My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 368 - Sharp Elbows

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

This week, Georgia covers the 2004 Napa Halloween murders of Adriane Insogna and Leslie Mazzara and Karen tells the story of Jacques Grelley and the 1955 Le Mans motor race disaster.For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is actually happening is a podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who live them. In a special five-part series called Point Blank, this is actually happening sheds a light on the forgotten spree killings of Rancho Tejama. So this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts. Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.

Hi, that's Karen Kilgariff. Bye! And that's our show. God, this is easy. It is. It's just quick. Yeah. It's a greeting.

It's a long exhale at the top and we're done. That's what podcasting is. It's that easy. Anyone could do it. Anyone does do it. I have to say, I was thinking as I was preparing my tea for this record and just having a wave of gratitude because this job is comparatively very easy to like working retail or working in an office where you don't care about what's being made and they don't care about you working

there. Absolutely. Or nothing's being made but money and you just feel like a fucking gross person who needs like a capitalist shower every day after work, anti-capitalist shower is what I mean. Anti. Yeah. Anti-capitalist shower.

Money shower. Or you get into one of those things from a game show, the glass. I wanted to get into one of those so bad as a kid. Me too. I knew I could grab money in a more effective and efficient way than they did on those shows. Well, the secret is you don't want to pluck it out of the air, right? You want to like create like a tunnel or like a barrier with your hands. I've thought about this for sure.

Yeah. Strategy. Yeah. How to get it. How to keep it. So you'd have to wear like a big, kind of like a grammar school teacher sweater that have big pockets so you can be shoving it in there, maybe some inside pockets. Inside pockets, they should have those in more things is what I'm saying.

They do. I think businessmen get them. I do. Again, because of capitalism, but. Such bullshit. God. Can we get anything, please? For once.

Can women have inside pockets on things? I mean, just think of what we get up to though, like the trouble, the mayhem we would cause if we could store things inside of our clothes. The rights we would have, the rights we would take back from this fucking fascist state, the fascist Christian takeover that's happening. Yeah. So many, if only. Guys, welcome to the podcast.

We're happy to be here with you. Yeah, we are. We are. What do you, what's up? What are you up to? Well, Jim's back in town. Wow. It's the trip where he drives down to his friend's house in Palm Springs for the Super Bowl.

Oh, okay. Then he has to come back. Oh, God, I kind of got it. Okay. He buffers either side with a, which is kind of smart, then it's not so long. And he hangs out with me and we do our, we've continued the movie festival of World War II. Now we've moved into a very specific, you know, post World War II Nazi revenge movies that I spent most of them are based on true stories of like how survivors, different Jewish

survivors go and find the Nazis that worked at their camps to murder them and is so satisfying. So you're, you're definitely talking about Quentin Tarantino's movie. What's it called? My dad won't watch that because there's too much swearing. There's a lot of swearing and there's a lot of violence. He already watched it, but with men. So that's fine. That's how he does it.

This one we just watched is called the 12th man, and this is, I mean, now we're actually learning history because this is about a Norwegian, there were 12 Norwegians who were basically in the resistance, 11 of them get caught and the 12 runs. And in this bizarre series of like miracle moves, he just keeps surviving even though the Nazis are like three steps behind him. It's all about the people of Norway who worked in this kind of resistance system when the Nazis invaded. It's just like amazing.

It's amazing. It's called the 12th man. It's, we just found it on Amazon, you know, dad movies, dad movies. We're binging because we just have nothing left. It's just like a wastelands or like, what did we, what did we not watch that we should have watched? So now we're watching, we're binging what we do in the shadows, the TV show. So good.

It's so clever. It's so cleverly written and acted. It's just flawless. I love it so much. I really love how that main, the tallest vampire, I, sorry, I don't know his name. Like you don't doubt for one second, that guy is a vampire. Totally. And his fucking, his familiar, the one who takes care of him Guillermo.

Oh my God. I love him so much. Guillermo was on, I said no gifts. Oh. Yeah. You can go listen. Awesome. And also, of course, Matt Berry, who is one of my very favorites, the funniest.

If you haven't watched toast of London, when you're done with what we do in the shadows, I would go over and watch that toast of London. There's I think two seasons, if not three, there's supposed to be a season where he comes to LA, but they haven't released it yet. Oh man. Yeah. He's incredible. He's the greatest.

Anything else? Deep breath. Well, we have gotten a lot of viewer responses about our last episode. Should we talk about that a little bit? Sure. We covered the Mirror Ball sisters. Yeah. Did you hear from some Dominicans?

I did. I heard a lot of nice things telling me I did an okay job and I appreciate that, last Miraposis. It matters. Yeah. It does. It is like so nerve wracking when you're covering something from a different culture you don't know and you want to make sure you like get, make them proud and get it right.

And so I heard a lot of nice things. So thank you to all the Dominicans out there who let me know. I had a couple of people write in because on Instagram, Connie Marino wrote and said, Karen, yes, native Clevelander. And you released this episode on 216, which is Cleveland Day. Oh my God. Because the area code in Cleveland is 216. Oh my God.

I get it. I love that. I don't know if that was an Alejandra slash Hannah producing move, but how genius is that? That and I guess I didn't know this. It's the start of baseball season. Right. It's the beginning. So like it's the perfect timing for that to come out for the 10 cent beer night to come

out. We knew, we knew all of that and we were absolutely planning it months ahead for you. That's the name of the podcasting game here at Exactly Right is baseball planning, baseball planning and baseball. Everyone loves a baseball plan. Yeah. Can't live without them. And also during that episode, I talked about Genesee Beer, one of the beers that they were

serving at 10 cent beer night and Stacey Saracen S underscore S-A-R-A-C-E-N-E on Twitter. She wrote to us and said, regional beer information for episode 366, Genesee Brewery is the pride of Rochester, New York since 1878. Wow. I've never had it. Same. Cool. Regional beer.

I mean, there's a new corner on this podcast that we don't need, but it's kind of interesting. That we actually can't do because you don't drink and I'm actually trying not to either. I have tea today, so just we'll smell it. We'll do it by smell. I think sometimes though, when you have a thing that you like to do and you've decided not to do it anymore, talking about it a lot does work out some of those, some of the yearnings and craving. That's true.

You think so? No. That's the opposite. Crack a Budweiser the second I got off. So yeah, it's for the best. Okay. Good. Exactly right corner.

Oh yeah. All right. Let's do it. Here's what's going on in our network at the moment, everyone. And in our world. Oh. Ooh. Every week I love finding out what this podcast will kill you, this episode is about.

It's just always so interesting. I'm always like, I want to know more about that. So this podcast will kill you, six season is underway and their newest episode is all about vitamin D. Oh my God, you hear about it all the time and I don't take it enough. I want to know more. And then over on buried bones, Kate and Paul cover the story of Sam Shepard over two episodes because that story, you covered that one, right? It's a biggie.

It's a biggie. He was an American doctor convicted of murdering his wife, Marilyn, in the fifties. Oh yeah. And Georgia covered it in episode, I didn't read to the end, I'm sorry. Episode 55. Like, can you believe that was like 12 years ago? I could definitely be remembering it wrong, but I feel like listening to you talk about Sam Shepard while we were in your first apartment in the green front room.

And you were talking about like, he's the one that said the hippies came. Yeah. Yeah. That case is good. It's so good. And then our friend, Chuck Bryant, host of the podcast, Stuff You Should Know, joins Tess, Babs and Brandy on Lady to Lady for some fun chit chat, so make sure to check that out and say hi to them.

Yeah. Stuff You Should Know is such a legendary podcast. If you don't listen to that one, it was around first, it is huge. Those guys are really awesome and they've been doing podcasting for so long and such nice people. Totally nice. And then of course over in the MFM merch store, if you're looking for something to buy, we've got the classic SSD, GMTs, tanks and lunchboxes.

Oh. If you need a lunchbox, did you lose your lunchbox? We've got some, so go over there and check them out. You go to myfavoritmurder.com and that's where you'll find it. I was going to say, go to myfavoritmurdergmail.com, email us, email us and tell us what you want. Yeah. And we'll go shopping for you.

Ooh, let's be personal shoppers, wouldn't that be a fun job? You know what, honestly, I would enjoy being an Instacart shopper. That does seem, it's almost like a game of supermarket sweep, right? Yes. Yeah. It feels that way. I've used it and had a couple people who were so fast at it, like they were at your house in 20 minutes, like crazy good at it.

Yeah. Okay. I think, will you go first? Right? Okay. Let's do this. I'm first. Okay.

We both took a sip of tea at the same time. Mm-hmm. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wanderers Against the Odds. In our next season, three friends backcountry skiing in Alaska disturb a hibernating bear and she attacks. The skiers must wait for help to arrive before one of them succumbs to his injuries. Listen to Against the Odds on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm first.

This is an old forensic files episode. Yes. It's been compared recently to the University of Idaho killings that happened recently. Oh, wow. Yeah. This is the story of the 2004 Napa Halloween murders. Oh. Mm-hmm.

Huh. How far is Napa from you? 20 minutes. Oh, wow. It's right over the hill. That's why I was like thinking I knew it. I might still, but I'm just going to keep an open mind. Okay.

I mean, it's a pretty safe area over there, right? Like the whole area is pretty quiet and safe. I think so. And now it's wine country and it's where it's like wine tourism, so it's becoming very upscale. Yeah. 2004 would have been like upscale or at least just kind of bucolic countryside. Totally.

Okay. So the sources used in today's episode are a 48 hours episode produced by Paul LaRosa, a true crime detective article by Cindy Parmitter, a Los Angeles Times article by Rowan Tempest, and a medium article by Lori Johnston. And you can see the rest of my sources in our show notes. All right. So it is Halloween night, October 31st, 2004 in Napa, California. Three women sit outside on their stoop, on the stoop of their house on Dorset Street.

They're handing out candy to trick or treaters, just having a good time. Their names are Adrienne and Sonia, Leslie, Marzara, and Lauren Minza. Their three roommates are also friends. They have that perfect balance of getting along really well and really liking each other, but not being such close friends that they're up in each other's shit all the time. You know what I mean? We've all had those. On Halloween, they have a nice little quiet night together, and then they're all in bed

by 11 o'clock. Around 1 a.m. on what is now November 1st, Lauren is woken abruptly by a single bark from her dog. Something is set off that motion sensor lights and her dog is bothered by it. And it's not a totally unusual occurrence, so she quiets the dog and tries to go back to sleep. Then she hears footsteps going up the stairs. She lives on the ground floor, and Adrienne and Leslie live upstairs.

And just a few days earlier, Leslie had brought a boyfriend over that night, just their first overnight guest in the house since the women had moved in. So Lauren figures that's what's going on and brushes it off. She eventually falls back to sleep. But not long after this, Lauren is waken up to the sound of a blood-curdling scream. She can hear her friend and roommate Adrienne calling out for help. So she jumps out of bed immediately and steps out of her bedroom door into the dark hallway. And that's when Lauren hears someone coming down the stairs.

She later describes him as just flying down the stairs, breaking stuff as he came around. So terrifying. Lauren runs out of the back door of the house, trying to escape, only to realize that in her panic, the backyard is fenced in by a six-foot-tall fence, so she has nowhere to go. There's no exit except back through the house. So assuming that the intruder is following her, Lauren hides behind a bush that's like the best she can do. She listens carefully for noises from inside the house and hears someone fumbling with

some window blinds on the ground floor in the kitchen, and then it gets quiet. And she hears Adrienne quietly calling for help. So at that point, she realizes no one's followed her. She returns inside the house, tries to call 911, but when she picks up the house phone in the kitchen, the line is fucking dead. I've seen this forensic files, I think this one. So this is when Lauren creeps upstairs to see what's going on. When she arrives at Adrienne's bedroom, there's so much blood on the floor that she slips

in it. When she gets her bearings, Lauren sees that Leslie is face down on the floor, covered in stab wounds, and Adrienne is curled up beside her bed, and she's still alive, but so injured from her stab wounds that she can no longer speak at this point. Lauren runs back downstairs, grabs her cell phone, and runs to her car to call 911 because she's not sure if the killer's still in the freaking house. Not long after the police and ambulance finally arrive, one roommate, Leslie, is confirmed dead, and Adrienne, the other roommate, dies not long after a paramedics arrive.

Both women have been stabbed repeatedly, and Lauren recounts what she heard, and detectives begin to collect evidence, and the investigation begins. So let's rewind to before this horrific event and talk about Adrienne, and Leslie, and Lauren, and the house on Dorset Street. Lauren and Adrienne had both grown up around Napa and were the first to move into the house. Adrienne was 26 years old when she died and had been working as an engineer for the Napa Sanitation District. She was smart, likable, and had a very close circle of friends.

At age 16, she got into a horrific car accident that nearly killed her and required her to be out of school for months, and she had to relearn how to function due to a traumatic brain injury, so she was a really tough person and had worked hard for this stable, meaningful life that she had. The only drama in her life was a rocky relationship with her on again, off again boyfriend. She wanted things to get more serious. He didn't. And the night of Halloween, they'd had their same typical fight again.

So of course, he automatically becomes a suspect. Leslie was 26 years old when she died. She had just moved to Napa that year from South Carolina and had just moved into the Dorset Street house that June. Leslie was ambitious. According to her mother, Kathy, quote, when she was a little girl, she used to say she wanted to be a mother, a teacher, and a nurse, and Miss America before she was 21. But when she moved to Napa, Leslie ended up working at a winery.

And after years of not quite knowing what she wanted to do with her life, it seemed like she'd found her calling because she was falling in love with the wine industry. Many men in Napa were interested in her at the time of her death. She was casually dating two men, and police later realized that many of her exes had reached out to her on the days leading up to her death. So of course, they all become suspects. She was popular, kind and extroverted, and she was a great fit for the Napa community. But police fear this might have made her a target.

By all accounts, Leslie, Adrienne, and Lauren were the perfect picture of roommates in their mid-20s. Adrienne's mom, Arlene, said that her daughter felt really at home in that house and planned to live there a long time. And then also, violent crimes are really rare in this wealthy city of Napa, and the targeting of these well-liked young women had the community totally terrified. Everyone thought it could be a serial killer, you know, what's going on, and everyone was freaked out.

Do you remember it happening back then? No, I was down here. But the thing I was going to say is it's such an interesting, like it kind of stopped me when you just said all those incredibly complementary things. This is a woman who's accomplished, beautiful, popular, great at what she does, obviously people that are in her life really like being in her life. And then the police say, and they're afraid, that made her a target. And what is so fucked up about that thinking is what made her a target is the motherfucker

that attacked and murdered her. And that idea that you can't be ambitious or you can't be successful and beautiful and popular because God forbid that upsets a man or something like that thinking. It just struck me in a way that I think we've both said those phrases and things like that a million times, and they don't really hit us. What a complete kind of scam that is to be messaging in that way, not that you are sorry or even your researcher. It's like that was a police quote.

And that's like, it's a male way of thinking of like, well, you did all these things and you did to be beautiful and accomplished and pretty and popular. So that made you a target. It's like, no, a mentally unhinged person who can't handle being in the world is who targeted her. That's completely correct. Yeah. When the investigation begins, police begin to think this was not a random attack.

Detectives conclude that the killer must have known his way around the house somehow. The women upstairs, the main targets, like what was going on, how did he know that they would be there? They look for evidence in the house and they find some blood on the kitchen window blinds. And based on Lauren's recollection, what she heard, police determined the killer entered and exited the house through the kitchen window. They also figure out that Adrienne must have injured her killer while trying to protect herself and Leslie, wounding him enough to make him bleed.

And after extensive testing, it's determined that the blood on the blinds does not match either of the victims and in fact belongs to a male and they now have the killer's DNA. Great. In the search, they also find several cigarette butts outside of the house, which I remember from the forensic files episode. Forensic files, yeah, me too. None of the roommates smoked, so the cigarettes are kept as evidence and DNA is collected. And I remember in forensic files, they said there was like a couple out there as if someone

was standing out there like waiting or biting their time or something. It's so fucking creepy. It's really unnerving that way. Yeah. They wait to see if the DNA from the blood on the window blinds matches the DNA collected from the cigarette filters and sure enough, they're a match. Detectives interview more than 1,500 people and collect at least 200 DNA samples. Christian, Adrian's boyfriend, is interviewed and DNA is collected, but he's ultimately

cleared. Leslie's recent dates and old boyfriends are also investigative. Cops get particularly interested in the father of one of Leslie's ex-boyfriends, an older man from South Carolina who apparently called her constantly. Oh. Ugh. She's so gross. This man's frequent calls ultimately led her to breaking up with his son.

And she was uncomfortable with all the unwanted attention. This father of her ex actually called Leslie twice the night she was murdered. So Napa investigators traveled to South Carolina to interview and collect DNA. And even though everyone agrees his behavior and the whole situation is creepy, both the father and his son are cleared of any involvement in the murders. It turns into days and weeks and months. And despite a thorough and lengthy investigation, there are no leads. Leslie and Adrian's family and friends are of course frustrated with the lack of movement

in the case and they do what they can to keep the murders in the public eye. There are visuals and charity events to honor and remember the young women. This woman, Lily Prudham, one of Adrian's closest friends, decides to get married to her longtime fiance, Eric, specifically because of the murders, saying they made her realize life is too short and she should just marry him right away. Lily had previously backed out of the wedding but was so shaken by the murder of her best friend, she decided to go through with it. And his mother attends the wedding instead of her daughter and even reads some scripture

during the ceremony. You imagine how sad. During the reception, Lily played Adrian's favorite song, She Will Be Loved by Maroon Five, in her honor. Lily explains in her own words, quote, Eric and I were originally planning to get married on November 1st, which is the day Adrian ended up dying. And if we had gone through with that wedding, it was planned in Hawaii, Adrian and Lauren would have been in Hawaii with us that week, it's something that haunts me.

Suddenly in mid-August, 2005, there's a breakthrough. Police bring Lauren, the surviving roommate, in again for questioning and they're convinced that the killer being a smoker will be the key to cracking this case. They asked Lauren if she knows any smokers and she racks her brain and the only person she can remember ever smoking in their house is actually Lily's new husband, Eric. She describes him as a very shy, very quiet guy, not social at all. And asked if the police have looked into him. They tell her no, they haven't, but they add his name to the list.

In a month, when Lauren follows up with this potential lead, police tell her they couldn't get ahold of Eric, so they stopped pursuing it. Yeah, not a good enough reason. No, that's actually the reason to keep pursuing it. Yeah. But in September of 2005, the police decide to share the cigarette information with the public. They've learned that the cigarettes left behind at the scene are a very particular brand

that had just come onto the market a few months before the murders. Police released the name of the brand, which are Camel Turkish Gold Cigarettes. They asked the public for help, does anyone you know smoke Turkish Golds? Just a few days later, a man turns himself into the police for the murder of Adrian Insagna and Leslie Mazzara. He's a Turkish Gold smoker. And the release of this information to the public convinced him that he was about to be caught.

DNA confirms that this man is indeed the killer, and everyone is shocked to learn that the new husband, Eric Koppel, committed the brutal murders. So horrifying. Can you imagine getting like standing up at an altar, getting married after murdering like the best friend of the person you're standing in front of? Also, the friend, what a terrible, like just a nightmare experience for her. It just clicked with me, you know, it's like, as you're telling me this, that that episode is kind of like coming back in bits and pieces.

But the idea that she originally had backed out of that wedding, there was something going on that wasn't working for her. Yeah. Well, the motive isn't totally clear for the murders, even to this day, but based on the information available, Eric was a jealous man, Adrian was one of Lily's closest confidants and might have disapproved of Eric, possibly leading Lily to call off the wedding initially. So that might, that might be the motive. On Halloween night in 2004, Eric gets so drunk that Lily refuses to spend the night with

him. Their wedding had already been called off at this point. He's now alone and rejected on the day he was supposed to be married. He tells the cops he doesn't fully remember what happens next, just that he ends up at the house on Dorset Street with a knife. After the murders, he burns his bloody clothes in a fire pit behind his house. And we can imagine he might have killed Adrian due to the envy of her relationship with Lily. He never gave a motive for killing Leslie, although it seems that she might have overheard

what was happening and walked in. And it seems that Lily never suspected him over the course of the 11 months between the murder and her husband's arrest. No, I bet she did. I bet she was shocked to the bone. Of course not. Yeah. Yeah.

The search for the killer is over, but Adrian's mom now has to live with the fact that she attended and spoke at her daughter's murderers wedding. Leslie's family is left with grief and confusion. If Leslie was not the sole target, then why did Eric kill her? Leslie and Eric had never even met. In January, 2007, Eric Koppel stands trial for the murders. The mothers of Adrian and Leslie give victim impact statements in the courtroom. Leslie also speaks out in court.

While addressing her husband, she says, there is, quote, nothing in this world that you could do that would make me love you less, which is a kind of a shock. That is shocking. I don't remember that part at all. Yeah. I think murder is a good one. The public display of support from the man that murdered her best friend confuses and alarms her family and friends, especially Adrian's mother Arlene, who considered Lily

to be like family. Lily eventually does divorce Eric while he's in prison, but she keeps his last name. So there's like a whole fucking box of worms to unravel. Who knows? She's a victim, too, in her own way. Yeah. At sentencing, Leslie's mother, Kathy, tells Eric that, quote, for the rest of your life, you and your family will experience what both your victims and loved ones have felt, terror,

desperation, hopelessness, violence. I wish I could tell you that I forgive you at this time. I cannot. And finally, I pray that never again will another mother's child grow up to be a murderer. And Eric is sentenced to life in prison. Lauren, the survivor, eventually moves to Los Angeles in the years after the murders, saying she feels more comfortable in a new city with anonymity. Arlene and Kathy are both interviewed five years after the murders, sharing that they're

both working to find peace in their own way. Arlene, Adrienne's mom, says friends and family have given her life a new meaning. Kathy, Leslie's mom, has gone on to become an outspoken advocate for abolishing the death penalty. And Leslie and Adrienne would have been 45 years old this year. And that is the story of the brutal and tragic Napa Halloween murders of 2004. God, it's just senseless and horrible. Yeah.

It's like every fucking story we tell on the show and the wreckage just kind of, it just reverberates out through all of these lives, all of these people, and it's so unfair. Just the like added horribleness of going to the wedding of your daughter's murderer is just such a fucking, it's like a punishment to always know that, you know? It's so horrible. I mean, obviously there's a much more going on. It's not just like denial because a person that could stab two people to death is obviously working with a completely other kind of brain, but also to be able to stand up there and

just be pretending. And it's like, so you're just going to bend the entire world around yourself because you can't cop to the fact that you did this horrible thing. So you're just going to continue the pain. Yeah. And you're just going to be tinged. Wow. I mean, I kind of really like the idea of like re-talking about old forensic files because

they are so good and well done and the stories are so compelling. Yeah. They are. And crazy. Yeah. Well, tell me we're taking a sharp left turn. We're going to take a left turn. Thank you.

But there is very disturbing violence in this, but it's an accident. It's another disaster story. Okay. Okay. So it has that element of relief where it's not humans damaging other humans. Okay. Okay. I'm going to tell you today the incredible story of the life of Jacques Grillet and the

Le Mans disaster of 1955. So the main sources I'll be using today are once a 1985 Dallas magazine article called Profile Race Around the Edge by Jan Javis or Javis, Javis, a 2020 GQ article titled Le Mans, 1955, The Disaster That Changed Motor Sports Forever by Benji Goodhart. And a 1985 Sports Illustrated article titled The Tragedy at Le Mans by Bruce Newman. And the rest of these sources are in our show notes. Please take a look on the afternoon of June 11th, 1955 at the famous 24 hour of Le Mans race in Northwestern France.

So here in America, this word looks like Le Mans. It is French pronounced, obviously it's French word and it's pronounced Le Mans. So that's what I'll be saying this time. So it's an unusually hot spring day. Perfect for the occasion. The atmosphere at the racetrack is like a big block party. It's very different from the stuffy and exclusive Monaco Grand Prix of today. We're talking cars here, right?

I'm clear. Oh, yes. Yeah. Race cars. So sorry. No, this just shows what I don't know about the Grand Prix or anything. I'm like, are we on bicycles? Are we on motorcycles?

Are we on fucking alligators? I don't know. Okay. So what's interesting, and I can just tell you this from having read Marin's research. So I didn't know this before, but now I do. It's fun to learn things and then start talking about them as if you've always known them. The Le Mans is an endurance race. It lasts for 24 hours.

Of driving. Holy shit. Of driving. So as opposed to NASCAR where you go around 20 times and then the first person across the line, it's not that. It's like whoever puts in the most mileage in 24 hours. Oh my God, that sounds exhausting. It's a lot.

The Monaco Grand Prix, you know, that's the one that actually goes through like the city of Monaco. I believe it's in one of the Iron Man's where you see it happening. But this race, the Le Mans is meant to be enjoyed by the masses. People, you know, show up with their bottles of wine. There's dancing. Families are there enjoying games and carnival rides and good food. There's actually even a strip show on site because the French love the human form and

their right to. So in addition to all the carnival style fun, the drivers today are some of the most famous of the era. These are guys like Sterling Moss, Juan Miguel, Afangio and Mike Hawthorne, and they're driving cutting edge cars from companies like Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Jaguar. So this race is a really big deal. It's always drawn a huge crowd. But this year in 1955, the combination of these very well known drivers and these race

cars that basically they're innovated every year so that they can race in this race and win and then be like, see, because we have this great steering, braking, fuel injection or whatever. So basically this year, the innovation is really great. The drivers are really well known and really amazing. The cars can get up to speeds that they've never gotten up to before. And there's also, of course, the lingering celebratory spirit of post World War II Europe. So it's 1955.

Basically it's like Europe is 10 years out from World War II. So it's built back, you know, like big change has happened. So all of those elements combined to make this a must see event and nearly 300,000 people come to watch this race. So one of those people is 19 year old Jacques Grilet. He's both a Frenchman and an aspiring competitive driver himself. He's attended the Le Mans race several times and he's very good at maneuvering his way through the dense crowds to get a good spot to actually see the cars as they go by to

get up close. Sharp elbows is what you need. Yes, exactly. It's like, and that's actually not as easy as it sounds because the crowd is packed in. There are about 30 to 40 people deep along the tracks, main straight away, which is where the grandstands are. And it's directly behind the finish line and it's also where the cars pull off for pit stops.

So that's like where the main action is. So Jacques and his friends can't get seats in the grandstand. So they settle on this standing area that's incredibly close to the racetrack. In fact, the only thing separating them and all the other spectators from the speeding cars as they go by is the kind of a shoddy wooden fence, a four foot mound of dirt and some bales of hay. Jacques doesn't mind. He actually loves it.

He looks out onto the track and dreams that he'll do that one day. He'll be competing in this legendary French endurance race. So Le Mans is considered one of the most grueling races in the world the last 24 hours, as I told you. So the drivers have to be incredibly strong physically and mentally to withstand an entire full day of pushing themselves and their vehicles to the absolute limit. They also have to think on their feet because they're driving ultra lightweight cars at speeds of over 150 miles an hour without seatbelts or roofs.

Oh, right. That little detail, right? The slightest mistake the driver makes could mean death, of course. And this is where Marin made a note to me saying, this is not vital to the story, but it's interesting. The winner of Le Mans is the team that travels the greatest distance over the 24 hour period. So speed is a factor, but it's not about who's the fastest. It's basically a test of the vehicle's ability to be driven at its limit for an entire day.

So it's all about those cars. And then basically the car company started doing it to be like, oh, we're Jaguar and we can beat a Mercedes and it's kind of like about that. Even knowing how dangerous a sport like that that I just described could be, no one would be able to imagine the tragic turn this day will take. Before this evening is through, the 1955 Le Mans will go down as the deadliest auto race in history. Wow.

So before we get into that, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about our friend Jacques Grillet. He's born in Normandy, France in 1936 to a family of dairy farmers. And there's a quote about him from Dallas magazine saying, quote, at five years old, he fell headfirst off a 12 foot wall. And at seven, he was thrown 30 feet by an angry cow and in both instances, he walks away without any long-term injuries, except for a twinge he'd get on his bones before a rainstorm.

I fucking bet. He was like, everybody come and bring the cows inside. But then, of course, World War II comes, the Nazis invade and occupy most of France, and he's just a toddler at the time. So like most people who survived World War II, the horrors of war leave Jacques with real emotional scars. This era of his life is chaotic and traumatic and violent. When he's eight years old, he watches as his friend who he had just been playing with

in the fields near their homes steps on a landmine and is killed, obviously killed instantly. And just two years later, when Jacques is 10, he witnesses the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Holy shit. Yep. Jacques and his family watch in awe as a wall of Allied ships move in and over 150,000 troops storm the French beaches to push back the Nazis. As the artillery fire begins, the grilles immediately flee their home, and Jacques would later say, quote, we climbed into a wagon and we didn't have to tell the horse to go.

He was flying. So they end up at a 500-year-old farmhouse, slightly more inland. But of course, the war continues to be fought all around them. This goes right along with all the movies my dad and I have been watching. Yeah, totally. So at one point, a group of Germans invade this farmhouse where the grilles are holding up and the Nazis make Jacques's grandmother cook for them. But within minutes of their arrival, British bombers begin to flood the skies.

Jacques sprints to his family's bunker to take cover, but the grilles are pushed out of the bunker by a dozen Germans who want to hide out there themselves. So the grilles family runs back into the old farmhouse, and they just stay there because they don't know what else to do. When the bombing ends, Jacques is relieved to learn that everyone in his family has survived. Every single bomb somehow misses this farmhouse, but everywhere else, there's carnage. Jacques will later say, quote, the next morning I walked through the fields and found one German with half his face blown off, and the bunker I tried to get into was totally destroyed.

So Jacques obviously is forced to grow up very fast. He has to be both courageous and daring at an early age. Before he's 10 years old, he starts delivering messages printed on microfilm for the French resistance all around Normandy. He hides them under his bike pedals, and even though he stopped and searched by Nazi officers multiple times, he's never caught. That's clever. It's awesome.

I love that. And this will hold true for the rest of Jacques's life. He is a person who endures countless close calls and somehow always manages to walk away. And this might be why once the war ends, Jacques gravitates towards the extreme sport of auto racing. In 1948, when he's 12 years old, his grandfather takes him to his very first grand pre-race, and he loses his mind. He's too young to drive, so instead he turns overnight into an avid collector of miniature

cars and racing posters. He's so into it that in his early teens, when his doctor suggests that he stops smoking, Jacques kicks the habit and then takes all that cigarette money and starts expanding his car collection, his mini-car collection, and he continues buying racing memorabilia for the rest of his life. But his passion and his dream is to be a race car driver. By 1952, he's itching to get behind the wheel, but the problem is he's only 16, and the driving age in France is 18.

So he does what any of us would do. He forges a driver's license, and he hits the road. So two years later, when he's legally able to drive, he goes all in, and the day after his 18th birthday, he competes in his very first race. Before long, he's traveling across the continent to race after race, and when he's not competing, he's going to watch the races as a spectator. And this is how 19-year-old Jacques ends up at the June 11, 1955, 24-hour of Le Mans race. So the lead up to this year's event has already been tragic.

Just a few weeks before, in May, Ferrari's top driver is killed during a race in Italy, and then just days before the event in Le Mans, the son of a Jaguar executive dies in a car accident while headed to France, and then in Le Mans, during a practice session, driver Sterling Moss loses control of his car and almost kills two reporters watching on the sidelines. They all survive, but the reporters suffer serious near-fatal injuries. And then on top of all that, some of the competitors are feeling uneasy about the circuit itself because there's a stretch along the pits that's super short and really narrow, and sources

vary on the actual width, but some reports say it's only 10 feet wide, and that's basically the width of a single lane, like a single lane on the road in America. But unlike on any given American street, this is a race with dozens of drivers all trying to outrun each other at top speed. This narrow spot is also the area where the drivers pull off if for pit stops, fueling and changing tires and stuff. So it's chaotic. The head of Mercedes racing team even reportedly tells the race's organizers, quote, I'm a

little bit scared, just imagine a driver realizes a fraction of a second too late that he's been told by a team manager to slow down. Drivers tend to break suddenly on a narrow track like this. It could have disastrous consequences, unquote. So these concerns are waved off by the race organizers who insist that the track, which has been in use since the 1920s, is safe. And it actually had been used for decades with no serious incidents, but the organizers are overlooking a crucial point.

And that's that cars have changed. When the circuit was first created, cars topped out at speeds of 60 miles an hour. Now it's 1955 and they easily surpass 150 miles an hour. And the car companies have specifically designed their vehicles to be faster, lighter and more technologically advanced. And these advancements are moving at lightning speed in this era. And often the race is their grand debut, as reported by Sports Illustrated, quote, in the decades since World War II had ended, industrial Europe had beaten its swords into

carburetors and crankshafts, and the Le Mans have become a new battlefield where national pride was challenged and tested for 24 hours each year. So like most of the crowd along this part of the race course, Jacques isn't aware of the dangerous driving conditions in front of him, like many people in the largely French crowd. He'd lost a lot during World War II, and he's there to cheer for his country as much as for the individual drivers. So there's the suave British 25-year-old driver named Mike Hawthorne, who's driving for Jaguar.

Jaguar. Jaguar. Jaguar. And he's there to specifically beat Mercedes, not only because Mercedes is the team to beat in that year's event, but also because it's a German company and Mike hasn't forgotten the friends and loved ones he's lost during the war. So this stakes are emotionally high. Conversely, Jacques could have also been rooting for Pierre Lavec, a fellow Frenchman

who was actually one of the racers on the Mercedes team. When Pierre was 18 years old, he also stood in the grandstands at his first Le Mans and dreamt of competing in the race. And he almost won Le Mans in 1952 as a solo driver, which is a huge accomplishment because drivers usually work in teams and switch off for the 24 hours. So Pierre's vehicle gave out after he'd been driving solo for 23 hours. Oh, man. Yeah.

So for him, today's race is important and emotional. He wants to cement his own legacy after that agonizing loss. And even though he's in a German car, he wants a triumphant win for France. So this race begins around four o'clock. And from the very beginning, things are exciting because many of the drivers are pushing the limits even beyond what's expected. Mike Hawthorne, who's still focused on beating Mercedes, is absolutely gunning it. Sports Illustrated describes his driving style as, quote, hard and almost brutal.

Hawthorne's decision to immediately push his Jaguar to the brink is incredibly risky. He's essentially starting this marathon by sprinting, but it's actually working. And he is setting lap record after lap record. So three hours pass, 21 more to go before the race is over. And near the grandstands, Jacques looks out into the distance and sees Hawthorne flying down the track toward the narrow straightaway directly in front of him. A few other drivers are approaching as well. And this includes Lance Macklin driving for Austin Healy and also Pierre Levec driving

for Mercedes. And what happens next unfolds in milliseconds. Hawthorne, who has almost flown past the grandstand, is now in the narrow section of the track when he realizes he's being called into the pits by his mechanics to refuel. And he can't miss a refuel, obviously. So he breaks, cuts across the lanes, and pulls his car over into his pit. And this catches Lance Macklin by surprise, who's behind him. And Macklin's car doesn't have the same braking power that's needed to avoid the hit.

He's basically forced to sharply turn off the track to miss Hawthorne's car, but he's going over 100 miles an hour. So he swerves right back onto the course, and that puts him directly in front of Pierre Levec, who's going 150 miles an hour and has no time to react. In the stands, Jacques has just asked one of his friends standing next to him if he can borrow the pair of binoculars around his neck. But before his friend can take it off his neck and hand them over, he hears a loud bang. Levec's front right wheel goes up over the back of Macklin's car and is launched into

the air. In his last living act, Levec signals to the driver behind him with a wave to warn him there's danger ahead. That driver is Juan Miguel Fangio, who would later say, quote, he was about to be killed, but he still saved my life. 49-year-old Pierre Levec is thrown from his car, hits the track, and dies instantly. And then something from a nightmare, his airborne Mercedes race car flies into the grandstands and explodes.

Oh, my God. This is my nightmare, truly, like being in the crowd and watching this happen. And being stuck in that crowd. Yeah, nightmare. Mm-hmm. Horrifying. A journalist named Benji Goodhart describes the hood of Levec's car like, quote, a terrible automotive guillotine.

Reporter Brad Spungen writes that, quote, the hood spun around like a disk through the packed group of spectators, decapitating dozens of people. Oh, my God. The Associated Press's coverage in 1955 reports that, quote, the screams of the dying were drowned by the roar of the powerful cars still racing down the straightaway. So this is happening up in the stands, and the race continues. So after hearing this loud bang, the next thing Jacques remembers is he's lying on the ground.

He doesn't know how he got there, but when he looks up, he sees that his friend is now missing his head. Oh, my God. His binoculars are still hanging around his neck. Oh, my God. Jacques says that, quote, after a few seconds, I got up and I could not see anything from my left eye. A piece of human brain covered the left lens of my glasses.

I had a piece of scalp on my neck. When I saw the blood on my hands, I began to go into shock. So this is, this is carnage, this is nightmare carnage, and with a crowd that literally is like their fun fair family day, good times, and all of a sudden in a matter of seconds, it's absolutely worst case scenario. Holy shit. I have never heard of this before. No, absolutely not.

And yeah, I would never go to a race like this. And the same reason I would never skydive. It's like, why risk anything? You know? Yeah. But I've never heard the story before. I know. Bradford, who works in our legal department, exactly, right?

My old friend, he's gone to NASCAR. He really likes NASCAR. And he says, it's so loud and you, the pieces of rubber hit your face when you're up in the stands. Like they're cars that are going up, going, you know, 150, 180 miles an hour, probably faster actually. Holy shit. I don't know anything about NASCAR, sorry everybody.

So this horrifying crash is unprecedented in the history of auto racing. 120 people are injured and 84 are killed, including, yeah, including Pierre Levec. And just feet away in the pits, Levec's American teammate, John Fitch, is standing there next to Levec's wife as they basically watch him be killed. Fitch is one of the many people who immediately lobby for the race to be called off, but the race's organizers refuse. No. They won't call off the race.

Nope. They won't fucking call off the race. No. Bad call. A car went into the stands. Like what are you doing? Like no one's paying attention to the fucking race anymore. Like what the fuck?

I will say the logic of that decision, but they also don't immediately spread word about the crash. So as a result, many of the thousands of people set up elsewhere along the track have no idea this has happened. Organizers argue that spreading the news will make people panic, rush to the area, and clog traffic so badly that ambulances won't be able to reach the victims. But many people pointed out that the race could have been canceled in the overnight hours when the crowds were at their thinnest.

Even though the organizers won't budge, Fitch goes straight to the Mercedes team leaders and tells them to withdraw on principle. At the very least, he argues this is a PR nightmare. Just 10 years after the war, a German company's piece of machinery is responsible for the gruesome deaths of dozens of men, women, and children on French soil. Good point. Mercedes agrees. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank God. Mercedes agrees and withdraws their teams from the competition. And even though their cars are the undisputed best in show, they don't compete in another 24-hour race at Le Mans for over 30 years. Wow. So back in the grandstands, Jacques is obviously in complete shock, literal medical shock. He wipes blood off his glasses, and then he notices that his shirt is drenched with other

people's blood, so he just takes it off and leaves it on the ground. His friends are dead, he is dazed, he has no idea how he avoided the same fate. He just begins to wander away from the grandstand area, and as he does, he passes dozens of corpses. And Jacques would later say, quote, I could not speak, it took me three hours to get my voice. Oh my God. So he finds his way to some phone booths, and he wants to call his family to let them

know he's alive before they hear anything about this tragedy. But all the phones are being used by all of the countless other survivors that are trying to do the exact same thing. So eventually Jacques just decides he's going to walk home. When he finally walks through the door, his family is absolutely shocked to see him alive. His grandfather screams, you're not dead. And then Jacques looks to see that on the kitchen table, his mother had already set out a candle, a crucifix, and a picture of him as a memorial.

So it turns out what happened was another friend who was at the race knew he was at the race and saw his bloody shirt on the ground and connected it to Jacques and called the family and said he's dead. The 1955 Le Mans disaster has been called the accident that changed everything. Several countries in Europe, including France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland immediately banned motor sports until safety improvements can be made. Switzerland holds out the longest and they don't lift their ban until 2022. Whoa.

I like Switzerland. I like their style. Let's move there. They're very like, they're very like, we're going to do our thing. Yeah. Let's move there. Let's get a chalet in Switzerland. Wouldn't that be nice?

Just be neutral. Yeah. So across the entire sport and into classes like Formula One, NASCAR, and IndyCar, there's a newfound focus on safety and the organizers at Le Mans concede that the historic track is no longer equipped to safely host newer, faster cars and the course is redesigned. Many drivers retire as a direct result of this event, including American driver John Fitch, but it never leaves his mind so much so that John Fitch goes on to invent something called the Fitch Barrier, which are those sand-filled barrels placed along roadsides

that act as a crash cushion. No way. That's what John Fitch took that tragedy and he actually took some action, which is kind of amazing. Yeah. Have you ever seen like on the freeway, sometimes on the freeway, they have water in them. So it just stops your car and it's like a buffer, but. Right.

Instead of driving into a wall, he drive into those barriers. Yeah. Wow. Thank you, John Fitch. Yeah. In the days and weeks following this disaster, people look for someone to blame. Of course, that's like part of the grief is who is the scapegoat. And of course, it turns out to be Mike Hawthorne.

He is later cleared of wrongdoing by investigators. On his fault, the track sucked, right? Right. And was completely inappropriate for what they were doing on it. It's not his fault at all. Oh, what a bummer for him. So even though he's cleared of wrongdoing, it is of little solace, he's haunted for the rest of his life.

And here's the kind of most horrifying part to me. I mean, there's not most. Why pick one? There's so many horrible parts, but he was forced to keep driving lap after lap for hours while the wreckage burned. No. So he was, yeah, he was just driving by it because he had to keep on racing. Oh, they made him keep racing, guys.

Well, they just didn't call the race. Yeah. And so he ends up winning for Team Jaguar. And then they take a picture of him because, of course, there's the victory champagne moment. And he sipped the champagne. That's when they took the picture and French newspapers ran that photo with the sarcastic caption, quote, to your health, Mr. Hawthorne, which is horrifying. And very sadly and ironically, in 1959, just four years later, Mike Hawthorne is killed

driving on a civilian road in his own Jaguar while trying to pass a Mercedes. What? And he was only 29. Oh, yeah. So just a baby, like all of that happening. Yeah. Horrifying. For Jacques Grillet, the disaster at Le Mans is only the beginning.

Later when he's asked about his unbelievable survival, he simply says, quote, it was a close call, but it was not time for me. So he goes on to a promising racing career. He competes in top tier events across Europe, but as charmed as his life seems to be, he's not immune to injuries. In fact, he gets hurt a lot. He suffers countless broken bones, a skull fracture, cracked vertebrae. He even spends a few long stretches in the hospital.

And after each injury, quote, doctors shook their heads in disbelief, then patched Grillet up and sent him on his way. And then in 1959, when he's 23 years old, Jacques Grillet achieves his lifelong dream. He returns to Le Mans as a competitor. But his car gives out during the 1959 race. He gets to go back again in 1961 and that race he finishes. Not long after that, in kind of a weird twist, Jacques decides that he wants to move to the United States.

And so he ends up in Macon, Georgia, where he works at a board and dairy plant. Yeah. So he continues racing and participating in regional races. And he also continues adding to his impressive collection of racing memorabilia. Before long, he's speaking English with a Southern accent. Then he decides to head to Chicago, where he lands a job waiting tables. A Chicago Tribune journalist named Kay Loring happens to be seated in his section. And she becomes so charmed by Jacques that she spontaneously writes an adoring article

about him that's entitled, His Heart Belongs to a Sports Car for the Chicago Tribune. It's so funny. It reads, quote, being a waiter is not his profession. He tells you. And that's too bad for many of us. He's such a good one, so pleasant and so unobtrusively attentive with an infectious kind of jaude de vivre that makes good food taste better. So Jacques just basically is like, I'm just going to go do what I want, wherever I want,

which is kind of awesome. I really love it. So then in the early 70s, he moves down to Dallas, Texas to take a job with a wine company. And there he announces his retirement from racing at just 34 years old. So I would imagine that all of that trauma and horror show, he was just kind of like, all right, I'm just going to kind of do what I want. Just go where the wind takes me, basically. He would later tell a journalist that, quote, when you race for a team and you burn an engine,

it's not so bad. But when the engine is your own, it can get very expensive. I spent so much in the 1970 that I decided to quit, end quote. But like so many of the greats, his retirement doesn't stick. A few years later, after restoring a vintage race car, he gets sucked right back in. Then he drops out of the wine business and makes a steady career of selling the rare miniature cars and posters he began to accumulate as a child. And his collection is believed to be one of the most unique of its kind.

So then fast forward a couple of decades, in 2007, he's 71 years old. And Jacques takes part in an endurance race that goes from Paris to Beijing. And after 43 days, he has to drop out because he fractures his foot during the drive. During his long trip home to Dallas, he gets a horrible pain in his stomach. He's rushed to the hospital. There doctors perform an emergency appendectomy. Jacques told that if he had been delayed even two hours, his appendix would have burst and he could have died.

So when he finally makes it back to Texas, he's 20 pounds lighter before he left for his race in Europe. But Jacques has no regrets. When he's asked about his trip, he says, quote, I saw things I could not have imagined. It was absolutely beautiful. Two years later, he races in another endurance drive from Beijing to Bombay, which includes stops on roads that are near Mount Everest that reach 16,000 feet in elevation. In 2011, he's 75 years old.

And he goes on another long distance drive from Lima, Peru to Buenos Aires, Argentina. And then 2014, Jacques Grilet dies at home in Texas due to natural causes. He's 78 years old. So a Dallas magazine in 1985 writes that, quote, as a boy growing up in France during World War II, he came too close to the bombings. As a European race car driver, he endured too many accidents. As a spectator during the worst racing accident in history, he survived against too many odds to walk away unscared.

Yet, he did, end quote, Jacques himself could never explain his good fortune. He once said, quote, I've had some very close calls, but I believe there's a good star shining above me. And that is the story of Jacques Grilet, the survivor of the 1955 Le Mans race disaster. Wow. Yeah, I would have never heard that before. Fucking the most nuts. The story itself, we were just like, Marin is like, have you ever heard of this Le Mans

race disaster? And I'm like, no, it sounds, I mean, sounds good. And then she's like, oh my God, wait, there's a whole other, there's a story within the story. Oh, that's fascinating. So crazy. What a crazy world. Yeah, I've never, I've never been interested in racing before to like care, you know.

Neither. At all. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Great job. Great.

Thank you. You too. Great story. Thank you. We did it. We really did. And you did it by listening to us do it. Yeah.

So congratulations listener. Congratulations. Thank you, appreciate you. Let's get some pockets in the fucking inside of our clothes, please. Someone, someone do something about inside pockets and until you do stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie? 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 Marin McClasham and Sarah Blair Jenkins. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.

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