Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
Speaker 1: of our new episodes, you're gonna notice that we're sounding
Speaker 1: a little different in these ones. Yeah, there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that. There is they've been remastered. They have been
Speaker 1: remastered because they had a really annoying hum. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost
Speaker 1: all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice
Speaker 1: if you had listened to what we're calling the last
Speaker 1: twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the
Speaker 1: music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone
Speaker 1: back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a
Speaker 1: little different today than we do in what you're about
Speaker 1: to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not You never know stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Well. Hello, welcome to the show,
Speaker 1: and tonight we're going to talk about something extremely mysterious,
Speaker 1: something some of you may have heard about before, but
Speaker 1: probably not. Um I'm Joe, I'm Steve, and this is
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. Most of you have probably not heard of
Speaker 1: the mystery of Casper Hauser, which is something that actually
Speaker 1: occupied a good deal of Germany and even the rest
Speaker 1: of Europe in the nineteenth century. So let's start from
Speaker 1: the beginning, when from the from the very beginning, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you how I heard the story. First years ago,
Speaker 1: I read in this book by this guy named Frank,
Speaker 1: somebody who wrote a lot of lurid a lot of
Speaker 1: lurid books about crap that never really happened. He wrote
Speaker 1: this very, very lurid account of the whole thing, which
Speaker 1: is that this boy mysteriously shows up in the town
Speaker 1: of Hamburg, Germany, and he was not able to say
Speaker 1: anything except I want to be a soldier like my father,
Speaker 1: and then uh and then uh. He sort of hiss,
Speaker 1: hangs around for several years, you know, picks up a
Speaker 1: few social skills, you know, be on being able to
Speaker 1: say I want to be a soldier like my father,
Speaker 1: but then eventually is murdered. He's come stumbling out of
Speaker 1: this park in Hamburg and with a mortal knife wounded
Speaker 1: his chest and he dies several days later. Most mysteriously
Speaker 1: of all, this murder takes place in the middle of winter.
Speaker 1: There's snow on the ground and there's no footprints, but
Speaker 1: his own in his park exactly acts. So that that
Speaker 1: was my first exposure to Casper Hauser's mystery. So it's
Speaker 1: a good way to make a living now, just like
Speaker 1: picking up stuff like this and spending really lured tales
Speaker 1: out of it and putting in these books and selling
Speaker 1: them and making money. Well, it's gonna be my next
Speaker 1: side job. That's kind of what we're gonna do here,
Speaker 1: and we start getting advertisers. So anyway, so here's the
Speaker 1: story as it happened, uh briefly, in a boy of
Speaker 1: approximately sixteen years old appears in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. UM.
Speaker 1: He had a letter with him addressed to the captain
Speaker 1: of the fourth Squadron of the sixth Cavalry Regiment, Captain Vaughn, investinating,
Speaker 1: and he was taken He was taken to this captain
Speaker 1: by a shoemaker who happened to spot him on the streets,
Speaker 1: and apparently, according to legend, he was Casper Hauser was
Speaker 1: walking unsteadily, almost as if drunk, and so the shoemaker
Speaker 1: takes an interest in him, and when he walks up
Speaker 1: to him, he hands this letter to him, and the
Speaker 1: letter is addressed to the captains, he is taken by
Speaker 1: the shoemaker to meet the captain, who is apparently not
Speaker 1: at home with the moment. So the servants have them
Speaker 1: weight out in the garden and they give them some food,
Speaker 1: which includes sausage and beer, which Casper spits out as
Speaker 1: if he has never I'm not exactly here in sausages,
Speaker 1: also as if he has never had these things before.
Speaker 1: But eventually he does eat some bread and water and
Speaker 1: eats him as if he's quite hungry. Eventually, when the
Speaker 1: captain comes home and he gets to read this letter,
Speaker 1: the letter says, quote from the Bavarian border, the place
Speaker 1: is unnamed. The author said that was given into his
Speaker 1: custody as an infant on seven October eighteen twelve. He extructed,
Speaker 1: instructed him in reading, writing, and Christian religion, but never
Speaker 1: let him take quote a single step out of my
Speaker 1: house unquote. H The letter state of the boy would
Speaker 1: not like to be a cavalryman as his father was,
Speaker 1: and invited the captain either to take him in or
Speaker 1: to hang him. Oh that's that's nice, yes, yeah, he
Speaker 1: actually well, you know, this was actually not the father
Speaker 1: of the child, the father that this was somebody apparently
Speaker 1: who supposedly was just a day labor or something and
Speaker 1: and didn't have a lot of cash laying around. Uh.
Speaker 1: The infant was given to him by supposedly cash for
Speaker 1: his mother, who's and the father had had actually apparently
Speaker 1: according to her in this letter, been in this in
Speaker 1: this cavalry infantry, and so the intention was that he
Speaker 1: should be raised to the the age of seventeen or
Speaker 1: sixteen or whatever the proper age is, and then become
Speaker 1: a soldier in his cavalry. So anyways, so he came
Speaker 1: with two letters. There was this one and there was
Speaker 1: another one supposedly from his mother to the caretaker, who
Speaker 1: at the other letter said his name was Casper, and
Speaker 1: he was born on April twelve, and his father, a
Speaker 1: cavalryman of the sixth Regiment, was dead. At this point,
Speaker 1: he has taken into custody and put in what's called
Speaker 1: the best nerd Gate Tower in care of a jailer.
Speaker 1: And so he essentially is being watched over by this
Speaker 1: guy and his family's kids, and he's exhibiting some strange behaviors. Uh.
Speaker 1: And later on he wound up writing his own autobiography
Speaker 1: and which he claimed that he had been kept in
Speaker 1: a hole in the ground which was about two ms
Speaker 1: wide by a meter and a half wide by meter
Speaker 1: and a half tall, So convert that defeat. That's three
Speaker 1: foot by six ft, that's about that's about six ft
Speaker 1: by about six ft by about four five ft by
Speaker 1: about five ft tall, with a straw mat to sleep on,
Speaker 1: and that's a very very small cell. Yeah, fed bread
Speaker 1: and water, and the only thing he had to play
Speaker 1: with was a carved wooden horse. Yes, so tis today
Speaker 1: are way spoiled. All he had was a carved horse,
Speaker 1: and he was happy. I don't know happy is the
Speaker 1: right word. All right, you got me there. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: he was mostly in the dark and cell. He he
Speaker 1: would find bread and water next to his bed every morning.
Speaker 1: Occasionally the water would taste bitter, and drinking it would
Speaker 1: cause him to sleep more heavily because obviously have been roofied,
Speaker 1: and and on on such occasions when he woke up,
Speaker 1: he find his nails had been trimmed, and his hair
Speaker 1: had been cut, and his bed had been changed. And
Speaker 1: so he was kept alone in this dark little cell,
Speaker 1: cording to himself for for many many years. And eventually
Speaker 1: the guy that was keeping him his cell took him
Speaker 1: out and they wanted a little road trip on foot
Speaker 1: to Nuremberg. Well, this guy basically took him to the
Speaker 1: signal and I said, it kind of leaves and he
Speaker 1: wandered to the street, and and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: So he's found by the shoemaker, taken to the captain,
Speaker 1: turned over to the jailer, who keeps him in custody
Speaker 1: for a while. And he went to a period of
Speaker 1: several years when he was under the care and tutelage
Speaker 1: of various people, and he quickly learned to read and write.
Speaker 1: In fact, especially so according to according to some people,
Speaker 1: because he came in basically being kind of a kind
Speaker 1: of almost a feral child, barely able to speak, very
Speaker 1: unable to eat, read and write. I probably didn't mention
Speaker 1: that after the captain took him to the police station
Speaker 1: when he was not able to get a coherent answer
Speaker 1: out of him about anything, and one of the policemen
Speaker 1: had this idea to hand him a pan and a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, and so he wrote his name Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser on on that. Other than that, he was not
Speaker 1: able to say much other than you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I want to be a soldier like my father. Wait,
Speaker 1: so somebody took the time to so not hang out
Speaker 1: with him, teach him how to sign his name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. It's a little weird, isn't that That That
Speaker 1: that that smells a little fishing. Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: There's there's that, and there's a lot about it, And
Speaker 1: which is one of the things about the story. That's
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting things about the story is
Speaker 1: that it still captures so many people's imagination. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's hear what else happened, because I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: still skeptical. Yeah, well exactly exactly. There's a lot about
Speaker 1: it that's still a mystery. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're here, we're all about solving mysteries. So all of
Speaker 1: you out there who have been puzzling for decades over
Speaker 1: this mystery, we're gonna solve it for you tonight. So
Speaker 1: he as I said, and I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into great detail about this stuff. About the various people
Speaker 1: he came under the tutelage of. One of them was
Speaker 1: an English nobleman named Lord Stanhope, was a great philanthropist
Speaker 1: and who actually once he took him under his wing
Speaker 1: pages living expenses for the rest of his life, which
Speaker 1: I actually didn't go on for very long. I'll I'll
Speaker 1: run back a little bit. There was an incident where
Speaker 1: he was cutting the forehead um and according to him,
Speaker 1: he wants he somebody and he said it was the
Speaker 1: same person, the same guy who took him to Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: the person who arranged him. The person. Yeah, the same
Speaker 1: man showed up slashed him with a knife on the
Speaker 1: forehead and basically said if you leave, if you leave
Speaker 1: this city, you are a dead man. It's still kind
Speaker 1: of ambiguous as to whether this actually happened, to whether
Speaker 1: perhaps he inflicted the wound on himself. Um. And so
Speaker 1: there was that ang About eighteen twenty nine or so,
Speaker 1: there began to be speculation because word got out about
Speaker 1: Casper that and people came from all over the city
Speaker 1: to see him because he was such a curiosity, and
Speaker 1: word got out. A rumor started that he was perhaps royalty,
Speaker 1: and that perhaps he had he was actually a prince
Speaker 1: of the House of Boden, And I'm not a student
Speaker 1: of European royalty. Apparently Boden is related to the Bodens
Speaker 1: Edie to Napoleon etcetera. And so that's a long lineageer
Speaker 1: a well known lineage. Yeah. And so anyway, I said,
Speaker 1: apparently there was a prince born in eighteen twelve who
Speaker 1: died at the age of about two and a half
Speaker 1: weeks and yeah, and the story goes that that perhaps
Speaker 1: there was a competing tinggent contingent to the family that
Speaker 1: because Casper, if he was indeed the prince, would have
Speaker 1: been the last surviving line or less surriving person in
Speaker 1: that line, or would have gone over to like the
Speaker 1: father's brother and his descendants. And so the theory is
Speaker 1: is that if Casper had been that baby, and if
Speaker 1: they had, say, for example, swapped and I found a
Speaker 1: baby that was already dying of natural causes, to a
Speaker 1: quick swap sand Casper off to the sticks or whatever,
Speaker 1: who cares, you know, the baby dies and the kingship
Speaker 1: passes over to you know, the uncle Casper. And so
Speaker 1: that rumor started about eight and it persisted actually for
Speaker 1: many years. Actually there were people up in the twenties
Speaker 1: century doing d DNA analysis on what there are believed
Speaker 1: to be remnants of Casper Houser's hair, for example, to
Speaker 1: see if perhaps he is related to the House of
Speaker 1: Bottom and they actually the results were inconclusive. It was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a strong correlation, but not quite strong enough
Speaker 1: to prove anything. And you know, so anyway, that's where
Speaker 1: it's at. But so it's it's a tenuous theory at best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, and and and and it's not supported
Speaker 1: by some of the other facts, which is that doing
Speaker 1: a baby swapping in the House of Royalty is probably
Speaker 1: not that easy. I wouldn't think so. I would imagine
Speaker 1: that would be something that they would try to make
Speaker 1: very hard, you would, thanks, So yeah, okay, But anyway,
Speaker 1: that was that was a widely believed theory, and so
Speaker 1: therefore that that's kind of like lens support to this
Speaker 1: whole thing. That a guy shows up and threatened said
Speaker 1: of the he ever leaves Nuremberg, you know, his life
Speaker 1: is forfeit, and YadA, YadA, YadA, and slashes him with
Speaker 1: a knife. And so anyway, a bunch of stuff went by. Um,
Speaker 1: he was living with out of the tutelage of various people,
Speaker 1: many of which he seemed to eventually alienate, and then
Speaker 1: at the very end he wants up stabbed in the
Speaker 1: chest fatally took him three days to die. But that's
Speaker 1: not fun, not really now. So he so December eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, so this is five days or five years,
Speaker 1: excuse me? After he was actually found counsel with a
Speaker 1: wound in his chest, and he claims that he was
Speaker 1: lured to the Ansbach Court garden in Nuremberg and then
Speaker 1: a stranger tried to hand him a purse and then
Speaker 1: while handing the purse, stabbed him in the chest. And
Speaker 1: the message there was a message in the purse because
Speaker 1: the police want to the park and they found it,
Speaker 1: and the message read and Hauser will be able to
Speaker 1: tell you quite precisely how I look and from where
Speaker 1: I am to save houses the effort. I will tell
Speaker 1: you myself from where I come blank blank, I come
Speaker 1: from like blank little Bavarian border blank blank on the
Speaker 1: river blank blank blank. I will even tell you the
Speaker 1: name Damn l SO initials. So a cryptic message. Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm confused, what's the blanks? Were those dashes in the
Speaker 1: letter or what's going on there? I'm I'm a little
Speaker 1: confused because I've seen that I've seen something on this
Speaker 1: story and that's never made sense to me. I am
Speaker 1: blank is yeah, are you telling us they're not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will tell you. And now now I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you. I wrote this out ahead of time
Speaker 1: so that when I got there, I could tell the
Speaker 1: coast clearance. Going to write it in myself. It seems
Speaker 1: weird that there's these pre made blanks. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so and so. Anyway, but again this deepness of mystery
Speaker 1: because even though that, even though there's a lot of
Speaker 1: absurdities and inconsistencies, people want to believe what they want
Speaker 1: to believe, you know, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people after he died, we was thinking, all he was
Speaker 1: murdered because he was a rightful prince, you know in
Speaker 1: YadA YadA um. Why was he at the park? Do
Speaker 1: we know? Uh? He later said that he was tricked
Speaker 1: into going to the park with the promise of information
Speaker 1: about his mother. But you know, he didn't say who.
Speaker 1: I mean. Obviously, he had three days to die, so
Speaker 1: plenty of times to spill the beans about everything, but
Speaker 1: he didn't give up out any useful information. Apparently, he
Speaker 1: didn't say, for example, whether he was like sent a
Speaker 1: note or somebody who told him this in person or what.
Speaker 1: So he uh waited by the artesian well in the park.
Speaker 1: No one came, so we went across to a monument
Speaker 1: in the park where a man was waiting for him.
Speaker 1: They walked together in the freezing cold. The man made
Speaker 1: as if to give him a document and suddenly stabbed
Speaker 1: him the side, puncturing his long piercing his liver, and
Speaker 1: then ran off. He goes back his naggers back home,
Speaker 1: saying that stab knife out, gave purse. Go the quickly
Speaker 1: they go and they find the person. They find this
Speaker 1: note inside the purse. But this is the thing is
Speaker 1: that the note was written. It was written in mirror scripts.
Speaker 1: So essentially you're hold a piece of papers in the
Speaker 1: mirror and you right backwards. So and okay, I got
Speaker 1: I got I got it. And it was folded in
Speaker 1: a in a way that was apparently characteristic of Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser himself. How was it folded? It was folded diagonally
Speaker 1: stuff he instead of folding it like this, so it
Speaker 1: was square corner a corner instead of edge to edge.
Speaker 1: So you fold a diagonally basicly, got it? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it was folded in a in a manner. And so
Speaker 1: this guy, even though he was a clever huckster in
Speaker 1: my opinion, Uh, you know, a very good con man
Speaker 1: was not that bright about you know, like covering his
Speaker 1: tracks when he did in those sticks like porge murder notes.
Speaker 1: Um so anyway, so so I'm sorry, we do or
Speaker 1: do not know if it was just left blank or
Speaker 1: they just never released that information or no, it was
Speaker 1: left blank. It was left blank. Yeah, yeah, And he
Speaker 1: was stabbed, Joe. You said the left chest, the left
Speaker 1: side of the chest, the left side of the chest,
Speaker 1: through the lung and into liver. Yeah. Is that a
Speaker 1: direct or an upward stroke or a downward stroke. Well
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's kind of mysterious about the whole thing,
Speaker 1: because you know, if it needed is true that his
Speaker 1: liver was punctured. As you know, your liver is on
Speaker 1: the right side of your chest. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: it's not all on the right side. But but in
Speaker 1: order to stab somebody too, the long into the liver
Speaker 1: and into the liver, that's that you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about at least four or five inches not longer. And
Speaker 1: so is it and is it an easy way to
Speaker 1: stab yourself? Well, that was the thing is a speculation,
Speaker 1: is that he stabbed himself to get attention. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the same thing with the not the slashing of the
Speaker 1: forehead incident where this guy threatened that if he ever
Speaker 1: left the city of Nuremberg then he would be his
Speaker 1: life with fortfit. And that is that he was just
Speaker 1: trying to keep his little legend alive because he liked
Speaker 1: the attention, and also by the way that that kept
Speaker 1: people coming to him, like Lord Stanhope, who were benefactors
Speaker 1: who would actually pay for his pay for his expenses
Speaker 1: and stuff like that and keep them want to keep them,
Speaker 1: you know, going. So essentially he screwed up. And the
Speaker 1: first time he slashed himself it wasn't that deep, so hey,
Speaker 1: I can do it again. But now I have this
Speaker 1: knife and oh that went way deeper than I expected,
Speaker 1: and that hurts a lot more. Yeah, and that's that's well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about it that is a little mysterious though.
Speaker 1: It's because like if you want to if you want
Speaker 1: to like stab yourself, you know, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: driving an if that deep into your body, even by accident,
Speaker 1: is pretty difficult. I mean, for forensic specialists, did that
Speaker 1: did that? They agree that it's entirely possible that he
Speaker 1: could have afflicted the wound on himself. But if you
Speaker 1: think about it, if you're gonna puncture your lung and
Speaker 1: your liver, you're gonna drive that knife been pretty damny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe somebody is seven. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there are people around who didn't like Casper, because apparently
Speaker 1: the guy was a really major flaming jerk, and he
Speaker 1: was widely regarded as a huge liar by the people
Speaker 1: that knew him very well. So it's like the public
Speaker 1: who didn't know him, well, we're all enraptured by his story,
Speaker 1: but the people that actually spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: with them all uniformly seemed to come away convinced that
Speaker 1: the guy was a massive liar. Well, I I can see, okay,
Speaker 1: I can see that somebody did it, but I can
Speaker 1: also see a guy who isn't that smart about things.
Speaker 1: We've all seen movies where somebody's gonna fake that they
Speaker 1: got beat up, and so they run their head into
Speaker 1: the door frame and then go, oh wow, that really
Speaker 1: hurts more than I thought. And I could just see
Speaker 1: him going, I need to jab this in, but I
Speaker 1: know that as soon as I stab myself, it's gonna
Speaker 1: hurt and I'm gonna pull it out and it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be credible enough himself against the wall. Yes, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, okay, one too. Three. Oh oh, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't use the eight teenage knife. Oh that's more than
Speaker 1: I expected. Yeah, I can see that happening because people
Speaker 1: have poor judgment and poor pre planning about these kind
Speaker 1: of things, as we well know. You see things like
Speaker 1: that in the news all the time. Did they ever
Speaker 1: find the knife? No, actually it didn't, and it's it's
Speaker 1: actually one of those things too. Where it was he
Speaker 1: was lying on his death, Patty was probably thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: I really should have sterilized that blade before he read ask. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: they didn't find the purse with the note in it,
Speaker 1: of course, getting back to the beginning, the letters he
Speaker 1: carried with him, one of which was wrong supposedly his mother,
Speaker 1: the other one was from the guy who raised him
Speaker 1: in the dark little cell on the ground, were written
Speaker 1: in the same handwriting. So that but wait, wait wait,
Speaker 1: wait say that again. They were written in the same handwriting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, are those notes still I mean, did
Speaker 1: are they still around at all? You know, that's a
Speaker 1: good question. I don't know I really don't know, because
Speaker 1: if Casper is so nefariously devious, he's so nefarious but
Speaker 1: so devious about making things for himself, then I would say, well,
Speaker 1: let's compare the quote unquote mirror script handwriting letter to
Speaker 1: the ones that say I want to be in the
Speaker 1: cavalry and see if they're the same handwriting, because that
Speaker 1: would prove if he did it himself or not. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the note, the none the purse. They're not specific about this,
Speaker 1: but the note that was found had a spelling air
Speaker 1: and a grammatical error, both of which were fairly typical
Speaker 1: for him. So the writing wasn't necessarily a smoking a
Speaker 1: smoking gun, but apparently those errors were kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit of smoking gun. You know. Again, it's hard
Speaker 1: to say, but it appears to me that the guy
Speaker 1: was just a fraud and that I made up this
Speaker 1: weird stick that would get him some attention and get
Speaker 1: him I'm getta taken care of, versus just being this
Speaker 1: peasant kid who's a homeless kid living in streets of
Speaker 1: Germany and whatever. And it seemed to work really well
Speaker 1: for him, except you know, his like megalomania sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, took over and eventually killed him. He
Speaker 1: killed himself with the knife accidentally, accidentally, or somebody stabbed him.
Speaker 1: It could we be maybe somebody just didn't like him
Speaker 1: and decided to stabb When was he stabbed? December? So
Speaker 1: it's it's December in Nuremberg, which means it covered in snow,
Speaker 1: cold snow. Okay. So they went back to find where
Speaker 1: he was at and follow his blood trail from where
Speaker 1: he came from, absolutely to go to the park, and
Speaker 1: they found they found his foot prints and no other footprints.
Speaker 1: Was there paths in the area They were kept up
Speaker 1: to be clear that he could have been walking on
Speaker 1: if there was the second person. Yeah, exactly. You know, again,
Speaker 1: the accounts are a little vague on that whole thing.
Speaker 1: All they say is they found his footprints in the
Speaker 1: snow and no one else's, which implies to me that
Speaker 1: at the paths had been cleared, they hadn't been cleared
Speaker 1: after every snow flowing, and so they were able to
Speaker 1: find his footprints but nobody else's, which is why they
Speaker 1: thought he had stabbed himself. Well, other people like this, Frank,
Speaker 1: what's his name that I read years ago? I'll play
Speaker 1: devil's advocate. Let's say that the paths were relatively clear,
Speaker 1: and you only find one set of footprints, and that's
Speaker 1: because he walked off onto the path, found that met
Speaker 1: the person got stabbed and walked back. Well, the other
Speaker 1: person would probably for a fast give getaways. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I want to run as fast as I can. Let's
Speaker 1: not go through through six inches of snow. Let's just
Speaker 1: go through a clear path and just hustle out a
Speaker 1: yeah and yeah. Unfortunately, on all the accounts that I've read,
Speaker 1: nobody gives that amount of detail about about whether the
Speaker 1: passmen cleared years ago. Of course not, we're not there.
Speaker 1: He accounts were not as detailed as they are now. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean no. It might be that if he could
Speaker 1: research it, there might somebody might have written a very
Speaker 1: detailed account that actually had that information in it, but
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, but it's quite possible. How old
Speaker 1: did Casper appear to be? Did he appeared to be
Speaker 1: the age he claimed or they said he appeared to
Speaker 1: be between the ages of fifteen and eighteen when he
Speaker 1: showed up, that's what they thought, So he maybe looked
Speaker 1: younger than yeah, and he was. It was an anteen
Speaker 1: the year eighteen twenty eight, and he had these letters
Speaker 1: claiming that he had been born in eighteen twelves. So
Speaker 1: they assumed the letters were true and he was sixteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps he was a little older. So if he was sixteen,
Speaker 1: then according to that account of the sixteen, he died
Speaker 1: at one. Oh yeah, he died. He died pretty young. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is really young. Really yeah, goodness. They gave him
Speaker 1: beer when he was sixteen, beer and sausage. Dumbass spatted
Speaker 1: out kidding me. Yeah. So anyway, it's one of those
Speaker 1: internal mysteries, but it persists to this day. They did
Speaker 1: DNA analyses. Obviously DNA analysis has not been around for
Speaker 1: very long. Uh. Der Spiegel reported an attempt to match
Speaker 1: a blood sample from underpants assumed to have been his. Uh.
Speaker 1: And apparently apparently they were the wrong enterpants, because in
Speaker 1: two thousand two this was ninety six when der Spiegel
Speaker 1: reported this. In two thousand two, the NST for Forensic
Speaker 1: Medicine for the University of Munster and So analyzed hair
Speaker 1: and body cells from locks of hair and I was
Speaker 1: a clothing that had belonged to him. The items all
Speaker 1: matched DNA. Wise, they did not match the blood from
Speaker 1: the thing, which means that they were using the wrong
Speaker 1: blood and they found that they compared that to a
Speaker 1: DNA segment from Estrad von Meddinger. I think I pronounced
Speaker 1: that right, I sent it in the female line of
Speaker 1: definitely uh deebo Harns. I think I'm pronouncing that right.
Speaker 1: Who was from the House of Boden. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: not identical, but it was definitely a possibility that there
Speaker 1: was a relationship between Caspar Hauser and the House of Bodden.
Speaker 1: But now the DNA sample that there were referenced against,
Speaker 1: was that someone that was alive at the same time
Speaker 1: or someone in modern times? This I don't know. I
Speaker 1: assume that was somebody in the House of Boden that
Speaker 1: was actually alive and willing to provide a sample. So
Speaker 1: modern times, so we've got two hundred years of between
Speaker 1: for genetics to change. So that would add the mystery
Speaker 1: or the inconclusive inconclusiveness. Yeah and so yeah, so that
Speaker 1: there was there was a high there was a relatively
Speaker 1: high similarity in DNA and not enough to be conclusive.
Speaker 1: Um And as far as matching the DNA was definitely
Speaker 1: Debo Harney's um who would have been his other or
Speaker 1: the child that was buried, because obviously there their remains
Speaker 1: are known and they could be dug up and a little.
Speaker 1: The House of Bod does not permit that. Shocking. Shocking.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would permit it either. Actually, there's
Speaker 1: as urban legend that this guy is related to us.
Speaker 1: Just go ahead and dig up all our old relatives,
Speaker 1: what the heck exactly? So so yeah, anyway, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting little thing, which is, you know, may maybe all
Speaker 1: that stuff is true, but mostly I think it's probably
Speaker 1: a fraud. And I think a lot of people bought
Speaker 1: into it because people wanted to buy want to buy
Speaker 1: into lurid stuff like that. So you're you're you're convinced
Speaker 1: he's a sham. Uh, not a hundred percent, but convinced
Speaker 1: he's a sham. Yes, Yeah, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know where I come down on this. I think that
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to imagine someone being so desperate
Speaker 1: for attention that they would stab themselves that deep, even
Speaker 1: by accidents. But I I don't really know where I
Speaker 1: stand on it. I'd have to do a little more research.
Speaker 1: Think I I have mixed feelings on it, so I
Speaker 1: don't I don't say that he was a huckster sham,
Speaker 1: but I don't say I'm not convinced that was the
Speaker 1: way that Casper said it happened. The only reasons that
Speaker 1: I say that is I've I've read some accounts of this,
Speaker 1: and the things that didn't ring true for me against
Speaker 1: Casper is the fact that the incident where he his
Speaker 1: he somebody barged in on him in the bathroom and
Speaker 1: caught him in the forehead. The problem that I had
Speaker 1: with that, and there's other accounts that were similar where
Speaker 1: he had evidently he had a couple of runnins of
Speaker 1: getting stabbed or beat up and stuff like that by
Speaker 1: bad people, is that in that particular where we got
Speaker 1: his head cut, they followed the blood trail from the
Speaker 1: bathroom to his room and then to the seller where
Speaker 1: he had gone to hide. And it's see, it's very plausible.
Speaker 1: And people said, well, he didn't really think this through
Speaker 1: very well as he cut himself and then said, oh
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do with the razor, went back,
Speaker 1: washed it off, went back to his room, put it
Speaker 1: in his room, and then went and hid, which seems
Speaker 1: like poor planning, which a lot of these things seem
Speaker 1: as if from the outside they're very sensational, but once
Speaker 1: you look at him, it's very poorly planned, which is
Speaker 1: somebody's got this great idea, but they just don't think
Speaker 1: about how to tie it together, and so it just
Speaker 1: it's really loose and there's nothing credible about. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: the whole idea that you know, like say, for example,
Speaker 1: I mean if if I was if I was stabbed
Speaker 1: or slashed by somebody, I would run to where there
Speaker 1: were people, exactly. I wouldn't run and hide in a
Speaker 1: cellar where I'm isolated that could be stabbed again, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. Well, and and here's the here's
Speaker 1: the other problem with that, do you And this is
Speaker 1: again I've seen the an accounts, and and the accounts
Speaker 1: that's the hard part of the accounts are two years old.
Speaker 1: People are interpreting them because the language is different now
Speaker 1: than it was then. But the accounts talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that he had been in a big argument or
Speaker 1: been chastised by his the people that were currently hosting
Speaker 1: him in their home, so he was in trouble. He
Speaker 1: got in trouble, and he got his hand slapped for
Speaker 1: doing something wrong and bad and he wanted to get
Speaker 1: in everybody's good graces. So I'm gonna get attacked and
Speaker 1: everybody will love me and hug me and forget about
Speaker 1: that I did wrong. It's very It's like a five
Speaker 1: year old or a three year old. I I I
Speaker 1: the cat broke that. I didn't break that. Oh god,
Speaker 1: the kid he scratched me. Kind of Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that actually might be evidence for him actually
Speaker 1: being a part of the royal family, because that's very
Speaker 1: indicative of in breeding. That's so true. But but the
Speaker 1: thing about it is is it's true. Is you know
Speaker 1: what what was consistent about him was what he was
Speaker 1: taken in by a lot of different people and families
Speaker 1: and stuff, and consistently he managed to alienate all of them,
Speaker 1: every single one of them, because every one of them
Speaker 1: came away with the impression that he was an incredible
Speaker 1: liar and you know, and a fraud. And there's something
Speaker 1: else I said, Yeah, there's another another huge glaring in
Speaker 1: his inconsistency or just whatever you wanna call it, is
Speaker 1: the claim to have been kept for sixteen years and
Speaker 1: a little hole and be fed nothing but bread and water. Well,
Speaker 1: excuse me, you would die. I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, that's very true. Yeah, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to survive on that diet.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. And so they were just a number of
Speaker 1: like I said, you've got he comes into town with
Speaker 1: two letters written in the same handwriting, by written by
Speaker 1: two people sixteen years apart. And but they're in the
Speaker 1: same handwriting. And so I think, well, this is the strongest,
Speaker 1: the best answer for this whole thing is that many,
Speaker 1: many people wanted to believe something that was just outlanderously silly.
Speaker 1: And people want to believe, and they and they do
Speaker 1: want to believe, and so and so, even to this date,
Speaker 1: people believe in this crap. Well, obviously we're curious about
Speaker 1: wanting possibly want to believe, because we're still doing stories
Speaker 1: like this. This is what we do. We all look
Speaker 1: into this stuff because we still we find it fascinating. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're almost on the same level. It's
Speaker 1: just that we have the benefit of all this research
Speaker 1: coming ahead of us accused, and just really super good
Speaker 1: looks that people out there don't have. Sorry, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I I get off the model runway, I take off
Speaker 1: my awesome sunglasses. I shake out my full head of
Speaker 1: hair and I walk and I go ahead and I
Speaker 1: start researching stuff like this, because that's that's just what
Speaker 1: my life is, the runway. That's not what I do.
Speaker 1: What I do is I jumped in the Ferrari with
Speaker 1: my intern. My intern is taking notes, and I'm speeding down,
Speaker 1: speeding on the highway in Malibu and at ninety miles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so how that's kind of how it works for me.
Speaker 1: How about you, Devin House, has it worked for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not a model, so I don't know. I thought
Speaker 1: you that's it, You're out. I thought, Oh, I thought
Speaker 1: we were doing mysteries. I think if you want to
Speaker 1: find out more about Casper Houser, we will have links
Speaker 1: on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: And also if you have any more information of any theories,
Speaker 1: so you know, what are just complaints or our Casper Houser.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you are Casper Houser or the stander
Speaker 1: from Casper Houser or just sender from the House of Boden,
Speaker 1: then we would like to hear from you, so please
Speaker 1: uh as an email at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com anyway. That's it for tonight. We will talk
Speaker 1: to you guys soon. I am Joe. Good night, I'm Devin,
Speaker 1: and goodnight. This is Stephen. I'll be talking to you soon.