Speaker 1: Hello and welcome.
Speaker 2: I'm my favorite murder that's Georgia Heartstar.
Speaker 1: That's Karen Kilgarith, and we're here to present some things
Speaker 1: to your real quick.
Speaker 2: Real quick. You wanted to tell you a couple of things.
Speaker 1: It's going to be fast, like an hour and fifty
Speaker 1: two minutes.
Speaker 2: I'll get you out of here, in and out.
Speaker 1: Yeah boom, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have to pull this out immediately because we
Speaker 2: put lotion on before every show. It's like our ritual,
Speaker 2: it's our rich And I was putting my nod on.
Speaker 2: I meant to tell you that I got my nails
Speaker 2: done by a murderino today. This murderina named Jess. She
Speaker 2: was awesome, old school murderino. And then I just realized
Speaker 2: as I was putting lotion on that I forgot to
Speaker 2: put my fucking wedding ring back on.
Speaker 1: Does that mean it's at the No?
Speaker 2: No, no, it's at my house. I took it off
Speaker 2: of my house, thank god. But I just was like,
Speaker 2: if I don't have a wedding ring on and this
Speaker 2: goes up, are going to be like are they okay?
Speaker 1: The dms are going to start? Yeah, and Peele are
Speaker 1: gonna be a what's up girl?
Speaker 2: Plus, it looks like Vince left for fucking WrestleMania this morning.
Speaker 2: It looks like I'm my husband's gone take off my
Speaker 2: ring for the weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's too many coincidences, it is, I'm calling him now.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't see her anywhere specifically, but
Speaker 1: I know I can feel it.
Speaker 2: Hashtag what's even happening? That ring on that rist one?
Speaker 2: But he did give me this one too, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I did what that came on purpose? It has
Speaker 2: to do with my story, so you do.
Speaker 1: There, we go there, it's all day.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I almost got a.
Speaker 1: Divorce just there out of nowhere, really quick before the
Speaker 1: show started. Divorce it could be. I mean I think
Speaker 1: it has been. It must be in the past, called Utah.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny. I was thinking about when we
Speaker 1: were in Austin for the iHeartRadio Awards and a girl
Speaker 1: came up to us afterwards and was just saying hi,
Speaker 1: and then said, I'm the one that you called a
Speaker 1: bitch on cameo what remember that? I could have sworn
Speaker 1: you were standing next to me. A girl came up
Speaker 1: and was like, ha ha ha I spent two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars on cameo for you to tell my
Speaker 1: friend happy birthday or something like that. And she goes
Speaker 1: and you called me a stupid bitch. And then I
Speaker 1: never got my cameo. And I was like, we're not
Speaker 1: on cameo. We're not on cameo.
Speaker 2: You're not on cameo.
Speaker 1: No, we've never been, don't ever.
Speaker 2: So she gave her money to some fucking people pretending
Speaker 2: to be us.
Speaker 1: Not only pretending to be us, but insulting people after
Speaker 1: they give him their money.
Speaker 2: Let's look it up right now. So, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I think I have cameos if you can look it up.
Speaker 2: Who did I get to do a cameo once?
Speaker 1: Well, you got all my Kevin? Is it Kevin Hart?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, that's a comedian, the wrestler, the wrestler.
Speaker 2: Guy, Kevin Vaughan Air.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's the guy that was on Detroiter's that
Speaker 1: plays Tim Robbins's dad.
Speaker 2: Oh, he was a stripper in the strip.
Speaker 1: Club in Magic Mike, Magic Mike. That's it, big fan.
Speaker 1: I've gotten two cameos from him. It's from Georgia and Vince.
Speaker 2: Kevin Nash. Yes, Kevin Nash, Kevin Nash. Okay, here's people
Speaker 2: are also asking why is my favorite word to rein
Speaker 2: canceled our? Karen and George is still friends?
Speaker 1: Who is?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: No, that's a fan cult video right there. We can
Speaker 1: answer that. We will answer those questions, but it's going
Speaker 1: to be behind a paywall.
Speaker 2: I don't know it does. Nothing's coming up, but there
Speaker 2: are not on hany that's so horrible. I know.
Speaker 1: There's also a chance that girl mistook me for somebody
Speaker 1: else and she was like, oh I meant the Giggly
Speaker 1: Squad girls or something like you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Oh I blessed today we get fucking mixed up for
Speaker 2: the Ghiggly Squad girls, Like.
Speaker 1: Please, can I get We're forty years younger the Giggly Squad?
Speaker 1: You know what's going on?
Speaker 2: Aunties? Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Nora actually told me that's her favorite podcast and I
Speaker 1: just stared into her face. So what am I supposed
Speaker 1: to do here? Now?
Speaker 2: That's no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody gets to like what they want, but please
Speaker 1: don't pay money.
Speaker 2: For Also, we would never charge two hundred fifty dollars
Speaker 2: to hear us f This is free. This is free here.
Speaker 1: Hold on, Happy birthday, Ashley, Happy birthday, Ashley. What Ashley too?
Speaker 2: I get what we're doing. Ok Ashley with the e
Speaker 2: e e e y. Do you have anything? Did you
Speaker 2: see the Baby Jessica thing? Yes, Baby Jessica who you covered?
Speaker 1: Say that show title?
Speaker 2: In episode two two one, Symbolic Violins, who was down
Speaker 2: a well when she was a baby, was arrested on
Speaker 2: assault charges.
Speaker 1: No fun, no fun? Did you already watch trust Me
Speaker 1: The Lost Prophet.
Speaker 2: We're in the middle of it right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to start it, but everyone keeps talking
Speaker 1: to me about it, where I'm just like, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I have.
Speaker 2: To watch it. Did you watch the movie? It's called
Speaker 2: The Dramas and Aya and Robert Patterson is that his name?
Speaker 1: Pattinson whatever?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, no, you don't see that. I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't gone to the movie since so long.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's like the first time I want to go
Speaker 2: to the movie in ages because there's a spoiler, and
Speaker 2: I know by the time it goes on streaming, I'm
Speaker 2: going to have heard it. Yes, and I'm trying to
Speaker 2: avoid it, but I just need to go see it.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of movies. You just want to
Speaker 1: know first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to know like authentically, not like
Speaker 2: reading a fucking New York Post or something.
Speaker 1: Yes, the cinema has been ruined in many ways for
Speaker 1: all of us, but that way where I watch people
Speaker 1: or read people fighting about it and all these opinions,
Speaker 1: and then I'm like, well, I don't want to have
Speaker 1: any of these opinions. I'll have a brand new opinion.
Speaker 1: And then it's like what Then you go to the
Speaker 1: movies and you're doing a whole different thing. It's such
Speaker 1: an irritating way to have preprocessed entertainment.
Speaker 2: Well, thank god there's alcohol in theaters now, because true,
Speaker 2: I don't know how other people do it. It's two
Speaker 2: and a half fucking hours just sitting there without a
Speaker 2: bud Ca soda. Please.
Speaker 1: You know what I did see recently, Johnny Pemberton is
Speaker 1: the star of a movie. I think it's called Mermaid, Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's Indy, and we went to see it. It was
Speaker 1: like its first showing in LA Is It Great? It
Speaker 1: was so I adored Johnny as a comedian, to see
Speaker 1: him as a kind of serious kind of comedy because
Speaker 1: it's a creepy movie. It's a lot going on. Definitely
Speaker 1: worth the watch. But to watch Johnny be like the
Speaker 1: leading man is amazing.
Speaker 2: Giding a man who looks twenty. It's like the best
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: And so many people love him from Fallout, people love
Speaker 1: him from all kinds of stuff. That he's already done everything,
Speaker 1: he's been in so many things.
Speaker 2: That's really exciting. Yeah, Mermaid, why am I playing fitsy
Speaker 2: with you? Should we do?
Speaker 1: You need more room over there?
Speaker 2: And that means we should get started.
Speaker 1: That's probably that's you signaling to me under the table.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly
Speaker 2: Right Media.
Speaker 1: It's correct, not slip your mind.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Here's some highlights from it over on our podcast. Then Knife,
Speaker 1: Hannah and Patia revisit the nineteen ninety five murder of
Speaker 1: twenty one year old Jennifer Evans in Virginia Beach, and
Speaker 1: then Advocate Aaron Lopman joins them to walk through Dusty
Speaker 1: Turner's case and all the questions surrounding his conviction.
Speaker 2: And then this week on Brief Recess It's a Hopecore episode,
Speaker 2: Michael and Melissa reveal they share a birthday week and
Speaker 2: they didn't know that.
Speaker 1: No, It's like, I just love a big He's an
Speaker 1: immigration lawyer, literally fighting ice in the courts every day.
Speaker 1: And then they're like, you know what, we have the
Speaker 1: same birthday week. It's like, yep, get it where you can.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and Seth Porge's director of Class Action Park, Oh
Speaker 2: my god. It was such a good documentary. And the
Speaker 2: upcoming Santa Con documentary returns to discuss news that the
Speaker 2: founder of Santa Con was charged with federal wire fraud
Speaker 2: for stealing over one million dollars from the organization. Where
Speaker 2: did they get one million dollars from?
Speaker 1: What organization? Isn't the whole thing disorganization?
Speaker 2: I think they get money to give presents to children
Speaker 2: in need.
Speaker 1: I hope so.
Speaker 2: But no, because he took all that money and got.
Speaker 1: Posted drunk allegedly and then harassed the citizens of New
Speaker 1: York exactly. Okay. Then, of course, Disgraceland our newest hit podcast,
Speaker 1: So exciting to have Jake Brennan here with us. They're
Speaker 1: back this week covering Depeche Mode. Jake tells the story
Speaker 1: of excess addiction and the West Hollywood overdose that left
Speaker 1: front man David Kahan clinically dead before the band's unlikely resurrection.
Speaker 2: I love this, like just he does these like snippets
Speaker 2: of time about the band. It's not the history from
Speaker 2: start to finish. It's just like, here's what life was
Speaker 2: like during this time when whatever happened happened with them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's so fucking fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's such good writing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, such good writing. And then we have a little
Speaker 2: treet for you. The Disgraceland feed drop hits the MFM feed.
Speaker 2: So if you haven't listened to Disgraceland yet, we're making
Speaker 2: it easy for you.
Speaker 1: Disgraceland, Disgraceland, Disgraceland Yet, We're making.
Speaker 2: It easy for you. But also get your shit together
Speaker 2: and please go follow and rate, review, subscribe to Disgraceland.
Speaker 2: And it's celebrity spin off Hollywoodland. What are you doing, Hollywoodland.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to upstage you as you just break your
Speaker 1: shit over there. I literally tried to move this very
Speaker 1: subtly and yanked this off over on Hollywood Land. Jake
Speaker 1: looks at Sigourney Weaver through a very strange and unsettling lens.
Speaker 1: He's telling the story of how one death Row inmate
Speaker 1: came to see her as a goddess sent to battle evil.
Speaker 2: Wow, not a hard thing to like assumption to jump to.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's not true, but it's scary.
Speaker 1: It's very scary. Yeah, all right, well you go first,
Speaker 1: I go first, right, So I'm going to turn it
Speaker 1: around on you.
Speaker 2: Oh shit.
Speaker 1: The story I'm doing is one of the most notorious
Speaker 1: cold cases in recent history.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: It begins with the twenty ten disappearance of a young
Speaker 1: woman named Shannon Gilbert. Police begin to search for her
Speaker 1: on the beach side roadway where she's last seen, and
Speaker 1: that's when they begin to find one horrific discovery after another.
Speaker 1: The remains of ten women are found between December twenty
Speaker 1: ten and April twenty eleven, setting off a chain of
Speaker 1: events that, now more than fifteen years later, has finally
Speaker 1: been solved. This is the story of the Gilgo Coach murderer. Shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: neither rest have ever done it. We've never done it.
Speaker 1: And when I was talking to Molly about it, our producer,
Speaker 1: and we're like, do you think Maren could turn this
Speaker 1: around where we could do it and try to be
Speaker 1: timely because all of this is happening right now. Maren's like,
Speaker 1: were you planning on covering this before it got solved?
Speaker 2: Like it wasn't on your list at all?
Speaker 1: No, yeah, I'm no, same, not on my list because
Speaker 1: to me it felt like, and especially all the things
Speaker 1: I've seen of it over the years, it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: we know this is where all these bodies have been found, right,
Speaker 1: and that's about it totally, and like we have some
Speaker 1: suspects and we have some ideas, and then of course
Speaker 1: there was like, well, let's get into it, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I was literally just going to start talking it out
Speaker 1: and then repeat it later. But thanks Maren, our researcher
Speaker 1: for turning it around and always doing such an amazing
Speaker 1: job and that idea, it's like, wait, can we this
Speaker 1: is breaking news? Can we actually start talking?
Speaker 2: Hey, what are you doing this week? Can you just
Speaker 2: do this? Yeah? Marin and Ali my god, yeah, the best.
Speaker 1: Our researchers on the show are the best in the
Speaker 1: absolutely so. The main source used in this story today
Speaker 1: is the writing of journalist Robert Kolker, who has reported
Speaker 1: extensively on this case. He actually published a book about
Speaker 1: it called Lost Girls, and also he did a deep
Speaker 1: dive in the New York Times magazine called the Botched
Speaker 1: Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Killer, and then the rest
Speaker 1: of the sources are in our show notes. We start
Speaker 1: on the early morning of May one, twenty ten, and
Speaker 1: Shannon Gilbert is in a car headed for Long Island.
Speaker 1: She is just twenty three years old, but she's been
Speaker 1: through a lot. She's endured some very difficult things in
Speaker 1: her childhood, including having to go to foster care at
Speaker 1: one point. But Shannon's friends remember her as a radiant,
Speaker 1: popular girl with undeniable talent, because going through hard stuff
Speaker 1: in life also really galvanizes you totally and who you are.
Speaker 1: And the thing I'd never heard about Shannon before is
Speaker 1: that Shannon can really sing.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Reporter Robert Kolker describes her as having a quote soulful
Speaker 1: voice that gave some of her friend's chills and made
Speaker 1: others cry wow. So she's just a good singer. In
Speaker 1: eighth grade, she was cast as Miss Hannigan in her
Speaker 1: school's production of Annie, and that was a life changing
Speaker 1: experience for her. She realizes she wants to be a
Speaker 1: star after she graduates from high school. She does try
Speaker 1: to make that dream come true, but as many of
Speaker 1: us know, it's very hard to make a living when
Speaker 1: that is what your goal is. So Shannon sometimes earns
Speaker 1: money through sex work, and she advertises as an escort
Speaker 1: on Craigslist and in Backpage. So when she gets a booking,
Speaker 1: typically she'll use a mail driver to take her to
Speaker 1: the appointments, both for transportation and for her personal safety,
Speaker 1: and so that's what she does on May first, twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Her driver is a man who she's not only worked
Speaker 1: with before, but she considers a friend. His name's Michael Pack.
Speaker 1: He picks her up. They head down Ocean Parkway, which
Speaker 1: is that long road that runs right next to the
Speaker 1: ocean and spans a very long swath of southern Long Island.
Speaker 1: Parts of Ocean Parkway are very dark at night, except
Speaker 1: for like the cars coming in the other direction. Shannon's driver, Michael,
Speaker 1: pulls off the road into a gated community in Oa Beach.
Speaker 1: As Shannon disappears into our client's home. The driver waits
Speaker 1: outside in the car, and everything is basically routine until
Speaker 1: around five am. Also, I just say the client is
Speaker 1: a man named Joseph Brewer. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: start talking about the men that are involved in these cases.
Speaker 1: It's weird because I just caught myself doing that where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, well, we don't have to get into that,
Speaker 1: but we're getting into Shannon's whole life. So Joseph Brewer
Speaker 1: is in this too, and that should be I think standard.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot we don't and may never know
Speaker 1: about what happened that night, But what we do know
Speaker 1: is that at one point, around five am, Shannon calls
Speaker 1: nine to one to one and she sounds terrified and disoriented.
Speaker 1: She can't explain where she is or what's happening to her.
Speaker 1: She just says, someone's trying to kill her. God.
Speaker 2: This is the most chilling, most chilling part, But also
Speaker 2: none of this story I feel like would have gotten
Speaker 2: out there if this weird chilling thing hadn't happened. Almost exactly.
Speaker 2: It made people pay attention to what was already going
Speaker 2: on for years.
Speaker 1: Yes, a horrible rock being moved, and this victim who
Speaker 1: her death, while entirely senseless, actually brings the authorities to
Speaker 1: all of these other cold cases that are just there,
Speaker 1: like just right there. So the nine to one one
Speaker 1: recording of the call has been released since you can
Speaker 1: listen to it, and on it you can hear both
Speaker 1: Joseph Burah and Michael Pack talking to Shannon in the background,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to make out or make sense of
Speaker 1: what's going on. What we know from here is based
Speaker 1: on witness statements. Shannon's client says that she suddenly started
Speaker 1: to panic when she was in his house. He went
Speaker 1: outside to ask the driver for help getting her out
Speaker 1: of the house, getting her to leave, and then the
Speaker 1: driver and the client both tried to calm her down
Speaker 1: while still inside the house, with the goal of basically
Speaker 1: trying to get her into the car, but because Shannon
Speaker 1: is so terrified, it doesn't work, and after a few minutes,
Speaker 1: her driver states that he goes back to the car,
Speaker 1: unsure of what to do, presumably, and that's when he
Speaker 1: watches Shannon bolt out of this house and sprint into
Speaker 1: the darkness. What we do know now is that she
Speaker 1: went and knocked on some neighbor's doors, and actually at
Speaker 1: least one of those neighbors brought her inside, but then
Speaker 1: she was still so freaked out. And the thing I
Speaker 1: keep thinking of this is all theory and opinion, but
Speaker 1: what I keep thinking of is that she got drugged
Speaker 1: ket I mean ketamine.
Speaker 2: Will fucking do that to you immediately, right, or.
Speaker 1: Just like any drug worst that you think you're here
Speaker 1: and you're handling things this way and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you know it's not good and you're not in control.
Speaker 2: We've all been there with drugs that we knew we took.
Speaker 2: We freaked the fuck out. Yeah, and then not knowing
Speaker 2: that you took them. That's like ten.
Speaker 1: Times worse being drugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So being drugged, yeah, I also know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being drug So Michael Pack says he tries to
Speaker 1: find her. He drives around for a while looking for her.
Speaker 1: He never finds her, so he goes home, assuming she
Speaker 1: just find a way to get back to New Jersey herself,
Speaker 1: not the job of a driver in that scenario. The
Speaker 1: problem is Shannon never finds her way back to New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and her worried boyfriend there quickly reaches out to the driver.
Speaker 1: He admits that he left Long Island without her. The
Speaker 1: two reportedly call around to different precincts. No one's seen her,
Speaker 1: so her boyfriend files a missing person's report and that's it. Basically,
Speaker 1: Shannon's case gets almost no media attention. As author Robert
Speaker 1: Kolker writes, quote a missing sex worker rarely does. So
Speaker 1: now we're back on Long Island and investigators begin searching
Speaker 1: for Shannon where she was last seen, including the coastal
Speaker 1: stretch off Ocean Parkway along Oak Beach and nearby Gilgo Beach.
Speaker 1: The terrain is marshy and uneven, and because it's spring
Speaker 1: turning to summer, it's also crawling with poison ivy and
Speaker 1: very thick brambles, very hard to search.
Speaker 2: Looks very swampy like Florida e right, and.
Speaker 1: It's a part of beach where it truly is like
Speaker 1: there's houses, there's ocean park, there's these brambles, sand and
Speaker 1: the ocean right there. So the police continue the search
Speaker 1: throughout the year. I don't know how often, but it
Speaker 1: does continue. And then as falterned to winter, that overgrowth
Speaker 1: is finally less thick, and on December eleventh, seven months
Speaker 1: after Shannon was last seen, police dogs hit on human remains.
Speaker 1: They've found these remains hidden deep in the brambles, bound
Speaker 1: with strips of burlap. Two days later, they find three
Speaker 1: more burlap bound sets of remains. So they basically stumble
Speaker 1: upon stumble upon a graveyard that they are there just
Speaker 1: to get additional evidence for the first remains, and then
Speaker 1: it's another and another, and they're bound the same way
Speaker 1: with the same material, same size of assuming woman. I mean, like, yeah, horrifying.
Speaker 1: None of the remains belong to Shannon Gilbert. When the
Speaker 1: DNA tests come back, investigators identify twenty four year old
Speaker 1: Melissa Barthelemy, who had been missing for over a year.
Speaker 1: She'd gone missing in two thousand and nine, last seen
Speaker 1: at her apartment in the Bronx, and like Shannon, she
Speaker 1: was ambitious. She dreamed of opening her own hair salon.
Speaker 1: She's a really talented hairdresser. She did sex work to
Speaker 1: pay the bills. Melissa was very close with her family,
Speaker 1: who clearly loved her very much. In fact, in July
Speaker 1: of two thousand and nine, right before she went missing,
Speaker 1: her little sister Amanda was planning to come and visit
Speaker 1: her in New York. In a July eleventh phone call,
Speaker 1: they talked through Amanda's upcoming trip, and the next day,
Speaker 1: July twelfth, Melissa set out to meet a client on
Speaker 1: Long Island, and she was never seen again. Melissa's disappearance
Speaker 1: devastated her family, and her sister Amanda once said quote,
Speaker 1: she was not only my blood sister. She was my
Speaker 1: soul sister, so they were very close obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another body identified as twenty five year old Maureen Brainerd
Speaker 1: Barnes of Norwich, Connecticut. She was reported missing in July
Speaker 1: of two thousand and seven, and she had last been
Speaker 1: seen in New York City. Her loved ones remember her
Speaker 1: as being creative, courageous, and gifted with words. At times
Speaker 1: she did sex work to pay family bills, but what
Speaker 1: she really loved was writing poetry, and she loved to
Speaker 1: write rap lyrics. She had two children, and her daughter, Nicolette,
Speaker 1: who's now an adult, has said that losing her mom
Speaker 1: quote drastically changed the trajectory of my life. There were
Speaker 1: countless times I needed her and she was not there.
Speaker 1: I remember she read to me every night, and now
Speaker 1: I can no longer remember the sound of her voice.
Speaker 2: God hard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next remains to be identified belonged to twenty two
Speaker 1: year old Megan Waterman of Scarborough, Maine. Her family has
Speaker 1: said that they believe she was forced into sex work.
Speaker 1: Author Robert Kolker reports Megan's boyfriend, the man she considered
Speaker 1: the love of her life, was seen by others as quote,
Speaker 1: her pimp and abuser sad she sometimes saw clients in
Speaker 1: New York. She was last seen leaving a Long Island
Speaker 1: hotel in June of twenty ten, presumably to meet a
Speaker 1: client back home and Maine. Meghan has a young daughter
Speaker 1: named Lily, who she loved very much. Megan's been called
Speaker 1: a quote, fun, caring and loving mom. Lily's in her
Speaker 1: teens now, and has talked about the pain of losing
Speaker 1: her mother, saying quote, I still wonder what her voice
Speaker 1: sounded like, or her laugh. I do remember missing her
Speaker 1: and always wondering when she was coming back. I don't
Speaker 1: wish this on anyone, the pain I went through or
Speaker 1: go through on top of that, because what it is
Speaker 1: getting me. Yeah, when your mom dies, especially when you're young,
Speaker 1: it's devastating, and for young girls it's like, yes, it's
Speaker 1: foundationally devastating, definitely. And then the idea that anybody would
Speaker 1: treat your mom's death like it was less important right
Speaker 1: than anybody else's deserved it too.
Speaker 2: People would like that's what people say, yes, And to
Speaker 2: feel that and not care as much about your own
Speaker 2: mother that that's devastating.
Speaker 1: It's just the authority more cops moralizing this doesn't matter
Speaker 1: this does, and that's what this story is all about
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, is people thinking that
Speaker 1: they can classify human beings that way. The final set
Speaker 1: of remains are identified as those of twenty seven year
Speaker 1: old Amber Costello, who lived in West Babylon, New York
Speaker 1: at the time of her disappearance in September twenty ten,
Speaker 1: so it was just months after Megan Waterman went missing,
Speaker 1: and Amber struggled with addiction, so she sometimes picked up
Speaker 1: sex work. She was last seen leaving her apartment to
Speaker 1: get picked up by a client, and on her way
Speaker 1: out the door, she tells her roommate quote, if my
Speaker 1: sister calls, tell her I love her. So these four women, Melissa, Maureen,
Speaker 1: Meghan and Amber become known as the Gilgo for and
Speaker 1: because of the similarities there remains being found in the
Speaker 1: same area wrapped in burlap, the use of online escort ads,
Speaker 1: and the fact that they were all young, very petite,
Speaker 1: white women, many people assume that a single person is
Speaker 1: responsible for their murders. The serial killer theories start immediately
Speaker 1: and with good reason, but the Suffolk County Police, who
Speaker 1: have the jurisdiction over this case, don't publicly confirm this.
Speaker 1: At first, the commissioner at the time tells the press, quote,
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to think we have a Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper running around Suffa County with blood dripping from
Speaker 1: a knife. God forbid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because then we won't have tourists coming.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's yeah, we're stuck in jaws for the
Speaker 1: rest of our lives. And it's instead it's like, no,
Speaker 1: get on this right now and solve it right now.
Speaker 1: Statements like this, of course, don't sit well with the victims' families,
Speaker 1: and they, along with the public, start connecting the dots
Speaker 1: that maybe there is a Long Island serial killer and
Speaker 1: that is what's being discovered. But if you know anything
Speaker 1: about this case, you've already read about the widely reported
Speaker 1: procedural missteps at the Suffa County Police Department. Despite having
Speaker 1: access to cell phone and internet data. Because the victims
Speaker 1: use their phones to contact their clients, statements from the
Speaker 1: people who knew these women, among many other leads to
Speaker 1: chase the police just somehow don't initially identify any suspects
Speaker 1: or persons of interest at.
Speaker 2: All, like talk to all the sex offenders in the area,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, for.
Speaker 1: Basics or how about just the sex clients in the area.
Speaker 1: Go go to those rich people neighborhoods and say who
Speaker 1: among you are hiring and we need to talk to
Speaker 1: you in a serious way. But god forbid, it's a
Speaker 1: professional man that gets questioned. In fact, they turned down
Speaker 1: the FBI's help.
Speaker 2: Don't ever do that.
Speaker 1: Reporting suggests that the Suffolk Police had serious internal corruption
Speaker 1: and misconduct issues at the time. Author Robert Kolker describes
Speaker 1: the department as being in a quote ethical free fall.
Speaker 1: This may have hampered, if not totally frozen, any real
Speaker 1: investigating into these deaths, as implicit biases around sex workers
Speaker 1: and what they do and do not deserve go completely unchecked.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say that there weren't people that
Speaker 1: were there. Like if they were still looking for her
Speaker 1: from the beginning of twenty ten until the winter, then
Speaker 1: someone cared enough to keep on going back out there, right,
Speaker 1: that definitely was happening. But when the system is set
Speaker 1: up like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not a chance.
Speaker 1: So per Kulker's reporting, at one point, this is going
Speaker 1: to make you very mad, like it made me. The
Speaker 1: then chief of detectives publicly victim blames the Gilgo for
Speaker 1: pointing out that they were quote willing to get into
Speaker 1: a car with a stranger. Fuck youw that's called uber
Speaker 1: You fucking do it every goddamn day.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also called it a quote consolation that the killer
Speaker 1: was targeting a specific group of people, sex workers, and
Speaker 1: not the general public.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's an infuriating attitude for local law enforcement to display,
Speaker 1: especially when these homicides fit into an even larger pattern
Speaker 1: of violence and murder on Long Island. Several sets of
Speaker 1: human remains have been discovered in this area going back
Speaker 1: to the mid nineties. Holy it's not new, yeah, And
Speaker 1: they include twenty year old Jessica Taylor of New York City,
Speaker 1: whose remains were discovered in Manorville in July of two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. She had gone missing from the Port
Speaker 1: Authority bus terminal in Manhattan days before the discovery of
Speaker 1: her body, and twenty four year old Valerie mac of Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: who disappeared in the year two thousand. Her remains were
Speaker 1: discovered eleven years later, also in Manorville. Thirty four year
Speaker 1: old New Yorker Karen Regatta's remains are first discovered on
Speaker 1: nearby Fire Island in nineteen ninety six, which is the
Speaker 1: same year she went missing. And the remains of twenty
Speaker 1: eight year old Sondra Castilla, who's a native of Trinidad
Speaker 1: and Tobago living in New York City, are also ideed,
Speaker 1: and she was found in Southampton in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: She had vanished only days earlier. So Sondra Castilla was
Speaker 1: one of the first of these bodies, and then it just.
Speaker 2: Kept happening, right, I mean, everyone after that could have
Speaker 2: been saved if there had been enough of a one
Speaker 2: would think.
Speaker 1: So we don't know much about those women. Authorities have
Speaker 1: alleged that Jessica, Valerie and Karen worked at escorts, with
Speaker 1: police stopping short of describing Sondra as doing the same
Speaker 1: and instead calling her lifestyle quote substantially similar to that
Speaker 1: of a sex workers, whatever that means. Obviously, there's much
Speaker 1: more to these people than the jobs that they paid
Speaker 1: the bills with. They all had people in their lives
Speaker 1: who cared about them and wondered what happened to them. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: the Suffolk County Police Department does experience some serious overhauling
Speaker 1: in the coming years, and as investigators continue working the
Speaker 1: Gilgo four case, they begin to find even more remains
Speaker 1: off of Ocean Parkway. I mean, that's it's fucking crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the amount of bodies and the idea that anyone would
Speaker 1: let anybody say no thanks FBI, and that's what's happening.
Speaker 2: You want to be like, oh, you're so what's it
Speaker 2: called sure of yourself that you don't think you need them?
Speaker 2: But no, it's actually you're corrupt and you don't want
Speaker 2: them to figure that out. That's the real fucking thing.
Speaker 2: That's why corruption is so fucked up where it's I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously it is, but also.
Speaker 1: It keeps out like any possibility of justice.
Speaker 2: Guys, you guys, why do we have to keep doing
Speaker 2: this podcast? Can't we run out? Fucking stories? Please?
Speaker 1: Let us run out?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: This includes more remains belonging to Jessica Taylor, Valerie mac
Speaker 1: and Karen Vergotta, all found in the spring of twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: suggesting that those remains had been scattered, and then in
Speaker 1: December twenty eleven, more than a year after she went missing,
Speaker 1: investigators finally find Shannon Gilbert's phone, clothing, and id on
Speaker 1: Oak Beach, not far from where she was last seen,
Speaker 1: and a few days later her remains are finally located
Speaker 1: in a marsh off Ocean Parkway about a quarter of a
Speaker 1: mile from those belongings. So it won't be until twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: after sustained pressure from the victim's loved ones, and I
Speaker 1: believe it's Shannon's mother that just goes to town and
Speaker 1: is like, yep, I'm not going.
Speaker 2: Away, I'm relenting.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, it won't be until twenty fifteen, after sustained
Speaker 1: pressure from the victims loved ones and under a new
Speaker 1: Suffolk County Police commissioner, that the FBI is invited back
Speaker 1: into the investigation. Welcome. And the real breakthrough comes years
Speaker 1: after that, in twenty twenty two, when a dedicated task
Speaker 1: force is put together to investigate these murders, specifically twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. Yeah, eleven years later.
Speaker 2: Like the shame you should feel that it's taken that
Speaker 2: long to even put together a task force, let alone
Speaker 2: solve it.
Speaker 1: Task force first, Yeah, please, with fresh eyes. The task
Speaker 1: force pours over case files, evidence and statements collected by
Speaker 1: earlier detectives, and they quickly hit on a statement provided
Speaker 1: by Amber Coastello's roommate at the time of her disappearance.
Speaker 1: He had told police about a quote ogre like client
Speaker 1: of Ambers who drove a green Chevy Avalanche pickup truck.
Speaker 2: Could he be more specific? Like just he's telling you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: have you seen the documentary that he is in that
Speaker 2: the roommate.
Speaker 1: The roommate.
Speaker 2: No, he's just the best. He's like a character out
Speaker 2: of euphoria, like gott to watch him, love him? Yes.
Speaker 1: Also, just these people who are like just trying to
Speaker 1: get by in their day to day and suddenly they
Speaker 1: have to take up like I need to get my
Speaker 1: roommate justice.
Speaker 2: So I told you who did it and you don't
Speaker 2: even listen to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Marin Wrights file that information away for a second.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So long established by this point is that Melissa, Maureen, Megan,
Speaker 1: and Amber the gilgo for they had all been contacted
Speaker 1: by someone using a burner phone shortly before they disappeared.
Speaker 2: I don't even know where you get a burner phone
Speaker 2: in the mall one of the Oh.
Speaker 1: The black market Internet? Isn't that what they call it?
Speaker 2: That's traceable, isn't it?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I hope I never have to you hope you do.
Speaker 1: Half Suddenly I'm like, well, goodn't it be kind of
Speaker 1: fun prank calling people. Someone had also used a burner
Speaker 1: phone and Melissa's own phone to repeatedly contact Melissa's little sister, Amanda.
Speaker 2: So fucking disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's Craven. That's the one who is planning a trip
Speaker 1: to meet her sister in New York while Melissa was
Speaker 1: actively missing. Amanda is fifteen years old, and she says
Speaker 1: a man would be on the other line taunting her,
Speaker 1: at one point, telling her he'd raped and murdered her sister.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the depravity. It's the same with a
Speaker 2: fucking golden steak killer. Like, yes, you are so sick
Speaker 2: in a way that we will never understand.
Speaker 1: And thank god it is rare. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's like, and that's why women choose the bear. The
Speaker 1: bear doesn't call you for years afterwards.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, Burner phones are tricky to trace, the whole point
Speaker 1: of having a burner phone, but calls made from these
Speaker 1: phones still ping nearby towers. I didn't know that police
Speaker 1: had already figured out. These calls typically hit towers in
Speaker 1: midtown Manhattan and on Long Island, particularly in the town
Speaker 1: of Massapequa. By twenty twenty two, when the task force
Speaker 1: is at work. Melissa's family had long been begging police
Speaker 1: to investigate those locations more fully. Now the task force does,
Speaker 1: hoping they can find a man who matches the description
Speaker 1: of an ogre who owns a Chevy Avalanche, who has
Speaker 1: connections to midtown Manhattan and Massapequa. And it doesn't take
Speaker 1: long for them to land on a name, and that
Speaker 1: name is rex Huerman.
Speaker 2: Doesn't take long except a decade to land.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take long for the task force who is
Speaker 1: assigned fucking a decade.
Speaker 2: Later, basic fucking research and.
Speaker 1: Any families having to beg Fifty nine year old Rex
Speaker 1: Hureman described by some acquaintances as quote a big goofy
Speaker 1: guy and others as quote cole and distant, kind of
Speaker 1: creepy men women. Is that what you were going to say?
Speaker 2: No, I was going to point to the hometown that
Speaker 2: we just recently did. Yes, that's right, Well had come
Speaker 2: out before this episode. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No, I think breaking news to this thing. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got a Minnesota coming up where you can hear from
Speaker 1: someone who wrote in a personal relationship with this guy right,
Speaker 1: worked near and around. Yeah, Okay, so rex Hierman lives
Speaker 1: in Massapequa. He works in midtown Manhattan, where he has
Speaker 1: an architecture firm. His personal cell phone records show that
Speaker 1: he's used his cell phone in no same areas as
Speaker 1: the Burner phone has been used. Many of our victims
Speaker 1: went missing at times when Huerman's wife and kids were
Speaker 1: away on trips without him. This is all compelling, circumstantial evidence,
Speaker 1: but there's also physical evidence and new ways to test
Speaker 1: DNA versus what was available earlier in the investigation. I mean,
Speaker 1: you think about twenty eleven versus twenty two, twenty six,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, it's huge, Yeah, big difference. Now detectives take
Speaker 1: a few hairs found at the crime scenes and compare
Speaker 1: them against a DNA sample pulled from a pizza box
Speaker 1: that Hureman had thrown away.
Speaker 2: Have you seen the footage of it? They have it
Speaker 2: on like security.
Speaker 1: Of them getting that pizza, I think of them.
Speaker 2: Getting the pizza. Wats they definitely have arresting him.
Speaker 1: Yes, that day that started happening. Now it was again
Speaker 1: this like it's finally happening. Yeah, the DNA is consistent
Speaker 1: with Hureman and or a member of his household. And
Speaker 1: then in July of twenty twenty three humans arrested, and
Speaker 1: search warrants are filed for his home and electronic devices.
Speaker 1: What investigators find is truly heinous. It's deeply disturbing, like
Speaker 1: searches for porn involving the mutilation of women. They also
Speaker 1: find Google searches for family members of the Gilgo four victims,
Speaker 1: members of the police task force, and a document of
Speaker 1: hummans that's been characterized as a quote serial killer checklist.
Speaker 1: Among other things, it notes problems a killer might face, DNA,
Speaker 1: hair and fiber thank god, and how to solve them
Speaker 1: Booty's hairnet, Oh my god, the planning, the dedication going
Speaker 1: into destroying human life. Despite everything that I've just told you,
Speaker 1: Hureman will maintain that he's innocent until this month, April eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, when he shocks the world by pleading
Speaker 1: guilty to the murders of the Gilgo for as well
Speaker 1: as the murder of Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, and Sondra Cristia.
Speaker 1: He also admits to killing Karen Vergata, but he will
Speaker 1: not be prosecuted for her murder as part of his
Speaker 1: plea deal, which also entails cooperating with agents from the
Speaker 1: FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, who hope to gain more insight
Speaker 1: into his crimes in the wake of his guilty plea.
Speaker 1: Rex Huermann's trial, which was scheduled for later this year,
Speaker 1: will not happen, and while it closes several cases commonly
Speaker 1: associated with this so called Long Island serial killer case,
Speaker 1: this story is not entirely over. Unsolved murders and disappearances
Speaker 1: on Long Island remain under investigation. There is real reason
Speaker 1: to believe rex huerman is not behind all of them.
Speaker 1: Among the lingering cases is Shannon Gilbert's. If you remember,
Speaker 1: in May twenty ten, she ran into the darkness of
Speaker 1: Oak Beach. Her body was found more than a year later,
Speaker 1: separate from her clothing and her belongings. Reports note that
Speaker 1: after fleeing her client's home, Shannon knocked on a couple doors,
Speaker 1: asking residents inside for help. By the time someone actually
Speaker 1: calls the police, though, and gives them Shannon's location, she's gone.
Speaker 1: Shannon's client and her driver were questioned by police. They
Speaker 1: are never considered persons of interest in this case, and
Speaker 1: her client insists that he doesn't know why she suddenly
Speaker 1: started panicking that night. Things get very fuzzy. I know,
Speaker 1: it's so weird, it's so crazy, but it's like it
Speaker 1: could have been a million things. Things do get fuzzy.
Speaker 1: After Shannon leaves her client's house, Reporter Robert Kolker makes
Speaker 1: space for the possibility that somebody who encountered her that
Speaker 1: night might know more than they are disclosing. Investigators meanwhile,
Speaker 1: think Shannon's death may have been accidental. She could have
Speaker 1: been intoxicated. That was never proven. She could also been drugged,
Speaker 1: if we're just going to say theories, and then wandered
Speaker 1: into the chili marsh, which many have pointed out would
Speaker 1: have required a ton of strength and energy to wade through,
Speaker 1: especially for a woman as petite as Shannon, and that
Speaker 1: that's where she ultimately either drowned or died of hypothermia.
Speaker 1: But as for her clothing and belongings being found far
Speaker 1: away from her remains, a former Sofa County Police commissioner
Speaker 1: once theorized quote, that's explainable because she's, you know, hysterical,
Speaker 1: and she's discarding her possessions as she moves along. Her
Speaker 1: genes might have come off from running in that environment.
Speaker 1: And that is a possibility. Okay, bro I mean. Also,
Speaker 1: it's like, then let's start naming.
Speaker 2: Any any possible possibly. Yeah, let's not do that.
Speaker 1: And also it's kind of going back to she's hysterical, Like,
Speaker 1: why would you use that word, the word hysterical because
Speaker 1: she thinks someone's trying to kill her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1: And she ends up dead along with all the other
Speaker 1: people who are dead.
Speaker 2: She's hysterical because she thinks she's gonna die, and then
Speaker 2: she dies. That kind of makes the hysterical part. You
Speaker 2: don't get to use that word null and void.
Speaker 1: How about logical? And if you use the word logical,
Speaker 1: none of that other stuff tracks at all totally. Shannon's
Speaker 1: family has long suspected vowel play, and the lack of
Speaker 1: knowing exactly what happened to her is something they've had
Speaker 1: to wrestle with for more than a decade. Robert Kolcher
Speaker 1: has spoken extensively with Shannon's family, including her mom Mary,
Speaker 1: who managed to find a silver lining in this unimaginably
Speaker 1: horrible situation. Kulker writes, quote, Mary understood that one way
Speaker 1: of finding at least a shred of meaning in the
Speaker 1: loss of her daughter was that her disappearance led to
Speaker 1: the discovery of those four women several months later, and
Speaker 1: that without and there would be no case, there would
Speaker 1: be no search for the killer, right, And that is
Speaker 1: the story of the Gilgo Beach murders.
Speaker 2: My God, great job.
Speaker 1: So now we're all up to date, right, yeah wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that stories just makes you feel real bad. How do
Speaker 1: we break down the institutional system that is based in racism, sexism,
Speaker 1: and abuse and build a new one that helps a
Speaker 1: girl who thinks she's being killed and then gets killed, right,
Speaker 1: and calls them on the phone to ask for that help.
Speaker 2: Or needs money because she's trying to live her life
Speaker 2: and can't afford to do that, and so turns to
Speaker 2: something that men pay for and want and then gets.
Speaker 1: Puts her size for it, puts her risk, right, and
Speaker 1: then she's blamed for their violence.
Speaker 2: Right because she couldn't make a living the way she
Speaker 2: wanted to or not enough or whatever it is. And
Speaker 2: so she's, yeah, I don't know how we do that?
Speaker 2: Next go, next timeline, next timeline? You want timeline?
Speaker 1: Pop, well, timeline jump on that one.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, as we do, we're gonna make a fucking
Speaker 2: sharp right turn. Great different direction, completely okay, and we're
Speaker 2: going to the spring of eighteen seventy one. Hey, you
Speaker 2: love that era. I love the past in San Francisco, Hey,
Speaker 2: your fave. So the California gold rush is long over
Speaker 2: by this point, but this is still very much a
Speaker 2: talent of prospectors and bankers who fuel their treasure hunts.
Speaker 2: So the prospectors and bankers pay the fucking regular people
Speaker 2: to go find the diamonds and shit, right.
Speaker 1: Prospectors do it, bankers pay them to do it.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. Yeah, okay. So recently a vein of
Speaker 2: silver has been discovered in Nevada, and much of that
Speaker 2: mining is being spearheaded from San Francisco, and people are
Speaker 2: moving to San Francisco every day to get a piece
Speaker 2: of that action. So one evening, a mining investor named
Speaker 2: George Roberts gets a knock on the door of his
Speaker 2: office in San Francisco. Outside on his doorstep are two men,
Speaker 2: one he recognizes, and when he doesn't, the one he
Speaker 2: knows is a handsome forty one year old named Philip Arnold.
Speaker 2: And Philip had worked with George on some gold and
Speaker 2: silver mining endeavors, so he already knew him and trusted him,
Speaker 2: but he currently works at a company that makes drill
Speaker 2: bits out of industrial grade diamonds. Did you know they
Speaker 2: did that?
Speaker 1: I mean no, no, because.
Speaker 2: It turns out some diamonds aren't really worth a lot
Speaker 2: of money. Yeah, and they turn them into stuff like
Speaker 2: drill bits, which is where this guy Philip works. Well.
Speaker 2: With this detail, we begin the story of the Great
Speaker 2: Diamond Hoax. Ooh, hoax, we got a scam. Hell yeah,
Speaker 2: here we go. Love it. The main source for the
Speaker 2: story is a nineteen forty New Yorker article called The
Speaker 2: American Goal Conda by aj Leebling, and the rest of
Speaker 2: the sources can be found in our show notes. So
Speaker 2: that's I still need this paper. Okay, okay, the other
Speaker 2: man with Philip. Let me show you Philip real quick.
Speaker 2: He's fucking hot, I guess for that time. Here's his photo.
Speaker 1: Let's see, I'll be the judge of that. Oh right, Hi,
Speaker 1: that looks like Paul what's his name from Ireland?
Speaker 2: Totally Paul Mescalstal. He does with really flat hair and
Speaker 2: a severe part down the middle.
Speaker 1: I love his layering. It's a great coat.
Speaker 2: What do you think his mustache smells like?
Speaker 1: I smells like gold. He's got a Kirk Douglas dot
Speaker 1: in his chin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He's a handsome fella.
Speaker 1: He combs that hair pretty seriously and.
Speaker 2: He looks like he knows it. Yeah. Okay. So the
Speaker 2: other man with our friend Philip here is a guy
Speaker 2: named John Slack. He's Philip's cousin. He's a bit surly,
Speaker 2: he doesn't talk much. Both look really dirty, like they've
Speaker 2: been traveling a long time. They are the prospectors. Essentially.
Speaker 2: Philip is clutching a leather sack, the kind someone might
Speaker 2: use to hold gemstones. Fucking it's like just straight out
Speaker 2: of a cartoon. Yeah, you know, like a like Goonies exactly.
Speaker 2: They tell George, the investor, that the bag contains diamonds
Speaker 2: and rubies, which they discovered on an exploratory trip through
Speaker 2: a region, and they refuse to name what the region is,
Speaker 2: but they're like excited about it. They say that because
Speaker 2: they've arrived back into town after banking hours, they want
Speaker 2: to use George's office safe to store the stones overnight, Like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know me, can you just hold onto these for
Speaker 2: me overnight? George is like absolutely, and they make him
Speaker 2: promise you won't look in the bag. And then but
Speaker 2: you'd look in the bag, right, yeah, and he does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean how could you not?
Speaker 2: Of course? Like, yes, is that part of the setup?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: See when someone comes around, they're like, I don't want
Speaker 2: you in on this thing, and you're like, I gotta
Speaker 2: get in. It's your idea now that you're in on it.
Speaker 2: So George says, okay, he says, you want to look
Speaker 2: in the bag, and then he doesn't press them for
Speaker 2: details about where they were, even though he really wants
Speaker 2: to know. Philip and John they say that the region
Speaker 2: they were in is controlled by Native Americans, who, if
Speaker 2: the story had been true, are rightfully hostile towards white outsiders. Yes,
Speaker 2: but the stories a lie. And they say that because
Speaker 2: of the Native Americans, because of the hostile area, that
Speaker 2: means any future larger expeditions will require significant upfront investment
Speaker 2: in order to have adequate defenses. So it costs a
Speaker 2: lot of money to go find a diamond, mind, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and to have everything you need.
Speaker 1: You're not just going to go out there and be
Speaker 1: like pannin for gold type of thing. Well, and also
Speaker 1: because it's very well dealt with in the TV show Deadwood,
Speaker 1: which I highly recommend everyone wants but like you think
Speaker 1: you want it, you're out there trying to get it
Speaker 1: with all everybody else. Then you get it. Now you're
Speaker 1: in like ten times the danger totally.
Speaker 2: Now everyone wants what you've got and they're not afraid
Speaker 2: to try to get it. And so, if there's one
Speaker 2: thing we've learned when we do stories about scams, it's
Speaker 2: when someone has let slip some information about a money
Speaker 2: making scheme and they seem reluctant to tell you more
Speaker 2: about it at first, and now you're in the position
Speaker 2: of wanting to be involved. That should be a red flag,
Speaker 2: right m hm, and you should stay away. Unfortunately, George
Speaker 2: does not do this. Instead, exactly according to Philip's plan,
Speaker 2: the two men leave. George takes the fucking jewel bag
Speaker 2: and looks inside it, and what he sees, to his
Speaker 2: semi trained eye is a pile of gemstones, all uncut
Speaker 2: but very precious looking. Nonetheless, he sees garnets, sapphires, diamonds,
Speaker 2: and I wore this ring so we could look at all.
Speaker 1: The Are those garnets and sapphires and diamonds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and their vintage? I don't think they are real anything.
Speaker 2: But yes, I wanted to do it, but look at
Speaker 2: what those look like. This is called a sputnick ring,
Speaker 2: and I'm definitely married. So all these are commonly found
Speaker 2: in Arizona, and so it makes George feel pretty sure
Speaker 2: that that's the region that Philip and John have returned from.
Speaker 2: But the fact that there are diamonds in the bag
Speaker 2: is actually a huge detail. No one has found diamonds
Speaker 2: in North America yet. And George brings the bag to
Speaker 2: a man named William Chapman Ralston's house. He's the chairman
Speaker 2: of the board of the Bank of California. Oh, and
Speaker 2: the two of them are like, ho the shit, And
Speaker 2: they bring the stones to an appraiser. But the thing is, Philip,
Speaker 2: the scammer who is hot, knows that no appraiser in
Speaker 2: San Francisco has the equipment or expertise to gauge the
Speaker 2: quality of uncut diamonds. He's just betting on everyone being
Speaker 2: a little uninformed based on very impressed by a baggage
Speaker 2: gem exactly, And it happens over and over again. They
Speaker 2: can tell that there are real diamonds in there, but
Speaker 2: they have no idea that they are industrial grade diamonds.
Speaker 2: The ones they turn into those drill bits where he works.
Speaker 2: They're not gem grade. Plus they're mixed in with a
Speaker 2: few stones that are actually of good quality. So the
Speaker 2: appraiser tells George and William, the richie guys, that the
Speaker 2: stones are probably worse around one hundred thousand dollars. We
Speaker 2: have a few opportunities to do in today's money, okay,
Speaker 2: story eighteen seventy one hundred thousand dollars, two million dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I mean to do it. Yep, to
Speaker 1: put this on your head, paper clip crown finally.
Speaker 2: So that's what they think it's worth. In fact, they're
Speaker 2: actually worth about twelve thousand dollars, not one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: which is still three hundred thousand dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: You always got for the big scams. You got to
Speaker 1: invest that money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So at this point in time, let's talk
Speaker 2: a little about diamonds. Diamonds, at this point in time,
Speaker 2: the majority of the world's diamond deposits have not yet
Speaker 2: been discovered. For the first two thousand years of the
Speaker 2: recorded history of diamond mining, diamonds have come from only
Speaker 2: one place, a place called Goal Conda, India, and these
Speaker 2: are now considered some of the rarest and highest quality
Speaker 2: diamonds in the world. They're the fucking og and the
Speaker 2: Hope diamond is from goal Condat just to like give
Speaker 2: you a fucking idea. And I looked at some photos
Speaker 2: and they're just so beautiful. By eighteen thirty, the Goal
Speaker 2: Conda diamonds had been completely mined. Oh they're gone, they're done.
Speaker 1: So we took them all.
Speaker 2: We took them all, and by that point the center
Speaker 2: of the diamond mining industry has moved to Brazil, where
Speaker 2: diamonds had been discovered in the seventeen hundreds by Portuguese colonizers.
Speaker 2: I mean, hence colonization fucking everywhere.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, because I wanted to say, did the
Speaker 1: colonizers find it or did the natives sign it? And
Speaker 1: they murdered the shit out of the natives to steal them?
Speaker 2: Probably that one. I mean, they're not worth anything unless
Speaker 2: you can sell them and you put worth on them.
Speaker 2: So if the natives did find them and they were
Speaker 2: just like heah yeah. But then in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: five years before, Philip walks into George's office with his
Speaker 2: bag of jewels, a twenty one twenty five caret diamond
Speaker 2: is discovered in South Africa, and so this kicks off
Speaker 2: the frenzy of prospecting in South Africa. And also it
Speaker 2: generates a lot of interest in where the next big
Speaker 2: deposit of diamonds is going to be found. And there
Speaker 2: are rumors that Arizona, for some reason might be a
Speaker 2: fruitful place to look, because the prospectors believe that there's
Speaker 2: some geological similarities to South Africa. So that's just like
Speaker 2: an educated guess from the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Sure, So the.
Speaker 2: Mining world are already focused on Arizona at this point,
Speaker 2: and George and William are now the rich guys are
Speaker 2: now under the impression that Philip and John have found
Speaker 2: that sought after vein of diamonds there and that they
Speaker 2: need to invest in order to find more.
Speaker 1: I'm not a geologist. I meant to tell you, excuse me,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, but is it and you're not either,
Speaker 1: But is it possible that you'd find a diamond mine
Speaker 1: and a ruby mine and a garnet mine like all
Speaker 1: those things together.
Speaker 2: You're being too sensible.
Speaker 1: Okay, you got my mistake, my mistake.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about hot phillip here.
Speaker 2: He had been born in Kentucky. He has a wife
Speaker 2: and family there, though it sounds like he left them
Speaker 2: to travel to the gold rush in the West, which
Speaker 2: seems like a lot of them did. He does send
Speaker 2: back money periodically, but who the fuck knows what that means.
Speaker 2: He had settled in San Francisco, and in the late
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties, after the gold rush had died down, he
Speaker 2: took a job as a bookkeeper at that company that
Speaker 2: makes rock drills out of industrial diamonds, so that's how
Speaker 2: he got ahold of them. These drills are used for
Speaker 2: mining other stones, and there he learned a bit about
Speaker 2: different grades of diamonds and where they come from. So,
Speaker 2: knowing everything that he does, he goes first to London,
Speaker 2: where he buys all of those uncut stones that George
Speaker 2: will later see in the bag. Those stones are mostly
Speaker 2: industrial grade diamonds with a few nice gemstones mixed in,
Speaker 2: and after returning to the US, he meets up with
Speaker 2: his cousin John in Saint Louis, and together the two
Speaker 2: travels through Arizona, where they buy the telltale garnets from
Speaker 2: a Native American, so they mix all the stones up,
Speaker 2: shake it up like a shake and bake, and then
Speaker 2: they bring that bag to where we were in the
Speaker 2: beginning of the story, to George's doorstep, with the intention
Speaker 2: of enticing him to invest. The plan works George and
Speaker 2: William the banker, and George tell Philip and John that
Speaker 2: they insist on being allowed to invest in their new
Speaker 2: diamond venture. Yes, so you have to include us. I
Speaker 2: looked in the bag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I did all the things you told me
Speaker 1: not to do.
Speaker 2: Must. They say they can help raise the capital that
Speaker 2: the men need to establish a new mine, and can
Speaker 2: help provide the security they need to defend against the
Speaker 2: made up Native Americans and then made up mine. Phillip
Speaker 2: says he's unwilling to part with controlling interest in his
Speaker 2: mining venture, but he'll allow George and William to invest
Speaker 2: very generous every time. Before proceeding, though, William the Banker
Speaker 2: insists on sending a scout to the area to make
Speaker 2: sure the diamonds are real. He at least has some
Speaker 2: forethought into the legitimacy of this whole fucking plan. So
Speaker 2: Philip and John say that's fine, but they make the
Speaker 2: scout wear a blindfold for the journey, so he can't
Speaker 2: tell where it is because he doesn't want to reveal
Speaker 2: the exact location yet until he has the money. So
Speaker 2: William chooses a gold miner named David D. Colton to
Speaker 2: accompany the men, and, like everyone pretty much in the US,
Speaker 2: he's never seen a diamond field in his life, so
Speaker 2: he doesn't really have a point of reference for it.
Speaker 2: So maybe he's not the best guy to.
Speaker 1: Go, and they're going to build a little diamond field
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, I mean essentially, Yeah, they take him on
Speaker 2: a on a train. They don't get an Arizona they go
Speaker 2: to Wyoming instead, and then they put him, I think,
Speaker 2: on a horse, and they like blindfold him and essentially
Speaker 2: just like walk him around for a long time on
Speaker 2: a blindfold on a horse. You could not pay me
Speaker 2: to go blindfold on a horse. It's for three days.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I could not fucking pay me for an
Speaker 1: hour back then. It was the only option.
Speaker 2: Not the blindfold part though, Oh the blind I'll do
Speaker 2: the horse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to. I'm not like begging to but about it.
Speaker 1: You're basically just having to feel how to ride that
Speaker 1: horse correctly, right, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Scary, you know's I'd get carsick.
Speaker 1: A lot of trust issues there.
Speaker 2: So when they take the blindfold off, this gold miner
Speaker 2: finds himself on a seven thousand foot high mesa in
Speaker 2: the middle of a vast wilderness. They walk for a
Speaker 2: bit and come to what looks like an ant hill
Speaker 2: shimmering with diamond dust. They dig for a few hours
Speaker 2: with pocket knives, and they each find several diamonds and
Speaker 2: a few other precious stones. So once they're back in California,
Speaker 2: the gold miner's like, it's fucking He takes the stones
Speaker 2: to a jeweler who again says they're worth a lot
Speaker 2: of money, and if you found this there, then there's
Speaker 2: got to be a lot more so, just like nobody
Speaker 2: fucking knows what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Everyone's bullshitting, everyone's bullshitting, and then that it's that thing
Speaker 1: of like if I did that and got the confirmation
Speaker 1: I would go, okay, now somebody no blindfolds, Yeah, well
Speaker 1: just now we know.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, But then they'd know where it is and
Speaker 2: they wouldn't have to pay him. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I have one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Agree I'm trying to scam, solve here, it's not going
Speaker 1: to work because this already happened one hundred years ago
Speaker 1: more than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what David doesn't know is that Philip or John,
Speaker 2: one of them, had simply scattered some more of those
Speaker 2: London diamonds in that spot while he was still blindfolded.
Speaker 2: So they walked him up, they wished, and then they
Speaker 2: were like, come on down.
Speaker 1: And he's like, plink, plink, plink. Is it starting to rain?
Speaker 1: Diamond damon?
Speaker 2: So once David the mining scout tells William George the
Speaker 2: diamond field is legit, the two rich dudes get really
Speaker 2: excited and they know they're going to have to raise
Speaker 2: some serious capital. And as we know, another classic hallmark
Speaker 2: of a scam is urgency. So William and George think
Speaker 2: that at any moment, some other prospector or trapper or
Speaker 2: just any dude on the street could come across this
Speaker 2: unclaimed diamond field and take it for themselves, because nobody
Speaker 2: owns it except the Native Americans, of course. So they
Speaker 2: think they have to raise enough money to open a
Speaker 2: brand new diamond mind and fund an army to protect it,
Speaker 2: and they have to do it fast. When this and
Speaker 2: you get stupid when you're doing stuff fast, oh you know.
Speaker 1: And also it's so much money.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, So it requires a trip to New York
Speaker 2: to get investors on board. And in New York, the
Speaker 2: diamonds are again appraised by fucking the founder of Tiffany
Speaker 2: and Company, Oh, mister Tiffany, and he values them at
Speaker 2: at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and in
Speaker 2: today's money he gets it wrong too, oh does he? Yeah? Like,
Speaker 2: I think I think everyone gets it wrong and keeps
Speaker 2: getting it wrong, and no one wants to be the
Speaker 2: one who's like, I don't think this is real, because
Speaker 2: what if you're wrong, like three guys ahead of.
Speaker 1: You, and like Tiffany j Tiffany who got in there
Speaker 1: and was like, no, these are great, right, Like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll go up again that guy. Yeah, after
Speaker 1: a while, it's not worth it.
Speaker 2: Right, So he says that what they found so far
Speaker 2: is worth at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: which intoday's money.
Speaker 1: Would that put it over? Is that three point one
Speaker 1: million dollars kill care of I'm learning?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, now the New York investors believe that this
Speaker 2: tiny sample from this vast diamond field is worth millions,
Speaker 2: but again they're wanting to do their due diligence and
Speaker 2: send their own mining expert just to be sure. So Philip,
Speaker 2: the main hot guy, agrees that he'll do this if
Speaker 2: they give him an upfront investment of six hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars, which is worth almost eighteen million today.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, and she says we'll buy him and the
Speaker 2: cousins out of any like, I'll show you where it
Speaker 2: is with the money. Yeah, And it seems like everyone
Speaker 2: forgot that at the beginning of the scam, Philip claimed
Speaker 2: he would never let go of a controlling stake in
Speaker 2: the mine. It's like, oh, you're now willing to do it,
Speaker 2: even though now you know it's worth so much more.
Speaker 1: Everyone forgot, including Philip. Yeah, real black, he didn't track that.
Speaker 2: So they basically agree to it. Before Philip can take
Speaker 2: the group on the trip, he says he and his
Speaker 2: cousin need two hundred thousand dollars up front. Of that
Speaker 2: six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the investors agree to
Speaker 2: these terms, and so with that two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: because they're already knowing they're going to get six hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand total. The Cousins go back to Europe
Speaker 2: and buy fifty thousand dollars worth of the worst diamonds
Speaker 2: in Amsterdam. What that trip? And then they seem to
Speaker 2: blow a decent chunk of the rest on nice hotels,
Speaker 2: meals and entertainment. Why take me there?
Speaker 1: Can we bring that picture back up again? Away? He's like,
Speaker 1: let me take you to Amsterdam. Do you like sirloin? Stay?
Speaker 2: You know who? He looks like Rory's Gobel.
Speaker 1: He looks like he doesn't, doesn't. It's Becausebury crosses his arms.
Speaker 2: He does love to cross his arms like that. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's so funny, all right, Okay, so they go, they
Speaker 2: party in Amsterdam. They bring back a bunch of fucking
Speaker 2: cheap ass diamonds. So Philip now takes the investors and
Speaker 2: the expert they have selected back to the hy Mesa,
Speaker 2: which turns out to be a mountain that is now
Speaker 2: called Diamond Peak. And I can show you a photo.
Speaker 2: So it's like that. So you just throw diamonds at
Speaker 2: that and everyone finds them. Yeah, so gorgeous, it's amazing,
Speaker 2: probably really hot, it's very cool. So Diamond Peak is
Speaker 2: actually only about fifteen miles from the railroad stop. But
Speaker 2: as I said, he made them walk around flying folded
Speaker 2: for days and days, And at this point one of
Speaker 2: the cousins has clearly had time to go plant more stones.
Speaker 2: And once they're there, everybody digs around with pickaxes. Everyone
Speaker 2: finds diamonds and other precious stones, and so at this
Speaker 2: point the investors are like, okay, we believe you, and
Speaker 2: we're ready to give you the rest of the money.
Speaker 2: And at this point, John, the surly quiet cousin, bows
Speaker 2: out of the whole scheme and makes himself scarce with
Speaker 2: his remaining money. He's kind of smart, He's like, don't
Speaker 2: be greedy, get it and go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this can't last.
Speaker 2: So he has about thirty thousand dollars left after his
Speaker 2: romp through Europe. So he Scadatle's on thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in today's money, eight hundred and thirty six thousand. So
Speaker 2: that's enough to live off of for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life. Back then, yeah, it was like a fucking penny.
Speaker 1: A cup of coffee was three cents exactly.
Speaker 2: And Philip takes his remaining four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: which is about twelve million today. His cousin got he
Speaker 2: should have got more, and he pretends and he's really
Speaker 2: upset that he got such a small amount of money, like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess you guys bested me.
Speaker 1: Oh my field of diarr so well.
Speaker 2: Twelve million dollars. These investors are so stoked they start,
Speaker 2: you know, setting up shop. They open an office in
Speaker 2: San Francisco. They display some of the gems that have
Speaker 2: been found at this new and mysterious diamond field, thinking
Speaker 2: it's like the first one in the fucking US. But
Speaker 2: they don't sell any additional interest in the property because
Speaker 2: they want to keep all the profits for themselves. So
Speaker 2: they're greedy about it and they just can't do that.
Speaker 2: Then a geologist named Clarence King, who would go on
Speaker 2: to form the US Geological Survey which you're in my favorite,
Speaker 2: and who had just finished a geological expedition in the
Speaker 2: exact same area where this mine was supposed to be
Speaker 2: or supposedly was, went into the investor's mining expert on
Speaker 2: a train. Just a coincidence. It's bad fucking news for everybody,
Speaker 2: the odds, I mean, everyone's a fucking miner back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's true. There's a lot of experts
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of this kind of shit that
Speaker 1: people are trying to do exactly.
Speaker 2: The mining expert had been promised a small share in
Speaker 2: the land, but he had already sold off his portions,
Speaker 2: so he actually doesn't give a shit about keeping it
Speaker 2: a secret, you know, like everyone else does. He tells
Speaker 2: the sky Clarence all about the diamonds and other precious
Speaker 2: gems in this one particular area of Colorado, and Clarence.
Speaker 2: Our expert is like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. Bullshit,
Speaker 2: He calls bullshit on the whole thing. He had just
Speaker 2: studied this area. He knows it's impossible that was found,
Speaker 2: but he has to go see for himself. So he
Speaker 2: takes the train to the general area he's heard about
Speaker 2: and asks some local shepherds to tell him where a
Speaker 2: bunch of random San Franciscans and New Yorkers had been
Speaker 2: digging lately. And you've seen a lot of dudes lately.
Speaker 2: Where are they? Where were they? A lot of pinstripes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, slip some of twenty Yeah. The shepherds point
Speaker 2: him to the exact spot near Diamond Peak, and once
Speaker 2: their Clarence discovers multiple kinds of diamonds that are clearly
Speaker 2: from different locations, Rubi's garnets, sapphires, emeralds, and amethysts, which,
Speaker 2: as Clarence puts it in a letter to the so
Speaker 2: called mining expert who really only ever knew about gold,
Speaker 2: calls it quote an association of minerals impossible of occurrence
Speaker 2: in nature, meaning they don't fucking grow together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, duh, oh, it's a treasure field.
Speaker 2: They were almost like too greedy, our hot guy, because
Speaker 2: it's like, just put the diamonds in there.
Speaker 1: That's enough, right, that kind of like mixing it up,
Speaker 1: I mean, getting people excited. It makes sense for the bag.
Speaker 1: But then to source them all in one place, it's
Speaker 1: like I foked out of college and I know that.
Speaker 2: Ain't you knew? I mean, they're lucky they didn't get
Speaker 2: caught earlier. He says. He finds diamonds in places where
Speaker 2: it would be impossible for them to be like a
Speaker 2: tree stump. They're just throwing them around, and his assistant
Speaker 2: even finds a little polished like diamond ready for jewel,
Speaker 2: like the ones we see in rings, which must have
Speaker 2: been accidentally mixed in with the other stones where they
Speaker 2: bought them for cheap and then threw them. And it's like,
Speaker 2: here's a fucking cut diamond like this, This is impossible.
Speaker 1: But also why would they leave it all behind, like
Speaker 1: this is our special thing, just in case somebody went
Speaker 1: and checked. It's so weird to me because there is
Speaker 1: value in those Yeah, they are mining for stuff, like
Speaker 1: it's not like.
Speaker 2: I think they like left them there. So when those
Speaker 2: investors come back, they don't realize they've been had someone
Speaker 2: else could have found them at the same time.
Speaker 1: No, it's very weird and to mine that gem field, right.
Speaker 2: Clarence sends a telegram to the investors at their brand
Speaker 2: new San Francisco office. He's like, I can't let these guys,
Speaker 2: you know, He says, quote, I have hastened to San
Speaker 2: Francisco to lay before you the startling fact that the
Speaker 2: new diamond fields upon which are based such large investments
Speaker 2: and such brilliant hope, are utterly valueless. That's way to
Speaker 2: say that you got fucking face face and yourselves and
Speaker 2: your engineer the victims of an unparalleled fraud end quote.
Speaker 2: So by this point the new mining company has been
Speaker 2: huge news, like this shop they set up, especially in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, so it's even bigger news when the whole
Speaker 2: thing turns out to be an elaborate scam. I'm sure
Speaker 2: so many people were like stoked to read like it's
Speaker 2: just gossip mags about me totally and were about investors.
Speaker 1: Because you know that one of them went down there
Speaker 1: with this pocket watch in his hotal pocket and it says, boys,
Speaker 1: I got to open his office.
Speaker 2: He's got those like sockgarters on and shit diamonds and
Speaker 2: the stock.
Speaker 1: Garters, rich guy in all over the place.
Speaker 2: That's right. So the story runs in the San Francisco
Speaker 2: bulletin and the whole thing just comes crashing down. But
Speaker 2: by this point John and Philip are later days, they're gone.
Speaker 1: He's shaved that mustag right filled in the hole.
Speaker 2: It's over. I got some fillery out. Ultimately, only one
Speaker 2: of the investors, a man named William Lent, He's the
Speaker 2: only person that's not too embarrassed to try to track
Speaker 2: Philip down and get some of his me back. Everyone
Speaker 2: else is so shamed that they don't want to even
Speaker 2: make it a bigger deal. They just want to quietly
Speaker 2: go away like I got had.
Speaker 1: That's the end of it, because I think maybe in
Speaker 1: that business, right, if they get had, then they're just
Speaker 1: the idiots forever. They can't go back and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's make another deal.
Speaker 2: Totally, no one believes in them anymore. So this guy,
Speaker 2: William Lytt is probably the most motivated, since he had
Speaker 2: bought out several investors and was on the hook at
Speaker 2: that point in Philip's scheme for three hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: which in today's money.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say seven hundred and ten thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars eight million? Karen, what oh what did you say? Nope?
Speaker 1: I said it wrong. I said it wrong. I heard
Speaker 1: it wrong. I don't know you were you heard the seven?
Speaker 1: You're like, we're there.
Speaker 2: I heard what I wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: We got there. I mean, listener, if you've just joined us.
Speaker 1: First of all, we've been playing this stupid game for
Speaker 1: ten years and I am not a winner of this
Speaker 1: game usually at all.
Speaker 2: Now you got closer I think this time than.
Speaker 1: Ever than ever, because usually my brain goes like crazy
Speaker 1: and it's the same is say fifty two million.
Speaker 2: I think I've gotten close or correct one time, and
Speaker 2: then every other time was so far off it's embarrassing,
Speaker 2: and I would I'd be like these investors and not
Speaker 2: go after my money.
Speaker 1: Let's put down the hubris around, not only in today's money,
Speaker 1: but all the jewels in our lives, truly.
Speaker 2: Like my fucking diamond ring that I forgot to put on. Okay, Ultimately,
Speaker 2: this investor tracks Philip down. He had skidaddled to Elizabethtown, Kentucky,
Speaker 2: your favorite place to summer.
Speaker 1: It's so nice.
Speaker 2: Well, he's back with his family, so he didn't ditch
Speaker 2: his family, and he's bought five hundred acres of land
Speaker 2: and has opened the first store in town that has
Speaker 2: plate glass windows. Like he's got the money to spend
Speaker 2: on plate glass windows at this point.
Speaker 1: And back then, in that era of America, it was
Speaker 1: all swindlers that opened a store with plate glass windows,
Speaker 1: built their empires. All it's all on the foundation of lying.
Speaker 2: You're a great great great grandfather that you're so proud
Speaker 2: of that sets you up for life with a fucking
Speaker 2: trust fund. Was a scammer.
Speaker 1: He was an absolute human rights exploiter.
Speaker 2: Sorry, enjoy your money.
Speaker 1: My own grandfather who was a cop in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: totally crooked, got rich. Then my his wife, the widow,
Speaker 1: donated all of it to the SPCA girl friend. How
Speaker 1: much well like enough a crooked cop level amount to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, we could have lived in and my
Speaker 1: mom and I used to talk about it all the time.
Speaker 2: The killed gera fortune.
Speaker 1: We could have been a contender.
Speaker 2: Is it the killed Gare of fortune or the your
Speaker 2: mob side night the Night Fortune, the Night Fortune. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that was her last name. It's amazing, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's good. Okay, so play class windows. Philip has plenty
Speaker 2: of cash left when this guy comes after him to
Speaker 2: hire a lawyer, and ultimately he settles with lent for
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so half of what
Speaker 2: he had taken him for, okay, and so he still
Speaker 2: has money left over. And in the end his net
Speaker 2: profits from the hoax are five hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: So essentially, with the playing with the lawyer paying this
Speaker 2: guy back, he's got away with about in today's money,
Speaker 2: ten million dollars. WHOA done?
Speaker 1: Just worth it? Worth it? Absolutely, he would do it again.
Speaker 1: God damn.
Speaker 2: Yeah. After the settlement, Philip decides to open a bank,
Speaker 2: and this is where ultimately karma comes back to bite
Speaker 2: him in the ass. So there are two competing banks
Speaker 2: in town, and the owners of one of those banks
Speaker 2: challenges Philip to a duel. They were still doing duels then,
Speaker 2: Great like say, no, such a fucking dude thing to do.
Speaker 2: I want to shoot at you want to shoot at me?
Speaker 1: Yes, I do.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to survive it, and I make
Speaker 2: guys with you. So let's just do this both dead.
Speaker 2: Philip shoots his competitor in the arm, but the competitor's
Speaker 2: dueling partner sneaks up behind Philip and shoots him in
Speaker 2: the back, killing him.
Speaker 1: That's cheating.
Speaker 2: Such cheating. So at the age of forty eight, in
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy eight, Philip dies. Philip's cousin and co conspirator,
Speaker 2: John Slack, is never heard from again.
Speaker 1: Smart.
Speaker 2: This is why we have to do the ancestry DNA tesk.
Speaker 2: I want to know whose fucking great great grandpa?
Speaker 1: This is?
Speaker 2: Oh in Europe.
Speaker 1: You want to do other people's ancestry DNA test.
Speaker 2: I want them to do it.
Speaker 1: Yes, everyone's got to do it.
Speaker 2: There's some reports that he moved to New Mexico and
Speaker 2: became a coffin maker. So if that sounds familiar your
Speaker 2: great great grandpa, let us know. And that is the
Speaker 2: story of the great diamond hoax.
Speaker 1: Incredible, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 2: I had neither, and it worked.
Speaker 1: You guys, follow your dream It pays, follow your diamond
Speaker 1: cheating dreams.
Speaker 2: Just get a scam, make it good, leave immediately.
Speaker 1: Get out right before the peak.
Speaker 2: Wait a second, should we be listening to our own advice?
Speaker 2: Oh shit?
Speaker 1: All right, well guys, this has been ten years. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for letting us get away with this for
Speaker 2: ten years. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You know, go find your diamonds. Yeah, but if someone
Speaker 1: shows you a bag of diamonds and says, don't look
Speaker 1: in here, and then you do, those aren't real diamond.
Speaker 2: That's right, but you are. You're the real diamond of
Speaker 2: this story. Say sexy and don't get goodbye? Elvis, do
Speaker 2: you want to cookie?
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
Speaker 2: is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Aristotle Lascevedo.
Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 1: Our researchers are Mayor McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 2: Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
Speaker 1: Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
Speaker 2: Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 2: Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
Speaker 2: And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
Speaker 2: the remind Me buttons. That's the best way you can
Speaker 2: support our show. Goodbye,