Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstars,
Speaker 1: that's Karen Kilgarriff, and we've got some surprises in store
Speaker 1: for you today. Bloody vacation nail he oh, those are
Speaker 1: the longest I've ever seen. Your name, not mine.
Speaker 2: They're like literally vacation nails that I'm obsessed with.
Speaker 1: Will you throw up those nails to your camera as
Speaker 1: we are on Netflix and show the world.
Speaker 2: They're gel x and they just make you feel like.
Speaker 1: A grown up. Yeah, they look really nice.
Speaker 2: My nails have always been like junior high school and
Speaker 2: now I'm like in my thirties working at a law firm.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, congratulations, when'd you get that job? When
Speaker 1: I got that, they came with the nails exactly wow,
Speaker 1: because my nails are the manicure I gave myself at
Speaker 1: the last minute because I couldn't somehow get to the
Speaker 1: manni petty salaun. Show your camera, well, no, because it's
Speaker 1: it's just dire because it now looks like a French manicure.
Speaker 1: But that's not how it started. That's how kind of old.
Speaker 1: I also always immediately smudged my right thumb. Always so irritating.
Speaker 1: Life is hard. Yeah, are you having any since you've
Speaker 1: been back from your trip to Italy? Which, now that
Speaker 1: you're a travel influencer, I think we should discuss all
Speaker 1: of your opinions and likes and dislikes. Finally, thank you
Speaker 1: can let me. Is anything staying with you that you
Speaker 1: miss about being on that trip or like your Italian experience?
Speaker 2: You know what I miss which was really nice, which
Speaker 2: probably gets old after a while, but it's only two weeks.
Speaker 2: Is dressing for dinner because they have that period between
Speaker 2: the afternoon and the evening where nobody does anything. You
Speaker 2: take a nap, and then you have to put on
Speaker 2: like a dress for dinner. You can't wear tennis shoes,
Speaker 2: and it's just like made everything feel so much more special.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I loved that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it was incredible at a really good,
Speaker 2: beautiful time. Milan is like incredible. I'd go back there immediately. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we stay with My mom texts me a thing of
Speaker 2: like don't wear your Star of David again.
Speaker 1: She texted me these things.
Speaker 2: If I've ever had a jewelry, Yes, she said, don't
Speaker 2: wear your Star of David, like keep it low key
Speaker 2: that you're Jewish, as if that's not what I already do.
Speaker 2: But then we found out we were staying at a
Speaker 2: hotel where Mussolini had stayed before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's like I can't tell her that that.
Speaker 1: You're like, look, I'm seeing their side of things. No,
Speaker 1: that's not good. But also, you can't get away from
Speaker 1: a city's history. You can't. You know, it's not your fault, right,
Speaker 1: but the really nice hotel was also his way. My
Speaker 1: fault was lots of things are my fault in my mind.
Speaker 1: World War two, though, I don't you can let yourself
Speaker 1: off the hook for that one. I mean, it must
Speaker 1: be a huge relief, it is. What's up with you?
Speaker 1: I've just been wearing a star David around. See what
Speaker 1: I can kick? Not much? You know. We went on
Speaker 1: vacation obviously, you know, at the same time, but I
Speaker 1: did a staycasion and truly just tried to do nothing.
Speaker 1: Literally lay on the couch and pull a blanket up
Speaker 1: to my chin, like it was the middle of winter.
Speaker 1: Any chance I could? I love it? Did you bringe
Speaker 1: Widow's Bay? Oh? Yeah, And now I'm in the watching
Speaker 1: people react to how much they love Widow's Bay on
Speaker 1: social media, which is such like it's becoming this new
Speaker 1: way that we all watched TV. Yeah, where it's just
Speaker 1: as satisfying for me to watch people get excited to go.
Speaker 1: Here's what I think that it.
Speaker 2: Was my favorite. I fucked the whole thing up there.
Speaker 2: Here's the negative side of that. I watched a spoiler
Speaker 2: on accident and knew that last bit, that last exciting
Speaker 2: bit I accidentally watched a fucking like it's the whole
Speaker 2: turning point of the show.
Speaker 1: But when you went in knowing it, when.
Speaker 2: She goes about you know I was pregnant. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: knew what happened. And at the beginning of that episode,
Speaker 2: before even halpened, I go, I get why that matters
Speaker 2: because I thought it was just like a regular random
Speaker 2: scene that I was to laugh at. It was the
Speaker 2: whole point of the fucking show. Yes, and I knew,
Speaker 2: and I was so bummed, like Vince gasped and I
Speaker 2: wanted to.
Speaker 1: Guess to And also the danger of when we get
Speaker 1: all this stuff through social media, you can't control that
Speaker 1: someone's about to give you a spoiler, as we do
Speaker 1: on this show constantly.
Speaker 2: That wasn't a spoiler and you should totally watch it.
Speaker 1: But but I mean, like you that there's a backwards
Speaker 1: way that like I always seem to end up consuming
Speaker 1: like a TV show. The way I hate the most,
Speaker 1: which is you know all the big moments before you
Speaker 1: go in, then you're kind of judging. You have to
Speaker 1: see them at that point you know the story, right.
Speaker 1: But I would argue that with Widow's Bay, they're doing
Speaker 1: so much. They work so hard to easter egg and storyline.
Speaker 1: I watched a woman lay out this whole idea, and
Speaker 1: we will in our social media, we'll post her video
Speaker 1: and we will give her the full credit because it's
Speaker 1: a really brilliant thing she noticed, which is that time
Speaker 1: is all screwed up in Widow's Bay, like the calendar
Speaker 1: as a car accident on us, and that in her theory,
Speaker 1: she's like, actually, lead, these three episodes all happened in
Speaker 1: one day, but you don't realize it. If you think
Speaker 1: about it, you can't tell when a thing is actually happening.
Speaker 1: You're not sure. And she introduced all these kind of
Speaker 1: doubts about, oh, that's right in the time where he's
Speaker 1: got the wolves calendar, but then he opens the month
Speaker 1: that they're in and it's the car accident, so random,
Speaker 1: like there's so many easter eggs about you assume you
Speaker 1: think you know what's going on and how, and it's
Speaker 1: going to start like it's what's the comedian's name who
Speaker 1: plays the shaman?
Speaker 2: It's just like the best, Oh, Chris Fleming, it's just
Speaker 2: the best, you know, five minutes of TV.
Speaker 1: It's so good, Chris Fleming, He's so perfect. It's okay,
Speaker 1: just drink it slowly, he goes. I just understand.
Speaker 2: This is not it should be a Widow's Bay Rewatch podcast.
Speaker 1: Just for the next four years we turn it into
Speaker 1: you have a true crime update. There's a true crime update,
Speaker 1: and it's just plain good news, which when in the
Speaker 1: ten years we've been doing this podcast, as that ever happens. Rex,
Speaker 1: the Gilgo Beach murderer, on Wednesday, June seventeenth, was sentenced
Speaker 1: to life in prison without the possibility of parole for
Speaker 1: the murders of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy Amberlyn Costello, Maureen
Speaker 1: Brainerd Barnes, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Cristia and Karen Vergatta.
Speaker 1: And he initially denied these charges and he was set
Speaker 1: to go to trial, but basically he changed his plea
Speaker 1: to guilty in April, and now he is in jail.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm glad that is over with and he
Speaker 2: can go rotten.
Speaker 1: Hell. Yeah. Wow. It's always strange when it ends and
Speaker 1: you know the reality and it is the big ghost,
Speaker 1: the big monster, that mysterious monster is just some horrible man.
Speaker 2: Some small little man, the coward. Yeah, that's why I
Speaker 2: love cold cases. It's like, let's not make them this big,
Speaker 2: you know, powerful being.
Speaker 1: It's just some fucking dad.
Speaker 2: From Long Island who sucks you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not good. Okay, should we get into it?
Speaker 1: You mean talk about our network? Sure?
Speaker 2: Hey, we have a podcast network. It's called exactly right Media.
Speaker 2: Here are some headlines.
Speaker 1: Let's here's some headlights. Nope, here are some highlights. Here's
Speaker 1: some highlights. This week on our podcast Bananas Curtain, Scottie
Speaker 1: discuss whether all the water on Earth has already been
Speaker 1: peed in. They talk about a world cut trophy bong
Speaker 1: that landed a headshop in legal trouble and everything between
Speaker 1: and then over.
Speaker 2: On Ghosted, Roz is joined by comedian and Taro queen
Speaker 2: our friend Lizzie Cooperman. They shuffle the cards while discussing
Speaker 2: Yes No Later, manifestations, hermit Crabs, and one lingering question,
Speaker 2: when will Roz.
Speaker 1: Become more famous? Well, we kind of have the answer
Speaker 1: to that right because Roz just released her new audio book.
Speaker 1: It is her memoir and it's entitled Peeing in an
Speaker 1: Empty Bottle and Other Glamorous Shenanigans of an almost famous
Speaker 1: transgender comedian on the Road, and that book is out now.
Speaker 1: It blends stories obviously from her cross country comedy tour
Speaker 1: with exclusive stand up and behind the scenes audio. So
Speaker 1: if you want to support Roz, she is an incredible
Speaker 1: stand upcomic, hilarious podcaster. We love her obviously member of
Speaker 1: our family here, but also just like an entertainer to
Speaker 1: beat the.
Speaker 2: Band, Rosca is gonna be great, ros Hernandez find it then.
Speaker 2: This week on trust Me, Lola and Megan are joined
Speaker 2: by doctor Christine Marie, Lola's mom.
Speaker 1: Who was also the podcast's very first guest.
Speaker 2: She shares how she went undercover with the FBI to
Speaker 2: help bring down self proclaimed profit Sam Bateman. So if
Speaker 2: you watch Trust Me on Netflix, this is what we're
Speaker 2: talking about. And you can also watch the full video
Speaker 2: episode now at YouTube dot com. Slash exactly right.
Speaker 1: Media. Karen goes first. So my story today begins on
Speaker 1: March first, seventeen seventy eight. Are you ready? No, so
Speaker 1: long ago, so long ago. We're talking about an area
Speaker 1: that I truly and literally know almost nothing about except
Speaker 1: for this story, which is the Revolutionary War era of America.
Speaker 1: Got it. I know that you can't correct me in it,
Speaker 1: any of these mistakes I'm about to make right now.
Speaker 1: That's why we do this podcast together again. My excuse
Speaker 1: is that I changed schools fifth to sixth grade. Well,
Speaker 1: that's got it. Yeah, that's hard. They learned about stuff
Speaker 1: like that in the fifth grade at my new school
Speaker 1: and in the sixth grade at my old school. We're
Speaker 1: preaching to the choir Roman numerals. I was sick that day.
Speaker 1: All the presidents not my business, none of my business,
Speaker 1: not really never brought up. I didn't vote for them.
Speaker 1: I didn't get to see pictures of them all around
Speaker 1: the walls all year long. Okay, So March first, seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, we are in Brookfield, Massachusetts, west of Woosta,
Speaker 1: and it's a snowy night around nine o'clock. Most of
Speaker 1: the locals in Brookfield are either at home sitting in
Speaker 1: front of the fire, or they've already gotten into bed
Speaker 1: under their thick quilts and blankets because it's so cold outside.
Speaker 1: But a local, wealthy, local businessman, thirty seven year old
Speaker 1: Joshua Spooner, he's outside in the elements because he spent
Speaker 1: the last few hours at the local tavern and now
Speaker 1: he's making the quarter mile walk home down Brookfield's main road.
Speaker 1: It's dark outside, almost no moonlight. He's holding a lantern
Speaker 1: because this is old fashioned times and that's required at night.
Speaker 1: So choky, right man, Hello, Hello, And first the beginning
Speaker 1: of his walk, he is with his friend, doctor Jonathan King,
Speaker 1: who is the town's physician. The doctor splits off in
Speaker 1: the direction of his house when they come to the
Speaker 1: fork in the road, and then Joshua continues on by himself,
Speaker 1: eventually making it to his very stately two story home,
Speaker 1: which is one of the nicest in Brookfield. He climbs
Speaker 1: a set of stone steps that take him from the
Speaker 1: street up onto his property. He unlatches his front gate,
Speaker 1: and then he heads back toward one of the back
Speaker 1: entrances of the house. He never makes it inside. Instead,
Speaker 1: Joshua Spooner's body will be discovered, beaten, strangled, and stuffed
Speaker 1: down his well. What Yes, this is the story of
Speaker 1: the murder of Joshua Spooner, which is one of the
Speaker 1: very first high profile murder cases in America. Dude, seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, at that vintage murder, right, happy fourth of July,
Speaker 1: eary budd, that's right. While we are lighting off firecrackers
Speaker 1: and trying to dissociate, let's remember how this country started
Speaker 1: with extreme violence on a day to day basis. True
Speaker 1: crime isn't new now. The main source of today's story
Speaker 1: is the research and writing of Deborah Novice, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the sources are in our show notes. So
Speaker 1: it's seventeen seventy eight. Only two years have passed since
Speaker 1: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We're in deep
Speaker 1: early history for us, kind of nauseating. It feels like
Speaker 1: you haven't eaten lunch, but you have to listen to
Speaker 1: the teacher, keep talking. The Revolutionary War has continued and
Speaker 1: will continue for five more years. It's been going for
Speaker 1: about two and a half three So the American Revolution
Speaker 1: is the backdrop for this whole case. The colonies are
Speaker 1: fear divided at this time between patriots and loyalists, and
Speaker 1: Joshua Spooner, this murder victim, was a supporter of the
Speaker 1: Patriot cause. That cause is especially strong and well supported
Speaker 1: in New England. At this point in the Revolutionary War,
Speaker 1: British leadership has been driven out of Massachusetts. The colony
Speaker 1: is now governed by Revolutionary leaders. One of the highest
Speaker 1: ranking officials is Joshua's stepbrother, a man named John Avery Junior.
Speaker 1: So the problem is, Joshua has a prominent loyalist in
Speaker 1: his family. His father in law, Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles
Speaker 1: cute right, little Timmy Ruggles Kins. His father in law
Speaker 1: his wife's Bathsheba's father. So Bathsheba Ruggles is the woman
Speaker 1: that Joshua's married. Joshua Spooner, bring that name back, Bathsheba,
Speaker 1: You're in witch. You're immediately a witch. You're a witch
Speaker 1: er your Bible lady, congratulations, like one of two things
Speaker 1: in this story which so before the revolution, Timothy Ruggles
Speaker 1: was a very powerful man. He held a bunch of
Speaker 1: important political posts in Massachusetts while under British rule. So
Speaker 1: when the revolution started, colonists began to embrace the Patriot cause.
Speaker 1: Timothy Ruggles stays committed to the British Crown. Huge mistake
Speaker 1: in Worcesta. So in the mid seventeen seventies, Timothy Ruggles
Speaker 1: goes to New York to join the British Army.
Speaker 2: That's how much he commits, literally wrong side of history.
Speaker 1: Bra read the fucking room, dude of Massachusetts. It's a
Speaker 1: room as wide as Massachusetts. So obviously bad for his
Speaker 1: reputation in New England. So soon Timothy Ruggles is considered
Speaker 1: one of the most despised political figures in revolutionary massachuests
Speaker 1: who so would you compare him to these days? Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: May sounds right? So this was that a little too fast.
Speaker 1: So all of this has created serious tension in the
Speaker 1: Spooner household between Joshua and his wife, Bathsheba. She is
Speaker 1: very very close with her father, Timothy Ruggles, and there
Speaker 1: are four Ruggles daughters, but Bathsheba has always been known
Speaker 1: to be her father's favorite. She's also suspected of sharing
Speaker 1: his political leanings. So when he leaves town basically to
Speaker 1: join with the British, Joshua forbids his wife from having
Speaker 1: any communication with her disgrace turn coat father, and of
Speaker 1: course she is devastated you.
Speaker 2: Got have discussed politics before you get married. I mean,
Speaker 2: I can get on the same.
Speaker 1: Page before you get Well, here's the real gossip about
Speaker 1: this story is that this relationship has never been good. Okay,
Speaker 1: it was basically engineered in seventeen sixty six as a
Speaker 1: political arrangement hashed out by their wealthy fathers. Timothy saw
Speaker 1: the political writing on the wall and he knew his
Speaker 1: loyalist sympathies could someday cause harm to his beloved Bathsheba.
Speaker 2: And I was kidding about that because women don't get
Speaker 2: to choose their politics or their husbands back then. So
Speaker 2: discussing politics before you get married, he designing if you
Speaker 2: want to marry them or not is not an option?
Speaker 1: Not being serious, No, no, no, it's not only not an option.
Speaker 1: It was literally like, how dare you? You couldn't suggest
Speaker 1: that you would be backhanded and told to go make
Speaker 1: a sandwich, right and then you have sliced bread. So
Speaker 1: imagine that. I mean back before the internet, they were
Speaker 1: still doing that. So when Bathsheba was around twenty years old,
Speaker 1: she was married off into the Spooner family, who were
Speaker 1: wealthy Boston merchants. Because basically Timothy ruggles knew his daughter
Speaker 1: would be protected socially and financially. But both Joshua and
Speaker 1: Bathsheba grew up incredibly privileged in aristocratic families. They both
Speaker 1: had generational power, and Bathsheba is roundly described to be
Speaker 1: exceptionally beautiful. Josh meanwhile, is a successful lumberman. So there's
Speaker 1: on paper they were supposed to make a perfect couple, right,
Speaker 1: she brings all the gorgeousness, he's money. In reality, they're
Speaker 1: just a miserable pair because despite the gender norms dictating quiet,
Speaker 1: dutiful wives of the time, Bathsheba is headstrong. She's rash,
Speaker 1: and she is free spirited, and she's said to have
Speaker 1: quote passions that have never been properly restrained. Same and right. Yeah. Meanwhile, Joshua,
Speaker 1: her husband, is described in old records as quote frequently drunk.
Speaker 1: There you go, right. He's also unfaithful to his wife.
Speaker 1: He is suspected of being physically abusive to his wife.
Speaker 1: And one of the few surviving direct quotes we have
Speaker 1: from either spooner is one where Bathsheba describes her feelings
Speaker 1: about her husband with just two words utter aversion.
Speaker 2: So she would have said same after always drunk, like
Speaker 2: I would have been soaked. Do it again, go again.
Speaker 1: And he is described in old records as quote frequently drunk.
Speaker 1: Same by seventeen seventy thank you, thank you for indulgent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fun. Yet the couple has, as were the practices
Speaker 1: of the times, the couple has four children together, bummer.
Speaker 1: Only three of those children survive to adulthood, and years later,
Speaker 1: one of the adult spooner sons will be heard calling
Speaker 1: his father quote old bogus, ooh, yeah, she's like such
Speaker 1: an insult back then, such an eighteenth century dig that
Speaker 1: historians say suggests his children did not respect him very much.
Speaker 1: So by seventeen seventy seven, it's been more than a
Speaker 1: decade into this miserable marriage, and the relationship is as
Speaker 1: bad as it will ever be. They detest each other.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, Bathsheba is struggling terribly personally.
Speaker 1: She's isolated because she has to hide at home because
Speaker 1: her father is such a pariah.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: But then hiding at home, she's there with this miserable marriage,
Speaker 1: no support, you know, so many kids, so many kids.
Speaker 1: So in March of that year, a stranger is passing
Speaker 1: by the front of the spooner home, and it's a
Speaker 1: Continental soldier who's just completed a year of service in
Speaker 1: George Washington's army. And this is how cinemax start. That's
Speaker 1: the first cinemax kick in those saxophones from the Revolutionary
Speaker 1: or Derek Pictures? Was he hot? We don't have pictures
Speaker 1: of the Continental Soldier. I'm about to tell you this
Speaker 1: picture who Jacob Alordie. Let me give you a little
Speaker 1: more information, okay, and then we're going to cast him
Speaker 1: because his name is Ezra Ross and he's sixteen years old. Okay, everyone,
Speaker 1: how old is? She's just grown? He's thirty two. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's illegal. It is illegal. I'm not sure a colonial law.
Speaker 1: So as we go, you can maybe think about who
Speaker 1: could be cast as a sixteen year old? What do
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 2: He's aa, I feel like he would be. He's casting everything. Yes,
Speaker 2: he looks like a teenager, very true, But.
Speaker 1: Like, how old are your nephews? Who's Mike is sixteen? Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 1: Oh gross? Right? Oh gross? Yeah? The reality of a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old no as opposed to a shalome? Right,
Speaker 1: So it's so funny. Okay, So he's on break between
Speaker 1: military duties walking by. He was in a new here's
Speaker 1: the army encampment, and he has to walk home to Ipswich, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: which is essentially a three hundred mile walk round trip.
Speaker 1: Bro Hitchhiking wasn't invented yet because the cart's right, it's
Speaker 1: too slow, right, they just knock you off. Also, it's
Speaker 1: the winter, right, so it's worst case scenario for this
Speaker 1: young soldier. And to complicate it even more, he's dealing
Speaker 1: with the lingering effects of what was probably the flu
Speaker 1: that he caught at camp. So he's on a long
Speaker 1: winter walk kind of getting over a bad flu. It's
Speaker 1: unclear whether he approached the Spooner House out of desperation
Speaker 1: or whether somebody in the Spooner House saw him passing
Speaker 1: and realized he needed help. Either way, the Spooners welcome
Speaker 1: Ezra into their home. The sick young man is put
Speaker 1: to bed Bathsheba begins to nurse him back to hell,
Speaker 1: feeding him and tending to him.
Speaker 2: In what side is he and he's not on the
Speaker 2: British side.
Speaker 1: He's the American side, right, yeah, So it's like it's
Speaker 1: like forbidden for her too, because like her dad is
Speaker 1: super and the British. Yeah, you know, she's like, not
Speaker 1: what sixteen? Fuck man, it just keeps getting ruined. It's
Speaker 1: so ruined. But it also it's like it's a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old. She's just being asked to live like a man.
Speaker 1: So there is that might help it a little more,
Speaker 1: that he is actually taking on the horrors and responsibilities
Speaker 1: of being in the army and fighting a war. If
Speaker 1: only he were twenty. But he does have the lama
Speaker 1: curl at the front of his hair, the way all
Speaker 1: the sixteen year olds do these days.
Speaker 2: Okay, Oh so sorry, wow, really pop that so loud?
Speaker 1: Okay. Taking in soldiers who are walking long distances after
Speaker 1: military stints is not uncommon in revolutionary war times. What
Speaker 1: sets this encounter apart is that that time it takes
Speaker 1: for Ezra, almost said Timothy Chalamey. That time it takes
Speaker 1: for Ezra to recover. We don't know exactly how long
Speaker 1: it is. We can assume it was at least a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, because he has to, you know, fully
Speaker 1: recover whatever. But in that time, thirty one year old
Speaker 1: Bathsheba Spooner, this adolescent soldier, develop what a tasteful person
Speaker 1: would call a uniquely strong bond. But what we can all,
Speaker 1: maybe in our Bravo minds, assume, was fucking so the
Speaker 1: age difference. We don't want to be calling things affairs
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, right, And also just let's not spend
Speaker 1: the time getting into all that discussion. Here's what we know.
Speaker 1: It's unclear if they start by having a physical affair.
Speaker 1: They have definitely started an emotional affair though, and it's
Speaker 1: a secret, which makes it even hotter. No one has
Speaker 1: any idea what's going on, especially Joshua Spooner, who has
Speaker 1: actually developed his own friendship with Ezra. So Ezra playing
Speaker 1: both sides, that's right, and getting some soup while he
Speaker 1: on his long journey home doing what he's got to do.
Speaker 1: At some point, Ezra's health improves enough so that the
Speaker 1: Spooner send him back on the road to Ipswich, but
Speaker 1: he never forgets Passheba within a month, thirty one year
Speaker 1: old woman, some hot milf. That's like, let me take care.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'll be seeing you within weeks. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Within months, he's called back to military service. But then
Speaker 1: when he gets leave, he comes and visits the Spooners
Speaker 1: in Brookfield. So it's a little less than a year
Speaker 1: later now January seventeen seventy eight, and Bathsheba has news
Speaker 1: for Ezra. On his next visit, he comes to see
Speaker 1: the spooners and she pulls him aside and is like,
Speaker 1: I bregged it. Oh shit, uh huh, Now I wanted
Speaker 1: to act that up for I loved it. She yanks
Speaker 1: him into the pantry and then has to push him
Speaker 1: Ba out because they have to act normal. So it's
Speaker 1: assumed by historians that given her like on the record
Speaker 1: utter aversion with her husband, that they weren't probably having sex,
Speaker 1: and that probably Ezra is the father of this baby.
Speaker 1: Bathsheba's definitely panicked, and writer Debora Novas puts it this
Speaker 1: way quote divorces were all but impossible for women in
Speaker 1: revolutionary America, and adulteresses were stripped to the waist and
Speaker 1: publicly whipped Jesus, so she is truly panicking. During one
Speaker 1: of Ezra's visits, Bathsheba asks him to poison her husband
Speaker 1: with aquafortis or also known as nitric acid. It's an
Speaker 1: extremely corrosive acid used to dissolve tough materials like metal,
Speaker 1: and unlike other poisons from these old stories like arsenic
Speaker 1: Aquafortis has an incredibly strong and very terrible taste, so
Speaker 1: it's a bad idea to use to begin with. But
Speaker 1: Ezra's just a sophomore in love with having sex with
Speaker 1: an old lady, so he does it. He's like, sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. He poisons Joshua's drink. So problem is,
Speaker 1: when Joshua takes a sip of that drink, it's literally
Speaker 1: like who put gasoline in my tea? He immediately tastes
Speaker 1: the poison, spits out the mouthful, dumps the drink. So
Speaker 1: then basically, for the rest of Ezra's stay, he keeps
Speaker 1: trying to poison Joshua and can't get it done. Oh folly,
Speaker 1: I mean right, the hilarious back and forth of all
Speaker 1: the things that Ezra has to spit out and be like,
Speaker 1: I this taste is driving me crazy. So basically, by
Speaker 1: the end, Ezra gets cold feet about this whole scheme.
Speaker 1: His visit ends without a poisoning taking place, and he
Speaker 1: leaves Bathsheba to carry out that plan for herself. So
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, February seventeen seventy eight, Joshua is
Speaker 1: away on a business trip. Bathsheba spots two British soldiers
Speaker 1: passing by the front of the house. They are Private
Speaker 1: William Brooks, who's in his late twenties and Sergeant James Buchanan,
Speaker 1: who is in his mid thirties. Okay, so we're age
Speaker 1: appropriate now now, yes, we're getting into some adults involving adults.
Speaker 1: Basheba sends out one of her workers basically to intercept
Speaker 1: them and offer them a place to sleep and food
Speaker 1: to eat, and they're very grateful to come inside. And
Speaker 1: when they do, Basheba learns they're British deserters who are
Speaker 1: trying to get home by way of Canada. So basically
Speaker 1: they're just trying to escape America alive to get home. So,
Speaker 1: sensing her opportunity, Bathsheba offers them clothing in cash if
Speaker 1: they kill her husband when he comes back from his
Speaker 1: business dresses. Some sources say she offers them one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars wow, which in today's money from seventeen seventy eight
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty six, twelve thousand, twenty five thousand, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of money. That's a lot of money. So
Speaker 1: they accept, and when they do, Bathsheba writes to Ezra, hey,
Speaker 1: when you graduate from High School come back here because
Speaker 1: the plan is afoot So by the time Joshua Spooner
Speaker 1: gets back from his business trip to Brookfield, these British
Speaker 1: soldiers have been staying in their house in the Spooner
Speaker 1: House for more than a week, sleeping in nice beds,
Speaker 1: eating great food whenever they want, running up an enormous
Speaker 1: tab at the local tavern under Joshua Spooner's name the
Speaker 1: whole nine. Joshua finds this out. He's irate at his
Speaker 1: wife for letting these British soldiers into their home. He
Speaker 1: kicks them out, but William and James don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: They just hang around town lurkin laying low, waiting for
Speaker 1: the opportunity to strike. And then, on February twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: Ezra Ross quietly arrives back in Brookfield and joins up
Speaker 1: with the two British soldiers. This and now we're back
Speaker 1: to the day this all started, which is the cold
Speaker 1: dark knight of March first, and thirty seven year old
Speaker 1: Joshua Spooner just arriving from home from the tavern around
Speaker 1: nine o'clock that night, he goes on to his property.
Speaker 1: He approaches the back entrance and that's where Ezra, William
Speaker 1: and James appear out of the darkness and ambush him.
Speaker 1: They beat him and they strangle him to death. Jesus.
Speaker 1: Then they carry his body over to the well and
Speaker 1: they throw him down into it headfirst. And the idea
Speaker 1: is that because Joshua has a reputation for heavy drinking,
Speaker 1: people will think he accidentally stumbled and fell into the well.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, from a fall. It just all of it
Speaker 1: in our forensic files. I know how these days it's
Speaker 1: like U Rubes from the Revolutionary War. You don't know
Speaker 1: how to murder. But also I love the idea of
Speaker 1: like the odds of a drunk person stumbling and falling
Speaker 1: into a hole smaller than really their own shoulder probably
Speaker 1: or the same size. Don't go toward the hole you're falling, Okay.
Speaker 1: So before they do drop Joshua's body into the well,
Speaker 1: they take his fancy watch, his ring, his silver shoe
Speaker 1: buckles which have his initials engraved on them, and like
Speaker 1: basically keep it for themselves. Then when they're done, they
Speaker 1: go into the house where Bathsheba Spooner is waiting. James
Speaker 1: Buchanan will later testify that she seemed quote utterly confused,
Speaker 1: which could imply a state of shock, or some historians
Speaker 1: have wondered the throes of an undiagnosed mental health crisis.
Speaker 1: That's basically kind of like at its apex with this
Speaker 1: you know, horrible event. She gives the men a thick
Speaker 1: stack of cash as well as a few pieces of clothing.
Speaker 1: Not so confused that she doesn't pay them off from
Speaker 1: killing her husband. She's not catatonic, Yeah, exactly, She's like,
Speaker 1: I can't deal with this. Nine to ten, that's it
Speaker 1: for you. And she also gives them clothes from Joshua's closet,
Speaker 1: so she's in on the on the cover up so confusing.
Speaker 1: You can take his vest and his boots. At around
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock, Ezra, William and James, all wearing Joshua's clothes,
Speaker 1: riding his horses or the Spooner's horses, skipped town had
Speaker 1: twenty miles out toward of course, the star of this
Speaker 1: show Wista. They arrive at an inn around four am.
Speaker 1: Of course, the innkeepers immediately sent somethings off. Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: go at four am, wait till nine in the morning,
Speaker 1: middle of the night, with big silver bubbles on your
Speaker 1: fucking my clothes that don't fit you correctly? What, yeah,
Speaker 1: like streaks of mud on your cheeks. Yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course acting very very strangely.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say, paying in cash, but they didn't have
Speaker 2: any other way to pay back then.
Speaker 1: Back then there's no cards, no gift cards, no tabs, right,
Speaker 1: hanging dirty dirty cash. Yeah, I guess gold. Do they
Speaker 1: pay gold? Yeah? But I think that would count as cash,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't stand out as much. So. Writer Debora Nava
Speaker 1: suggests that all of these actors in this murder are
Speaker 1: dealing with their guilt and their regret, and then it's
Speaker 1: just coming out in their own ways. So Ezra's despondent,
Speaker 1: he refuses to give the innkeepers his name. He immediately
Speaker 1: isolates himself in a bedroom church of just the funniest
Speaker 1: eye roll to me, like she hates Ezra so much. Sorry,
Speaker 1: of course he does.
Speaker 2: Like you fucking did the crime, yep, and now like
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how horrible you feel afterwards.
Speaker 1: Yes, you got all high on like being in the
Speaker 1: murder group, right, and then.
Speaker 2: Like they could have probably done it without you, bro,
Speaker 2: but she wanted to prove your sixteen year old ass
Speaker 2: to your fucking thirty one year old lover.
Speaker 1: Yes, he had a hot milk lover. He was willing
Speaker 1: to to go the distance, but now he's despondent and listener,
Speaker 1: we're just telling you that's how it always goes, whether
Speaker 1: it's murder or just taking people to weddings. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: on your permanent record, that nerd and you spending time
Speaker 1: with them. He's in the photos. Your family talks about it. Okay.
Speaker 1: William and James, on the other hand, immediately go to
Speaker 1: the inns tavern by alcohol and just start drinking their
Speaker 1: way into the early daylight hours.
Speaker 2: That's the way to deal with your regret, except for
Speaker 2: an adult.
Speaker 1: Except for they wear the silver shoe buckles and the
Speaker 1: jewelry and the clothing, so they couldn't be drawing more
Speaker 1: attention to themselves as they're trying to have a nice
Speaker 1: escape from reality drink. So the average person in the
Speaker 1: colonies would just never have the wealth to afford silver
Speaker 1: shoe buckles with their own engraved initials on them or whatever,
Speaker 1: especially not a pair of British deserters, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's kind of pretty obvious right away. So by the afternoon,
Speaker 1: the men have raised so much suspicion, the authorities are notified. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back in Brookfield, there's all ready a swirl of suspicion
Speaker 1: around Bathsheba because she, of course, the very next day
Speaker 1: had morning visitors because she's the lady of the you know,
Speaker 1: of the elite. And when they show up and ask
Speaker 1: where Joshua is, she just burst into tears. So they're
Speaker 1: just kind of like, are you okay? And they start
Speaker 1: looking for him, and they find his body in the well.
Speaker 1: Ladies who were just there for some nice tea and
Speaker 1: tiny sandwiches and suddenly they're like, we just found your
Speaker 1: husband dead. They're like, is mercury and retrograde or what?
Speaker 1: I'm having a bad day. So Joshua's body is pulled
Speaker 1: from the well. Doctor Jonathan King, his friend who was
Speaker 1: walking home with him the night before from the tavern.
Speaker 1: He shows up to examine the corpse, and he notes
Speaker 1: the signs of strangulation and injuries consistent with being beaten.
Speaker 1: He testifies later that Joshua hadn't seemed all that drunk
Speaker 1: when they left the tavern and walked home together. Pretty
Speaker 1: crucial element to this story, and that's of course in
Speaker 1: direct contrast to the idea that Joshua was so drunk
Speaker 1: that he walked in big circles and fell down a well,
Speaker 1: almost impossible unless he sat down and then started singing
Speaker 1: and maybe fell backwards. But you just kind of folds
Speaker 1: like that right stop.
Speaker 2: And then start screaming, yeating out of here.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So less than twenty four hours after
Speaker 1: Joshua Spooner's murder, his wife Bathshiba, the young soldier Ezra Rass,
Speaker 1: Private William Brooks, and Sergeant James Buchanan have all been
Speaker 1: arrested as suspects in his murder. The joint trial begins.
Speaker 1: So now you're on trial with two strangers and your
Speaker 1: teenage lover.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's quick. That begins late April seventeen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: It becomes, of course, a huge sensation. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's the wealth that's the scandal, the violence at play.
Speaker 1: But it truly is one of the first times, like
Speaker 1: in the official newborn two year old America, there has
Speaker 1: been a murder trial. The prosecution is led by a
Speaker 1: man named Robert treat Payne. He's one of the signees
Speaker 1: of the Declaration of Independence. I knew that maybe you've
Speaker 1: heard of it. Ask your friend Nicholas Cage if you
Speaker 1: know now and then the defense is led by a
Speaker 1: man named Levi Lincoln, no relation, but he would later
Speaker 1: serve as President Thomas Jefferson's attorney general. So it's not
Speaker 1: only one of the first capital murder cases tried in
Speaker 1: the United States, but because Levi Lincoln will attempt to
Speaker 1: paint Bathsheba Spooner as mentally unwell at the time of
Speaker 1: the murder, it's also believed to be one of the
Speaker 1: first times the insanity defense is used. Yeah interesting given
Speaker 1: the patriotic backdrop of Massachusetts at the time, the involvement
Speaker 1: of two British soldiers, and the infamy of Bathsheba's loyalist
Speaker 1: father makes this trial inherently political, and of course everybody
Speaker 1: has big opinions about it. Levi Lincoln urges the jurors
Speaker 1: to look past their quote political feelings, but the evidence
Speaker 1: is overwhelming. The trial quickly ends and four guilty verdicts
Speaker 1: are turned in. All of them are sentenced to death
Speaker 1: and their schedule to hang on June fourth, seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and this is when Bathsheba begs the court to delay
Speaker 1: her execution to spare the life of our unborn child. Right,
Speaker 1: the gallery gasps, that's not true. I put that in.
Speaker 1: I don't know when she told them or how could
Speaker 1: have been in a letter. I bet there was a gas.
Speaker 1: I bet someone gassed, even if it was just someone
Speaker 1: somewhere the secretary of the person that opened that letter.
Speaker 1: So at the time, common law protects fetuses if there
Speaker 1: have been signs of what they used to call the quickening,
Speaker 1: which is basically when the mother can feel the baby.
Speaker 1: It happens usually between the fourth and fifth month of pregnancy.
Speaker 1: So if she really did get pregnant sometime in January,
Speaker 1: which is when she told Ezra that she was pregnant,
Speaker 1: this would put her in the correct timeframe. And there
Speaker 1: are theories that Bathsheba is lying about being pregnant just
Speaker 1: to buy herself time, but either way it works. The
Speaker 1: execution date gets pushed to July second, and then in
Speaker 1: the interim she is examined, and she's examined many times
Speaker 1: to determine whether she's pregnant by a panel of midwives
Speaker 1: that the court puts together. Wow, it is as bad
Speaker 1: as you are anticipating. Humiliating, also, needless sleep, painful, it's
Speaker 1: as gross as you can think of it to be,
Speaker 1: and it's described by one contemporary as quote indecent and cruel.
Speaker 1: In the end, the panel concludes that she is not pregnant,
Speaker 1: but Bathsheba appeals and she hires her own midwife to
Speaker 1: conduct her own exam, and then that midwife concludes she
Speaker 1: is pregnant. So the court sides with their own panel. Surprisingly, no,
Speaker 1: it's been like this all along, and they reject Basheba's
Speaker 1: pregnancy claims. So on July second, seventeen eighty eight, seventeen
Speaker 1: year old Ezra Ross, twenty seven year old William Brooks,
Speaker 1: thirty six year old James Buchanan, and thirty two year
Speaker 1: old Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner are brought to the gallows. Bathsheba
Speaker 1: demands that they perform an autopsy on her body after
Speaker 1: she is hanged, to prove the existence of her unborn child,
Speaker 1: which is like, I'll be looking down at all of
Speaker 1: you as you martyr me. Okay. So outside of that discussion,
Speaker 1: which I imagined to have in a darkened tunnel but
Speaker 1: probably didn't, five thousand people have gathered to watch this hanging.
Speaker 1: You guys. A small town has gathered, which is funny
Speaker 1: because that what was that at the beginning, was that
Speaker 1: Widow's Bay at the beginning when all the people are
Speaker 1: there and they're cheering for the hanging. Or is that
Speaker 1: just another movie? I was watching Wuthering Heights wathering. Molly
Speaker 1: is dialed in. She knows well, because we've been talking
Speaker 1: about Wuthering Heights, and I mistakenly thought that Molly like
Speaker 1: loved it, and so then we watched it to be
Speaker 1: like other people hate it, but Molly seems to love
Speaker 1: it less check it out, and then we were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is good. We like it. Yeah, I really liked it.
Speaker 1: People love their books, they really do. The children love
Speaker 1: the books. Okay, So outside, five thousand people gather to
Speaker 1: watch this hanging. The man who signs the execution warrant
Speaker 1: is John Avery Junior, who was Joshua's stepbrother. Testimony from
Speaker 1: the execution describes the one set of quote one of
Speaker 1: the most terrified thunderstorms that occurred within the memory of
Speaker 1: anyone living end quote. And they say that that that
Speaker 1: storm quote came up and darkened the heavens, conspiring to
Speaker 1: produce a scene of most dreadful horror. So as they're
Speaker 1: walking to the gallows, black cloud rolls in. Yeah, my god,
Speaker 1: God is pissed. Shortly after the executions, an autopsy is
Speaker 1: performed on Bathsheba's body and the physician finds a quote
Speaker 1: perfect male fetus of the growth of five months completely correct.
Speaker 1: The panel led, damn. The panel led, the clouds told you,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't listen. Okay, When word gets out that
Speaker 1: Massachusetts has just executed a pregnant woman, the public is horrified,
Speaker 1: and over time this is a plot twist I did
Speaker 1: not see coming, right, yeah, because you're kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's bad, she's bad, this is the crime. They killed him,
Speaker 1: and here's the execution. It's like, yeah, but wait, oh,
Speaker 1: but hold on one second. So the real controversy most
Speaker 1: associated with this case over like history because in the beginning,
Speaker 1: of course, it was the usual moralizing about the risks
Speaker 1: of adultery and evil women having their way and being
Speaker 1: free spirited and loud and all the things that are
Speaker 1: so terrible about sexually a music as child, but don't yeah,
Speaker 1: that is very seen, the risks of adultery and evil
Speaker 1: women using dumb men. But it's actually lived on as
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about how the biases around politics and
Speaker 1: gender seep into the justice system. Bathsheba herself has increasingly
Speaker 1: been treated with more and more empathy as the years pass,
Speaker 1: and sympathy, I should say, but no one doubts she
Speaker 1: wanted her husband dead or that she conspired to kill him,
Speaker 1: But contemporary historians all over the extreme circumstances of her
Speaker 1: life that led up to the crime. Her marriage was
Speaker 1: stifling and it likely involved domestic abuse, the double standard
Speaker 1: and how who commit adultery are treated versus the men
Speaker 1: who commit adultery, Not to mention Bashiva's grief around being
Speaker 1: basically cut off from her father, him being going from
Speaker 1: being an incredibly respected man to an all out pariah,
Speaker 1: and then that reverberating into her life, people judging her
Speaker 1: and her being socially isolated because of all that. In
Speaker 1: the end, the Spooner's children end up being adopted by relatives,
Speaker 1: and it seems they most likely escape all the notoriety
Speaker 1: that is around this case. A few years after his
Speaker 1: daughter's execution, Bathsheba's father, Timothy Ruggles, dies in exile in
Speaker 1: Canada in his early eighties, and the well that they
Speaker 1: put Joshua Spooner's body into is actually still standing in Brookfield, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: according to the Brookfield Historical Commission, although they say it's
Speaker 1: obscured by thick poison ivy much of the year. AKA
Speaker 1: stay the fuck away from the well. And that is
Speaker 1: the story of the first murder in America, the murder
Speaker 1: of Joshua Spooner. Wow, that's crazy, that's heavy. Good job,
Speaker 1: thank you, that's a great one. The four July. Right,
Speaker 1: it's coming up. Do your homework, everybody.
Speaker 2: They don't tell you this shit at cool mine is
Speaker 2: they had one hundred years later? Only okay, a little later.
Speaker 2: I think right after the Civil War? When did the
Speaker 2: Civil War end? Its ion might be lying.
Speaker 1: Eighteen fifty three, six eighteen sixty five. We were both right?
Speaker 1: So should we get our high school diplomas? Again? No?
Speaker 2: On the show, I don't want to take that test
Speaker 2: in front of everyone. We're gonna fucking fail. Are you
Speaker 2: kidding me? To be humiliating? It's a fan cult video
Speaker 2: of us trying to pass the GED get our ged. No,
Speaker 2: I'd rather talk about my modeling photos.
Speaker 1: Come on, Oh my god, the people love the fucking
Speaker 1: modeling photos. We have to talk about that. People are
Speaker 1: going crazy for that entire thing. They really met you
Speaker 1: at that vulnerability that you revealed for them. That's really nice.
Speaker 1: That is nice. So here we go.
Speaker 2: We're getting into the country's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
Speaker 2: as you know right now.
Speaker 1: Definitely now we're going.
Speaker 2: To go back to the centennial, which is eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: and we're going to be in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Great. Today's story is.
Speaker 2: An unexplained phenomenon that's straight out of an episode of
Speaker 2: Bananas Weird News. Great, and this one is in the
Speaker 2: genre of weird stuff falling from the sky, like when
Speaker 2: I covered the Oakville Blobs in episode four twenty nine,
Speaker 2: where unidentified goo fell out of the sky in the
Speaker 2: eighties and Washington State. But today, in our story, there's
Speaker 2: a bit more progress made in identifying the stuff that
Speaker 2: actually fell from the sky as big of a mystery.
Speaker 2: This is the story of the Kentucky meat shower.
Speaker 1: Oh I've heard of this. Oh no, meat shower. Meat shower.
Speaker 1: Let's meditate on meat shower. You're just out in a
Speaker 1: Kentucky field, roaming through hip high grass and love life
Speaker 1: and then splat boom, right on your face. There's a
Speaker 1: Prime rib.
Speaker 2: The main sources for the story are articles from Scientific
Speaker 2: America and Atlas Obscura, and the rest of the sources
Speaker 2: can be found in our show notes and Cooks Illustrated
Speaker 2: and Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Falls. So it's
Speaker 2: March third, eighteen seventy six, and we're an Olympian Springs, Kentucky.
Speaker 2: It's a small rural community in Bath County, about fifty
Speaker 2: miles east of Lexington, Kentucky. Great a woman named Rebecca
Speaker 2: Crouch is in the front yard of her family farm
Speaker 2: making soap as you had to do back.
Speaker 1: Then, mixing some lye with some tallow.
Speaker 2: That's right, which is a time and labor intensive chore
Speaker 2: done by boiling rendered animal fat on an open fire
Speaker 2: and combining it with lie.
Speaker 1: How do you think I used to spend my summers?
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: You're a farm girl, country girl. Have you read the
Speaker 2: book Yesteryear yet?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: It's great, you should read it, Okay, But there's a
Speaker 2: soap making scene in it.
Speaker 1: That's all I know about it. Is it sexy? No,
Speaker 1: forget it, very not sexy.
Speaker 2: It's about a trad wife blogger who gets taken back
Speaker 2: into the time when she would have to actually work
Speaker 2: as a trap, like had to do the things like
Speaker 2: make so like and make bread fresh instead, and like
Speaker 2: that's genius, so good yesteryear. It's getting made into a movie.
Speaker 2: It's like that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So, as missus Crouch is working, she begins to see
Speaker 2: what she'll later describe as a substance that looks a
Speaker 2: bit like snowflakes falling out of the sky.
Speaker 1: Snowflakes is fine, it's so fun. It's not big deal.
Speaker 2: But it's sunny and warm out. There's no snow. This
Speaker 2: isn't snowflakes. It's a cloudless day. And some of the
Speaker 2: flakes are very big. She describes them as being quote
Speaker 2: as long as my hand and about half an inch wide,
Speaker 2: so well as long as my hand, the big ones
Speaker 2: and like half an inch wide.
Speaker 1: Okay, take some big pieces of meat. I'm sorry, it's meat.
Speaker 1: I already's meat. Spoiler, it's fucking meat. It's me meat flakes,
Speaker 1: meat flakes.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's a really great drawing of the whole thing,
Speaker 2: if you just don't have the imagination for it.
Speaker 1: Great. I love this so much. Let's take a look.
Speaker 2: The artist is James Fossdyke, brilliant and it's just James sausag.
Speaker 1: You sure can draw Gristle. I don't like the look
Speaker 1: of those meat clumps that are falling on her.
Speaker 2: It looks like a children's book. Yeah, so if you're
Speaker 2: watching on Netflix you can see this. If you're not,
Speaker 2: you should be.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 2: So, as everything gathers on her yard and she inspects
Speaker 2: them further, missus Crouch realizes that they look not unlike
Speaker 2: the stuff she's making her so bad of animal flesh,
Speaker 2: like meats or bits of fatty connective tissue. She said,
Speaker 2: quote it looked gristly, as if it had been torn from.
Speaker 1: The throat of some animal. Good Lord.
Speaker 2: The Crouch family cat and dog are fucking stoked. They
Speaker 2: come a run in and they start going to town.
Speaker 1: Do we know the names of those pets? Oh no,
Speaker 1: Well let's name them now for history's sake. Snowflake, Snowflake
Speaker 1: and gristle, Peaty Grizzle who I had a friend whose
Speaker 1: dog was named grizzled. That's a great name for a
Speaker 1: dog that I just made up or was it in
Speaker 1: like a movie? Probably both?
Speaker 2: Okay, So they're losing their minds eating all of this.
Speaker 2: The family hogs and chickens get in on the action too,
Speaker 2: and eat.
Speaker 1: A lot of what was falling and cannibalize themselves. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly what the animal is. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it's human meat, right, Oh, it's not cannibalism, it's human.
Speaker 1: The chickens are like, finally we get our say, I've been.
Speaker 2: Feeding the crows freeze ried chicken hearts. Oh, which feels bad,
Speaker 2: but they love it.
Speaker 1: They're going to take over. They're going to take the
Speaker 1: keys to your home. Fine they can, Okay.
Speaker 2: A few days later, just by the bye, the dog
Speaker 2: does get a bit sick, but we don't know if
Speaker 2: it's connected, and it doesn't seem like any of the
Speaker 2: other animals do either.
Speaker 1: So right, because the dog ran over and bit like
Speaker 1: ate some grizzle, and then they ran over there and
Speaker 1: to eat a big cow pie exactly.
Speaker 2: So in all, about two hundred pounds of this meat
Speaker 2: substance falls for about.
Speaker 1: A minute a grown man's worth. So true. Oh the
Speaker 1: sound of the slop and just one lady trying to
Speaker 1: make some soap. What the fuck Jesus?
Speaker 2: It seems like this event is pretty much limited to
Speaker 2: the area around missus Crouch's house, and she says that
Speaker 2: the meat smells fresh when it had just fallen, but
Speaker 2: throughout the day it starts to go off, and by
Speaker 2: the next day the little flakes are all dried out.
Speaker 2: So it does what meat does. The event attracts national
Speaker 2: media attention and several samples are saved. One is sent
Speaker 2: to Louisville for analysis, while another is sent to Washington, DC. Also,
Speaker 2: a correspondent for the New York Herald goes to visit
Speaker 2: the Crouch farm. This reporter goes all around town interviewing
Speaker 2: people about the phenomenon, asking if missus.
Speaker 1: Crouch is full of shit basically fit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but no, everyone is like, this is not a
Speaker 2: woman who like she's making soap. She doesn't have a
Speaker 2: lot of time for joking around and like pranks. She
Speaker 2: handles live, yeah, with no glove.
Speaker 1: She's a fucking farm. Like she's not making shit up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: do not even. And while there is some.
Speaker 2: Investigation going on in the article, it does seem like
Speaker 2: a lot of it is just a reporter making fun
Speaker 2: of the members of this very rural community. He's kind
Speaker 2: of a dick about it, and it's probably pissed that
Speaker 2: he got sent all the way out there.
Speaker 1: So what are you saying like people are kind of dumb?
Speaker 2: Or yeah, okay, or he's making stuff up because some
Speaker 2: of the conversations in the article are just don't seem
Speaker 2: like conversations people have. But yeah, you know, it was
Speaker 2: the eighteen seventies, so what do I know?
Speaker 1: Fill it up? Fill up that article, rusty.
Speaker 2: Exactly, we need two thousand words. So he bargains with
Speaker 2: a railroad laborer named Jimmy Welsh to eat a dollar's
Speaker 2: worth of the meat. No, like, just so we could
Speaker 2: get some fucking color for his article.
Speaker 1: So he's saying, if you eat this lump of gristle,
Speaker 1: I will pay you.
Speaker 2: A dollar that fell how many days ago?
Speaker 1: And also, sorry, but can we do a doult? What
Speaker 1: is a dollar worth? Back?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Oh shit, one dollar? Eighteen seventy six? One dollar going
Speaker 1: to go?
Speaker 2: You go first, and then Molly will okay would that be?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess too, I guess too, you can too.
Speaker 1: We're all in this now. I'm going to say thirty
Speaker 1: one dollars. Okay, I'm going to say fifty. Karen is
Speaker 1: just ai overview, but it says thirty one dollars. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to add that looks like I set this
Speaker 1: whole thing up because I demanded it. No, come on,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that you would do something. Have we
Speaker 1: ever had a dead on one?
Speaker 2: I think once? And this is yours. Congratulations drop the
Speaker 2: streamers hiding up.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I've tried so hard for so long
Speaker 1: to guess the numbers. I'm really bad at it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't have done it without Elvis his necklace. I'm always like,
Speaker 1: could you please do your job? No, I love it.
Speaker 1: This is your job. This is my joy. This is
Speaker 1: your job. Good job getting this job. Thank you making
Speaker 1: this my god, thank you creating the job. I applied
Speaker 1: and then I called back two weeks later and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I am a bad interview, but I know I can
Speaker 1: do this. Okay.
Speaker 2: So we're in the moment when he's given thirty one
Speaker 2: dollars for this poor guy named Jimmy to eat this meat,
Speaker 2: which is probably a lot of money.
Speaker 1: He's a railroad laborer. That's a lot of money.
Speaker 2: At this point, it's been about a week after the
Speaker 2: meat first fell from the sky.
Speaker 1: This Jimmy's got a tummy agg.
Speaker 2: Well, journalist writes quote the article was ordered and placed
Speaker 2: before him the meat. He then hesitated and said he
Speaker 2: was not hungry. I then told him I would give
Speaker 2: him three dollars to gulp it down.
Speaker 1: Ninety then ninety three. Right.
Speaker 2: He then suddenly remembered that it was the season of
Speaker 2: lent and backed out on moral principles.
Speaker 1: So he Jimmy chicken out, Jimmy chicken out or muttoned out.
Speaker 1: We don't really know. You know what he did, He
Speaker 1: dumbed his way into a thing that right, Why were
Speaker 1: you ever sitting at that table? It's disgusting and risky.
Speaker 2: Don't do it drinking alcohol. There's no way alcohol wasn't involved.
Speaker 2: Just meant some guide the bar.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the meat is sent to several different agencies for
Speaker 2: testing in Kentucky and also out of state. There's a
Speaker 2: man named Leopold Brandeis whose qualifications are on clear same.
Speaker 1: Well, he has his own college. Does that count, does
Speaker 1: he Brandish? Yeah, university.
Speaker 2: He analyzes a sample that's been preserved in glycerine, and
Speaker 2: he publishes his findings in the Scientific American because I
Speaker 2: guess anyone could throw anything in there now, saying he
Speaker 2: believes the substance is something called gnostic.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of gnostic only in the Bible or
Speaker 1: gnostic gno nostoc No, I've never heard of that. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's a bacteria that swells up into a jelly like
Speaker 1: substance when it rains.
Speaker 2: I went to Wikipedia and it said that quote. The
Speaker 2: word itself is a combination of the English nostril and
Speaker 2: German nason loch, which means nosehole or nostril.
Speaker 1: Because basically, because it looks like not that's disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when it lands on the ground.
Speaker 1: I have a photo of it. Great, here we go. Oh,
Speaker 1: it just looks like seaweed kelp. He looks like kelp.
Speaker 1: It looks like Oh. I have a photo of Missus
Speaker 1: Crouch too. Oh perfect.
Speaker 2: We're all guessing she's fifty, but that's in today's money.
Speaker 2: She's probably twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Great, I know. Also, listener, Missus Crouch took a photo
Speaker 1: smartly with a parasol parasol and her hand on her
Speaker 1: fucking hip. She's doing it. Yeah, she's making it happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come at me, she says, this is Crouch.
Speaker 1: Now she has to use an umbrella because there's fucking
Speaker 1: gnostics falling all over the place. I bet that was
Speaker 1: the journalist's ideas.
Speaker 2: That's so true, okay, But the problem with this theory
Speaker 2: is that, of course the weather was fine and clear,
Speaker 2: so it's not that other testers believe that the meat
Speaker 2: is lung tissue, either from a horse or a human infant,
Speaker 2: which is fucking insane, and everyone just moves on.
Speaker 1: From that statement. Please now, like nobody is like, what, well,
Speaker 1: because there was two hundred pounds of it.
Speaker 2: Right, And actually, when missus Crouch first sees it falling,
Speaker 2: she had said she'd had quote a vague idea that
Speaker 2: my husband and son who were away had been torn
Speaker 2: to pieces and their remains were being brought home to
Speaker 2: me in this way by the wind end quote, So
Speaker 2: she needed some xanax before this even fucking happened.
Speaker 1: Well, and after the Civil War, so maybe she saw
Speaker 1: some stuff that she was like, this reminds me of
Speaker 1: human good point tragedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they probably still believe in God back then,
Speaker 2: so the like that God works, that guy works in
Speaker 2: mysterious ways, absolutely, like throwing meat through the weather.
Speaker 1: As a punishment go to church, Missus Crouch. That's very
Speaker 1: weird though, because I think that idea of looking at
Speaker 1: something completely foreign and immediately attributing it to a certain
Speaker 1: place is meaningful because it's like.
Speaker 2: And also that like you're being punished in some way
Speaker 2: for something. Yeah, that's like, we understand how that works.
Speaker 2: But multiple testers believe the meat might be human. And
Speaker 2: this is so dumb. People think that two or more
Speaker 2: men may have killed each other somewhere in a nearby
Speaker 2: knife fight, and then the wind picked up all that
Speaker 2: remains and tornado dropping.
Speaker 1: It's just like, yeah, stupid, they slash each other to
Speaker 1: ribbons and then without bones. Those car those car dealership.
Speaker 1: You can set one of those car dealership guys that
Speaker 1: dances around to any song and I will laugh my
Speaker 1: ass off. So funny, really good. Okay.
Speaker 2: So a humor writer back then named William Livingston Elden
Speaker 2: writes in The New York Times that the meat might
Speaker 2: have come from space and maybe exploded animal matter from
Speaker 2: another planet. Let's stop talking about dumb theories.
Speaker 1: Let's not ask any old fourth grader what they think.
Speaker 1: Here's a dumb theory that is probably true. Okay.
Speaker 2: The theory that most locals arrive at, and that most
Speaker 2: people still believe to this day, is that the meat
Speaker 2: had been eaten by vultures, so we're far off partially digested,
Speaker 2: and then when vultures get scared, they vomit their contents
Speaker 2: of their stomach out. Okay, so the vultures maybe had
Speaker 2: eaten something, they were in flight, something startled them, and
Speaker 2: they barfed all the meat onto this one spot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the only that's to me, that's the only solution that
Speaker 2: isn't paranormal.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, It makes perfect sense. Man introduced the
Speaker 1: idea that they got scared by a pterodactyl, a leftover dinosaur.
Speaker 2: You know what, if they got scared by a ufo,
Speaker 2: then we're back.
Speaker 1: If they got scared by the Lugno's monster, now I'm
Speaker 1: interested in that story.
Speaker 2: So we actually you're right, that might be the reason,
Speaker 2: but we don't know why and what scared them, and
Speaker 2: it's probably sci fi.
Speaker 1: It feels good, though, that there's something normal that you
Speaker 1: can tell me that possibly could happen because the agitation
Speaker 1: I feel not being able to think of even how possibly.
Speaker 2: This is now, because your brain goes to airplane and
Speaker 2: then your brain is like, that's stupid, it's eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you start going but I saw a
Speaker 1: show on Netflix where they actually rolled those things over.
Speaker 2: The enduring mystery, though, is that Missus Crouch was standing
Speaker 2: right in her yard. She didn't see any of these vultures.
Speaker 2: But who knows, or might it could have flown that way?
Speaker 2: She might not have seen them. They were very high.
Speaker 1: Who knows what? I just I would love to keep
Speaker 1: that list going. She had bad vision. She was a liar,
Speaker 1: so blinded her.
Speaker 2: She had eaten some fucking magic mushrooms from her phone.
Speaker 1: Thing was fake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so here's the fun part. In the early she though,
Speaker 2: there's an art professor named Kurt God who takes a
Speaker 2: job at Kentucky's oldest university.
Speaker 1: Kentucky University of Ancient History. So close Transylvania.
Speaker 2: Your University of Lexington, Kentuck' not in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: No, No, there is not a vampire college.
Speaker 2: There's Vampire College and he's an art professor there. And
Speaker 2: right around that time that he starts this job, he
Speaker 2: reads a book about strange weather phenomenon and is thrilled.
Speaker 1: This guy's like an adorable weirdo.
Speaker 2: Great, he's like an art teacher, but seems like the
Speaker 2: kind of like high school science teacher that like makes
Speaker 2: you interested in science and you become a scientist and
Speaker 2: you're like, the only reason is because mister God told
Speaker 2: me that I could be anything, and so I did,
Speaker 2: and that women are in science too, and so I
Speaker 2: did you know, Like he's just one of those. He
Speaker 2: also he's kind of like Evince had an older brother
Speaker 2: who is a professor. He kind of looks like him.
Speaker 2: Actually have a photo of him. Oh, he's kind of
Speaker 2: got a hot Zaddi vibe. Oh hell yes, right, so
Speaker 2: we love him. He reads a book about this thing
Speaker 2: happening and he's shocked to learn that like nobody from
Speaker 2: there knows about the meat showers, and he's like, this
Speaker 2: is exciting, and it kind of becomes an obsession of
Speaker 2: his just by luck. A few years later, in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four, he is cleaning out a storage university
Speaker 2: at Transylvania University when he happens upon a small, clear,
Speaker 2: very old vial filled with yellowy liquid. In the liquid
Speaker 2: is suspended a white hunk of something and the faded
Speaker 2: label reads Olympia Springs. Kurt has found at this fucking
Speaker 2: college that he started teaching at, the last known sample
Speaker 2: of the meat and he's overjoyed. I have a photo
Speaker 2: of it, and I have one.
Speaker 1: For you right here, I'll dry Actually the thing behind
Speaker 1: you kind of looks like it. For thirty one dollars,
Speaker 1: get a little bit of that.
Speaker 2: Here's a photo of the vial with the like gross
Speaker 2: tendery looking.
Speaker 1: How much to drink that liquid? I guess for me
Speaker 1: right now in my life, it would have to be
Speaker 1: roughly three million dollars. Yes, yeah, but how much would
Speaker 1: I have to drink? How about a zip.
Speaker 2: Chew that shit in the bottle or drink chew and
Speaker 2: spit out in the bottom in the swallow or drink
Speaker 2: the liquid?
Speaker 1: Pick one, drink the liquid? No, because in you're yeah,
Speaker 1: the chewing is it's just going to give you true
Speaker 1: trauma because you're going to be like, yeah, remembering any
Speaker 1: time you chew anything, and then like infants and stuff.
Speaker 1: But also wouldn't you just die? You also don't have
Speaker 1: to do either of those things. Well now I want
Speaker 1: to I am not even drinking. Okay.
Speaker 2: He's so excited because he's a nerd, and he so
Speaker 2: he works with a professor in the biology department to
Speaker 2: try to test the sample. But it's too degraded and
Speaker 2: they can't find a conclusive finding. It's two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: so it's like the Dark Ages. But Kurt is an artist,
Speaker 2: and he's more interested in the multisensory experience of the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Drinking and eating it, rather than continuing to pursue clear
Speaker 1: cut answers.
Speaker 2: So he sends the vial to a lab in Cincinnati
Speaker 2: that analyzes flavor compounds. Oh okay, and then he uses
Speaker 2: that flavor information to make jelly beans that essentially tastes
Speaker 2: like whatever it was, to have people help him figure.
Speaker 1: Out what the meat was. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: very art teacher solution. That's exactly what it is. I
Speaker 1: feel like if I was involved with that, it would
Speaker 1: be on par with the first time I had a
Speaker 1: popcorn jelly belly. Have you ever eaten that flavor? The butter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: buttered popcorn?
Speaker 2: Any like the weird jelly belly flavors that came out
Speaker 2: in the like nineties the kids today, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like that wasn't a thing for it was just like
Speaker 2: fruit flavored jelly beans. God, I sound so old, but really, really,
Speaker 2: when jelly Belly came out with these like crazy flavors,
Speaker 2: we were our minds were blown. Yes, and then he
Speaker 2: like mixed the coconut with the popcorn one and that
Speaker 2: book yeah.
Speaker 1: In third grade, saying I just had tried to my tie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also there was some flavors that were so upsetting
Speaker 1: that like he's basically walking people into come and eat
Speaker 1: and upsetting thing right with me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I want to learn for science for learning sake,
Speaker 2: So it's like adorable, okay, Okay, So he actually passes
Speaker 2: them out. There's a big festival called Kentucky Court, and
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven he passes them out. Responses
Speaker 2: are varied. Multiple people said the beans tasted like bacon.
Speaker 2: Another person said it was like a strawberry pork chop.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's trying to do like everybody gets to have
Speaker 1: a vote to figure out what this is. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: what kind of meat is this? I see? Sorry, I
Speaker 1: was thinking he was doing it scientifically, but also through
Speaker 1: jelly beans.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, I don't know, She's okay, kind of
Speaker 2: fun with the whole thing, love it, but nobody wanted
Speaker 2: to try a second jelly bean to find out how
Speaker 2: bad they were. Yeah, and I think he still has
Speaker 2: some leftover too. Almost twenty years later. So fast forward
Speaker 2: to now and Kurt is still obsessed with the Kentucky
Speaker 2: Meat Shower, and in fact, just last this February that
Speaker 2: just happened in twenty twenty six. It was the one
Speaker 2: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Kentucky Meat Shower, and
Speaker 2: he celebrates with a little festival in town which includes
Speaker 2: there's a meat fall toss, there's hot dogs, of course,
Speaker 2: and a blowney throwing contest.
Speaker 1: Like he's just having fun with.
Speaker 2: His great So this whole festival that he create, it
Speaker 2: culminates in the second ever Kentucky Meat Shower. He has
Speaker 2: a small airplane, oh drop eighteen hundred and seventy six,
Speaker 2: which is the year it happened, individually wrapped pieces of
Speaker 2: beef jerky from the sky.
Speaker 1: I love this man.
Speaker 2: There's a video of it. They look like snowflakes the
Speaker 2: way he wraps them when they come down. It's so
Speaker 2: it's so whimsical.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, and fun yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And each package has a number on it and then
Speaker 2: the people who pick them up can go to his website,
Speaker 2: which is called Fleshfalls dot com and claim prizes based
Speaker 2: on those numbers, including a gift card to a local
Speaker 2: cafe nice like get me out of la is what
Speaker 2: I think? That's what this is a plea yes me
Speaker 2: exactly and a necklace by a local artist, as well
Speaker 2: as a signed book by humorist, author and journalist Dave Barry,
Speaker 2: who wrote about the event in his sub stack assumed
Speaker 2: charmed by it. So the specimen is now housed in
Speaker 2: Transylvania use Monroe O Sick Medical and Science Museum.
Speaker 1: If you work at the Monroe Medical, Music and Medical
Speaker 1: Science Museum, will you please reach out to us because
Speaker 1: we want to hear Are you real? Is Transylvania reel?
Speaker 1: Is any of this real?
Speaker 2: Can we have a private tour? And will you send
Speaker 2: us merch? And will you send us meatsticks?
Speaker 1: Will you send us merge? I wan't worch Transylvania College
Speaker 1: sweaters please.
Speaker 2: Dave Barry writes about it that the museum quote houses
Speaker 2: many nineteenth century scientific and medical artifacts, including a hairball
Speaker 2: fourteen inches in diameter that was removed from the stomach
Speaker 2: of a cow, uh huh, and a quote tobacco smoke clister,
Speaker 2: which is a device that doctors once use to try
Speaker 2: to revive drowning victims by blowing tobacco smoke.
Speaker 1: Up their butts. No, and then he writes, I am
Speaker 1: not making any of this up. That sounds like it's
Speaker 1: the Muture Museum or the Yeah, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: like a medical history museum is a fascinating for sure,
Speaker 1: especially a small one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, specialized and Dracula and Trendsylvania. I'm going to end
Speaker 2: on a quote from Dave Barry that he has defined
Speaker 2: a sense of humor as quote, a measurement of the
Speaker 2: extent to which we realize that we are trapped in
Speaker 2: the world, almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how
Speaker 2: we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yes, Dave, And that is the story of the Kentucky meat.
Speaker 2: Shower fuck on a True crime murder podcast.
Speaker 1: Hell, yes, you're ten. You're ten. In the fall of fascism,
Speaker 1: when the world around us has turned to living hats.
Speaker 2: Right, when women are getting imprisoned for taking out We're
Speaker 2: not going.
Speaker 1: There, I mean Jesus, but we are there. We don't
Speaker 1: have to go anywhere. We're fucking here. Yes, We've been
Speaker 1: talking about it for a while, and in the meantime
Speaker 1: of all this bullshit, we're going to tell each other
Speaker 1: about delightful things, Right, and horrible things. Yeah, and things
Speaker 1: we feel we need to know.
Speaker 2: As of yesterday, we are no longer the only true
Speaker 2: crime podcast, so you're welcome to listen.
Speaker 1: Did that just happen? Yeah, there's a couple more popped up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had a great run. Yeah, being the only ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to be doing this weird shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we buckle the fuck up. People are like we are.
Speaker 1: We listened to the end of this episode. You want
Speaker 1: us to do? Why are you mad at that? How
Speaker 1: much more do we have to listen to you? Oh?
Speaker 1: We love you guys.
Speaker 2: If you've listened to this point, you're a real one
Speaker 2: and here we fucking appreciate the shit out of you.
Speaker 2: You're the realist one and we're all trying and you're
Speaker 2: doing great.
Speaker 1: Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Good by, Elvis. Do
Speaker 1: you want a cookie? 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 Ascevedo. This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: Leona Squalocci. 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,