Wilder - The Sicilian Inheritance Ep 1: LORENZA

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Journalist Jo Piazza’s family has been playing a hundred year long game of telephone about the murder of her great great grandmother Lorenza Marsala. Family members who have gone back to Sicily to discover the truth, including Jo’s dad have been shut down by authorities and threatened by seemingly supernatural forces. But Jo is determined, maybe even a little obsessed, to cut through the stories, the lies and the mythologies to find out the truth, even if her family members don’t want her to. Want your own taste of Sicily – grab a bottle of The Sicilian Inheritance inspired OLIVE OIL direct from Sicily to BUY - GO HERE .  Snag your copy of  THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE, the novel!  Like what you hear? Follow us @kscope_nyc on Twitter and Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of Bridgerton is here. And with it,

a new season of Bridgerton the Official Podcast. I'm your host, Gabby Collins. And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton. Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix. Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Hey, girlfriends. It's me, Carol Fisher, back with another season of the global number one podcast The Girlfriends. Last time we investigated the murder of Gail Katz. This time we're uncovering

the identity of the woman who was buried in Gail's grave for a decade before she disappeared. Join me and the rest of the club as we tell her story. Listen to season two of The Girlfriends, our Lost Sister on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine you're a fly on the wall at a dinner between the mafia, the CIA, and the KGB. That's where my new podcast begins. This is Neil Strauss, host of To Live and Die in LA. And I wanted to quickly tell you about an intense new series about a dangerous spy taught to seduce men for their secrets and sometimes their lives. From Tenderfoot TV, this is To Die For. To Die For is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, Wilder fans. Jo here. Now, I know, and I know this because I've heard from so many of you, that you love a road trip. That you love a road trip and an adventure and a meaty podcast that just digs into the lives of women. So I've got another show for you. And this time, it's personal. I'm so excited to drop this episode of The Sicilian Inheritance into the feed today. About four years ago, I started writing a novel that was loosely based on the murder

of my great-great-grandmother, Lorenza Marsala. It's called The Sicilian Inheritance, it came out six weeks ago, and it's delicious. It's a delicious murder mystery. It's being called the Book of the Summer. You're going to love it. But that's not what this podcast is about. The Sicilian Inheritance, the podcast, is a true crime murder mystery where I travel back to Sicily,

occasionally with my three children under the age of six, to try to solve the real-life murder of Lorenza Marsala. I dig through archives, I interview people in the village where she's from, I got access to the homicide and murder record from the year 1916 when she died. When I went into this reporting, I wasn't even sure if the story my family has been telling forever and ever was actually true. I thought, I wasn't even sure if the story my family has been telling forever and ever was actually true. I thought maybe she wasn't even murdered at all. But the bombshells that I've dug up through the reporting, I mean, I have just been personally

blown away. And more importantly, I haven't just found out more about Lorenza's death, but I found out more about her life. And frankly, those are the stories that we need to be telling. I want to know more about how women lived in the year 1916. And we've got all of that in here. So take a road trip to Sicily with me. Come on, let's hop on a plane and eat delicious four-hour lunches.

This is the first episode of The Sicilian Inheritance. If you love it, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. We're still making it. I'm still reporting. I am still solving this murder, literally in real time. I just can't wait for you to listen to this. Enjoy. Hey babe. I'm trying to solve a mystery, Charlie. Charlie, what do you need? What do you need? These goggles don't work. What's wrong with them? I think you had them on upside down,

man. I'm sitting by the pool in Schiapello, Sicily with my podcast producer Kate and my three kids. And two pools. B, do you want to hear about the family mystery? No? No? Yes? Yeah?

You want this towel? Charlie is much more interested in the very deep pool B is freezing. What is the mystery? Everyone's jet-lagged and I'm questioning every decision that I've ever made about my life Bees, do you know why we're here in Sicily? I'm trying to solve the mystery of my great-great-grandmother of her Can I say murder to a three-year-old? Her death. Her death. How she died? How? We don't know yet. We're trying to figure it out. We're trying to learn. Do you want to help me? I'm not exactly sure what possessed me when I made this plan. Jetting off

to Sicily with a five-month-old baby, a three-year-old, and a six-year-old for a vacation slash fact-finding mission to look for clues into my investigation into my great-great-grandmother's century-old murder right here in our motherland. Do you want to know what her name was? Uh... Her name was Lorenza. Can you say that? Lorenza?

I keep telling myself that if we can learn something new, something more concrete about what happened to her, it will all be worth it. But just being here, it all feels more real. She feels more real. And we are closer. Closer to figuring out if my great-great-grandmother really was murdered right here on this island. And if so, why? I'm Jo Piazza. From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Sicilian Inheritance. Chapter 1. Lorenza. So take me to the left. Do you like remember the first time you heard this?

It's hard to say. I feel like I've always known this story because Italian Americans love to tell stories and they love to embellish stories. And especially if it's really salacious or it could possibly have something to do with the mafia. They love that shit. Can you just walk me through the quote unquote story? Yeah, the story. The story.

The story is one that I've known all my life. I've heard it over and over and over again. Not always in the same way and definitely not with the same information. It's my family's origin story. The story of where we, the piazzas, came from. It all starts a little over a hundred years ago with my great-great-grandparents back in Sicily. The ancestral homeland, as far as my dad's side of the family is concerned. My great-great-grandfather Antonino and my great-great-grandmother Lorenza lived in

this tiny village called Caltibalota where they had seven children. One by one around 1910, Antonino and his son saved up enough money to sail to the U.S., pass through Ellis Island, and settle in the Northeast, the classic Italian-American story. Lorenza was supposed to follow them eventually. But she never made it. She died in Caltabilota. According to my family's 100-year-long game of telephone, she was murdered.

For years, this story has just been a mystery for our family, something we've enjoyed speculating about, swapping different bits and pieces and versions of the story, as you'd say in Italian, la chiera chiera, idle gossip. Hello. Hey, Sharon. How you doing? I'm okay. So now I hear you're writing my memoir and I'm going to become famous now, right? You are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the plan.

I wish. And this story was always told with a kind of hand gesture where you push your thumb into your nose and lower your voice when you say the black hand or the mafia. Now, in Sicily, there's still tons of mafia. And of course, they called it the Black Hand. Which is why, for me, for a long time, I thought the whole thing might be bullshit. Well, nobody knows for sure. There's two stories.

But over the years, as I've heard it more and more, Lorenza's story and her potential murder have become a bit of an obsession. Maybe that's because we're a family of storytellers, sometimes liars, definitely myth-makers, myself included. I'm a writer, and recently I turned my fascination with Lorenza into a novel. It's also called The Sicilian Inheritance. And it is loosely, loosely based on my family's story. A woman is left alone, there's an unsolved murder, there's just a lot more food and wine and

sex thrown in. And look, my obsession with this story, this family story, may have ended there. But the writing? It got me fixated on the real story and the real woman. Who was the real Lorenza Marsala? And what actually happened to her? So I started digging. And I began with my best sources. My family. The first thing I'm doing is asking different family members what they think the story is. What do they know? Good luck with that. Good luck with that. Hello, dear. Hi, how are you? Good. This is Uncle Jimmy. He's my dad's older brother. I want to hear everything you know.

Well, I don't know any more than probably you do, but Jimmy and I have been talking about it. probably you do, but Jimmy and I have been talking about it. And our one concern is if it's too realistic, you're going to wind up starting our vendetta again and I'm too old to go over there and shoot somebody. And Jimmy wants to bring his kids over there. Are you too old to go over there and shoot somebody, Uncle Jim? Are you really? Oh, hell no. Shit no. Vendetta or not, I kept calling relatives. You know, that you have this book coming out. I didn't know it was finished.

That was Aunt Gail. When I was growing up, she lived down the street. She was like a second mom to me. I'm bad at writing sex scenes, okay? Like I am like, I have to get like real drunk to write them. I hope you don't write too many sex scenes. No. You're drunk all the time.

Cousin Sissy. She's a romance novelist. Cousin Sharon. Cousin Laura. We have a lot of cousins. We are Italian Americans. We breed like rabbits. All I know is just obviously here we say. Okay, so here's what I was told. Grandpa, my grandpa, Santo Piazza, immigrated to the U.S. Santo came over with his siblings. Large family, brothers and sisters, siblings that immigrated. The boys came over to kind of settle in and, you know, all of that.

So they came through Ellis Island, settled in in New York. The boys came over from Italy two by two. They immigrated, and Dad came with them, but they left Mom behind. They left their mother behind. The mother to sell the farm. His wife stayed behind to tend to. She said they had a family farm.

What I heard was that the mom was interested in her land. She refused to sell. Now, this part, I don't know if it's true. I don't know who told me whether it was Aunt Anna or somebody else. But they had a vineyard, and the Black Hand took over the vineyard. So they did not get access to the vineyard.

The black hand. That's how my family tends to refer to the mafia in this story. It is not how Sicilians refer to the mafia. I just want everyone to know that. But this right here, this is the reigning theory of how Lorenzo was killed. And it's the version of the story that's been in my head the longest. It's the version where the Piazzas owned a farm or a vineyard, it is unclear. And once Aunt Tenino and all of Lorenzo's sons had been gone in the US for over a decade, the mafia killed Lorenzo to get that land. They owned a farm and they left her behind and did a transaction and the mafia allegedly stole it from her and killed her. She sold the farm and all the money was in the house and they killed her

for the money. She was murdered while the boys were over here. Maybe she had already sold the land and the mafia then killed her to get the money from the land. Maybe it was that money that she was planning to use to leave Sicily and finally reunite with her family. They were kind of stupid to leave all that money but there were no banks then or anything and that was the money she was going to be using to come to the United States and get them started. But they were kind of stupid to leave her there alone like that. What was her name? The name of who?

Of the great-great-grandmother who was murdered. Oh. Oh, I forget. I forget her name. Oh, Lorenzo and Marcella. For all the times that I've heard the story about Lorenza being murdered, all the tellings and retellings, talking to my relatives this time made me realize how little any of us knew about her actual life. Or her death, for that matter. That's the thing. There have never been any real details when this story gets told. Things that you can prove. And that's always what's made me skeptical. Like maybe it was never a murder. Maybe her story could be as open and shut as a case of the flu.

Maybe she got sick and that's why she didn't make it over. A tragedy for sure for her sons and her daughters. But not exactly worth the legend status. Maybe the family needed to make her death into something more than just a virus. I mean, my dad was a claims attorney. My uncle Jimmy's a judge. Like, we're like, we're a very basic Italian American family. But they love imagining that there's some kind of adventure and romance in possibly being adjacent to the mafia, even though they're absolutely not. And this story gives it to them. But this story gives this story does give them that this story gives them some kind of connection.

And I think that's what they love about this story. Like if she was possibly killed by the mob, why? And like that gives them this link to, you know, good fellows, the sopranos, the godfather. When I started writing my novel, I didn't want to know the real story. I wanted to use the small bits and pieces that I knew about Lorenza to get started and then let my imagination run wild with the rest. But once the book was put to bed, I got this tug in my gut. Something told me the story wasn't finished. And that's

when I needed to know the truth about what happened to Lorenza. I became obsessed. What really sent me looking for answers was this email from my dad from about a decade ago. Toward the end of his life, he used to send me dozens of emails a day. And one day, a couple years ago when I was cleaning out my inbox, one of those unopened emails caught my eye. It was his grandfather's birth certificate, Santo's birth certificate. And in the email, my dad remarked on how beautiful the mother's name was. Lorenza. She was the one who was murdered, he reminded me in all caps.

That email got me to start doing a little more digging. Just a little bit of reporting. And as soon as I scratched the surface, it started to look a lot like I had a hundred year old murder mystery on my hands. Would there be a police record? Yes, only in the case of a murder. One that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be able to solve. Oh my gosh, why would they be murdered together?

More after the break. When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence. Radios were smashed, cassettes burned, you could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules and yet Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off.

The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of Bridgerton is here. And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast. I'm your host Gabrielle Collins, and this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.

Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad. Is betrothal written in the stars for the eligible bachelor? Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who holds Lady Whistledown's pen. We're discussing it all. I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, and more to offer an exclusive peek behind the scenes of each episode of the new season. Watch season 3 of the Shondaland series on Netflix. Then, fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton the Official Podcast

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Hey, girlfriends. It's me, Carol Fisher. I'm so excited to tell you about the brand new series of The Girlfriends. In season one, we told you about the murder of Gail Katz at the hands of my ex-boyfriend Bob. At one point, a woman's torso washed up on Staten Island and was misidentified as Gail. She spent nine years in Gail's grave,

and then she just disappeared. It's almost like it's become this moral obligation to find her. And that's what we're going to do. Find this missing girlfriend and tell her story. With the help of some of your favorite girlfriends from season one, like my producer Anna. Oh my god. My friend Dr. Mindy Shapiro.

Hi, it's Dr. Shapiro and I'd like to speak with the deputy medical examiner. And of course, Gail's sister, Elaine Katz. Having no closure, it kills you. Join us as we try to solve a 35 year old cold case. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be one hell of a ride. What? I can't believe this. Listen to season two of The Girlfriends, our lost sister on the iHeartRadio app, to be one hell of a ride. What? I can't believe this. Listen to season two of The Girlfriends, our lost sister on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there. I'm Bob Pitman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. Welcome to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. This week I'm talking to acclaimed musician and entrepreneur, Mr. Worldwide himself, Pitbull. A lot of artists in general, people are very creative, sometimes tend to overthink. That's one of my number one rules. Don't ever overthink. You can think ahead, but don't overthink. And what I mean by that is when they start to write a record, they're like, oh, that's

not the line. Oh, that's not this. Oh, it's not that. And everybody has a creative process. I'm not knocking it. For me, I just let it flow. In these exciting times, we're looking to the math, the strategy and analytics and the magic, the creative spark more than ever. Listen to math and magic on our very own iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey all, Jo here. You may have noticed that this show is a sort of travel log. Throughout this series, I am truly hoping that you feel like you've gone on an expedition, adventure,

journey with me to solve my great great grandmother's century-old murder. Our true intention is that by the end, you actually feel like you've gone on both vacation and a fact-finding mission with me, traveling across the Atlantic to the gorgeous Mediterranean island of Sicily, all through the magic of podcasting. For me, Sicily has some real main character energy, and I hope you feel it too. So to help drop you even more into that experience, we want to offer a warning with this podcast. I do not want you listening to this without some delicious food. And so what better way for me to continue to follow in my father's sometimes haphazard footsteps, and also be a champion of one of Sicily's best exports, than by bringing you

some actual Sicilian olive oil. I have actually partnered with Philadelphia's own Cardenas Gourmet Foods. It is a woman-owned and operated shop to bring you the Sicilian inheritance olive oil. I like to call it a flavor journey from the volcanic soil of ancient groves through the special terroir that family secrets and inherited stories provide. Yeah. With a taste of fresh off-the-vine tomatoes and a hint of almonds, it is not only an incredible olive oil, but we know that it is going to transport you to the beautiful and sometimes dangerous island of Sicily. So join us! Get even more into

this journey by getting your very own bottle today at Cardenas Tap Room. You can check the show notes for the link and the details. And of course, thank you, thank you. And remember to enjoy this podcast with something delicious. I just spent $300 on ancestry.com. Oh no. did. I did. As I tried to solve this mystery, I forced my husband Nick to be my enthusiastic sounding board for all of my discoveries. Here is Santo. No way. I've got all the dates. There she is. This is the... That's her! Wow! Which of course involved immediately googling genealogy websites. There's a picture of her. No way. Look at that. Have you ever seen it?

No, I've never seen this. Wow. She looks, she looks unhappy. When you imagine an Italian Nonna, what do you think of? A chubby lady in the kitchen making pasta. That is not Lorenza. Lorenza looks like she could kill you with her stare. Her cheekbones alone could cut glass. She looks like someone who might have been involved in some shit. But this is very helpful because now we have the death date. Yeah, or the alleged death date. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa, cool panda. So before we go much further, I think I need to draw my family tree for you all.

In fact, I now have a massive wall in my house where I sketched it all out. Lorenzo Marsala, my great-great-grandmother on my dad's side, she was born in 1862. She married Antonino Piazza. Quick note here, just to make things extra confusing, in Italy women don't take their husbands last names. Did you know that? I didn't until we started doing this. So Lorenza kept the last name Marsala. Lorenza Marsala. Sounds like a

pasta dish. Anyway, Lorenza and Aunt Anino had seven children who lived to adulthood. I personally have three children and I think seven is a lot of children. Anything more than one is a lot of children. Anyway, Lorenza and Aunt Tenino's kids. First we've got Santo, he's my great-grandfather, then Joseph, also known as Giuseppe, Vito and Caligaro, also known as Charlie. And the daughters, Josephine, Paulina, and Rosa. All of them would eventually come to America. The men first. Santo, the oldest son, and Giuseppe left Sicily in 1905.

Now just to set the scene, picture this. Pre-World War I, turn of the century. A lot of Italians were immigrating back then, especially the ones living in intense rural poverty in southern Italy and Sicily. Between 1900 and 1910, more than 2 million Italians made their way across the Atlantic Ocean. And among them were Santo and his brother. Lorenzo's son, Santo, is my dad's grandfather. Got it.

And he worked in the coal mines and was also a farmer. This is me trying to explain it all to Kate. It's really hard to keep all this straight. And not that Kate is the best at keeping it straight either. And presumably Santo told him. No, that's the thing. So Santo, like a lot of other Sicilians at the time, settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he goes to work in the coal mines. Two years later, their

father, Aunt Tenino, joins them, bringing along another son. By 1912, most of the kids, all of the sons, are in the States. Lorenza and two of her daughters are still in Sicily. In 1916, Lorenza dies and a few years later, her daughters would immigrate to the US too. Now Santo, the eldest son, he starts my particular branch of the family tree. Santo is the grandfather, great grandfather to all of my relatives that you've heard so far. They held a big reunion one time where all the piazzas, the first generation piazzas were there. They were fantastic. My uncles and my dad were playing more, which is a finger game, you know, rock, stone, scissors almost. And they

played bocce on a dirt road. It was a great time. It's one of the few times I have memories of seeing all Santo's brothers and sisters. Santo also had a lot of children, 10 of them. And here the family tree gets even more confusing for a lot of reasons. Namely because everyone seems to have the same names. There are so many Giuseppes, Giuseppes, Josephines, Vitos, Vinys, and then the names they get anglicized when people come to the US. The Giuseppes become Joes, the Lorenzas become Loras, the Vitos become Vinnie's. You get the picture. Santo at some point lived with each of his children. And for as Sicilian as Santo was, he didn't like to talk about Italy.

I remember going there and my old great aunt would get my face and squeeze it and hurt the hell out of me and talking Italian. Cousin Sharon. She's my second cousin. I think. I'm bad with the seconds and the thirds. Her mom Rose was one of Santo's children. Santa was very quiet about his past. Growing up, I remember he wouldn't, he didn't even want to acknowledge that he was Italian for a while there. Really? Yeah, yeah, it was very strange. Somebody would come to the door and see that he was clearly Italian with his, you know,

deep accent. And he'd say, you're in America, you speak English, no Italian. I mean, he didn't want, it was strange. He was very close-mouthed about much of his younger life, very close-mouthed. So it's worth investigating and looking into. Santo definitely didn't talk about what happened to his mother, Lorenza. Your dad knew the most, I think. Didn't he? I know. But yeah. My dad and his siblings and cousins are the complete opposite. They're obsessed with

their Sicilian roots. Santo was first generation. He wanted to hide being Sicilian so he could fit in in this country, which for some immigrants was a pretty common reaction. My dad, on the other hand, he used to say things like capiche instead of understand or mozzarella instead of mozzarella. Picture this, Sicily, 1912. So that everyone would know he was Italian. Everything from Sicily means something. My dad loved to pretend to be this kind of Tony Soprano tough guy,

especially with my high school boyfriends. Sorry, Kurt Siegel. Not with this Sicilian thing that's been going on for two thousand years! In the early 2000s, my dad started to get really sick with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. But instead of saying housebound or just feeling sorry for himself in bed, Lorenz's story became this kind of unfinished business,

and it seemed to light a fire in him. He started researching genealogy and taking trips to Sicily. By that time, he had to use a cane and a walker to get around around and his obsession had gone into overdrive. It's like falling in love with Sicily and with learning new things about his family gave him this way to escape his broken body. He did some crazy stuff too. He started he got this hair brained idea to start importing Sicilian organic olive oil

And he bought a shit ton of it. I think he blew probably about a hundred grand on Local Sicilian olive oil then there was something wrong with the caps and the labels and they leaked and It just sat in our garage for years and years and he just pissed away All of his remaining money on this business that would never exist but that was yet another way to keep him going back to Sicily. As he got sicker and less mobile, my dad could still sit at a computer making calls and researching his leads on Lorenza's murder. At the time, I found all of it a little bit silly.

I was so disinterested in this. And if you think about 2000, I was in college, I was 20 years old, graduate, I moved to New York, I'm not living with my parents. I could care less about my dad's obsession with Sicily. I'm like, that seems like a nice hobby for you, Dad. I'm happy for you. But we never talked about it. And now I really wish that we had like now I really wish that I'd paid more attention and I'd listened to the things that he was finding out because so much of it is also just now gone. I can't find anything in his email. I can't Facebook won't let me into his Facebook account. So a lot of what he learned died with him. A lot of parts of him are gone and he would hate that. He wanted to know the answer to this mystery and I wish that I'd been there to help him. But I was on my own journey, searching for a life partner, falling in love, getting married, getting pregnant. And then he was gone. I never properly grieved for him at the time.

And it's just been hitting me now. His legacy and what he left unfinished. And now I feel like I owe him something by finishing what he started. When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence. Radios were smashed, cassettes burned. You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules. And yet Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured.

They said my head should be cut off. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of Bridgerton is here. And with it, a new season of Bridgerton the Official Podcast. I'm your host Gabrielle Collins and this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.

Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad. Is betrothal written in the stars for the eligible bachelor? Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who holds Lady Whistledown's pen. We're discussing it all. I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, and more to offer an exclusive peek behind the scenes of each episode of the new season. Watch season 3 of the Shondaland series on Netflix. Then, fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton the Official Podcast

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Hey, girlfriends. It's me, Carol Fisher. I'm so excited to tell you about the brand new series of The Girlfriends. In season one, we told you about the murder of Gail Katz at the hands of my ex-boyfriend Bob. At one point, a woman's torso washed up on Staten Island and was misidentified as Gail. She spent nine years in Gail's grave and then she just disappeared. It's almost like it's become this moral obligation to find her. And that's what we're going to do.

Find this missing girlfriend and tell her story. With the help of some of your favorite girlfriends from season one, like my producer Anna. Oh my god. My friend Dr. Mindy Shapiro. Hi, it's Dr. Shapiro and I'd like to speak with the Deputy Medical Examiner. And of course, Gail's sister, Elaine Katz. Having no closure, it kills you. Join us as we try to solve a 35-year-old cold case.

It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be one hell of a ride. What? I can't believe this. Listen to season two of The Girlfriends, our lost sister on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there, I'm Bob Pipman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. Welcome to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. This week I'm talking to acclaimed musician and entrepreneur, Mr. Worldwide himself, Pitbull.

A lot of artists in general, people that are very creative, sometimes tend to overthink. That's one of my number one rules. Don't ever overthink. You can think ahead, but don't overthink. And what I mean by that is when they start to write a record, they're like, oh, that's not the line. Oh, that's not this. Oh, it's not that. And everybody has a creative process. I'm not knocking it. For me, I just let it flow. In these exciting times, we're looking to the math, the strategy and analytics and the magic, the creative spark more than ever. Listen to Math and Magic on our very own iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Why do you think you care about it?

Is it really like to do this thing for your dad? Do you feel you have the same motivation he did? I think my motivation is different than dad's. There's a part of me that wants to do this because he didn't get to finish it. And there's another part of me that wants to do it, because I feel like this woman's real story deserves to be told. Like for people to really know the truth about what happened to her instead of just becoming a character in everybody else's life. Lorenzo Marsala was born in this village called Calta Malota, had a bunch of kids, and died

there at age 54. That's pretty much all we know of her life. When she died it was 1916. She still had two young daughters at home. The First World War had just broken out. Now that I'm a wife and a mother of three children, thank God it's not seven, her story just hits different. I'm getting closer to Lorenza's age every year, and I can't stop thinking about our family story from her perspective. How did she feel about being left behind by her husband for more than a decade? Did she miss him? Or was it liberating to finally not just be someone's wife, to finally not be getting pregnant almost every single year? Did she feel safe in her own village? Was it okay because she had a lot of her family members around her?

Or maybe she was in constant danger in this village surrounded by mafia bandits. I was asking somebody about her and they just looked at me and they kept saying, Morte, Morte, no. And they're like, they shut it down. They wouldn't talk. Really? You just said her name, you're like, Lorenzo Marsala Piazza.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And they were like, morte, morte, morte, no. Morte, morte. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Over the years, many of the Piazzas have gone back to Sicily looking for answers about our family's past.

And a lot of them have returned with stories of dead ends and also unsettling experiences that happened when they tried to find out more about Lorenza. They knew about the murders. They knew about it, right? Yeah, they did. My uncle Jimmy claims that when he was in Caltabilota, a bunch of police officers warned him off this case.

He said, you better drop it. Not in any threatening matter whatsoever, but just as a matter of you don't want to start it off. You don't want the vendetta to continue. And if the warnings from the cops weren't enough, they also got a sign from above. When we were there, we were at the church. Lightning struck the church. What? We were in the church where they got married and lightning struck the steeple. While you were in it? While we were in the church.

Shut up! Yeah, while we were in the church. We were in with the priest going through the records, right, in the rectory, and lightning struck the top of the church. We had to get out. Wow! My sister-in-law said, that is a sign. Get us out of here. I'm starting to think that maybe my family doesn't want to know what really happened. They're pretty attached to the stories that they've been telling themselves for all

these years. Well, that's interesting because I wonder how people will feel if we actually get to like a truth, will it be disappointing or satisfying or you know? I don't know if my family wants to know the actual truth. That's the that's the interesting thing. Like for as much as like people have come back here and tried to like dig up more information, I think if the truth ended up being less interesting than their story, I don't think they're going to change their story. I think they're going to continue to tell the story the way they want to tell the story.

But I need to know. I have to solve this mystery. I don't know if it's for me or for my dad or for Lorenza, but I have to solve it. So here I go. I'm looking for long-lost relatives, I'm digging through archives covered in dust, and trying to trace back a family history that's been twisted by secrets, omissions, and vengeance. I can't do all of this from my desk in Philadelphia. I've got to go back. Back to, as my dad liked to call it, the motherland.

I've got to go to Sicily, to the village of Caltabilota, where all of this happened in the first place. Back to where Lorenzo was born, and maybe, just maybe, back to the very spot where she was murdered. There's a landslide, there's a landslide here! This is it! This is the place! We have the absolute certainty, 110% that's the... 110% this is it!

I wanna see a picture of when she died. We don't have a picture of that. Actually a video. You wanna see a video? Videos didn't exist. I'm bringing all of you on my summer vacation. With my husband, three kids under the age of seven, everyone is coming to Sicily with me to solve this 100-year-old murder.

Now I think it's pretty clear that something bad did happen to her. Your father had his story that she was like the witch doctor. Could Lorenza have been killed by the mafia for being a witch? So I'm wondering how is the story similar or different than what you got? So I heard two stories. One story is over land. And the other story is that she was a witch. Well that's even more interesting.

What? That's all coming up on the Sicilian Inheritance. I'd love to know what the hell happened. Wouldn't it be great to solve this mystery? I feel good. My Sicilian witchy powers. I feel like we're on the right path. The Sicilian Inheritance is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The series is produced by Jen Kinney, Kate Osborne, Dara Potts, and me, Jo Piazza, with key help from Laura Lee Watson of Digging Up Your Roots in the Boot and Ciro Grillo of Sicily Roots. Many thanks to Giulia Peravicini and the Ancestry.com research department. You can get your copy of the Sicilian Inheritance, the novel, right now at truly anywhere that you get your books. Anywhere you get your books. It's got the same name as the podcast, but with more food, wine, and sex.

Also, do not forget to get a taste of Sicily in the form of delicious Sicilian olive oil at Cardena's Tap Room. Make sure to check out our show notes for a link to buy it. Or if you find yourself in Philly, just stop by. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Manga Shatikador, Costas Linos, and Oz Woloshin. From iHeart, executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Itour. From iHeart, executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Itour. We also want to thank Will Pearson, Conal Byrne, Bob Pitman, and John Marienopoulos. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating

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Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix. Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Hey, girlfriends. It's me, Carol Fisher, back with another season of the global number one podcast, The Girlfriends. Last time we investigated the murder of Gail Katz. This time we're uncovering the identity of the woman who was buried in Gail's grave for a decade before she disappeared. Join me and the rest of the club as we tell her story. Listen to season two of The Girlfriends,

Our Lost Sister on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine you're a fly on the wall at a dinner between the mafia, the CIA, and the KGB. That's where my new podcast begins. This is Neil Strauss, host of To Live and Die in LA. And I wanted to quickly tell you about an intense new series about a dangerous spy taught to seduce men for their secrets and sometimes their lives. From Tenderfoot TV, this is To Die For. To Die For is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.