My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 387 - Cocaine Shark

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

On today’s episode, Georgia covers the death of actor George Reeves and Karen tells the story of Glacier National Park’s “Night of The Grizzlies.”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 exactly right. I'm Candace DeLong and on my new podcast, Killer Psychie Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the cold-butted killers you read about in the news. Listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. [♪ Music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hard Star. That's Karen Kylgareff.

Did you get the slurp? Did you go with my sip of water right before your line? Was it loud enough? Or should I do it again with a louder slurp of water? You know, AMDR. Or what is it called? EMDR? No, that's electronic dance music.

ASMR! ASMR! You know, what if you it called? EMDR? No, that's electronic dance music. ASMR. ASMR. You know, what if you just were changing the topic? You know, the Electric Daisy Festival, where I love to do all my speakers, rake dancing. I went to that in like 1996. Just give us a couple of the pictures

that you've captured in your mind and tell us about it. I don't remember which one it was because it's been so long, but I definitely had vinyl pants on. I probably had crimped hair, tons of body glitter, but like everyone had body glitter on in the 90s, so it wasn't like that big of a deal.

Right, that is to go to Gelsons, you would do that. Totally, and like, you know, rave jewelry, that was little Georgia. I mean, speak with you. What a time, what a time to be alive. Did you, did you also wear white eyeliner? Yeah, that definitely happened. That was a thing. Because, and I think this is the Gen X Millennial distinction, is we run a marketing meeting and everyone was talking about when they used to wear white eyeliner. And I was like, how do I really hate this feeling of not knowing what people are talking about?

And then Aaron actually showed a picture of that era. Wow. And it was, I was completely out of that, like, didn't even know what happened. Yeah. That and then the like bright pink glittery wet and wild lip gloss was my absolute, like, that's all I wore, like that was my thing, always.

Did they go together? Yeah, I mean, yeah. I don't know. I was like, I'm not sure. Speaking of being high, let's get right into it. Have you heard that there is a cocaine shark and sharks going on? Well, I have, and the only reason I have

is because our audience knows the news we want to know. That's right. And immediately retweets and forwards us all of that kind of information. That's fucking right. And we appreciate it. The Guardian says experts say cocaine sharks may be feasting on drugs dumped off of Florida.

Of course. Of course, Florida. Yeah. Wait, maybe should we put together a theory, a very fact-based theory right now that that's the only issue that sharks actually have. And if it wasn't for the drugs, they'd be chill. What if that's the only issue that Florida has

and if it weren't for the drugs? Everything's chill, too. They would all go back to normal and stop becoming a fascist. That would be, I mean, yeah, it's actually just like, it's just like jaws. It's just the movie jaws, but if you can catch a cocaine shark, it solves the country's problems. Oh my God.

We all come together and hand over rehabbing those sharks. Are you just trying to be, being here for sharks instead of for ourselves for once. Can we please get those sharks some fucking compassion? Our message, we've always sent. This is what this podcast has always been about. Right. Acting like we were never a marine biology slash drug rehab based podcast because we have been since day one.

Yeah, and you know that. And that's why you send us these stories. Did you ever see, and this is a TikTok thing because I don't know how recent it is, but there's a video on TikTok of a woman who studies whales and she's in the water, swimming next to this blue whale, and it's really amazing. And then they look over and here comes a great white shark.

Oh my God. And she knows she can't swim away. Yeah. Because then it'll just chase her. And so she's kind of near the whale. And the whale is doing this thing where it is swimming, blocking the shark so she can get back to the boat. But at one point she swims out and she just basically stands her ground and pushes the shark away by the nose. Like it's a badly behaved dog. Like those things as they swim at you, it's all those teeth. That's all you can see is those teeth. Oh my god. It's it's pretty great. They have bad breath sharks. You know what I mean?

No, because it's like a constant saline solution rinse that they're doing across their teeth. That's true. Every episode now, I'm going to verbally describe a TikTok, the worst way to experience a TikTok would just someone retelling you. But it's the only way I could experience it. I don't have TikTok anymore.

I like, I had it for like a month and then I just recently went back on and it's like, you don't have an account anymore. We deleted it, fuck you. So, which is good. I like I had it for like a month and then I just recently went back on and it's like you don't have an account anymore. Like we deleted it. Fuck you. So which is good. I'm glad I don't need it. I don't want it. But they they're just like, okay, if you're not going to be here with us every day day and night, then you don't get it. Oh, you're not a team player, then you don't get to fucking play on this team. Well, then you don't get to watch ring videos of people falling down in their own icy driveway. Sorry. I ate those.

I ate those. Oh my God. There was one today. And the funniest look, I couldn't handle living in anywhere near ice. No, just absolutely not prepared. It makes me laugh really hard though, because you know these people have been living

like with icy driveways their whole lives, but they still is like a girl walking, this is a ring video, walking out, and the second she steps, she starts the forward, her feet are going forward in front of her, and she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's sort of like sound with them on them. Like on them, can you hear them?

Normally, no, but this one may not have been a ring, because you could hear the noises she was making before she hit the ground, and it was just absolute chef's kiss perfection. Really good. It's like you're weaponizing your security camera, you know what I mean? I mean, also, and I think we've talked about this, we're all always on camera now for real. I don't like it, but yes.

Ring a doorbell, they have you. I was actually thinking about that, walking my dogs in neighborhood, because it makes me so mad that people don't pick up their dog shit. And it happens a lot on my street. And I just thought, the next time anybody, there's a neighbor email, I'm gonna be like,

by the way, can we start collecting up all the ring-cam footage of people just letting their dogs free-range shit on the sidewalk. It's kind of a bummer. It's insane. That's insane. It's even somehow more insulting when they put it in a bag, a poop bag, and then leave the poop bag there.

Did you ever see that? People do that? Yes, and my neighbor, people fucking do that. Or it's like, there's one more step, dude. No, I have not seen that. Have you been watching anything you like lately? I have a podcast, if you can believe it. I'm watching a ton of stuff. A huge crime one.

I love that one. I have a podcast, and I tell you about my podcast. No, I found a podcast recently because I started following this guy on Instagram who was like makes his hilarious midwestern mom videos. And his name is Zachariah Porter. And he and his friend, John, Jonathan Carson, have a podcast called Camp Counselors. It's basically them, like, just talking and telling you funny things, like, they did, like,

like, recently a beach day rundown of, like, must-haves. And then they're just hilarious. You really feel like you're hanging out with your camp counselors that are like way cooler and you wanna be buds with them. I love it. And are they, is it like a long sketch? Like they're pretending like,

hey, we're about to go to the canteen, but before we go. Yeah, and I'd be like canteen quarter and then they'll just talk about what snacks they're actually eating right now. Sort of thing. Oh, I made that up, but yes, exactly. Got it. It's camp themed. It's that up, but yes, exactly. Got it.

It's camp themed. It's camp themed. Like camp counselor themed. Yeah. That's hilarious. It's really, and they're just so both so funny and tell great stories. And so yeah, camp counselors highly recommend

between like true crime documentaries and podcasts. Get yourself a little humor. Get yourself a little light and light and airy. What have you got? I tried to find, remember that old guy from Australia that had the interesting mysteries podcast? And he met him. Yes.

It's not on anymore. And I couldn't remember the name. So I was in the search thing forever. And I can't tell you how many things are named paranormal unexplained or mystery. Like there's so many. And then eventually I just found a red thread that said there was a lovely old guy in Australia that used to read article and I was like, yes, it's the one. And it was, it was like, mystery is abound. Mysteries abound, that's it. I can hear him saying it in this world. Mysteries abound.

Mysteries abound. They found a small statue in the desert. That's the one that got me where I was like, oh, you're gonna read us National Geographic articles. Like hell, yes. You don't need to have like a fucking MPR podcast. You could just fucking read other people's articles as long as you give the sources and give them credit.

Just read a fucking mystery article. Yes, everyone needs a little, yeah, everyone needs a little like, let me disseminate this for you. Let me shorten this for you just in this moment on this podcast. I mean, that concept built this podcast. God bless, I survived.

Truly. Are you watching, speaking of Shrew Crime? Are you watching the HBO documentary Last Call? And it's made by a friend of the podcast, Liz Garbus, who's so talented. No, I haven't heard of it. It's Last Call when a serial killer stalked queer New York.

And it is, I didn't know the story. It's from the early 90s. And it talks a lot about homophobia in New York at the time and all over the fucking country. And there's a serial killer praying on gay men in New York City, like infiltrating the club scene and the night like the gay bar scene and serial killing and like dismembering and stuff.

It's wild. I read that book because we were sent that book and I recommended that book, but it was probably two years ago. Yeah. So long ago. So as you were just describing it, I was like, yes, that sounds familiar. That's called last call.

Great. Oh, that's, I'm in it. I'd love to watch that. And you don't have to read. Yay. My family came to town. So I wasn't really doing anything. But then one night we watched a movie called Polite Society.

That's really, it's a British movie, and it's featuring like a British teenage girl whose family is... Is it like the superhero kind of one? Yes. Oh my God, isn't the best. Yeah, it's great. It's like she wants to be a stunt woman and it's made like a karate or stunt movie or something like that.

Like she did so good. It's such a great compelling way to make a movie about girls who are just like going through it in high school. It's really good. I did not love it. She did. And then of course, I fell asleep. What I realized is when there's people at my house,

I will fall asleep because it's almost like, I'm like a weird, feral animal where it's like, oh, they're here now. So I can go to sleep. Yeah, like you can, you can like, you're off the clock, you're off like duty of like making sure nothing bad happens. Someone else has it.

Yeah, they'll turn the lights out. And so then I just like 30 minutes into anything. I'm like, so the next morning I was like, hey, how the end of that movie goes. And she just like rolls her eyes at me. It was so funny. Did you go see Barbie? No, I can't wait to see Barbie.

Oh, okay. I didn't see, I didn't do anything because it's that thing of like having family at your house. Oh, right. I needed a recharge from just simply talking to other people for several days in a row. Did you? Yeah, it was good. several days in a row. Did you? Yeah, it was good.

I liked it a lot. It was fun. It was fun watching in the theater because everyone was laughing a lot, you know, and I never do that, but I enjoyed it a lot. The, oh, that's right. You know, like movies, the way people got into it dressed up, there was a, of course, a TikTok. I saw where women walking into the movie, as people were walking out,

they kept saying, hi, Barbie, to anybody, anybody that was wearing pink and leaving the theater. And it was like, women, dudes, it was anybody that passed by high Barbie and they'd go, like, hi, Barbie, and it was the funniest, cutest. Just I think people need something positive to focus on and be together in. And it has a positive message. So that's like, we need that. It's fucking great. It's not just like fucking mindless, like pretty drivel.

It's actually really well acted. It's got really great storylines and I like to have a lot. Yeah. And the outfits are great. I wore a pink dress to it, of course, with strawberries on it. Did you do that? Of course I did. You would. Those girls would have said high barbie to you if they saw you walk in.

The Americana is full of a bunch of fucking fashus. So I guess it doesn't happen in Glendale, California. Down here, people, everyone's pretending to be too cool to say high barbie. Yeah. You're going to have to get that somewhere else in a different town. All right. Fine. But I love that. Should we do exactly right corner and then get to our stories? Sure. All right. We have a podcast network called exactly right. And here are some updates from it. Okay. This is breaking news. Not only is the hilarious comedy podcast adulting with Michelle Boutot and Jordan. Carlos back from their summer break.

But adulting is now a weekly show. You can listen every single Wednesday, which is great. And then on this week's episode of our newest show, Ghosted by Roz Hernandez, Roz is joined by none other than Lacey Mosley. And she's the incredible host of the awesome podcast scam goddess. So like, I feel like Roz Hernandez and Lacey Mosley together is like a power power team, you know. That really is.

And I'm sure everyone's listeners scam goddess, but if you haven't, that is like one of the best scam podcasts there is out there. Definitely. Also in infectious disease news, um, um, on this podcast, they'll kill you. Aaron and Aaron are going over to Larimia, which is also known as what rabbit fever? Which typically infects humans through tick and deer fly bites. Can we get rid of ticks? Let's save the sharks and let's fucking get rid of ticks.

They are the biggest dicks. Here come the emails. What you don't know is ticks. Hey, and lastly, you're invited to head over to the My Favorite Murder Store, which is at MyFavoriter.com, and you can check out a collection of enamel pins for this and other exactly right podcasts. Everyone loves enamel pins. Get them for your leather jacket.

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Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Are you first this week, right? Okay, yeah. I mean, no, what? I mean, you are as a fact. Oh, not, not like, you're not offering it. Not like you go. That's not how we do it.

No. All right. Well, today I'm going to tell you about a mysterious death of an actor. It's TV's first Superman, George Reeves. Ooh. Mm-hmm. You know what I'm telling. About the swelling?

Well, I kind of knew about it a little bit because it's one of those ones where if you ever look up like creepy Hollywood blank, it'll always come up. But then there was that there's a Ben Affleck movie. Hollywood Land. That's right. Yeah. It's Ben Affleck who plays George Reeves.

It's a good movie, 2006. Is it? Yeah, I liked it. I feel like I've found it midway through on regular TV. And, you know, oh yeah, for sure. I've never done the comprehensive title to title viewing. Well, I'm gonna do it for you today. It's also in an episode of Unself Mysteries

from 1995, so you can check that out as well. You know, tour to force, Ben Affleck's not in that one, though, unfortunately. They should have got him for it. Definitely. That was a mistake. So my main source is that Unself Mysteries episode and a 2006 article from the LA Times by Robert Welko's called Who Killed TV Superman and the other sources are in our show notes. All right, so let me tell you about George Reeves in his background. Okay. He's born George Keifer Brewer, because actors don't have the real names as they're acting names, you know. It's a chance to change and be new.

Yeah. He's born in January of 1914 in Woolstock, Iowa, and his parents separate shortly after he's born. And his mom moved to beautiful Pasadena, California. What's up? Nice. His mother remarries a man named Frank Joseph Bessolo and Frank adopts George. And I guess George is really little because he's brought up to believe that this dude, this new stuck-dad dude is his actual biological father. So he takes his name, George Kiefer Bessolo, and then

the mom Helen and her husband Frank divorced when George is a teenager. And it was while George was at a town visiting relatives. They just fucking divorced. And when he gets back from visiting, instead of telling him the truth, George's mother tells him that Frank, who he thinks his father, died by suicide rather than telling him that he, they just divorced, like somehow that's better. Sorry. Is this, what years is like the 20s or the 30s? Probably.

It looks like the 20s, yeah. I mean, people had bad ideas back then. They all went unchecked. And the way anybody ever handled anything was the worst. It seems. Truly. And it's like, it says later that she did it because she was doding and overprotective.

Like, divorce is somehow worse than he's just not alive anymore. I mean, it's one way to interpret it, but I would say that that's being incredibly self-centered just not a lie anymore. I mean, it's one way to interpret it, but I would say that that's being incredibly self-centered to not care the effect. Right. It would have to not only lie that your adopted father is your real father,

but then say, now he's dead. Totally. That seems like taking his own life. Yeah, it does. Yes, yeah. It's nightmare. Okay. So one time, George is going through some picture,

it finds a picture at his home of a good-looking guy, big dude, and asked his mom who that was, and she offhandedly said, oh, that's your father. And then stopped dead, because she realized what she had just fucking said. It was like, not the dad. And he said, quote, I thought I was Italian, little George Bessolo, who talked Italian and Spanish

with the other Bessolos and ate spaghetti and all of the rest of it. And then I found out that I was Irish, all Irish. Sorry, it's called 23 May. Check it out. That's the old version of 23 May, where like someone comes and takes your plate of spaghetti away and then puts a just big bottle of whiskey in front of you and says get to drink in junior. Boyled cabbage is what you eat now. No food tastes good after this.

So as a teenager, George likes to sing and act. He also likes boxing, but he gives that up because his mom is overprotective and is like quit. And so he focuses on acting and he performs at the Pasadena Playhouse for about five years and is discovered there by a casting director. This leads to him signing a contract with Warner Brothers and this is when Hollywood is still operating under those studio systems where like you get hired by a studio. And you're contracted to a specific amount of, you know, movies or whatever. So his film career gets off to a great start.

One of his very first roles is in 1939, when he is on a little picture called Gone with the Wind. What? Yeah. Was he, can I guess? Yes. Was he one of the party goers at the very beginning opening scene party?

I think so. There's twin redheads trying to woo her. I think I knew that. Sorry, I think I tried to get credit for knowing it. I think I knew that already. But I didn't tried to get credit for knowing it. I think I knew that already But I didn't know that and does he play twins with another actor? I think so. They didn't have No, no Well, I don't know here because what I need to learn to say I don't know for sure

But I'm pretty sure that they didn't have that technology back then and it was him and another guy. Yeah, okay. That's my guess. That's a pretty big fucking deal, right? Yes. At this point, George is 25 and the studio is like betting on him and they want to change his name. So they change it from George Bessolo to George Reeves Classic. And there's some alley my researcher said said other name changes of this era include Kerry Grant, who was born archibald leech classic. Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Persky. Just cute. And that is cute. So in 1940, George Mary's of women named Elinora needles,

which is the most punk name I've ever heard of my life. That is pretty badass. She's a fellow actor from the Pasadena Playhouse. And after Gone With The Wind, he works steadily, but doesn't really break through until 1943, when he's about 29, and he lands a starring role in the World War II film, So Proudly We Hail. The film is a success, and it might have launched George's career, but it also inspires him to enlist. Hmm.

Just like no bullshit. So around 30 years old, Georgia enlists under his real name instead of a stage name in order to avoid special treatment, but they find out that he's an actor and he winds up getting special duty assignments in the entertainment core, where he performs for the troops. So what if you're like, I want to go fight the good fight and they're like, get on stage and tap dance, you know? That's kind of embarrassing. That's like, especially because he's a big guy. So I'm sure he was like, yeah, this is,

I'll, you know, I'll pull my weight, I'll get in there and do my duty like everybody else in this country seems to be doing. And then they're like, the entertainment core. But then you imagine that the amount of actual, like just, you know, everyday soldiers who're like, the entertainment core. But then you imagine the amount of actual, like just, you know, everyday soldiers who were like, I would kill for that fucking position and how dare you like shit on it, you know.

Yeah, that's, I wonder if they were like, pull from the studios where like we've invested in this guy. So let's get him in the entertainment core, please. Right. And the loop with some cash in it. That's, that's a good point. So George gets back from the war and his career has lost momentum.

He's not booking as many roles. And the director of the movie he had been in the show proudly. We hail, had promised to make Georgia star, but he dies while George is overseas. So like, that's your ticket and that sucks. Yeah. He takes roles in a series of beef movies and struggles to pay the bills,

which I feel like is so many actors, actual stories here in LA. Especially now that there's a horrible strike, which did you hear that who was it? The rock, like the rock made this gigantic donation to the SAG strike fund. Oh my God. So basically people don't have to worry

about losing everything in the first six months type of things Like that now there's actual benefits set up for sag actors who might need support while they go through that I mean just like stuff like that that's happening amazing people are supporting each other is really beautiful support unions everyone Yeah, so then because it's just doing b-movies struggling to pay the bills he finds a day job And because he's just doing b-movies, struggling to pay the bills, he finds a day job digging cesspools. Oh, do you want to know what a cesspool is exactly? Sure.

It's an underground holding tank for sewage, a precursor to a modern septic tank. Oh, man. So it's not glamorous. I mean, that's truly humbling. It's like, it's me, the star of so proudly we hail. And they're like, pick up that shovel right over there. Right. But the thing is, he's making $100 a whole,

which in today's dollars would be, you want to guess? $5,000 a whole? No. No. To $1,500 a whole. 1,1282. Nope. 1,282. Okay. That's a ton of money per whole. A lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Okay. And I guess it's like a whole takes like two days. So that's, that's fucking. That's great. Yeah. Ain't no shame in the paycheck as Marty likes to say. In 1951, when George is 37, he's cast as Superman in the movie Superman and the Mollemen. And then he's cast in the same role in the TV series, The Adventures of Superman, which to us is like a huge fucking deal, right? Like you got cast as Superman, like the biggest hero in fucking comic book history, and it's starring TV role, right? But it wasn't as big of a deal back then

because it's 1952 and TV is only just become common in American households. So TV's not a big deal. It's like next to movies, it's kind of looked down upon. So it's actually not that big of a deal. Right. It's less prestigious, I guess it is. Yeah, and it doesn't pay nearly as well either.

The hours are long, the work is grueling, and the pay isn't great, but George feels proud of the show as a quality product for children and he wants to be a good role model. So he even stops smoking in public because he doesn't want kids to think that Superman smokes cigarettes. Oh, I know, which probably was real hard back then because everyone was like a pack of day. Literally like you're in the doctor's office and the doctor's like, would you like a cigarette as I tell you your diagnosis?

It's just like it never stopped. No, so he did that and he says in one interview, in Superman we're all concerned with giving kids the right kind of show, we don't want to go for too much violence. And then he adds quote, we even try in our scripts to give gentle messages of tolerance and distress that a man's color and race and religious beliefs should be respected. Wow. But as time goes on, though, George becomes dissolution with the role. In a 1956 interview, he says quote,

the only rub and plank Superman is that I have a tough time finding other roles. Most movie producers feel I'm too closely identified with Superman so they won't use me. So, typecast. Taylor's old as time. So, he's unable to get other work, but he needs to find ways to make more money when the show isn't shooting. So, he appears in advertisements as Superman. He books wrestling events as Superman. Oh. Yeah. And he also does promotional appearances like early versions of conventions, yeah. And he also does promotional appearances like early versions of conventions, essentially. So Georgian is first punk rock wife, Eleanor and Needles. They divorce in 1950, 10 years after their marriage and right before George starts playing Superman. And George starts

dating a woman named Tony Manix, who is eight years older than him and used to perform in the Zigg Field Follies. The thing is Tony's married, her husband is MGM Vice President Eddie Mannex, and you might remember him from the movie Hail Caesar. Yes. The movie is a fictionalized version of his life and career as MGM's fixer. Oh, Josh Brolin's part? Yes, I'm saying that, and I think so. Yeah. Got it. Yes, no, you're right., and I think so. Yeah. Got it.

Yes, no, you're right. We're all right together. Yes. I love Hale Cesar, that's why I answered so fast. I love that movie, and I love the concept of it where it's like, this is, of course, it's the Cohen Brothers version. Yeah. Yeah, it's so, like, those are the people that made Holly would go.

Totally. The behind-the-scenes. George Clooney is the guy that gets kidnapped by the Bolsheviks, the Red River. I've got to watch that again since so long. So this dude, his husband of his new girlfriend, it's his job to do things like bail actors out of jail, pay off the victims of their drunk driving accidents, cover up sexual assaults, and arrange illegal abortions for actresses who were under contract. So he's like in the underground scene.

And when Eddie needs to bring actors in line and can't do it himself, he reportedly has mob contacts from his childhood in New Jersey who act as his enforcers. Yeah, all of Hollywood is the mob really, definitely. I mean, not anymore, but back then, that's really how it was. So hearing all this, you're like, George, why are you sleeping with this man's wife?

Don't fucking do that. It's dangerous. But actually, Eddie and Tony have an open marriage and Eddie encourages the affair because he has a mistress of his own. And he wants his wife to be happy and entertained. And the two couples actually go on double dates together. It's sexy. And then so Tony, she helps subsidize and entertained, and the two couples actually go on double dates together. Sexy.

And then so Tony, she helps subsidize George's comparatively low income. She buys him a car and a house in Benedict Canyon, which of course we know is a nice LA neighborhood. Very fancy. And she also helps pay some of his bills, so she's fucking doing it. She's a great girlfriend to him. Yeah. So in late 1958, George breaks up with Tony,

though, hold it, in order to pursue a relationship with another woman named Leonora Lemmon. So Leonora is the ex-wife of a penniless Vanderbilt relative, which is such a bummer, and has a reputation for getting into fights in the New York club scene. Leonora is also much younger than Tony was, and Tony is devastated by George breaking up with her. George and Leonora get engaged shortly after a meeting which causes Tony to spiral even further and she harasses the couple, sometimes calling them 20 times a day.

Okay, but she's still married, right? Yeah, but that was her boyfriend, boyfriend. Give a you can't, I don't think you get to lay that right? Yeah, but that was her boyfriend boyfriend. Give it you can't. I don't think you get to lay that claim. Yeah, it's complicated. It's definitely complicated. That's why the button up, it's complicated. Wait, is this Eleanor Needles side?

Maybe, maybe. Yeah. I'm on Leonora Lemon's side because that's Liz Lemon's grandmother. Oh, amazing. Is that true? That's her name? No, I'm joking. Goodbye.

It's just a name. I thought you knew so much about 30 Rocks that you were like in the TV show, 30 Rock. Liz Lemon's grandmother is named Leonora. I'm impressed. No. So she's harassing the couple and shit and like really devastated and upset about all of this. And then her husband's upset because his wife's upset,

you know, they're both upset. And it's not. OK, also just think about back then. No answer machines. Yeah. No anything. The high pitched fucking rattle the telephone ring. You call 20 times a day that phone's ringing 50 times minimum.

No. No. It's just ringing. Take the phone off the hook. I'm plug it. No, thanks. You just have to leave your house. So on the night of June 16th, 1959, George at this point is 45 years old.

He and Leonore are entertaining a writer named Robert Condon, who's staying over in their downstairs bedroom around midnight George Excusees himself and goes upstairs to bed and while he's up there two neighbors come over Which is it's like one o'clock in the morning and two neighbors stop by which to me is fucking bananas and like It's especially like he's 45 like what is he doing up so late and shit like but that's crazy I guess it's kind of a party atmosphere at his house. So that's kind of pretty normal. I feel like in the 50s and 60s,

it was like late night drink all night, key party hangouts, right? Yeah. So it's not odd for them to have drop-by. Sounds like it. On this particular evening though, George is not stoked, but the late night visit. And so he goes downstairs and is bathrobe and gets into an argument with the dude who stopped by William. And in the end,

though, both men apologized, George goes back up to his room and the guests stick around. Robert Condon, the house guest, later tells police that George seemed to spawned in that evening, but didn't seem like he was about to kill himself. Dun, dun, dun. Of course, we now know that people can outwardly appear fine and actually be suffering inside. That's just life. Yeah. According to Leonore's own retelling of the events to police,

when George goes upstairs, she says to one of the guests, quote, in a moment, you will hear a gun. And then the group hears George open a drawer upstairs, and then she says, quote, now you will hear a shot. And then the group hears George open a drawer upstairs. And then she says, quote, now you will hear a shot. And then the group hears a gunshot. What? Yep. So Leonore herself tells police that she said this,

but by the group's account, William the neighbor, then goes upstairs and they find George's body on the bed, dead. Leonore tells police that she was kidding with her commentary and didn't really believe that George was gonna take his own life. Andore tells police that she was kidding with her commentary and didn't really believe that George was gonna take his own life. And later she says that she didn't

actually make those comments at all. So it's real weird. I mean, the odds of the coincidence of narrating your boyfriend's suicide is just crazy. I mean, it is. But they were probably really shit-faced too at the time. I mean, they're drinking like straight fucking martinis and whiskey probably at that time, right? Yeah. And

so it seems unlikely they're all shit faced, but then like, why would you say that at all? Totally later tonight, I'm never saying that, right? Which then makes me go, they definitely said it. Yeah. So for decades, many of George's close friends and colleagues fiercely maintained that George did not and would not have killed himself. They point to several details in George's death that don't line up with suicide. First and foremost, 45 minutes alapsed between when the gun goes off and when Leonor calls the police. Everyone is very drunk, but this is still a very long time. Yeah. George is killed by a gunshot wound to the head. That bullet creates a hole in the ceiling above George, but police find

two additional bullet holes in the floor under the rug. Leonore tells police that she made one of those holes days earlier when she was quote, fooling around with the gun. The other hole goes unexplained completely. Huh. What does that mean fooling around with the gun? Like fooling around and then discharging a gun, which would be like a whole thing because if they're living in an apartment, is there a house?

Oh, it's a house. Like the Benedict Canyon house, yeah. Oh, a house, right, right. Oh, sorry. For some reason, I'm, for some reason I pictured pictured in those real, like, forties looking apartments Yeah.

In that are like central Hollywood that I have like almost the stucco, you know, fancy outside where it's like, well, then they would shoot a downstairs neighbor. Like I just built a whole thing that doesn't exist. But yeah, 45 minutes between, imagine if a gun went off in your house, even if you knew a gun was there, people would freak the fuck out and pick up the phone immediately.

Even before you knew what was going on, you call the police. Absolutely. I think. Yeah, why exactly? Someone runs up to see what happened, someone else calls the police and says, I heard gun shots upstairs. Please come immediately. Immediately. That's a bad amount gunshots upstairs, please come immediately. Immediately.

That's a bad amount of lag time in my opinion. In your doctoral position, in my thesis speech, that I'm going to be giving next week. That's right. So George has found lying on his bed on his back with his legs dangling off and his feet close to the floor. Like he fell back when he allegedly shot himself. The gun is a luger pistol and it's found between his feet on the floor, which would be an

odd place for the gun to have fallen if he had shot himself, but it's not impossible. One bullet casing is found underneath George's body, which is weird. And there's some debate over whether or not a casing would wind up there if George had shot himself, but no casings are found from the other two, you know, bullet holes. Which is weirder. Yeah, totally. Here's what I think is very weird.

The gun is clean. There's no fingerprints on it at all. And they say that the gun had been recently oiled so it might not hold fingerprints, but like to have not a single person's fingerprint on it, like hers from when she was allegedly fooling around with it the other day, right, his on the gun, like he's probably, if you were going to shoot yourself and imagine you're like sweaty and, you know, nervous and stuff.

I mean, who knows, but I think they're the fingerprints. It wouldn't be clean, that's for sure. It wouldn't be without anything. If the gun is clean, it's because someone fucking wiped it off before they ran out of the window, allegedly. There's also no powder burns or residue on George's hand or on his head, which you would normally see with a shot at such close range. They're explained away and the coroner only examines George after his body had been washed. And he also had several unexplained bruises on his face and chest.

What's up, Red Flag? Like a welcome to the party. You just read like five red flags in a row where it's like, I'm not going to stop you every single time, but like what? What? What? Right. Right.

All of that, maybe singular instances wouldn't add up to much, but all of those together is very suspicious. Totally. Some people say the fact that George was found naked and the fact that he didn't also leave a note point away from suicide. John Field, a television historian,

who was part of a push in the 90s to get the case reopened, says in a 1991 article that the scene did not look like a suicide. Field says quote, the body of George Reeves was found naked in his upstairs bedroom. The shower was running fresh clothes relayed out as if he were preparing to go out in party, which he was known to do." Other accounts of the evening say George was not going back out and was getting in bed. So like, Connolly would have.

The shower running, was that a fact? Is that like a shower running and clothes laid out on the bed is like, I'm getting my clothes back on to go downstairs or whatever and keep hanging out. He was, he was like, at first man, like, I have to get up early, I'm going to bed. And then it's like, oh, it sounds like they're having so much fun. I'm going back downstairs. Totally. Totally. Totally.

Despite the strange crime scene and the fact that Leanneur waited 45-fuck-and-minutes to call the police, the police immediately ruled the death of suicide and don't investigate any alternative possibilities. So let's get into theories. There are two main theories besides suicide. The first is that Leonor and George, gotten to an argument and that Leonor,

his fiance, shot him. And the second is that Eddie Manix, the MGM studio boss from the Hale Cesar movie, was angry about George breaking up with his wife and had him killed. Which he has resources to do so, you know? Right. So George and his fiancee Leonora's relationship with Stormi by some accounts they were supposed to get married

just a few days after George's death. Though some people say they were never going to actually get married. It was just like too complicated. They were also struggling financially and without Tony Mannex subsidizing George, the bills were piling up. They were known for getting into fights, and she admitted she had played her out the gun, and some believe that she may have shot him by accident,

drunkenly. So she had an accident a couple days before into the floor, and then, oh no, another accident into a human head. Mm-hmm. In 1999, when I was wearing white eyeliner, went in wild lipstick, Mm-hmm. In 1999, when I was wearing white eyeliner, went in wild lipstick. A Hollywood publicist named Edward Lozy goes on the TV show Extra, fuckin' Extra.

And claims that he was with Tony Manix, the ex-girlfriend, when she was on her deathbed in 1983. And they had become close towards the end of her life, and she was dying of Alzheimer's. And Lose claims that Tony confessed to a priest that she and Eddie had had George killed. Oh, wow. This is deathbed confession.

Deathbed confession, everybody loves one. Everybody. He repeats his claim on court TV. Oh, remember that one? In 2006, when the movie Hollywood Land comes out, and on that appearance, he says that Tony had a shrine to George in her house and would routinely say prayers for him. So she was kind of like a pssessie, I'm guessing, is the point.

Sounds like it. These claims made by a Hollywood publicist on extra and court TV about a woman with Alzheimer's are, of course, taking with a grain of salt by everyone. You know, right? Yeah. As for the theory that George took his own life, people go back and forth talking about how

the circumstances of his life could or could not point to suicide, being typecast as Superman and feeling like he would never make it in the way he wanted to as an actor was devastating to him. At the same time, he was beginning to direct episodes of the show and friends say he was looking forward to doing more of that in the next season. So he did have, you know, stuff he was looking forward to doing. But again, of course, we know that it can be so hard to tell like who's

suffering and who's not. Right. John Field, the television historian, says quote, with the death of George Rees, a lot of children thought that Superman himself had died and a lot of their hopes and dreams died with him. Oh, I know, right? How about a follow-up message of that that's not what happened? Right. Like somehow, can you somehow add a little footnote there for the message so that parents tell your children.

It's like the same message his mom gave him that his father had died. Oh, he's a teenager. Oh, just like do everyone else to go through it? Yeah, that's right. In 1960, a year after his death, George is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A CGI version of him as Superman appears

in the new The Flash movie that I guess just came out. He became a big deal and I don't think he realized what a big deal TV and Superman were going to be in the future. No. Right. So George's Superman co-star Jack Larson said that George worried that his career wasn't meaningful because his work didn't resonate with adults and Jack says, quote,

he didn't have the opportunity to see all the adult fans grow up and recognize that people of all ages, even in the 1950s, were watching the adventures of Superman. Yeah. And that is the tragic and mysterious death of George Reeves. Man, here's only one theory that I thought of as you were explaining, like the end part, which is those 45 minutes before calling the police, maybe was someone else called.

Did they ever look into it to see if somebody else was called because if the current girlfriend knew that he went out with Eddie Manix's wife. Right, the fixer. They call a fixer before they call the police to get like to say, can someone come over here and clean this up and make it so that I don't get in trouble or that whatever just happened.

Right, there's a big mess, like not mess, but like, yeah, something crazy's happened over here. Can you come tame it somehow? Yeah, that's true. It's tame it for his memory. Right? Because this guy, maybe it isn't as sinister as I was first thinking,

and maybe there was a piece of it that's like, say if it was suicide, there's something involved that was nobody wanted anyone to hear about. Right, who knows? They didn't want it to come out, so they'd try to make it look more simple than that. Yeah, something. That's a good point.

This is why deathbed confessions are so necessary. But I gotta tell you, not believing in a deathbed confession from someone who has Alzheimer's and is dying of Alzheimer's. Yeah. Because then your brain's like Swiss has Alzheimer's and is dying of Alzheimer's. Yeah. Because then your brain's like Swiss cheese and you're just kind of staring around. But I mean, not in a way where you can make a coherent, reliable confession. Right. Right.

Wow, that's, I'm going to be thinking about that. A lot. So sad. It's so sad. And also, it's just like back back then when you were in the studio system You were playing by totally different rules. It was like you were in the mafia essentially and you were covered in certain ways So there's just so many possibilities that it could be where people were like If it was an accident and you got murdered and covering it up like what what is the best optics for the situation?

Exactly, and we'll never know what the what is the best optics for this situation? Right. Exactly. And we'll never know what the starting point was. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Do you have a U-turn or a right-hand turn? Or a... Oh, yes, I do. Oh, 180. Right? I'm in it.

I'm going to take us on a 145. I love that freeway. It's not. To the five to the four or five to the two ten. To the one point of I did the two ten. This story I'm going to do for you today was suggested by listener, Bex Solidarity, on Twitter, NowX. They've released.

That's today. They changed the name to X. They not only changed it, but I bookmarked this tweet, and then when I went to find the bookmark, I didn't know where it was because I was looking for the Twitter symbol, and it's now an X. I, this is news to me, and I am horrified. Truly, so truly, truly dumb. Yeah. But all that aside, what's beautiful is that we have listeners that suggest great story ideas to us constantly.

And Beck's solidarity is their account name. The handle is at Beck, underscore, underscore, la. And they wrote and said, Karen Koguerre, have you ever heard of the night of the Grizzlies? Would be a great story for my favorite murder? I checked the wiki and don't think you all have covered it. Mm. So I did their research. I love it. Exactly. They were like,

I'm not going to suggest a repeater. And thank you for that, Beck's or Beck Aula. And the other interesting thing is, in planning this out, Aula Honda and Hannah, saved it for this record because the anniversary of this event of the night of the Grizzlies happened August 13th, which is just around the corner.

This episode goes wide August 3rd. Oh my God. So today I'm going to be telling you the story of Glacier National Parks Night of the Grizzlies. And the sources used for the retelling of this story is a 1969 book by an author named Jack Olson called Night of the Grizzlies. There's a PBS documentary that Marin,

our researcher highly recommends people watch. She really enjoyed it called Glacier Parks Night of the Grizzlies. And there's also a 2017 outside magazine article by a journalist named Ben Goldfarb called the 50-year legacy of Glacier's Night of the Grizzlies. And you can find the rest of the sources in our show notes. So to paint a gorgeous Bob Ross style picture for you, this story takes place in Glacier National Park in Montana. And it is apparently I've never been there, but it's apparently an I've never been there,

but it's apparently an absolutely stunning place. They have Alpine lakes and beautiful meadows, mountains, and of course, glaciers that you have to go see now because they are vanishing essentially. So a biologist and conservationist named Douglas H. Chadwick told PBS in their documentary, Glacier Park, Snight of the Grizzlies, quote, Glacier Park is heaven on earth. I've heard Montana is super beautiful. Yeah, it's supposed to be incredible. Yeah. So of course, that wilderness is teaming with all the wildlife you'd imagine.

And the big ones, some of the big ones include mountain lions, big horn sheep, elk, and the star of the top of that food chain, the grizzly bear. So when I say grizzly bear, you're just probably imagining like a bear in your head or pictures from the film, cocaine bear that we all enjoyed. But that cocaine bear, I actually looked it up. Cocaine bear was a brown bear.

Right. And the grizzly bear. Cocaine bear was a brown bear. Right. And the grizzly bear is only slightly different than a brown bear. So I found a graph that looked like a police line up where there's a man standing there and he's six feet tall. Uh-huh. A brown bear is also six feet tall. Okay. A grizzly bear is seven to eight feet tall.

No. And a polar bear's nine feet tall. Fuck. Why do I think I could take a six footer, but not a fucking. You want no part of any of these? I don't. That's why I stay very far away from the fucking forest.

Stay in LA, LA Central. Well, also, when I was looking at these pictures, because you can go and look at the difference between a grizzly and a brown bear. And it's just so scary to look at bears imagining the story I was about to tell and what the interactions were. Yeah. Another small difference, brown bears,

they have kind of pointy ears that stick up. And grizzlies have round ears, like teddy bears. It's just funny. But another difference is that brown bears have like roughly four centimeter long claws, which is a little short ones, and grizzly bears have five to 10 centimeter long claws, which are on average the length of an adult human's fingers. So too big. No, no, no. Yeah. Also, grizzlies can weigh up to 800 pounds. Fuck. Okay. And despite that size, they can sprint 35 miles an hour. They can swim for hours.

They eat everything, including other large mammals. So here's what's crazy, hearing all of that information and knowing what we know about bears. Grizzly bears used to live all over North America, but by the beginning of the 20th century, their population plummets because of human beings, because of overhunting, because of land development. They lose roughly 98% of their original habitat on this continent, but kind of in opposition to that, during the first half of the 1900s, due to the invention of the teddy bear, which was because of Teddy Roosevelt.

Really? The teddy bear was invented because of Teddy Roosevelt. He was a big hunter and he loved the outdoors and they made those and they were incredibly popular still are to this day, as we well know. And then there was this onslaught of like child-based bear entertainment. Or no, I'm sorry, bear-based child entertainment. No, I wanted the other way around. So I'm talking about things like Winnie the Pear. God damn it. Winnie the pear. That's just rude. It's pear shaped a little. He is

And he's beautiful. Winnie the poo yogi bear patting tin, corduroy, smokey the bear. Bears are just emerging in popular culture as friendly, cuddly animals. Mm-hmm. Their staples and circus acts. They become roadside attractions. Oh shit. That's right. Yeah ex they become roadside attractions. Oh shit, that's right. Yeah. Along with being prized hunting trophies where people stuff a bear or have a bear skin rug or whatever. So basically glacier national park starts to adopt this bear fuel tourism.

There's a ranger named Bert Gildart who remembers in the 60s that quote, drivers would regularly pose their kids alongside bears. One motorist even tried to coax a bear behind the steering wheel for a photo op. And also, Glacier National Park staffers would bait bears to come close to the lodges with food scraps, basically just to put on a show for the guests. So if you had made a reservation at a lodge in Glacier National Park, you're essentially kind of guaranteed to see a bear come really close to you. And that was like a curse for you.

It's on the amenities list. And I want to fucking see it. Right. So with a few exceptions, there is not a lot of fear around grizzly bears in this era. The Rangers aren't worried about them. Park staff isn't worried about them. And because of that, the visitors are not worried about them. And this is another kind of interesting like the way all this came together in this one night. So I didn't understand this,

but our national parks kind of went into decline during World War II. And the people who worked like for the national parks in the government, they had to fight to keep national parks from being stripped, like, loggers wanted to go in. They wanted resources out of the national parks to help with the war effort. And they had to like fight to keep everybody away from them. So basically, once the war was over and everything kind of got settled again, the National Parks Director Conrad Wurth proposed an ambitious 10-year program to improve and staff our national parks.

And then kind of simultaneous to that, the same year actually, that that program was proposed, it was in June of 1956, Congress passes the Federal Aid Highway Act, which approves the creation of a 41,000 mile highway system. So suddenly, by the time, you know, four years later, by the timings of the 60s, there's these national parks all over the country that are fully staffed, that are fully maintained, and there's all these highways to get you there. Yeah. And now, camping gear is being made more lightweight and inexpensive, national parks are easy to get to.

So suburban Americans have every reason to start going to and exploring our nation's national parks. Cute. So Glacier National Park gets exponentially busier in the 60s, and that same program that I talked about enabled the park to build out its 700 mile trail system. So Glacier National Park now welcomes and unprecedented one million visitors a year. Wow. Yeah, and that means that more people than ever are

regularly hiking through glaciers grisly territory. regularly hiking through glaciers, grizzly territory. That's obviously risky, but these parks, they don't know to do anything to mitigate that risk. And the anti-litter campaign in America won't hit its peak until the 70s. So many park visitors consider it totally normal to just throw their garbage along the trails or leave it at their campsites. Like, littering is celebrated. Yeah. That's one of my favorite scenes in Mad Men. Remember that scene where they're having a picnic by the road and then just get up and they snap out their blanket, throw the litter everywhere and

leave. Yeah. Is that real? Like, littering is so bad. I just can't imagine. You're just like, well, yes. Well, I think it was someone else will do it. So it that's somebody else's job to pick up our litter. Like you can't even be expected to just walk over to the garbage can and throw it away. And they were doing it in national park. So people are just walking along just go wherever and throwing garbage. And of course, the bears can smell that. That's food. That's something that they can come and eat. So before long, these naturally timid animals lose their shyness and they start gravitating toward the populated spaces where human garbage is being left behind. It's kind of

an unholy combination. Visiting National Park starts to rise in popularity and we're basically drawing the bears out of their natural environments to come and steal our pick and neck basket. So although the numbers are still tiny, there's an increasing number of visitors who start to report encounters with aggressive bears. Some of these escalate to actual bites or slashes, but none of the encounters are fatal. And they're kind of just written off as flukes. As journalist Jack Olsen points out in his book, Night of the Grizzlies, quote, the park's animal safety record was vastly better than any zoos in the country.

End quote. Yeah, it's safer to go to a natural park and just witness a bear in the wild than it is to just like go see just witness a bear in the wild than it is to just like go see one in a cage. That is crazy. Also, and even quotes an unnamed ranger who in 1967 tells him, quote, if you set up a danger index ranging from zero to 10 where the butterfly is a zero and the

rattlesnake is a 10, the grizzlies of Glacier Park would have to rate somewhere between a zero and a one. Okay, buddy. Right. The Rattlesnake kills about 10 Americans a year. The Grizzlies kills about none. So it just hadn't happened yet. Yeah.

Yeah. And they were basically saying, hey, we've got our toys. We like these guys. Yeah. Bears aren't going to hurt you. Right. Chill out. So it's interesting that he said that in 1967 because that's the year that people began to notice that something is off with the bears at Glacier National Park.

In June of 1967, at a residential part of Glacier National Park called Kelly's camp, where families own private seasonal residences, a woman named Joan Barry sees a bear rifling through her trash can in broad daylight. Joan's taken aback by how weird this bear looks. It has an oddly shaped head, its face looks all smashed in, its fur is raggedy, and it looks like it's starving.

But the strangest thing about this scrawny bear is when Joan tries to shoot away by screaming out her cabin's windows, the bear just stares back at her. Yeah. Grizzlies are typically very shy and skittish around people, not this one. The bear eventually leaves, but only after it's had its fill of garbage. And that's like, you need a pardon garbage. Shoo, Georgia, get away from that dip. 1967 garbage, so it's like leftover meatloaf. A lot of mashed potatoes.

Lots. So a few days later, that same bear comes back for more trash, and a few days after that, it comes back again. Within a week or so, the sickly bear gets bolder. Instead of just hanging around garbage cans, it starts looking inside Jones' house. It seems like the bear's increasingly interested in Jones and her family,

especially very happy dog. Before long, the sickly bear's behavior escalates into outright aggression. According to Jack Olson, quote, whenever the grizzly was at the garbage cans, Joan would counsel everyone not to move between the light and the window. And if someone would forget and commit this error, the bear would crash into the side of the house with all its weight, smashing against the walls with its heavy paws, one night sending a saw flying halfway across

the room from the intensity of the impact." Someone's exaggerating. Well, the weird thing is, normally the food was enough, but now this bear is kind of like, there's more and I want it. So it turns out this bear is a female bear, and it was being reported by several other people staying in Kelly's camp throughout the months of June and July. And in all of these incidents, the bear seems completely unafraid of humans. In fact, she seems drawn to them. One afternoon, the bear arrives during a dinner party on one homeowner's raised deck. And this scrawny bear starts climbing the steps up the deck and it only goes away when the panic party members start just throwing a bunch of stuff at her.

Oh my god. And this is like no one's seen stuff like this before. So more complaints about the bear come in saying that it swatted at cabin windows, that it slashed screen doors, it was even stalking children. Oh dear. So the week's pass, nothing's done about the Gersley bear, and Joan Berry gets pissed off. She gives Park Rangers a piece of her mind, saying,

quote, we've got a sick bear, a crazy acting bear around. I wish you'd do something about it. I'm sure that he's dangerous and somebody's going to get hurt." End quote. So this executive ranger reportedly tells Joan, oh, Joan, is it really that bad? Kind of a baffling reaction for several reasons,

especially because park policy at the time explicitly stated that aggressive bears should be killed period. Wow. But nothing's done about this bear. In August, Kelly's camp residents are informed by a ranger, quote, you shouldn't be having any more trouble. Your bears at trout lake tearing up camps. No, don't worry about that bear.

It's somebody else's problem now. No. Uh huh. Okay. So aside from the park rangers, there are about 850 on average college age people who seasonally staff, the kitchens, the laundry rooms and the gift shops of glacier national park. It's a great summer job for young people who actually like enjoy camping.

Not you, not weirdos. So this summer there's a group of young people working at the park and they all become friends. At the East Glacier Lodge, there's Roy DuCat, 18 years old from Ohio, he's working as a bus boy. Julie Helgason is 19. She's from Minnesota. She's working in the laundry room. Paul Dunn is from Minnesota also,

but he's only 16 years old. And he's working as a bus boy alongside Roy. And Paul had actually been on vacation at Glacier National Park with his parents, but when it came time for them to go home, he loved it there so much he wanted to stay so he applied to get a job there. Yeah, which is precious. So along with those guys, there's 19 year old Michelle Coons of San Diego.

She works in the park gift shop. Brothers Ray and Ron Nozack from Arizona. They are both in their early 20s. Ray works as a service station manager, Ron's a waiter at the lodge, and rounding out the group is Denise Huckle from Arizona. She's 20 and she works as a room clerk. So this group of friends, like most of the other people working in the park that summer,

they like to plan weekend excursions together. So Michelle, Denise, Ray, and Ron, they all decide they're gonna be camping at Trial Lake this weekend. And they invite Roy, Julie, and Paul to go with them. But Roy and Julie had just been to Trout Lake the weekend before, so they tell those guys they're gonna go to somewhere new. They want to go up to the Granite Chalet, which is a lodge at the end of Glacier's Highline Trail. After weighing those two options, Paul

decides to go with the larger trout lake crew instead of with Roy and Julie. So on the morning of Saturday, August 12th, Roy and Julie load up their hiking gear, they put on their backpacks, and they head out from the employee bunkhouse. They get a ride in the back of a pickup truck to the trail head,

and then they set out on a hike for Granite Park, Shale. This hike takes several hours. And when they get there, there's bad news. It's overbooked. No. It's so packed. Some guests have to sleep on the floor. So Roy and Julie decide they're not going to sleep on the floor inside the crowded Shale. But since it's already sunset, it'll take them hours to get back home to the bunkhouse. So they settle on a happy medium. They walk about 400 yards away to the nearest campground and decide to stay there for the night. So, Roy and Julie knew that bears regularly rummage through the dumpsters at the chalet. They've heard the chalet employees actually bait the bears with food so that in the

evening guests can see bears. Yeah. So the two of them knew it was not ideal to have any animal poking around their campsite at night. So they think it over and they decide the campground is far enough in the opposite direction of the chalet that they would be out of a bear's footpath. But the problem is Roy and Julie thought they'd be sleeping at the chalet, so they didn't pack tents. They just have sleeping bags. So the two start a fire. They heat up some food from their packs.

And once they're done eating, Roy takes the leftovers far into the woods, you know, to keep animals away and just huck them into nature. Because that's that was the time that we got to live in. So it's like, I'll take care of this garbage and then you just go and throw it into a lake or something. Then he comes back, they put out their campfire, they go to sleep. Roy says, quote, being out in the wilderness was, I don't know, it felt great.

I had no qualms with sleeping, neither did she. As far as camping in the middle of nowhere with a sleeping bag, no tent under the stars, I always felt fairly safe. I never had any fear of wild animals or anything. Typically wild animals stay away from people and that's pretty much the way we felt. There was just nothing to be afraid of in our minds at the time." So meanwhile, the group that went to trout lake spent their afternoon about eight miles away also in a grizzly bear hotspot. Trout Lake had it all access to water, fishing, waste high foliage, including lots of berry patches where grizzlies can hide out and fill their stomachs with straw berries,

hawkle berries, raspberries. And by August of 1967, the trail up to trout lake is accommodating as many as 700 daily visitors. Those people are leaving their garbage along that trail and around the lake, which is again another draw for hungry bears. So the Trout Lake group knows what they're walking into here. It's well established that bears are all over this area. So on the trail up, they actually run into two hikers who are heading back down the trail, and they tell the kids that they had been freed by a strangely aggressive grizzly while camping at the lake. That's true. They had to climb trees to get away from this bear.

Yeah, treat. That's what camping people, that's a verb camping people use. Got it. I am not. And I was pretending to use it, but I learned it when I was putting these together. The bear is described as skinny, scrawny, female grizzly with an oddly shaped head who's now been involved in a handful of incidents at Tret Lake. She's ripped up campsites, she's chased fishermen halfway around the lake shore, and she's sent multiple hikers rushing up trees for safety. But this story does not

deter the group, and they decide to keep going. They find a place to set up camp. Paul goes out to the lake with his fishing rod and catches a few rainbow trout. Then the group sits around a campfire. They cook fish and hot dogs for dinner, and as the sun is setting, Michelle points to the brush and says, here comes a bear. So before the grizzly can get too close, the group decides to ditch that campsite and basically move to a different spot on the lake. And they leave most of their supplies behind, and as they're leaving, they see a large grizzly bear And as they're leaving, they see a large grizzly bear burrowing into their camp and start gobbling down all their food. And Paul says, quote, there was a discussion about whether we should leave, but it was getting late in the day and we had to go back through that berry patch in order to get up to the trail ridge.

So there was a decision that we would stay and tough it out. End quote. So for added protection, the campers put up a log barrier around their new campsite and they leave their remaining food, which at this point, because they left so much behind, now all they have is a box of cookies and some crackers, but they leave that far away from their sleeping area. And then they all do their best to fall asleep. But it's difficult because throughout the night, they can hear bear noises in the bushes nearby. I can't even imagine this. Night night, go to sleep.

Do your best. Every so often a grizzly walks near the campsite. One grabs a box of cookies before going back into the woods. And then for the next several hours, it's just an ebb and flow of bear grunts and total silence. Then woofing sounds, more silence, then splashing in the nearby lake, then silence, but eventually everyone manages to fall asleep. So back at the camp near the chalet,

it's after midnight, and Roy wakes up to Julie whispering to him, play dead. Cool. Yeah. As Roy begins to process this, a bear picks Roy up inside his sleeping bag and tosses him six feet away and then attacks. Oh my God. The bear basically bites him all over on his shoulder, in his back, on his legs.

Roy will later say, quote, I remember that his breath was very bad. It was the most horrible sense I've ever smelled. After a few very long moments, Roy feels the bear pull away. But it doesn't leave. Instead, Roy listens in horror as the bear begins to attack Julie. Roy remembers, quote, she started screaming yelling and then he picked her up. I heard her screams going down the mountain side. He carried her off. End quote.

Oh my fucking god. It's so horrible. So, so Roy is totally injured himself, but now he's like, I have to get up and get help for Julie. So he gets up and somehow is able to start going back up the trail toward the chalet because he knows if he tries to chase the bear, he's going to he could find the bear. That's not going to help anybody. Right.

So as he heads back up the trail toward the chalet, luckily he runs into a solo camper named Don Gullet. And when Don sees Roy's wounds, he knows the boy is losing a ton of blood. So he stops, he wraps Roy in his own sleeping bag, he grabs his flashlight and signals SOS up to the chalet. So at this point, some of the chalet's guests have been awakened by the screaming. They see Don signals, several of them come down the mountainside to help, but by the time they get to dawn and Roy, Roy has gone into shock. So here's the most incredible twist of fate.

Among the guests at the chalet that night are a nurse, three doctors, including a surgeon and a priest, named Father Connolly. So when the guests bring Roy back up to the chalet, he is put on the dining room table and immediately operated on using the first aid supplies that are kept on sight at the chalet. Wow. And as the doctors try to stabilize Roy in these imperfect conditions, a park's official signals for help on the radio, so now a helicopter is on the way. Meanwhile, some very brave guests form a search party and are combing the woods looking for Julie.

But when they find her, the situation is very bad. She has been mauled. She has horrible injuries all over her body, including large puncture wounds on her chest. And this is awful. Much of her right arm has been chewed off. Oh my God. Incredibly, she's still alive though. So one of the men runs to a nearby crew cabin, grabs a camping mattress, and they very delicately put Julie on it and carry her back up to the chalet. When this group arrives, the triage team gets to work, but they realize it's too late for

Julie. She's lost almost all of her blood. Her puncture wounds are too large to seal shut in any way. Jack Olson, author of Night of the Grizzlies says, quote, the surgeon doubted that the problem could have even been solved in the operating room of a major hospital. So she just had mortal wounds from the attack. As Julie struggles to make shallow breaths, Father Connolly holds her hand. He tells her, quote,

you know that God will watch over you and take care of you and Julie manages to whisper back, yes, I know he will. When it's clear that Julie's slipping away, Father Connolly baptizes her with a cup of water from the shallay sink and recites the Lord's Prayer, which Julie seems to be mowling along with him until her grip on his hand weakens and she passes away. The death of 19 year old Julie Helgison

at 412 AM on Sunday, August 13th, 1967 marks the very first bear-related fatality in the 57 years of Glacier National Park's existence. Holy shit. So now there's this helicopter on the way and it's being piloted, this is another like unbelievable twist. It's being piloted by a man named John Westover

who was a combat pilot in Vietnam. And he's not only having to navigate the peaks and valleys of Glacier National Park in complete darkness, but there have been recent wildfires. So there's also smoke and haze. And basically, Westover manages to fly land and then take off again, completely blind. Wow. Like he get, he just gets it done. And because of him, a teen-year-old Roy Ducat is transported to the nearest hospital and saved. Wow. But this horrible night isn't over yet,

because now at the trout Lake Camp site, it's 4.30 in the morning. And 16-year-old Paul Dunn is startled awake by the sound of a large animal coming toward him. No. And when it stops, it's standing directly over him. He later remembers, quote, I could hear the bear breathing.

And that was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life, having this gigantic creature directly over my sleeping bag while I'm laying down. And at the advice of everyone in the campsite, I was playing dead. End quote. So Paul hears a noise and then he feels a pull on his shirt and he realizes the bear is biting down on him.

So instinctually Paul shoots out of his sleeping bag, dashes across the campsite and basically climbs up a tree as fast as he can, aka being treeed. This sudden movement actually seems to startle the bear and it heads back into the woods, but not for long. When the bear comes back, it comes toward Ron and Denise. But like Paul, both of them jump up, run down toward the beach, and each climb a separate tree. Again, the bear heads back into the woods. So now Paul, Ron and Denise, from their separate separate trees start yelling down to Michelle and Ray

to ditch their campsite and climb up into trees before the bear comes back. So Ray hears them. He darts out of a sleeping bag. He runs up a tree in no time. But just like in a horror movie, Michelle tries to get out of her sleeping bag and the zipper is stuck. No. Yes.

So she's panicking. She can't get free. She has no choice but to play dead as this bear comes back into the campsite. Can you imagine being one of the friends like watching this fucking happen? I don't have to imagine because it's on this piece of paper,

listen to this shit. No. From his position up in the tree, Paul, the 16 year, the youngest one of all. Yeah. He can see Michelle dimly lit by the campfire, stuck in her sleeping bag, playing dead. He can, he watches as it all happens. Oh my God.

He watches as the bear comes back out of the woods and heads straight for her. Michelle is laying entirely still. And then they all hear screaming, Michelle is screaming, he's got my arm, my arm is gone. Oh my God. So Paul is watching as the bear drags Michelle inside her sleeping bag back into the woods. And he then just starts screaming, she's dead, she's dead.

So so horrifying to imagine these young people in the dark, paralyzed with fear and shock and grief, just trying to like hold on to the branch of a tree. They end up staying up in these trees for more than an hour, basically until dawn breaks and they can finally actually see what's going on around them. So when they can finally see, they climb down and they run to the Ranger Station to get help. When they enter the Ranger Station, all four of them are visibly shaking as they tell the Rangers Leonard Landa and Gildart who was the Ranger who had given that quote of that bears were 0 to 1% danger. They basically start telling those two Rangers as a story that their friend has been mauled by a bear

and is still somewhere out in the woods with this bear. So Ranger Landa knows this group of kids. He sold them a fire permit the day before. And he cannot believe what they're saying because both of these Rangers have already been alerted that there have been these attacks up at the chalet. So in one evening, they have to go from thinking bears are a zero to one danger.

To, oh, there's been a bear attack up at the chalet. And now these kids come in, there's been a second bear attack. Fuck. What are the chances that they would know each other the two groups that's so wild? Right. Well, it's all employees. That's wild.

So it's, yeah, exactly. It's not random people, too. It's Well, it's all employees. Yeah, that's wild. So it's, yeah, exactly. It's not random people, too. It's like, it's crazy. So these two Rangers grabbed their guns and a medical supply bag and they head out toward the campsite. How horrifying is that? It's like, yeah. Now, you're like, oh, this is actually a monster.

Yeah. And we have to go solve this problem. So it's even worse than that because as they're walking toward the campsite, they come upon a detached human ear. And then they come upon a ripped up sleeping bag. And when they finally find Michelle's body, it's mutilated beyond recognition. They have to call an emergency crew to come in and retrieve her remains. Michelle Coons is only 19 years old.

The remaining four campers are told about the bear attack at the Chellet involving Roy and Julie. So now they have to learn that they're same friends that they went to two separate places from, also were attacked by bears. Roy will later say, quote, when I finally pieced it together, the Granite Park Chellet's incident involved two other friends of mine that I had intended to go camping with. There was a shutter through my being that still remains to this day. Somewhere somehow I was meant to be in an experience that night with a grizzly bear, and I was

just lucky to be a survivor. Wow. Yeah. Like he's saying, no matter what choice he made, the same thing would happen, and there's a chance he made the better choice because would happen, and there's a chance he made the better choice because he was able to live through his. Totally. Wow.

So now Glacier National Park Officials, of course, snap into action. Trails are closed, guests are escorted out of the backcountry by gun-toting rangers, and any grizzly bear that feeds near the attack sites is ordered to be killed. This includes the bears that have been habituated to come and take food near the chalet. Right?

So, Rangers end up killing three adult bears near the chalet. One is a female with dried blood on her paws. Park officials believe that this bear, who might have been particularly aggressive because she did have cubs, is the one who killed Julie, but it's impossible to prove that. And meanwhile, over trout lake, rangers land at and gildar, do the same. They bait the lakeside campground and then they lay in wait.

And when they see a weird looking skinny bear approaching from about 40 feet away, they realize it's the Kelly's camp bear. This bear walks straight toward them. Landa and Gildart take aim, fire, and shoot her dead. Later that day when an FBI agent and a park biologist examined this bear's body, they find that she has broken glass embedded in her molars, which is almost certainly a result of her feeding on garbage

from dumpsters and trash cans. This glass would have left her in constant pain, making her agitated and unable to eat normally. Inside her stomach, the biologist also finds a clump of blonde hair, which was the color of Michelle's hair. So they conclude that the Kelly's camp bear that had been reported countless times that summer is the bear that killed Michelle. Wow. So that, but the irony of the idea that that bear and what was wrong with that bear was human-related. Totally.

Once again, is that kind of thing of like, it's a starving bear with glass and it's right, tea, right, and so much pain and horrifying. Yeah. News of the Fatal Bear Tax at Glacier National Park sweep the nation and cause widespread panic and a newfound fear of grizzly bears. The story is featured on Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News, the tragic deaths of Michelle Coons and Julie Helgason shocked the nation.

People demand answers. They want to know why after decades with no attacks, these grizzlies would suddenly kill two humans on the same night. I mean, how wild mind blowing. Some theorize that recent lightning storms, wildfires, or even the late summer heat could have caused the bears to become particularly agitated that weekend. But as Jack Potter, chief of science and resources management at Glacier National Park says, quote, I think it's just sheer coincidence.

Yeah. Conservationists and biologists are immediately concerned that there will be a devastating backlash against grizzlies. In his book, Knight of the Grizzlies, Jack Olson warns the quote, the grizzly will almost certainly be banished into Canada and then perhaps into Alaska to live out his last years as a species and all the good will and understanding in the world will not alter his eventual fate. So that seemed to be so possible because it after jaws came out and then they were just killing great white sharks

all over the place. That that kind of fear and people deciding that this is a fear, this is a concern and a danger that we need to do something about is very threatening. So by the 1970s, a mix of all of those factors lead to this critical situation and it does look like grizzly bears might go extinct and then something amazing happens. Human beings in positions of authority actually make a series of excellent decisions. Huh. In 1973, the Endangered Species Act is passed,

which outlaws unauthorized hunting of grizzly bears. Then, new policies are passed at the state level, which aim to preserve wildlife habitats, and keep humans and grizzly bears as far apart as possible. So basically saying, hey, let's not just go where they live and then blame them for what happens. Right. At the same time, many national parks rethink their policies around human interaction with bears, journalists Ben Goldfarb writes that, quote, all together, Glacier's Bear Management Plan expanded virtually overnight from three pages long to around 50. Wow. And, quote, all together, Glacier's Bear Management Plan expanded virtually overnight from three pages long

to around 50. Wow. And quote, many parts of this plan are now considered common sense measures. So they didn't even have the most basic stuff in place about these dangers. Like don't make an extra sandwich for a bear. No, don't talk to a bear, don't try to put a,

like a little fake collar and a green tie on a bear. Just, don't talk to a bear, don't try to put a, like, a little fake collar and a green tie on a big just describing Yogi bear. So now, of course, we bear proof garbage cans, cooking areas are kept away from tents and cabins. And of course, that tradition of baiting bears with food so you could be entertained by them. Yeah, of course, it's now not done. Also the advice to just play dead in a grizzly-bear encounter has been updated. The recommendation now is avoid eye contact, be calm, speak in a low-steady voice,

don't make any sudden movements. If the bear is stationary, just very slowly move sideways, ideally to higher ground, because being taller will make you seem bigger to the bear. You always try to seem bigger than the bear. And now the National Park Service actually warns against climbing trees because bears can climb trees too. That's what I thought, but I was like, don't say that because maybe they don't. Oh, no,

they do. And actually grizzlies with their long crazy claws can climb them pretty easily. So those guys just got fucking lucky. They got super lucky. They just didn't bother too. They were just going for kind of the easy food on the ground. Oh, they also say that if a bear doesn't go away, if it's like worst-case scenario, either lie flat on your stomach

or curl up at a ball and lay on your side and be as quiet as possible until it leaves. And if you're already standing up in a bear charges you, they say, stand your ground because you can't out-run a bear. Sure. That makes me think of there is an amazing video that was going around, I think it was like in quarantine. And it's a little kid walking down a trail, downhill, down a trail toward, I think it was in Italy somewhere because the father is saying be quiet and be calm on video. And the little kid is walking and going, be calm. Like mom, it's fine, be calm.

And there is a huge bear walking behind this kid. And the mother is, like, can barely control herself. Because you're like, oh my God. And they're like, you have to be quiet, you have to be quiet. It's one of the scariest videos I've ever seen. And the amazing part is that little kid was clearly educated about this kind of stuff.

Because the kid was like, don't do, mom be quiet, don't do anything. I mean, like the calm one. And just like walking normally, which is like how? I think that's like, if you have a certain type of personality, you're not gonna be able to do that. Yeah, totally.

Totally. And by that, I mean, my personality, okay. There is a silver lining in the horrifying story of the night of the Grizzlies. It basically put an end to our illusion that a wild animal is harmless. That idea, it's so funny to hear it now, but that was a thing that people really kind of believed and didn't care about, and the national parks and media policy changes saves the lives of countless human beings and countless bears over the years. But as many viral videos do show us,

people still have a lot more to learn. You see those videos constantly of people trying to mess around with like, bison at Yellowstone? Seriously. And I think a guy got killed recently. Yeah. Trying to take a picture near a bison. And it's like, you, they don't do that.

Don't. Just don't. Like, please have some respect. As conservationist Douglas H. Chadwick told PBS, quote, a bear is what it's born to be. And it's what it learned to be. The most distant place in the lower 48 states from the nearest road is 23 miles,

which would take a bear a morning to walk out of. Wow. There is no big wild left out there, and these guys are gonna have to learn to live with us, which I think they're doing, and we're going to have to learn to live with them." End quote. And that's the story of Glacier National Parks,

night of the Grizzlies. Holy fucking shit. I've never heard of that before. That is bananas. Same. I never heard it until Beck suggested it. That's a mind-blowing story. Wow. Good job. That was great. Thank you. That was great. I'm terrified. Yeah. That's great. I'm terrified. That's why we all came here today. I stand hotels. I saw true Beverly Hills recently on a, uh, at Vitiates, you know, in town. Yeah. Yes. And they, they're supposed to be camping and starts raining. They go to the Beverly Hills hotel to do their like, kumbaya camping. And I'm like, that's where I learned it. Yes, that's just go to a hotel. You can still have a lot of similar fun.

Totally. You know, just while we're here, I really can't wait to go to video. It's I haven't been there yet. Although I have bought tickets multiple times and just not shown up for certain things that I wanted to go to and forgot about or whatever. But there's a lot of people who ask what can be done during a strike when writers and actors are striking because nobody wants to like break a rule. People are very careful to be like, oh, if we mentioned this, does that mean that we're promoting it? We don't want to do that. All that kind of concern. I think one of

the best things you can do is support places like Vitiates, places where you can see the brilliance of filmmakers and writers and actors and appreciate it and support local businesses around your town or wherever you live and understand that that's not something some computer program can replace. You can kind of go sit and absorb it and understand how cynical and kind of ugly and disrespectful that attitude is, that these studios are taking, that like all of that talent is replaceable

when the truth is they're the ones that are replaceable. So replaceable. Well, how's two hours for you guys. That long enough. Jesus. Almost. Yeah, is there anything else you want to discuss real quick so we can round it out to a solid two hours? I have to pee so bad. So no. Then let's just say stay sexy and joke't get murdered. Goodbye! Goodbye! Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! This has been an exactly right production.

Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producers, Hannah Kyle Crite, this episode was edited and nixed by Leonis Colachi. Our researchers are Marin McClashan and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns and fucking arrays to my favorite murder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and Twitter at my favorite murder. Goodbye!

Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, did you know that you can listen to my favorite murder early and ad free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today. You can support my favorite murder by filling out a survey at Wendery.com slash survey. survey.