Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: It's kind of an adult Lord of the Flies, you know.
Speaker 2: It really sort of devolves into a situation that's dangerous
Speaker 2: for everybody.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stores. At the height of the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, an oil mogul from la decided to escape
Speaker 1: society with his mistress to create their own utopia on
Speaker 1: a far away land. The problems started when other people
Speaker 1: followed them there. My friend Abbot Kaylor is my guest today.
Speaker 1: She used to write under the name Karen Abbott. Abbot
Speaker 1: tells me the story at the center of her book
Speaker 1: Eden Undone, a true story of sex, murder and utopia
Speaker 1: at the dawn of World War Two. Where did you
Speaker 1: even find the story? I had never heard of any
Speaker 1: of it. I had never heard of George Allen Hancock.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of any of this. So this
Speaker 1: came as a big surprise when I read the book.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about its origin story for you.
Speaker 2: So I was actually researching a different book. I was
Speaker 2: looking into world War two stuff, maybe fourteen years ago
Speaker 2: or so twelve fourteen years ago, and I came across
Speaker 2: a headline in a nineteen forty one newspaper, and I
Speaker 2: actually wonder if I could read it to you, because
Speaker 2: it is it is literally the most absurd and fantastic
Speaker 2: passage I think I've ever read in a newspaper.
Speaker 1: We love that sort of thing on this show, so sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I hope you find it as titillating
Speaker 2: as I did. But here it is. Quote was doctor
Speaker 2: Ritter with his steel teeth poisoned in Paradise was Baroness Eloise,
Speaker 2: known as Crazy Panties, who ruled the island with a
Speaker 2: gun in love, murdered by one of her love slaves
Speaker 2: after she had driven the other to his death. And
Speaker 2: why is Frau Ritter going back to what she once
Speaker 2: called Hell's Volcano, the mystery of the Galapagos Island, which
Speaker 2: Germany covets to be solved at last. So I just
Speaker 2: read that again and again, and I didn't know quite
Speaker 2: what to focus on. Steel dentures, crazy panties, Hell's volcano,
Speaker 2: driving the one lover to death while killing the other one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I just was like, what the fuck is this story?
Speaker 2: And I started digging. I forgot all about the World
Speaker 2: War II project I've been looking into, and I was
Speaker 2: My first order of business was to look up crazy panties.
Speaker 2: I was like, if you are going to be called
Speaker 2: crazy panties, by god.
Speaker 1: You better earn it.
Speaker 2: You better earn that. And she, this woman earned it
Speaker 2: and then some and I became fascinated by the story.
Speaker 2: I pitched it to my publisher at the time. They
Speaker 2: said no. I pitched it to my next publisher, they
Speaker 2: said no. I pitched it to that publisher again they
Speaker 2: said no, And finally finally I got a yes.
Speaker 1: Oh good, thank you. Is the least interesting person the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles oil tycoon who sort of uncovers all of
Speaker 1: this whole. Is this the boring one out of everybody?
Speaker 1: If we all have a boring character in our books.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's fair to say, and which
Speaker 2: is quite quite amazing, because Alan Hancock was a fascinating
Speaker 2: man who anybody and who's in Los Angeles or people
Speaker 2: saidamiliar with Los Angeles with no Hancock Park that's named
Speaker 2: after him, the labrea' tarpits that was his backyard when
Speaker 2: he was growing up. He was an overnight millionaire after
Speaker 2: being a pretty poor, you know, young man growing up there.
Speaker 2: You know what was fascinating about him and his colleagues collectively, though,
Speaker 2: it was this sort of error in American history where
Speaker 2: everybody was suffering from the depression. You know, this is
Speaker 2: early this is nineteen thirty, and then people who were
Speaker 2: not suffering from the depression one of their favorite things
Speaker 2: to do is to take these really extravagant oceanic explorations in.
Speaker 1: The name of science.
Speaker 2: And it was something that people were just starting to
Speaker 2: get involved in terms of looking at exotic creatures and
Speaker 2: the fauna and the flora of unexplored islands and bringing
Speaker 2: those specimens back to the United States for further study.
Speaker 2: In the footsteps of Darwin, of course, you know Darwin
Speaker 2: started all this. It was reignited again by an author
Speaker 2: named William Biebe who wrote a book about the Galapagos,
Speaker 2: and people started picking up that interest again around this
Speaker 2: time period, and it became really, really a popular thing
Speaker 2: to do for these American millionaires in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: So tell me where the story begins for you. Is
Speaker 1: it with Hancock in la meeting with the Smithsonian scientists,
Speaker 1: making this expedition to the Islands. Where does it really begin?
Speaker 2: Well to me, I mean I was first fascinated by
Speaker 2: these German exiles, these people who in the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: when the Wimer Republic was just starting to falter, Hitler
Speaker 2: was coming into power, chaos was starting to start in
Speaker 2: Europe and in Germany in particular, these people decided to
Speaker 2: try to escape their lives, escape civilization, and build a utopia.
Speaker 2: And it began with a doctor named Frederick Ritter, who
Speaker 2: is this really really fascinating character. I mean, he's kind
Speaker 2: of a nineteen thirties like kipster in Cell who studied Nietscha.
Speaker 2: You know, Virtuo signaled by pretending to be a vegetarian.
Speaker 2: But meanwhile he's like eating meat all the time. He
Speaker 2: fancied himself as very important philosopher. His big goal was
Speaker 2: to go to a remote island and implement some of
Speaker 2: his his his theories. He had a lot of theory
Speaker 2: about the effect of sunlight on human skin and raw
Speaker 2: food dieting. I mean, in a way, he was ahead
Speaker 2: of his time, studying the sort of raw food dieting
Speaker 2: and other sort of natural ways of living that you know,
Speaker 2: I guess are commonplace today, but we're sort of revolutionary
Speaker 2: at the time. And he, you know, this was his
Speaker 2: idea to write about these philosophies and his experiments and
Speaker 2: become a household name, become a famous philosopher in the
Speaker 2: manner of nietzscha And he brings along with him a
Speaker 2: woman who had been his patient in Berlin named Dorri Stratch.
Speaker 2: She was suffering from multiple sclerosis, and you know, every
Speaker 2: single doctor she had seen told her it was incurable.
Speaker 2: You know, she has multiple scrosis, it's incurable. But Frederick
Speaker 2: Grinnard decides to tell her no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you are perfectly capable of curing your own multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 2: You just have to want to cure it enough. You
Speaker 2: have to the power is in your mind to cure
Speaker 2: your multiple scoreses. And she kind of falls in love
Speaker 2: with him, She falls for his whole thing. She decides
Speaker 2: he's a genius. They're both going to leave their spouses
Speaker 2: and run off to the Scalapagos Island together and try
Speaker 2: to live out his grandiose dream. And she's going to
Speaker 2: facilitate his writings and his philosophy and his experiments. And
Speaker 2: in the meantime she gets to be has helped me
Speaker 2: and his companion, and she can't think of a higher calling.
Speaker 2: That's in the beginning. Things get a little bit diceier
Speaker 2: as the story goes on.
Speaker 1: Had Ridder done any real planning at all? I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to bring up boring things like sanitation or plumbing.
Speaker 1: It no, okay, it's.
Speaker 2: Actually fascinating what they did. So Ritter, if I could
Speaker 2: refer back to that initial passage I write at the beginning,
Speaker 2: with his steel teeth, doctor Ritter, with his steelt So
Speaker 2: Frederick Gridder was so committed to the idea of life
Speaker 2: on a remote island that he yanked out all of
Speaker 2: his teeth and had them replaced by a set of
Speaker 2: steel dentures. Because the idea was that he didn't want
Speaker 2: to encounter any dental problems on the island. That was
Speaker 2: his big nod to the gravity of what he was
Speaker 2: about to embark on. He also had a philosophy. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just about dental problems. He also had a philosophy
Speaker 2: that if you got rid of your teeth, they're superfluous.
Speaker 2: Your gums could be quote forrny enough to serve his teeth.
Speaker 2: They could adapt. So it was kind of a human
Speaker 2: evolution idea in his mind that our gums would just
Speaker 2: become teeth in the absence of teeth. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: what he failed to account for eventually was that his
Speaker 2: gum shrank a bit and the dentires did not stay improperly.
Speaker 2: So they're rattling around in his mouth a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's not sexy at all. Does she care? Does care?
Speaker 2: Well? I think that Dory was having her own issues.
Speaker 2: You know, she was experiencing dental problems, and her teeth
Speaker 2: were sort of falling out, and he yanked a few
Speaker 2: of them to the point where she became embarrassed. Once
Speaker 2: these American explorers started encountering them, she became embarrassed. She
Speaker 2: didn't want to smile. She didn't want to talk, she
Speaker 2: didn't want to show her sheep. So they would actually
Speaker 2: share the dentures at times. And I really don't think
Speaker 2: there's a grosser phrase in the English language than shared
Speaker 2: seal dentures, like I took pretty bad. It's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: But that was the way that they approached that. And
Speaker 2: you know, they did give Alay a lot of their possessions.
Speaker 2: But as for that, you know, Frederick was actually a
Speaker 2: kind of talented inventor. He was able to sort of
Speaker 2: rag up a shower for them that came out of
Speaker 2: the spring. He attached the cartridge and sort of like
Speaker 2: a hose contraption, and he was actually able to make
Speaker 2: a regular household. Floriana and the island that they went
Speaker 2: to was an interesting choice because it's barren and descelin.
Speaker 2: The Glacos Islands are not a very They're not really
Speaker 2: this sort of thing you think of when you think
Speaker 2: of tropical island. They're not these beautiful sandy beaches with
Speaker 2: these lush landscapes and palm trees and beautiful bewater. It's
Speaker 2: all lava rock, not a lot of fertile soil. Is
Speaker 2: very dry, it's very barren if there is any soil
Speaker 2: that's able to be cultivated, which they found. It was
Speaker 2: up in the highlands where you get the sort of
Speaker 2: missed from the mountains that are there, all the volcanic mountains.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a volcanic area, so you get the
Speaker 2: miss from that and sort of a spring that runs
Speaker 2: from that. But the Floriana where they settled only had
Speaker 2: one spring, so it was a very strategical location, which
Speaker 2: also causes problems later on with the other settlers. Everybody
Speaker 2: wanted close proximity to the spring.
Speaker 1: Of course, now Ritter and Dory are both together, how
Speaker 1: are other people showing up on this island? Is he
Speaker 1: recruiting a lot of different people? Is he the leader
Speaker 1: of this? Like who finds the island? And how does
Speaker 1: this first sort of develop so that we have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a civilization.
Speaker 2: So Frederick's idea was that it was going to be
Speaker 2: just him and Dory. It was going to be a
Speaker 2: private utopia, just the two of them. They didn't want
Speaker 2: any other company, or so fret Or claims. They just
Speaker 2: wanted to sort of be by themselves and cultivate this
Speaker 2: utopia on their own. What happens so the American Explorers
Speaker 2: throw a wrench into that. There was a man named
Speaker 2: Eugene MacDonald who actually found the Zenith radio. He was
Speaker 2: a Chicago millionaire, and he also was sort of a playboy,
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Of a it's like a bad boy, yeah, a little
Speaker 1: bad boy.
Speaker 2: He's a bit of a nineteen thirties bad boy. He
Speaker 2: was a big drinker. He liked to shoot his gun indiscriminately.
Speaker 2: He collected guns. He actually collected the gun reportedly that
Speaker 2: that al Capone had used in the Balentine State massacres.
Speaker 2: He was a sort of Chicago the Chicago bad playboy.
Speaker 2: So he shows up in nineteen twenty nine, and it's
Speaker 2: at a time period when Dory and Friedrich are having
Speaker 2: a little bit of trouble. You know, they start out okay.
Speaker 2: Friedrich's kind of a difficult character live was, to say
Speaker 2: the least, which I get into. The relationship is sort
Speaker 2: of up and down and up and down, and Dorry's
Speaker 2: trying her best to keep the peace. Eugene McDonald shows
Speaker 2: up and he's shocked to find people on this island.
Speaker 2: He thought it was uninhabited. They talked to him. He
Speaker 2: gives them scenes, He gives them the supplies, and he
Speaker 2: tells them he'll be back, He'll stay in touch with them.
Speaker 2: He's fascinated by the experiment they're doing. But achieve McDonald
Speaker 2: goes back and sends out a wire to all the
Speaker 2: newspaper across the country, across the world. I discovered Adam
Speaker 2: and Eve on the island of Floriana. You know, I
Speaker 2: discovered these two people. They are, you know, these two
Speaker 2: eccentric Germans trying to create their life together on this island.
Speaker 2: And wow, what a crazy thing I discovered. So that's
Speaker 2: when the international publicity starts, much to Dori and Friedrich's
Speaker 2: you know, dismay, and the word reaches Germany and another
Speaker 2: family decides to come after that.
Speaker 1: So these are people from Germany who are fleeing. Are
Speaker 1: they fleeing anything like any sort of like persecution having
Speaker 1: to do with World War One? You know, World War
Speaker 1: two coming up later.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this second family, it's the Whitmer family. Like Friedrich,
Speaker 2: Heinz Whitmer was a veteran of the Great War. Both
Speaker 2: had post traumatic stress disorder, I think from their service
Speaker 2: and Hines had worked for a high ranking official in
Speaker 2: the Weimar Republicmer Republic was crumbling, and you know, his
Speaker 2: boss was an avowed enemy of Hitler, so there was
Speaker 2: some fear of retaliation for Hines, I think, in just
Speaker 2: sort of a general sense that his political situation might
Speaker 2: come to light and he might get in trouble. In
Speaker 2: addition to that, he had taken up with a lover.
Speaker 2: He also left his spouse, and she left her spouse
Speaker 2: and they were together. And Hines had his son from
Speaker 2: his first marriage, and this son was a teenage son, Harry,
Speaker 2: who had been sickly since Burt and nearly blind. So
Speaker 2: they couldn't afford a sanitarium. They couldn't afford a hospital,
Speaker 2: so they decided that it might behoove the boy to
Speaker 2: move to a more tropical climate and it might sort
Speaker 2: of heal some of his ailments. So all of those
Speaker 2: factors went into Hines thinking that moving to Floriana to
Speaker 2: follow in the footsteps of doctor Ritter and Dory might
Speaker 2: be a good idea.
Speaker 1: So now we have two couples who have left all
Speaker 1: of their spouses for each other, right, and then a
Speaker 1: teenage boy who sounds like he could use some medical help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Eugene McDonald doesn't come back, does he? Does he? End
Speaker 1: up shacking up there too.
Speaker 2: No, he SE's in touch with them. I think he
Speaker 2: does return a second time, but he does not end
Speaker 2: up None of the American explorers end up moving in.
Speaker 2: They just keep coming back and reporting on the situation.
Speaker 1: They just ruined things, Yeah, they ruin things.
Speaker 2: And then and then once things are really you know,
Speaker 2: once the ship really hits the fan, they start digging
Speaker 2: through the pieces and trying to figure out what happens.
Speaker 1: Now, how do these two couples in this teenage boy?
Speaker 1: How does everybody get along? I feel like this is
Speaker 1: the second or third story I've done about a remote
Speaker 1: island with people on it. And what I had learned
Speaker 1: in the pattern was that everybody seems to kind of
Speaker 1: pick up a role, and they do their they have
Speaker 1: their own role, and when something happens to one person,
Speaker 1: it sort of makes everything fall apart. It's amazing how
Speaker 1: you can have such a small community and if you
Speaker 1: remove one person, or if that person rebels against the community,
Speaker 1: it can really devastate them. So how are these people
Speaker 1: getting along for now?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, once Ritner and Dory found out that
Speaker 2: Heinz Whitmerner's family were coming, I mean they were completely
Speaker 2: angry about it. They were furious, really, they did not
Speaker 2: want anyone else there. They were very disturbed by the
Speaker 2: idea that Hines and his girlfriend Margaret Whitmer, you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of common law spouses at that point. She
Speaker 2: eventually came when they eventually moved to the Glaco. She
Speaker 2: was pregnant with Heinz's child. So the immediate implication was that, oh,
Speaker 2: doctor Ritter is going to be there to help with
Speaker 2: the baby. He's going to help with the delivery, he's
Speaker 2: going to help Margaret with her medical care. He's going
Speaker 2: to make sure the baby is okay. And doctor Ritter
Speaker 2: and Dorry both resented this, you know, they resented the imposition.
Speaker 2: He didn't go there to practice as a doctor. He
Speaker 2: didn't go there to serve, you know, he was getting
Speaker 2: away from all of that. That's not what he was
Speaker 2: there for. So things start off really rocky with them,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like, look, you you do your
Speaker 2: thing over there, we'll do our thing over there, and
Speaker 2: let's just try to coexist peacefully without really involving each other,
Speaker 2: ourselves in each other's lives. That does start changing. Margaret
Speaker 2: does give birth and she does have to call it
Speaker 2: behind Printer Gritter and Frederick Gritter. You know, the avowed
Speaker 2: vegetarian often asks Hymes for a cut of meat. He
Speaker 2: always says the meat is for his chickens. He feeds
Speaker 2: meat to his chickens. But he's always asking Himes for
Speaker 2: a cut of meat. And it becomes a running joke
Speaker 2: with Margaret Whitmer and heins Whitmer that Frederick is, you know,
Speaker 2: the first thing from a vegetarian they could possibly be,
Speaker 2: and they just laugh about him. It's kind of private
Speaker 2: joke with them.
Speaker 1: Are these five people prepared to live in the wilderness?
Speaker 1: I watch alone? Have you seen a loan on History
Speaker 1: Channel before? No? Oh my goodness. So they throw these
Speaker 1: you know, these survivalists, most of them are professional survivalists
Speaker 1: into like really remote areas in Canada with very few
Speaker 1: supplies and they just have to last as long as
Speaker 1: they can. You know, it's you and and against nature
Speaker 1: and you have to have some skills. What is day
Speaker 1: to day life for these people who I presume we're
Speaker 1: not professional survivalists in any way? Are they hunting or
Speaker 1: fishing or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean they're mostly hunting, especially Hines and Margaret
Speaker 2: because they you know, they do eat meat. They hunt
Speaker 2: a lot. Dori and Frederick have a garden. They sort
Speaker 2: of start cultivating a garden that's alternately looming well and
Speaker 2: dry and barren. You know, sort of the mercurial weather
Speaker 2: down there just messes with the garden at times. But
Speaker 2: they're able to cultivate a lot of a pretty healthy garden.
Speaker 2: Mostly they eat a lot of eggs. They have chickens.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Fredrick's you know, sneaking some meat on the side.
Speaker 2: But they sort of, you know, figure out how to
Speaker 2: make it work. It's backbreaking work building a house from scratch.
Speaker 2: I talk a lot about how they did that, and
Speaker 2: just weatherproofing against the rains that could come there. You know.
Speaker 2: I went to visit the Galapagos Floriana Island in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, and I visited the areas where they had lived,
Speaker 2: and you know, it is still it is very rough terrain.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't imagine how do you do and in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty without the benefit of any modern tools or
Speaker 2: internet or access to immediate help, especially if you have
Speaker 2: multiple scrosis. And Dory had sort of a limp leg
Speaker 2: as an effective effect of multiple scruesis. Now she didn't
Speaker 2: just roll over and die in the first couple of
Speaker 2: weeks of exhaustion. I will never understand. I mean, the bravery. Say,
Speaker 2: you know, the characters all are very flawed people, but say,
Speaker 2: you know, you cannot dispute their bravery and just the
Speaker 2: balls they had to really just make it go of
Speaker 2: this and make it work well.
Speaker 1: Margaret with a new baby and then this teenage son.
Speaker 1: It just seems like the majority of the people need
Speaker 1: some sort of medical regular you would think medical attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and it's sort of just remarkable. You know,
Speaker 2: they just make do you know, she feeds the baby
Speaker 2: what she cultivates from the garden. She breastfeeds obviously until
Speaker 2: she until she can't do it anymore. But they get desperate.
Speaker 2: This is what makes it interesting in terms of the explorers.
Speaker 2: You know, here are all people who said, we don't
Speaker 2: want help from the outside. But onilst these explorers keep
Speaker 2: coming and bringing seeds and bringing food and bringing preserves
Speaker 2: and bringing milk and bringing this and that, they start
Speaker 2: welcoming the explorers. They start welcoming them, and they start
Speaker 2: competing for their extension and for their gifts. They're sort
Speaker 2: of a mad scramble that starts and a competition among
Speaker 2: all of these people that only and also causes a
Speaker 2: lot of envy and anger in the community.
Speaker 1: So I've had read about explorers coming from all over
Speaker 1: the world and they're going to these islands where they
Speaker 1: are quote unquote natives, and they're bringing all of these gifts.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what's happening here in a really
Speaker 1: odd way with people affluent enough to be able to
Speaker 1: live this sort of lifestyle. Are they what are they
Speaker 1: bringing to them?
Speaker 2: Oh? So it's mostly at Hancock. It's Alan Hancock, it's
Speaker 2: Vincent Astor, it's Eg McDonald, it's all American. Anybody who's
Speaker 2: visiting the Gladgos Islands at this period of time because
Speaker 2: the Great Depression was on, was rich and they did bring,
Speaker 2: you know, seeds and hands of food and milk and
Speaker 2: sort of guns, ammunition tools, garden tools, anything that might
Speaker 2: help facilitate life on the island for these people. And
Speaker 2: it's a system that works very well, you know, until
Speaker 2: Crazy Panty shows up. So she comes a little bit later,
Speaker 2: and then you know, it prows another sort of element
Speaker 2: into the competition for the explorers' gifts.
Speaker 1: So I was going to ask, what the next big
Speaker 1: event is. Is crazy panties the next big event that
Speaker 1: happens to this to the utopian island.
Speaker 2: So crazy panties is the next big event? Crazy panties. Okay,
Speaker 2: her real name is Antoinette. It's always been misreported as Eloise.
Speaker 2: Her name was not Eloise. Her name was Antoinette. I
Speaker 2: did a lot of research into her lineage. You know,
Speaker 2: people also falsely reported that she's not a real baroness.
Speaker 2: She actually was a real baroness. Came from a pretty
Speaker 2: aristocratic family, a well connected family, wealthy family in Vienna.
Speaker 2: So when this story happens, she is living in Paris
Speaker 2: with a husband, but she also sort of is in
Speaker 2: Paris culture at this time. You know, she's sort of
Speaker 2: this sort of was described as orgiastic by one of
Speaker 2: her contemporaries, and I think that was literal. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of sex happening around the
Speaker 2: baroness and she decides to you know, there's various sort
Speaker 2: of stories about why she fled Paris. I talk about
Speaker 2: them in the book. But she ends up leaving Paris
Speaker 2: with two of her lovers that she was with at
Speaker 2: the time. One was a business partner, kind of a
Speaker 2: demoted lover. The other one was her preferred lover. There's
Speaker 2: a hierarchy. There's a definite hierarchy that's happening.
Speaker 1: Well, you're doomed if you're a demoted lover, I guess
Speaker 1: in any situation.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like it was kind of like
Speaker 2: the reverse Sister Wives. You know. It was like she
Speaker 2: was the head of the family and she had various
Speaker 2: lovers of importance and degrees. And she also brings along
Speaker 2: a native Ecuadorian man who who had been living in
Speaker 2: Paris and doing work for her. She brings him along
Speaker 2: because of course he's going to be helpful in this situation.
Speaker 2: He can help her her. Her plan is come to
Speaker 2: the Floriana and make a hotel in the spirit of Miami.
Speaker 2: She wants to turn Floriana into Miami for American tourists
Speaker 2: and seduce American tourists and become a sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: a well known person among Americans, possibly get to Hollywood.
Speaker 2: But this is her goal. So you can see it's
Speaker 2: immediately at odds with Frederick Ritter and with the winners,
Speaker 2: who really just wanted to coexist peacefully on this island.
Speaker 2: But she comes in and announces, Hey, I'm turning this
Speaker 2: into Miami. I'm bringing on my head. I'm going to
Speaker 2: seduce everybody. All the Americans are going to come and
Speaker 2: love me. And she went for it. This woman, I mean,
Speaker 2: in a way, she was this really kind of like Braisen.
Speaker 2: She did not give a fox. She went for anything
Speaker 2: she wanted. She just she just did not care what
Speaker 2: anybody thought.
Speaker 1: But did she understand what rough living this would be
Speaker 1: when she got did she understand there's no infrastructure? I mean,
Speaker 1: she would have wanted indoor plumbing and stuff.
Speaker 2: She realized that, you know, she was going to have
Speaker 2: to build a hotel. She calls her hotel the Hacienda Paradiso,
Speaker 2: and she leaves it in the hands of her ecutoring
Speaker 2: contractor and her two lovers to build this hotel. You know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't have any real modern conveniences. Of course, I
Speaker 2: think anybody who was visiting Florian at this time knew
Speaker 2: that they would, you know, be shitting in a hole somewhere.
Speaker 2: There's not going to be any kind of you know,
Speaker 2: luxurious bathroom set up. But it was it was, you know,
Speaker 2: she ended up cultivating a nice garden she draped the
Speaker 2: inside with the sort of exotic silks and rugs and
Speaker 2: made a pretty picture out of it. She had a
Speaker 2: very sort of picturesque boudoir that she liked to take
Speaker 2: photos in. You know, there was all kinds of rumors.
Speaker 2: One visitor called her hotel a quote festering sex complex,
Speaker 2: So if that gives you an idea, but needless to say,
Speaker 2: you know, she shows up and the first thing she
Speaker 2: does is announced that she's going to live by the
Speaker 2: Whigber's house, and she puts her feet in their drinking
Speaker 2: water and their water supply, and she just basically from
Speaker 2: the start has no problem antagonizing everybody, including Frederick Ridder,
Speaker 2: including the Whitmers. She's immediately sort of establishing herself as
Speaker 2: as a person who's going to do whatever she wants
Speaker 2: and she doesn't care.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask what the reaction was, are
Speaker 1: either of these two men, the heads of these families
Speaker 1: or whatever we're calling them, Are these men who have
Speaker 1: ever had any kind of a pension for violence in
Speaker 1: the past. I don't get a sense for what they
Speaker 1: were like. If they were very volatile people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in the manner of Frederick Ridder, I
Speaker 2: think he had after effects from his.
Speaker 1: War service, yeah, PTSD stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that there is a little bit
Speaker 2: of violence left over from that. Although he you know,
Speaker 2: he was kind of a very interesting he's a fascinating character,
Speaker 2: but he's full of contradictions. And you know, as he
Speaker 2: progressed himself to be a very peaceful person. In fact,
Speaker 2: so peaceful ones he said, but he did not even
Speaker 2: like to pull potatoes from the earth because it involved
Speaker 2: yanking something from its roots. It was no too violent
Speaker 2: an act for him, you know, but I think he was.
Speaker 2: I think he was severely, severely disturbed by his experiences
Speaker 2: in the war.
Speaker 1: So the baroness comes toning along this Ecuadorian contractor and
Speaker 1: these two men who were her lovers, and she sets
Speaker 1: up shop right next to the Whitmers. What happens next?
Speaker 1: What's the big thing? They can't be happy about this,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure are they arguing with her all the time?
Speaker 1: How are they handling it?
Speaker 2: You know, it goes through period those where you know,
Speaker 2: after Margaret has her baby, everybody tries to get along.
Speaker 2: They're sort of a period of peace and magnanimous feeling,
Speaker 2: you know, and sort of just let's all get along.
Speaker 2: It really coincides with the visitors of the you know,
Speaker 2: the American visits. You know, whenever an American shows up
Speaker 2: with a yacht full of goodies, you know, competition starts again.
Speaker 2: Is the baroness stealing things from the Whitmers? Is she
Speaker 2: taking milk from the baby? Is she doing this? Is
Speaker 2: she is she hoarding everything for herself? Or the Winnmer's hoarding?
Speaker 2: What is Frederick Britters stealing? You know, there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of accusations and suspicions that start festering because nobody trusts
Speaker 2: each other, and it leads to a couple of accusations, fights, arguments,
Speaker 2: and then a simmering down period because people, you know,
Speaker 2: the escalation gets very dangerous and people keep pulling back,
Speaker 2: and people keep pulling back, and then the next time
Speaker 2: it happens, it just flares higher, and then people pulls back,
Speaker 2: and then it flares higher. So it's just sort of
Speaker 2: this continuous pattern of let's try to keep the peace.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the piece has got the piece is exploding.
Speaker 2: We can't we can't sort of contain what's going to
Speaker 2: happen here.
Speaker 1: What is the motivation of explorers like Eugene McDonald to
Speaker 1: come back again and again. What are they getting out
Speaker 1: of bringing gifts to these people? They're not journalists, what
Speaker 1: are they getting out of it?
Speaker 2: I think that it was sort of a point of pride.
Speaker 2: I mean for Eugene McDonald, it was I discovered these people.
Speaker 2: You know, it was that and also just curiosity. I mean,
Speaker 2: these people were interested and ostensibly in the wildlife of
Speaker 2: Floriana and the Galapagos, and what does it say, you know,
Speaker 2: these human beings were the most exotic specimens of all
Speaker 2: you know, look at these people. So they just became
Speaker 2: like a circus curiosity that people wanted to keep track of.
Speaker 2: And there were, you know, reports in the newspapers back
Speaker 2: in the United States that I think were a kind
Speaker 2: of welcome distraction from the bad news of the depression.
Speaker 2: You know how dowur the thirties were, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of became an aspirational thing. Couldn't we all just
Speaker 2: leave our very difficult lives, especially at that time period
Speaker 2: and build a new life on an island where we
Speaker 2: didn't have such worries. We could live off the land,
Speaker 2: we didn't have to worry about a paycheck. Money is
Speaker 2: in money doesn't matter here, and so it sort of
Speaker 2: became a fascination and a dream, and I think the
Speaker 2: explorers fed into that. And in the case of instein
Speaker 2: Ast and Hancock, they became very good friends with the exiles.
Speaker 2: They became invested in their lives, and I was able
Speaker 2: to cap into a bunch of archives that had never
Speaker 2: been published or written about before they newly donated. You know,
Speaker 2: Hancock became their closest confidant.
Speaker 1: So you have these explorers kind of going back and
Speaker 1: forth and the German exiles are competing for their attention.
Speaker 1: How long does everything proceed on this island where everybody
Speaker 1: is living not happily but just sort of their coexisting.
Speaker 1: Is this years? How long does this last before the
Speaker 1: next big event?
Speaker 2: There's a series of little earthquakes. I would say once
Speaker 2: the Baroness arrives. There's never a moment of true peace.
Speaker 2: There's just little little earthquakes that happen. There are incidents
Speaker 2: that so disturbed Frederick and Hines that they try to
Speaker 2: seek help from Macadorian officials and say, this woman is crazy,
Speaker 2: this woman is crazy. We need your help, we need
Speaker 2: your official intervention.
Speaker 1: It's more serious than feed in the drinking water.
Speaker 2: I assume then yes, I will say there's medical attention required.
Speaker 2: But it's not only competition up among the settlers. Within
Speaker 2: the baroness's own camp, she starts pitting her two lovers
Speaker 2: against each other in ways that are increasingly disturbing. One
Speaker 2: of them decides that, you know, he has to flee,
Speaker 2: he has to seek refuge elsewhere. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: like all of the chaos that's happening outside in the
Speaker 2: real world. You know, she's managed to create a microcosm
Speaker 2: of it on this little island.
Speaker 1: Do you think had she not been introduced to this
Speaker 1: so I talk about, you have a small civilization, and
Speaker 1: he throws some one person in the mix, and look
Speaker 1: how much it changes. Do you think that the Whitmer's
Speaker 1: and Ritter and his girlfriend slash wife, would they have
Speaker 1: been able to just sort of live their lives forever
Speaker 1: it had the Baroness not been introduced to this little ecosystem.
Speaker 2: I will say this, The Whippers are still there. Whitmer
Speaker 2: descendants are still on Floriana Island. Wow. I met Hines
Speaker 2: and Margaret's daughter. She's in her eighties now, their daughter
Speaker 2: is still alive. They run two hotels on that island.
Speaker 2: So the Whitmers. The Whitmer sort of got the game right.
Speaker 2: They knew how to play, they knew how to survive.
Speaker 2: They're remarkable people, especially given Margaret, who I think is
Speaker 2: kind of a low key mastermind of things. You know,
Speaker 2: she always knew more than.
Speaker 1: What she let on.
Speaker 2: And this woman was just a badass. I mean she
Speaker 2: went out and hunted wild wore on her own and
Speaker 2: middle of the light the night, she gave birth to
Speaker 2: a child alone in the middle of the night, without
Speaker 2: any assistance. And they really were serious about it, and
Speaker 2: I think they're the people who are most prepared and
Speaker 2: therefore had the most success.
Speaker 1: Well, the Baroness is there and things kind of get
Speaker 1: ratcheted up. You know, you said that there's a series
Speaker 1: of small earthquakes. What's kind of the next thing that
Speaker 1: happens that you feel like shifts your narrative. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it would be like the climax or what
Speaker 1: you would want to call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say two people go missing, that becomes
Speaker 2: something that the explorers start investigating.
Speaker 1: So what is motivating the explorers? They just want the headlines.
Speaker 1: They like to be in the talk of the news
Speaker 1: is that what it really is.
Speaker 2: Well, I think at this point they're very invested in
Speaker 2: these lives, you know, I think that there was a
Speaker 2: genuine friendship.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Vincent asked her became such good friends with Dorian Frederick
Speaker 2: that he would go visit them, and when other people came,
Speaker 2: when other just random Americans would show up, Astor was
Speaker 2: the one who would you know, lead the tour around
Speaker 2: around Fredo, which was the name of their house. He
Speaker 2: was invested in our lives, and Hancock, especially Hancock was
Speaker 2: still very serious about collecting Glackago's specimens. You know, he
Speaker 2: actually did do some good conservation efforts, but he always
Speaker 2: made time to stop for Dorian Frederick, especially when two
Speaker 2: of the exiles go missing. I think he feels responsible
Speaker 2: and involved that he has to sort of take it
Speaker 2: upon himself to investigate what was going on and be
Speaker 2: a source of help and guidance and escape if need be.
Speaker 1: Tell me the direction that we can go, so I
Speaker 1: know it doesn't spoil too much of your book, but
Speaker 1: that we can feel like we have like a sense
Speaker 1: for where everything's going and how we can conclude. And
Speaker 1: then I'm going to want to talk about of course,
Speaker 1: like what the island's like today and how it's developed
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. So what do you think?
Speaker 2: So I think that, you know, it turns to me
Speaker 2: it's kind of an adult Lord of the Flies, you know.
Speaker 2: It really sort of devolves into a situation that's dangerous
Speaker 2: for everybody. It's desperate. I think they're in a desperate situation.
Speaker 2: You know, if you just imagine two people are missing.
Speaker 2: You know, in the case of Dory, who I would
Speaker 2: say is one of my main narrators, you know, is
Speaker 2: she protecting somebody who was involved in this?
Speaker 1: Does she know this?
Speaker 2: Does she know the extent of if Fredrick Gritter is involved?
Speaker 2: She and Margaret wrote pretty amazing memoirs, and you read
Speaker 2: them in hindsight, you know, from this distance, and you
Speaker 2: wonder how much they kept out of their memoirs, how
Speaker 2: much they really knew. And it's something that I grappled
Speaker 2: with in the writing of this, because there are two
Speaker 2: different versions of what happened, and I can't sit here
Speaker 2: today and say this is true or this is true.
Speaker 2: So I sort of had to present both and you know,
Speaker 2: see what was most factual and present post versions and
Speaker 2: maybe flow to theory or two, But there's no definitive
Speaker 2: answers here. I definitely think Margaret Whitmer knew more than
Speaker 2: what she led on without a doubt. So the men
Speaker 2: did not write memoirs. Brederick did write a memoir. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he read about more, but it's in German. I had
Speaker 2: to have it translated, and it doesn't it's not as
Speaker 2: not as much about his feelings as his accomplishments, which
Speaker 2: seems pretty.
Speaker 1: It's on brand for somebody like that.
Speaker 2: Pretty on brand exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so the book, the back of your book
Speaker 1: talks about you know, them finding two mummified bodies, so
Speaker 1: we know two people are dead, right, yes, okay, So
Speaker 1: we have two people that eventually are going to be recovered,
Speaker 1: and there's a kind of a it sounds like a
Speaker 1: murder mystery. So ultimately we know that at least one
Speaker 1: of the Whitmers survives and continues to be on the island.
Speaker 1: How does this island develop after whatever happens happens here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I could, you know, go back and just
Speaker 2: talk about the history of Florien a little bit and
Speaker 2: then go into how it is today. So Florida I
Speaker 2: was always this fascinating history it's a smaller island in
Speaker 2: the glac Goes. It's in the southern part of the islands.
Speaker 2: It had this dark history. It was it was the
Speaker 2: glock of his first penal colony. It was where they
Speaker 2: shipped all their prisoners. The first and known inhabitant was
Speaker 2: this pirate named Patrick Watkins, who was sort of notorious
Speaker 2: for terrorizing anybody who would come by. He lived in
Speaker 2: the caves. There were these caves that people move into
Speaker 2: when they first go into the island, and it's always,
Speaker 2: you know, it's always rumored the Patrick Watkin's ghost is there.
Speaker 2: Native Ecuadorians are very afraid of Floriana at night, at
Speaker 2: least back in that time here in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: they did not like to go thereafter dark because it's
Speaker 2: sort of full of lore. It was ruled for a
Speaker 2: time by a dictator who was very vicious to his people.
Speaker 2: He was eventually overthrown and murdered because there was a
Speaker 2: coupe and it just sort of anything about this island.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of dark death lore and just
Speaker 2: sort of unsavory characters. That reputation carries over today a
Speaker 2: little bit. You know, when Ecuadorians talk about Floriana. They
Speaker 2: now give tours about this history and sort of talk
Speaker 2: about that and give tour about where Patrick Watkins had
Speaker 2: lived and sort of all of the people's since who
Speaker 2: had come. You know, there was also a group of
Speaker 2: Norwegians who tried to build a colony there before, right
Speaker 2: before the Germans and the Ritters and Dory came over,
Speaker 2: and they failed spractacularly. So it was kind of when
Speaker 2: when Doriy and Frederick showed up there, they were trying
Speaker 2: to do something in a lasting way that nobody had
Speaker 2: been able to do. You know, the Norwegians did not
Speaker 2: last very long at all, so you know, they arrived
Speaker 2: there right in the tail of their failed predecessors, and
Speaker 2: that was something that very much colored their initial, at
Speaker 2: least Doriy's initial perception of the island. She's always talking
Speaker 2: about how foreboding it is. Everywhere she looks, she sees
Speaker 2: an oma of something evil happening. You know, Usually a
Speaker 2: narrative nonfiction, you know, the writer has to sort of
Speaker 2: create foreshadowing and the sense of foreboding if something's dark
Speaker 2: is about to happen. But there was so much foreboding
Speaker 2: on her part that my editor was like I like
Speaker 2: that all of those foreboting is coming from the character,
Speaker 2: not from you. But even it's too much, you got
Speaker 2: to dial it back because she just everywhere she looked,
Speaker 2: she saw something evil in this island. And I think
Speaker 2: that when worrying today, are sort of really proud of
Speaker 2: the history, at least of the people I talk to,
Speaker 2: the wonderful people I talked to when I went there.
Speaker 1: Did either of these two women who use their memoirs,
Speaker 1: did either of them ever turn to their partners and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm clocking out of this, let's go back home.
Speaker 2: There was talk about Dorry occasionally wanted to say that
Speaker 2: she wanted to go home, and then she would be
Speaker 2: defying and say, I'm not leaving. I even if I
Speaker 2: die here, this is my destiny. It's going to be
Speaker 2: my destiny to die with Frederick. It's going to be
Speaker 2: my destiny to die getting his important work out into
Speaker 2: the world. So Dory definitely wavered. And you can understand
Speaker 2: once you read more into her relationship with Frederick and
Speaker 2: how valuable that could be, you understand why Dorry sort
Speaker 2: of had some ideas about getting the hell out of there.
Speaker 2: Once in a while, Margaret that family was more stable.
Speaker 2: I think that they were just sort of like if
Speaker 2: you could just find like a normal, normal family die
Speaker 2: And I think that they were the perfect family to
Speaker 2: really give that a go, because they thrive there. The
Speaker 2: Whitmers thrive there, and you know, it takes a certain
Speaker 2: level of pragmatism to do that, and I think that
Speaker 2: they were just built for it.
Speaker 1: Was this murder mystery of yours. Is this the biggest
Speaker 1: event that ends up happening in the history of this island?
Speaker 2: I think it is. I think it's safe to say.
Speaker 2: You know, when anybody talks about flour around today, it's
Speaker 2: usually the foremost event that comes up in people's minds.
Speaker 1: So what happens after the event, you know, where you
Speaker 1: have the explorers going and investigating what ends up happening
Speaker 1: with the island? Does somebody buy it? Is it developed
Speaker 1: by the Whitmers and more people come and now it's
Speaker 1: the size of Puerto Rico or something? Now would tell
Speaker 1: me about it?
Speaker 2: Now? Yeah, No, it's a good question. It was completely
Speaker 2: uninhabited when Dori and Frederick showed up. There were boats
Speaker 2: that would come by, there were people who will come
Speaker 2: and do fishing, enterprises. Once in a while, there was
Speaker 2: a man who would ferry people from the mainland of
Speaker 2: Ecuador to the islands. You know, so there are people
Speaker 2: here and there, but they were the only people living
Speaker 2: there for until the Whitmer showed up. After all of
Speaker 2: this happened, you know, the Whitmer stayed there. There was
Speaker 2: another very prominent family called the Cruise family. They are like,
Speaker 2: you know, the Floriana family. I think you could say
Speaker 2: they own a lot of the land up in the
Speaker 2: highlands where where a lot of this took place. Wonderful people,
Speaker 2: really big family. I think there's about four hundred people
Speaker 2: who live there now. The restaurants, the situation is very interesting.
Speaker 2: If you want to go eat there, you have to
Speaker 2: call the ahead of time. They don't just open for service.
Speaker 2: You have to say, I would like dinner reservation at
Speaker 2: this time, and then they go. You like, the only
Speaker 2: people in the dinner. They'll cook just for you. You know.
Speaker 2: It's still kind of a difficult life. It's still sort
Speaker 2: of remote. They still have delivery issues, they have Wi
Speaker 2: Fi issues. When I went there, I you know, I
Speaker 2: could go days at a time without connecting anywhere. But
Speaker 2: it's it's a I mean, it's an absolutely stunning island,
Speaker 2: and the people are amazing. I think I met every
Speaker 2: every member of the cruise family when I was there,
Speaker 2: and they're all they're all really wonderful. But it's a
Speaker 2: thriving island now. It thrives on tourism. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of conservation efforts going on that they're all very proud of.
Speaker 2: During the time in my book, the glavibus tortoise was
Speaker 2: extinct on Floriana. They had been long extinct actually, and
Speaker 2: they're trying to do all of these repopulation efforts and
Speaker 2: conservation efforts in terms of bringing back dangered species.
Speaker 1: So when Hines and Margaret's daughter passes away, will she
Speaker 1: be the last of that family on the island.
Speaker 2: No, she has two daughters. Yeah, so they are running
Speaker 2: two hotels on the island, and so there are still
Speaker 2: Whitmer's there.
Speaker 1: What did she have to say about everything that happened
Speaker 1: that's the focus of your book. Did she have an
Speaker 1: opinion about any of it?
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you asked that. You know, she would
Speaker 2: in her later years invite journalists to come over, you know,
Speaker 2: for them a glass of orange wine, maybe accept a
Speaker 2: gift of fifty dollars or something, and she would talk
Speaker 2: about the old days, and she would talk about the
Speaker 2: Baroness and her of the Baroness, and she would talk
Speaker 2: about Dory and her bressions of Dory and Ritter. But
Speaker 2: she would never she would never talk about what she
Speaker 2: thinks happened. She would say in Spanish, and I'm not
Speaker 2: going My Spanish is too or for me to say
Speaker 2: it without being completely embarrassed. A closed mouth amidst no flies.
Speaker 1: She was fond of saying okay.
Speaker 2: And so of course she knews more than what she
Speaker 2: what she led on, more than she ever talked about
Speaker 2: or wrote about. But she she never spilled anything. And
Speaker 2: I think Hancock was the other person who knew everything also,
Speaker 2: and he wrote I found in the archives. He wrote
Speaker 2: that he was never going to you know, he was
Speaker 2: going to take that to the grave with him and
Speaker 2: he did.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I did one season of my show and it was
Speaker 1: based on a family feud that happened in the mid
Speaker 1: to late eighteen hundreds in Virginia between two families that
Speaker 1: were connected through marriage. And I spoke to both sides
Speaker 1: of the family and they were happy to talk. And
Speaker 1: you know this ended in a terrible tragedy. But I
Speaker 1: was trying to get a hold of one woman who
Speaker 1: was in her eighties or nineties, and she said, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about any of this. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was going through another family member and I said, uh, okay,
Speaker 1: tell me what's happening, and she just said, my parents
Speaker 1: had never said talk about this ever. And I was thinking,
Speaker 1: this happened in like eighteen sixty. This is so long ago.
Speaker 1: It does not matter to people. Sometimes it does not matter.
Speaker 1: I mean, that happened a long day, and your story
Speaker 1: is a little more contemporary than mine. But I think
Speaker 1: that when things happen in your family like that, that
Speaker 1: clearly shifts the trajectory of your family and makes you
Speaker 1: kind of look at the people you know, who you
Speaker 1: who were around you differently than Yeah, I guess you
Speaker 1: clam up, but she stayed. That's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also think it was sort of she enjoyed
Speaker 2: being a mystery. She enjoyed it, you know, And if
Speaker 2: she's filled all her secrets, what's the motive for anybody
Speaker 2: to come and talk or heredy lore. She really I
Speaker 2: think she really enjoyed sort of being the last one
Speaker 2: standing and she was the last one standing. And I
Speaker 2: think it was a point of pride for her, and
Speaker 2: I think she earned it. I think Margaret, Margaret deserved that.
Speaker 1: Did Harry end up staying on the island too, or
Speaker 1: did any of the other family members end up staying
Speaker 1: later on Harry?
Speaker 2: You know, again, this feeds into also the later part
Speaker 2: of the Floriana lore. How are you had to guide
Speaker 2: to a tragic voting accident? Lot of Margaret's son in
Speaker 2: laws died in a mysterious accident. There's all kinds of
Speaker 2: mysterious deaths happening. People vanished, you know, long in the seventies,
Speaker 2: or a couple other American tourists spanished on Floriana. There's
Speaker 2: like a bunch of sort of weird disappearances on Floriana
Speaker 2: like decades after this. You know, it all feeds into
Speaker 2: the mystique and the sort of dark lore of Floriana.
Speaker 1: What will it be about your book that resonates with
Speaker 1: the modern reader? What are they going to read and
Speaker 1: just say, gosh that this part could have happened today
Speaker 1: besides crazy panties.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think crazy Fanny's gonna happen today.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's what I mean. I mean, aside
Speaker 1: from crazy pancia. Oh right, what do you think the
Speaker 1: book says? I mean, what is it about the society
Speaker 1: that makes people say, wow, this is really actually this
Speaker 1: reminds me of this or that.
Speaker 2: I wrote part of this book sating COVID during a
Speaker 2: period when we were extremely self isolated. Of course, you know,
Speaker 2: they were self isolated by choice and we were not.
Speaker 2: But you can see how it does start playing tricks
Speaker 2: on your brain. You know, there was a there was
Speaker 2: a corrosive effect that can happen when when you're in
Speaker 2: a predicament like that. But to me also, I thought everybody,
Speaker 2: you know, it's timeless and universal, the desire that we
Speaker 2: can flee the chaos and challenges of our daily life
Speaker 2: and go somewhere simpler. But you know, we we cannot
Speaker 2: escape the Tyrian of our own nature. Humans cannot escape
Speaker 2: the Turian of our own nature. And you know, uh,
Speaker 2: seeking utopia is always going to be a doomed quest.
Speaker 2: We are not capable of creating utopia because what was
Speaker 2: a hell? As other people and I just feel like
Speaker 2: that that sort of a universal and timeless message. Who
Speaker 2: ever thought about getting away from it? All will read
Speaker 2: this and see what happens when you get away from
Speaker 2: it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, be careful what you wish for, you know, I
Speaker 1: tell my teenage daughters all the time. You can only
Speaker 1: control yourself. You can't control other people. You can only
Speaker 1: control your own actions and reactions. I think this is
Speaker 1: a great illustration of that. It's the best laid plans.
Speaker 1: You come here. You've got Frederick and Dorry who were
Speaker 1: just there and could have lived a perfectly happy little life,
Speaker 1: you know, on this island.
Speaker 2: I don't could anybody be happy with Frederick?
Speaker 1: I don't know. No, No, you're right. I know you
Speaker 1: said that they had were a volatile relationship, but you
Speaker 1: know there would be less intrusion, right, And I'm sure
Speaker 1: they wished for the days when it was just the Whitmers.
Speaker 1: They're annoying them when the Baroness shows up. But it's
Speaker 1: amazing the chaos that one person can add to the story.
Speaker 1: So I thought about isolation when I was reading about
Speaker 1: it too. And you know, the isolation that we feel
Speaker 1: now was with social media is helpful, but at the
Speaker 1: time same time it can make you feel isolated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that idea of living off the grid is very
Speaker 1: interesting for me. And then thinking about this story in
Speaker 1: the way that you've described it, boy, it doesn't take
Speaker 1: much for it to really turn into a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, I've read you know, your books for
Speaker 1: a long time, and the common thread with you that
Speaker 1: I don't read much with other nonfiction writers is that
Speaker 1: you have universally very passionate characters. The last story the
Speaker 1: man from was Chicago. Is that what it was? Now
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of that story.
Speaker 2: Well, he was born in Chicago, but he was a
Speaker 2: Cincinnati bootlegger.
Speaker 1: Bootlegger, Yeah, And I mean just like murdering someone in
Speaker 1: the middle of a park, and these are people who
Speaker 1: have so much pent up rage or passion or angst
Speaker 1: or something, and you just don't get that in a
Speaker 1: lot of nonfiction books. I think from deep history, I
Speaker 1: think you gravitate towards that, and certainly you gravitate towards
Speaker 1: controversial but very fiery, very intriguing women. I know, women
Speaker 1: tend to really be central characters for you. And this
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like it was an exception. It sounds like
Speaker 1: this was just falls right into your wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, you know, and I and you're correct about
Speaker 2: all those things, and I would add also, I think
Speaker 2: there's a theme of self reinvention. I'm fascinated by the
Speaker 2: idea of people sort of trying to start over to
Speaker 2: and having varying degrees of success with that, but the
Speaker 2: idea that you can and I think also that's universal.
Speaker 2: Everybody at one time or another thinks they can they
Speaker 2: can reinvent themselves in some capacity. It's so funny. I
Speaker 2: finished this book and I'm like, where do I go
Speaker 2: from here? Like, I don't like, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: I can't find anything that I'm as passionate about. I'm hoping,
Speaker 2: I'm hoping it comes, but right now I'm just like,
Speaker 2: how do I top crazy Panties?
Speaker 1: I don't know, you can't or the demoted lover, who
Speaker 1: I want to know more about. I don't want to
Speaker 1: know the main pick. I want to know who the
Speaker 1: demoted lover was.
Speaker 2: I think I should just call them that demoted lover.
Speaker 1: There you go, crazy fantasy and demotive lever. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like there's a movie that's coming out about the
Speaker 1: same subject from Ron Howard, which is amazing. Tell me
Speaker 1: what you know about this?
Speaker 2: Well it is. I can't wait to watch it. It's
Speaker 2: premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's called Eden,
Speaker 2: and it stars Jude Law as Frederick Gritter. It stars
Speaker 2: Sidney Sweeney as Margaret Whitmer, Vanessa Kirby as Story Strausch,
Speaker 2: and added to Armis is the Baroness. So it should
Speaker 2: be incredible.
Speaker 1: And I think the big thing people need to know
Speaker 1: is there's a huge difference between Hollywood and the real story.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get a good sense for
Speaker 1: the differences in sort of the poetic license that an
Speaker 1: amazing director like Ron Howard took on this, it would
Speaker 1: be a great comparison to read your book and see
Speaker 1: the movie both. So I hope that's what people are
Speaker 1: going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and go to my book and look at the
Speaker 2: pictures and see the glow up. The glow up that
Speaker 2: the real people get with these Hollywood stars is quite amazing.
Speaker 1: What the hell the hell that all these people went
Speaker 1: through and put each other through. Don't you think they
Speaker 1: deserve a Hollywood glow up with Jude Law?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think Frederi would be very very pleased.
Speaker 1: Actually, it's gonna be hard to beat a bunch of
Speaker 1: hot people on an island together trying to kill each
Speaker 1: other with crazy panties exactly.
Speaker 2: I really want to see if Ron Howard put crazy
Speaker 2: panties in the script, if that those words, actually, if
Speaker 2: you're in a script, it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you, I appreciate this's great.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Cape.
Speaker 1: This was fun. If you love historical true crime stories,
Speaker 1: check out the audio versions of my books The Ghost Club,
Speaker 1: All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget.
Speaker 1: There are twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast,
Speaker 1: Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll
Speaker 1: back and give them a listen if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
Speaker 1: is Alexis a Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis heath is
Speaker 1: our composer, artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark,
Speaker 1: Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram
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