
Speaker 1: but it's a nineteenth century mental asylum. Her physical symptoms
Speaker 1: do start to improve, though, so she's finally discharged because,
Speaker 1: of course, she is treated and basically her brain infection
Speaker 1: goes away. But by the point that she gets out,
Speaker 1: she firmly believes that her recovery is incidental and that
Speaker 1: her treatment by these asylum doctors has actually only made
Speaker 1: her worse mentally and emotionally. So a couple of years
Speaker 1: pass after that, and then in eighteen thirty nine, when
Speaker 1: she's twenty two, she gets set up with a friend
Speaker 1: of her father's named Redie.
Speaker 2: For this.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, we have a picture of Elizabeth. Here's her og.
Speaker 2: She does not look happy. That's a dour face.
Speaker 1: All she wanted to do was be mean to children
Speaker 1: and hit them with a stick while she taught them Latin.
Speaker 2: She's like someone unzip my dress. It's so tight.
Speaker 1: Please, I'm just upset about it. The idea that you
Speaker 1: would get a physical infection or a virus, and suddenly
Speaker 1: it's like, sorry, crazy, go to the insane asylum.
Speaker 2: Your father or your husband says you're crazy.
Speaker 1: So that's all that's needed. That's it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So she gets set up with a friend of her
Speaker 1: father's named Theophilus Packard. Can we take a look at
Speaker 1: theophilis whoa, Yeah, this is when he's young. No, this
Speaker 1: is after he sees the ghost.
Speaker 2: He looks like Planet of the Apes where they like
Speaker 2: put a suit on the apes.
Speaker 1: And also I think it's the chin strap beard. This
Speaker 1: is the final argument against the chin strap beard. I
Speaker 1: know guys do it because they're like there was more left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there used to be a lot. Now we're down to
Speaker 1: this one. And the answer is firm. Norah, Please don't.
Speaker 2: Trying to see if you'd be hot without it. But
Speaker 2: I don't think well.
Speaker 1: Also, he's taken the chin strap beard to a totally
Speaker 1: upsetting level where it's under his chin but grown out,
Speaker 1: so it looks like he's wearing a children's lion costume.
Speaker 2: You think it smells like is that so they can
Speaker 2: eat soup better?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's so that he can worship the Lord better.
Speaker 1: Because he is like her father, a Calvinist minister, and
Speaker 1: fourteen years older than her. He's thirty seven. He is
Speaker 1: not particularly romantic. I know that's going to shock you.
Speaker 1: He's not all about that relationship. And in fact, later
Speaker 1: Elizabeth will write that during their courtship he quote did
Speaker 1: not seem to love me much. Yeah, who sounds about right.
Speaker 1: She does go on to say that she marries him
Speaker 1: in part to make her father happy, but they are
Speaker 1: not a match, so author Kate Moore writes, quote, their
Speaker 1: characters were as opposite as it was possible to get.
Speaker 1: Where Elizabeth was vibrant, sociable and curious, Theophilus was gloomy and,
Speaker 1: in his own words, dull. He said he was dull.
Speaker 2: Yeah, always trust the guy when I tell you what
Speaker 2: they are.
Speaker 1: He's like, Look, don't get fooled by my way back
Speaker 1: chin strap beard.
Speaker 2: I know I seem whimsical because of this fucking.
Speaker 1: This was just an accident. Yeah, what if he couldn't
Speaker 1: grote beard hair on his chin? It started back there. Okay,
Speaker 1: So for years Elizabeth endures a marriage that she will
Speaker 1: later describe as quote love strangling the worst. She spends
Speaker 1: that relationship constantly tempering your own thoughts and feelings to
Speaker 1: keep peace in the household. She has a lot of children,
Speaker 1: and she moves at the whim of her husband's ministry career.
Speaker 1: He is always the focus of everyone's life, because how
Speaker 1: could it not be.
Speaker 2: He turns heads when he walks in the door.
Speaker 1: He looks like he invented, like grape juice or something.
Speaker 1: He looks like something from the old, like try to clean,
Speaker 1: like a disgusting prune on it.
Speaker 2: Ye, He's like, it works, it makes you buytolity, it
Speaker 2: affects your clean And always talking about a spleen like
Speaker 2: he won't shut up.
Speaker 1: That a spleen. He's like, listen, I'm dull, but your
Speaker 1: spleen will be clean.
Speaker 2: Clean is the heart of every malady.
Speaker 1: Of every chin beard. In eighteen forty eight, the first
Speaker 1: women's rights convention ever held in the US, which was
Speaker 1: the Seneca Falls Convention, takes place to New York and
Speaker 1: activists like Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Lucretia Mott are like
Speaker 1: the central players of this event. It's a watershed moment
Speaker 1: in the broader movement for women's rights in the United States.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth is now in her early thirties. She doesn't get
Speaker 1: to go to this, but she hears about it, and
Speaker 1: she hears the messages of women's empowerment that come out
Speaker 1: of it. It resonates with her. She is a decade
Speaker 1: into this miserable, dull, loveless marriage, and she begins to
Speaker 1: test the social limits of her role, not only as
Speaker 1: a mother, but as a preacher's wife. So she takes
Speaker 1: on this is the ultimate like get out of jail free.
Speaker 1: She starts doing missionary work, so she gets out of
Speaker 1: the household. She's like, it's for the Lord by, It's
Speaker 1: what we're all supposed to be doing. And she gets
Speaker 1: to be out in the real world. And once she
Speaker 1: gets out into the real world, she starts examining her
Speaker 1: own faith. And this is the time where spiritualism is very,
Speaker 1: very popular in the United States, which is the belief
Speaker 1: the living can communicate with the dead, and being raised
Speaker 1: in the Calvinism end of Christianity, she's drawn to theologies
Speaker 1: that are more empathetic and mystical and humanistic. She even
Speaker 1: attends a seance where she claims that she spoke with
Speaker 1: her late mother. Wow. So listen to episode three sixty
Speaker 1: three landed in Marshmallows if you want to hear about
Speaker 1: Harry Houdini's fight against spiritualism.
Speaker 2: That was a good one because.
Speaker 1: He didn't like it. So for most other women at
Speaker 1: that time, that kind of dalliance into spiritualism was what
Speaker 1: was happening. It probably would have been fine. But because
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's husband is a rigid nineteenth century Calvinist minister, her
Speaker 1: spiritual journey puts a huge strain on their marriage. But
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to hide her beliefs anymore. Basically, she's
Speaker 1: just trapped and she's like, whatever, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: what I want. So in their ultra religious social circle,
Speaker 1: which is probably just all the people at her husband's church,
Speaker 1: they're just watching as the minister's wife dabbles in the
Speaker 1: heretical like the saance.
Speaker 2: It can't, it can't, it's not allowed.
Speaker 1: And so at home, this I guess hobby is challenging
Speaker 1: Theophilis's values on everything from how to raise their six
Speaker 1: children to major issues of the day like slavery. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: identifies as an abolitionist, although a very flawed white eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds one got it very self serving, but overall, especially
Speaker 1: like trying to put it on the table with her husband,
Speaker 1: who is ten times worse in every direction than her,
Speaker 1: he doesn't like it. She is an avid supporter of
Speaker 1: John Brown, the man who led the anti slavery raid
Speaker 1: at Harper's Ferry in eighteen fifty nine and was executed
Speaker 1: for it. She's a believer in this movement and her
Speaker 1: husband is mortified. He, of course, unsurprisingly finds his wife's
Speaker 1: politics increasingly embarrassing. She becomes so disillusioned that she actually
Speaker 1: leaves her husband's church because she's like, how could you
Speaker 1: say you're of God and be doing this to people?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's such a fuck you. Yeah, my wife
Speaker 2: leaving preacher's wife.
Speaker 1: You saw the Whitney used To movie, you know what
Speaker 1: it's like. So leaving the churches, she is just piling
Speaker 1: up the humiliations for him, their marriages and shambles. But
Speaker 1: of course, divorces off the table. He would never do
Speaker 1: it morally, and she is deathly afraid that she'll lose
Speaker 1: custody of her children. Then her husband of twenty one
Speaker 1: years does the unthinkable dies. No, No, it's close though,
Speaker 1: but not bad for him. It's eighteen sixty They're living
Speaker 1: in Jacksonville, Illinois, and one night, in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, Elizabeth is taken from her home by two
Speaker 1: strange men and brought to the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital.
Speaker 2: Wow, he's just like, here's the problem. Let me get
Speaker 2: rid of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're so embarrassing by contradicting me that you must
Speaker 1: be insane, and so you have to be committed. And
Speaker 1: it's right there in Jacksonville. Elizabeth has no idea what's
Speaker 1: going on. She remembers being in the reception room hours later,
Speaker 1: begging to be released, and then she sees her husband
Speaker 1: through a window and realizes, like he's there to confirm
Speaker 1: this is happening and make sure it happens. Chilling. She
Speaker 1: will later write in her journal that he looked at
Speaker 1: her with quote one last look of satisfied delight. Never
Speaker 1: had I seen his face more radiant with joy. Damn,
Speaker 1: He's like, she's gone, Can you imagine that face? Can
Speaker 1: we see the face again? Never had I seen the
Speaker 1: face really so radiant with joy.
Speaker 2: That's why it doesn't look like a joyful person.
Speaker 1: It's not.
Speaker 2: He looks a little stunned.
Speaker 1: It would actually probably be very upsetting to see him.
Speaker 2: That guy radiant, just seeing that face through a window
Speaker 2: and I think, like that's a ghost or whatever.
Speaker 1: But to see him happy, he's like heat, he's finally gone.
Speaker 1: I can get back to my books and ledges and
Speaker 1: God and of course God. So Theophilis commits his forty
Speaker 1: four year old wife to an asylum, telling the doctors
Speaker 1: there that she is quote slightly insane. His proof is
Speaker 1: we all, I mean, we'd all be in there, this
Speaker 1: whole building of people would be in there, thank God together.
Speaker 1: His proof is her leaving his Calvinist church and disavowing
Speaker 1: his worldview, and Illinois state law at the time says
Speaker 1: no problem passed her. All husbands have the right to
Speaker 1: institutionalize their wives without any medical proof that they are
Speaker 1: mentally ill in any way. Yeah, and it was just
Speaker 1: so recently, I know. So as we know, Elizabeth has
Speaker 1: been through this before. It's what her father did to
Speaker 1: her when she's a teenager, and of course that works
Speaker 1: against her and reaffirms her diagnosis. The well respected forty
Speaker 1: three year old superintendent of this hospital is a man
Speaker 1: named doctor Andrew MacFarlane, and he does seem to agree
Speaker 1: with Theophilis's assessment that Elizabeth's actions over the last few
Speaker 1: years suggest that she is quote slightly insane.
Speaker 2: Slightly insane is so cute, It's like, can you that
Speaker 2: would be great?
Speaker 1: Now? I mean, she's not raving in the streets, we understand,
Speaker 1: but she certainly isn't down at church nodding along with
Speaker 1: her husband's beard. Elizabeth will write that she has been
Speaker 1: quote placed there by her husband for thinking end quote.
Speaker 1: But her insistence that she's saying, of course only since
Speaker 1: seems to affirm to doctor McFarland that she's not the
Speaker 1: old trick screaming I'm insane Yeah never works. Yeah, I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I'm saying and then you say it five hundred more times.
Speaker 1: So she's committed with no clear discharge date, and so
Speaker 1: she begins to write, and from her very thorough diaries,
Speaker 1: she describes her time in there, yearning not only for
Speaker 1: her freedom but for her children. She is in agony.
Speaker 1: Her friends on the outside are advocating for her release,
Speaker 1: but they are powerless, of course, because of the laws
Speaker 1: of the time, so they can argue all they want.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth is certainly not alone in her experience, though she
Speaker 1: documents the leagues of other women that she meets in
Speaker 1: the asylum and who've also been unfairly institutionalized by the
Speaker 1: men in their lives. She also records details on patients
Speaker 1: who are genuinely unwell and how the staff are clearly
Speaker 1: unequipped to treat them and are often abusive. It is
Speaker 1: a miserable place. It's overcrowded, resources are stretched thin, there's
Speaker 1: high staff turnover. Some words are filthy. There are puddles
Speaker 1: of human waste left on the unclean floor. Every room
Speaker 1: seems to have been stripped of the smallest possible comfort.
Speaker 1: Patients only get to sit on hardwood benches, and the
Speaker 1: bedding is as scratching, itchy and terrible as it could
Speaker 1: possibly be. And so Elizabeth writes all this down. She
Speaker 1: takes it all down, and she writes about all of
Speaker 1: it in detail. But the darkest testimony involves the extreme
Speaker 1: abuse that she experiences and that she witnesses other patients
Speaker 1: being subjected to at the hands of asylum employees. So
Speaker 1: you've got to figure probably a lot of these employees
Speaker 1: were totally unqualified on trains, They're just thrown in there,
Speaker 1: like make sure they're quiet, or makes sure they eat
Speaker 1: or go to bed. From there, the exploitation of that power.
Speaker 1: Women are injured as they're violently stuffed into strait jackets.
Speaker 1: They're beaten for being unruly, they're choked. Sometimes Elizabeth tries
Speaker 1: to intervene, but she writes that once, while trying to
Speaker 1: help a patient that's being man handled by a much
Speaker 1: larger attendant, he turns and grabs Elizabeth and drags her
Speaker 1: through the hallways back to her room by her arm
Speaker 1: and locks her in so she can't interfere anymore. She
Speaker 1: writes about a patient being starved as punishment, and when
Speaker 1: she sneaks that woman some food and aid finds out
Speaker 1: and pulls a knife on her and holds it over
Speaker 1: her head. Holy shit, so it's just it's Mayhem in there.
Speaker 1: She also writes about an assistant choking a young patient
Speaker 1: and one of his fingernails is so sharp it slashes
Speaker 1: the young patient's throat. When the attendant backs off, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: dresses the patient's wound with a piece of her own clothing,
Speaker 1: and she keeps that bandage, and she writes that the
Speaker 1: scrap is quote red with the blood of this innocent girl,
Speaker 1: as proof of this kind of abuse in the Jacksonville
Speaker 1: Insane Asylum. Oh my god, she terrifying. Yeah, and she's
Speaker 1: just kind of like, I'm just going to put it down.
Speaker 1: She writes extensively about the arrival of bath tubs too.
Speaker 1: Oh no, And we talked about this a little bit
Speaker 1: with Nelly Blyig.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: At first, they're introduced as a more hygienic and dignifying
Speaker 1: alternative to the sponge baths that were usually given to patients,
Speaker 1: but Elizabeth describes them as quickly becoming instruments of torture,
Speaker 1: used to punish girls and women for things as small
Speaker 1: as quote silly behavior and laughing from her bed. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: writes that she can hear the patients begging for mercy
Speaker 1: as attendants throw them into the tubs, sometimes with quote
Speaker 1: their hands and feet tied and if they resisted, a
Speaker 1: straight jacket was placed upon them end quote like just
Speaker 1: sadistic people. This is not therapy in any way, And
Speaker 1: this is no and fa sadism. It's sadism because they're
Speaker 1: held underwater repeatedly for long stretches of time, and sometimes
Speaker 1: the water's freezing or it's scalding. Haunts and the only
Speaker 1: way that Elizabeth knows that the patient survives this basically
Speaker 1: torture slash treatment is when they come back up out
Speaker 1: of the water screaming. Fuck. So she is in this
Speaker 1: situation and in this hospital for months, and of course
Speaker 1: it's deteriorating both her mental and her physical health because
Speaker 1: it's a living hell. As an act of resistance, she
Speaker 1: does her best to keep her mind sharp, so she
Speaker 1: commits to a routine of regular exercise and prayer. This
Speaker 1: is you and me in jumping rope. This is how
Speaker 1: we're going to.
Speaker 2: Do it, keeping sane in this fucked up world.
Speaker 1: As we jump rope or on a mini trampoline. We're
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 2: Like, Lord, Lord, Lord, sharpen our brain.
Speaker 1: Let's sharpen this shit up and get it together. She
Speaker 1: writes in her journal, quote I am becoming so extremely
Speaker 1: sensitive to wrong and abuse that I cannot or shall
Speaker 1: not witness it without interference, even if you put me
Speaker 1: into fetters for it. End quote. Wow. She is trapped
Speaker 1: in this asylum for three years total, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: until she's finally released in eighteen sixty three due to
Speaker 1: sustaining pressure from her older children, who are now are
Speaker 1: either in their late teens or early twenties. So they
Speaker 1: just basically have been calling and pressuring doctor McFarlane and
Speaker 1: the other asylum officials like armaphones. No, sorry, they've been calling.
Speaker 1: They've been they have been putting pressure. Sorry doctor no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's the good catch. They have been putting pressure on
Speaker 1: doctor McFarlane and on the other asylum officials basically saying,
Speaker 1: our mother is not crazy and you know it, and
Speaker 1: get her out of there. But also the asylum officials
Speaker 1: and the workers are getting sick of dealing with Elizabeth
Speaker 1: and her interference because she really is fighting back. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they officially declare her incurably insane, but then release her
Speaker 1: so it's not a celebration because she is still married
Speaker 1: to Theophilis, and so when she gets home, according to
Speaker 1: her journals, he locks her in the nursery of their
Speaker 1: homes the whole time. Are you thinking about the whole
Speaker 1: little just now, just now, full credit, then thank you,
Speaker 1: full credit. And apparently nurseries were way smaller in houses
Speaker 1: back there.
Speaker 2: They were like in the fucking attic, like the attic room.
Speaker 1: With the it's carry potter ship. He's he's locking her
Speaker 1: in the smallest place he possibly can't. She manages to
Speaker 1: sneak a letter out of the nursery window to a friend,
Speaker 1: outlining exactly how she's been confined against her will.
Speaker 2: So she's just locked in there, yeah, and she had okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like whatever if it's I mean, imagine, it's
Speaker 1: just like, you want to give me some soup? Sounds good?
Speaker 1: Could we please do that? Like whatever? This guy fucking beardo,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see it. Don't bring it back
Speaker 1: outlining exactly how she's been confined against her will under
Speaker 1: the false pretense that she's insane. That friend and delivers
Speaker 1: the letter to a local judge, and finally, for some
Speaker 1: reason and somehow it works. For the first time, the
Speaker 1: Awfulis's behavior is seen as legally problematic. While a husband
Speaker 1: can easily have his wife committed to an asylum, it's
Speaker 1: not as defensible to lock that same wife up in
Speaker 1: a little room in your house.
Speaker 2: There are boundaries, people, we're here, let's just run around.
Speaker 1: There's a rocking chair on the front porch. It's so
Speaker 1: nicely you keep all that abuse to the asylum, okay.
Speaker 1: So in January of eighteen sixty four, Elizabeth goes to
Speaker 1: trial to establish her mental state once and for all.
Speaker 1: She's now forty eight years old.
Speaker 2: She's like, can I go to sleep?
Speaker 1: She is like, but probably in the perfect like menopausal
Speaker 1: state to be like, let's do this thing.
Speaker 2: She's also like an old late I mean.
Speaker 1: No, no, say it. I mean, because forty eight in
Speaker 1: today's money, she's one hundred and seventeen. Various physicians and
Speaker 1: family members, friends and acquaintance go on record in the
Speaker 1: courtroom to state that she is a sane human being,
Speaker 1: and after five days of testimony but only seven minutes
Speaker 1: of deliberating, the jury deems Elizabeth Packard to be sane.
Speaker 1: And you know it is an all male jury. I
Speaker 1: mean it would have to be. I believe Neckbeard's being like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to give this woman her freedom, but
Speaker 1: I've asked With that, Theophilis immediately skips down and takes
Speaker 1: their three youngest children with him. Elizabeth is left with
Speaker 1: nothing but the clothes on her back. Luckily, she does
Speaker 1: have her older children and her friends to lean on,
Speaker 1: but of course she is forever changed by the years
Speaker 1: of mistreatment. So she channels her anger into advocacy work,
Speaker 1: and she starts by advocating for herself. She takes her
Speaker 1: husband to court in both Illinois and Massachusetts, where he's
Speaker 1: currently living, and she sues him for damages. Damn, I
Speaker 1: mean in the mid eighteen hundreds in the is electricity real?
Speaker 1: Yet it's that long ago. A few years after that,
Speaker 1: in her early fifties, she finally wins custody of her
Speaker 1: youngest children, and then she sets out on a campaign
Speaker 1: for the rights of both married women and patients in
Speaker 1: psychiatric institutions. Wow. Her most powerful tool is her writing.
Speaker 1: Her diaries capture the horrors of the asylum so vividly
Speaker 1: that when she publishes several books based on them, the
Speaker 1: public laps it up. She becomes increasingly famous. She travels
Speaker 1: all through the United States sharing her story, and she
Speaker 1: eventually secures real changes in the law. She's said to
Speaker 1: have inspired the passage of over thirty different laws in
Speaker 1: various states, ones that better protect women's personal assets when
Speaker 1: they get married, and an Illinois law that guarantees a
Speaker 1: trial for anyone unwillingly being committed, which could have prevented
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's own institutionalization if it had existed years earlier. So
Speaker 1: now it's eighteen sixty seven, and Elizabeth's efforts also result
Speaker 1: in the state investigation of doctor Andrew McFarland and the
Speaker 1: Illinois State Asylum in Hospital, which stretches on for seven months.
Speaker 1: In the end, investigators recommend he be removed from his post,
Speaker 1: but for unknown reasons, this doesn't happen, and he holds
Speaker 1: the job for three more years, at which point he
Speaker 1: willingly leaves to open his own private asylum. In eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, when she is eighty years old, Elizabeth Parsons
Speaker 1: ware Packard dies suddenly of a strangulated hernia. She is
Speaker 1: buried in Chicago. After decades spent writing books and giving
Speaker 1: in passion lectures on the horrors of the asylum and
Speaker 1: the women who were sent there and who suffered there.
Speaker 1: Her legacy as a courageous woman who stood up and
Speaker 1: spoke out has endured. As for doctor McFarland, despite the
Speaker 1: reputational damage caused by Elizabeth's advocacy work, not to mention
Speaker 1: the investigation into the asylum under his leadership. When a
Speaker 1: new state run psychiatric center opens in Springfield, Illinois in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, it's named in his honor, cool the
Speaker 1: mcfarlande Mental Health Center. But when author Kate Moore's book
Speaker 1: The Woman They Could Not Silence is published in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. It brings renewed attention to Elizabeth Parson Where's story,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty three, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker
Speaker 1: announces that center will be renamed the Elizabeth Parsons were
Speaker 1: Packard Mental Health Center.
Speaker 2: That is amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it just happened. And it's because of author
Speaker 1: Kate Moore and her work. And of course Elizabeth Parsons
Speaker 1: were Packard's work where she was just blindly in the dark,
Speaker 1: going this is wrong. I need to change this.
Speaker 2: Somebody, dude such a strong like they could have named
Speaker 2: it something generic to just taking his name off of it.
Speaker 2: But instead of naming it after this evil doctor, they
Speaker 2: named it after a woman who fought him. Yeah, fought
Speaker 2: his evil. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And also it's like, was he evil? I feel like
Speaker 1: the naming thing is like their way of saying, but
Speaker 1: he did such great work, which always happens, but he
Speaker 1: didn't according to the people he was doing the work on.
Speaker 1: And that's the key is that anybody can claim that,
Speaker 1: or their constituents can claim it, or their boys down
Speaker 1: at the Elks Lodge. But how about the people that
Speaker 1: were there and sitting in their own fucking piles of
Speaker 1: feces being tortured. Okay, So of this decision, author Kate
Speaker 1: Moore has said, quote, I think she would be personally
Speaker 1: grateful that she and her work have been recognized when
Speaker 1: for so much of her life she was denigrated and
Speaker 1: dumbed down. But I also think she would say the
Speaker 1: work is not done. End quote. And that's the story
Speaker 1: of mental health advocate Elizabeth Parsons wear packard.
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't as slightly what is it slightly insane?
Speaker 1: Slightly insane?
Speaker 2: I didn't know that about her at all.
Speaker 1: Amazing And also it's a mental health awareness month, that's right,
Speaker 1: So that's what the whole vibe is about. Yes, good job,
Speaker 1: thank you. And here's Kate moore book. She's an amazing author.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the.
Speaker 1: One they could not silence. Very cool, so cool, good job,
Speaker 1: that was great, thank you. That was harrowing the idea
Speaker 1: that there are this many women who had to go
Speaker 1: either undercover or just were committed to insane asylums and
Speaker 1: then had to do the work on the other end
Speaker 1: once they were released totally and I mean you can't
Speaker 1: just send me here because you don't like that I'm talking.
Speaker 2: I mean it says something about like, you know, because
Speaker 2: she knew how to write. All the women who were
Speaker 2: not given an education, who couldn't write about their experiences
Speaker 2: or send a note through a window to their friend
Speaker 2: to tell them what was going on with them, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, they could only raise their voices, which
Speaker 1: then immediately qualified them as being slightly.
Speaker 2: Insane, which is why they didn't want to educate women.
Speaker 1: Then we would fucking that's why. That's why our school
Speaker 1: systems are in the state that they are, because if
Speaker 1: nobody knows anything, then weren't going to be good with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: great job, thank you. I mean if you insist, I guess.
Speaker 2: I mean I don't have to.
Speaker 1: I mean I could walk out right now.
Speaker 2: How do they get so disgusting? And how do you
Speaker 2: keep them clean?
Speaker 1: You never can. You're always wiping your glasses on your shirt,
Speaker 1: the thing they tell you not to do. Oh really,
Speaker 1: m hm, unless you're the kind of person that can
Speaker 1: keep a little silky thing. Now, I can't do it.
Speaker 2: Nobody can do that.
Speaker 1: That's a lie, is it started? Line?
Speaker 2: Okay? Conspiracy? I couldn't think of the word conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, my brain. The brands are going to
Speaker 1: cross the board, myself, the people I'm observing, this is
Speaker 1: what's happening to all of us. Okay, but let's go back, okay.
Speaker 2: To February of twenty twenty. Remember that the world is
Speaker 2: starting to look with increasing concern at coronavirus outbreaks in
Speaker 2: China and Italy. But today we are in Argentina. Specifically,
Speaker 2: we are in the Andes Mountains on South America's highest peak,
Speaker 2: the Aconcagua.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've heard of it. No? Is it a by
Speaker 1: match you peachu?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: The fact that this is I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Why am I saying yes? Right? The fact that this
Speaker 2: is the highest mountain in South America makes it one
Speaker 2: of the seven Summits, which are the highest peaks on
Speaker 2: each continent. So this makes it part of a popular
Speaker 2: climbing challenge for mountaineers who want to conquer.
Speaker 1: All of them.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine being like that?
Speaker 1: Do they not know about TV or naps? It's I mean,
Speaker 1: I get it, it's nice to be outside and stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that.
Speaker 2: Dry it would be cool for something aside podcasting.
Speaker 1: I feel I feel like those are people who have
Speaker 1: learned something in this world about not the immediate gratification
Speaker 1: of like stuff like this. I just never learned that. Yeah. Same,
Speaker 1: It's just mean I can't hike all the time if
Speaker 1: no one's giving me attention, right or alcohol?
Speaker 2: Okay, So Everest is the highest of these seven summits.
Speaker 2: It's also the most expensive and logistically worrisome, which is
Speaker 2: because of its popularity, altitude, and weather concerns. But it's
Speaker 2: debatable as to whether it's the hardest to actually climb.
Speaker 2: And so also, I did the deaths on Everest in
Speaker 2: episode one seventy four, and you covered Junko taba e
Speaker 2: in episode five twenty six. Should anyone want to feel cold.
Speaker 1: More learn about a legendary lady mountaineer, right, or your thing?
Speaker 1: Or just a bunch of terrible deaths skeletons?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay. So it's the middle of summer in
Speaker 2: the southern part of the Hemisphere twenty twenty, so February.
Speaker 2: It's the peak of the Andes climbing season, and two
Speaker 2: porters are on the mountain not too far from the
Speaker 2: summit on its hardest climbing route. It's called the Polish
Speaker 2: Glacier laying down ropes for a climbing expedition, and Akankagua
Speaker 2: has multipots to the summit. Some don't require much technical
Speaker 2: equipment or skill at all. You can just kind of
Speaker 2: have a nice walk up to them. But you do
Speaker 2: have to be in really good shape to get to
Speaker 2: the top, which is twenty two thousand feet, because the
Speaker 2: risk of getting severe altitude sickness is very high, and
Speaker 2: so some climbers use oxygen. Some are purists and don't.
Speaker 2: But this route that we're taking, the Polish Glacier route,
Speaker 2: is where the porters are, you know, getting everything ready
Speaker 2: for the mountaineers. And this part is extremely difficult. It
Speaker 2: requires significant mountaineering experience. And it's named the Polish Glacier
Speaker 2: because the first group to open up the route in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties had been from Poland.
Speaker 1: Okay, not that interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It used to be that groups of mountaineers set
Speaker 2: up their own camps, lay their own minds. But now
Speaker 2: there's a whole industry around mountaineering and these porters are
Speaker 2: doing just that.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that's your job, though, it'd be pretty
Speaker 1: red like some people are planning, like this is my
Speaker 1: lifetime trip to climb this mountain, and other people are like, ugh,
Speaker 1: gotta go to work and climb this mountain again. They
Speaker 1: do it constantly.
Speaker 2: These idiots just keep coming.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Another thing that's changed is that the Polish Glacier is
Speaker 2: receding because of the global climate change.
Speaker 1: Fake.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. What's the word conspiracy?
Speaker 1: Conspiracy? No, it's not.
Speaker 2: This means that every so often, and I remember seeing this,
Speaker 2: like in my news feed, the glacier spits out an
Speaker 2: item that had once been encased on ice.
Speaker 1: My favorite.
Speaker 2: On this particular day, the porters stumble upon a nicomat camera.
Speaker 2: Oh it's an old school camera and it's got an
Speaker 2: old school label maker name on it. So a name
Speaker 2: and address with an old school label maker. Wow, right, Yes,
Speaker 2: the name says Janet Johnson and there's her address as well.
Speaker 2: The porters can see that twenty four photos have been
Speaker 2: taken with this old camera.
Speaker 1: They shrug it off.
Speaker 2: They take it down to the mountain to their campsite
Speaker 2: when they're done for the day, and they show it
Speaker 2: to a guide named Ulissees corve Lan. And when Uluss
Speaker 2: sees the name Janet Johnson. Then he goes white and
Speaker 2: he tells the porters that Janet Johnson, along with another
Speaker 2: climber named John Cooper, died on the mountain almost fifty
Speaker 2: years earlier under very mysterious circumstances. Her camera had just
Speaker 2: been uncovered.
Speaker 1: The ice receding is unveiling evidence. That's right.
Speaker 2: This is the story of the Aconcagua Mountain mystery. The
Speaker 2: main source for this is a twenty twenty three New
Speaker 2: York Times article.
Speaker 1: It's very good, robust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's not urty.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 2: It's called Ghosts on the Glacier by John Branch with
Speaker 2: videos by Emily Ryan.
Speaker 1: It's a really great read.
Speaker 2: And then I also went to a website by this
Speaker 2: writer slash mountaineer named Mark Horrell h.
Speaker 1: O R R E L. Mark.
Speaker 2: It's one of the greats. The rest of the sources
Speaker 2: can be found in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 2: So it's nineteen seventy two and a fifty two year
Speaker 2: old Portland based lawyer named Carmine Defoe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good name.
Speaker 3: Old done starts putting together a group that will tackle
Speaker 3: Aconcagua together, and they want to do the Polish Glacier route,
Speaker 3: the hardest one.
Speaker 2: If they succeed, they will be the fifth ever group
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: So. Hey, hey, let's climb. CARMEI is a member of
Speaker 1: a climbing.
Speaker 2: Club which Karmie. Is that his nickname Carmi? Yeah? Did
Speaker 2: I say Carmine? Yeah, well I've meant Karme. It's really Carmine.
Speaker 1: That's it could be, And it's just it's such a
Speaker 1: cutie nickname for like Carmar Carmie.
Speaker 2: So he's been a member of a climbing club that's
Speaker 2: a thing called Mazumas.
Speaker 1: It's been around.
Speaker 2: Since the eighteen nineties. It's still around today, so don't
Speaker 2: talk shit, you can join it. Most of the climbers
Speaker 2: he recruits are also members of Mazumas. The group includes
Speaker 2: a psychiatrist named Jim Petrowski, a doctor named Bill Eubank,
Speaker 2: a dairy farmer named Arnold McMillan. Wow, just like people
Speaker 2: who were in the climbing mountains. It's like pigs, all kinds.
Speaker 1: Joe girl named Maureen.
Speaker 2: No, a police officer named Bill Zeller, and the youngest,
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old Brigham Young University student named
Speaker 2: John Shelton who was hot and He also spoke the
Speaker 2: best Spanish in his group because of his mission trip. Okay, hm,
Speaker 2: the hot was me. What's it called editorial life?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Welcome?
Speaker 2: And NASA engineer named John Cooper, who had worked on
Speaker 2: several recent Apollo missions.
Speaker 1: I mean every type of person, that's right, except for women.
Speaker 2: Well, oh, we're gonna get to her.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Carmie hires a local guide named Miguel Alfonso, and then
Speaker 2: close to when the group is going to leave, he
Speaker 2: announces one new member of the party, a school librarian
Speaker 2: with a PhD in education from Denver named Janet Johnson.
Speaker 1: Okay, right.
Speaker 2: While most people in the group are in the same
Speaker 2: general orbit, although none of them have ever climbed together,
Speaker 2: Janet has never met anyone else in the group. But
Speaker 2: Carmie's Denver friends say she's a highly experienced climber, so
Speaker 2: she can come along letter in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, lady climber.
Speaker 2: What's she doing?
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna wait around all day?
Speaker 2: What's she doing on the mountaintop?
Speaker 1: Stop it? This is serious. No, it's not okay.
Speaker 2: Because the climbing party includes a NASA engineer and a
Speaker 2: woman and a woman, there's considerable public interest in the expedition,
Speaker 2: and it attracts some media attention because like it's kind
Speaker 2: of a new exciting thing, this mountain climbing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Women in the sixties, you know, everest the whole, like
Speaker 2: climbing things.
Speaker 1: Like the trend. It's really becoming entrent.
Speaker 2: And everyone loves NASA people so and women of course
Speaker 2: they love women, so love women. They get us a
Speaker 2: lot of media attention, especially directed at John Nasa, John
Speaker 2: and Janet so John Nasa, John, I'm gonna call him.
Speaker 2: That is thirty five at the time of the expedition.
Speaker 2: He had grown up in Kansas and had always loved
Speaker 2: the outdoors. After graduating from Oklahoma University, he becomes a
Speaker 2: pilot for the Coastguard.
Speaker 1: He's an avid climber.
Speaker 2: He's just like all the things that you want if
Speaker 2: you want an outdoorsy type. Yeah, you know, like when
Speaker 2: you are swiping whichever way and you're like, do I
Speaker 2: want to hike on my first date or no, he's
Speaker 2: the hike on the first daid guy.
Speaker 1: He's the hike five miles on our first day. That's right.
Speaker 2: He summitted Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and po Poka Tepey Toll.
Speaker 1: Yes, where my vacation home is.
Speaker 2: That's right, And they all have elevations between seventeen thousand
Speaker 2: and nineteen thousand feet. And at NASA, John had worked
Speaker 2: on the Apollo eleven mission to the Moon and every
Speaker 2: mission since up until the last one, which was Apollo seventeen.
Speaker 1: That's right. You knew that.
Speaker 2: Shortly before his expedition to Uconcagua. While at NASA he
Speaker 2: had met a secretary named Sandy Myers and they had
Speaker 2: gotten married in nineteen sixty eight and they had a
Speaker 2: son named Randy in nineteen sixty nine. And we're back
Speaker 2: and it's a fan offal of NASA, John Cooper CIVU play.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, regolutely right. Absolutely, you would love to have
Speaker 1: a beer with that guy. Totally fun cheers.
Speaker 2: Although all of John's backstory becomes known to public around
Speaker 2: the time with the climb, most of what people know
Speaker 2: about Janet at the time she's a lady. She's a lady, yes,
Speaker 2: which is unusual for a climber at this time. Janet's
Speaker 2: thirty six at the time of the expedition and had
Speaker 2: been born in Minneapolis and adopted by Victor and May Johnson.
Speaker 2: That Johnson's are very religious and very strict, and Janet
Speaker 2: is an obedient daughter. She's a voracious reader, extremely studious,
Speaker 2: loves to learn. When she's ten, she says to her
Speaker 2: parents she wants a sister, and so they adopt a
Speaker 2: five year old named Judy. I know, Judy, says her sister,
Speaker 2: quote liked to study. That was her favorite thing to do.
Speaker 2: Straight a's. She would settle for nothing less same when
Speaker 2: Janet goes away to college.
Speaker 1: This sucks.
Speaker 2: When Janet goes a way to college and this is
Speaker 2: so little sister. Oh no, Judy finds a box of
Speaker 2: love notes between her sister and another woman. This Janet
Speaker 2: and love notes between Janet and another woman. Judy found
Speaker 2: those in her room. Oh okay, she went away to college.
Speaker 2: It's unclear exactly how j and its parents find out,
Speaker 2: although little sister it's clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean you allegedly, but you said that,
Speaker 1: you go this sucks and then you're like she found
Speaker 1: it where I'm like.
Speaker 2: Why that sucks?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sorry, Alviany, that doesn't suck.
Speaker 2: Judy fucking became a rat. Yes, you know, got it.
Speaker 2: I'm sure she regretted it the rest of her life.
Speaker 2: They find out about it. Her parents are really strict
Speaker 2: religious parents, and they send Janet to a hospital to
Speaker 2: cure her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's seme today.
Speaker 2: This of course does not work, and Janet moves to
Speaker 2: Denver as soon as she can to put distance between
Speaker 2: herself and her parents.
Speaker 1: That's the story my mom used to tell as being
Speaker 1: a nurse and a psychatric hospital and like the you know,
Speaker 1: the late sixties seventies where people are just taking their
Speaker 1: the kids that smoke pot, the kids that rebel, the
Speaker 1: kids that were different in some way, and just like, well,
Speaker 1: you have to go to a psyche.
Speaker 2: To the scariest place on earth. So it's in Denver.
Speaker 2: She becomes her own woman, and she gets her masters
Speaker 2: and then a PhD in education and starts working as
Speaker 2: a school librarian. And then really just it's the thing
Speaker 2: to do between climbing mountains whenever she can. She's just
Speaker 2: obsessed with it. She's among the first twenty women to
Speaker 2: climb all of Colorado's fourteen ers they're called the summits
Speaker 2: that are higher than fourteen thousand feet, as well as
Speaker 2: notable mountains all around the world.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In addition to local interest in John and Janet, the
Speaker 2: group also attracts attention because of their plan to climb
Speaker 2: the notoriously difficult Polish Glacier again. They would be the
Speaker 2: fifth team to do it if they accomplished it. Spoiler,
Speaker 2: they don't. A journalist from the local paper in Mendoza,
Speaker 2: Argentina named Raphael Moran goes to interview the climbing team
Speaker 2: when they arrive in Argentina. So he goes to the hotel.
Speaker 2: He's like, Mistick gets just you know, a little fluck
Speaker 2: piece on everyone, but right away he gets some bad vibes.
Speaker 2: When he interviews everyone together, he feels that the group
Speaker 2: is not cohesive. They don't seem to know each other
Speaker 2: well enough for what they're about to embark on, because
Speaker 2: you have to trust each other, especially if you're roped together,
Speaker 2: and believe that the other person knows what they're doing
Speaker 2: and has your best interest and helps out. They also
Speaker 2: don't seem to quite understand just how difficult the Polish
Speaker 2: Glacier route is. They're kind of being jovial about it.
Speaker 2: He tells the photographer to make sure he gets single
Speaker 2: shots of everyone in the party because he's convinced they
Speaker 2: won't all make it back down the mountain and he'll
Speaker 2: want a photo for the newspaper when that happens. WHOA, yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: let's see a photo of Janet. So that's Janet got it.
Speaker 2: There's no sunscreen back then, but sunscreen didn't exist.
Speaker 1: No sunscreen. Everyone's wearing the same flannel.
Speaker 2: That's right, no sunscreen. Skin cancer still exists.
Speaker 1: Those cool sunglasses for sure, though, Oh yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: So wow, that's yeah, she's got it all going. The
Speaker 2: group stays together at a hotel in Mendos, Argentina, before
Speaker 2: setting off. John Cooper, the NASA engineer, keeps a diary,
Speaker 2: and from it it seems like he and the other
Speaker 2: men in the group don't quite understand like what category
Speaker 2: to put Janet in. She just is kind of an
Speaker 2: enigma to them.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 2: She doesn't seem feminine at all. He writes, quote, Janet
Speaker 2: sure is weird. She went swimming in her bra, blouse
Speaker 2: and panties today and the.
Speaker 1: Poll was full of people.
Speaker 2: End quote. So it's just like whamon climbing mountains.
Speaker 1: Also, she just jumped into the pool because she didn't
Speaker 1: have a suit.
Speaker 2: She didn't give a fuck, like she was definitely like
Speaker 2: a I don't give a fuck, lady, yeah, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: going to live life how I want.
Speaker 1: To live with And so these guys had kind of
Speaker 1: never been around anybody like that before exactly.
Speaker 2: So the team sets out for base camp, a twenty
Speaker 2: five mile extremely rigorous hike on its own. Like you
Speaker 2: get to the first place and you're like, we have
Speaker 2: to go more.
Speaker 1: Who's making the food?
Speaker 2: Right? So base camp is at thirteen thousand, five hundred feet,
Speaker 2: which is around one thousand feet less than any of
Speaker 2: the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. Altitude sickness begins
Speaker 2: to be a factor at around eight thousand feet and
Speaker 2: they're at thirteen five hundred and by the time they
Speaker 2: reached the base camp U Banks, the group's doctor is
Speaker 2: already not feeling well oh and has.
Speaker 1: To stay there.
Speaker 2: So I looked up what altitude sickness feels like, because
Speaker 2: I don't fucking know, and I'll tell you and you'll
Speaker 2: understand this as well as I do. So altitude sickness
Speaker 2: generally feels like a severe hangover. Ooh, those fucking hangovers
Speaker 2: where you're lying there just wishing for consciousness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can get out of your own body just
Speaker 1: for two hours.
Speaker 2: Like sweaty and suppressed, and oh it'spicious, so bad. It's
Speaker 2: characterized by a throbbing headache, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, and shortness
Speaker 2: of breath.
Speaker 1: So it sucks.
Speaker 2: You're not hiking anymore when you get it. At base camp,
Speaker 2: the group connects with a local twenty five year old
Speaker 2: climber named Roberto Bustos, whom they have hired to look
Speaker 2: after their base camp setup. So I think he might
Speaker 2: be the cook or they just are eating like dry
Speaker 2: weird Yeah, what is it?
Speaker 1: Handfuls of walnuts? It would drive me insane. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Roberto also specifically remembers that the vibe seemed off to
Speaker 2: him as well. They didn't seem like a team, but
Speaker 2: rather a group of individuals. He says, quote, there was
Speaker 2: no group attitude. I was thinking, Oh, I am on
Speaker 2: my own. Everyone has to take care of himself. In
Speaker 2: my opinion, they weren't ready for such a strange and
Speaker 2: big mountain as a Concagua.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a terrible way to start, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people underestimate this mountain, and
Speaker 2: the people who are from there know that.
Speaker 1: Do you think the infighting would be worse if it's
Speaker 1: strangers who aren't gelling, or if it's people who know
Speaker 1: each other really well, because that also has a thing
Speaker 1: of like you could start as a great group, but
Speaker 1: something happens and then yeah, either way, then it's more
Speaker 1: personal totally. But you think that that you make sure
Speaker 1: you like each other though, if you're going to do it,
Speaker 1: you're right. Trust is the two people.
Speaker 2: Might not like each other when everyone else, Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 2: Email us? Are you a mountaineer? Let us know what's
Speaker 2: it called altitude sickness?
Speaker 1: It's ultimate thread on the trail. Let us know what
Speaker 1: it's like to be a mountaineer. Do you hate Everyonekay?
Speaker 1: The whole time you're thinking of string cheese, right, because
Speaker 1: that's all I can think of? Or like you have
Speaker 1: to like line your pockets with gummy bears, some.
Speaker 2: Crackers that are sandwich with peanut butter. They're so fucking good.
Speaker 1: Think up pulling that out of your socks and no
Speaker 1: one else can see.
Speaker 2: These days, it's expensive to be a mountaineer, and that's
Speaker 2: partly because nowadays porters set up camps, they lay lines
Speaker 2: so that groups can mostly travel directly from base camp
Speaker 2: to base camp up the mountain. But in the seventies
Speaker 2: that wasn't really how it went. This group would be
Speaker 2: doing all of that work themselves. So their route up
Speaker 2: the mountain will include three separate camps. So they have
Speaker 2: to climb up to Camp one, haul all the gear
Speaker 2: up there and set up camp, then go back to
Speaker 2: base camp, then go back to Camp one with the
Speaker 2: rest of the gear camp there, and then do the
Speaker 2: same thing two more times for base camp two and three.
Speaker 2: So bring everything up, stay, bring everything up.
Speaker 1: So it's exer size and frustration. Yeah, while you're mountaineering. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that tree already. You're like, your attitude just
Speaker 1: gets worse and worse.
Speaker 2: Right, The conditions are varying with the potential for storms
Speaker 2: to blow in, and the climb includes long periods of
Speaker 2: navigating through spiky ice formations called penny ten days, right,
Speaker 2: Penny ten.
Speaker 1: Days, Penny ten days. Have you ever heard of them? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Literally penitents petitentes because they look like people praying in church.
Speaker 2: They're basically still agmites.
Speaker 1: There's still lag mites coming up from the ground exactly.
Speaker 2: They're these huge spikes of ice, huge fields of them,
Speaker 2: just coming up from the ground like upside down giant icicles.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna show you a photo. Oh great, because I
Speaker 2: didn't understand those. Oh, so you have to navigate around those.
Speaker 2: It's just a pain in the ass.
Speaker 1: Essentially, you can't just like worry about putting one foot
Speaker 1: in front of the other. No, it looks like.
Speaker 2: An old movie, like a Dune or you know, labyrinth
Speaker 2: kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Or a doctor no situation exactly.
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of those as well. So those
Speaker 2: are a big pain in the ass. They're hard to
Speaker 2: climb around. It's grueling and already feels like people are
Speaker 2: starting to grumble about each other.
Speaker 1: NASA.
Speaker 2: John writes in his diary that he does not think
Speaker 2: Janet is contributing enough. He writes, quote, she's a real
Speaker 2: loaner and appears to be for only one thing, to
Speaker 2: get herself to the summit at the expense of everyone,
Speaker 2: or on everyone's back, meaning they're carrying more than she
Speaker 2: is or something, and she's not really yeah, helping out.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing I thought of that she would
Speaker 1: be accused of, because as a woman she can't maybe
Speaker 1: technically carry as much, or if there is that kind
Speaker 1: of bitterness where they're like, we didn't want her here anyway, totally.
Speaker 1: That is what you would say.
Speaker 2: Several in the group come down with acute altitude sickness
Speaker 2: right off the bat and stay at Camp one or
Speaker 2: go back to base camp. This includes Karmi right off
Speaker 2: the bat, the leader.
Speaker 1: The author of the whole plan.
Speaker 2: He's out, the doctor U Banks is out, and Shelton,
Speaker 2: the hot interpreter out gone. The rest of the group
Speaker 2: make it to Camp three. They do the fucking thing
Speaker 2: at the base of the Polish Glacier about eighteen thousand
Speaker 2: feet up and the last camp before the stretch to
Speaker 2: the summit. So one last camp, okay. As they get
Speaker 2: ready to start climbing, Petrowsky the psychiatrist, can't get on.
Speaker 2: I just hate this word. Can't get on his crampons.
Speaker 2: I hate it.
Speaker 1: I can't every time I see it.
Speaker 2: Are you gonna spit that out?
Speaker 1: Why did I take that sip? That's they are spiking.
Speaker 2: Shoe attachments to get into the ice that absorb.
Speaker 1: Your foot blood every month, not crampons. I just can't
Speaker 1: a borrow crampon.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you a krampon. I forgot to bring mond.
Speaker 1: I'm sliding into the penitents. So he's like.
Speaker 2: Having trouble putting them on, which is weird, and it's
Speaker 2: clear to everyone else that it's because he's disoriented, and
Speaker 2: they think that he's suffering from severe, possibly deadly altitude sickness,
Speaker 2: because at that point your brain is like not working fine.
Speaker 1: Alone, it is my Tampa.
Speaker 2: The local guide, Alfonso, takes him back down the mountain
Speaker 2: to base camp. So now there are only four climbers
Speaker 2: left in the entire group. Zeller, the police officer, McMillan,
Speaker 2: the good old dairy farmer, and John Nasa John and
Speaker 2: our Janet. None of them have ever climbed a mountain
Speaker 2: this high before, and none of them knew each other
Speaker 2: before the trip.
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing that I just would like to
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm totally wrong in doing this, but the
Speaker 1: idea that someone was like, she's just doing it for herself,
Speaker 1: It's like, so how many that are left are doing
Speaker 1: it for everybody else?
Speaker 2: Do you want to hold hands at the top of
Speaker 2: the mountain?
Speaker 1: Now? Literally going to be like me first? I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't that kind of what mountaineering is about? Like you
Speaker 1: go together, but it's a one man sport. It ends
Speaker 1: a woman one woman, Okay, sure?
Speaker 2: According to the accounts, of Zeller and McMillan, the psychiatrist
Speaker 2: and the police officer who are left and spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: they're the only two survivors at the group. Before the
Speaker 2: group had set out believing they would reach the summit
Speaker 2: that day, but had moved very slowly, picking their way
Speaker 2: across the glacier with ice axe and crampons. They realized
Speaker 2: they will have to camp for the night, and they
Speaker 2: didn't bring their tents, so they have to like beave
Speaker 2: a whack into the fucking ice and try to like
Speaker 2: spend the night in there.
Speaker 1: We'll make themselves like a little igloo.
Speaker 2: It sucks, And so the next morning NASA John Cooper
Speaker 2: says he's too fucking cold. He's like, I'm out sense.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm going to go back to base camp.
Speaker 2: And they let him go alone, which is something I
Speaker 2: guess we're not supposed to do, which is like maybe
Speaker 2: part of the thing of them not knowing each other. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they don't stick together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: So those three climbers keep going up for the summit.
Speaker 2: The last stretches an icy, snowy Ridge, and Zella and
Speaker 2: McMillan say they walk ahead of Janet, making.
Speaker 1: A path for her.
Speaker 2: Let's see that photo, remember that one. Okay, it's just
Speaker 2: someone hiking with the rope tight around them, leading back
Speaker 2: to whoever's taking the picture behind them.
Speaker 1: Yep, right, they're at the top, big old mountain. They
Speaker 1: made it to the top. No they didn't.
Speaker 2: Ok that's technically not the top.
Speaker 1: Oh it's on the side. That's the top. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: What do I know.
Speaker 1: More than me?
Speaker 2: So they make her a path and at some point,
Speaker 2: as the sun is starting to go down, they turn
Speaker 2: around and realize Janet's not behind them anymore. According to
Speaker 2: their account, they find her one hundred feet off the trail,
Speaker 2: lying in the snow, and she says, quote, my name
Speaker 2: is jan Johnson. Don't make me suffer, Just let me
Speaker 2: lay here and die end quote. The men say that
Speaker 2: Zeller ropes himself to Janet, and eventually both of the
Speaker 2: men try to get Janet back down the mountain, and
Speaker 2: they say her hands are swollen and black. They have
Speaker 2: to anchor her from three different directions to keep her
Speaker 2: standing up. They get to the snow cave where they
Speaker 2: had been in between the final Ridge and Camp three,
Speaker 2: where they had spent the night, where Cooper had left
Speaker 2: to go back down the mountain, remember, and there's a
Speaker 2: flare gun there and so they shoot it, but nothing
Speaker 2: happens at the lower altitude at this point because it
Speaker 2: came down. They say, Janet seems in better shape, so
Speaker 2: they send McMillan down the mountain to help. So it's
Speaker 2: just Zeller, the police officer, and Janet at this point,
Speaker 2: who's clearly not doing well. Yeah, on his way down,
Speaker 2: McMillan loses his ice axe and falls, sliding one thousand
Speaker 2: feet down. He has a black eye when he tells
Speaker 2: this story and says that's how he got it. Then
Speaker 2: he says he saw members of the Argentine Army and
Speaker 2: dead news and a dead soldier. But it's only when
Speaker 2: he finally reaches camp through that he realized he had
Speaker 2: hallucinated all of that, because that's what happens when you
Speaker 2: have altitude sickness. He will later learn that he really
Speaker 2: did see a body, but it wasn't a dead soldier hallucination.
Speaker 2: It was actually John Cooper's body NASA. John Cooper's no
Speaker 2: thirty five year old NASA engineer. So meanwhile Janet and
Speaker 2: Zeller are following McMillan down the glacier, and they also
Speaker 2: take a big fall, which doesn't result in major injuries,
Speaker 2: but their faces get cut up and their glasses get broken.
Speaker 2: In the fall, Janet and Zeller become untethered from each
Speaker 2: other because remember they had tied her up in three
Speaker 2: places to help walk, and it's only when Zeller climbs
Speaker 2: back up to Janet that he sees John Cooper's body.
Speaker 2: He says, quote, I checked him, and he was dead
Speaker 2: and appeared to be frozen. I didn't see any cuts
Speaker 2: on his exposed skin and no tears in the clothing,
Speaker 2: so I assume that he didn't die as a result
Speaker 2: of a fall, but exhaustion and hypothermia end quote. So
Speaker 2: just kind of sat down on where he was at,
Speaker 2: and yeah, died. Zeller says at this point that Janet
Speaker 2: seems in decent shapes since they've been coming down a bit,
Speaker 2: but wants to rest a bit longer, so he leaves
Speaker 2: her and says he'll go back ahead of her, back
Speaker 2: down to camp three, which again, you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: leave anyone alone, especially someone who's clearly suffering. He reaches
Speaker 2: camp and he finds McMillan there, and the two fall
Speaker 2: asleep and Janet never joins them. The men say in
Speaker 2: the morning when they woke up, there's no sign of Janet.
Speaker 2: So they decided to go back down the mountain, saying
Speaker 2: that Zeller was too disoriented from altitude sickness to try
Speaker 2: again and to keep going or to help get anyone
Speaker 2: down the mountain. So essentially, just two people of this
Speaker 2: whole mountaineering team make it close to the top and
Speaker 2: come down, and out of the four, only two come
Speaker 2: down alive.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The case is widely reported on, and John and Janet's
Speaker 2: families are, of course devastated. In some newspaper articles, Janet's
Speaker 2: name is misspelled as Jeanette. Janet's mother saves clippings of
Speaker 2: every single article and carefully crosses out every Jeanette replaces
Speaker 2: it with her daughter's correct name. I know some articles
Speaker 2: quote Janet saying having said let me die here, which
Speaker 2: they said that she said, and in all of those articles,
Speaker 2: her mother blacks out the entire quotation. She's like, my
Speaker 2: daughter would never do that. They don't believe that at all.
Speaker 2: A judge and police investigator in Mendoza open a case
Speaker 2: labeled as an investigation into possible manslaughter, but despite this.
Speaker 2: After brief questioning, everyone on the mountaineering team is allowed
Speaker 2: to leave the country and go home. Once back in Oregon,
Speaker 2: Carmi gathers as surviving members at the party for a
Speaker 2: meeting with the club leadership and they write an official
Speaker 2: chronology of events, which is a story everyone tells their
Speaker 2: hometown newspapers and any following investigators. So they put a
Speaker 2: story together in secret, and everyone sticks to that narrative.
Speaker 1: Oh so they don't that meeting and that plan is
Speaker 1: a secret plan. They're not like, let's get together and
Speaker 1: put this on the official record.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, they're like, having been interviewed back in Argentina
Speaker 2: and having very different narratives and conflicting stories, they meet
Speaker 2: up and they get their story straight, especially which is suspicious.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: The account says that John and Janet had been desperate
Speaker 2: to reach the summit and had likely died of pulmonary
Speaker 2: edemas from lack of oxygen at altitude, and because their
Speaker 2: bodies aren't able to be autopsied, they're still on the mountain.
Speaker 2: That's the general consensus.
Speaker 1: That is so.
Speaker 2: That was nineteen seventy two, and in the summer of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, John's body is found. That expedition is
Speaker 2: led by Alphonse, our local guide, who is haunted by
Speaker 2: this entire ordeal. At the foot of the Polish Glacier,
Speaker 2: they find ripped tents and sleeping bags, and about one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty feet above on the glacier they find
Speaker 2: John's body and there's photos of it. John is found
Speaker 2: missing a crampon and without an ice axe. He's on
Speaker 2: a gentle slope and reports say his face is frozen
Speaker 2: in a.
Speaker 1: Look of terror.
Speaker 2: But like that to me is like everyone is when
Speaker 2: they die.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's the same thing as when it freaks people
Speaker 1: out and people think it's demonic when people's like eyes
Speaker 1: are missing when their bodies are discovered, and it's like
Speaker 1: soft tissues is what goes first. Yes, but it looks
Speaker 1: like the devil has been here.
Speaker 2: Right, So that says nothing to me. But it's just it's.
Speaker 1: Noted death, it's dead bodies. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So here's the weirdest part of all to me. His
Speaker 2: abdomen has a cylindrical hole which is bloody and goes
Speaker 2: so deep it almost like hits his spine, though this
Speaker 2: isn't seen until his body thaws. At a lower altitude
Speaker 2: because they bring him down. A National Geographic reporter named
Speaker 2: Lauren McIntyre, who goes with this group, comes to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that quote, there is no mystery at all. He
Speaker 2: fell on his ice axe and he injured himself. But
Speaker 2: remember his ice as isn't with him when they find him,
Speaker 2: but he could have fallen on it left it behind.
Speaker 2: Then he says he was in so much discomfort and
Speaker 2: pain when he was nearly a base camp that he
Speaker 2: finally got off the steep part of the glacier, got
Speaker 2: down on the flat. He had evidently stopped, sat down
Speaker 2: and removed his gloves and was probably trying to examine
Speaker 2: himself in his wound when he fell on anous and
Speaker 2: froze to death. So he fell on his ice pick.
Speaker 2: As that consensus, he tells us to the press in
Speaker 2: a statement, and it seems like a lot of people
Speaker 2: take him for his word, even though he's just a
Speaker 2: reporter and not a forensic investigator. Alfonso the Guy feels
Speaker 2: incredibly uneasy about all of this because he specifically remembers
Speaker 2: the two other climbers saying they had seen John's body
Speaker 2: in a seated position, not laying down. With his head
Speaker 2: in his hands. But of course they had been hallucinating.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 2: You have to remember the whole time that these two
Speaker 2: who survived were probably suffering from out some sort of
Speaker 2: altigide sickness as well. Janet's body is not found until
Speaker 2: February nineteen seventy five. Ernesto Cumballero and his son Alberto,
Speaker 2: who's seventeen, are with another climber named Guillermo Vieio when
Speaker 2: they have to scrap their summit attempt and decide to
Speaker 2: climb down via the Polish glacier in a field of
Speaker 2: penny ten days and covered by some snow. So it's
Speaker 2: a field of those and it's covered by some snow.
Speaker 2: They find Janet's body.
Speaker 1: Ooh.
Speaker 2: Her face is blackened from two years of exposure, but
Speaker 2: it's also severely injured with exposed bone, and there is
Speaker 2: blood visible on her face and jacket. And like John,
Speaker 2: she's missing one crampon and her ice axe. Her hands
Speaker 2: are bare. She's tangled up in ropes, and this is
Speaker 2: super ran. A rock is found sitting on top of
Speaker 2: her body, and there are no rocks around. She's in
Speaker 2: this ice field field exactly. So she's found on a
Speaker 2: shallow slope far from anywhere she could have possibly fallen
Speaker 2: a long distance with Zeller, So that narrative that that's
Speaker 2: how he lost her and she could have died isn't true.
Speaker 2: So Alberta is a teenager and doesn't really know it
Speaker 2: to make up at all. But the other two men
Speaker 2: will say that they are sure Janet was murdered. Of
Speaker 2: course they are just as an expert as a National
Speaker 2: geographic reporter who swears the opposite. But it doesn't look
Speaker 2: like it squares up with the official narrative of the expedition.
Speaker 1: It's just such a weird thing for a porter to
Speaker 1: come out and just be like, I'm almost positive that
Speaker 1: this is what happened, where it's like, sorry, aren't you
Speaker 1: a reporter? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would you.
Speaker 2: Supposed to speculate?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: A medical student who was present for the autopsies of
Speaker 2: both John and Janet says that John had a skull
Speaker 2: fracture and that hole in his abdomen which looked to
Speaker 2: him like it could have been made by an ice crew,
Speaker 2: maybe your ice pick as well. The injuries to Janet's
Speaker 2: face and damage to her boot looked like she had
Speaker 2: been hit hard several times, so it looked like she
Speaker 2: had plant forestroma to her face.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The medical student who is now a neurosurgeon, is also
Speaker 2: convinced that they were killed and that their deaths were
Speaker 2: not accidental. He says that this was the consensus and
Speaker 2: that the medical examiner believed the same, and they're all
Speaker 2: dead now, so he's kind of one of the last
Speaker 2: people who can verify that. Janet is buried at the
Speaker 2: small cemetery at the base of the Aconcagua, which she
Speaker 2: had told her family she wanted before the expedition if
Speaker 2: she perished on the mountain. No one from her family
Speaker 2: is able to attend, but someone leaves flowers with the
Speaker 2: note detu madre or from your mother on her grave.
Speaker 2: That's so sad, and the only item her sister receives
Speaker 2: it is Janet's ring with a brown stone from her finger,
Speaker 2: and Judy still has it today. Unfortunately, any chance of
Speaker 2: for their investigation, so here's maybe there would have been
Speaker 2: a big investigation and the answers would have happened. However,
Speaker 2: it's nineteen seventy six in Argentina and there is a
Speaker 2: there's a violent military coup that overthrows a democratically elected
Speaker 2: president Parone and establishes a military dictatorship that brutally just
Speaker 2: consumes Argentina for years. I hate to gloss over that
Speaker 2: because it's so important, And.
Speaker 1: Just go watch the musical A Vida. You'll learn at
Speaker 1: least one woman's perspective exactly.
Speaker 2: So moving on just like that, but you know, there's
Speaker 2: no chance of further investigation. Essentially, the last surviving thember
Speaker 2: of the party, John Shelton, the mor No the Mormon
Speaker 2: missionary missionary BYU student, was in hospice care at the
Speaker 2: time of this New York Times article by John Branch
Speaker 2: and Emily Ryan, and they go see him in his
Speaker 2: hospice bed. He insists that there is no foul play.
Speaker 2: He calls that idea hogwash, and he dies a month
Speaker 2: before the article is published. But he firmly doesn't believe.
Speaker 2: And but you know that's the narrative.
Speaker 1: That's the narrative that he he was at the secret
Speaker 1: meeting to establish.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, and he wasn't there.
Speaker 1: He was, Oh yeah, he wasn't wasn't so, but you
Speaker 1: know that's based on everyone.
Speaker 2: That's his opinion, right, those around the uconcago community have
Speaker 2: more mixed feelings. Even though the medical examiner felt certain
Speaker 2: foul play had been involved, they might not adequately understand
Speaker 2: the damage a fault in the mountain terrain could actually inflict.
Speaker 2: So that makes complete sense. But still, looking back at
Speaker 2: the conditions at the time on the glacier, the amount
Speaker 2: of soft snow would have made a very long fall
Speaker 2: improbable or maybe impossible. So when Janet's camera is found,
Speaker 2: the film is sent to a special archival photo development
Speaker 2: company in Canada called Film Rescue.
Speaker 1: Because they're like, what's on here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if just anyone tries to develop it, it's
Speaker 2: going to get fucked up. So they are able to
Speaker 2: get all the photos off of it, so the camera
Speaker 2: film and another role of film they found are able
Speaker 2: to be processed. And the pictures show the party mostly
Speaker 2: smiling in those early stages of the journey, hauling gear
Speaker 2: and setting up camp. The photos are beautiful and well composed,
Speaker 2: and actually, can you show one of them, really beautiful photos.
Speaker 2: This is on the mountain for fucking fifty years.
Speaker 1: Wow, just sitting up there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, Zella and McMillan said, when she turned around and
Speaker 2: saw that she was gone, he said, well, we weren't
Speaker 2: tied together, so she could have just left. But that
Speaker 2: one photo that she took, they're tied together. So is
Speaker 2: that her last clue? They are tied together? Whoever took
Speaker 2: this photo? And we're not totally positive which one of
Speaker 2: them that is they are roped together? Yes?
Speaker 1: So so why lie? Right? What's the lie about? Exactly?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: John Branch writes in the New York Times article, quote,
Speaker 2: if she was oxygen deprived or delirious, she still knew
Speaker 2: how to focus the lens, compose the frame, and hold
Speaker 2: the camera study to take clear photographs. That is where
Speaker 2: the film ends. That is where the legend begins. The
Speaker 2: film does not solve the mystery. It adds to it.
Speaker 2: It tells you what Johnson saw in her final hours,
Speaker 2: but not how she felt, not how she died. Not
Speaker 2: every discovery leads to revelation. Some just make you want
Speaker 2: to know more. End quote. And that is the story
Speaker 2: of the Aconcagua Mountain mystery. And you can punch me
Speaker 2: in the face.
Speaker 1: Just why, God damn.
Speaker 2: Just one time you can punch me in the pit.
Speaker 1: You really set that up like we were gonna get sorry, But.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's speculate care speculation allegedly. Allegedly, this is just
Speaker 2: a true crime podcast theory. We're not doctors, that's right.
Speaker 2: Did one of them go?
Speaker 1: Although we could have been it's been ten years, we
Speaker 1: could have gotten a PhD.
Speaker 2: Why don't we have our fucking honorary degrees from Sacramento
Speaker 2: and La City College?
Speaker 1: Yause they know we're fool of shit, so speaking up.
Speaker 2: So maybe one of them actually kind of had lost
Speaker 2: it on the mountain and was hallucinating something and killed them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was not sexually assaulted as well.
Speaker 2: I don't think that a sane, normal person would be
Speaker 2: able or have the energy to attack someone like that
Speaker 2: with being at that elevation. But if you were hallucinating,
Speaker 2: if you were, if you had delirious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you didn't like a person to the degree
Speaker 1: where they kind of invaded your space, right, and then
Speaker 1: it's not just anybody, it's this lady that's I'm going
Speaker 1: to get there for myself, is their perception for some reason.
Speaker 2: But or she was pushing to keep going and they
Speaker 2: didn't want to. But I don't think that there was
Speaker 2: that level of linear thinking at.
Speaker 1: That height because they had such bad Yeah, like.
Speaker 2: On the way down, he saw, you know, he was hallucinated.
Speaker 2: So what happened up there? Did he hallucinate?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 2: He was at war and these were soldiers, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, but I guess if that were the case, then
Speaker 1: when they all got together to put a story together,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they be able to say, hey, listen, these
Speaker 1: are the myriad stories we have because these are the
Speaker 1: crazy things we experienced.
Speaker 2: Because mountaineering would change forever after that. Like I see them,
Speaker 2: these mountaineers, these guys, guys banding together and being like,
Speaker 2: let's not you know, we're going to get a bunch
Speaker 2: of press over this. We just wanted like this to
Speaker 2: kind of be hidden so we can go on doing
Speaker 2: what we're doing, and we don't want to ruin these guys.
Speaker 2: Like the memories of these people and the lives of
Speaker 2: the living ones. This is speculation. I'm not saying this
Speaker 2: is true or right. Their entire families because they had
Speaker 2: altitude sickness and did and some crazy thing yeah that
Speaker 2: they weren't aware of, they don't remember and you know,
Speaker 2: in their minds aren't responsible for. So I'm not saying
Speaker 2: I think that's true.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you think that's possible. Like as
Speaker 1: opposed to the usual where it's like they killed her
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's like you're like, something weird happened, for sure,
Speaker 1: But what they're protecting probably isn't just a pure killer, right,
Speaker 1: it's more of an accident situational. Yeah, I know, doesn't
Speaker 1: it seem like though, that's a little bit more of
Speaker 1: an argument of not mountaineering, because it's like you'll get oh,
Speaker 1: you'll get up there, no, yeah, and you'll be hallucinating
Speaker 1: dead soldiers all around you because you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: go up that.
Speaker 2: High, right, because our bodies and brains were not meant
Speaker 2: for that elevation. Yeah, I mean I got sick in
Speaker 2: Denver because it was too fucking high.
Speaker 1: How high we were on stage in Salt Lake City
Speaker 1: the first time we played there, we had to take
Speaker 1: oxygen in the va It's crazy, right, And that was
Speaker 1: like I'm guessing right now, three thousand feet above sea level,
Speaker 1: like probably not even close to this, it's serious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but a camera being found in the fucking ice.
Speaker 1: Also, it does sound a little fake the I'm saying
Speaker 1: she said my name is Janet. That whole story, yeah,
Speaker 1: seems fake, Yeah, and oversimplified, Like if you fell and
Speaker 1: were laying there dying. Yeah, wouldn't you just be like
Speaker 1: cat help leave me or get help?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think leave me makes sense if you're
Speaker 2: a true mountaineer.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Tell us what mountaineering is like at my favorite murder
Speaker 2: at gmount And Wow, I don't know.
Speaker 1: What other mysteries will be uncovered over the years as
Speaker 1: the snow melts. Those crampons dos those crampons come rolling along?
Speaker 1: Ice pick? DNA tests them.
Speaker 2: I mean he had a hole in.
Speaker 1: His Yeah, he got ice picked somehow. Yea, yeah, did he.
Speaker 2: Fall on it?
Speaker 1: That's possible. Oh man, Well that was a great story.
Speaker 1: I mean that was very compelling.
Speaker 2: I've been excited to tell you about it. Despite the ending,
Speaker 2: I apologize.
Speaker 1: I love seventies photographs. Yeah, I love the idea that
Speaker 1: at the very end, it's like except for that they
Speaker 1: were tied together. Right, that's wild?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Well, jump rope, jump on a trampoline. Keep
Speaker 2: it positive, don't go on a mountain, don't go hiking
Speaker 2: up on a mountain.
Speaker 1: Don't be a hero. Don't be a hero. Speak up.
Speaker 1: Your voice is wanted and needed, Yes, definitely, And of course,
Speaker 1: stay sexy and don't get murdered.
Speaker 2: Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
Speaker 2: is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Aristotle Lascevedo.
Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 1: Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 2: Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
Speaker 1: Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
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Speaker 1: Goodbye,