Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, do you live in Washington, DC? Are you
Speaker 1: sitting around fretting about this upcoming election? Maybe you're even
Speaker 1: working on one of these campaigns. Well, we've got a
Speaker 1: great stress reliever for you, and that's coming out to
Speaker 1: see us on May thirtieth at the Warner Theater for
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we guarantee zero political jokes, one hundred percent zero
Speaker 2: political jokes if you come out and see us. We're
Speaker 2: gonna be in Medford, mass on May twenty ninth. The
Speaker 2: next night, we'll be in DC on May thirtieth, and
Speaker 2: then the night after that we'll be at our old friend,
Speaker 2: the Town Hall in Manhattan Town, NYC.
Speaker 1: That's right, So check out tickets. You can go to
Speaker 1: stuff youshould Know dot com, you can go to the
Speaker 1: theater websites themselves, avoid those secondary ticket brokers, or check
Speaker 1: out our link tree, right, Josh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, link tree sysk Lot.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Ben's here too, So this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a big trigger warning upfront, and we may issue
Speaker 1: even in a second one after breaks or something. This
Speaker 1: is about a human monster. It's a story of a
Speaker 1: human monster who did awful things to children. So don't
Speaker 1: listen to it if that is a trigger, and don't
Speaker 1: let your children listen to this.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, So, Chuck, I'm always on the lookout
Speaker 2: for somebody who's grave i'd like to spit on, and
Speaker 2: I've never found anybody before before we started researching this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, boy, no getting around it.
Speaker 2: If I ever make it out to Hickory, Mississippi, I
Speaker 2: will definitely go out of my way to spit on
Speaker 2: Georgia Tan's grave because she deserves it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get to her sort of upbringing here in
Speaker 1: a sec but just very quickly. Georgia Tan was a
Speaker 1: woman who worked in social work, and she made a
Speaker 1: long and wealthy career. Got rich by kidnapping babies, falsifying
Speaker 1: birth records, stealing kids from generally poor families, uneducated mothers,
Speaker 1: and selling them to rich people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was hands down the wealthiest social worker to
Speaker 2: ever live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm having a hard time already.
Speaker 2: So Chuck, let's set the scene a little bit, because, like,
Speaker 2: the idea of adoption is not that old in the
Speaker 2: United States for a very long time. If you were orphaned,
Speaker 2: if your parents abandoned you, whatever led you to this
Speaker 2: position where you were no longer under the care of
Speaker 2: a grown up, you were extraordinarily vulnerable. If you were lucky,
Speaker 2: relatives might take you in, maybe a kindly neighbor, but
Speaker 2: you were also very much at risk for basically becoming
Speaker 2: somebody's indentured servant. It was like, without that whole idea
Speaker 2: of that's what became of orphans, we wouldn't have Dickens today.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, for sure, there were a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about sort of the movement after
Speaker 1: industrialization from more rural farming communities to the city. That
Speaker 1: increased a lot of the kind of the rate of
Speaker 1: orphans in cities because in a lot of these poorer neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: you had outbreaks of cholera, you had yellow fever. A
Speaker 1: lot of these urban communities were decimated, killing parents, leaving
Speaker 1: a lot of children behind abandoned. One thing that happened
Speaker 1: during that period was something called the orphan train. Starting
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty four, for about sixty five years, about
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand orphan kids were shipped from
Speaker 1: the northwest and cities to rural towns. But again, most
Speaker 1: of the time it looked more like a slave trade
Speaker 1: than like they weren't being adopted as family members. They
Speaker 1: were being kind of auctioned off at train stations and lineups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were basically adopted as hands. I wanted to
Speaker 2: say hired hands, but I don't think they were hired.
Speaker 2: In some cases, they didn't even get room and board,
Speaker 2: Like if you were fostered out, if you made it
Speaker 2: into a foster home, you very often had to work
Speaker 2: to repay the family for your care. Yeah, so this
Speaker 2: was how it was for a very long time. Adoption
Speaker 2: just it wasn't It didn't click with Americans in particular,
Speaker 2: at least because kids that were in that situation were
Speaker 2: viewed as like inferior, morally inferior, potentially genetically inferior. It
Speaker 2: was a very mean time. So you didn't want those kids,
Speaker 2: You didn't want to bring them into your family. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until I think about the nineteen thirties that
Speaker 2: the idea of adoption as we understand it today, where
Speaker 2: a couple or a family want to include a child
Speaker 2: that's not biologically theirs into their family that's less than
Speaker 2: a century old. That concept in the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like adoption as we know it, out
Speaker 1: of if you were out of wedlock. It's horrific to
Speaker 1: think of how we thought of these kids and the
Speaker 1: women that were in that situation. Just recently, I went
Speaker 1: to Memphis, and that's where this story takes place, is
Speaker 1: where my mom grew up in her family. And so
Speaker 1: we went there on a trip to kind of show
Speaker 1: my daughter where grand grand grew up in her high
Speaker 1: school and all that stuff. And at one point we
Speaker 1: were driving through a neighborhood and my mom was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's the old house for unwed mothers.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wait, I've heard that term. What
Speaker 3: is that?
Speaker 1: And she was like, if you were out of wedlock,
Speaker 1: then there's a very good chance that you were sent
Speaker 1: to live in a house like kind of removed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you told the neighbors that you that your
Speaker 2: daughter went off to stay with relatives, ye, to help
Speaker 2: like a sick aunt or something like that. And then
Speaker 2: she would come back ten months later and everybody would
Speaker 2: move along like there was nothing, like nothing had happened.
Speaker 2: But there would be a child out there in the
Speaker 2: world that was no longer with her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the sort of stage that we set
Speaker 1: for when Georgia Tan came into the world. I was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen ninety one in Mississippi, raised in Hickory, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Was the daughter of Beulah and George Tan. Her father
Speaker 1: was a very prominent judge. Part of his job as
Speaker 1: a judge back then, because of the way things were,
Speaker 1: was placing kids, finding homes for orphan kids and abandoned
Speaker 1: kids and neglected kids. And because, like we said, adoption
Speaker 1: wasn't such a big thing at the time. So that
Speaker 1: was part of his job, was placing these kids, sometimes
Speaker 1: in foster homes, sometimes with families who you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: it was a great situation, but not always, and sometimes
Speaker 1: just like to the state asylum.
Speaker 2: And also the idea of like what you think of
Speaker 2: in like that old timey orphanage where there's like nuns
Speaker 2: walking around like that was a real thing. Like charities
Speaker 2: often ran homes for children orphanages. Yeah, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: any place she wanted to be, although it was. I mean,
Speaker 2: I suppose it was better than the alternative in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases. But I think that you were just
Speaker 2: so vulnerable that that's not something you could say across
Speaker 2: the board, Like, I'm sure there are people kids who
Speaker 2: were better off fending for themselves on the street than
Speaker 2: in some of the homes that they were put in
Speaker 2: or some of the orphanages that they stayed in. It
Speaker 2: was just nobody's looking out for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So in nineteen oh six, when Georgia
Speaker 1: was fifteen years old, this is kind of how she,
Speaker 1: I guess, got the idea for all this. She met
Speaker 1: a couple of orphaned kids, a five year old and
Speaker 1: a three year old, from her father's court, and she,
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old, talked a wealthy local couple into
Speaker 1: adopting them. And I guess that's when the light bulb
Speaker 1: went off where she equated like placing families with people
Speaker 1: who had money, and instead of in a kind hearted
Speaker 1: way giving these kids a home, it was like, I
Speaker 1: can make some money off of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy, that's a crazy thought. But that was
Speaker 2: basically the germ of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy instinct, you know, Yeah, but it says
Speaker 1: a lot about her.
Speaker 2: I think that was very much your instinct, and I
Speaker 2: think that's it says everything you need to know about her.
Speaker 2: Not only did she have that thought, she ran with it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Initially she was going to become an attorney, and she
Speaker 2: passed the Mississippi bar. But either her father forbade her
Speaker 2: from following that and sent off to be schooled and
Speaker 2: to become a concert pianist, or it was just socially,
Speaker 2: you just didn't a woman couldn't be an attorney. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure which one was the case, but either way,
Speaker 2: she didn't end up being an attorney. She also didn't
Speaker 2: end up being a concert pianist. She ended up becoming
Speaker 2: a social worker and her first her first gig was
Speaker 2: with Mississippi, I think the state of Mississippi, basically working
Speaker 2: as a social worker, visiting homes and very quickly stealing
Speaker 2: babies to sell herself, Like right out of the gate,
Speaker 2: she basically started the scam that she would later become
Speaker 2: famous for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a woman named Rose Harvey, which, you know,
Speaker 1: some sources say it was like her very first you know,
Speaker 1: sort of field visit. Other say it was just early on.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, she visited Rose Harvey.
Speaker 3: Who was young.
Speaker 1: I've seen that she was widowed, but I also saw
Speaker 1: that the father of her kids was forced to sign
Speaker 1: a false document basically stating that she was an unfit mother.
Speaker 2: I think it was her father. Oh, it was her father,
Speaker 2: That's what I got from it. Yeah, but it could
Speaker 2: also be confused that they were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was Onyx's father. But either way,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's no less reprehensible either way. But she
Speaker 1: found Georgia Tan found Onyx, who was a two year
Speaker 1: old boy playing at the house, basically walked in and
Speaker 1: kidnapped this kid, just walked out, put the baby in
Speaker 1: her car, got her father of the judge after, you know,
Speaker 1: a member of her family signed that she was an
Speaker 1: unfit mother and had the boy listed as an unfit
Speaker 1: child or I'm sorry, an abandoned child.
Speaker 3: And that was it. Very sadly.
Speaker 1: Rose Harvey was even able to muster up the money
Speaker 1: to hire an attorney. But she was ill, she had diabetes,
Speaker 1: she was not doing well. She's very ill and just
Speaker 1: stood no chance basically against that system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in particular, the father of Georgia Tan got
Speaker 2: involved and was like this is not happening, Like do
Speaker 2: not let this case go forward, Like he was a
Speaker 2: judge in the nineteen aughts, Mississippi. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: he could make that happen. So, yeah, like you said,
Speaker 2: she never had a chance. But either because of that
Speaker 2: particular case or another similar case, or potentially because Georgia
Speaker 2: tan was actually a she had a lifelong partner, another
Speaker 2: woman who was a childhood friend, and they actually, I guess,
Speaker 2: fell in love and spent the rest of their lives together.
Speaker 2: That is also possibly one of the reasons why they
Speaker 2: got out of Mississippi. But eventually, I think in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen twenties they left Mississippi, the landed in Texas
Speaker 2: and then ultimately ended up in Memphis a short time later.
Speaker 2: But very bizarrely, in the interim, her partner had gotten
Speaker 2: pregnant by a man out of wedlock and had a
Speaker 2: son named George. So now they had a son, and
Speaker 2: then Georgia adopted a girl named June, so they built
Speaker 2: a little family. But when you know more about Georgia's
Speaker 2: view on kids and adoption and how she really viewed it,
Speaker 2: it's really strange to me that she ever did it herself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: This is another story too that also, like a lot
Speaker 1: of times, things happen in history just because of when
Speaker 1: they happened. She was definitely fired from her job for
Speaker 1: doing what she did. Like she may have left also
Speaker 1: because of her relationship, but she was fired. And it
Speaker 1: was a time where like no one knows you can
Speaker 1: just move a state over right, start over, and it's
Speaker 1: not like there's really no way, Like if she didn't
Speaker 1: list them maybe on a resume or whatever, or you know,
Speaker 1: who knows even how it worked back then, she would
Speaker 1: not have been able to get work elsewhere, which is
Speaker 1: still a problem today. Yes, with that terrible story about
Speaker 1: the fake doctor who just kept practicing in different states.
Speaker 3: It was a podcast. I can't remember doctor death, I think.
Speaker 1: But it's amazing even with technology today that that can
Speaker 1: still happen, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also one of the things that I found
Speaker 2: from researching this is that the secrecy that developed at
Speaker 2: this time around adoption, that's still around today. We did
Speaker 2: a short stuff on it, I think, right that still
Speaker 2: is keeping kids in the system vulnerable to exploitation and
Speaker 2: predation and including essentially private sales. Rehoming, I think.
Speaker 3: Is what they call it. Should we take a break.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break, all right, We'll take a break.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go wash our mouse out with soap. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back, all right. So Georgia Tan makes her
Speaker 1: way to Tennessee to the Tennessee Children's Home Society was
Speaker 1: where her next job was. And from nineteen twenty four
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty, span of twenty six years, she sold,
Speaker 1: kidnapped and sold more than five thousand kids.
Speaker 2: And as you said before, she made millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: From what I saw, she made around a million dollars
Speaker 2: in her time, which is equivalent to something like eleven
Speaker 2: million today. And she sold these kids to some really
Speaker 2: high profile customers. A lot of them were in New York,
Speaker 2: a lot of them were in California, and some of
Speaker 2: them are stars like Joan Crawford adopted twins from.
Speaker 3: Her, apparently. Yeah, and this is maybe you saw the
Speaker 3: movie be Mommy, dearist. This was not that girl.
Speaker 1: I believe that was Christina, who was also adopted, But
Speaker 1: these were her later adopted daughters, Cynthia and Kathy, but
Speaker 1: also Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and June Allison pearl Buck
Speaker 1: the author. And then, in a very weird and sad twist,
Speaker 1: a guy that we worked with, Rick Flair, the wrestler,
Speaker 1: was one of these babies, yep, which is just crazy
Speaker 1: to think about and obviously has deep emotional trauma.
Speaker 3: But I think he.
Speaker 1: Elected to not sort of find his biological family, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, biological brother reached out to him and he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't really want to strike up a
Speaker 2: relationship here. Earlier, man, he's like, what are we going
Speaker 2: to talk about? I think is what he said. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he said that. In addition to that, it's like just this,
Speaker 2: the trauma from it is still with him obviously because
Speaker 2: he stolen from his family, Like these kids were stolen
Speaker 2: from their families. In some cases, their parents spent the
Speaker 2: rest of their lives looking for them. But because of
Speaker 2: the way that these adoptions were carried out, there was
Speaker 2: no paper trail that these people could access to find
Speaker 2: whatever happened to their kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely not. She made sure that happened. She very
Speaker 1: much was of the mind, like we mentioned earlier, that
Speaker 1: like some of society viewed these kids as less than
Speaker 1: she was one hundred percent down with that line of thinking.
Speaker 1: She thought that poor single mothers were damaged goods. She
Speaker 1: called them breeders, she called them cows. She thought they
Speaker 1: were genetically inferior she used marketing tactics. She was a fraudster,
Speaker 1: but all of this like worked. You don't you don't
Speaker 1: adopt out five thousand and children without working really really
Speaker 1: hard to do that using the most you know, in
Speaker 1: her case, the most reprehensible tactics you can imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about her tactics real quick, shall we,
Speaker 2: because I can't wait any longer. It's just I just can't.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, Well, before we get to the actual tactics
Speaker 1: of the adoption, we should say this whole time this
Speaker 1: is going on, she's running a house of horrors in Memphis,
Speaker 1: she's running an orphanage there, and hundreds of babies are
Speaker 1: dying under her care. So that's just sort of the
Speaker 1: background of what's going on while she's adopting these kids out.
Speaker 2: Right, And we said that adoption wasn't really kind of
Speaker 2: a thing in the United States until about the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties and it started to kind of spread. Here's the
Speaker 2: big twist about this whole thing. The reason that we
Speaker 2: have adoption today, the way that it is, like the
Speaker 2: fact that childless couples will go, you know, take a
Speaker 2: kid into their life and like you're like you're my family.
Speaker 2: Now you're our family. She started that, Like, you can
Speaker 2: trace that almost single handedly back to Georgia tan which
Speaker 2: in a way like kind of complicates her legacy, but
Speaker 2: really doesn't because the stuff she did was so despicable
Speaker 2: that even that it can be you can't even consider
Speaker 2: that like a mark in her favor. It just just
Speaker 2: immediately is overwhelmed by all the horrible stuff she did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't complicated for me at all. That would
Speaker 1: have changed anyway, and we did not need a human
Speaker 1: monster to make it happen. That's like saying, well, we
Speaker 1: got Volkswagens because of Hitler, so you know, right, you go, boss.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's a great point. But yeah, no, she's kind
Speaker 2: of like the opposite of where like you really like
Speaker 2: somebody's work, but you find out that they're a terrible person,
Speaker 2: you have to reconcile that this is like hating the person.
Speaker 2: And just you know, there was one piece of her
Speaker 2: work that was you know, worthwhile or legitimate, but yet
Speaker 2: doesn't do anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so her you know, she would adopt kids out
Speaker 1: of all ages, but what she really concentrated on was babies,
Speaker 1: because you know, even today, adopting a baby is much
Speaker 1: more in demand, and especially then when adoption was just
Speaker 1: sort of a new thing, she was sort of selling
Speaker 1: the idea like, hey, you get a blank slate here,
Speaker 1: like these these babies. You know some of them may
Speaker 1: be from bad homes, but you've got them right out
Speaker 1: of the gate, and you can you can mold them
Speaker 1: into whatever you want. And that's when she wasn't lying
Speaker 1: about who the parents were, because she also did that
Speaker 1: and would say things like, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: one night stand basically between a social lighte and a
Speaker 1: doctor and it was just a big mistake. But you
Speaker 1: should see their genes, incredible genes.
Speaker 2: One of the other things she was very well known for,
Speaker 2: especially in Tennessee, was the at every Christmas she would
Speaker 2: take out advertising space in the press scimitar of the
Speaker 2: Memphis newspaper and it was like a Christmas adoption drive,
Speaker 2: a baby drive. But they it wasn't like open your
Speaker 2: home to this wonderful child. It was like, so do
Speaker 2: you want a real live Christmas present? That was like
Speaker 2: one of the one of the ads, could you use
Speaker 2: a Christmas baby? And she would like they would vow,
Speaker 2: like this is a drive, we're gonna We're gonna adopt
Speaker 2: off twenty five to thirty kids. And I think to
Speaker 2: the people who were reading this and who saw this
Speaker 2: every Christmas, they were taking it like it was an
Speaker 2: adoption drive. They didn't realize. And this is the thing,
Speaker 2: no one seems to have really realized, at least no
Speaker 2: one who had any real power to do anything about it,
Speaker 2: knew what was going on, that she was making this
Speaker 2: money like this wasn't allowed to go on and open
Speaker 2: in o in sight. There was a lot of mechanations
Speaker 2: in groundwork laid to keep this as far out of
Speaker 2: the public eye as possible, but to let her just
Speaker 2: do it as flagrantly as possible. The general person who
Speaker 2: was aware of her didn't know what she was doing,
Speaker 2: I should.
Speaker 1: Say no, or like you said, they thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: they thought she was a hero.
Speaker 2: Right, They didn't realize she was selling kids openly in
Speaker 2: the newspaper every Christmas.
Speaker 1: Yes, after kidnapping them so financially. And this one was
Speaker 1: a little hard to parse out. I've seen different things,
Speaker 1: but what I think I found the reality, which was
Speaker 1: in the state of Tennessee at the time, it was
Speaker 1: supposed to cost seven dollars for an in state adoption
Speaker 1: and about seven hundred to seven fifty out of state.
Speaker 1: And I saw that she was charging more like I
Speaker 1: think eighty percent of her adoptions were New York and
Speaker 1: California to wealthy families, about five thousand dollars instead of
Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars, which is close to ninety grand today.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, Yeah that was I think average was
Speaker 2: about like five grand. Or was that the height of
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Was that as much as you would pay?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I just saw five thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars, So the whole thing. Again, it's really tough to
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hammer on this because it's just
Speaker 2: so nuts. But through those Christmas drives, through introducing the
Speaker 2: concept of adoption, it started to spread in Memphis, in Tennessee,
Speaker 2: in the South, and it actually spread out of the South.
Speaker 2: This trend of adoption grew out of the South in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties and forties again because of Georgia Tan
Speaker 2: and then it just spread and kept going. But from
Speaker 2: the outset she was she targeted wealthy customers, clients you
Speaker 2: can't really call them anything else in New York and California,
Speaker 2: like I said, but there doesn't seem to be any
Speaker 2: evidence whatsoever that any of the adopting parents knew that
Speaker 2: their kids were anything than what she was presenting them as,
Speaker 2: which was kids from good backgrounds, Like you said, maybe
Speaker 2: a one night stand and the parents had willingly given
Speaker 2: them up. That's what they thought they were getting, and
Speaker 2: that the fact that they had to pay through the
Speaker 2: nose for them just meant that these kids were like
Speaker 2: that desirable, their genes were that good. And it's ironic
Speaker 2: to me because you don't think of the South as
Speaker 2: being much of a trendsetter, but it set the trend
Speaker 2: of adoption in the United States. It started in the
Speaker 2: South and just kind of spread from there. But out
Speaker 2: of the gate she targeted adoptive parents, wealthy ones in
Speaker 2: New York and California.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You know, we already talked about the kidnapping.
Speaker 1: She would sometimes she would drive around a limousine in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood so kids would could run out to her
Speaker 1: car that were all excited and take them. She would
Speaker 1: this is having a hard time even reading this part,
Speaker 1: but she would go to new mothers who had just
Speaker 1: given birth in the hospital and tell them that their
Speaker 1: infant was dead and steal the baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a common trick. Another one was she
Speaker 2: would present mothers who'd just given birth, who might still
Speaker 2: be under the effects of anesthesia or something like that,
Speaker 2: with papers and said just sign these. These are like,
Speaker 2: you know, standard paperwork for having a baby, and they
Speaker 2: were actually full adoption papers. So even if you could
Speaker 2: say you stole my baby, there were cases where she
Speaker 2: could point to paperwork that said, no, you signed your
Speaker 2: kid away. Sorry, clearly you're you're crazy. Essentially, she also
Speaker 2: had a network of nurses like it's she was in
Speaker 2: some cases present in these in the hospital and spoke
Speaker 2: with some of the mothers, but she also had like
Speaker 2: nurses working for her that would either trick the mothers
Speaker 2: themselves or would just outright steal babies from nurseries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nurses and fake people dressed as nurses. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's literally not her the whole time. This is
Speaker 1: a very very big operation. So you know earlier when
Speaker 1: you said no one know, one empowered to stop it, like,
Speaker 1: no one empowered, that wasn't on the dole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in particular, there was one woman, a judge
Speaker 2: named Camille Kelly, one of two women judges in the
Speaker 2: South at the time, who was a progressive and a
Speaker 2: juvenile court judge, and she was fully in Georgia Tan's pocket,
Speaker 2: fully cooperated. There's a writer named Barbara Raymond who wrote
Speaker 2: probably the most exhaustive account of this whole horrible chapter
Speaker 2: of American history. And she estimated that Camille Kelly, Judge
Speaker 2: Kelly supplied Georgia Tan with about twenty percent of the
Speaker 2: kids that she kidnapped, So that would put it at
Speaker 2: about a thousand kids that Judge Kelly essentially handed over
Speaker 2: to Georgia Tan to steal and sell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's things that Judge Kelly was doing,
Speaker 1: as far as bending the rules, ceiling adoption records, signing
Speaker 1: off on false paperwork, stuff like that, and fraud to
Speaker 1: driving around herself. There was supposedly a Catholic orphanage in
Speaker 1: Memphis where the nuns would like hide the what they
Speaker 1: called the prettiest children whenever Judge Kelly pulled up outside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It is super, super, just terrible. I saw an interview
Speaker 2: with a woman who is now today and has been
Speaker 2: for a while trying to connect these people to their
Speaker 2: original biological families. If they want to see her name,
Speaker 2: is Denny Glad And she was asked what she would
Speaker 2: say to Georgia Tan. She said the exact same thing
Speaker 2: I wanted to say, like like how how could you
Speaker 2: do this? Like what was your mindset that allowed you
Speaker 2: to do this over and over again? Because as bad
Speaker 2: as kidnapping got, as bad as the eruption that was
Speaker 2: associated with it, and in stealing and selling babies, some
Speaker 2: of them were not adoptable, so she had them on
Speaker 2: her hands, and as just looking at these kids as products.
Speaker 2: If you had a bad product, why would you sink
Speaker 2: any more money into keeping that product around if it
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna make you any money? And so the kids
Speaker 2: who stayed at the home with her, they were often malnourished.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they would starve to death there. If they had
Speaker 2: any medical issues, they would go untreated, they wouldn't get medicine.
Speaker 2: They were just left to die, essentially because they weren't
Speaker 2: worth the investment as far as Georgia Tan was concerned.
Speaker 2: And her entire job was to help kids like that,
Speaker 2: But kids like that couldn't be sold, so they didn't
Speaker 2: deserve any of her time or attention or funding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a horrific statistic, but the toll
Speaker 1: at her orphanage's estimated between five and six hundred kids.
Speaker 1: Obviously most of them infants and babies, and this is staggering,
Speaker 1: but it was so many children died under her care.
Speaker 1: She may have actually affected the infant mortality rate in
Speaker 1: Memphis because in nineteen thirty two, eight years into her
Speaker 1: stint there, Memphis had the highest infant mortality rate in
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, that's no accident.
Speaker 2: So one of the other things too, is she wasn't
Speaker 2: reporting these deaths. She reported nineteen children's death Yeah, the
Speaker 2: other five hundred to six hundred. The rest of the
Speaker 2: five hundred to six hundred were never reported. No one
Speaker 2: knows where they are, no one knows where they were buried.
Speaker 2: They're just gone. And so I think in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: Memphis raised a memorial over a mass grave that had
Speaker 2: been discovered with I think forty kids are maybe that
Speaker 2: was the nineteen I think they found a grave with
Speaker 2: those kids in it, and they erected a memorial to
Speaker 2: those kids and all the others who were just lost
Speaker 2: to history and time. And it was just it was
Speaker 2: a terrible place to be. But being adopted out wasn't
Speaker 2: necessarily much better. You said that the babies were advertised
Speaker 2: as blank slates. Not all of the kids that were
Speaker 2: sold were babies, and she didn't screen the adoptive parents,
Speaker 2: so there were kids that were extremely vulnerable to the
Speaker 2: idea to sexual abuse, and apparently they also endured sexual
Speaker 2: abuse in the home as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the just the mental damage of being ripped
Speaker 1: away from your biological family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that too.
Speaker 1: So I say we take a second break, and we
Speaker 1: must muster the will to finish this thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll be back and talk about some of those pretty
Speaker 1: high powered people in Tennessee that were on the dole
Speaker 1: out of this.
Speaker 2: All right, So I want to say, yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: we've made it through the worst part, but it's not
Speaker 2: like anything gets much better. We talked about how she
Speaker 2: was Georgia Town was able to get away with this.
Speaker 2: She did this from nineteen twenty four to nineteen fifty,
Speaker 2: like you said, and you can't do that without the
Speaker 2: cooperation of essentially the city that you're working in. And
Speaker 2: lucky for her, the mayor of Memphis at the time
Speaker 2: was a guy named Ed Crump. And if you want
Speaker 2: to know anything, all you need to know about Ed Crump.
Speaker 2: You just need to know his nickname, which was Boss Crump,
Speaker 2: and he was a progressive mayor who really cared about
Speaker 2: the city and was extraordinarily corrupt himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there was there was Boss Crump, and then
Speaker 1: there was this other guy, an attorney named abe Waaldour,
Speaker 1: who she hired as her personal attorney and he also
Speaker 1: worked as the attorney for the agency. Was also a
Speaker 1: very influential guy and successful lobbyists. In between Waldour and Crump,
Speaker 1: she basically got whatever she wanted. She got records falsified,
Speaker 1: she got records sealed. If there were laws that didn't
Speaker 1: jibe with what was going on, they had the power
Speaker 1: to get those laws changed. Crump had a lot of
Speaker 1: sway at least and we'll talk about this in a minute,
Speaker 1: to at least to a certain point on the governor's office,
Speaker 1: and they just you know, they were all getting kickbacks.
Speaker 3: Everyone was on the dole, so they would do whatever
Speaker 3: she wanted. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the operation from what I saw, essentially when she
Speaker 2: would go to Camille Kelly, the judge that was in
Speaker 2: her pocket, and say, hey, these are things that would
Speaker 2: make my life a lot easier as far as laws
Speaker 2: are concerned, and then Judge Kelly would go to the
Speaker 2: legislature and or Boss Crump probably both, and say, hey,
Speaker 2: here at Family Court, these are some laws that are
Speaker 2: really kind of making things unnecessarily difficult and hurting families.
Speaker 2: Let's get these changed. So they would actually change laws
Speaker 2: to help Georgia Tan steal and sell babies more efficiently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and this kind of just shows how
Speaker 1: manipulative she was. There's actual like letterhead from Judge Kelly
Speaker 1: written in her handwriting to the attorney Abe Waldauur, so
Speaker 1: like this was the attorney working for Georgia Tan. Instead
Speaker 1: of Georgia Tann going to him, she would manipulate go
Speaker 1: around him to the judge to get her to write
Speaker 1: this congestion to a Walldauer would then lobby and pressure
Speaker 1: on her behalf, which was really on Tan's behalf.
Speaker 2: So as like, I guess, kind of alien concept modern
Speaker 2: adoption was at the time. Tennessee had a pretty good
Speaker 2: law on its books that dated back to eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: and there were requirements that were sensible and smart. If
Speaker 2: you wanted to adopt a kid from Tennessee, first of all,
Speaker 2: you had to be from Tennessee. The adoptive parents had
Speaker 2: to be from Tennessee.
Speaker 3: Not about that one, but fine.
Speaker 2: Right right, But I'm just saying, if you look at
Speaker 2: what Georgia tan was doing, this was Yeah, that was
Speaker 2: not in step with that at all. Secondly, if you
Speaker 2: were a birth mother, a judge needed to certify that
Speaker 2: you were voluntarily giving your kid up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, still the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, orphanages needed to investigate the adoptive parents. Great idea,
Speaker 2: and you needed to follow up with the the kid
Speaker 2: and make sure that the child was being treated well
Speaker 2: in their new adoptive home. These were the eighteen fifty
Speaker 2: two laws. And if you look at what Georgia Tann
Speaker 2: was doing out in the open, just the stuff people
Speaker 2: knew about, none of it checked any of those boxes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she, you know, because of that, she got
Speaker 1: a lot of these laws changed to suit her racket,
Speaker 1: which is just unbelievable that this was going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of them that got me was you didn't
Speaker 2: need a judge to certify any longer that the mom
Speaker 2: was voluntary surrendering. A notary public could do it. And
Speaker 2: so Georgia Tann would have one of her employees certify
Speaker 2: that basically falsify these records. There was another thing that
Speaker 2: was a really important outcome of all of this, and
Speaker 2: that is that she lobbied for secrecy and adoption. Her
Speaker 2: whole premise was that it saved unwed mothers the shame
Speaker 2: and social stigma of being non and his unwed mothers
Speaker 2: publicly having files open available to the public showing that
Speaker 2: they had had a child out of wedlock, and that
Speaker 2: that that was in the in the family's best favor
Speaker 2: for these records to be sealed. That's still what people
Speaker 2: say today, that there's like it in states where secrecy
Speaker 2: is still a thing in adoption. It's to protect the
Speaker 2: biological parents rights in case they don't want to be found, right,
Speaker 2: that aside all of the the Yeah, in some states,
Speaker 2: I think California still has really strict secrecy laws or
Speaker 2: owned adoption.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that I thought that was just for
Speaker 1: old adoption records. No, so that's like the current thing.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Starting in about
Speaker 2: the eighties that it opened up, adoption became much more open,
Speaker 2: but it didn't retroactively affect anybody who adoption took place
Speaker 2: before the eighties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, so okay.
Speaker 2: So but those those laws are still in the books,
Speaker 2: so those people are still have their records sealed, and
Speaker 2: that includes Georgia tans kids. But all that aside, that
Speaker 2: whole quandary and argument about whether that's a legitimate way
Speaker 2: to do adoption or not, that had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with why she wanted to do it. She wanted to
Speaker 2: do it because once she got those records sealed, and
Speaker 2: she soon was able to do that. As a matter
Speaker 2: of course, after that law was passed, there was no
Speaker 2: finding the kid any longer. And like you legally could
Speaker 2: not get your hands on any records that would lead
Speaker 2: you to your biological kid. They were just.
Speaker 1: Gone, yeah, well and not more importantly but more commonly,
Speaker 1: probably that kid can't find their parents, Yes, their biological parents,
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then even if you did, I think, get
Speaker 2: your hands on the records, she's so frequently monkeyed with
Speaker 2: the records and falsified them that they might not even
Speaker 2: lead you to your birth parent to begin with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we would love to tell you that there
Speaker 1: was an ending to this where Georgia Tan was made
Speaker 1: responsible for her crimes. Sadly that is not the case.
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that Crump eventually had less sway over
Speaker 1: the governor's office. That was in nineteen fifty when Governor
Speaker 1: Gordon Browning became governor, started getting these letters from people
Speaker 1: talking about Georgia tan being blackmailed, keep silent, things like that,
Speaker 1: so he launched Browning launched an investigation into the orphanage,
Speaker 1: headed by Robert Taylor's special counsel. But here's the thing is,
Speaker 1: Georgia Tann had a very aggressive uterine cancer was dying fast,
Speaker 1: and Browning held off on making all this public until
Speaker 1: she died on September fifteenth, nineteen fifty, at the age
Speaker 1: of fifty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is like, it really ticks you off about Browning,
Speaker 2: like why would you extend any modicum of courtesy to
Speaker 2: Georgia Tann at all? But Browning's general motivation for this
Speaker 2: wasn't to prosecute her. It was to embarrass Boss Crump
Speaker 2: and to erode some of his political clout because he
Speaker 2: was so powerful he could get governors elected, like he
Speaker 2: was a really powerful mayor, and so this really helped
Speaker 2: embarrass him and he just became illegitimate in a lot
Speaker 2: of people's eyes when this came out that this was
Speaker 2: happening under his watch, and how could he possibly have
Speaker 2: not known about it? So that was one reason why
Speaker 2: he held it back, because Boss Crump was still going
Speaker 2: to be round. After Georgia Tnn died. Luckily, in my eyes,
Speaker 2: a couple of reporters from different newspapers in Memphis got
Speaker 2: a hold of the story and they broke it before
Speaker 2: she died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I mean just a couple of days
Speaker 1: before she died. So I like to think that there
Speaker 1: was some great shame visited upon her.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 1: I doubt it, because I think she felt justified the
Speaker 1: whole time, because her whole deal was I'm taking these
Speaker 1: babies out of these out of these houses where these
Speaker 1: undesirables shouldn't be having kids to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and so what if I make some money,
Speaker 2: I'm going to a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: I just looked at Boss Crump for the first time
Speaker 1: for some reason, I didn't look it up earlier.
Speaker 3: Did you see him?
Speaker 2: He looks more like Boss R.
Speaker 1: Crump you would He looks like you would think he
Speaker 1: would look basically.
Speaker 2: So that investigation that Robert Taylor headed up led to
Speaker 2: a lawsuit from the State of Tennessee against Georgia's estate
Speaker 2: Georgia Tansas State. And apparently so we said that she
Speaker 2: was in a lifelong relationship with her partner, Anne Atwood,
Speaker 2: who supposedly was a good person. She just happened to
Speaker 2: love a monster. I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I don't know how to square
Speaker 3: that one her.
Speaker 2: I can't remember who who went to I think her
Speaker 2: knee or something, or surviving niece went to bat firm.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, she was actually a really good person
Speaker 2: at any rate, An Atwood. This is a rather ironic
Speaker 2: twist if you asked me. Georgia Tan adopted Anne at Wood,
Speaker 2: which was a fairly common technique among gay couples back
Speaker 2: in the day to ensure that your partner would receive
Speaker 2: your estate. So Georgia Tan, the woman who would steal
Speaker 2: babies and sell them out for adoption popularist adoption in America,
Speaker 2: adopted her partner in her old age a couple of
Speaker 2: years before she died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was a lawsuit that you mentioned. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about the abuse or the kidnapping, though, it was
Speaker 1: about basically the excess funds. Like the victims in that
Speaker 1: case were parents who overpaid in their mind for kids
Speaker 1: because like I said, she was I think the adoption
Speaker 1: fee was like seven hundred dollars. She was charging up
Speaker 1: to five grand. So that was what the Cibil case
Speaker 1: was about. She they sued the estate for five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars only got a little more than fifty grand
Speaker 1: in the end. So you know, there was never any
Speaker 1: justice for these families, basically no.
Speaker 2: And some people have actually found one another. There was
Speaker 2: a very famous episode of Unsolved Mysteries or a famous
Speaker 2: case that came out of Unsolved Mysteries in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: where a woman named Almas Sipple was watching Unsolved Mysteries
Speaker 2: as you did in nineteen ninety, I can attest, and
Speaker 2: on TV they flashed a picture of Georgia Tan They're
Speaker 2: talking about this case, and Almas Sipple said later that
Speaker 2: she just came out of her chair and recognized her
Speaker 2: immediately as the woman who had swindled her out of
Speaker 2: her baby. And from that, from watching that, they ended
Speaker 2: up reuniting. She reunited with her birth daughter named Sandra.
Speaker 2: And then there's a few other people who've worked to
Speaker 2: find their successfully find their biological family. And again Denny
Speaker 2: Glad has been really instrumental in trying to sue Tennessee
Speaker 2: into opening up these records, in particular for Georgia Tan's
Speaker 2: victims so that they can find their biological families, and
Speaker 2: her organization is called Tennessee's Right to Know.
Speaker 1: Joan Crawford's daughters found their biological family. Oh yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: those two girls did. And hey, you made me laugh
Speaker 1: in that last bit.
Speaker 3: I got. You got one laugh out of me?
Speaker 1: What in this episode when you said watching unsolved mysteries
Speaker 1: as you do in nineteen ninety I can attest.
Speaker 2: You like that?
Speaker 3: Huh you got a chuckle. I didn't think I was
Speaker 3: gonna laugh at all.
Speaker 2: Okay, well then this would works. This episode's finally complete.
Speaker 1: If you want to watch a movie, there's a TV
Speaker 1: movie from ninety three called Stolen Babies, A Little on
Speaker 1: the Nose starring Mary Tyler Moore.
Speaker 3: She wanted emmy.
Speaker 1: I'm told it was the reviews I read, and you
Speaker 1: know said she was pretty remarkable in that role.
Speaker 2: I saw an ad for it. She looked pretty, she
Speaker 2: did despicable really well.
Speaker 3: Sure, Mary Tyler wor can do. That's it.
Speaker 2: She got range and Leah Thompson was the woman who
Speaker 2: opposed her. I'm not sure if she was based on
Speaker 2: anybody or not.
Speaker 1: Oh ninety three. Oh yeah, I guess that was. That's
Speaker 1: right in her wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: And if you're like Stolen Babies, that's a great band name,
Speaker 2: well you're a little late to the party, because there
Speaker 2: actually is a band called Stolen Babies.
Speaker 1: Of course there is so actor and a movie developer,
Speaker 1: Octavia Spencer, who was wonderful option that book that we
Speaker 1: were talking about.
Speaker 3: Who was the author.
Speaker 2: Again, Barbara bezantce Raymond, and the book she wrote was
Speaker 2: Baby Thief Colon The Untold Story of Georgia tan Comma,
Speaker 2: the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption.
Speaker 1: It's a long title, but I was kind of curious
Speaker 1: because Octavia Spencer, I wasn't surprised. It was just like,
Speaker 1: I wonder, you know, if she was adopted or has adopted,
Speaker 1: like if there was just some some pull for this
Speaker 1: story for her personally, and that is not the case.
Speaker 1: But she did play an adoption caseworker in a movie
Speaker 1: a few years ago. That movie which I didn't see,
Speaker 1: Instant Family with Rose Byrne and Macky Mock, So maybe
Speaker 1: just being in that role kind of I know that
Speaker 1: she studied and interviewed a lot of adoption caseworkers, so
Speaker 1: that may have just sort of piqued your interest. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe so. Well, if you want to know more about
Speaker 2: Georgia Tan and you can stomach it, there's some stuff
Speaker 2: out there to read on the internet, but you will
Speaker 2: probably keep running into Barbara Raymond's book, so you might
Speaker 2: as well just read that and get it over with.
Speaker 2: And since I said that, it's time for listener.
Speaker 1: Mail another Peanuts email. There's gonna be three total because
Speaker 1: we got a lot of great emails about the Peanuts seconds,
Speaker 1: but the best one is coming soon. This one's pretty
Speaker 1: good because it's an actual correction on something I said. Josh, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: Peanuts episode is awesome. Grew up with a series of
Speaker 1: Peanuts and they were pretty much the only thing I
Speaker 1: read as a child. I'm so glad you were to
Speaker 1: me of so many little details. The only thing you
Speaker 1: guys said that was wrong, and lish here didn't call
Speaker 1: me out, but I remember saying this was it. Sally
Speaker 1: was the one talking about her naturally curly hair. I
Speaker 1: totally got that wrong. That was Freda. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: Freda had the red curly hair. And she's always going
Speaker 1: my naturally curly hair because I think I think she
Speaker 1: was kind of crushing on Charlie Brown, which obviously wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been Sally. So I just got that all wrong.
Speaker 2: I see, I gotcha.
Speaker 3: Anyway, you guys are great.
Speaker 1: I hope you do occasionally do podcasts into your nineties
Speaker 1: at least. Thank you for your research, dedication and great
Speaker 1: sense of humor. Plus, I was born in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: so Chuck and I often sync up to your memories.
Speaker 3: And that is from Lish.
Speaker 2: Lish with the brain meld on. Chuck, how does that feel?
Speaker 3: Feels great?
Speaker 2: Well, thanks a lot, Lish, that was a great Peanuts email.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what the third in the trifect is
Speaker 2: going to be. If it's even better than.
Speaker 3: That, I can't imagine. I think you know, but unless
Speaker 3: you didn't see.
Speaker 2: It, I don't know if I did or not. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to go sort through them.
Speaker 3: I'll just say the wall.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I do know the one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta good one.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like listen get in touch
Speaker 2: with us. You can send us an email too. Send
Speaker 2: it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 1: Com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.