Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
Speaker 1: to remind you that my brand new book is coming
Speaker 1: out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
Speaker 1: order it right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
Speaker 1: just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
Speaker 1: and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
Speaker 1: turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
Speaker 1: to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
Speaker 1: and check out all the tour details and day, or
Speaker 1: just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffoo Season
Speaker 1: three Formula six last time on Snaffoo double tote and
Speaker 1: two gun hearts, became a prohibition enforcement agent. If he
Speaker 1: couldn't use his gun, he would use his fist to
Speaker 1: apprehend these criminals and bootleggers and ended up killing an
Speaker 1: innocent man. Back in DC, Mabel Walker willebrandt roped in
Speaker 1: just about the last people who should ever be involved
Speaker 1: in law enforcement. This is where the klan comes in. Actually,
Speaker 1: so what was supposed to be a righteous moral crusade
Speaker 1: was turning into a bloody, morally compromised debacle.
Speaker 3: I have no objection to people dressing up in sheets
Speaker 3: if they enjoyed that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And even after all that, the dries weren't done yet.
Speaker 1: On a cold, misty night in late November nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: two Brooklyn cops stumble upon something extremely suspicious down by
Speaker 1: the docks on the East River under the full moon.
Speaker 1: A stooped man struggles to carry a big bundle of
Speaker 1: something towards the water. When the cops holler out and
Speaker 1: ask him what he's doing, he panics, kicks the bundle
Speaker 1: into the water and runs away. The cops tackle him
Speaker 1: and handcuff him, but even once they get him to
Speaker 1: the precinct. He's still not talking. And this isn't just
Speaker 1: a regular old I ain't saying nothing kind of silence,
Speaker 1: more of a stupor. He looks ill, his face oddly flushed.
Speaker 1: The police suspect he's had quite a lot to drink.
Speaker 1: Eventually they identify him as Francesco Travia, a longshoreman who
Speaker 1: lives in nearby Cobble Hill. They can't get a word
Speaker 1: out of him, but they do notice his legs are
Speaker 1: soaked in blood.
Speaker 4: The police go back to his apartment they find this
Speaker 4: dismembered body.
Speaker 5: I love this story so much, and sorry I shouldn't
Speaker 5: laugh about this.
Speaker 1: That's historian Deborah Blum. Remember she's an expert on the
Speaker 1: various ways chemicals can kill you. When you spend your
Speaker 1: career talking about poisoned corpses, sometimes you just gotta laugh.
Speaker 1: The police go to Travia's apartment find a woman's dead body,
Speaker 1: well half of one.
Speaker 5: And her hat is still theretor torso on the floor.
Speaker 1: The scene in Travia's apartment is gruesome, so it's not
Speaker 1: really a stretch to conclude that Travia murdered this woman,
Speaker 1: chopped her up and is just disposed of her legs
Speaker 1: in the East River. The body is identified as Anna Fredrickson,
Speaker 1: Francesco's neighbor. Anna's family tells the police that she went
Speaker 1: to Francesco to scrounge up some booze and left his
Speaker 1: apartment in multiple pieces. To the NYPD, this looks like
Speaker 1: an open and shut case. They'd caught Francesco Travia red handed,
Speaker 1: or at least red panted. But then the city's chief
Speaker 1: medical examiner arrives at the crime scene.
Speaker 5: Norris is the on call medical examiner that night.
Speaker 4: He goes all the way out to Brooklyn, driven by
Speaker 4: his chauffeur, to the shabby little Black Worker apartment in
Speaker 4: Brooklyn goes in.
Speaker 1: Norris emerges from his car and strolls into the apartment,
Speaker 1: no doubt dressed in an outfit that cost an arm
Speaker 1: in the lot of money. He takes a quick look
Speaker 1: at the crime scene, here's what the cops have to report,
Speaker 1: and immediately blows up the entire theory of the case.
Speaker 4: He takes one look at it and goes, you know,
Speaker 4: know that that woman was dead before he cut her up.
Speaker 1: Noras only needs to see two things. The unnatural flush
Speaker 1: of the dead woman's skin and the lighting fixtures in
Speaker 1: the tenement building where she was found.
Speaker 4: A lot of people lived in buildings that were pretty
Speaker 4: much equipped by.
Speaker 5: What was called illuminating gas.
Speaker 4: Right. An illuminating gas was a cold derived gas. It
Speaker 4: had hydrogenetics, so it was explosive, and it had carbon
Speaker 4: monoxide in it, so it was poisonous.
Speaker 1: As Noras knows, this gas is not only poisonous, it's
Speaker 1: also colorless and odorless, a deadly combination he and Alexander
Speaker 1: Getler know all too well from their work examining New
Speaker 1: York City's dead. The presence of carbon monoxide also explains
Speaker 1: why Travia has been in a stupor and the strange
Speaker 1: hue of the alleged victim's skin.
Speaker 4: When you are killed by carbon monoxide, your skin flushes
Speaker 4: a deep pink. So here she is, she's bled out
Speaker 4: completely right, she should be pale as a sheet. Instead,
Speaker 4: she's flush pink, because that's what carbon monoxide does.
Speaker 1: Anna Fredrickson's death was a tragic accident. At some point
Speaker 1: as she got drunk with Francesco. One of them must
Speaker 1: have caused the gas leak.
Speaker 4: They knock a kettle or something over that's boiling away
Speaker 4: on a gas burner, put out the flame, illuminating gas
Speaker 4: which they don't smell, start seeping into the apartment. And
Speaker 4: he and Getler have already shown that when carbon monoxide
Speaker 4: gets to the kind of level he's looking at, it
Speaker 4: kills you.
Speaker 5: So she has to have been dead.
Speaker 1: Charles Norris feels compelled to testify in Francesco's case. He
Speaker 1: knows this man is innocent, well innocent of murder anyway,
Speaker 1: and he has the scientific facts to prove it.
Speaker 4: And he goes actually into court opposite to the district
Speaker 4: attorney and the police department and wins.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the first time Norris and Getler took on
Speaker 1: the political powers that be and won, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the last. Of course, Francesco did still get convicted
Speaker 1: of him properly disposing of a corpse, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it to the prosecutor on that one. But he
Speaker 1: did avoid the death penalty because Gettler and Norris investigated
Speaker 1: and intervened. From gas leaks to lead pipes to radioactive watches,
Speaker 1: which is an actual thing you could buy. At the time,
Speaker 1: there was a lot that could kill you in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties America. Time and time again, Gettler and Norris cracked
Speaker 1: cases that cops couldn't crack, and they were just about
Speaker 1: the only ones in New York City capable of getting
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the especially twisted mystery of Formula six.
Speaker 1: I'm ed Helms and this is Snaffo, a show about
Speaker 1: history's greatest screw ups. This is the story of how
Speaker 1: Prohibition backfired so badly that the government chose to poison
Speaker 1: thousands of a Mata Americans. Today, a string of mysterious
Speaker 1: deaths presents Norris and Gettler with another mystery, even as
Speaker 1: the culprit hides in plain sight. One thing we know
Speaker 1: about Alexander Geittler is that he loved the Yankees, and
Speaker 1: we also know that, as a workaholic, his thoughts were
Speaker 1: never far from his work. So indulge me as I
Speaker 1: paint a picture for us Gettler attending a real Yankee
Speaker 1: game and piecing together a few work thoughts. Sunday, August second,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six, Alexander Getler, notorious workaholic, has given himself
Speaker 1: a rare day off to enjoy Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.
Speaker 1: His beloved Bronx Bombers are facing the Chicago White Sox,
Speaker 1: and they're off to a rough start. Right in the
Speaker 1: top of the first, Chicago left fielder Bib Fuck hits
Speaker 1: a weak ground ball off Yankee pitcher Wait Hoyt and
Speaker 1: drives in a run. Bib Wait, come on, you gotta
Speaker 1: love these old timey baseball names, right, But Getler, well,
Speaker 1: he's not loving it. By the time he's gotten into
Speaker 1: his seat and lit up one of his White Owl cigars,
Speaker 1: his Yankees are already down by a run. Now, even
Speaker 1: amidst all the peanuts and cracker jacks, Gettler's mind wanders
Speaker 1: to what he's been seeing in his lab and in
Speaker 1: the news. All over the city and all over the country.
Speaker 1: People are dying going blind. Remember that bootleg cocktail ginger Jake.
Speaker 1: There are people walking around town with a condition nicknamed
Speaker 1: Jake Leg, which causes the legs to twitch uncontrollably. By now,
Speaker 1: it's common knowledge that lots of ill gotten hooch has
Speaker 1: se even fatal side effects, but people are still drinking it.
Speaker 1: The Yankees have their own formidable tag team, Lou Garrig
Speaker 1: and Babe Ruth. They're both in the midst of incredible seasons,
Speaker 1: smashing homers and breaking records. But in the bottom of
Speaker 1: the first the Chicago pitcher gets Garrig to ground out
Speaker 1: into a fielder's choice, intentionally walks the great Bambino, I'll
Speaker 1: come on pitch to a scarty cut and retires the
Speaker 1: side without letting up a run. Hitler puffs his cigar
Speaker 1: and cogit dates. There's been a commotion upstate in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: where the health commissioner is alleging that dozens of recent
Speaker 1: deaths chalked up to heart disease or apoplexy were actually
Speaker 1: the work of methyl alcohol. In his own lab at Bellevue,
Speaker 1: Alexander's been seeing some downright bizarre things in his test results.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean the sludge he makes out of
Speaker 1: dead people. That's all in a day's work. But the
Speaker 1: chemicals he's finding in that sludge, well, they're getting weirder
Speaker 1: and weirder. Purody what the pyridine is colorless and highly flammable.
Speaker 1: It's commonly found in herbicides and insecticides. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's poison. Geitler knows the mafiosos distributing tainted liquor aren't
Speaker 1: afraid to get their hands a little dirty, but still
Speaker 1: intentionally serving people insecticide.
Speaker 6: That's not good for business.
Speaker 1: And it gets weirder. There's also kerosene and industrial benzene,
Speaker 1: commonly found in rubber and gas. Now you don't need
Speaker 1: to be chief toxicologist of Bellevue Medical Center to know
Speaker 1: kerosene and alcohol are a bad mix. But never one
Speaker 1: to jump to conclusions, Gettler wonders if there's a way
Speaker 1: these victims might have accidentally consumed these poisons, which sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: but he's actually seen a lot of it. The Radium Girls.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen twenty five, a dozen women died and
Speaker 1: at least fifty more became ill with mysterious symptoms, including
Speaker 1: necrosis of the jaw. Since they all worked at the
Speaker 1: same watch factory, the cases were assumed to be connected. However,
Speaker 1: the company doctors tried to sweep it all under the rug.
Speaker 1: That's when Getler was called in. He ran some tests
Speaker 1: and figured out exactly what was going on. In order
Speaker 1: to make the watchfaces glow in the dark, the workers
Speaker 1: painted them with radium, which, just like it sounds, is radioactive.
Speaker 1: The Radium Girls, as they came to be known had
Speaker 1: been licking their paint brushes to wet them as they painted,
Speaker 1: unknowingly consuming toxic radium every time. So now back to
Speaker 1: these latest poisonings by benzene and kerosene. Maybe all of
Speaker 1: these victims worked at a rubber tire factory and they
Speaker 1: were all roommates in a building heated by burning kerosene,
Speaker 1: but probably not. Gettler can't find any connection between them
Speaker 1: apart from the unique blend of the poisons that killed them.
Speaker 1: Each of these chemicals is gnarly enough on its own,
Speaker 1: but when you put them together it becomes clear whoever
Speaker 1: invented this cocktail at a deeply sinister intent. Benzene brings
Speaker 1: on a seizure. Kerosene constricts the throat, Pyridine sends agonizing
Speaker 1: pain shooting through the gut. Still, other additives would have
Speaker 1: made the limbs go stiff. Methanol sears the optic nerve
Speaker 1: after a few gulps, and nearly all the victims went
Speaker 1: blind before they died.
Speaker 6: Out.
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth strikes out to lead off the bottom of
Speaker 1: the fourth inning. The Yankees are still down and they
Speaker 1: haven't even recorded a hit yet. Alexander is starting to
Speaker 1: worry about the dollar he's wagered on this game, but
Speaker 1: he's far more worried thinking about those noxious chemicals showing
Speaker 1: up in his lab sludge.
Speaker 2: Hey, nice to one hot dog, No nough.
Speaker 1: The Yankee pitcher Tommy Thompson keeps the White Sox in
Speaker 1: check through the fifth inning, but his team is still behind.
Speaker 1: The crowd is restless, especially Alexander Gettler, as his mind
Speaker 1: turns to the most fucked up thing about all these poisonings.
Speaker 1: Since the dawn of Prohibition, the bootleggers and the mob
Speaker 1: have been competing directly with the government, the Prohibition Bureau,
Speaker 1: Mabel Walker, Willebrandt, the Irs, James Duran, and all their cronies.
Speaker 1: They've been going back and forth, taking their swings at
Speaker 1: each other. As the government keeps putting nastier things into
Speaker 1: industrial alcohol and the outlaws keep hiring chemists to thwart them.
Speaker 1: Gittler knows what he's seeing is no accident. Finally, in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the sixth, with Garrig on base, Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth gets a hold of one the Colossus of cloud
Speaker 1: hammers his thirtieth home run of the season, and the
Speaker 1: Yankees take the lead. Gettler rises to his feet with
Speaker 1: the rest of the crowd as he watches two all
Speaker 1: time greats cross home plate. Sorry to spoil it for you,
Speaker 1: but the score line will hold. The Yankees win two
Speaker 1: to one. All in all, a bad afternoon for Gettler
Speaker 1: has turned good thanks to a single swing of the bat.
Speaker 1: But as he joins the crowd streaming out of the
Speaker 1: park and towards the one hundred and sixty first Street
Speaker 1: subway station, Getler can't help but wonder how many of
Speaker 1: these people would the government be willing to sacrifice for
Speaker 1: this insane, failing strategy of deterrence. Getler knows better than
Speaker 1: anyone this strategy isn't working. If denaturing industrial alcohol stopped
Speaker 1: people from making drinks out of it, people would have
Speaker 1: stopped getting drunk. But that's clearly just not happening. If
Speaker 1: introducing more and more pernicious cocktails of poisons actually scared
Speaker 1: people away from drinking, they wouldn't keep ending up on
Speaker 1: a metal tray in Getler and Norris's lab. It's madness,
Speaker 1: Gettler thinks to himself as he boards a packed train
Speaker 1: back to Brooklyn. Not only are Duran and his boys
Speaker 1: intentionally making industrial alcohol unsafe, but this latest concoction seems
Speaker 1: to be a sign they're going to keep upping the ante,
Speaker 1: as if there's some magic formula, a perfect mixture so
Speaker 1: deadly it could finally convince drinkers to give up the booze.
Speaker 1: Alexandre Getler knows this is folly, but he doesn't know
Speaker 1: how much worse it's about to get.
Speaker 3: This is a warning to all you drinkers tempting fate.
Speaker 1: That's JW. Quillen, head chemist at the IRS. Now, I
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking, and don't worry. Our old pal
Speaker 1: James Duran is still around. In fact, he's moved up
Speaker 1: in the world. Duran's now the Federal Prohibition Commissioner. Quillen
Speaker 1: works for him, and on a hot August day, just
Speaker 1: a week after Babe Ruth's game winning dinger, Duran has
Speaker 1: sent Quillen to deliver a warning from the government to
Speaker 1: drinkers everywhere.
Speaker 3: Alcohol found in speakeasies is not safe to drink.
Speaker 1: Okay, not exactly breaking news. The stuff has been blinding
Speaker 1: and even killing people all over the country. And I
Speaker 1: gotta say it's pretty twisted to even phrase this as
Speaker 1: a warning, because Quillan isn't some passive bystander here, it's
Speaker 1: his office doing this. In the first place, he lists
Speaker 1: the chemicals the irs has been using. See if any
Speaker 1: of them sound familiar.
Speaker 3: This product is compounded with benzene, kerosene, rusine, and various
Speaker 3: other products which make it a very deadly poison.
Speaker 1: That's the fucked up cocktail of poisons Getler's been seeing
Speaker 1: in dead bodies at Bellevue. And it's a formula with
Speaker 1: an official name.
Speaker 2: We call this concoction formula six.
Speaker 1: And there it is Formula six. It's kind of snazzy sounding,
Speaker 1: but still nigmat The important thing is one of these
Speaker 1: toxic recipes has been given a public name. Here's Debrah again.
Speaker 4: There were dozens of these formulas, each with a different number,
Speaker 4: each with a different mix of things.
Speaker 1: Quillan reminds everyone what the plan for these formulas is
Speaker 1: all about.
Speaker 3: Specialty denatured alcohol is used for the manufacture of hair
Speaker 3: tonic and toilet perfumes. This alcohol is unfit for beverage purposes.
Speaker 1: Sure that sounds like a warning, but a little PSA
Speaker 1: to the speakeasy regulars, this ain't you see. There is
Speaker 1: a second, much more sinister layer to this press conference
Speaker 1: because Quilling goes on to say, the Treasury Department knows
Speaker 1: that Formula six has not been effective enough, so they're
Speaker 1: going to release even more formulas that will be even
Speaker 1: more deadly. The really really fucked up thing here is
Speaker 1: they know it's going to kill people. Just listen to
Speaker 1: the words Quillen uses.
Speaker 3: The cup of tear is lined with death, either swift
Speaker 3: and dramatic or slow and painfully sure.
Speaker 1: Kind of a weird way to talk about a public
Speaker 1: health crisis, and a downright evil way to talk about
Speaker 1: a public health crisis he himself was causing. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine how different those Smoky the Bear PSAs would go
Speaker 1: over if we also knew that Smokey was an avowed arsonist.
Speaker 1: Quillen ended his press conference promising a.
Speaker 3: Wave of alcohol poisoning.
Speaker 1: As Deborah Blum says.
Speaker 4: The government is starting to go, Okay, this isn't working.
Speaker 4: Let's supercharge poisons into the alcohol that the bootleggers are stealing.
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you this shocked the nation,
Speaker 1: but it didn't. The next morning, a couple hundred words
Speaker 1: about the press conference appear on page twenty two of
Speaker 1: the New York Times. Quillen's threat did not exactly start
Speaker 1: a national conversation, nor did it convert boozehounds into teetotalers
Speaker 1: from coast to coast. And honestly, did Quillen expect it to.
Speaker 1: I mean, did he or James Duran, or Mabel Walker
Speaker 1: Willebrand or anyone really think that announcing they were adding
Speaker 1: a little more poison would finally do the trick Here.
Speaker 1: We don't know what was in their minds or in
Speaker 1: their hearts, but we know they proceeded just as Quillen
Speaker 1: said they would. Oh and even though Quillen is announcing
Speaker 1: the FEDS are retiring Formula six, that doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: going to vanish overnight. Two months after Quillen's announcement, another
Speaker 1: Bureau official casually tells the press he's aware of one
Speaker 1: million gallons of denatured industrial alcohol poisoned with Formula six,
Speaker 1: sitting in warehouses right around New York City. These supplies
Speaker 1: belonged to companies who had permits to buy it legally
Speaker 1: for industrial purposes, but everyone knows that most of these
Speaker 1: companies are really just fronts for bootleggers, and all that
Speaker 1: alcohol is heading for the holiday punch bowl.
Speaker 2: I could take you down to a warehouse on the
Speaker 2: East Side and show you five hundred thousand gallons of
Speaker 2: this stuff, which I amsertion is being sold for beverage purposes.
Speaker 1: The FEDS know how much tainted liquor is out there,
Speaker 1: and they know that it's destined for human consumption. In
Speaker 1: other words, one million gallons of poisoned liquor practically a
Speaker 1: loaded gun pointed at the city of New York.
Speaker 2: I know of a place in Newark where there are
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand gallons. It will probably be cut and
Speaker 2: made into all sorts of intoxicating liquors.
Speaker 1: But for the moment, since it's categorized as industrial, it's legal.
Speaker 1: So in the minds of the Prohibition Bureau officials, well,
Speaker 1: there's nothing they can do. It's like, gee, we'd really
Speaker 1: love to do something about all that liquor we poisoned,
Speaker 1: but gosh darn it, it's perfectly legal and privately owned.
Speaker 1: Our hands are tied as Christmas ap roaches. Everyone from
Speaker 1: Gettler to James Duran knows what's about to happen. The
Speaker 1: only real question is how many lives will Formula six claim.
Speaker 5: Say Frankie, what time is it?
Speaker 7: I don't know. It's pitch dark in the clocks all
Speaker 7: the way over there.
Speaker 5: Not gee, now we'll never know.
Speaker 7: Looks like you boys need Undark?
Speaker 5: What the hell is that?
Speaker 1: Call yourself?
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 7: With Undark watches, you can tell the time, no matter
Speaker 7: the time, even when it's dark, even.
Speaker 5: When it's dark. What's the secret? How did you get
Speaker 5: it here?
Speaker 1: That's right? The secret is radium.
Speaker 7: You see here, at Undark we've harnessed the benevolent power
Speaker 7: of radiation to make watches that glow in the dark.
Speaker 7: We use nothing but pure radium to deliver a watch
Speaker 7: that glows and shines, so you know the time even
Speaker 7: in the dark.
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve, New York is a glow with holiday lights
Speaker 1: as a soft rain falls over the city. The evening
Speaker 1: starts off as a normal holiday shift. At Bellevue Hospital,
Speaker 1: cheery music wafts through the halls. It's quiet for now.
Speaker 1: Then the er doors swing open. A man barges in,
Speaker 1: ranting and raving, gasping for air. He's terrified, he says,
Speaker 1: Santa Claus is chasing him with a baseball bat. The
Speaker 1: doctors are well aware that spoiler alert kids, Santa isn't real,
Speaker 1: but the man who just burst into the er seems
Speaker 1: pretty damn convinced. This isn't your normal holiday drunk. This
Speaker 1: guy is straight up hallucinating, and he's not the only one.
Speaker 1: As Christmas morning approaches, over sixty more people crashed through
Speaker 1: the er doors, drunk, sweating and volomitting like the guy
Speaker 1: being chased by Saint Nick. Many of them are seeing
Speaker 1: things that aren't there, but others are already blind By
Speaker 1: the time they get to the hospital that night, eight
Speaker 1: of them die. Returning to his basement lab after the holiday,
Speaker 1: Alexander Getler finds his Boxing day surprise eight new dead bodies,
Speaker 1: not to mention the dozens more people elsewhere in the hospital,
Speaker 1: blinded or hallucinating. He gets to work examining the man
Speaker 1: who spent his final hours raving about being stalked by
Speaker 1: old Chris Kringle.
Speaker 7: Extremities, blue lungs, bloated, full of fluid, stomach lining, hemorrhaged.
Speaker 1: Nothing out of the ordinary. Just taking a peek at
Speaker 1: the organs of the recently deceased, and on first glance,
Speaker 1: Gettler sees the hallmarks of death by alcohol poisoning the
Speaker 1: ordinary kind, but that doesn't explain the hallucinations or the blindness.
Speaker 1: Gettler knows full well that alcohol impairs vision, but it
Speaker 1: can't blind you on its own, nor can it make
Speaker 1: you see things that aren't there. Whatever killed these eight
Speaker 1: people and poisoned dozens more, it contained some especially nasty chemicals.
Speaker 1: Gettler turns to his tried and true method. He takes
Speaker 1: biopsies of the body's liver, brain, and blood. He blends
Speaker 1: them into a sludge. He repeats the same process with
Speaker 1: each of the fresh bodies, eight livers, eight brains, eight
Speaker 1: blood samples, twenty four beakers of human chemicals slurry. As
Speaker 1: he waits for the results, news of more grisly yule
Speaker 1: tide fatalities come in from around the country. One hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dead in Philadelphia, seventy one dead in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: three hundred and twenty eight in Chicago. Gettler knows he'll
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of it sooner or later. He'll
Speaker 1: figure out what's in Duran and Quillen's latest formula. But
Speaker 1: the more pressing question is will anyone stop them. We
Speaker 1: began this season with the story of Bix bider Beck,
Speaker 1: the virtuoso cornetist who quote cracked up and collapsed while
Speaker 1: on tour in Cleveland. It's time to come back to
Speaker 1: his story. See Bis survived that nineteen twenty eight incident,
Speaker 1: but he never really recovered. To be clear, Bix was
Speaker 1: already a full blown alcoholic, which certainly didn't do wonders
Speaker 1: for his health. But ever since that night, he had
Speaker 1: trouble breathing, he had pains in his legs, and he's
Speaker 1: convinced he was poisoned. Paul Whiteman, leader of the orchestra
Speaker 1: in which Bix was a member, keeps hoping his star
Speaker 1: cornetist will recover. For more than a year, he keeps
Speaker 1: Bix's chair empty. Nobody knows what exactly happened to Bis,
Speaker 1: but most chocolate up to drunkenness. Maybe he just needs
Speaker 1: to dry out first. Bix goes to his parents' place
Speaker 1: in Iowa to recuperate. Then he checks into rehab. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what rehab was like in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: but let's just say it was less than fully effective.
Speaker 1: When he returns to his apartment in New York City,
Speaker 1: Bix is still in pain and still drinking heavily. When
Speaker 1: Paul Weitman comes through town. He invites BIS to join
Speaker 1: them on stage. Whip through those old solos again, buddy,
Speaker 1: even if it's just for one performance. But Bix is
Speaker 1: racked with mysterious pain and struggling just to Breathe sadly
Speaker 1: his playing days are over. It's not long before Bix
Speaker 1: is a patient at Bellevue Hospital. He was so close
Speaker 1: to Alexander Getler. Do you think they ever met their pads?
Speaker 1: Did actually cross? Kind of see? While undergoing treatment at Bellevue,
Speaker 1: Bix crashes with his friend, the legendary jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden.
Speaker 6: There's a story about him taking Jack Teagarden to the
Speaker 6: more Get, the famous hospital in New York that's still there.
Speaker 1: That's Randy Sanke, renowned musician and an expert on BIS.
Speaker 6: And he writes this letter where he talks about how
Speaker 6: the poison is settled in his legs and he can't
Speaker 6: get up without falling over. His signature is just so scratchy.
Speaker 6: I mean, you can tell that he's shaking. He's not
Speaker 6: in good health, good control of you know, of his
Speaker 6: motor abilities.
Speaker 1: He's got pneumonia. His eyes are still bloodshot. It's a
Speaker 1: struggle to keep food down. His breath is so shallow
Speaker 1: it's starting to seem unlikely he'll ever be able to
Speaker 1: hit those great core netlicks he's so well known for again.
Speaker 1: So one day Jack helps him out of bed and
Speaker 1: down to the street. Anything to preoccupy him, maybe help
Speaker 1: him regain a bit of his strength. But today Bix
Speaker 1: is overcome by a strange impulse, a morbid curiosity. Something
Speaker 1: in his gut, still ravaged by the poison, tells him
Speaker 1: to take the elevator down to the basement level.
Speaker 4: What floor, sir?
Speaker 1: They take the elevator down to the lowest level. The
Speaker 1: temperature drops about ten degrees as they step out. It
Speaker 1: might just be a bad case of the chills, but
Speaker 1: Bick swears he can see his breath. They slowly teeter
Speaker 1: towards a heavy iron door clearly marked with the word mortuary.
Speaker 1: A watchman idols by the entrance to the morgue. Turns
Speaker 1: out he's a jazz fan. That, along with a five
Speaker 1: dollars bill, is enough to get them inside.
Speaker 3: Bis you sure you want to do this?
Speaker 1: Jack and Bix are the only living souls in the morgue.
Speaker 1: No doctors, no students, but there is a lone body
Speaker 1: lying on an examination table in the middle of the room.
Speaker 1: She's bloodless, as cold, and smooth as marble. Soon she'll
Speaker 1: be embalmed, redressed, and placed in a pine box a
Speaker 1: modest funeral. More than likely, she comes from a family
Speaker 1: who can only afford the bare minimum. With one foot
Speaker 1: in the grave himself, Bix must have wondered what he'd
Speaker 1: look like when it came time display him out on
Speaker 1: a cold steel table. When Randy told us this story,
Speaker 1: it really hit me because Big stands out to me
Speaker 1: is the kind of person Getler was trying to help,
Speaker 1: trying to save. And the fact that Bis visited the morgue.
Speaker 1: He literally walked the halls where Getler was doing his
Speaker 1: important work. It has a kind of sad irony to it,
Speaker 1: like Getler was working to put the pieces together and
Speaker 1: stop the poisonings. He was desperate to save as many
Speaker 1: people as he could, but it was too late for Bis.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like Bix knew it.
Speaker 6: You know, whether there was this death wish concurrently, It's
Speaker 6: hard to say, but it seems like things developed pretty
Speaker 6: fast in the last few days.
Speaker 1: Bix's last few days are hot. It was August in
Speaker 1: New York. So hot and already addled, Bix can't get
Speaker 1: to sleep. His neighbor's hear him playing his piano in
Speaker 1: the wee hours of the morning. He's seeing people and
Speaker 1: hearing things that aren't there. Understandably, he's fixated on death.
Speaker 1: It comes August sixth, nineteen thirty one, while Bis is
Speaker 1: still in his apartment. He's sweating, shouting that there are
Speaker 1: men under the bed. They have knives, they want to
Speaker 1: kill him. The building supervisor tries to call him Bicks
Speaker 1: down by playing along. He gets on all fours and
Speaker 1: looks under the empty bed. Suddenly, Bix dives down from
Speaker 1: the bed and slams into him. The man struggles to
Speaker 1: catch him. Hell, oh, we need a dot. A nurse
Speaker 1: who lives across the hall runs into help, but the
Speaker 1: commotion is over. Bix goes slack and crumples to the floor.
Speaker 6: And if officially prounced Bis dead. But you said this
Speaker 6: boy is dead.
Speaker 1: Big Spider. Beck's obituary listed his death officially as pneumonia,
Speaker 1: lungs filled with fluo spasms, shooting pains, hallucinations. Formula six
Speaker 1: had done its.
Speaker 3: Job slow and low in sure Sure poor who.
Speaker 1: But the bigger question was would anyone face consequences? SNAFU
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment and Pacific
Speaker 1: Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and
Speaker 1: Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Nevin Calopoli and
Speaker 1: Stephen Wood, with additional writing and story editing from Alissa
Speaker 1: Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canny,
Speaker 1: and Kelsey Albright. Torry Smith is our associate producer. Our
Speaker 1: story editor is nicki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin
Speaker 1: Callapoly and a kimmedy Ekpo Fact checking by Charles Richter.
Speaker 1: Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing music and sound
Speaker 1: designed by Ben Chug, Engineering and technical direction by Nick
Speaker 1: Dooley Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music
Speaker 1: by Dan Rosatto. The role of Mabel Walker will Brandt
Speaker 1: was played by Kerrie Bische. Special thanks to Alison Cohen,
Speaker 1: Daniel Welsh and Ben Ryzak,