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Speaker 1: Pushkin, Pasadena, Texas, nineteen seventy four. Someone is getting ready

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Speaker 1: for Halloweens. He lays out five pixie sticks on the

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Speaker 1: kitchen counter, the large plastic tubes nearly two feet long,

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Speaker 1: filled to the brim with fizzing candy, quite a prize

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Speaker 1: for the local trick or treaters. Then he takes a

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Speaker 1: sharp pair of scissors and one by one he snips

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Speaker 1: off the top of each pixie sticks, and from each

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Speaker 1: one he pours an inch or two of candy into

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Speaker 1: the sink. He turns the forcet and the water rinses

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Speaker 1: the candy powder away, fizzing as it vanishes down the drain. Next,

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Speaker 1: he unscrew the cap from a large bottle filled with

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Speaker 1: a white powder. The bottle has an official looking label

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Speaker 1: on it, some kind of chemical. He grabs a spoon

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Speaker 1: and digs into the powder, heaping it into one pixie

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Speaker 1: sticks tube after another, replacing the missing candy. He's hurrying

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Speaker 1: a little now. He puts down the spoon and screws

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Speaker 1: the cap back on the bottle. He reaches for a stapler.

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Speaker 1: A couple of staples per tube does the job, sealing

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Speaker 1: their new contents away. Stapler away scissors away from the

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Speaker 1: force it again. He rinses the spoon and dries it.

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Speaker 1: He picks up some soap and thoroughly washes his hands.

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Speaker 1: Then he dries them. Five pixie sticks tubes still lie

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Speaker 1: on the counter. Is anyone ready for some trick or treating?

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Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary Tails. Fifteen

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Speaker 1: years earlier Fremont, California, Trick or treat squealed the children

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Speaker 1: as they rang the doorbell. The door swung open. On

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Speaker 1: the threshold stood an ordinary looking couple. On the doorstep

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Speaker 1: gathered a gang of tiny little vampires and ghosts and monsters,

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Speaker 1: holding out their treat bags and waiting for candy, treat

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Speaker 1: or trick. Smiling, the grown ups dropped a handful of

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Speaker 1: candy into each bag, and the spooky little sprites scampered

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Speaker 1: off to the next house. But when they tasted the candy,

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Speaker 1: something wasn't. Some of the treats were little white heart

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Speaker 1: shaped pills. They were sugary on the outside, but the

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Speaker 1: inside was yucky. Some of the kids complained to their

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Speaker 1: parents about the substandard treats on offer. The parents of

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Speaker 1: Fremont were seriously worried looking for evidence, They sent some

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Speaker 1: older children back to the house with treat bags. The

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Speaker 1: children returned with lollipops and more of those unpleasant little pills.

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Speaker 1: The police were summoned and paid a visit to the

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Speaker 1: house of doctor William Shine, a dentist with an impeccable reputation.

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Speaker 1: It was nineteen fifty nine, a simpler time, a more

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Speaker 1: innocent time. Nobody could quite get their heads around what

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Speaker 1: doctor Shine seemed to have done, but it was hard

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Speaker 1: to deny. The pills were analyzed and found to be

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Speaker 1: a professionally manufactured laxative, suggesting that doctor Shine had a

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Speaker 1: rather twisted sense of humor. Given that an adult dose

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Speaker 1: was two pills and some children had thirty pills in

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Speaker 1: their treat bags, the risk of tragedy was clear enough.

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Speaker 1: Eventually the police recovered nearly five hundred pills. Fortunately, none

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Speaker 1: of the children was sick enough to go to hospital.

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Speaker 1: A few suffered cramps or vomited, most of them spat

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Speaker 1: the unpleasant pills out immediately. The main damage was to

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Speaker 1: the peace of mind of the community, along with a

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Speaker 1: self inflicted damage to doctor Shine's reputation. For a while,

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Speaker 1: it seemed as though he'd faced prison time and lose

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Speaker 1: his license to practice, But in the end he escaped

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Speaker 1: with probation and a fine of five hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: five dollars. And that was that, a strange, cruel joke

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Speaker 1: in which sheer luck prevented tragedy, something unique, the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that would surely never happen again. My daughter

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Speaker 1: says that Halloween is her favorite holiday. She says it's

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Speaker 1: even better than Christmas. How so, I ask, because it's

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Speaker 1: about community, She says. Christmas is inward looking, the immediate

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Speaker 1: family huddled together having fun at home. Halloween is outward looking.

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Speaker 1: You don't spend it at home, You spend it wandering

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Speaker 1: around your neighborhood. Gifts aren't wrapped and handed to a

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Speaker 1: select few, They're doled out liberally to all visitors. Children

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Speaker 1: experience kindness, not just from friends and family, but kindness

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Speaker 1: from strangers too, But not all strangers are kind. William

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Speaker 1: Shine's laxative prank is the first example I can find

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Speaker 1: of what is sometimes called Halloween sadism, where a stranger

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Speaker 1: puts something dangerous into the treats collected by children on Halloween.

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Speaker 1: Rat poison and the chop looked aff needles in marshmallows,

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing. My daughter's vision of Halloween is

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Speaker 1: a way to meet your community and realize that strangers

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Speaker 1: can be nice people too. That vision dissolves on contact

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Speaker 1: with Halloween sadism. And that's what makes Halloween sadism such

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Speaker 1: a grotesque act of betrayal. It's toxic, figuratively and literally,

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Speaker 1: poisoning the relationship children have with their community, eating away

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Speaker 1: at the very idea that someone you don't know might

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Speaker 1: nevertheless give you something of value. No wonder, we're warned

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Speaker 1: that plump red apple that Junior gets from a kindly

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Speaker 1: old woman down the block, cautioned the New York Times

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy may have a razor blade hidden inside. Well,

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Speaker 1: it may, but does that happen often? Indeed it does,

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Speaker 1: noted Newsweek shortly before Halloween, nineteen seventy five. If this

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Speaker 1: year's Aween follows form, a few children will return home

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Speaker 1: with something more than an upset tummy. In recent years,

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Speaker 1: several children have died and hundreds have narrowly escaped injury

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Speaker 1: from razor blades, sewing needles, and shards of glass purposefully

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Speaker 1: put into their goodies by adults that's just awful. It

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Speaker 1: implies that serious incidents occur every single year. And in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, the Dear Abbey column, syndicated in over

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Speaker 1: a thousand newspapers, agreed, it's Halloween time again, and time

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Speaker 1: to remind you that somebody's child will become violently ill

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Speaker 1: or die after eating poisoned candy or an apple containing

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Speaker 1: a razor blade. But after reading such alarming warnings, a

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Speaker 1: young sociologist named Joel Best became curious. Best had a

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Speaker 1: wide variety of interests. He was interest in crime and

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Speaker 1: in social problems, but he was puzzled by these stories.

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Speaker 1: Best had found that criminals and drug addicts always had

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Speaker 1: a reason for what they did, even if we might

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Speaker 1: object to those reasons. I could not, for the life

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Speaker 1: of me, figure out what the reason for poisoning Halloween

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Speaker 1: treats might be, he told me. And some of these

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Speaker 1: stories sounded a bit more like Grimm's fairy tales than reality.

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Speaker 1: A razor blade and the plump red apple from the

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Speaker 1: kindly old woman. Seriously, But when Joel Best told his

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Speaker 1: friends he thought these stories might not be real. His

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Speaker 1: friends were outraged. Of course, they were real. So Best

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Speaker 1: started to look for data on these appalling crimes. How

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Speaker 1: often were children poisoned or maimed by evil strangers peddling treats?

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Speaker 1: Not easy to say. There is no crime of Halloween sadism,

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Speaker 1: so crime statistics wouldn't cover it. The denist, William Shine,

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Speaker 1: was convicted of outraging public decency for handing out laxatives

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Speaker 1: to neighborhood children. That's the kind of crime they charge

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Speaker 1: you with when everyone agrees you've been a complete bastard,

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Speaker 1: but nobody can quite nail you with anything more specific.

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Speaker 1: But Joel Burst figured that whenever a child died or

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Speaker 1: was hospitalized by a Halloween treat, the newspapers would cover

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Speaker 1: the story in the first few days of November, and

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Speaker 1: so he got hold of the major newspapers dating back

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Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty eight, the year before William Shine's laxative stunt,

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Speaker 1: and carefully studied the days immediately following Halloween to find

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Speaker 1: out just how often this had happened. The newspapers reported

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Speaker 1: some worrying incidents. In nineteen sixty four, two teenage girls

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Speaker 1: Elsie and Irene Drucker, knocked on the door of Helen File,

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Speaker 1: a neighbor in Greenlawn, Long Island. Missus File gave them

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Speaker 1: a foil wrapped pack of treats, but when they opened it,

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Speaker 1: they were disgusted to find steel wool dog biscuits and

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Speaker 1: a bottle cap sized container full of ant poison. They

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Speaker 1: showed the parcel to their father. He called the police,

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Speaker 1: and missus File was duly arrested and charged with endangering

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Speaker 1: the health and life of a child. The judge committed

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Speaker 1: her to a hospital for psychiatric examination. It's hard for

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Speaker 1: me to understand how any woman would sense all reason,

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Speaker 1: could give this to a child. Well fair enough, missus

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Speaker 1: File did not display good judgment. Her husband told The

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Speaker 1: New York Times that she had given out the trip

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Speaker 1: packages only to teenagers. She had told them explicitly it

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Speaker 1: was a Halloween joke, and she had been giving out

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Speaker 1: real candy to younger children all day. I've no reason

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Speaker 1: to doubt that explanation, and in fact, it would actually

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Speaker 1: be quite a good joke if it wasn't so self

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Speaker 1: evidently flirting with disaster. That said, the experts tell me

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Speaker 1: that even if a young child did get hold of

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Speaker 1: and poison, it would be unlikely to do them serious harm. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so now, Joel Best had two cases, William V. Shine,

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Speaker 1: who in nineteen fifty nine gave laxative pills to neighborhood

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Speaker 1: children and made some of them sick for an evening,

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Speaker 1: and Helen File who in nineteen sixty four gave teenagers

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Speaker 1: inedible household supplies from the cupboard under the kitchen sink

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Speaker 1: and told them to their faces that it was a

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Speaker 1: Halloween joke. Two stupid, thoughtless people, and thankfully no lasting

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Speaker 1: harm done. But by the nineteen seventies, newspapers were warning

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Speaker 1: before each Halloween that severe injuries and death were frequent occurrencies.

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Speaker 1: It's true that after each Halloween accounts of trouble had

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Speaker 1: become more common in the media in the early nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: the newspapers would rarely have any incident to report. Yet

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Speaker 1: in the three years from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one, there were thirty one incidents in the press.

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Speaker 1: The strange thing was noted Joel Best. While there were

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Speaker 1: a lot of reports of Halloween sadism, most of them

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Speaker 1: seemed fairly minor. Most of the time, nobody was hurt.

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Speaker 1: A child just pointed to something worrying in a candy

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Speaker 1: bar Indeed, on closer inspection, many of the cases seemed

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Speaker 1: to be well somewhat implausible. A few were proven hoaxes,

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Speaker 1: others just seemed rather unlikely. Joel Best noted one case

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Speaker 1: where a boy had eaten half a candy bar, then

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Speaker 1: complained to his parents, I think there's hand poison on this, mum.

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Speaker 1: And indeed there was on the unbitten end. The child had,

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Speaker 1: of course applied the poison himself, was perfectly unharmed, and

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Speaker 1: presumably thought it would be a hilarious Halloween prank. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, the trade magazine The Newspaper Industry Editor

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Speaker 1: and Publisher reviewed newspaper's efforts to track down actual cases

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Speaker 1: of Halloween sadism. Editor and Publisher magazine concluded that almost

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Speaker 1: every report was a hoax. There was one strange and

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Speaker 1: awful exception. Cautionary tales return in a moment. Three days

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Speaker 1: after Halloween in nineteen seventy, Kevin Tostum, a five year

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Speaker 1: old boy from Detroit, collapsed and fell into a coma.

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Speaker 1: Four days later, he died the cause of death was

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Speaker 1: a drug overdose, and the police had said Kevin's Halloween

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Speaker 1: candy had been sprinkled with heroin. This tragedy was widely

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Speaker 1: reported as an appalling case of Halloween sadism, and you

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Speaker 1: can see why. After a growing drip of newspaper warnings,

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Speaker 1: the first fatal case of Halloween sadism had finally happened,

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Speaker 1: Except the truth that gradually emerged was rather different. A

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Speaker 1: few days later, the Detroit police announced that Kevin had not,

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Speaker 1: in fact consumed poisoned candy. It swallowed a capsule of

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Speaker 1: heroine while visiting his uncle's home. And that was the

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Speaker 1: state of play in the early nineteen seventies. Every year

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Speaker 1: there would be ten or twelve reports of tampering with candy.

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Speaker 1: Hardly anyone was injured, and careful reporters had concluded that

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Speaker 1: most of the incidents were fabricated. The tragic death of

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Speaker 1: Kevin Tosten had nothing to do with Halloween at all.

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Speaker 1: And then on Halloween nineteen, nineteen seventy four, something happened,

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Speaker 1: something so terrible that even by the standards of cautionary tales,

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Speaker 1: it's shocking. The evening started well enough for eight year

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Speaker 1: old Timothy O'Brien and his five year old sister, Elizabeth.

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Speaker 1: They were strolling around the neighborhood in Pasadena, near Houston, Texas,

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Speaker 1: with their father, Ronald, Ronald's friend Jim Bates, and Jim's children.

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Speaker 1: It was something of a reunion. The O'Brien's had once

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Speaker 1: been neighbors of the Bates family, but on he was

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Speaker 1: tight and the O'Briens had moved to an apartment in

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Speaker 1: a less desirable neighborhood. Still they were all together again,

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Speaker 1: now tapping on doors collecting treats. Timothy and Elizabeth had

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Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes costumes, issuing traditional garb for something

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Speaker 1: a little more modern. It was raining, but if you

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Speaker 1: want the candy, you can't be scared off by that.

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Speaker 1: They not on the door of one spooky looking house,

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Speaker 1: dark and perhaps deserted. There was no answer. They ran

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Speaker 1: off to the next house, leaving their father, Ronald, trailing behind.

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Speaker 1: But Halloween treats come to those who wait. Ronald had

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Speaker 1: lingered a little and emerged smiling with a hall of candy.

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Speaker 1: The door had cracked open a few inches, and an

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Speaker 1: unseen stranger had thrust out a hand with the treats.

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Speaker 1: What treats why? Five large plastic tubes of fizzing candy powder,

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Speaker 1: five giant pixie sticks as the rain got heavier, everyone

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Speaker 1: decided to head home. Ronald handed out the pixie sticks

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Speaker 1: to the four children, then gave the last one to

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Speaker 1: a child who knocked at the door, a fellow congregant

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Speaker 1: at Ronald's church. The O'Brien family then waved goodbye to

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Speaker 1: the Baitses and headed for home. Little Timothy begging for

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Speaker 1: a treat before bed. Ronald gave him the pixie sticks,

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Speaker 1: but Timothy complained that the candy tasted bitter, so Ronald

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Speaker 1: fetched some sweet cool aid to wash it down. Then

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Speaker 1: he turned out the light. Within minutes, Timothy had run

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Speaker 1: to the bathroom violently throwing up, Daddy, Daddy, my stomach hurts.

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Speaker 1: Timothy went limp. It was obvious that he was seriously ill.

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Speaker 1: Timothy's mother, Danene, called nine one one. The ambulance was

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Speaker 1: on its way, but it wasn't clear whether anything could

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Speaker 1: save Timothy O'Brien. The pixie sticks that Timothy had gulped

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Speaker 1: down hadn't been spiked with ant bait or a laxative

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Speaker 1: or even heroin. The top inch or so of the

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Speaker 1: pixie sticks tube had been emptied of candy powder and

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Speaker 1: filled up with powdered potassium cyanide, one of the most

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Speaker 1: infamous poisons in existence. Cyanide blocks the body's ability to

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Speaker 1: use oxygen gulp all the air you like. The cyanide

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Speaker 1: poisoned body can't absorb it, as the victim's blood carrying

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Speaker 1: oxygen that can't be used. Terms cherry red. Timothy O'Brien,

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Speaker 1: an eight year old boy, had swallowed enough cyanide to

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Speaker 1: kill three grown men. He died long before reaching the hospital.

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Speaker 1: But while Danin O'Brien tried to absorb what had just

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Speaker 1: happened to her boy, the police had an urgent question.

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Speaker 1: Where were the other four pixie sticks? Five year old

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth had one but had gone to bed without touching it.

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Speaker 1: Two more were in the possession of the Bates children,

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Speaker 1: and the child from church who had knocked at the

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Speaker 1: Bates's door had the last one. Those other tubes of

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Speaker 1: candypowder might be just as deadly. They had to be found.

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Speaker 1: The Bates children had gone to bed by the time

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Speaker 1: the police arrived at Jim Bates's house. Fortunately, their mother

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Speaker 1: had objected to the mess making pixie sticks and had

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Speaker 1: told her children and have to wait until morning when

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Speaker 1: they could eat the candy. Outside the suspect treats were

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Speaker 1: safely removed by the police, and soon enough they two

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Speaker 1: were confirmed to contain cyanide. At two o'clock in the morning,

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Speaker 1: when the police finally arrived at the house of the

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Speaker 1: last child, Whitney Parker, the news of the cyanide triggered

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Speaker 1: understandable panic and a frantic search. Where was that tube?

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Speaker 1: Surely Whitney hadn't eaten it. Whitney's parents found him in bed,

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Speaker 1: eyes closed, quite still clutching the pixie Sticks tube to

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Speaker 1: his chest. He was safely asleep and the tube was unopened,

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00:20:06,010 --> 00:20:09,570
Speaker 1: perhaps because Whitney had failed to prize open the treats

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Speaker 1: crudely stapled end. It was of course poisoned too. One

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Speaker 1: eight year old child was dead, and that number could

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Speaker 1: easily have been five who could have done such a thing.

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Speaker 1: The police retraced the trick or treating route with Ronald

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Speaker 1: the next day, but he couldn't remember any details. Ronald

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Speaker 1: spoke to the press telling them I have my peace

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Speaker 1: knowing tim is in heaven now. And then the day

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Speaker 1: after that was Timothy O'Brien's funeral service. His father, Ronald

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Speaker 1: sang the old hymn Blessed assurance, but changed the words.

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Speaker 1: Instead of this is my story, this is my song,

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Speaker 1: he sang, this is Tim's story. This is Tim's song.

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Speaker 1: The boy's little coffin sat there in the center of

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Speaker 1: the chapel. The congregation were weeping uncontrollably. Soon after, Ronald

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Speaker 1: O'Brien and the police retraced the route again. Finally, Ronald

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Speaker 1: remembered where he'd got the pixie sticks. Someone had opened

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Speaker 1: the door of that house, just a crap stuck out

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Speaker 1: an arm, a man's arm. It was hairy and offered

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Speaker 1: the deadly tubes of candy. But when the police investigated,

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00:21:33,250 --> 00:21:36,570
Speaker 1: the occupant of the house had a solid alibid. He

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Speaker 1: worked at nearby Houston Airport and he'd been on shift

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Speaker 1: that Halloween. His colleagues backed up that story. His employer

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00:21:44,130 --> 00:21:48,130
Speaker 1: had the timesheets to prove it. So Ronald O'Brien's account

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Speaker 1: just didn't make sense. Cautionary tales will be back in

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Speaker 1: a moment. We're never going to stop worrying about our children,

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00:22:10,170 --> 00:22:14,170
Speaker 1: of course, but what exactly we worry about seems to

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00:22:14,250 --> 00:22:18,970
Speaker 1: change from decade to decade. Here's the latest, fresh from Facebook,

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Speaker 1: warning about an epidemic of child abduction with that inevitable

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Speaker 1: invitation to smash the share button. Twenty two thousand kids

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Speaker 1: go missing a day, nine hundred and sixteen per hour.

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Speaker 1: Never keep quiet about it. Keep sharing hashtag save our Children,

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Speaker 1: and people do indeed keep sharing. When I last checked,

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Speaker 1: just that one post had been shared about forty thousand times.

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Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, we worried about Halloween candy. In

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, we worried that Satanists were running daycare centers.

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Speaker 1: Today it seems we worry about industrial scale child abduction

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Speaker 1: twenty two thousand missing children a day. My book The

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00:23:06,890 --> 00:23:10,810
Speaker 1: Data Detective argues that one of the most important steps

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Speaker 1: to take when confronted with a statistic is simply to

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Speaker 1: notice your emotional response and try to find a moment

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Speaker 1: of calm. It's not easy to be calm when you're

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00:23:21,490 --> 00:23:25,450
Speaker 1: picturing gangs in vans with blacked out windows cruising the

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Speaker 1: streets of every neighborhood looking for the next child to grab.

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Speaker 1: But if we can slow down, calm down, and think,

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00:23:35,330 --> 00:23:38,690
Speaker 1: we might not rush to hit that chair button, we

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00:23:38,770 --> 00:23:42,450
Speaker 1: might notice that if twenty two thousand children really were

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Speaker 1: going missing each day in the United States, that would

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00:23:45,890 --> 00:23:49,050
Speaker 1: mean children were going missing at more than twice the

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Speaker 1: rate at which children are being born. That seems unlikely.

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Speaker 1: Our brains feed on stories, not statistics. Some stories are

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Speaker 1: completely fictional that they seize our imaginations anyway. A kindly

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Speaker 1: old woman offering the plump red apple, juicy yet full

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Speaker 1: of dangers image from snow White It's more than two

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00:24:11,450 --> 00:24:15,650
Speaker 1: centuries old, will never forget it. Other stories are based

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00:24:15,690 --> 00:24:19,970
Speaker 1: in reality. The abuser whose money and status and connections

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Speaker 1: shield them from scrutiny, who do exist Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassa,

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Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein. But on these foundations of truth, some people

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00:24:30,770 --> 00:24:35,770
Speaker 1: spin much grander fantasies, deep state gangs kidnapping and enslaving

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of children, all commanded by the pedophile

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Speaker 1: master minds who control the most powerful institutions in the world.

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Speaker 1: Our gut reactions can easily overwhelm all rational thought. But

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Speaker 1: if we can stop and think, perhaps we can find

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Speaker 1: more reliable statistics and take a moment to understand what

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Speaker 1: they mean. According to the FBI, there were four hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty five thousand reports of missing children in the

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Speaker 1: US in twenty eighteen. It's a huge number, but as

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Speaker 1: the investigative journalist Michael Hobbs has explained, about half these

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00:25:17,890 --> 00:25:21,890
Speaker 1: cases were a custody dispute. One parents took the children

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Speaker 1: away for the weekend and didn't bring them back on time,

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00:25:24,770 --> 00:25:28,450
Speaker 1: and the other parent complained to the police. Most of

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00:25:28,450 --> 00:25:32,810
Speaker 1: the rest were runaways, children unhappy with their families, or

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00:25:32,850 --> 00:25:35,970
Speaker 1: foster families who left to sleep on a friend's couch.

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00:25:36,850 --> 00:25:40,090
Speaker 1: Often this would happen again and again, so the same

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00:25:40,170 --> 00:25:43,050
Speaker 1: child might be reported missing a dozen times a year.

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Speaker 1: It's all very sad, but none of this matches the

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Speaker 1: social media myth of the van with darkened windows cruising

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00:25:51,090 --> 00:25:55,210
Speaker 1: neighborhoods to look for children to snatch. The number of

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00:25:55,450 --> 00:26:00,530
Speaker 1: actual kidnappings in the United States by strangers or near strangers,

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00:26:01,170 --> 00:26:04,290
Speaker 1: it's between a hundred and one hundred and fifty children

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00:26:04,330 --> 00:26:08,930
Speaker 1: a year. Even one would be too many, but thankfully

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00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:12,490
Speaker 1: it's very far from four hundred and twenty five thousand.

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00:26:13,170 --> 00:26:15,970
Speaker 1: It's also much less than the number of American children

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00:26:16,170 --> 00:26:19,530
Speaker 1: who die in car accidents more than two thousand a year,

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00:26:20,370 --> 00:26:24,570
Speaker 1: or who are fatally shot again more than two thousand

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00:26:24,570 --> 00:26:28,250
Speaker 1: a year, or who die from abuse or neglect at

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00:26:28,250 --> 00:26:31,810
Speaker 1: the hands of their parents or primary care givers just

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00:26:32,050 --> 00:26:36,450
Speaker 1: under two thousand a year. Children are much less at

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00:26:36,570 --> 00:26:40,370
Speaker 1: risk from predatory strangers than they are from cars or

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00:26:40,450 --> 00:26:48,250
Speaker 1: gums or their own families. Back in nineteen seventy four,

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Speaker 1: in Pasadena, Texas, the police received an intriguing call from

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Speaker 1: a life insurance agent. Were they aware? He asked that

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00:26:59,930 --> 00:27:03,930
Speaker 1: Ronald O'Brien had taken out insurance on his own son's

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00:27:04,010 --> 00:27:08,770
Speaker 1: life eight days before Halloween, that he had insisted on

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Speaker 1: a policy that would pay in full even if only

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00:27:12,210 --> 00:27:16,130
Speaker 1: the first quarterly premium had been paid, and that on

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00:27:16,170 --> 00:27:20,610
Speaker 1: the first of November, the day after Timothy's death, he

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00:27:20,650 --> 00:27:26,050
Speaker 1: had called the agent to collect his money. No, said

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00:27:26,050 --> 00:27:33,170
Speaker 1: the police. They had not been aware of that. Joel

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00:27:33,210 --> 00:27:37,730
Speaker 1: Best had trouble publishing his findings. At first. Academic journals

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00:27:37,730 --> 00:27:41,170
Speaker 1: were so convinced that Halloween sadism was real that when

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00:27:41,210 --> 00:27:45,610
Speaker 1: he published evidence suggesting that it was dramatically exaggerated, the

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00:27:45,730 --> 00:27:50,450
Speaker 1: journal editors just rejected it out of hand. But he persisted,

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00:27:50,770 --> 00:27:54,570
Speaker 1: and eventually, in nineteen eighty five he published an article

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00:27:54,610 --> 00:27:58,490
Speaker 1: with a colleague. By then, Joel Best had found newspaper

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00:27:58,570 --> 00:28:04,490
Speaker 1: reports of seventy six separate incidents of suspected Halloween sadism.

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00:28:04,530 --> 00:28:08,410
Speaker 1: There were no cases of children being poisoned by kindly

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00:28:08,410 --> 00:28:13,410
Speaker 1: looking old ades or any other stranger. The two fatal

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00:28:13,490 --> 00:28:18,570
Speaker 1: incidents were Kevin Toston's accidental heroin overdose, a tragedy that

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00:28:18,730 --> 00:28:21,810
Speaker 1: never had any connection to Halloween, and the death of

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Speaker 1: Timothy O'Brien eight days after his father took out a

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00:28:26,810 --> 00:28:31,490
Speaker 1: generous insurance policy on his own son's life. As for

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00:28:31,570 --> 00:28:35,690
Speaker 1: the other seventy four incidents, a mixture of minor injuries,

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00:28:35,850 --> 00:28:41,290
Speaker 1: near misses, and hoaxes, mostly thought Joel Best hoaxes, and

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00:28:41,410 --> 00:28:44,810
Speaker 1: while every year brings more reports of trouble, they either

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00:28:44,930 --> 00:28:48,850
Speaker 1: evaporate under scrutiny or turn out to involve very minor

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00:28:48,890 --> 00:28:53,010
Speaker 1: injuries or no injuries at all. I'm not making light

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00:28:53,090 --> 00:28:56,130
Speaker 1: of the dangers to children. I'm a parent, and like

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00:28:56,330 --> 00:29:00,010
Speaker 1: most parents, I worry about my children's safety. But I

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00:29:00,050 --> 00:29:03,130
Speaker 1: am trying to shed some light on which dangers should

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00:29:03,130 --> 00:29:06,770
Speaker 1: worry us. For instance, it's common for more than a

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00:29:06,810 --> 00:29:10,810
Speaker 1: dozen children every year to die in accidents connected to

386
00:29:10,650 --> 00:29:14,850
Speaker 1: toys or baby equipment, often by choking on a small part.

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00:29:15,490 --> 00:29:18,610
Speaker 1: A child is vastly more likely to be killed by

388
00:29:18,650 --> 00:29:22,130
Speaker 1: their own toys than by candy poisoned by a stranger.

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00:29:22,690 --> 00:29:27,010
Speaker 1: Still unlikely, mind you, still very unlikely. But looking squarely

390
00:29:27,050 --> 00:29:29,570
Speaker 1: at the numbers, I know what I'd worry about more.

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00:29:30,650 --> 00:29:35,130
Speaker 1: Here's another number. Between four pm and ten pm on Halloween,

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00:29:35,690 --> 00:29:40,330
Speaker 1: children aged five to fourteen years old are four times

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00:29:40,370 --> 00:29:43,250
Speaker 1: more likely to be hit and killed by a car

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00:29:43,650 --> 00:29:46,130
Speaker 1: than during the same hours on any other night of

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00:29:46,130 --> 00:29:50,170
Speaker 1: the year. That's according to a detailed analysis from the CDC,

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Speaker 1: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's four or

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00:29:54,290 --> 00:29:58,610
Speaker 1: five deaths a year in the US every year. Compare

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00:29:58,650 --> 00:30:02,250
Speaker 1: that to the number of children killed because a stranger

399
00:30:02,450 --> 00:30:08,250
Speaker 1: poisoned their candy. Not one, not ever. No one ever

400
00:30:08,330 --> 00:30:11,330
Speaker 1: made a decision because of a number, said the celebrated

401
00:30:11,330 --> 00:30:16,330
Speaker 1: psychologist Daniel Carneman. They need a story, But the more

402
00:30:16,370 --> 00:30:19,930
Speaker 1: emotional the story is, the less we're really thinking it

403
00:30:19,970 --> 00:30:26,010
Speaker 1: all through. Our misperceptions of the world matter. They matter

404
00:30:26,570 --> 00:30:29,370
Speaker 1: because we end up scaring our children about things which

405
00:30:29,410 --> 00:30:32,650
Speaker 1: are very unlikely to happen, such as being abducted by

406
00:30:32,650 --> 00:30:36,450
Speaker 1: a stranger, while diverting our attention from problems that are

407
00:30:36,490 --> 00:30:41,410
Speaker 1: bigger but more mundane. And our misperceptions of the world

408
00:30:41,450 --> 00:30:44,690
Speaker 1: matter when they provide cover for people who really do

409
00:30:44,770 --> 00:30:52,130
Speaker 1: want to do harm, people like ron O'Brien. When the

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00:30:52,170 --> 00:30:55,770
Speaker 1: police in Pasadena, Texas began to look more deeply into

411
00:30:55,850 --> 00:30:59,650
Speaker 1: the death of little Timothy O'Brien, they quickly discovered some

412
00:30:59,850 --> 00:31:04,330
Speaker 1: unsettling facts. That not only had Ronald O'Brien taken out

413
00:31:04,370 --> 00:31:08,170
Speaker 1: life insurance on Timothy just days earlier, but that on

414
00:31:08,250 --> 00:31:13,090
Speaker 1: the insurance documents he had forged the signature of Timothy's mother,

415
00:31:13,250 --> 00:31:17,610
Speaker 1: Danene Danine O'Brien didn't know anything about the life insurance.

416
00:31:18,450 --> 00:31:22,130
Speaker 1: The police also discovered that Ronald O'Brien was in money trouble,

417
00:31:22,730 --> 00:31:26,570
Speaker 1: that Ronald's friend Jim Bates, had noticed him acting very

418
00:31:26,650 --> 00:31:30,490
Speaker 1: strangely at the funeral. He was paying so little attention

419
00:31:30,650 --> 00:31:34,130
Speaker 1: to his own son's coffin that he actually walked into it.

420
00:31:34,730 --> 00:31:39,050
Speaker 1: That three people remembered Ronald chatting quite recently about the

421
00:31:39,130 --> 00:31:42,570
Speaker 1: toxicity of cyanide, and that he had been at Pains

422
00:31:42,650 --> 00:31:46,490
Speaker 1: to confirm the lethal dose and to find a cheap supply.

423
00:31:47,530 --> 00:31:51,850
Speaker 1: That scissors in O'Brien's house had fragments of pixie Stick's

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00:31:51,930 --> 00:31:56,930
Speaker 1: plastic on the blades. Ronald O'Brien was arrested and charged

425
00:31:57,010 --> 00:32:00,890
Speaker 1: with the murder of his son, Timothy and the attempted

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Speaker 1: murder of his daughter Elizabeth, the Bates children, and Whitney Parker.

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Speaker 1: He had decided that he could murder his own eight

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Speaker 1: year old son and risk the death of his own

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Speaker 1: daughter and three other children because he had heard the

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Speaker 1: stories about stranger danger at Halloween. He thought nobody would

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Speaker 1: suspect him. All those urban myths about poisoned candy, they

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Speaker 1: kept circulating and circulating until eventually they became a self

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Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy. O'Brien's trial took place in the summer of

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. The prosecutor, Mike Hinton, did not hold back.

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Speaker 1: He ought to be damned for what he did, he declared,

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Speaker 1: staring intently at the jury while pointing at O'Brien. I

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Speaker 1: don't want you to forget for one minute. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to take those other kids with him. The jury agreed.

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Speaker 1: After forty six minutes of deliberation, they pronounced Ronald O'Brien guilty.

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Speaker 1: He was sentenced to death, and in nineteen eighty four,

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Speaker 1: the state of Texas executed him. Joel Best is still

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Speaker 1: updating his data approaching Halloween twenty twenty two, Professor Best

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Speaker 1: still has yet to find a single example of a

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Speaker 1: child killed because a stranger poisoned a Halloween treats. But

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Speaker 1: when you've finished listening to this podcast, what will you remember?

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Speaker 1: Will you remember Joel Best's carefully compiled statistics, or will

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00:33:42,730 --> 00:33:48,130
Speaker 1: you remember the horrific death of little Timothy O'Brien. If

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00:33:48,170 --> 00:33:52,770
Speaker 1: your family is celebrating Halloween this year, enjoy yourself, make

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00:33:52,890 --> 00:33:56,970
Speaker 1: some new friends, meet your neighbors, and do please make

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00:33:57,010 --> 00:34:07,850
Speaker 1: sure that your children take care when crossing the street.

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Speaker 1: For a full list of the sources used in this episode,

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Speaker 1: visit the show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Portionary

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Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.

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Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilley with support from Courtney Guarino

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Speaker 1: and Emily Vaughan. The sound designed original music is the

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00:34:31,730 --> 00:34:35,330
Speaker 1: work of Pascal Wise. It features the voice talents of

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Speaker 1: Ben Crow, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Harford, and Rufus Wright. The

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Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of

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Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Famee, John Schnarz, Julia Barton,

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00:34:48,490 --> 00:34:53,730
Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Basserv Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano,

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00:34:54,090 --> 00:34:58,770
Speaker 1: Daniane Lakhan and Maya Caning. Portionary Tales is a production

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00:34:58,930 --> 00:35:02,570
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember

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00:35:02,610 --> 00:35:06,290
Speaker 1: to share, rape and review, tell a friend, tell two friends,

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00:35:06,410 --> 00:35:08,330
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the show ads free

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00:35:08,490 --> 00:35:12,850
Speaker 1: and listen to for exclusive Cautionary Tale shorts, then sign

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00:35:12,970 --> 00:35:15,690
Speaker 1: up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple

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00:35:15,730 --> 00:35:19,730
Speaker 1: Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus