Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Violets sat in the parlor of Welsh doctor Edward Hughes Jones.
Speaker 1: He was twice her age, but she was professing her
Speaker 1: love for him. He was so kind and so generous.
Speaker 1: She was an heiress. Her first husband was a soldier
Speaker 1: who died at sea, but his fortune wouldn't become hers
Speaker 1: until her twenty fifth birthday, which was still years away.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, doctor Jones was offering to support Violet financially.
Speaker 1: They would become engaged and she would pay him back
Speaker 1: tenfold in just a few years. She was so grateful
Speaker 1: she burst into tears and embraced him. With the help
Speaker 1: of doctor Jones and other generous locals, Violet was able
Speaker 1: to live the life befitting an heiress. In the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, she stayed in a manor home in Wales
Speaker 1: and wore fined for coats and expensive jewelry, when appraiser
Speaker 1: remarked that she had the finest collection of diamonds he
Speaker 1: had ever seen, more than anything. Violet loved fast cars,
Speaker 1: and she acquired a collection of top of the line automobiles.
Speaker 1: She raced them through the countryside, and her maintenance bills
Speaker 1: grew to thousands of pounds each year, the equivalent to
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars today. But happiness is always fleeting,
Speaker 1: isn't it ed In Violet's case, her lavish lifestyle was
Speaker 1: destined to have an expiration date. On January tewod of
Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine, Violet was driving one of her cars
Speaker 1: on a narrow seaside road just above the wall. She
Speaker 1: lost control and crashed, being thrown from the driver's seat
Speaker 1: and into the ocean. All that was left of her
Speaker 1: was her hat sitting on the road. She was just
Speaker 1: shy of her twenty fifth birthday. Violet's mother was filled
Speaker 1: with grief. She spread the news far and wide of
Speaker 1: her daughter's death, except the police weren't quite as moved
Speaker 1: as she was. There were a few things about the
Speaker 1: car wreck that didn't add up. For one, there was
Speaker 1: no damage to the car other than the driver's side
Speaker 1: window being broken. That was supposedly where Violet had been
Speaker 1: thrown from the car. But that was the other odd thing.
Speaker 1: There was no blood anywhere. If Violet had really gone
Speaker 1: through the window, there should have been blood everywhere. This
Speaker 1: all led investigators to look deeper into Violet herself. They
Speaker 1: found that she was seventeen thousand pounds in debt. That
Speaker 1: amount was about a million dollars today, and there was
Speaker 1: no record of her ever having a rich soldier husband
Speaker 1: who died at sea. Violet Charlesworth, you see, was not
Speaker 1: an heiress, but a prolific con artist who had scammed
Speaker 1: dozens of people out of their money and then faked
Speaker 1: her own death when it came time to pay up.
Speaker 1: As investigators searched for her, she became a global folk hero.
Speaker 1: Although she was a criminal, her ability to successfully pose
Speaker 1: as a member of the upper class and then con
Speaker 1: many of them out of their money was looked upon
Speaker 1: with admiration. Violet was ironically known for wearing a red cloak.
Speaker 1: Many women in the United Kingdom were wearing one in
Speaker 1: her honor, although they stopped once police started to question them,
Speaker 1: thinking that they were potentially Violet, but soon enough they
Speaker 1: would get a much more promising lead. A woman who
Speaker 1: looked like Violets and was going by the name Margaret
Speaker 1: MacLeod was spotted in Scotland and she'd skipped out on
Speaker 1: a hotel bill which definitely sounded like Violet. Reporters found
Speaker 1: her first traveling south by train with a swarm of
Speaker 1: press taking her picture. She had to admit that she was,
Speaker 1: in fact Violet Charlesworth. Over the next several months, Violet's
Speaker 1: celebrity only grew. She can now make her own money
Speaker 1: honestly by giving interviews to the press. She wrote a
Speaker 1: song about her life, she starred in a stage show.
Speaker 1: Producers from Hollywood reached out about a silent film deal,
Speaker 1: but by nineteen ten, investigators had completed their investigation and
Speaker 1: charged both Violets and her mother with fraud. They were
Speaker 1: found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. However,
Speaker 1: they only served three of those years. Once free, Violet
Speaker 1: is said to have moved to Scotland, and after that
Speaker 1: she disappears from history. It's possible that she finally decided
Speaker 1: to live a quiet life, or it's possible that she
Speaker 1: took on a new identity and scammed her way into
Speaker 1: another fabulous existence. Ultimately, though we will never know, The
Speaker 1: press moved on pretty quickly with the sinking of the
Speaker 1: Titanic in nineteen twelve, arguably the biggest news story of
Speaker 1: all time up to that point. The Violet story has
Speaker 1: survived to the modern day for those curious enough to
Speaker 1: learn about it. Although she was a criminal, we can
Speaker 1: all sympathize with her desire to live life among societies elites.
Speaker 1: Her schemes were always creative, although if she could do
Speaker 1: it all over again, maybe she would throw just a
Speaker 1: little bit more creativity behind faking that car wreck. Perhaps
Speaker 1: one of the most tense places on Earth is the
Speaker 1: Demilitarized Zone or the DMZ, that separates North and South
Speaker 1: Korea and acts as a buffer between the two countries.
Speaker 1: It was created through the Armist Disagreement of nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: ending the Bloody Korean War, which had caused the collective
Speaker 1: death of nearly three million people. The agreement also created
Speaker 1: a joint security area at panmud Jam, where North Korean
Speaker 1: officials and the United Nations Command would meet to conduct diplomacy.
Speaker 1: It was, however, an uneasy piece. Numerous clashes still took
Speaker 1: place between North Korea and the UN Command throughout the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, but these skirmishes were generally small
Speaker 1: enough to keep tensions high, but not to inflame larger conflict.
Speaker 1: That is, until the Poplar Tree. The tree had grown
Speaker 1: too large for the UN Command's taste, as it blocked
Speaker 1: the line of sight between a checkpoint and a nearby
Speaker 1: observation post. It was decided that this was unacceptable, and
Speaker 1: so a team of UNC and Korean Service Corps were
Speaker 1: ordered to prune the tree to create a more direct
Speaker 1: line of sight. It would take four attempts to complete.
Speaker 1: The first attempt was halted when North Korea objected, stating
Speaker 1: both sides would have to agree on whether or not
Speaker 1: to cut back the tree. The second attempt was canceled
Speaker 1: due to heavy rain, the third would be deadly. After
Speaker 1: the first two failed attempts, it was decided that two
Speaker 1: US Army officers, Captain Arthur Boniface and First Lieutenant Mark Barrett,
Speaker 1: as well as a Korean Army Captain Kim, would escort
Speaker 1: engineers to the tree in question as security. At first,
Speaker 1: North Korean soldiers merely observed the work, but at eight
Speaker 1: thirty am, a mere fifteen minutes into the job. Opposing
Speaker 1: soldiers approached the site demanding that the work stop, claiming
Speaker 1: that the poplar had been planted by none other than
Speaker 1: the leader of North Korea, Kim Il sung. But when
Speaker 1: that work did not stop, North Korean soldiers seized the
Speaker 1: axes from the workers. In the ensuing brawl, Boniface was
Speaker 1: struck down with confiscated axe handles, and a wounded Barrett
Speaker 1: managed to escape to hide in a nearby ditch. Neither
Speaker 1: man would survive his injuries. Of the three security officers,
Speaker 1: only Captain Kim had survived. Things moved quickly in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of what became known as the Korean axe murder incident.
Speaker 1: American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested bombing barracks on
Speaker 1: the North Korean side, and President Gerald Ford called the
Speaker 1: event a callous and unprovoked murder, but refused to order
Speaker 1: an outright attack. After America's stinging recent loss in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: there was little stomach in the administration for another war.
Speaker 1: A different plan would have to be made. There had
Speaker 1: to be a response that was both adequate for the
Speaker 1: gravity of the moment, but that would stop short of
Speaker 1: inciting violence, and so South Korean and American forces created
Speaker 1: a plan prune the poplar tree in the center of
Speaker 1: the conflict once in for all, using American and Korean
Speaker 1: military assets in a show of force that would discourage
Speaker 1: North Korean violence, and so Operation Paul Bunyan was launched.
Speaker 1: The mission was to be non lethal unless North Korea
Speaker 1: made it otherwise. Of course, that tree would be trimmed,
Speaker 1: and so three days after the attack, a massive convoy
Speaker 1: of South Korean and American trucks arrived at the JSA
Speaker 1: as helicopters circled overhead. They were backed in turn by
Speaker 1: gunships and an aircraft carrier battlegroup in the Sea of Japan.
Speaker 1: Out of the military trucks came two security platoons, who
Speaker 1: were there to guard teams of military engineers, each armed
Speaker 1: with chainsaws, who immediately got to work trimming the poplar
Speaker 1: at the center of everything. Although the North Korean military
Speaker 1: deployed troops with machine guns, they did not act, likely
Speaker 1: cowed by the massive show of force. When the engineers
Speaker 1: were done trimming, they had trimmed away all of the
Speaker 1: branches entirely, leaving a twenty foot tall stump as a
Speaker 1: stark reminder. The event also ended a series of small
Speaker 1: but deadly clashes that had dogged the JSA since the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three Armistice. Occasional deaths would still occur, but
Speaker 1: compared to the decades before the incident, they were few
Speaker 1: and far between. A plaque was placed at the site
Speaker 1: of Boniface and Barrett's murders to honor their sacrifice. In
Speaker 1: the end, the poplar's removal was more than a simple
Speaker 1: pruning job. By wielding chainsaws under the watchful eyes of
Speaker 1: a formidable yet non lethal show of force, the Allies
Speaker 1: sent a clear message aggression would be met with strength,
Speaker 1: but not with renewed war. It was a measured display
Speaker 1: of resolve that turned a flash point of bloodshed into
Speaker 1: a lasting symbol of restraint. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with How Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.