My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 328 - The Year is 2243

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

On today’s episode, Karen covers the death of socialite Sunny von Bülow and Georgia tells more stories of bodies found in chimneys. Note: this episode was recorded before the horrific tragedy in Uvalde, Texas.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook, and listen to True Crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hey, it's Karen in Georgia. We are thrilled to announce a new comedy podcast joining the Exactly Right Network. That's right, it's Adulting with Michelle Bouteau and Jordan Carlos.

Adulting premieres on Wednesday, June 8th on Exactly Right, and we are sharing the trailer at the end of this episode. Michelle and Jordan are two hilarious New York City-based comedians who've been friends for years. On Adulting, they cover the most pressing, most specific, sexiest, timeless topics yet. They answer questions like, is breakup sex ever a good idea? How do you make new friends as an adult? I just quit my job. What should I do next?

They invite friends, comics, and experts to share their hot takes and real-world solutions on all things adulting. So stay tuned at the end of this episode for the Adulting with Michelle Bouteau and Jordan Carlos trailer. And check out the network premiere on Wednesday, June 8th. New episodes drop on Wednesdays. Follow the show on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Goodbye. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstar. Hi, that's Karen Kilgarath. You're welcome. And we're doing it again for the 4,000th time. Is it our 4,000th anniversary? It's our 4,000th episode.

This is our Paleolithic episode where we, the year is 2243, and we're still podcasting. And we still want to talk about what we watched on Hulu last night. That's right, and we're still fighting for women's rights and gun control. It still seems to be a problem that people shouldn't be allowed to simply murder constantly. No, and guns, all over the fucking world.

Guns aren't allowed by most people. That's a very loose definition of laws around the world. But let's just take one and go with it. A lot of people have it together in a way that America can't seem to get it together. Right, and the racism, let's talk. The racism, bodily autonomy for people. There's a lot of things that are from 1945

that should not be a problem anymore. It's logical, it's obvious, and yet here we are. And yet we, the people listening to this podcast are the only ones who fucking can figure it out. Yeah, the bravest part about us talking about this is that we're talking to people who agree with us a thousand percent about everything that we're saying. And that's really what it's all turning into

is little clusters of people who agree with each other, yelling into each other's faces. I just like being called brave. It's the end of the day. Say it again. I just think we're brave for agreeing with each other and other people that are just like us. Yeah, I think we're brave for speaking the truth

and being right. You know what's brave these days? What? Is just continuing. Sure. Just charging on in the face of... As Michelle McNamara, the great Michelle McNamara said, it's chaos, be kind.

However, that seems hard to fathom for some people. It's a tough one. It's a tough one for a lot of us. I do want to talk very quickly about the beautiful marches all around this great nation where lots of people, majority women, but a lot of people, went out and held up some really amazing signs like public cervix announcement,

fuck you, was my number one favorite. They just are so clever, you know? Some of these signs just bowl me over in their correctness, but also their humor. Yeah. It's amazing. It's pretty great. Our own Cara Clank from the That's Messed Up podcast

goes out at every fucking march. She brings her children. She makes amazing signs. She marches. She is a beacon of how we should all be in our lives one day. Because isn't it hard enough, I would imagine, to have some babies. Yeah.

Two kids now? She's two kids. One's like under a year. One's like, can't even fucking talk yet. And you're like, get it together, you know, Oscar. Come on, Oscar, here's some shit from you. Yeah. And then the next day she brought them to drag con.

So it's like she's just creating these children that are hopefully going to be the next thing that fixes everything. So that where we're at in 2245 or whatever I said, it is fixed, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that would be nice. Thank you, Cara, for doing that and being that awesome.

Yeah, there's something to be positive about. Sure. There's something to look toward. Yeah. Well, I guess we get, now we have, the time we have to talk about the staircase TV show, and are you watching it? I, and I will talk about Candy, the TV show, because that's what I'm watching.

OK, so I'm not watching Candy. I'm watching the staircase one. How is Candy? I loved it. Who's the lead actress in that? Our girl, Jessica Beale, from the cinema. Oh. Killing it once again, and the great Melanie Linsky,

who everyone loves from Yellow Jackets? Her, yes. Oh, you should see the haircut Melanie's got in this. Oh, no. Because it's 1980. Oh, of course it is. So there's some beautiful, well, you were just born. I was coming into my 10-year-old own,

and everything in this TV show, it's like the big wooden spoons and forks hanging on the wall in the kitchen. Yes, yes, I love those. It's a very bygone era, early 80s, where there was no branding of anything. Everything was brown. Yeah. Everything was kind of dimly lit.

Yeah, tight perms on women. Oh, Jessica Beale has a perm that is, it's, I would call it brave. If we're going to call it ourselves brave, she's absolutely, you know, perfect face and perfect body, but man, this perm is bad. Tight. Do you know that in fourth grade,

after seeing Dirty Dancing, I got a perm because I wanted to look like Jennifer Gray. So bad. Yeah. It looked great on me. Did it really, did you kill it? No. My hair looked wet all the time.

Yeah. It was like ramen, crunchy ramen. Then you take a thing of mousse and you just, it looks like fucking shaving cream and you just crunch your hair. Yeah. And then just let it sit there. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but I have heard. Yeah. When I heard that the staircase was now a scripted series, I was just like. Scripted series. That's what I thought. Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah. When I heard about it, I was like, I think I think I've had enough of the staircase. And then I've had friends be like, you have to watch it. It's so good. Everyone. And it is so good.

It is so good. And I actually had the thing of Colin Firth playing Michael Peterson. Like that doesn't make any sense. The way he speaks his mannerisms, it is creepy. How perfect. I mean, it's not creepy. He's an amazing actor.

But he fucking has it like so hardcore. The whole like pompous, you know, speech that he does. And my wife was my like that whole thing. He kills it. And then Tony Collette, like the two of the greatest fucking actors of our time, Tony Collette and Colin Firth, like it's really interesting. And it does show like some scenes

that you saw from the documentary that like kind of make more sense now because you just saw photos or like a quick video. And I don't know. I don't know where they're going with it because I've only seen a couple of episodes, but it's it's good. And I was sick of that too.

But I you definitely have to watch it. Yeah. Everybody says it's not it's basically not what you think because it's it's not what you think. I did see an article about how the original documentarians are upset about it. Well, yeah, they come up. Do they really?

Well, no, I haven't seen all of it yet, but they are basically making the show about what happens. And then the documentary coming and making it is part of the whole story. So it's not just like they're not part of it. So they're like there's actors playing the documentarians or is the actor playing the woman he ends up that like sound woman he ends up going with.

But everyone in it like all the children. And I think it had to be hard because we all know their mannerism so much because we saw the documentary like so many times everyone in it is looks exactly how they're supposed to look. It's really well done. But we'll see. I don't know if there's an agenda.

Like if they think he did it or not, we'll see. Right. Right. Exactly. I just think now there's probably going to need to be a documentary about how the documentarians are mad at the scripted series producers. And then of course we'll have a scripted series after that documentary all produced by Exactly Right Media.

Right. Who's going to play Colin Firth playing Michael Peterson in the Exactly Right Media version? It's got to be Pete. What's his name from Saturday Night Live? Davidson? That would be fun. That would be fun.

That would just be a romp. Let's get him in there. Come on. Give him a chance. Give him a chance to get some exposure. Yeah. He needs that. He needs that.

He needs that. Hulu and oh, I also because. That was a fun way to see you get to that point. The twists and turns just took in your brain. I saw it moving. I'm having the kind of like, because I'm up north right now. So I'm like, my brain is relaxing in a really nice way. Vacation style.

So when I go to, I try to think of a phrase and then it just, it just won't come. And then I'm just like, well, that's okay. That's okay. It's okay. Don't worry about it. Just go walk the dog. That'll be fine.

Yay. But what I was trying to say is candy's only four episodes. Oh. So when I watched the last one, it rolled over into Under the Banner of Heaven, which I then began with Andrew Garfield. Yes. And a bunch of superstars playing the members of that family. And man, I read that book a while ago.

Yeah. Man, it's good. It's really fascinating. It's so dark. Yeah. I've only gotten two episodes in. And another good time and place, the 80s Mormon, like that is a whole different, is it 90s?

They all bleed into each other. Like 80s and 90s are so much more similar than people want to give them credit for it. You know what I mean? True. Very true. Yeah. Although I think maybe that was because you were little.

Oh, you know what? You're probably right. You know, you were just coming to in 85. Yeah. You were just opening your eyes to the world, right? Yeah. And just being like, what's going on? Yeah.

Which one had more neon? I feel like the 90s had more neon, right? And then the 80s were more muted. Pastels. Pastels. But then also you had, yeah, OK. 80s started in the in the earth tones, which was a coming out of the 70s thing.

And then they went into this pastels situation where everything became pink and blue and white and yellow and esprit de corps. Like it was Easter every day. Easter always, especially on my eyelids. High school Karen loved a blue, pink, and yellow eyeshadow journey from inner to outer lid. It was a lot.

It was brave. It was what I would call for a 15-year-old incredibly brave. Incredibly brave. And the perfect draw your eye away from the line that my makeup made because there was only three shades of cover girl foundation. And none of them matched my skin. Why would they?

I still to this day, someday, I'm going to have a dress like yourself in high school party. Like that is my fucking, like how much better will you get to know someone when they show up, you know, all fucking going all out. Like you have to have that makeup line. You know, you have to have that eyeshadow palette. Yeah.

God, I know exactly the outfit I would wear because I wore it constantly. What is it? It was an aqua blue and pink mini skirt, but it was cotton and it was a little bit poofy. It wasn't like your classic mini skirt kind of stood out from my hips. Yeah.

And I would wear that with a nice, of course, suntan hose and some white cats. High schoolers wearing pantyhose is such a fucking hilarious image. It's so ridiculous. And then the shirt was a white cotton button down short sleeve shirt that was, that had blue and aqua stripes on it.

But no, don't rest there because there's, coming in is of course a sweatshirt, a white sweatshirt vest that went over the top and was elongated. And so that went down, it covered up the top because the top of the mini skirt had a pink band. The majority of the mini skirt was aqua blue. Yeah.

So then this sweatshirt came down, it kind of covered everything. And then of course, what did I do? What? I belted it. Okay, artists, all the fucking amazing artists that follow us. Can you please draw Karen in this outfit?

Because I'm having a kind of hard time. I know you don't have a photo of it. So like just, can you please, and then we'll post them all on Instagram, like all the different versions of Karen's outfit, please. And you know, just, you know, it's, this is my plea. Please be brave and please try to get Karen's likeness in whatever art style you love.

And of course, once you get warmed up and you kind of finish that, then you go ahead and you give us all those drawings of Georgia and her perm as crunchy as you can make it on the page. You are brilliant. This is brilliant. Okay, I'll post a photo of me with my perm on Instagram so you can have an idea.

Because the outfit that goes with it is like, you know, there were pegged jeans that were pleated in the front, poofy. So it looked like I had poof in the front, but I didn't. Right. No, that was the look. Yeah. A pot belly was hot when you were 15 in 1995.

Oh, let's get it back. Wow. Wow. Don't be done. I'm tired. Okay. We have a little bit of business from the corner. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Speaking of Kara Klank, over on Lady to Lady, the podcast that she does not host. Good segue. I guess this week, Brandy Posey, Babs Gray, and Tess Barker, they have the great Chris Fairbanks. It's a cross-section of Exactly Right.

You mean the host of Do You Need a Ride, one of the hosts of the Exactly Right podcast, Do You Need a Ride is on the other podcast. And then on True Beauty Brooklyn, Alex and Elizabeth Delvin to the perks of microcurrent facials, which I've had before. Don't know anything about.

Just like, okay. Give it. Let me have it. So that'll be really interesting. Zap it. Yeah. Zap it. They do some great work over there of like,

you know, peeling back the scary layers of like, face stuff, you know? I just like put on whatever fucking BuzzFeed tells me is the new best thing, you know? And I don't know what I'm doing. And it could actually be making it worse, you know? If you have the wrong kind of skin, whatever. Issues.

Or if I saw a thing, a social media, that was all about how you had to get this thing, because like Jennifer Aniston uses it, and it's one of those microcurrent face things you rub on your face. Yes. I immediately ordered it, and then opened the instructions,

and it said, if you have seizures, do not use this machine. Oh my God. And so I brought it right up to my sister and said, congratulations. Got you, Chris. Yep. Wow.

Well, I should have kind of, as a person with that thing, just thought, do you think you should be rubbing electricity on your face, if you have an electrical problem in your brain? I guess, near your brain. Yeah. Yeah, but that's not on you. I refuse.

You know what everyone loves these days, speaking of kicking back and relaxing, is wearing crocs, right? Yeah. That's everyone's new thing. And listen, we're just following the trends, you know? And it turns out that we now have a Mortarino shoe charms for crocs shoes.

Yes. So, you know, do your thing. I've seen them in real life, because Nora got a set, because she actually wears crocs, because the teens love crocs these days. Yeah. And they're super cute. She has a bunch of those charms,

and half of them are from our podcast that she's not allowed to listen to. I love it. Just go to myfavoritmurder.com. There's a store there. Yeah. Cool. Who's first this week?

I think you are. Is it really? Let me see. Let's just roll right into this mother. Karen goes first. Karen, January is going to be my month for HelloFresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much.

I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since early fall. So, I can't wait to get back in the kitchen, and HelloFresh makes it so easy, and also makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need. So, get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box

at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candice DeLong, and on my new podcast,

Killer Psyche Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths, and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent, and criminal profiler. On Killer Psyche Daily,

I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton Serial Killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia, and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions.

Hey, Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast, Killer Psyche Daily, in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. So, look, when I was putting my story together for this week, I took a kind of first-year, my favorite murder, Karen approach to this, where I was like,

could I tell this off the top of my head? Oh, no. It's been 4,000 episodes, and you still think you could do this off the top of your fucking head? Look, I have never claimed to be a learner or a person that takes negative experiences and says, don't do this anymore. Because I wanted to talk about one of my favorite,

one of my favorite movies is based on a real-life case, and that is the film, Reversal of Fortune. Now, it's directed by a director who I've spoken about on this podcast. I incorrectly pronounced their name, Barbette Schroeder, and declared them to be a woman, and said I was really proud that my favorite movie was directed by a woman. It is absolutely not a woman, Barbette,

and it's actually pronounced Barbette Schroeder. Okay. Also could be Barbette Schroeder. There was no phonetic pronunciation when I looked it up, but I was once again horrified where I'm like, I'm still wrong about this guy. It's a male director, very accomplished, I should know. But if you've never seen the movie, Reversal of Fortune,

it's about the very famous Rhode Island, and at the time, it was the longest court case in Rhode Island's history, and it was the case of Klaus von Bülow. He was accused of attempting to murder his wife, Sonny von Bülow. And so that's the story I'm going to tell you today. Okay. My sources today.

There's a website called what'supnewport.com. What is up, Newport? What is up? I've always been wondering that, so that's a good thing. So there's an article from there about Sonny von Bülow, then of course the movie, Reversal of Fortune, and the book written by Alan Dershowitz. There's a Wikipedia article about this case,

and then there's True TV has a website, and there's a section on it called the crime library, and there's basically articles written about famous true crime cases, and this one about this case was written by a guy named Mark Gribbin, and the majority of the chronology of this story and the kind of detail work is from Mark Gribbin's writing.

Okay, so, and the other part about, especially the first time I saw this movie, the part that's so appealing, or at least so fascinating, I should say, the movie opens with like an overhead shot, and I think this movie is old enough where this was not a drone, it must have been a helicopter shot of some kind,

but it's just going over all the gigantic, they're not even mansions, they're like estates in Newport. It's the kind of thing where I just, as a girl from a farm, I'm just like, wait, what? Like that, that's a neighborhood somewhere? Yeah. It looks like, almost like castle after castle, all in one area.

Two people live there, you know? And like they have servants and things. Full time. Full time. Every kid has a nanny, no. It's crazy. Why? I don't want to, yeah.

Why? So this, I think we can call this as common man fascination with the rich that I think this country has always had, because it's what this country is built on, capitalism. So when murder, attempted murder happens in houses like that, that you're not even allowed to drive by, because it's not even a gated community,

it's like just stay away from here. You have no business, like you're not going down the road to the local 7-Eleven, like there's no fucking reason that you and I, that me and my 2015 fucking GTI is driving down that fucking road. They're like no corollas allowed, there's literally a sign at this, right at the city center.

Yeah, you will never see it, you'll never be anywhere near it. It's not, it's totally a different class, literally, of people. And so when they do stuff like, attempt to kill each other, everybody wants to know about it, because it's like, the rich, they're just like us.

So this is the story I'm going to tell you. Okay. Barbay Schroeder. And watch the movie, Reversal of Fortune, if you've never seen it. I've never seen it. It's Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. And just rattling around in a mansion, being rich.

Here's the controversial part. This movie is based on a book by Alan Dershowitz. Back when Alan Dershowitz was like, Harvard's youngest law professor. And he went on to become the most successful appellate lawyer in this country. Dershowitz dedicated the beginning of his career, he did so much pro bono work for the wrongfully convicted

and going to overturn cases where the procedure was wrong, where people who were poor, people who couldn't afford good lawyers just sent to prison. That was what he used to be about. And then he wrote a book. God, I'm lazy. He wrote this book called Reversal of Fortune about this case.

And that's the book that this movie is based on. So when I talk about Alan Dershowitz in this, I'm talking about the 80s version of Alan Dershowitz and not the four seasons landscaping version of Alan Dershowitz. So, you know, it's a real look back in time. Sure. We begin. But this really, this story is about, separate from him,

separate from Klaus von Bülow, who became his, he was in all the papers. It was, you know, this crazy tabloid personality. Like in the 80s, his name was synonymous with like Dracula. I mean, it was nuts, Klaus von Bülow. Sure. But really at the heart of this story is the woman, Sunny von Bülow,

his wife who ended up in a coma. And that is basically where all of this kind of is centered on and what it's all about. So we'll talk about them first. So Sunny von Bülow was born Martha Sharp Crawford on September 1st, 1932. She's the only child of a utility's magnate named George Crawford.

So we're talking about that. We're talking about that level of... Affluence. These people don't worry about bills. Never. Never once do they go, uh-oh, my car payment's coming up. Right.

They're the people that you send your car payment to. They're the people that, the people you send your car payment to send their payments to, essentially. This guy owned like electricity or whatever. Yeah. So it's like monopoly, he's like... He's the guy.

He owns Park Avenue or whatever the fuck. Entirely. Also her mother was a woman named Annie Laurie Warmack who herself was a socialite and an heiress. So she was nicknamed Sunny based on her personality. Her very early childhood nickname was Choo Choo because she was born on her father's private train car. What?

He had his own train car. I couldn't have thought of a prettier nickname than Choo Choo. Once she... Well, they did. Came around. They were like, fine, we'll call you Sunny. That's better, which is a pretty good name.

So, but she was only three years old when her father, George, died. And she inherited somewhere around a hundred million dollars. But in 1935, which in today's money is a little over $2 billion. So she essentially, she's all set. We don't have to worry about her. It's...

Her mother, Annie Laurie, also an heiress, her father founded a company called the International Shoe Company. They just own all shoes. Every shoe has his name on the bottom. He gets a penny for every shoemane and fucking world for the rest of eternity. For a forever, yeah.

Even now, Air Jordans, they all go back to this guy. Okay, so young Sunny, she's raised by her mother and her maternal grandmother on Fifth Avenue in New York. She got driven to school in a Rolls-Royce every day. Jesus. Right? But they summer in Greenwich, Connecticut at their family estate, Tamar Lane.

Oh, me too. That's right. Summer. Where did you guys summer in Orange County? The hard, starkest state. Yes. In the fucking, you know... San Diego.

San Diego. San Diego. There's no hard, starkest state. Oh, sorry. Okay, so in New York City, she goes to the exclusive Chapin School on the Upper East Side, All Girls School, K-12, Educating the City's Elite. She's a beautiful young woman, very shy.

She'd later be compared to Grace Kelly. She was really a striking, gorgeous woman. When she turns 18, of course, she comes out to society at a ball thrown at Tamar Lane. Bridgerton. It's Bridgerton. Now she's a society lady. Oh, geez.

And she's a fixture on the party circuit. No parties complete without Sunny. Some people remember her and would try to say that she wasn't bright. But actually, the people who really knew her personally were like, no, that's because she was so shy and has such intense social anxiety, and yet was forced to be a social person.

Right. When she graduated from Chapin, she takes her college boards and actually gets amazing grades on those and could have gone to any college she wanted, but she chose not to go to college. So there's your proof that she was not a dumb person. Instead, her mother takes her to Europe

to, quote, experience the continent. Hell yeah. Janet, why didn't you do that when I graduated high school? The equivalent is when my mom would drive me down to the Mall in Corda Madera so I could experience Marin County. And then she'd go, don't get used to it. So Sunny, her mother and her mother's fiance,

should go experience the continent. They go to a place called the Schloss Mittersel Resort in the Austrian Alps. This place, which we might consider visiting sometime, it's a 900-year-old castle that where basically the elites go to relax and ski, it's in the Austrian Alps so they can ski there in the winter, go shooting, go hiking,

do rich people stuff, lay around in money, whatever it takes for them to relax. It's so hard to relax. It's so difficult to relax. In World War II, Himmler made this castle his, like he took over this castle. I knew there'd be Nazis involved in this. Of course, they were everywhere.

They took over. When they left, though, after World War II, which is kind of, this was kind of an interesting, kind of historical thing to learn, a lot of the people who had been royalty in Europe had nothing left, right? They're like, their estates were taken away, or they had no money left.

We've all seen fucking Santa music. It's rough. You just, you have to put on your dirndl, and you have to climb over the Alps with your eight brothers and sisters. So this guy, his friends, convinced him, the guy that owned this resort, they said, open it up again.

And there were all these young, like royalty princes and stuff that didn't have money anymore, but they were beautiful and they were of royal lineage. So rich Americans would come over there, and then they'd get to interact with the royals. Then the royals who were left with nothing would have a chance to marry back into money, right?

So it was kind of this, like that's when, you know, in like Downton Abbey, when suddenly it's like, oh, so-and-so married an American, because they had to, they had to maintain their big estate. Right, that makes total sense. Yeah, they needed that new money. So on Sunny's first day at the resort, she meets a young tennis instructor,

and his name is Prince Alfred Edward Frederick Vincennes Martin Maria von Oursberg. Okay. His family lost all their money when the Austrian Empire fell, World War II. So now he's, you know, he's making it work at this resort. Okay. The two of them fall madly in love,

and of course against her mother's wishes, Sunny ends up marrying Alfie. Her mother says, he's four years younger than you, he's a prince, he's gonna cheat on you, he's gonna have a roving eye. You're an American girl, you don't know how these European princes work, and she's like, no, you don't know.

You don't know. And so she does it. And very soon after that, she hires basically a maid for the household named Maria Schallhammer. And Maria attends Sunny's every need. She's very loyal, and she will remain that way for like the next 30 years.

Wow. So the couple, Sunny and Alfie, have two children, Ella and Alex. But just as her mother warned her, Alfie never gives up his Playboy lifestyle, and he eventually cheats on her. Sunny's heartbroken. She also misses New York,

because they're living in Europe now. So the couple ends up getting a divorce in 1965. But before Sunny leaves Europe, and after she separates from Alfie, she goes to a dinner party, and that's where she meets a very mysterious and suave Danish man named Klaus von Bülow. He himself had royal blood,

had been from a once very well-standing family, his grandfather was the Justice Minister of Denmark, and he grew up there. He was sent to Swiss schools, and he's not the ultra-rich like the people that he went to these Swiss schools with. Yeah. But he learns to use his intelligence,

his wit and his charm to ingratiate himself to the ultra-rich. So he essentially learns how they act by going to school with them. But when the war starts in 1940, and things start getting hairy, and the Nazis then occupy Denmark, he is smuggled out in the belly

of a British mosquito bomber. Whoa. Basically, as a young man, gets smuggled out of Nazi territory and into England. Okay. He ends up going to Trinity College in Cambridge. He graduates with a law degree in 1946.

He practices law in London in the 50s. Then in 1959, he gets a job as an executive assistant to the oil baron, John Paul Getty. Wow. So basically, Klaus gives Getty legal and public relations advice, and they say he was occasionally Getty's whipping boy. In 1985, the Providence Journal reports

that Klaus also helped Getty procure medicines and rejuvenation drugs. So it's a little... It's cocaine. Some cocaine and a little aloe vera. So this is from Mark Ribbon's true TV article. It says, quote, while Getty once praised Bulo for his rapier quick mind,

penchant for hard work and highly personable manner, others who knew him at the time described him as a sly and supercilious man who often attempted to make himself look good at the expense of Getty's staff. So you get a little sense of the two-faced aspect of Klaus von Bulo. Klaus. So a year after Sonny ends her first marriage,

she and Klaus are married on June 6, 1966. A year later, Sonny gives birth to their daughter Cosima. So now she has three kids. So they basically move to Newport, Rhode Island. They move into an estate called Clarendon Court. So two years after their marriage in 1968, Klaus leaves his job with J.P. Getty. And then for the next 13 years,

the couple lives a life of luxury to the point where Sonny spent almost every day in her bedroom. Oh, my God. That sounds like depression, not luxury. Well, she definitely had it. There are people who said she really suffered from it. Mental health issues that she was suffering from,

but it was the 60s. So, you know. What are you? You don't talk about it? No. Or you just take some speed. I mean, what do you do? Diet pills.

And the weird thing is, a lot of people said who knew her and went to these parties with her that she had a very bad reaction to alcohol. She was one of those kind of people that after one or two drinks, she'd be slurring, lose her balance, knock things over, fall down.

She probably drank on top of pills, right? Like that's what everyone did back then. I mean, that's what everyone did. I don't know. No one knows. Yeah. For sure. So for whatever the reason,

because of this, she'd have one drink. It's almost like she had an allergy. Yeah. It seems to me. Yeah. So then she kind of drank a lot because then she was just immediately drunk. There are those who told a story

about a sober friend who tried to do an intervention for her, which Sonny quote politely rebuffed. So, fuck you! That's what actually happened. Oh, I have a quote from that intervention. Fuck you. I'm rich.

Right. I mean, I think that's a part of it, though. I think there is an element to people who live this way, to people who have servants 24 hours a day, they're not going to take that kind of stuff. They're not going to do anything they don't want to do ever

because they never have. And it's not like they have obligations they're flaking on. They have no obligate. Like it's not like you can be like, you're fucking up your job. It's there's no job or like, you know, you're in your room all day.

It's like, well, yeah, I'm rich. Except the one job that she really had, especially for women in that position, is socializing. So if you're at a party and you're falling down, and one drunk gets you super fucked up, then you're actually not doing your job. Right?

Because you're supposed to be the person that's holding it all together all the time, no matter what. Yeah. So there's that element to it where then I think if someone says, hey, do you want to go to AA with me? It's like, you can't be scratching this.

I have to be telling myself, I'm still doing my job just fine. Right. So there's that piece of it. There were also rumors of drug use. We're talking about the 60s and 70s. So it's probably true. Yeah.

Because also if you have that much money, you can get any drug in any amount that you want at any time. So still a rumor, though, you know, not proven. According to Klaus, after the birth of their daughter Cosima, Sunny lost all interest in their sex life and gave Klaus permission to seek sex outside the marriage.

He'd gone back to work. He started working at a place called Artemis International Art Advisors. He had to travel for that job, and he would be away a lot. And she blamed that job for the reason that their marriage was starting to fall apart. But Klaus didn't like being seen as being a kept man.

He really wanted to work and felt it was important to him. At the time, he got a $10,000 a month allowance from Sunny's estate. Wow. That's got to feel a little emasculating for, I feel like for any, not just Cosimaean, but like an allowance in a marriage seems like an awkward thing to...

It's not romantic, that's for sure. No. Yeah, it's a little bit of a bummer, I think. Yeah. He also began having an affair with a woman named Alexander Iles, who had been a soap opera star, and who had come from just as much money as Sunny had come from.

Oh, okay. And so, of course, she was used to being whined and dined. That started off as it was supposed to be a fling, but then it actually became a full-fledged affair. And so, he knew that he didn't have enough money to basically afford himself or herself the lifestyles that they had grown accustomed to. Right.

So, he knew working would be important, and that $120,000 a year wasn't really going to cut it, if this was something that he thought he was going to continue doing with her. Right. So, his mistress, Alexander Iles, demands that he leave his wife and basically marry her, because she didn't want to be his mistress.

And he tells her Sunny's too unstable, he can't leave her, so Alexander breaks up with him. There's a really amazing part in the movie where Sunny, one of the times that she takes to her bed and is kind of incoherent, she's saying, all those letters, all those beautiful letters. And it intimates that when Alexandra and Klaus broke up, Alexander took all the love letters he wrote her

and left them at their house, and then Sunny found them. Oh, no. Now, I need to say, because I'm basing some of my knowledge of this case on the movie, that that could have been added for a dramatic effect. But that idea that it's like, it becomes a thing where it's like, I understand if you need to have sex,

you can do that, but keep it outside the house. And I'm sure the expectation is, of course, don't fall in love with anybody. Right. Totally. Yeah. By 1979, Klaus and Sunny's marriage is failing. People know it.

They're both talking about getting a divorce to other people, so it's becoming common knowledge. That Christmas, the family gathers at Clarendon Court to celebrate the holidays, as they always do. The day after Christmas, Sunny and her son, Alex, go into the library to drink some eggnog together, spiked eggnog, and that was their family tradition. Sure.

Sunny becomes incoherent and disoriented, and Alex ends up having to put her to bed. So the next morning, when the family wakes up, Alex leaves the house to go play tennis. His mother's not awake, which is pretty standard. That's pretty common. She stays in bed a lot. When he comes home later in the day,

he finds Maria, his mother's made in tears. She tells him that she believes Sunny's very ill, and that Klaus is refusing to call a doctor. Klaus just says that Sunny's sleeping off a night of drinking and just to leave her alone, because Klaus said Sunny hated doctors, and he would later testify that he and Sunny had spent the night before arguing about his job

and about travel and about their marriage. He claims Sunny was very depressed, and even more so now that her daughter was leaving for Austria because she was getting married. Her fiance was in Austria. So the next day, Maria had heard moaning coming from the bedroom, and she was really worried. And so she's an old school servant,

so she's not going to be telling her the master of the house and the mistress of the house what to do or asserting herself in any way. But after a while, she's so worried about Sunny that she goes into the room. She sees Klaus is just reading on one of the twin beds in the room, and on the other twin bed, Sunny is lying unconscious.

So Maria tells Klaus he needs to call a doctor, and he says, no, she just has a sore throat. Just leave her alone. Then she just basically spends the next several hours checking on Sunny who's not coming around. She seems to be unconscious. Her status is not changing. So by the time Alex gets home, Maria is in tears.

So when Alex hears this story, he rushes to his mother's room to check on her. He can hear that her breathing is erratic. He shakes her, calls her name. She's not waking up. He turns around. Klaus is now standing at the end of the bed in silence. So he yells, call a doctor.

The doctor gets there in 15 minutes. Just as he gets there, Sunny vomits and starts to aspirate the vomit. Oh, my God. So the doctor has to give her CPR. He gets her breathing on her own again, basically clears that up, but she's not waking up. She's rushed to the hospital.

And when she gets there, they find she's in a coma. Oh, my God. So the doctors are eventually able to bring her out of that coma. After extensive testing, she's diagnosed as being hypoglycemic. She tells the doctors that she does not take drugs, that she does not have a drinking problem,

but she does admit that she has a fondness for sweets. So upon her release, the doctors tell her, you can't eat too many sweets, and you also can't go too long without eating because that was, you know, another piece of it. So now with that and the way that that all went down, Maria is very suspicious of Klaus. She doesn't like how nonchalant he was

while Sunny was clearly into stress. And one day when she's cleaning the house, she finds a small black toiletry bag in one of his closets. She's seen him take it when he goes into New York City to stay. So she decides to look inside of it. And when she does, she finds a prescription bottle of Valium.

It has the name Leslie Baxter on it. She finds a vial of powder and she finds a vial of liquid. So she immediately calls Ala and she takes this bag into New York City to Ala's apartment to show her. So Ala ends up taking samples of the things that are in those vials, the liquid and the powder. And she brings those samples to the family doctor

to have them tested. And then when the results come back, they find that the liquid was Valium and the powder was a powerful barbiturate called Secobarbital. This doctor that tested these things had prescribed both of these things to Sunny in the past. But the versions that they were in,

there's no pharmacy in the world that would be selling this version of these drugs to regular people on the street. Like it comes in a tablet, not in liquid or powder form. Yeah, you don't get your drugs in powder form. Right. I'll take care of it from here. Yeah.

So Maria, Ala and Alex all decide that they're going to keep this to themselves. They're afraid to warn Sunny about it. They don't want to scare her. They don't want to freak her out. They don't want Klaus to find out that they did all this. So four months later in April of 1980, again, Sunny's found incoherent and disoriented.

She's brought to the hospital. So that's when the doctors say, you can't do anything you're doing anymore. You have to go on a strict diet. You have to limit your sugar intake and you cannot drink alcohol at all. And by all accounts, this is what she does. So when Ala's wedding, when they actually have the wedding,

she only drinks like diet drinks and she's completely great and fine during the whole celebration. But around Thanksgiving of that year, Maria is cleaning Klaus's closet and she sees the black bag again. And this time when she looks inside, she sees a bottle of insulin

and three syringes. Two are in their packaging and one looks used. So she shows the new contents of the bag to Alex. And again, they decide not to say anything to Sunny. Okay. So then there's another incident. Sunny's found incoherent and bleeding from the head. And when she's rushed to the hospital, the doctors discovered that she'd taken over 60 aspirin.

And it was a toxic amount that could have killed her. In a letter that Maria wrote to a friend, she says Klaus and Sunny are at dagger's points with each other. So basically the marriage is really falling apart. Sunny is really depressed and having a really hard time. So usually the family spends Christmas at Clarendon Court and all together,

including the grandmother. But Sunny's grandmother, Annie Laurie, had become ill. So they decide that they're gonna celebrate Christmas in New York City. But right before Christmas, they're gonna go back to Newport for a quick trip and then come back into the city on Christmas. So Klaus tells Maria,

she doesn't need to go to Newport with them because it's gonna be such a quick trip, which Maria finds very suspicious. She checks Klaus's little black bag again. She sees the contents haven't changed. This insulin and the syringes are still in there. So now it's December 21st. Sunny, Klaus, Alex and Kosima are at Clarendon Court.

After dinner, Sunny asks for a Carmel Sunday, which of course she isn't supposed to have. Then the whole family leaves the house and goes to watch the movie nine to five. Which I was like, so these super rich people from this estate drive into town and like go to a regular movie theater. I love it.

What a weird detail and an amazing movie. Yes, a classic. Time and place, it really puts you there. So when they get back from this movie, Klaus says he has to go make some phone calls. The rest of the family goes into the library to basically kind of like hang out and talk. But Sunny first goes to her bathroom for a little while.

And when she comes back, she's holding a glass of what Alex assumes is ginger ale. But then when Sunny's voice starts getting kind of faint and she starts getting disoriented, Alex asks her if she's taken any barbiturates. He has to pick her up and carry her to bed and then he goes and gets Klaus. When he gets back to the bedroom,

he finds that Sunny is crawling back from the bathroom to try to get into bed. So he leaves Klaus to it, he leaves the house, and he goes to meet his friends at a bar. So it must be really upsetting to be in this situation. Really awful. For years and years of that. Right, and I wonder if for a while it was like hidden

and then suddenly it's happening in front of him. Because now he's a teenager. Right. So the next morning, Alex and Kosmar are eating breakfast. Klaus comes in and asks if they've seen their mother yet that morning and they say no. So Klaus goes to the room and he finds Sunny unresponsive on the bathroom floor

next to the toilet. Her nightgown is bunched up around her waist. There's a cut on her lip, her body is cold, and she's lying in a puddle of her own urine. So she's again rushed to the hospital, but this time the doctors can't revive her. She's transferred to a hospital in Boston.

The doctors there find that she has suffered serious brain injury and she is now in what they call a persistent vegetative state. And she's put on life support. So she's basically slipped into a permanent coma. So when Alla gets to the hospital, she talks to a neurologist who tells her that he believes this coma could only have been caused by insulin being injected into her mother's system.

And now given Klaus's behavior around the first coma and the family knowing the contents of the black bag, Sunny's two oldest children, Alex and Alla, and her maid, Maria, are extremely suspicious of Klaus. These suspicions are confirmed when Klaus begins trying to persuade the children over the next few months of having their mother taken off life support.

He claims it's the only humane thing to do. Alex and Alla, of course, say absolutely not. So here's a quote from Mark Kirbin's article. It says, quote, two or three times a day Klaus would call Alla or Alexander, urging them to consider his request. He was relentless. He tried an emotional attack saying falsely

Sunny's organs would begin to break down and have to be removed one at a time. He then appealed to their checkbooks preparing a memorandum outlining how much it would cost to keep Sunny alive indefinitely. Her care would require them to modify their lifestyles drastically and would bankrupt the family. Finally, when Sunny was removed from Boston to New York, where her own physicians could treat her,

Klaus argued that the hospital's Christian doctrine would require staff to prolong her life at any cost, regardless of anyone else's wishes. Now, basically, they're convinced that Klaus has something to do with their mother being in a coma. So they contact a former New York district attorney named Richard Keh to investigate the possibility that this wasn't a medical condition that caused this coma,

but Klaus's attempt to murder his wife. So they gather as much evidence as they can from Clarendon Court and they interview staff members, friends, and family. But when they try to find Klaus's black bag, they can't locate it. They find the closet where he used to keep it, and now that closet is locked for the first time than anyone can remember. They end up calling a locksmith to have it open,

but when the locksmith arrives, he says, have you tried to find the key that opens it before we just replace this lock entirely? And so they search Klaus's desk, they find a key ring, and they end up being able to open the closet. Inside, they find the black bag, so the investigators take it and they start testing the contents. So on the dirty syringe, the one that looks used,

their lab finds remnants of insulin, and the doctor that conducts these tests tells Richard, either you go to the police or I will. So Richard Keh being concerned about a discretion for this family, because they're the ultra-rich, they never want their name in the paper, like Sunny would get asked to be interviewed about Clarendon Court, or like she always donated anonymously,

they avoid being in the paper, it's the last thing they want. And so first, Richard Keh tries to talk to his contacts in the New York City DA's office about looking into prosecuting this, but those people say we have no jurisdiction in this case, so he has to go to the Rhode Island police. So a man named Sergeant John Reese is put in charge of this investigation. He has the contents of the black bag retested in the state labs, and he ends up re-interviewing all the family members and the house staff.

And then he goes into Manhattan to interview Klaus. Klaus invites them into his apartment. They talk for less than an hour. Klaus explains that the family has been fractured since Sunny slipped into her second coma. He tells them the children blame him for their mother's state and that the whole thing is basically a vendetta against him. He says that the children are in grief, and because of that,

some families become united and stuff like this, but this family is not. Several weeks later, Reese goes to Clarendon Court with a search warrant. He goes to re-interview Klaus. Klaus is very friendly and open. He signs the search warrant. He's very welcoming to the investigators. It's only after they begin searching the house that Klaus suddenly realizes he's being interviewed as a suspect. He's very shocked and upset by this.

He wonders aloud if he should call a lawyer. Reese tells him he doesn't have to talk with them, but they end up talking for two hours. At one point, Klaus even brings the investigators into the bathroom where he found Sunny's body the night that she slipped into her coma. So basically, while all these people are in the house looking through everything, Klaus excuses himself to go get some cigarettes. When he comes back, another officer goes and checks the closet

where the black bag was kept, and it's now locked where it wasn't before when they first got there. And so the officers interpret this as Klaus trying to hide evidence. So basically, they keep collecting evidence through the spring, and then on July 6, 1981, the Rhode Island grand jury indicts Klaus von Bülow on attempted murder charges. Klaus goes to the Newport courthouse for his arraignment on July 13. It's a full-blown media circus.

Basically goes in, he immediately posts $100,000 bail because, of course, this is how it is for rich people, and he goes home and awaits his trial. So the first trial takes place, the prosecution rate, the quick indicator of what's going to happen. The prosecution knows to put their strongest witnesses on the stand early. So Alex von Arsberg is on the stand first.

He tells the jury he never saw his mother drunk, except for in connection with these comas. He also testifies that just after Thanksgiving in 1980, his mother told him that she was divorcing Klaus, quote, for a reason too horrible to tell. When Maria takes the stand, she confirms everything Alex testifies to. She also adds that she didn't warn Sunny about the insulin that she'd found because she was afraid of Klaus.

There's days and days of medical testimony and all kinds of really involved stuff about hypoglycemia, insulin, the way the body's organs process, sugar, basically all this stuff. It essentially takes the jury four days, once all testimony is over, it takes the jury four days to come to their verdict. And on March 16th, they find Klaus von Bülow guilty

of two counts of attempted murder. He's sentenced to 10 years for the first count because Sunny recovered from that. And he's sentenced 20 years on the second count. Klaus files for an appeal and that he now has to use his money to hire the best appellate lawyer in the country if he has any chance of not going to jail. Because if he goes to jail, he'll be in jail for the rest of his life.

He's in his mid-60s. I think he was 65 when this happened. So it's recommended him that he hires Alan Dershowitz. So everyone knows about this case. It's been in the tabloids. It's in all the papers. Most people think he's guilty because of the way the press presents him.

And so at first, when he hears about it, first of all, he gets the call. He thinks he's being pranked. And then he has lunch with Klaus. Klaus basically says, I'm innocent. And I got railroaded, basically. And so Dershowitz is like, the only way I would take this case is if I can prove that the judicial process was incorrect,

essentially. And he basically also says, I want your money so that I can keep doing pro bono work for innocent people. So it's worth it to me to work on this for you because either way, I'll still get your money and then I can keep on doing the work for the people who are actually wrongfully convicted. The other good thing about the fact that Alan Dershowitz

was a Harvard Law professor is he could get all these law students to come in and work on this appeal. And it ends up being a 101-page appeal that they put together where they basically take apart every single piece of evidence. And he has all of these law students. They basically are assigned each piece of evidence that needs to be taken apart. So there's a black bag team.

Richard Ke would not turn over his notes to the defense. So they're like, what's in those notes that he doesn't want us to see because that's the only reason someone wouldn't turn over those notes. So they basically very strategically breaks everything up and he has tons of law students working on this day and night. It's not just him. And interestingly, because this case got so much public attention, there's a lot of people who are really surprised

that Klaus was actually found guilty. So people came forward who were like, I actually know for a fact that that isn't true and that people testified and it isn't true what they said. One of those people was Truman Capote. What? Truman Capote came forward and sworn in affidavit that Sunny Von Bulo had taught him how to shoot up

intravenous drugs like during the 50s and 60s. Oh my God. Yeah, so he had a whole story about it because he hobnobbed with the rich and the elites and he was like, yeah, she absolutely did drugs and did stuff like that. And same with another person that came forward to testify was Johnny Carson's wife, Joanne,

and other people too, unfamuses. Truman Capote ended up dying before he could be cross-examined. I don't think they ended up using his testimony, but essentially a very different picture of Sunny's lifestyle and her sobriety began to get painted by all of these people who the prosecution had basically kind of left out of the story before. For the first time around.

So they start doing the work on the black bag and the dirty syringe. Those are the two other big pieces of evidence that they need to like basically disprove. This is another big quote from the Mark Ribbon's article. It says, first, the expert said, if the needle had been injected into Sunny, there would have been traces of human tissue and blood elements

in addition to the insulin on it, but there were none. And second, amobarbital was found on the needle, and that drug always leaves a bruising and welts, but there were none on Sunny. Physicians looked everywhere for indications of injections. They found none. Third, valium was found on the needle, but no valium was found in Sunny's body.

And finally, the incrustations on the needle were found at the tip, which experts say is inconsistent with injection. The skin acts as a sponge, and when the needle is withdrawn, it wipes the serum from the tip. So the only residue would be located at the lever fitting of the needle,

which is where the needle goes into the syringe. Right, not the tip, but the end, basically. Yes, exactly. That's the only place that that would actually be. Yes, so basically they wipe out that entire theory that like, oh, we found it and there's insulin on this needle, and they're just like, that is not how it works. They also then submit four unused needles

to the same crime lab, and they come back with two false positive tests. So they're just ticking off thing after thing. So on March 15th, 1983, Dershowitz and his appeals team filed a 101-page brief, and in October, Alan Dershowitz actually argues it in front of the state Supreme Court,

and this is the first time Rhode Island allowed TV cameras into the courtroom. He argues this appeal, and they take down all of the most damning evidence in very clear, logical, and inarguable ways, even though there's one point where apparently the justices actually snaps at Dershowitz, because he doesn't like his style,

like he doesn't like the way he's being talked to, but in the end, actually have to give him it. They win the appeal, and they give a new trial to Klaus von Bülow. So he now gets to on the fact that all of this evidence, like all of the prosecution's case is based on all of this evidence that's faulty, he gets a new trial.

Okay. So now in the second trial, the defense finally gets to read Richard Ka's investigation notes, and they find testimony in them from old chauffeurs that used to drive Sunny to pharmacies to go pick up medications and drugs, stories of drinking, drug use, people, all this testimony that they had interviewed witnesses,

got that, and then left it all out, and didn't let anybody see it. So essentially, it's that idea that this, a private investigator for the family is going in, finding the story they want to find, and only turning that in, and using that to prosecute and convict someone. So in the second trial,

the new defense attorneys are now much harder on the cross-examinations of both Maria and Alex, accusing them basically of lying to protect Sunny and to indict Klaus. On June 5th, 1985, Klaus von Bülow is found not guilty of the attempted murder of his wife. The appeal works, and they get a new trial,

and then they actually end up winning the new trial. Although Alan Dershowitz consulted on that second trial, but he was not the lawyer. So afterward, Ola and Alex von Auernsberg are still convinced that Klaus von Bülow attempted to kill their mother. None of what happened in the courtroom convinces them of anything,

and they end up suing him for $56 million, basically so that they can get him out of their, like, out of their mother's estate. That's not the actual term, getting them out. But essentially, it's just like, you're not going to, you're not going to get what you think you wanted, you thought you were going to get from this. Their sister, Kosima,

because she stood by her father in both the first and second trials, is disinherited by their grandmother, which was a $30 million inheritance. I mean, that's kind of not fair, right? It's rough. Well, I mean, it's the dividing line of this is, you know, Klaus is Alex and Ola's stepfather,

but it's Kosima's father, and she loves him and would never think that. So that's that. It's very staircase-y. It's very like what happens to the family when these things happen, and these cases happen, and it's very salacious, and it's very fascinating,

and oh, what are the rich doing in their houses? They're just families, like any other family that get torn apart by things like this. And whether they have $56 million or $50, the only difference is that they don't have to sit in jail, and they don't have that extra tragedy of... And they have better lawyers and better everything. Yes, they have better everything.

So eventually, Klaus drops his claim to Sonny's estate in exchange for reinstating Kosima into their grandmother's will. So he basically says, just please let her have what she was going to have, and I claim nothing to it. Sonny von Bülow remains in a coma for the next 28 years. Oh, my God. And she dies on December 6, 2008,

when she was arrested in New York City. Oh. And so, although he is found innocent in his second trial, he was found guilty in his first trial. And so, at the end, no one really knows. Everyone has their opinion, but no one really knows whether or not Klaus von Bülow attempted to kill his wife.

And so, that is the very bizarre case of attempted murder of Sonny von Bülow. Oh, my God. Or was it? I can't believe she was kept on life support that long. Yeah. It's so sad and tragic. It's awful.

Wow. That was a fucking tale, for sure. Thank you. There's so much more to it. I can't even tell you how much more there is to it. I really... Please go to truetv.com to their crime library, because this article that Mark Grimmins wrote is comprehensive.

It's so long. I mean, it's an amazing resource. But also, it really gets into the nitty-gritty of how they basically had to go in and pick everything apart to basically say, you can't investigate a crime so that... to get a certain conclusion. You have to keep it all in there

so that everything gets discussed, which is a really important part of that, whether or not you think he did it or didn't do it. Right. Totally. Wow. Great job. So, a few episodes ago, I told you the story of the young man, Robert Thompson, whose body was found in a chimney.

Yes. And I did a lot of research on that, because that's just a topic I'm really fascinated about, people being found in chimneys. And so today, I'm going to tell you a couple more stories on that topic. Of people being found in chimneys? Uh-huh.

Wow. People dying or going missing, or people going missing and their bodies are found in chimneys. Oh, my God. I don't know why. It's like the death to Disneyland. I'm just like... I'm fascinated by it. It's so awful. Yeah. So specific.

So specific. The sources I use today are a ranker article by Laura Allen, two ABC news articles, one by Paul Payne and one by Christina Caron, two Natchez Democrat staff articles, an Associated Press staff article, two CBS news articles, one a staff article and the other by Casey Glenn,

an NBC news article by Mary Foster, a daily news article by Michael Sheridan, and then the website chimneysolutions.com. All right, so let's get some history going. In the past, way, way before Karen, you and I know that children were just tiny humans and not these precious, delicate flowers who probably shouldn't be working grueling, dangerous jobs

alongside grown-ups. But back in the industrial age, that wasn't the case. So on September 6th, 1666, the Great Fire of London completely gutted the city. And because of this, building codes were changed, which is so great, safety is awesome. It made it so that chimneys had to be built much more narrow than they were before.

And so this meant that the full-grown men who worked as chimney sweeps were now unable to do their job because the chimneys had shrunk so much. So instead of inventing tools that could be used to clean the chimneys, instead, they went and found children who were five to 10 years old. Most of them were orphans,

and they were small enough to be crammed down that chimney and clean it themselves. So these kids were brought on as, quote, apprentices, apprentice chimney sweeps, which is not fucking true. They were just indentured servants, and they were called climbing boys. So I don't have to tell you,

they're obviously very deplorable, fucked up jobs. It was just a horrible experience. And aside from the chimney sweep cancer and spine injuries and other hazards of this unpaid job, many children died after getting stuck. In the chimneys, they were cleaning, which actually turns out to be the first industrial deaths. So, and actually the term

light a fire under someone, the origin of that is because when the boys were going too slowly up the side of a building or were hesitant to climb up into these fucking chimneys, their master would light a torch and hold it under their feet to get them to climb up faster. So really awful. All right.

So that's some history of the origins of chimney deaths, but here are two stories about people dying in chimneys more recently. So on January 19th, 2001, stone mason Duncan Morgan is conducting restoration on a two-story building in the historic district of Natchez, Louisiana. The building is home to the riverboat gift shop

and as Duncan looks inside the chimney, he realizes there's an obstruction. He investigates further and finds a human foot and leg bones clad in socks and cowboy boots. He alerts the authorities and then to remove the skeleton, they chisel through the chimney and find the remains of a body and a muscle shirt, blue jeans, and some jewelry. It's clear from the state of the remains

that the body's been inside the chimney for a long time. Inside a pocket is a wallet containing pay stubs in the name of Calvin Wilson. And when they look into this name, they found out that 27-year-old Calvin Wilson had gone missing without a trace almost 14 years before. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So in May 1985, 27-year-old Calvin Wilson was living in Vidalia, Louisiana with his mother, Caroline. Calvin works on the oil field in Jackson, Mississippi. He often stays away from home between jobs, kind of a drifter. But when he fails to return home for several months, his family starts to worry and he's reported missing. Police open investigation into his disappearance and Caroline, the mom and Calvin's younger brother,

drive around everywhere they think Calvin could be, but there's no sign of him. He doesn't make contact with his employer or loved ones, which even if he stays away for a long time, he'll still get a hold of everyone. Caroline's heartbroken. Calvin has a three-year-old daughter and it's entirely out of character

for him to disappear for so long without word. But then in February 1987, so like two years after he goes missing, human skeletal remains are found by police in the international paper mill in the Mississippi town of Natchez around 100 miles from Jackson. So according to the Natchez Democrat, Calvin is the only active missing persons case

when the remains are discovered. So investigators conduct a photograph study of the remains compared with Calvin's photo and they conclude that there are enough similarities to make a probable identification, but they can't be 100% certain it's Calvin or release the remains to the family. So they think this body found behind this mill is him.

And in the absence of any other remains or identifying information, the Wilsons can't even have a memorial service to mark Calvin's passing. So then cut to almost 14 years later, on January 19th, 2001, when the remains are found in the chimney, Calvin's wallets in the pocket of the pants

found along with the skeletal remains and Calvin's mom, Carolyn, tells ABC News, it just floored us. His daughter just went to pieces when she heard the news. Oh, she's like a teenager now. The prospect that the person found in the chimney could potentially be Calvin means the identity of the remains found on the banks of the Mississippi in 1987

are now unidentified. The Adams County Medical Examiner sends samples from both sets of remains to the Mississippi State Crime Lab for DNA analysis. And in August, 2001, eight months after the body inside the chimney is discovered, that person is confirmed to be Calvin Wilson. It's determined that Calvin has no broken bones

or any sign of injury. This is a coroner to believe Calvin could have been alive in the chimney for days before dying. Oh, no. I know. Sadly, Calvin's mom, Carolyn, dies in March, 2001, before the remains are confirmed to be those of her missing son. Police start to retrace Calvin's last known steps

to see how he could have ended up inside the chimney, and they find that Calvin has a criminal record for previous burglary offenses. So they conclude that Calvin tried to rob the gift shop by climbing onto the roof of the building, then shimmying head first down the chimney while the shop was closed. But Calvin, they think, doesn't realize that the closer

he gets to the bottom of the chimney, the narrower the passage becomes. Horrible. Uh-huh. Nor does he realize the fireplace at the bottom is no longer in use, so the flute is closed. And so, you know, he gets to that point, and there's no climbing back out

when you're going head first, right? So he becomes stuck about 15 feet down and is unable to escape. Oh, head first. I didn't realize that. Yeah. How awful is that? So it's just awfulness upon awfulness.

The thought of being stuck. As the years passed, the chimney is sealed off at the top, and no one checks inside beforehand to see if there's anything in there. So because the chimney flute is closed by the time Calvin climbs down, I guess it traps any odor emitted during the decomposition process.

And that's one of the weirdest things about these stories I read is, like, no one smells anything. No one figures it out. But, okay, so when police check to see if anyone in the building has ever reported unusual smells, there's nothing. It's also suspected that breezes from the nearby river may have kept anyone in the building's vicinity

from noticing that anything was decomposing inside. Before Carolyn Wilson dies, she refuses the theory that Calvin voluntarily climbed it in the chimney. She tells ABC News that her son had, quote, too much sense to climb into such a small space where he could become trapped. Instead, she believes that Calvin has been murdered

by people who knew him and then hid his body in the chimney. Which does make sense where it's, like, head first. Who's idea? No one. And also, what value is in that place that would make that worth it? Right. It doesn't make sense.

It does make much more sense as a threat or a hiding place. Yeah. Breaking a window and even maybe going down feet first into a chimney. Those things you could understand. That actually happens all the time and people still get stuck. But head first into a chimney doesn't make any sense. But foul play isn't supported by the autopsy results,

but, you know, it can mean anything. So Calvin's family finally has solid answers about what happened to him. But so who was the person found on the banks of the Mississippi that they originally thought was Calvin? According to ABC News, Sheriff Tommy Farrell says police just don't know who it is, adding, quote, we get floaters near the river all the time.

You never really know who they are. He has that law enforcement can't even be certain that the remains hadn't washed down from the Mississippi river from outside Adams County and the case still remains open. So, OK. So it seems like bad news. Yeah. We get floaters all the time and we can't identify them.

Oh, well. It's actually not that weird. It's probably from another town over. Don't worry about it. How about your job? Yeah. It's not being paid to do it. Right.

So it's actually not that unusual. I guess. I mean, that unusual is who knows what that means to, for bodies to be discovered in chimneys during restoration work on a property. And that's what happens in the next story. So in May, 2011, a contractor is installing plywood on the second floor of the empty former Abbeyville National Bank

in southern Louisiana. The historic building is being converted into offices and has several fireplaces. The contractor removes a metal shield covering one specific fireplace. The chimney for this fireplace has since been sealed off from the roof and looking inside the chimney, the contractor finds some fabric.

He decides to see what could be stuffed inside the chimney. And when he pulls on the fabric to dislodge it, he gets a gruesome shock when human bones and more fabric fall onto his head. When officers show up to remove the body, they note that the additional clothing which falls out of the chimney consists of a yellow long sleeve shirt, a pair of jeans, blue tennis shoes and gloves.

And a magazine watch and cigarette lighter are also found with the remains. As with Calvin Wilson, there are some items with the skeleton giving investigators a solid indication of the person's identity. Inside one of the pockets is a wallet. It contains photographs, a social security card and a copy of a birth certificate in the name of Joseph Schecksneider.

The autopsy can't determine the cause of death, but there's no record under the name found in the wallet. So law enforcement contacts Joseph's family to obtain a reference DNA sample. And the remains are then taken for DNA testing to confirm whether or not the body is Joseph. And if it is him, how could he have ended up there? So Joseph was born in 1962 in Louisiana.

He grows up with his mother, two brothers and a sister. He's known as a sweet natured and laid back kind of kid. He's known for going off wandering, even as a child. His brother Robert remembers Joseph initially running off when he was nine or 10 years old. So he likes to go on adventures. As an adult, Joseph serves in the National Guard in Louisiana, but he's eventually medically discharged.

He leaves town traveling for several months, working for a circus, selling cotton candy and peanuts. He drifts from job to job, but he just really loves seeing the country. And at one point he tells his brother Robert that he'd seen all 50 states. By January 1984, 22 year old Joseph is wanted for possessing a stolen vehicle.

He has no prior criminal record, but when he fails to appear in court, Vermillion parish sheriff's deputies call around to his house. His mother tells the officer she has no idea where Joseph is. And that's true, though she suspects he's decided to take off to avoid being arrested. And Joseph's mother never reports him missing, figuring, you know, she knows he's wanted by police.

He just took off. Why would she report him missing? And she hopes that he'll return home at some point like he always has in the past. So none of his family searched for him, given that this disappearance isn't out of character. You know, it's 1984. He's 22 years old.

Like he loves to go on adventures. Yeah. It's what he does. Right. So the more time passes, the more worried Joseph's mother becomes. But according to CBS, his brother Robert tells her, quote, mom, that's just Joseph being Joseph.

However, Robert knows that his brother had fallen in with a bad crowd just prior to his disappearance. And, you know, is a little worried about him because of that. There's no contact from Joseph. And he doesn't return home without any further leads. Police efforts to track him down for that warrant go cold. Three years after Joseph's disappearance, the chimneys of historic buildings in Abbeyville are sealed off.

Yet no one involved in the work notices that a man's body is stuck inside the chimney of the former bake building. So in July, 2011, two months after the discovery of the body, the remains are confirmed as those of Joseph. Police determined that Joseph had entered the chimney feet first from the top, but it's impossible to say how long he'd been there or even why. And according to CBS, the narrow gap is a tight 14 inches by

14 inches. And it narrows at the bottom where it ends in a three inch opening to a fireplace on the second floor. So no one was getting in there. This level of the building is mainly used for storage. So anyone stuck inside where Joseph is found, the people in the building wouldn't have heard the cries of someone stuck down there because it was, you know, so low.

And there was also the thickness of the bricks and the fact that he's 20 feet underground, essentially. In the years since Joseph was last seen, no one who works in the building reports any strange smells, anything like that. The case is officially closed, but there's still questions. Joseph's manner and cause of death seem to rule out foul play. Given the lack of clues available at the autopsy and from the DNA analysis, it's thought that he died from starvation.

Oh, no. I know. That's how long he was alive down there. That's awful. I know. His brother, Robert suspects that perhaps Joseph intended to rob the bank and that his plan went horribly wrong. But when his body is found, there's no tools on him that

Joseph would have needed to use to open any safes or anything like that. He isn't even carrying a bag in which he could have stashed the money. The lab director who did his autopsy tells ABC News that Joseph most likely died within a few days of entering the chimney. In August, 2011, Joseph is laid to rest by his family. His brother, Robert, tells CBS, quote, at least we know where

he is now, at least he's home. But the questions still remain about why Joseph was in the chimney in the first place and how his remains could have gone unnoticed for 27 years. Lieutenant Hardy tells CBS everybody has an opinion, but no one has evidence to say one way or the other. All right. So let's go back to the little chimney sweet boys.

The practice of the climbing boys went on for over 200 years. Whoa. This is a quote from chimneysolutions.com, quote, in spite of the deplorable conditions the children lived in, the horrible health effects they suffered, and the many injuries and fatalities resulting from related work hazards. A 12-year-old boy named George Brewster was the last chimney sweep boy in England to die on the job.

In 1875, after getting stuck, and at this point, adults were finally like, oh, like maybe this is a fucked up practice. Can someone take five minutes and invent some basic fucking tools to take the place of the children? And that someone was Joseph Glass, an engineer from Bristol, England. Child chimney sweeps are actually honored every year in England, and it's done right around May Day, which is

because May Day was the only day off the climbing boys had every year. Oh, my God. And that is more stories of people dying in chimneys. That's... I'm sorry. It's so dark. Well, no, it's, I mean, which is why it's the

fascination that it is because that's like a nightmare that you would have. Yeah. The headfirst version is insane. The idea that children were seen as just that disposable and that, you know, if they had no one to advocate for them, then send them down or up a chimney. Everything about it is just like...

For 200 years, everyone was like, great. For so long. Yeah. Sorry, that's just how it has to go. All right, let's do, let's each do one fucking hooray. Great. Here's mine. Let's see.

It says, this is from the Gmail. It says, I just realized that I have a fucking hooray this week. On Friday, I paid off my student loans and my car. It only took a global pandemic, not going anywhere or doing anything, working for a biomed company involved in making PPE, medical equipment and medications and the payments of interest accrual on the student loans to be paused

to get there. Wow. I am debt free for the moment and can finally start saving for a house. I know that I've been extremely fortunate and without some extenuating circumstances, this would still be at least three years in the future. I'm still a thousand percent on board with cancelling student

loan debt and reforming our financial aid system because it really is holding a lot of people back. It says DGM Ray, R-A-E. Wow. That's perfect. What a generous thing to be like, I'm paying my off and then get rid of it for everybody else. It's such a rip off.

It's such a rip off. Absolute bullshit. It's made to hold people back for sure. This one's called fucking hooray for Prozac. Hi, ladies. I just wanted to say that my fucking hooray is after years of struggling with depression, I finally took my therapist's advice and started taking Prozac.

I was hesitant, but with the encouragement from your podcast, I decided to give it a try and I feel like a different person. My mom struggles with undiagnosed mental health problems and made fun of me for going to therapy, but you all gave me the courage to continue. Thank you for being so open about mental health, stay sexy and buy the chemicals if your brain can't make them. Emily.

Great job, Emily. Yeah. If anyone makes fun of you for getting help for your mental health, it's because they're scared of your recovery and it's going to, they think it's going to affect them negatively. Or they're scared because they never got it for themselves. Right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for listening, guys. Yeah, I hope everybody's staying strong, keeping it light, staying off social media if they possibly can because it ain't going to help you being in the real world, talking to real people, trying to have a real good time and staying sexy. And don't get murdered.

Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? What's up, Brooklyn? Make some noise, honey. Yes. Yes. Yes. More yes.

What's up, everybody? I'm Michelle Butteau. And I'm Jordan Garlas. And we're here with some exciting news that will make you want to buy a dress and not even return it. Our podcast, Adulting, is back. Jordan and I are both NYC Comics. It's true.

We've been friends for years. But after two years of a pandemic hiatus, we're podcasting together again. We're podcasting together again. Sometimes in the studio. And sometimes we podcast on stage. Now on the Exactly Right Network. Jordan and I will cover the most pressing, most specific,

sexiest, timeless, adulting topics ever. Things like long-term relationships. How many of y'all broke up with friends and or family members during the pandemic? Didn't know it was spring cleaning, but I was like, why don't we have a cabbage? We'll break down the essentials of parenting. Discuss the nitty and gritty of work life.

And let's not forget about honey. Dating. Along the way, we invite friends to join the party and ask them adulting questions too. We go straight to the source with our favorite comics like The Inspiring Shalawa Sharp. Have you ever done long distance? No.

I barely do. Next to me. A look with their singular truth serum. What's the most adulting that you want to do for yourself? I think I want to have a kid. I mean, mostly because, like, imagine the outfits. We would, like, coordinate. Beyond.

We'd be wearing platform heels by age three. And the very real Nori Davis. All right. How can I be more comfortable in social situations with social anxiety? Y'all at Perf don't go. So check out the network premiere of adulting with Michelle Butoh and Jordan Carlos on Wednesday, June 8th, on Exactly Right.

With new episodes dropping on Wednesdays. Follow the show and leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we want to hear from you. What are your questions about adulting? You can send them at AdultingQuestions at gmail.com. That's all.

I gotta go. Bye. Bye. This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Gemma Harris and Haley Gray.

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