Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 489 - We Are Your Baby About this episode This week, Georgia covers the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III and Karen tells the story of the Pappygate bourbon heist.
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Transcript 17,351 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Karen Kilgariff? This is Exactly Right.
0:06 Speaker 01 In New Orleans, truckers kept getting sideswiped the exact same way. When a man is found murdered under questionable circumstances related to these accidents, the rubber hits the road. And what the feds uncover is a complex scheme of staged wrecks, financial fraud, and a pair of conspiring lovers behind it. This is a story about fake accidents that led to real consequences. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
0:42 Georgia Hardstark? You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.
0:45 Karen Kilgariff? Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.
0:47 Georgia Hardstark? Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals, it's designed to relax and prepare you for a night of rest.
0:53 Karen Kilgariff? If you need a reset after your day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine.
0:58 Georgia Hardstark? Generously spritz each foot before bed and you'll be all set. I've actually started doing this and I'm obsessed with magnesium. It does everything.
1:05 Karen Kilgariff? Something like this is just like, it's simple, it's easy, and it actually works.
1:08 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.
1:14 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
1:15 Georgia Hardstark? Hey, everybody, it's Georgia and Karen, and we're so excited to announce our newest podcast on the Exactly Right Network.
1:21 Karen Kilgariff? It's a show called Trust Me. It explores cults, manipulation, and extreme belief systems, and it's hosted by Lola Blanc and Megan Elizabeth.
1:29 Georgia Hardstark? They're smart, funny, insightful women who also happen to be cult survivors themselves. They'll be talking to other survivors, experts, and former believers to unpack how cults work, how people get pulled in, and how to get out.
1:41 Karen Kilgariff? So stick around after this episode and listen to the trailer for Trust Me, our brand-new cult podcast.
1:46 Georgia Hardstark? And after you listen, head over to Trust Me's feed and please hit follow so you can be there for their Exactly Right premiere on Wednesday, July 30.
1:53 Karen Kilgariff? And look for Trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:58 Georgia Hardstark? You're gonna love this one. Trust me.
2:01 Karen Kilgariff? Nice.
2:03 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
2:03 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
2:22 Georgia Hardstark? Hello.
2:24 Karen Kilgariff? And welcome.
2:24 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder.
2:26 Karen Kilgariff? That's Georgia Hardstark.
2:27 Georgia Hardstark? That's Karen Kilgariff.
2:28 Karen Kilgariff? And this is the podcast you're looking for.
2:31 Georgia Hardstark? Here we are. Come and get us.
2:33 Karen Kilgariff? Uh huh. Yep. New slogans. More professionalism at the top of this podcast.
2:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, that's the attitude you're looking for.
2:39 Karen Kilgariff? Hey, girly pop.
2:40 Georgia Hardstark? Hey, are you a girly that likes?
2:43 Karen Kilgariff? To slay?
2:44 Georgia Hardstark? Well, slay we must.
2:46 Karen Kilgariff? Stand on business right in front of us with your ears.
2:50 Georgia Hardstark? We stan you.
2:52 Karen Kilgariff? I have to have my hands on my hips like this to do my character.
2:55 Georgia Hardstark? It's a very like.
2:56 Karen Kilgariff? Modern.
2:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
2:58 Karen Kilgariff? I'm trying to be modern.
2:59 Georgia Hardstark? That's sus at all. Oh, God. I hate it.
3:04 Karen Kilgariff? I hate everything.
3:05 Georgia Hardstark? They must hate it.
3:05 Karen Kilgariff? They must love it. Here's the thing. Is this similar to when, well, you won't be able to answer this. I always forget. You're 10 years younger than me. When the Valley Girl song came out.
3:17 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah.
3:17 Karen Kilgariff? And everybody all of a sudden overnight started talking like a Valley Girl. It drove my parents insane. And I wonder if it's just like that same kind of thing where to us, we're like,
3:25 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
3:26 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God. Like, we have to talk like this. Like, it was that thing where we didn't understand there was an option to to remove yourself from the trend.
3:34 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
3:35 Karen Kilgariff? Because you kind of weren't, the trend was for you. You were in the trend.
3:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Shit, man. Are we gonna get into fucking sociology now? Because I have no clue.
3:44 Karen Kilgariff? Let's light up this bong and get into our version of sociology.
3:49 Georgia Hardstark? See, they don't even have, it would be a vape. They don't even have bongs anymore. Like, that's how fucking bad we are.
3:53 Karen Kilgariff? They're like, we don't know what that is.
3:54 Georgia Hardstark? We don't do bongs. It's actually bad for the environment.
3:58 Karen Kilgariff? It's a fossil fuel.
4:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:00 Karen Kilgariff? Bongs.
4:00 Georgia Hardstark? That's right. Speaking of, and can I bring them down completely?
4:04 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yes.
4:05 Georgia Hardstark? Are you watching One Night in Idaho?
4:08 Karen Kilgariff? No.
4:08 Georgia Hardstark? The new documentary about?
4:10 Karen Kilgariff? The Kohlberger murder?
4:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:12 Karen Kilgariff? No, I have not seen it.
4:13 Georgia Hardstark? So heart wrenching. And it's by our friend Liz Garbus.
4:17 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, wow.
4:17 Georgia Hardstark? She directs it. She's one of the directors.
4:18 Karen Kilgariff? Incredible.
4:19 Georgia Hardstark? So, of course, it's incredible and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, heartbreaking, but like, just really well done and not,
4:25 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I gotta watch it.
4:26 Georgia Hardstark? You know, gross.
4:27 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
4:29 Georgia Hardstark? You gotta watch it.
4:30 Karen Kilgariff? That story, I mean, still.
4:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, well, you know, he just fucking pled guilty.
4:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
4:34 Georgia Hardstark? Thank God.
4:34 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, thank God.
4:35 Georgia Hardstark? Thank God those families don't have to sit through the trial and the appeals and the, you know.
4:39 Karen Kilgariff? And hearing all of those and, and the kids that lived that like people are trying to somehow.
4:45 Georgia Hardstark? That's the whole first episode is the kids getting interviewed. They interview everyone.
4:49 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God.
4:49 Georgia Hardstark? And that's the whole first episode. And it's just like, you know, you couldn't have found a more innocent place to have this happen.
4:57 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
4:57 Georgia Hardstark? So it's really heartbreaking, but, you know, as a true crime doc, it's good.
5:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
5:03 Georgia Hardstark? Speaking of, we were gonna talk about Murder Land.
5:05 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
5:06 Georgia Hardstark? The book.
5:07 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
5:07 Georgia Hardstark? So the book is, just came out. It's called Murder Land: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser. And it's basically about the thing we've talked about, which is that between 1920 and the 90s, when leaded gasoline was legal and abundant, the rise in violent crime follows the same track of how much lead is in the air.
5:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
5:30 Georgia Hardstark? And so it talks about all these serial killers, mainly in the Pacific Northwest, because there was like smelt, there were all these like smelting, just completely immoral manufacturers of arsenic and lead and just dumping everything into the sky and into the fucking water. And all these serial killers came out of it.
5:48 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
5:48 Georgia Hardstark? It's so fascinating and heartbreaking.
5:51 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, I'm just thinking of just like, why aren't there more? Or are there more we don't know about? Or did they go, was it like the serial killing switch flipped in some people, but then other things flipped in other people?
6:04 Georgia Hardstark? Probably. I mean, well, in general, it just made everyone's IQ lower. It just kind of made like three generations of people less, you know, I can't think of the word because I'm a part of that generation.
6:14 Karen Kilgariff? Baby, that's us.
6:15 Georgia Hardstark? Because I was born in 1980, so I'm fucked.
6:18 Karen Kilgariff? I mean.
6:18 Georgia Hardstark? And my parents, my parents grew up in LA, so like, that's just, there's just.
6:22 Karen Kilgariff? That's all.
6:23 Georgia Hardstark? Lead city.
6:23 Karen Kilgariff? It's lead in the air. And also then the smog situation where it keeps it in the like breathing environment.
6:29 Georgia Hardstark? So if you're into history at all, I think that Murder Land is a really great book. You're gonna love it. It's fascinating. It's fascinating.
6:35 Karen Kilgariff? I want it.
6:36 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, you can have it when I'm done. I'm almost done.
6:37 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, good.
6:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:38 Karen Kilgariff? I can't wait. Well. Speaking of the Pacific Northwest and other regions of this nation.
6:45 Georgia Hardstark? Good one.
6:46 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
6:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:47 Karen Kilgariff? We announced last week that we are going on tour. Now, we are recording this episode, obviously, Monday, four days before it actually airs. So, we don't know what the status of the tickets will be when you are hearing this. So, we can't really tell you what's going on. But if you might still want a ticket, give it a try. Go over to myfavoritemurder.com/live. All the cities, there's pages for every city there and you can go on and see if they're sold out or not.
7:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, get those last tickets. Come to the late show. They're always weird. Oh, and we should tell people that the late show and the early show are not going to be the same stories. I think we didn't tell people that and so they don't know to get both tickets. Stay out all night.
7:27 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. We haven't done Same Story 2 shows since our first tour where we found out by people asking us and then being overtly disappointed in our faces. Are you doing the same story for the second show?
7:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
7:39 Karen Kilgariff? Remember that? I think it's Seattle.
7:40 Georgia Hardstark? No, because we said it on the stage and they, and I, like, there was a groan.
7:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. We didn't know. We're like, oh, so we, double work?
7:46 Georgia Hardstark? Double work.
7:47 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, sounds good.
7:48 Georgia Hardstark? Double work for that night. Same dress, though. Same, I'm not fucking changing.
7:51 Karen Kilgariff? There's no fucking way we're changing.
7:53 Georgia Hardstark? So, sorry if you wanted to see a different dress, don't get a ticket. But if you want to hear a different story, get a ticket for the late show and the early show.
8:00 Karen Kilgariff? We're immediately making this a negative thing when, in fact, people were very excited when we made this announcement. We actually asked Chin and our social media manager, hey, do you mind co-finding us some funny comments?
8:10 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah.
8:11 Karen Kilgariff? Stuff that people said. So, my first one that made me laugh so hard is Courtney on Instagram said, I'm skipping my son's toddler swim class tomorrow just for the fan cult pre-sale.
8:22 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my gosh. Send him with someone else, though. Don't send him alone.
8:25 Karen Kilgariff? Too bad. No, that baby will not learn to swim because of us.
8:30 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, I can hear him in his therapist's office in 20 years. My mom.
8:33 Karen Kilgariff? She loves true crime.
8:35 Georgia Hardstark? This one says, I'm canceling my honeymoon from Katie Them on Instagram.
8:40 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you, Katie. This one, Wild Lou from Instagram.
8:46 Karen Kilgariff? This is must be in reference to the video that went out. It says, do you stare each other dead in the eyes when you talk? It looks like it in these recordings, so I need to know. We just, we just talked about that. We had to like, record something that was supposed to be a promo. And we're like, it's weird if we're saying this to each other. But we do stare each other.
9:05 Georgia Hardstark? Sell it, say it, share it, say it, share it.
9:07 Karen Kilgariff? Have to. What if I was just slightly turned out like this?
9:10 Georgia Hardstark? So anyway.
9:11 Karen Kilgariff? George, I agree.
9:12 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, maybe you're looking at my forehead and I just don't know it.
9:15 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it could be.
9:16 Georgia Hardstark? Um, this maybe is one of the best ones off Instagram by the Wild Pine. Not me wondering if I can hold my baby in so I can make the Boston date on my due date. Been waiting for this longer than her arrival.
9:28 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
9:30 Georgia Hardstark? Here's my pitch, have a baby at our live show.
9:32 Karen Kilgariff? I mean.
9:33 Georgia Hardstark? That would be a bit.
9:34 Karen Kilgariff? It would be quite something.
9:35 Georgia Hardstark? You can't get, you can't paper press like that.
9:37 Karen Kilgariff? We're the real baby.
9:38 Georgia Hardstark? We are your baby.
9:39 Karen Kilgariff? We're the baby, that baby's new.
9:41 Georgia Hardstark? There has been a baby at our live shows before, so.
9:44 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
9:44 Georgia Hardstark? Just, you know, make sure.
9:45 Karen Kilgariff? Little baby and headphones.
9:46 Georgia Hardstark? So cute.
9:48 Karen Kilgariff? We also had a lot of people from small towns being angry that we're not coming to their small town, which we love. Bring that passionate rage to us.
9:56 Georgia Hardstark? You like that energy.
9:57 Karen Kilgariff? I love it.
9:58 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
10:00 Karen Kilgariff? Well, there wasn't really. Paula McCambridge on Instagram said, I sure hope you're coming to a tiny little town in Michigan's remote upper peninsula, namely the historic Calumet Theater. So Paula lives in Calumet, Michigan. That has, it's a town of 676 people.
10:16 Georgia Hardstark? And they'll all be there.
10:17 Karen Kilgariff? Hey, guys.
10:17 Georgia Hardstark? At the early show.
10:18 Karen Kilgariff? They all, they have to come to every show four times.
10:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Yeah, we've got Savannah, we know you want us to come, Australia, lots of Canada. Apologies. This is, you know, this is us dipping our toe and just kind of giving it a shot.
10:30 Karen Kilgariff? Canada's like, we can't come to your country anymore.
10:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
10:33 Karen Kilgariff? Our government warned against it.
10:35 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
10:36 Karen Kilgariff? Also, Anna Rose with two As at the bottom and two Es at the end says, want to make a quick trip to Okinawa, Japan? Kay, thanks, bye.
10:44 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
10:45 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, we do.
10:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, but I can't imagine that's gonna sell out.
10:49 Karen Kilgariff? And then Kay Taylor Gore said, please come remotely near Mississippi. You can even come to my house if you want.
10:56 Georgia Hardstark? That's nice.
10:56 Karen Kilgariff? That's a tiny little.
10:57 Georgia Hardstark? Next door, just people's houses.
10:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that's Maria Bamford did that. Did you ever see that special?
11:02 Georgia Hardstark? No.
11:03 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, it's the best comedy special. It's literally like 12 people sitting around a living room and it's kind of dark and she's up there.
11:09 Georgia Hardstark? And she just does like a tour of people's houses. That's so brilliant.
11:12 Karen Kilgariff? She's so brilliant.
11:13 Georgia Hardstark? She's so funny. I see her at the dog park a lot and I'm always like, hey.
11:17 Karen Kilgariff? She's the best. God, she's such a good comic. Well, that was fun. Yeah, so thanks you guys for caring and being excited. We are too.
11:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but tell me, look me in the eye when you say that.
11:26 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, oh, thanks, guys. Guys, it means so much to us.
11:30 Georgia Hardstark? We appreciate it.
11:31 Karen Kilgariff? Wide eyes.
11:32 Georgia Hardstark? Telling each other only.
11:33 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I saw a TikTok about someone who was like, if there's a man that you feel is somehow trying to intimidate you, don't turn away, don't try to get away. It's like, the best thing you could do is make eye contact and widen your eyes a little bit.
11:48 Georgia Hardstark? I just look super terrifying. That's good. I like that. I could do that in my sleep.
11:53 Karen Kilgariff? Right? Let the predator know.
11:55 Georgia Hardstark? Well, my favorite one, though, is that is when she is being followed by this dude and he says something to her and she turns to him and goes, you can see me? You can see me? And then starts chasing him? You can see me, okay? How can you see me? Like she's a ghost or something and I'm just like, wow.
12:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
12:08 Georgia Hardstark? That's, that's fucking ballsy.
12:10 Karen Kilgariff? That's creative. It's effective. It's not, yeah.
12:13 Georgia Hardstark? It's hilarious.
12:14 Karen Kilgariff? Going for it.
12:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
12:15 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, speaking of which, this is a complete left turn.
12:19 Georgia Hardstark? Where are you going?
12:20 Karen Kilgariff? Over here. Bye. Bye, Georgia.
12:22 Georgia Hardstark? Karen's turning. She's got, getting something.
12:26 Karen Kilgariff? This is a belated birthday gift for you.
12:28 Georgia Hardstark? For me?
12:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
12:29 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, I just want to, we have to point out that the ribbons are ketchup and mustard color.
12:34 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
12:35 Georgia Hardstark? Is that on purpose? Is that, is that a hint?
12:38 Karen Kilgariff? Well.
12:39 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God, thank you.
12:40 Karen Kilgariff? Mm hmm.
12:41 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
12:41 Karen Kilgariff? You said something a couple of episodes ago when you're like, on my birthday and I was like, oh, shit. Because the, the Italian hand was huge.
12:49 Georgia Hardstark? I, I held on to that for like three months, though. It wasn't specifically for your birthday, but I was like, it's coming up soon enough.
12:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
12:55 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
12:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
12:56 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God. It's a hot dog phone.
13:00 Karen Kilgariff? It's a hot dog phone.
13:02 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god. Where did you find this? Is it vintage?
13:07 Karen Kilgariff? Our writer, Alison Agosti, found that online and was like, I don't know. It feels like you never gave Georgia anything for her birthday.
13:14 Georgia Hardstark? Holy fucking shit. It's like, like a 1980s.
13:20 Karen Kilgariff? And do you know, this was used, this is Newman's phone on Seinfeld. Newman, the irritating neighbor.
13:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, of course.
13:28 Karen Kilgariff? He gets in trouble one time. There's an episode and he answers his phone and that's the phone he answers.
13:34 Georgia Hardstark? Honestly, this might be the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. And it's got its original box, which is like so big, you know?
13:41 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. I'm acting like I had anything to do with it, but Alison was like, don't you want to give this to Georgia? I'm like, yes, I do.
13:47 Georgia Hardstark? And when was the last time you held a fucking phone in your hand? Like, hang up. Like, people, you know, it's like.
13:52 Karen Kilgariff? Slam this thing down.
13:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
13:55 Karen Kilgariff? Hello, Oscar Mayer? Dude.
13:58 Georgia Hardstark? It's so weird. I love it.
13:59 Karen Kilgariff? And you can make it either tone or pulse when you dial.
14:01 Georgia Hardstark? I remember the, oh my god.
14:04 Karen Kilgariff? There's a redial R button. Shit, dude.
14:07 Georgia Hardstark? This is great. This is amazing. Thank you. Can we put it here for now?
14:10 Karen Kilgariff? You're welcome. Oh my god, yes. Hot dog phone and we should get this made into a real landline. And eventually, people can call in on the hot dog phone. Like, one call an episode?
14:23 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you. That is like fucking amazing. Like, I'm speechless.
14:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yay. Okay, good. I'm glad. Cause the Italian hand.
14:31 Georgia Hardstark? So much better than hamburger. Fuck the hamburger phone.
14:33 Karen Kilgariff? Fuck hamburger phone. It's a hot dog phone.
14:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, so much better.
14:36 Karen Kilgariff? I really, when I unwrapped that Italian hand, I was like, oh my god, I don't even know. I don't even know how I'm gonna match this thing. It's so epic and perfect.
14:44 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you. You did it.
14:45 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, thank you.
14:47 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you, Alison.
14:48 Karen Kilgariff? She had her eye, she had her eye out. She was like, how do we make this all work?
14:51 Georgia Hardstark? It's vintage. It's in its original box. Like, that is like. That's a shit kiss, not an Italian hand gesture.
14:57 Karen Kilgariff? It's a, yes, it's a positive.
14:59 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:01 Karen Kilgariff? But also, who was the person that bought that and never fucking touched it?
15:04 Georgia Hardstark? Someone bought it as a joke for their grandma or something.
15:06 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
15:07 Georgia Hardstark? That, right?
15:08 Karen Kilgariff? God, thank you.
15:09 Georgia Hardstark? Grandma always ate hot dogs.
15:10 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that's right.
15:11 Georgia Hardstark? Did your grandma have a hot dog phone or did someone you know have a hot dog phone growing up? Tell us about it at myfavoritemail@gmail.
15:17 Karen Kilgariff? Call us at 1-800-H-O-T-D-O-G.
15:20 Georgia Hardstark? Uh, no, comment and tell us if you had a hot dog phone on, on, uh, on this post. Okay. By the way, we have an Exactly Right network. It's a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media.
15:30 Karen Kilgariff? Where the Exactly Right shows go.
15:31 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
15:32 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
15:32 Georgia Hardstark? Here's some information about them.
15:34 Karen Kilgariff? Like, for example, we have a podcast called Ghosted by Roz Hernandez, and this week Roz is gagged and goosebumped for the arrival of Canadian ghost hunting duo Luke Hutchey and Matthew Finland. They share spooky origin stories and behind the scenes moments with their celebrity ghost hunting web series, Ghosting with Luke Hutchey and Matthew Finland.
15:53 Georgia Hardstark? So fun, getting the professionals in. I love it.
15:55 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, Roz must have been freaking out.
15:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. On Do You Need a Ride, Karen over there and Chris, welcome comedian and musician Paul Dankie. Love him.
16:03 Karen Kilgariff? The best.
16:03 Georgia Hardstark? Love to see him at a party. And they talk about disappointed dads, bathtub wine, and more.
16:08 Karen Kilgariff? I will, I love Paul Dankie. He truly is one of the funniest standup comedians. He's the guy that can play all over this great country of ours and do amazing because he's just the guy that like you want to talk to at a party.
16:20 Georgia Hardstark? He's very likeable.
16:20 Karen Kilgariff? And he is one of the first friends I made when I went back to standup after I, yeah, like my big return to standup, which was so humiliating.
16:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
16:31 Karen Kilgariff? And I made, like, he and I met at a show and it was like we were just immediately best friends. Love him.
16:35 Georgia Hardstark? He's great.
16:36 Karen Kilgariff? He's the best. And over on the knife, off record, Hannah and Pasha sit down with Anna Sinfield, who is the producer and writer of the podcast The Girlfriends. And they're talking about telling stories where women win. Anna previews the new season of the show, The Girlfriends: Jailhouse Lawyer, and Hannah shares a legal update on the Brenda Andrew case.
16:56 Georgia Hardstark? That is such a great podcast.
16:58 Karen Kilgariff? So good. It's so compelling.
17:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, yeah.
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18:29 Karen Kilgariff? Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Goodbye. Sometimes being a little salty is completely justified. Pair your salty side with something sweet with the new Salted Caramel flavor from Kachava. Kachava is a whole-body shake with plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and other nutrients to help fill nutritional gaps. Just two scoops provide complete nutrition your body craves with protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. Their new Salty Caramel flavor combines sweet caramel with a little salt so you get that salty-sweet balance along with the nutrition Kachava is known for. When the day demands your salty side, fuel it with plant-based protein that actually tastes delicious. I really do love Kachava and I really do think it does taste delicious for getting you through the morning.
19:15 Karen Kilgariff? Filling in the gap if you just need some protein and you need some vitamins. It's such a nice little treat.
19:21 Georgia Hardstark? It's such an easy way to get everything you need and it tastes good, too, which is just huge bonus.
19:25 Karen Kilgariff? So embrace your salty side.
19:26 Georgia Hardstark? Go to kachava.com and use code MFM for 15% off your first order.
19:31 Karen Kilgariff? That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code MFM. Goodbye.
19:38 Georgia Hardstark? All right, is that it? I think that's it. Da, da, da, da, da. I think I'm first. So for my story, we're gonna go to the summer of 1973. We're gonna go to Rome.
19:50 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
19:50 Georgia Hardstark? Have you been?
19:51 Karen Kilgariff? I have.
19:52 Georgia Hardstark? Of course you have.
19:52 Karen Kilgariff? I was recently.
19:53 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
19:54 Karen Kilgariff? I actually, for my last vacation, the last fall, I went to Italy. And then we've been joking about me doing a video for the fan call where I show everybody my pictures in a real boring slideshow style.
20:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
20:06 Karen Kilgariff? And narrate them, because they're just, they're the pictures everyone has when they go to Italy.
20:09 Georgia Hardstark? It's called Instagram. I don't know if you've met it.
20:12 Karen Kilgariff? I have not at all. I don't know her. I don't know that man.
20:16 Georgia Hardstark? Um, all right, so we're in summer of 1973, we're in Rome, and a 16-year-old boy vanishes off the streets.
20:22 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
20:23 Georgia Hardstark? It's not just any boy, though. It's not just any normal kid. He was born John Paul Getty III, heir to the vast Getty oil fortune.
20:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
20:31 Georgia Hardstark? Of course. What follows is a bizarre tale of ransom, severed ears, and a billionaire grandfather who refuses to pay up.
20:41 Karen Kilgariff? Can I just, first of all, I really love this story.
20:44 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
20:44 Karen Kilgariff? I'm very excited you're about to tell it.
20:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
20:46 Karen Kilgariff? My dad loves to talk about how cheap Getty was.
20:50 Georgia Hardstark? No way.
20:51 Karen Kilgariff? Because he can't believe that someone would be that rich and that, he goes, do you know? He goes, "Do you know that, uh, there was no phone to use in that house? You had to use a payphone?"
21:02 Georgia Hardstark? I have that in my story.
21:03 Karen Kilgariff? I'm so sorry.
21:04 Georgia Hardstark? No, it's true. Like, that's like, everyone knows that, apparently.
21:06 Karen Kilgariff? It's so hilarious.
21:08 Georgia Hardstark? Like, you're that rich and you put a payphone in your castle.
21:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:11 Georgia Hardstark? Like, it's a castle.
21:13 Karen Kilgariff? What, what are you keeping it for?
21:14 Georgia Hardstark? Well, I'll tell you even worse shit about this guy.
21:17 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, great.
21:17 Georgia Hardstark? But we can argue it, because there is, like, an excuse for it that he gives that I'm like, "I hear you, but you're still a dick."
21:25 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
21:25 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. Um, and so the main sources for the story are a 1974 article from Rolling Stone by Joe Estrahaus, who is the screenwriter of such famous films as Flashdance, Basic Instinct, and your favorite movie of all time? Showgirls.
21:39 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
21:40 Karen Kilgariff? Well, see this, he's the screenwriter of all those?
21:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
21:43 Karen Kilgariff? Okay. I thought he was a director.
21:44 Georgia Hardstark? All right, let's talk about J. Paul Getty. He amassed his fortune through the Getty Oil Company, which he founded in the 1950s, which kind of has a through line to that Murderland book, you know? Just people using Earth's resources to get wealthy and make other people work hard and then die early for them.
22:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. And when they get the science back that, hey, maybe your invention isn't that great for people, they're like, too late now.
22:06 Georgia Hardstark? They literally hide it. They literally hide it. This book is a little infuriating, I must say, like.
22:11 Karen Kilgariff? I bet.
22:12 Georgia Hardstark? Anyway, that's not this.
22:14 Karen Kilgariff? This is all this.
22:14 Georgia Hardstark? This is not this, this is something else. So, but his father had been involved in the oil industry in the early 20th century, you know, the rich get richer. People in LA, of course, know the Getty family name, thanks to the sprawling Getty Museum campus. We all have been to the Getty. It's an art museum housed in several palatial buildings that are owned by the family. And we also know Balthazar Getty, the actor.
22:36 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, such a beautiful young man.
22:38 Georgia Hardstark? The kidnapped boy's son.
22:39 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, right. The kidnapped son's son. The grandson, some call them.
22:44 Georgia Hardstark? But the kidnapped kid is his son. His actual son.
22:48 Karen Kilgariff? Right. No, no. Balthazar Getty is his son, right?
22:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, take that out.
22:54 Karen Kilgariff? No, that was fascinating.
22:56 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know where we are. Okay, so the J in, this is confusing, the J in J. Paul Getty stands for Jean, like the French version of John. He names his own son, John Paul Getty II, and then John Paul Getty II names his own son, Jean Paul Getty III, but most people refer to the third, the kid, as Paul. So, we're gonna call him that through the rest of this, just for simplicity's sake. If it gets confusing, just let me know. So, grandpa, J. Paul Getty, gets married five different times and has five children. By the 1970s, when our story takes place, he is quite literally the richest man in the world.
23:30 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, wow.
23:31 Georgia Hardstark? With an estimated fortune of about, you're gonna laugh at this, and we could talk about it.
23:35 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
23:36 Georgia Hardstark? One billion dollars.
23:37 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
23:38 Georgia Hardstark? Which is adorable in today's money.
23:41 Karen Kilgariff? That's why everything is so fucked.
23:43 Georgia Hardstark? So, how much would that be in today's money?
23:45 Karen Kilgariff? Seventies billion?
23:46 Georgia Hardstark? Seventies one billion.
23:48 Karen Kilgariff? One billion. Is it seventies, isn't that long ago, is it? Yes, it is. It's 50 years.
23:58 Karen Kilgariff? Fifty billion?
23:59 Georgia Hardstark? Seven. I knew you were gonna get it wrong because it's like too small. It should be bigger.
24:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
24:02 Georgia Hardstark? But it's not. But however, this is really interesting that Ali let me know. She said, "As an aside, the current wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, is worth about $381 billion." In fact, a fortune of that $7 billion today wouldn't even crack the list of the top 300 richest people." And then Ali wrote, "Just to give you an idea of how much has changed in terms of wealth disparity over the past 50 years." And I'm like, "I love you."
24:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
24:29 Georgia Hardstark? Right. So like, that is absurd and insane and unnecessary and gross.
24:33 Karen Kilgariff? That's what happens when you deregulate and you buy up all the representatives and everything goes fucking crooked.
24:40 Georgia Hardstark? Right. And, and, ah, okay. Back to our story. She wrote, "Back to our story," because she probably knew we'd go off on a tangent.
24:47 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. I'm so sorry, but why did I fucking put a sweater on at the beginning of this? I don't know.
24:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I'm hot. Always more AC. We're over 40.
24:54 Karen Kilgariff? So sorry, so sorry.
24:57 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you. Okay, and so in addition to being enormously wealthy, Jay Paul is known for being extremely cheap, I guess, which was news back then that everyone knew about.
25:04 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Well, I'm sure it's what a fun thing to talk about. You have it all and you're penny pinching.
25:10 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. Everyone loves that. And the most extreme example is that he had a castle outside of London called Sutton Place, literally a former residence of Henry VIII, and he put in a payphone so his guests wouldn't charge him for long-distance phone calls, which were expensive at the time.
25:27 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, a dime!
25:28 Georgia Hardstark? Calling, no, no, no. Remember calling long distance when you were a kid? You got in trouble because you called your best friend from camp and...
25:33 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, oh, long distance. I get you.
25:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. But I know, I'm, I know. I know. I know.
25:39 Karen Kilgariff? You're like, "It was expensive." I'm like, "A dime isn't expensive."
25:42 Georgia Hardstark? A dime in today's money wouldn't be. But here's a, here's a darker illustration of how he was so cheap. He had a son with his fifth wife, a woman named Louise Getty, who was known by the name Teddy. Their son, Timmy, is diagnosed with a brain tumor when he's six years old in the early 50s. It causes him to go blind. Jay Paul scolds Teddy for her spending on his medical treatments. Says she spent too much on them. Yep, Teddy dies from his illness sadly when he's 12 years old and Jay Paul does not attend the funeral, saying he's too busy with work. So it's basically, it's basically, what's his name in The Simpsons, Monty?
26:23 Karen Kilgariff? Oh yeah, Burns?
26:24 Georgia Hardstark? Mr. Burns, yeah, think of him.
26:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, I mean, either he's a complete sociopath, or he's making those decisions, and then when the like, effects of those decisions come up, he's like, I can't look at that or deal with that.
26:37 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, you're being kind.
26:38 Karen Kilgariff? Trying to figure it out. How the fuck do you have all that money and that's the way you're living your life?
26:43 Georgia Hardstark? Totally, totally.
26:44 Karen Kilgariff? You're miserable then, you're electing to be miserable.
26:47 Georgia Hardstark? Your life isn't happy, and so what's the fucking point?
26:50 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
26:50 Georgia Hardstark? Those are the people that like, on their deathbed, they're like, I wish I had, and it's always something they could have done, you know, spend more time with my family.
26:58 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, exactly.
26:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we all knew that. Spend less time with dickheads. Did you see that? Have you seen that meme? It's a guy with a strong Australian accent who says, spend less time with their kids?
27:06 Karen Kilgariff? Oh yeah.
27:07 Georgia Hardstark? And he's like, spend less time with dickheads? But the guy thinks he's saying, okay, stop it. Okay.
27:12 Karen Kilgariff? Focus.
27:13 Georgia Hardstark? Focus. So Paul the son, the teenager that we're talking about at the center of the story, is born in 1956 to Eugene Getty, you know, the second, and a woman named Gail Harris, she's a San Francisco socialite.
27:23 Karen Kilgariff? Hey.
27:24 Georgia Hardstark? I wonder if she knew your family?
27:25 Karen Kilgariff? She is really good friends with my mom.
27:27 Georgia Hardstark? Maybe your grandma cleaned her house.
27:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, for real. I was gonna say, there's no socialites crossing over with the Kilgariff or the Pat Knights family.
27:35 Georgia Hardstark? Unless it's like, she was called in as a caterer one night for the party.
27:38 Karen Kilgariff? Literally.
27:39 Georgia Hardstark? No, I'm not, that sounds insulting. Maybe she cleaned her, maybe your grandma cleaned her house. Your grandma was a...
27:43 Karen Kilgariff? My grandma was a maid.
27:44 Georgia Hardstark? A maid, right.
27:45 Karen Kilgariff? Absolutely.
27:46 Georgia Hardstark? So, I'm not being an asshole.
27:47 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, not in the least.
27:48 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you. And the family moves to Rome when Paul is two years old. And of course, Paul is born into a life of enormous privilege, but it's not a particularly happy one, as none of us are surprised to hear. He's a sensitive child, he just immediately is aware of the disconnect between his family and everyone else around him. Spends a lot of time alone, and says he has absolutely no fond childhood memories.
28:12 Karen Kilgariff? Oh no.
28:14 Georgia Hardstark? Like, I was abused and I have fond childhood memories. You know what I mean?
28:19 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
28:20 Georgia Hardstark? Like, it's so.
28:21 Karen Kilgariff? No, usually it's a mix, you know?
28:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
28:24 Karen Kilgariff? It's a, but that's absolutely awful. Also, it makes sense if you already are disconnected, if you are like the uber wealthy anyway.
28:33 Georgia Hardstark? Cause the only kids you meet are like, yeah, the people who work for you, their children, and they have to be nice to you, or they have to come to your party, and they just don't really, like that creepy.
28:42 Karen Kilgariff? Sadness.
28:43 Georgia Hardstark? Sad thing.
28:44 Karen Kilgariff? Also, he didn't have any dimes to make phone calls with, so.
28:47 Georgia Hardstark? Right. And like, yeah, woe is, woe is the little rich boy we know. Like, just, just bear with us for this story, okay?
28:53 Karen Kilgariff? But I think like, if you're gonna come in hard for that argument, it's like, but quality of life is not, as we've all learned, it's like, those people, Elon Musk spends a lot of his time on Twitter.
29:03 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
29:04 Karen Kilgariff? Fighting with people.
29:05 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
29:05 Karen Kilgariff? He could literally buy himself a whale and ride it around in the ocean if he wanted to.
29:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but I'd rather be lonely than starving, you know?
29:13 Karen Kilgariff? True.
29:13 Georgia Hardstark? Right?
29:14 Karen Kilgariff? Well, I don't know, sometimes you're like, party and you're starving, but you're like, how many parties did you go to in your twenties? We were just kinda like, maybe I'll steal some.
29:21 Georgia Hardstark? You're saying that because you were starving throughout your twenties, literally.
29:24 Karen Kilgariff? And in deep, deep debt.
29:26 Georgia Hardstark? And go to a lot of parties.
29:27 Karen Kilgariff? And I basically was like, this is better than having any money in my bank account.
29:31 Georgia Hardstark? We had, we had a really good time in our twenties, respectively.
29:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, we did.
29:36 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
29:37 Karen Kilgariff? What are we talking about?
29:37 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know. This is problematic, and the kids these days, no. But he loves reading, he loves hiding away with a book, he reads about oceanographers, he's just loves hiding away with a book, that's his childhood. In 1966, when he's 10, Paul's parents separate and his father moves out of the country. The two never spent much time together, but at this point, their contact becomes extremely limited. It seems like the dad and the families are not in it to win it.
30:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
30:03 Georgia Hardstark? So as a teenager, Paul, not surprisingly, has behavioral issues, he bounces from school to school, he has issues with any authority figure, and his signature move was to make himself throw up on the desk in class. I mean, that's aggressive.
30:19 Karen Kilgariff? It's wild.
30:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:20 Karen Kilgariff? My cousin Stevie used to hold his breath until he passed out when he didn't get what he wanted.
30:26 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
30:28 Karen Kilgariff? And he would do it all the time.
30:29 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my, why haven't I been using that?
30:31 Karen Kilgariff? I know, right?
30:31 Georgia Hardstark? That's good.
30:32 Karen Kilgariff? It's pretty, it's a wild one, but that's like intentionally throwing up.
30:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:36 Karen Kilgariff? That's pretty.
30:37 Georgia Hardstark? That's like a, that's a sign.
30:38 Karen Kilgariff? Stevie's thing was more internal. That's like he did it to himself.
30:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:41 Karen Kilgariff? But that's, you're doing it to everyone else.
30:43 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
30:44 Karen Kilgariff? So gross.
30:45 Georgia Hardstark? However, he's still actually popular surprisingly with other students because they like agree with him that this sucks enough to make yourself throw up on, I, I, who knows what the story is there?
30:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, maybe they just thought it was cool.
30:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Despite these major issues, Paul is actually his grandfather, his dick of a grandfather's favorite grandchild, and Jay Paul tells him that repeatedly. And then around this time, Paul's dad Eugene, who left, marries another woman. Her name is Talitha Paul. And she dies tragically young at the age of 31 in 1971, maybe from a heroin overdose, maybe cardiac arrest due to the mixture of alcohol and barbiturates. It's like a little sus fish, a little sus.
31:23 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
31:23 Georgia Hardstark? Um, and so all this is to say that in 1973, Paul is now 16 years old. He's incredibly privileged. And his life has also been incredibly chaotic. He's a cutie pie. He's got the like long seventies curly hair. What was that like? Um, name some heart throbs from the seventies.
31:42 Karen Kilgariff? Andy Gibb, Leaf Garrett.
31:44 Georgia Hardstark? He's got Leaf Garrett vibes slash, what was the other one who was the sibling, all the siblings?
31:49 Karen Kilgariff? On Eight is Enough?
31:50 Georgia Hardstark? No, in the like their band, their band, they all had a band.
31:54 Karen Kilgariff? The Osmonds?
31:56 Georgia Hardstark? Osmonds.
31:57 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
31:57 Georgia Hardstark? Donny.
31:58 Karen Kilgariff? Right? Donny Osmond?
32:00 Georgia Hardstark? Is that right?
32:00 Karen Kilgariff? He's the one that had the big teeth and he's, he's Mormon.
32:03 Georgia Hardstark? Well, here, look at his face. He's got Donny Osmond vibes, kind of Leaf, he's got that like cute.
32:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. He's cute and he's kind of like, he actually looks like Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge Family. Is that who you were thinking of?
32:14 Georgia Hardstark? Probably all of the above.
32:15 Karen Kilgariff? He's a kind of a mix of all of them.
32:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. He's like a cute, little cutie pie. He looks like, has a sweet little face.
32:21 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. He looks like the kind of boy that you would pick because you would think he might like, it's not like he's dashing.
32:27 Georgia Hardstark? And he looks like he's gonna be so hot when he's older too, like he has, right?
32:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, because he has almost like a poetic winsome kind of face.
32:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, totally.
32:36 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
32:38 Georgia Hardstark? Don't get sad.
32:39 Karen Kilgariff? His mother looks like Julie Christie.
32:41 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah.
32:43 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, anyway. Oh, no.
32:45 Georgia Hardstark? I know. His grandpa looks like Monty Burns.
32:47 Karen Kilgariff? Give me a dime.
32:48 Georgia Hardstark? You know who, you know who played him in the movie that came out recently?
32:50 Karen Kilgariff? Donald Sutherland.
32:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
32:53 Karen Kilgariff? I saw it.
32:54 Georgia Hardstark? But who did, who did Christopher Plummer play?
32:57 Karen Kilgariff? Christopher Plummer. Oh, did Christopher Plummer play it and not Donald Sutherland?
33:00 Georgia Hardstark? I think, yeah, but he looks like Donald Sutherland. But you know, Kevin Spacey was cast originally. And that's the movie that they had to stop and redo because of the allegations against
33:11 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
33:12 Georgia Hardstark? Kevin Spacey. And so Christopher Plummer took his place.
33:14 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, that's amazing.
33:15 Georgia Hardstark? And got nominated for an Oscar. The movie's called All The Money In The World.
33:18 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, okay.
33:19 Georgia Hardstark? Did you see that?
33:19 Karen Kilgariff? No, I'm thinking of the, the one they made on FX.
33:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
33:23 Karen Kilgariff? And I think that was Donald Sutherland, because I just remember the fucking phone. The phone with the
33:29 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
33:29 Karen Kilgariff? Like, he made a normal phone into a payphone.
33:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. It looks like, he looks like Donald Sutherland.
33:34 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
33:35 Georgia Hardstark? And Christopher Plummer. He's living at this point in an apartment with friends at 16 in Rome, not really going to school, partying with celebrities in fucking Rome, like Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. There's a huge disco scene in Rome, like, take me there. Can you imagine?
33:51 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my, in the 80s?
33:52 Georgia Hardstark? In the 70s, early 70s. So like, every
33:55 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, shit.
33:55 Georgia Hardstark? It's, everything is a go.
33:57 Karen Kilgariff? Also, the people there are so good-looking.
34:00 Georgia Hardstark? Are they? I bet.
34:01 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that's just like, they just are. It's like, they're like chic and good-looking
34:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
34:06 Karen Kilgariff? in the day-to-day.
34:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. When he's not out partying, he's mostly, he mostly hangs out in the Piazza Navona.
34:12 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm.
34:12 Georgia Hardstark? Did you go there?
34:13 Karen Kilgariff? Probably.
34:14 Georgia Hardstark? It's a popular tourist destination in the center of Rome with this famous fountain.
34:18 Karen Kilgariff? Dude, did I tell you my Trevi Fountain story really quick?
34:21 Georgia Hardstark? It's not Trevi Fountain, but it's, yes.
34:23 Karen Kilgariff? It's a different one?
34:24 Georgia Hardstark? It's a different fountain, but yes, no, you didn't tell me.
34:26 Karen Kilgariff? Just that it was, it was blocked off when we were there because they were redoing everything for the jubilee. And, but people, of course, still went and stood in front of the fence that was in front of it while they were cleaning it. And somebody, somebody near the front tried to throw a coin over the fence so they could still, even though it was like drained and stuff. But they ended up throwing it backwards accidentally and just hitting somebody else. And it was the
34:52 Georgia Hardstark? That's good luck.
34:53 Karen Kilgariff? It's so funny. It was so hilarious. And the person in the back got so mad where they're like, these fucking tourists, like, there's so many tourists there.
35:00 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God, I know.
35:01 Karen Kilgariff? It was wild.
35:02 Georgia Hardstark? But how was the Bezos wedding, though?
35:03 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God, I loved it. I loved Kim's outfit.
35:07 Georgia Hardstark? Kim?
35:07 Karen Kilgariff? Kim Kardashian.
35:08 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
35:09 Karen Kilgariff? She was all over that thing.
35:10 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, we're back. So, um.
35:12 Karen Kilgariff? I did not go to Jeffrey Bezos's wedding.
35:15 Georgia Hardstark? She wasn't even invited.
35:17 Karen Kilgariff? She, he is not talking to me anymore.
35:19 Georgia Hardstark? She gotta save the date and then no invite. Like, how rude is that?
35:23 Karen Kilgariff? They changed their mind.
35:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Uh, so Paul has some walking around money from his mother, but since he's not yet an adult, he doesn't have access to the family's fortune. I'm sure he does fine.
35:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
35:32 Georgia Hardstark? He sometimes sells paintings for money. Uh, but that said, everyone in Rome knows that Paul is a Getty. You know, his name gets him into clubs and parties, and unfortunately, it also winds up getting him kidnapped.
35:43 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
35:44 Georgia Hardstark? In the very early morning hours of July 10th in 1973, 16-year-old Paul has been out partying, and now he's wandering the streets of Rome, as you did when you were young.
35:55 Karen Kilgariff? What a place to wander around drunk and high.
35:59 Georgia Hardstark? And like, the lights coming up, it's so beautiful.
36:01 Karen Kilgariff? It's an, it's an unbelievable city.
36:03 Georgia Hardstark? You've had a couple Aperol spritzes.
36:05 Karen Kilgariff? You, get out there.
36:06 Georgia Hardstark? And some Coke.
36:07 Karen Kilgariff? Get some Coke and just a general, like, totally unrealistic life up until that point.
36:14 Georgia Hardstark? I'm 16 and everything's ahead of me.
36:16 Karen Kilgariff? And everyone kind of likes me because even if they can't get something from me in that moment, maybe later.
36:21 Georgia Hardstark? Do, do, do. And then he gets hit over the back of the head.
36:25 Karen Kilgariff? So is he walking by himself?
36:27 Georgia Hardstark? It sounds like he's by himself. He stops at a newsstand to get a magazine and a Mickey Mouse comic book, which is like, oh, he's a baby. He is at least drunk, if not more. And so a white car pulls up with four guys in it. They jump out and they hit him on the back of the head with their pistol butts. And then put a cloth over his face, and he thinks it has chloroform on it because he passes out.
36:48 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm.
36:49 Georgia Hardstark? He wakes up sometime later in the moving car. He's blindfolded, and the back of his head is bleeding, and his wrists and ankles are tied together. The kidnappers drive Paul for about six hours, and there was no air conditioning in bed either.
37:01 Karen Kilgariff? No, no way.
37:02 Georgia Hardstark? When they stop, they carry Paul out of the car. He gets the sense, he later says, that he's in the mountain area because of the wind. And he worries the kidnappers are gonna throw him off a cliff, but instead they lie him down on a blanket on the ground. So he doesn't know it's for ransom yet. He's just like, I've just been kidnapped. Every few days, the kidnappers move Paul to a new location. They feel mostly outdoors to Paul. He remains blindfolded, but sometimes he could tell he's like in a little hut or something. After what feels like a few days, the kidnappers bring him a pen and paper and ask for his grandfather's address.
37:37 Georgia Hardstark? Because they want to send him a ransom letter.
37:40 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
37:40 Georgia Hardstark? And Paul has to write it and he like considers like trying to write in code, trying to get like just somehow a message across and he's probably starving and hurt and he's like, I can't even think of how I would do that.
37:52 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
37:53 Georgia Hardstark? So he just writes the letter.
37:54 Karen Kilgariff? Here's how I would do it.
37:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:56 Karen Kilgariff? Dear grandpa.
37:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:57 Karen Kilgariff? You've always been so generous to me. I know that this won't be a big deal to you because I know how much you don't care about money.
38:04 Georgia Hardstark? It's not him. It's not him. And they wouldn't know it's him. Yeah.
38:08 Karen Kilgariff? Be like, something's terribly wrong.
38:09 Georgia Hardstark? Wrong. That's a good point. So that he does that and now Paul knows that it's definitely a ransom kidnapping and he, he knows that his grandpa is tight fisted. So he, he is like, I'm screwed. Yeah. He's not like, oh, good. I'll, maybe I'll survive this. He's like, shit.
38:25 Karen Kilgariff? I'm living in this hut from now on.
38:27 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Paul has been kidnapped by a group called the, the Undrangetti, a mafia syndicate that operates out of Calabria, which is all the way in the south of Italy. It's the toe of the boot. And in the 1970s, it's still a very poor area and very much run by the mafia. At first, people think that there's evidence that he like helped with the kidnapping to get some money himself.
38:48 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
38:49 Georgia Hardstark? Cause he's 16 years old. He lives by himself on Rome. He doesn't have a ton of money to his name. But it's quickly shown that he has nothing to do with the plot.
38:56 Karen Kilgariff? He knows.
38:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
38:57 Karen Kilgariff? That's not the way to do it.
38:58 Georgia Hardstark? They're not getting ransom money and I wouldn't get any of the ransom money that you guys got. So he has nothing to do with it. Okay. So then on July 18th, a ransom letter arrives, one to Gail, the mother, and one to Jay Palgetti, the grandpa. Gail's letter says, quote, "Dear mummy, I have fallen into the hands of kidnappers. Don't let me be killed. Arrange things so that the police don't intervene. You must absolutely not take this thing as a joke. Try and get in contact with the kidnappers in the manner and the way they tell you. Don't let the public know about the negotiations if you don't want me killed." He's like, please don't take this as a joke.
39:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
39:33 Georgia Hardstark? And no, this isn't just me running away. Like, I know I've done shitty things and like weird stuff in the past and I party all night, but this is not that.
39:40 Karen Kilgariff? You have to get all of that said in one letter of like, okay, we don't hang up.
39:43 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
39:44 Karen Kilgariff? But as in a letter.
39:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, exactly.
39:46 Karen Kilgariff? It's horrible.
39:46 Georgia Hardstark? I want to live and to be free again. Don't publicize my kidnapping. Pay, I beg you. Pay as soon as possible if you wish me well. This is all you have to know. If you delay, it is very dangerous for me. I love you, Paul. End quote. And to his grandpa, he simply says, quote, "I know we haven't been very close, but I hope you know that I love you. Please do whatever you can to get me out of here. This is serious. Love, Paul." That's kind of like all he can.
40:12 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, he doesn't, he knows the other way won't work.
40:14 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. Despite Paul's warnings not to publicize the kidnapping, the news gets out and J. Paul Getty releases a statement to the press saying he doesn't plan to pay any ransom. And now, let's play devil's advocate. He says, quote, "Although I see my grandson infrequently and I'm not particularly close to him..." Didn't need to say that. That didn't need to be.
40:35 Karen Kilgariff? No connections.
40:36 Georgia Hardstark? No.
40:36 Karen Kilgariff? No. Don't care.
40:37 Georgia Hardstark? "I love him nonetheless." Like, just say you love him. You don't have to, okay. "However, I don't believe in paying kidnappers. I have 14 other grandchildren and if I pay one penny now, then I'll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren."
40:50 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
40:50 Georgia Hardstark? End quote. Which is, yeah. Don't negotiate with terrorists. Like, that makes sense.
40:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, it does. It completely does.
40:58 Georgia Hardstark? But you're still, you're still in a hard place.
41:00 Karen Kilgariff? But also, the way he's lived the rest of his life makes no sense. So it's like, suddenly he's making all kinds of sense where it's like.
41:06 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
41:06 Karen Kilgariff? Cough up the fucking brain cancer money. Would you please?
41:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
41:11 Karen Kilgariff? Like, what are you doing?
41:12 Georgia Hardstark? Brain cancer was holding your kid ransom before and you didn't care.
41:16 Karen Kilgariff? Ouch.
41:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
41:17 Karen Kilgariff? So, I suggested that, but then you put it in the perfect statement.
41:21 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah.
41:21 Karen Kilgariff? So now it's.
41:22 Georgia Hardstark? You were being subtle.
41:22 Karen Kilgariff? You're being mean, not me. Just kidding. Don't be mean to J. Paul Getty.
41:26 Georgia Hardstark? I'll never be allowed in the Getty again.
41:28 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
41:28 Georgia Hardstark? I'm like on the banned list. Fine, I don't like museums.
41:31 Karen Kilgariff? Your picture's right there in the ticket booth.
41:34 Georgia Hardstark? My painting is right there in.
41:35 Karen Kilgariff? Did you say I don't like museums anyway?
41:37 Georgia Hardstark? I was kidding. Gail, the mom instructs the kidnappers to speak with the family lawyer and they have the rest of the correspondence with him. They tell the lawyer that they want 10 billion lira, which is about 17 million dollars. You want to guess what that is in today's money?
41:52 Karen Kilgariff? 17 million dollars, 10 billion lira would in today's money be 30 billion lira, which would be roughly around, um, well, you said no already.
42:03 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no, I thought you were saying 30, no.
42:04 Karen Kilgariff? 25?
42:05 Georgia Hardstark? 122 million.
42:06 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, shit.
42:07 Georgia Hardstark? So they went, they went high.
42:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, they did.
42:09 Georgia Hardstark? The kidnappers go back and forth negotiating with the lawyer for weeks, negotiating for this person's life, turns into months. And meanwhile, the Italian police have basically dismissed the whole thing, saying it's either a hoax or that Paul himself orchestrated the kidnapping. So no one's taking it seriously.
42:24 Karen Kilgariff? Again, that thing the police do where they're like, no work for us here. Cause we've theorized that there is no work for us here.
42:31 Georgia Hardstark? You know what I bet? That's what they said. I bet it's this.
42:33 Karen Kilgariff? I bet it's not real.
42:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. While this is going on, Paul's kidnappers continue to move him around. He's got to be so fucking bummed at this point. Eventually, they march him for eight hours up a high mountain to a cave and he thinks later that it's an abandoned Nazi bunker. So he's not anywhere comfortable. In October of 1973, okay, this is when it gets serious for him. They say that they're going to give him a haircut and he is like, oh no.
42:57 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
42:58 Georgia Hardstark? Thinking they're about to slice off one of his fingers. But they do give him a haircut and then they pour alcohol all over one side of his head and they cut off his ear. And you can see it in the photos later, like ear is gone, not a tip of the ear. They cut off his entire ear, which is so just sad. He's in excruciating pain. He paves in and out over the next couple of days.
43:22 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, can you imagine? Can you, you like, I cut my finger so often when I feed my damn dogs. Cause I do that like dog roll or whatever that I'm always cutting up.
43:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
43:32 Karen Kilgariff? I'm like, you walk around with that for a couple of days, it's like, uh huh. This is so awful. It's your whole ear.
43:37 Georgia Hardstark? Your whole ear and you're in the mountains. And so the only painkiller he really has is alcohol. It seems like they give him a lot of alcohol.
43:43 Karen Kilgariff? Well, that's at least he has a, I mean, but then the hangovers. Also, he can never sleep on that side.
43:49 Georgia Hardstark? Ah, it's just like the pain. The captors seal the ear in a plastic envelope with a lock of his hair, so they did cut his hair for a reason, and a letter threatening to further mutilate Paul if the negotiations keep dragging on. They mail it to an Italian newspaper because they're like, maybe they're the only ones who will give a shit, which is smart. But here's the problem, this is so sad, there's a postal strike going on.
44:11 Karen Kilgariff? No.
44:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, so the ear takes three weeks to arrive at its destination. Like, what bad luck.
44:17 Karen Kilgariff? That's horrible.
44:18 Georgia Hardstark? For him.
44:18 Karen Kilgariff? Horrible.
44:19 Georgia Hardstark? Right? It's just like, it's just like a shitty thing.
44:22 Karen Kilgariff? Also, just like, why can't they just place him somewhere, I mean,
44:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
44:27 Karen Kilgariff? out in the countryside or whatever, just like, moving him around and always keeping him, like, in a cave or somewhere exposed.
44:35 Georgia Hardstark? Go drop that letter off at the, yeah, there's no, there's no CCTV at the time, like, just throw that letter somewhere and don't mail it.
44:41 Karen Kilgariff? Put it in a basement.
44:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. And once it does get there, in mid-November, the reporters contact the Getty family and the police, though the police still think the kidnapping is a hoax.
44:51 Karen Kilgariff? They're holding on.
44:51 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm. Paul's mom, Gail, doesn't have access to that kind of money herself, you know, of course. But at this point, Paul's father, Eugene, J. Paul Getty the Second, finally gets in touch. He's not in Italy, and he doesn't want to come back to Italy because he's wanted for questioning in his second wife's death. Remember, she died of a possible drug overdose?
45:10 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
45:10 Georgia Hardstark? There's not really evidence he has anything to do with the death, but it does seem fair to say that he doesn't want to deal with the Italian police. So Eugene says he's willing to pay a reduced ransom for his son of 1 million, which is about 10 million in today's money, but tries to simultaneously negotiate with his ex-wife, Gail, for custody of their children if he pays it. So he turns this into a thing about, about himself.
45:34 Karen Kilgariff? Right, of course. Like, he has to get something out of...
45:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, "I'll do it, but, I'll save your son," but the kidnappers reject the offer, saying they want 2.9 million, which is more than 20 million in today's money. They're like, "You're negotiating for your child."
45:50 Georgia Hardstark? His ear's gone.
45:51 Karen Kilgariff? I feel like my family would like get us some sort of a chili cook off together and raise money. You know what I mean? Like this idea that he has to keep passing it from relative to relative. You'd like to think.
46:03 Georgia Hardstark? Do you wonder though, like if they saw the ear, if they'd know it was his ear? Like, would you be able to like pick, pick your own ear out of a lineup? I don't know if I could.
46:12 Karen Kilgariff? I could, I just have, I have big ears.
46:14 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
46:15 Karen Kilgariff? So I think I'd be able to be like, oh.
46:16 Georgia Hardstark? Do you think they were, think it was like a big Lipowski little toe situation? Or like this could be anyone's little toe?
46:22 Karen Kilgariff? That's very true.
46:23 Georgia Hardstark? Right?
46:23 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
46:23 Georgia Hardstark? You should have done something more recognizable.
46:25 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, an ear is tough, although they say that they can use them to identify people like in aging and stuff like that.
46:31 Georgia Hardstark? That's true. Yeah. Okay.
46:33 Karen Kilgariff? But not separate from the head.
46:35 Georgia Hardstark? No.
46:36 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I don't know what people can do.
46:38 Georgia Hardstark? Let us know. Forensic, uh, people who are in.
46:41 Karen Kilgariff? Please write in.
46:42 Georgia Hardstark? Please let us know. So they want 2.9 million. It's only at this point that the family patriarch, J. Paul Getty, the OG, the world's richest man, says he'll pay. But he actually only pays 2.2 million, just as this is like a final fuck you. I'll pay it, but I'm only paying 2.2 million because that's the maximum amount that's tax deductible. What in the actual fuck?
47:05 Karen Kilgariff? Wow, these people.
47:06 Georgia Hardstark? Like, right?
47:08 Karen Kilgariff? And he's, he's also like, and I'm minus every time I had to make a phone call about this.
47:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:13 Karen Kilgariff? And that's, that's over a hundred dimes.
47:15 Georgia Hardstark? He pays 2.2, but to get to that 2.9, which they still want, he then gives the rest of the amount to his son to pay that part of it, so he doesn't have to pay taxes on it. But he gives it to him as a loan with interest.
47:28 Karen Kilgariff? Good lord. I mean, that's like.
47:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:32 Karen Kilgariff? Diabolical. And also like it's mental illness at that point. You just can't not track money.
47:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:40 Georgia Hardstark? All while the Italian media is running photos of his teenage grandson's severed ear. So I think people were probably like, felt pretty bad for Paul.
47:47 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, it was actually the kidnapper's best move was to just send that ear to the press.
47:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:52 Karen Kilgariff? Or just like.
47:53 Georgia Hardstark? Right, right. The Getty family hires an ex CIA officer to handle the exchange and in December, he leaves packages of money along the side of the road in Calabria. The captors tell Paul that they've received the money, but they have to wait until the next day, Monday, to release him because there's a gas shortage in Italy and no one is allowed to drive anywhere on Sundays. Like dude.
48:14 Karen Kilgariff? What is happening?
48:15 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know.
48:15 Karen Kilgariff? It was a bad time in Italy.
48:17 Georgia Hardstark? Thankfully, the next day, the captors blindfold Paul, bring him to a car, drive him to a remote location and leave him on the side of the road to be picked up eventually. And I don't know how long that is. The local police find him.
48:28 Karen Kilgariff? God.
48:29 Georgia Hardstark? Poor dude. Paul arrives in Rome to a huge amount of attention from the press and from bystanders. He's mobbed at the police station. Eventually, his mother takes him to a private clinic to recover. And then he goes to the Alps to rest and rebuild his muscles by skiing, which is like, that sounds nice.
48:47 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, you can also do that in physical therapy.
48:50 Georgia Hardstark? Right, right.
48:51 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, that's, yeah.
48:52 Georgia Hardstark? The Italian police ultimately arrest nine people for the kidnapping, but only two are ever convicted. Most of the ransom money is never recovered.
48:59 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
48:59 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:00 Karen Kilgariff? So they kind of got away with it.
49:01 Georgia Hardstark? Some people got away with it.
49:03 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
49:03 Georgia Hardstark? Gayle, the mom, suggests that Paul calls his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom, but Jay Paul Getty doesn't come to the phone. Yeah, to say, you're welcome for the ransom, my grandson. The Getty patriarch dies about a year after his grandson's kidnapping. And everyone said, good riddance.
49:21 Karen Kilgariff? With a roll of dimes clutched to his chest. I mean.
49:23 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
49:25 Karen Kilgariff? I can't let it go because phones, phone calls used to be really cheap.
49:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:30 Karen Kilgariff? So crazy.
49:32 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to me like harboring the local only thing. Like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
49:36 Karen Kilgariff? It was really expensive, long distance.
49:38 Georgia Hardstark? I wish I had like a really happy ending to this. We all want him to like go on to a happy life of charity and giving and everything, but unfortunately, he doesn't. He grows up, gets married, moves to New York, has a son, the actor Balthazar Getty. He's not surprisingly forever traumatized by his kidnapping.
49:57 Karen Kilgariff? Of course.
49:58 Georgia Hardstark? And will always struggle. He struggles with substance abuse and alcohol abuse. He's just not, there's no therapy for him, I'm sure. It's just, he's, like, not just the kidnapping, but that your family wouldn't pay it.
50:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. It's this idea of like your value.
50:11 Georgia Hardstark? There's nobody for you.
50:12 Karen Kilgariff? Your value, yeah. No one's on your side. No one's gonna fight like hell. No one's gonna do anything. It sucks.
50:20 Georgia Hardstark? And in 1981, when he's only 25, he suffers an overdose and this causes him to have a stroke, which leaves him paralyzed and unable to speak for the rest of his life. And he's in a wheelchair. It's so heartbreaking. There's photos of him and it's just like, you try to see the man he could have been.
50:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
50:37 Georgia Hardstark? And it's just, he never had a chance.
50:39 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
50:40 Georgia Hardstark? Paul's mother, Gail, cares for him full-time after that. And in 2011, he dies at the age of 54.
50:48 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
50:48 Georgia Hardstark? And that is the sad story of the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III.
50:54 Karen Kilgariff? That sucks.
50:55 Georgia Hardstark? Sorry.
50:57 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, dang.
50:59 Georgia Hardstark? It's just tragic.
51:01 Karen Kilgariff? Because I'll be honest, when I was watching the FX series.
51:05 Georgia Hardstark? Trust.
51:05 Karen Kilgariff? Trust.
51:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I want to watch it now.
51:07 Karen Kilgariff? It's great.
51:08 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:08 Karen Kilgariff? And of course, like, it's really well done, but I stopped watching, because I think it was a mini-series if I'm not mistaken. So like, if that is the case, then after three episodes, I was like, I just don't, the people that played the Italian kidnappers were hot, hot, hot.
51:23 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, wow.
51:23 Karen Kilgariff? And wearing like 70s, like, a leather jacket with like a big V, very disco hot.
51:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:30 Karen Kilgariff? So that was fun.
51:31 Georgia Hardstark? Ooh, I want to watch it.
51:31 Karen Kilgariff? But then after a while, you're just like, oh yeah, this sucks. And this is kind of this human condition where we get this idea of like, if I have X, it'll make me happy.
51:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:40 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, we know that because like, many people have been broke and that there's nothing worse than when you're stressing about.
51:46 Georgia Hardstark? No.
51:46 Karen Kilgariff? It's the worst and you're trapped.
51:48 Georgia Hardstark? It takes time off of your life, the stress of.
51:49 Karen Kilgariff? It's horrible.
51:50 Georgia Hardstark? Being broke.
51:51 Karen Kilgariff? And it makes you desperate and all those things. But it's like, but there's a desperation to being on that other side, which is.
51:57 Georgia Hardstark? It's hard to empathize with, but, you know, this is what we do as people.
52:01 Karen Kilgariff? But I just think it's really important that we care for the billionaires. At a time like this in America.
52:06 Georgia Hardstark? Try to understand the billionaires' point of view.
52:09 Karen Kilgariff? They're sad.
52:10 Georgia Hardstark? They have so much art. That's all they have.
52:13 Karen Kilgariff? Uh, we're joking, clearly.
52:15 Georgia Hardstark? Please don't add us.
52:16 Karen Kilgariff? Please don't take anything we say too hard.
52:19 Georgia Hardstark? Do you have something happier?
52:20 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, I do.
52:21 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, good.
52:22 Karen Kilgariff? Are you ready to turn it around?
52:23 Georgia Hardstark? Please.
52:26 Karen Kilgariff? The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Sonny's life is pretty great, until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his, with one exception: his mom.
52:38 Georgia Hardstark? To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sonny, he knows something is off.
52:44 Karen Kilgariff? As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.
52:52 Georgia Hardstark? Is this all in his head, or is there really an imposter in his house?
52:55 Karen Kilgariff? Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nevola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.
53:03 Georgia Hardstark? Watch the Hulu original series Phony.
53:05 Karen Kilgariff? Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
53:09 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
53:11 Karen Kilgariff? We've all had moments where dealing with healthcare or insurance feels completely overwhelming.
53:15 Georgia Hardstark? You're sick, worried about someone you love, trying to understand what comes next, and suddenly you're spending hours on hold, filling out paperwork, and trying to figure out who to call.
53:24 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month coordinating their own care.
53:30 Georgia Hardstark? Nobody hands you a roadmap when you're dealing with a diagnosis or ongoing health issues.
53:34 Karen Kilgariff? That's why there's Solace Health.
53:35 Georgia Hardstark? Solace provides personal healthcare advocates who average 16 years of healthcare experience and can help you get answers fast.
53:42 Karen Kilgariff? Think of them as someone in your corner who understands the healthcare system and can handle the logistics while you focus on your health.
53:48 Georgia Hardstark? They can help with appointments, insurance denials, medical bills, treatment options, and understanding doctor recommendations.
53:54 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows 92% of patients report a positive impact on their care from working with an advocate.
54:00 Georgia Hardstark? Advocacy improves outcomes, and Solace advocates are covered by insurance nationwide.
54:04 Karen Kilgariff? Eligibility varies by insurance plan.
54:06 Georgia Hardstark? Advocates do not provide medical or legal advice or services. Must be 18 years or older.
54:11 Karen Kilgariff? Go to solacehealth.com/murder to see if you qualify.
54:14 Georgia Hardstark? Takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.
54:17 Karen Kilgariff? That's S O L A C E health.com slash murder.
54:20 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
54:22 Karen Kilgariff? Vacation planning should feel like a breeze, not a deep dive into countless travel sites searching for the best deal.
54:27 Georgia Hardstark? With Cheap Caribbean's Budget Beach Finder, you can search every destination and every date, all in one search.
54:33 Karen Kilgariff? You'll save time and money with the Budget Beach Finder.
54:36 Georgia Hardstark? Say goodbye to endless scrolling and tab hopping and hello to Budget Beach Bliss at your fingertips.
54:41 Karen Kilgariff? Go to CheapCaribbean.com to try out the Budget Beach Finder and see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.
54:47 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
54:51 Karen Kilgariff? This one's light and fun.
54:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yay.
54:53 Karen Kilgariff? And I have to put my sweater back on.
54:54 Georgia Hardstark? What?
54:55 Karen Kilgariff? I'm 55.
54:56 Georgia Hardstark? It's so hot in here right now. I don't know what.
54:58 Karen Kilgariff? I got cold.
54:59 Georgia Hardstark? I'm sweating.
55:00 Karen Kilgariff? This is all I do all night long.
55:02 Georgia Hardstark? Back and forth, back and forth.
55:03 Karen Kilgariff? And I'm just like, get away from me. Hold on a second. I'm, okay. Okay.
55:09 Georgia Hardstark? I also found out that when you're on SSRIs, as I am, it makes you intolerant to temperature changes, especially heat.
55:16 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, so now you're like extra sensitive?
55:18 Georgia Hardstark? So when I'm at a party, I'm like, it's hot, right? It's hot, right? It's like.
55:20 Karen Kilgariff? Boiling.
55:21 Georgia Hardstark? It's not. Yeah, just me. Okay.
55:23 Karen Kilgariff? You're not alone. It's hot to other people, too.
55:26 Georgia Hardstark? It's hot to other people with depression, too.
55:28 Karen Kilgariff? Other people, menopause, depression.
55:30 Georgia Hardstark? Menopause and depression.
55:31 Karen Kilgariff? A lot of us with random heat syndrome, where you're just hot, hot for no reason.
55:37 Georgia Hardstark? Cool.
55:37 Karen Kilgariff? People who run hot. Okay, so my story today takes place in Franklin County, Kentucky, which is home to the state capitol. And what's the capitol of Kentucky?
55:48 Georgia Hardstark? Louisville.
55:49 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. Frankfurt.
55:54 Georgia Hardstark? Damn it. Oh, my God. I was, I wrote.
55:56 Karen Kilgariff? That's right, Frankfurt. No matter what you were gonna say, I was gonna pretend you said Frankfurt.
56:01 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, man.
56:02 Karen Kilgariff? You really believed you, you had it right.
56:04 Georgia Hardstark? I was so excited. Oh, that's embarrassing.
56:08 Karen Kilgariff? I'm so sorry.
56:09 Georgia Hardstark? Now Franklin is gonna be mad at me and Louisville is gonna be mad at me.
56:11 Karen Kilgariff? Everyone, it doesn't matter. Everyone's always mad at us. It doesn't matter. Now we have to go there on tour. Now we- We have to add a date. Here we come, Frankfurt. Here we come. Franklin County, here we come. That's what I meant. I said Frankfurt. Frankfurt is the city and Franklin County is the area. All of it, sorry. And we're probably pronouncing it wrong also because it's Frank Fort, which I'm sure- Right. It's actually Fort. The Fort is silent, isn't silent? It sounds like Appalachia. Okay. Give us an, what is it called? Pneumonic aid and we will remember. Always. So this part of Kentucky, this part of Kentucky tends to be pretty quiet. The population of Franklin County is around 50,000 for everybody. That means- For everybody. For everybody.
56:56 Karen Kilgariff? That means every resident of Franklin County can fit in Dodger Stadium. Wow, shut up. So it's small. That's crazy. People-wise. So when Franklin County made headlines in October of 2013, the people who lived there could not believe it because it wasn't just the local paper or the local news station that was reporting. The case that was being talked about was on the national news and then it went international. Uh-oh. But it wasn't the kind of case that normally gets that level of press. You could say it's actually a very Kentucky crime. Dozens of cases of bourbon had gone missing from one of the state's most well-known distilleries, a distillery called Buffalo Trace, which is based right there in Franklin County. It's good shit. Right? That's what's in this cup right here.
57:41 Karen Kilgariff? It's just all bourbon. Just like- A glass of warm bourbon. It's seven fingers of bourbon in Georgia's travel mug. So, you know, bourbon going missing normally would not ignite a media frenzy. But it was no ordinary bourbon. It was a very rare whiskey with a cult following. A single bottle could sell for thousands of dollars on the black market. It was called Pappy Van Winkle. Oh. You heard of this? I don't think I've heard of this, but I know Pappy Van Winkle, no. You do? I don't think I know this. Oh, for sure. I like bourbon. So this is the story of the Pappy Gate heist. And the man who'd find himself at the center of it all, and his name is Toby Kurtzinger. Wow, I don't know this.
58:23 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so the sources that Maren used for the story today are reporting by the Lexington Herald Ledger. There's a magazine called Garden and Gun, and that's real. Wow. There is an article in it by a journalist named Guy Martin entitled What Netflix Gets Right and Wrong About Pappy Gate. So it's like the definitive, like, locals knowing the story. Which is so the coastal elite, it's crazy. Yeah, for Garden and Gun. Yeah. I mean, hey, we have gardens and guns out here in California. We've got both. We've got both, but we don't think we have a lot of magazines about it. And then, of course, two episodes of the Netflix series Heist that feature this story. And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
59:03 Karen Kilgariff? So this all begins in 1988 because that's the year that a young man in his late teens named Toby Kurtzinger is hired by the Buffalo Trace Distillery. So Toby starts out working in the warehouse, and then over the next two decades, he basically moves around to different departments at the distillery. He works in shipping, then he works on the loading docks. So he has a very good understanding of how this distillery works. And on that Netflix show Heist, Toby explains firsthand that when he first starts working at Buffalo Trace, he isn't a big whiskey guy himself, but it is part of the workplace culture, as you could imagine. Everybody drinks, he picks up the habit quickly.
59:45 Karen Kilgariff? And according to Toby, everybody who works there also dips into the distillery's bourbon supply. It's not unusual for employees to head home with a bottle or two or three. Sure. And it's mostly tolerated and probably actually even expected. It's probably great business. Yeah. And it's like, you put that up in your cabinet and you pour it to your friends when they come over, and then that's just more business. Totally. So basically, a little missing inventory here and there does not draw much attention. And again, everyone is drunk, so who's to say? Just kidding, I put that in. So outside of work, Toby's world revolves around the local adult softball league.
1:00:23 Karen Kilgariff? Uh, he and his teammates are a tight knit group and they take the game very, very seriously. As men love to do with casual sports outings. Um, they actually go start lifting weights at the local gym together. Uh, they're always trying to get bigger and stronger and more intimidating on the field. Hit that ball harder? I don't know. Yeah. Toby even starts taking steroids. First fucking softball? Yes. Friend. I mean, cause winning is everything. Sure. And softball is everything. I told you about the year I played entertainment intermural softball when I was on speed. No. In the nineties. Anyone cool, anyone cool on the team? On our team? Yeah, that you can brag about. Mr. Shows, John Ennis. Oh. Mr. Shows, David Cross.
1:01:08 Karen Kilgariff? There you go. There was a lot of good people. I had one game where I was so high and I was so good at this game that people applauded for me at the end of the game. Holy shit. And I was just like, oh no, I'm just going faster than everybody else. I'm just like, I can see it. Your brain works, yeah. Just trajectories and shit make total sense to Karen Kilgariff. I am into doping for sports. I think it works. It works. It works if you work it. Yeah. So he's now beefed up. Okay. And great at softball. Good for him. And of course, he meets a woman at the gym named Julie. Sparks fly. They get married in 2001 when Toby is around 30 years old. And they quickly have two children together. And Toby loves his family, but he does have trouble adjusting to marriage, like the responsibilities
1:01:52 Karen Kilgariff? of marriage and fatherhood. He still is spending all his time playing softball, his passion. Okay. And of course, working out. So that means his wife Julie, who is a very busy real estate agent, has to pick up all the slack. No, no. So she is forced to give Toby the ultimatum, his family or softball. Like, that's just not something you picture in your like 10 year plan of life as like fighting with your husband about softball. No. You know? But I, it makes sense that like, I think if you... You didn't play sports in high school. I didn't. I did drugs in high school, so I but I played sports before. I played soccer before, pretty like aggressively. Okay. Yeah. And you were very good at kickball afterwards in the in the 2000s when kickball was fun.
1:02:37 Karen Kilgariff? In rehab. Oh, yeah. I played kickball in rehab. No, I got really good at table tennis because. But I mean, I think that's that thing where like, I remember, I wasn't even that good at softball, but when I left high school, I would have dreams about playing it all the time because it was just this kind of ritualistic, this is how I spend my time. Yeah, I'm not making fun. Like, everyone should have their hobby, but when it gets in the way of your family, then it's like. Yeah. You gotta. You gotta come on. Yeah. And also, women don't get the choice. Right. Which is the thing I think, you know, people are starting to realize now of like, yeah, you do just get to go play softball. Yeah, you pick. There is slack, and you're not picking it up. Yeah. Bro. Pick it up. So, he picks family over softball. Sure. He's a decent human being. Okay. But there is genuine grief over having to quit the team. Oh, he has to quit.
1:03:21 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, because she's like, you gotta come home at night. Yeah. Yeah. So now we fast forward to a night in 2008. Toby invites one of his old softball friends over. He never names this person, but in their hang, in his man cave, just kidding, I put that I added that in, he decides to pull out his special bottle of 20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle for them to drink. Okay. Pappy Van Winkle, by 2008, is worth around $1,000 a bottle. I had no idea. Yeah. And it's worth more on the black market. Yeah. So this is the stuff, it's because it's aged for 20 years and all that, whatever. It's very specialty. Yeah. And so, of course, he wants to treat his friend, and it's their special night and fun times. Yeah. And also, here's why 20-year Pappy is so expensive, because since its debut in
1:04:05 Karen Kilgariff? 1994, this bourbon has been recommended, heralded, and celebrated by everyone, from casual drinkers and bartenders to whiskey experts and celebrities.
1:04:16 Karen Kilgariff? The most important one being Anthony Bourdain.
1:04:18 Georgia Hardstark? Oh shit.
1:04:19 Karen Kilgariff? So that's like his favorite.
1:04:20 Georgia Hardstark? Connoisseur.
1:04:21 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
1:04:22 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. Oh yeah. He talked about it a lot. I fucking can hear Anthony Bourdain saying.
1:04:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Writer Paul Walker reports for New York Magazine, quote, "20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle has become the most covetable whiskey on the planet. Its defining characteristics are an unusual sweetness and an uncannily long, complex finish that's described as having the flavors of everything from cigar boxes to coconut to dried tangerine."
1:04:48 Georgia Hardstark? We gotta ask Paul Holes about that. He's a connoisseur too.
1:04:50 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I wonder if he's tried it.
1:04:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:04:53 Karen Kilgariff? Call him on the hot dog phone. Wouldn't that be amazing?
1:04:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:04:56 Karen Kilgariff? If you pick up the phone, any host-
1:04:58 Georgia Hardstark? Just go straight to Paul Holes. Oh, any host, yeah.
1:05:01 Karen Kilgariff? No, you're right.
1:05:02 Georgia Hardstark? I just want Paul Holes.
1:05:03 Karen Kilgariff? Straight to Paul Holes. Ask him a question. Hey, is it illegal to- And he has to pick it up.
1:05:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, yes.
1:05:08 Karen Kilgariff? There by his fish tank in his office where he records all his hot dogs.
1:05:13 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so over the last three decades, the hype around Pappy Van Winkle has snowballed so much that Buffalo Trace, which has a very long, very specific distilling process for this particular bourbon, just can't keep up with demand. They're only able to produce about 7,012 bottle cases a year.
1:05:31 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:05:32 Karen Kilgariff? So for example, Jack Daniels produces more than 10 million cases of black label whiskey every year.
1:05:37 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. Seven, how'd you say it, 700?
1:05:40 Karen Kilgariff? 7,000.
1:05:41 Georgia Hardstark? 7,000, okay.
1:05:41 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:05:42 Georgia Hardstark? Oh wow, okay, yeah.
1:05:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. So a Thrillist article describes 20-year Pappy as, quote, "The sort of thing that millionaires will fight each other for."
1:05:50 Georgia Hardstark? Guys.
1:05:51 Karen Kilgariff? Guys.
1:05:52 Georgia Hardstark? Guys.
1:05:53 Karen Kilgariff? You're softball and fucking thousand-dollar whiskey?
1:05:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, just come on. And listen, my husband's into professional wrestling, like, a lot, so I shouldn't be judging other people's hobbies.
1:06:03 Karen Kilgariff? I love any British film that involves Jane Austen in any way, shape, or form.
1:06:08 Georgia Hardstark? That's what yours is?
1:06:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:06:09 Georgia Hardstark? What's mine? Cats. Just fucking cats.
1:06:11 Karen Kilgariff? Cats, cats, cats.
1:06:12 Georgia Hardstark? I would have all the cats.
1:06:13 Karen Kilgariff? Hardcore cats. And vintage.
1:06:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
1:06:16 Karen Kilgariff? Okay. I also like to swim and read. Um-
1:06:21 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so it's obviously a big treat when Toby pulls this bottle out to share it with his softball friend. It seems possible that his friend has never even seen a bottle of 20 Year Pappy before. Because you cannot find it on liquor store shelves. And the lucky shops that do get it in only have a few bottles like a year. Then they have to decide, the liquor store has to decide how to sell it. So some stores have years-long waiting lists for it. Holy shit. Other ones raffle them off, like have it random drawn to see if they get their Pappy. I had no idea. Yeah, you might be able to find a restaurant or a bar that has it on the menu. But a single shot of 20 Year Pappy will likely cost you at least? $250. $100. Damn it.
1:07:06 Karen Kilgariff? I just realized as you were guessing, I was like, this is probably anticlimactic. That's what I was thinking with the other one. I was like, don't guess. You shouldn't guess. It's not that fun. Yeah, okay, $100 for a shot, though. That's ridiculous. So when Toby brings out the Pappy to impress his guest, it works. His friend is so excited to be getting to drink it. He even asked Toby if he can buy the rest of the bottle they're drinking right then and there. Toby does his friend one better. He pulls out two more bottles of 20 Year Pappy and he offers them up like you can buy these from me. Oh shit. And the friend happily takes the bourbon and returns the next day with a bunch of cash for Toby and a request for more.
1:07:47 Karen Kilgariff? And in Toby's mind, it's easy money. He has easy access to this very expensive bourbon. He's never gotten in trouble for taking anything before from work. And he genuinely doesn't think anyone will leave a notice if a couple more bottles go missing. So Toby figures he's just gonna steal one or two more 20 Year Pappies to sell to this friend. They weren't locking them up or anything? No, in fact, they talk about it. They had a very antiquated, like, security system in general. It was all very lax and casual. They didn't have video cameras. The, I'll talk about it later, but the, the place where they did hold it, the hinge was broken, so you could just like open the door anyway.
1:08:28 Georgia Hardstark? It's reminding me of the great maple syrup heist story, where it's just like.
1:08:32 Karen Kilgariff? It's just like that.
1:08:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:08:34 Karen Kilgariff? So Toby's taking it very casually. He's like, oh, this will be fine. But of course, when that cash starts rolling in, because it is so valuable, things quickly get out of hand. Toby starts showing up at local poker nights with a stolen bottle of 20-year Pappy, knowing that there will be doctors, lawyers, judges, and politicians there, the kind of people who want and can afford the price of the Pappy. It sort of becomes a promotional ploy, him showing up with that bottle and basically alerting the wealthy around town that he can be their Pappy hookup. And it works. Everyone wants Toby to get them a bottle of 20-year Pappy, and he promises that he can.
1:09:16 Karen Kilgariff? He says, quote, "You got people going, hey, I'll give you this for a bottle, and what they're offering is twice what you make in two weeks, and it's tax-free."
1:09:25 Georgia Hardstark? And you know, I feel like it's like that broken window syndrome, or whatever it's called, where it's like, it's not locked up, so he is assuming it's not as valuable to them as it would be. He's not breaking any, he's not breaking into anything. He's just walking in, so they must not care about it that much.
1:09:41 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
1:09:41 Georgia Hardstark? You know what I mean?
1:09:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's just, it's very easy to rationalize. I think that's like why religion was started, because if people are left to their own devices, they're just like, it's all about, you know? Like, that's a, we've told the story many times. Like, one of my first jobs, I worked at a cafe, and I was like, "I deserve to take $20 out of the till at night, so I can buy beer."
1:10:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:10:02 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, I did it twice.
1:10:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:10:04 Karen Kilgariff? And then the manager's like, "I think the janitor's stealing." And I was like, huh, yeah. That's when, when the rationalization meets the road.
1:10:11 Georgia Hardstark? Thankfully, you had that insight, at least.
1:10:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. And I had home Jim on the phone, who was like, there's some people, he said it like almost out of the blue one day, and he's like, "You know, there's some people, they just can't keep their hands out of the till." And then I was like, I'm not those people.
1:10:27 Georgia Hardstark? I know.
1:10:27 Karen Kilgariff? That's me.
1:10:28 Georgia Hardstark? That's good, that. He knew.
1:10:30 Karen Kilgariff? He, he could tell. So Toby's starting price for one bottle? $750. And it's normally like a thousand. It's, he's basically like friends and family, I guess. Smart. But if you go and, I, Maren keeps using the term black market. Yeah. But I think it's like any, it's so hard to get that you would probably end up having to pay this much. Right, right. So he's kind of like, I'm your guy that can get it for you for this. Yeah. But he's fulfilling these orders by simply stealing bottles from work as needed. Jesus. And as I said, the cage where Buffalo Trace keeps the Pappy has a broken hinge, so Toby walks in and out and takes it anytime he wants to. No one's looking. He can take as much as he wants.
1:11:14 Karen Kilgariff? So this sales plan obviously is not sustainable. And basically, very quickly, he can't meet his own demand. He's kind of like worked it around and been like the big man at the party with the 20-year Pappy, but he can't actually get it done, so he enlists some help. One of his first recruits is a friend at work who's a new father, and Toby figures he can use some cash. This coworker comes up with a very straightforward plan. They can steal the 20-year Pappy that's currently staged in one of the distillery's display cases. So basically, there's a bunch of bottles of it just sitting somewhere like for show for people that are going to be at the distillery. Right, it's like five layers deep and you just take the fifth layer? Just like the maple syrup heist. Yeah.
1:11:57 Karen Kilgariff? So the men simply walk up, open the glass case, take the Pappy out, rearrange the rest of the bottles to hide the gap. That time, they take four bottles of 20-year Pappy, which Toby sells to a local doctor for $4,000. Holy shit, no discount there, I guess. No, no. It's a doctor. Charge him an arm and a leg. He and his coworker split that money. And then word spreads around the distillery that Toby is the go-to guy for moving stolen bourbon. So a few more coworkers take note. One Buffalo Trace employee from the warehouse pilfers around 80 cases of anything he can get his hands on. What? Not even Pappy Van Winkle, just a bunch of other Buffalo Trace products, and dumps them on Toby's doorstep. 80 cases? Yes.
1:12:42 Karen Kilgariff? That's too many. It's not for Toby, though. He is able to sell the stolen liquor to two different buyers while no one at Buffalo Trace notices that anything is gone. Shit, dude. It's all so good faith. It's like, you know, like a small-time distillery that's like, "We've always treated our employees like family." And it's like, "That's your mistake." So Toby says this in the Netflix series Heist. He says, quote, "I was the kind of guy that you knew could get stuff. I was kind of like a mini Amazon. And if you got to talking to me and we became friends and you said, hey, man, can you help me get this? I'd help you get it. Boom. Helping you get something released, a small endorphin that made me feel good." Sure. So does stealing. Yeah.
1:13:27 Karen Kilgariff? And so does softball. So Toby eventually pulls a few old softball buddies into this scheme, some as accomplices and others as buyers. One guy works as a truck driver for another Kentucky-based distillery, a bigger one called Wild Turkey. Uh oh. This friend mentioned having access to entire barrels of Wild Turkey bourbon, and those barrels hold around 50 gallons of liquor each. So Toby winds up moving several barrels himself. Basically, his friend from Wild Turkey pulls his delivery truck over on the road and Toby pulls up behind him and they just put the barrels into the back of Toby's truck and Toby drives it home and hides it in his shed on his property. What are you gonna do with a barrel?
1:14:12 Karen Kilgariff? Sell it. The whole thing? Sell it to all these people that want this. But how do you bottle it even? I don't know. They're like, come and you have to put your head under the barrel? Yeah. You get three turns. Yeah, well, hold your legs up over your head. It's a great way to get people to party with you in your shed. Definitely. So depending on the product, Toby will sell these for between $1,000 and $1,500, a fraction of what they're worth at the distillery. So each barrel is valued at between $3,000 and $6,000, depending on the content. Wow. So he's moving like a bunch of liquor. Yeah. Again, no one at Wild Turkey realizes their barrels have gone missing. That's because it's such a massive, you know, a business.
1:14:56 Karen Kilgariff? At one point, Toby and his accomplices make off with a barrel of Buffalo Trace's high-end bourbon called Eagle Rare, and Toby sells it to a woman. Who tells him that she's looking for a special Christmas gift for her husband? We don't know how much Toby got for the Eagle Rare, but we do know that a barrel of it has a retail value of more than $10,000. Holy shit. Yeah. And that also, I have the same question, which is, is he selling, does this lady roll in a barrel of bourbon for her husband? And it's like, da, da, da, da. I think so. I mean, like- He tapped that shit, right? It's kind of fun. Yeah. And then you can wear it afterwards. Can go down a waterfall in it. Yeah. Okay, so by the 2010s, Toby is now in his 40s.
1:15:40 Karen Kilgariff? He's been reselling stolen bourbon in a pretty messy ring, made up of his friends and colleagues for years. But the side hustle does help him support his family. It's also given him a way to reconnect to his old softball buddies that he missed so much. Then, in the fall of 2013, someone working at Buffalo Trace Distillery notices something shocking. They're missing 65 cases of 20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, which is around 200 bottles of it, which would be worth $25,000. On the black market, it could be worth as much as $100,000. Holy shit. So for the record, Toby insists he is not responsible for all of those missing cases of Pappy, which does seem plausible. There's no security. Right.
1:16:24 Karen Kilgariff? A lot of people at the distillery know that he's doing it, so why wouldn't they do it? I mean, you know, kind of a free-for-all. Either way, the discovery drums up a ton of press, probably because some reporters refer to this as a heist, suggesting an organized, well-planned, Ocean's Eleven-style situation. And that, plus the Kentucky setting, the stolen loot being bourbon, and the name Pappy itself, all of this is like catnip to the media. Reporters dubbed the case "Pappygate", and they called the thief "The Pappy Bandit". Amazing. And they were bored that week. Yes, that's right. How fun, though, to finally, of all the stories that come across your desk. Oh, my God, seriously.
1:17:07 Karen Kilgariff? So as the story goes international, Franklin County Sheriff Pat Milton launches an investigation. His guts telling him it's an inside job. So his officers interview around 100 Buffalo Trace employees hoping for a lead. Meanwhile, Toby keeps doing it, presumably because he knows he has friends in high places. His buyers include some of Franklin County's most respected lawyers, cops, and politicians. That... So he must have felt untouchable. He's like, this is what the people want. Yeah. He even starts selling smuggled steroids alongside... What? ...Tallinn whiskey. No, no. It's a different thing now. It's like, he's like, wait a second, I think I'm good at this. I think I can do black market shit. Does his wife know anything? I mean... It doesn't seem like if he's finding shit in the shed. Plausible deniability. Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't have to testify against him.
1:17:52 Karen Kilgariff? He's out in the shed. Well, he had the barrels in the shed, right? He's like, honey, don't look in that shed. Don't go in the she shed. Don't go in the... That's my she shed. That's my man cave. So, here's the good news. No one at this distillery says a thing to the sheriff, so that investigation goes cold. There were no, no snitches at that place. They must have been proud, so... That's pretty amazing. I know, right? Yeah. Probably because they're all, maybe all a little bit involved. Totally. So a couple of years pass, then in March of 2015, a tip finally does come in. The tipster tells officers that a local man has barrels of bourbon suspiciously sitting in his backyard. And this is how Toby Kurtzinger first lands on Sheriff Milton's radar. Again,
1:18:37 Karen Kilgariff? I say, do not fight with your neighbors. Do not over anything for any reason. Yep. Everything's great all the time. Yep. Because you get to that kind of shit. Right, that's where you live. Yeah, you can't get away from them. So before long, investigators head out towards Toby's property, and they park on adjacent land, hoping to get a good look at the backyard without having to enter it, which would, of course, require a search warrant. Then they decide to walk through the woods a little bit, and as they approach the property line, they're hit with a familiar smell. No. One of the officers will later say, quote, "If you grow up in Kentucky, you know what it smells like. It's kind of a sweet smell, and when it's in a barrel like that, there's no doubt in your mind, you can smell bourbon." I can smell it in every dive bar I've ever been in. Like, you know that smell.
1:19:22 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, you really do. Wow, that's, that shouldn't be... Something's leaking. Well, and also I wonder if it's like, that's hilarious, because it's like, in Petaluma, at certain times of year, when they turn like, the chicken shit for fertilizer. That's what the whole town smells like. And I wonder if it's that thing that's like, from childhood, you'll just get a waft of bourbon. Totally. That's the biz. Okay, so from here, I had to explain to you how smells work.
1:19:50 Karen Kilgariff? From here, they easily get a search warrant, they find, they easily get a search warrant for the shed, they find all sorts of contraband, including five barrels of wild turkey bourbon, and a bulk quantity of steroids. Oh, that's, see, that's, that's federal prison. That's, that's his little store back there. Yeah. "I got everything from bourbon to steroids and more." Police also seized Toby's personal cellphone, which is bad, because that's what he'd been using the entire time to move all of these stolen goods. Yeah. So now the police have the names of Toby's accomplices, his buyers, even the details of the specific deals he's made. I beg. Because he's not a criminal. He's just like, casual guy trying to like- Burner phone. Who needs it? I just work in shipping. Totally. I'm gonna get a little money.
1:20:35 Karen Kilgariff? I miss softball. I work in shipping, like- Why can't I have some fun? Right. As investigators piece together this haphazard network, they ultimately recover around 20 barrels of bourbon, and two dozen bottles of Pappy Van Winkle. It's estimated that Toby and his accomplices stole and resold about $100,000 worth of bourbon in this entire scheme. Okay. Toby's immediately branded the ringleader, and he is handed felony theft charges, and a misdemeanor for selling those steroids. Oh. Yeah. I guess it's not- Theft and sales are not, I don't know. I don't either, but I guess, maybe steroids aren't a full-on- Right. -big deal narcotic? Maybe not as big a deal. Maybe he didn't have a large enough supply? Intent, maybe the intent, I don't know.
1:21:20 Karen Kilgariff? Maybe there was a mistake on the paperwork, when they were filling it out? Yeah, maybe it was actually just cotton candy. Yeah, that's right. And they like, thought it was steroids. People are so drunk on bourbon, that they're like, "These steroids are amazing." And again- We're gonna get in trouble for that. That's not the accent.
1:21:37 Karen Kilgariff? Don't at us. Don't, don't attack me for my generalized southern accent. So Toby pleads guilty and he's sentenced to 15 years in prison. We could have just called Paul Holes about the Oh, goddammit. Damn it. Class A felony, yes or no? Okay, 15 years. 15 years. Sheriff Milton sees this as a win. He stands up in front of cameras. He declares Pappy Gate solved, which must have felt amazing. Anti-climatic, maybe, too. I know. It's no Ocean's Eleven, that's for sure. No. And while what Toby and his accomplices did is, of course, criminal, at the end of the day, police only recover a handful of stolen Pappy. Much of the bourbon Toby is caught with is from Wild Turkey. Oh. Reporters from around the world are present at that sheriff's presser,
1:22:22 Karen Kilgariff? and the word of Toby's arrest is covered in papers as far away as Pakistan. Wow. People love Pappy Gate. Just try to tell me that town didn't have a cold case murder to solve. I mean, for real. Not to be a bummer. But still, like, can't we get involved in some stuff? Yeah. 10 people are ultimately indicted in Toby's Bourbon Ring. Several of them take plea deals. Only one person is ever tried, convicted, and sentenced, and that is Toby Kurtzinger. He will later say, quote, "There's an old saying, 'The devil deceived me, showed me something I wanted. It felt good, it looked good, but guess what? Sooner or later, that bill comes due." Damn. Very true, Toby. I mean, it's kind of, he probably kind of knew it the whole time. Yeah, just waiting for it to happen.
1:23:07 Karen Kilgariff? How do you stop doing a thing that's so easy and Right. seems like And if you know you're gonna get caught anyways, like, why stop now? Yeah. Just keep going until you get caught. That's like every heist movie, every kind of criminal, it's, that's Scarface, 100%. Amen. Toby does not end up serving the full 15 years. Of course not. Instead, he's granted something called shock probation, which is a Kentucky program that basically gives nonviolent first offenders some leniency. Sounds like a good idea. Great idea. He's paroled after just 30 days, and then he serves on probation until 2023. So for years. Wow. So essentially, it's just like Probation. Yeah. A long, long, long probation, so Ugh, those weekends of picking up trash and
1:23:52 Karen Kilgariff? And then he can't travel certain places. I don't know all the restrictions.
1:23:56 Georgia Hardstark? Right, can't play softball.
1:23:58 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God. What if it's softball only probation? You can't talk about softball. You can't go to the gym to work out for softball. So Toby Kurtzinger now lives a quiet life and seems basically to just be working on trying to mend his relationship with his family because there was fallout from the scandal.
1:24:17 Georgia Hardstark? Of course.
1:24:18 Karen Kilgariff? And that's, you know, that's the other thing that probably he never even thought of.
1:24:21 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:24:22 Karen Kilgariff? Of like when this actually happens.
1:24:23 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
1:24:24 Karen Kilgariff? How will it affect everybody else? So to this day, the vast majority of those 200 or so missing bottles of 20 Year Pappy from 2013 have never been found.
1:24:34 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:24:34 Karen Kilgariff? And in an unexpected twist, this story has only fueled the bourbon craze and prices of Pappy have skyrocketed since the news of the theft first broke.
1:24:44 Georgia Hardstark? I have no idea.
1:24:45 Karen Kilgariff? Right. So bottles of 20 Year Pappy that once went for $1,000 on the secondary market are now worth $5,000 or more.
1:24:53 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit. Inflation, I guess.
1:24:55 Karen Kilgariff? Right. And also, just like, it's even harder to get.
1:24:58 Georgia Hardstark? Legendary. Oh, my God.
1:24:59 Karen Kilgariff? Because now they put a lock on the area.
1:25:02 Georgia Hardstark? Imagine that.
1:25:03 Karen Kilgariff? Where you keep that Pappy. They took it all out of the display case.
1:25:07 Georgia Hardstark? Good.
1:25:07 Karen Kilgariff? Those are just plastic bottles. So in a weird way, this entire ordeal, while still being a bit of an embarrassment, has been great for Buffalo Trace's bourbon business. And that is the story behind the Pappy Gate Bourbon Heist.
1:25:20 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. Did he have to give any of the money back? Do we know?
1:25:23 Karen Kilgariff? I don't know.
1:25:24 Georgia Hardstark? I wonder if he got fined. Probably.
1:25:26 Karen Kilgariff? Probably.
1:25:27 Georgia Hardstark? But who knows? Honestly, I'm thinking about his wife. I don't think I'd leave Vince over that.
1:25:32 Karen Kilgariff? No way. Now he's trying to get a little cash going.
1:25:36 Georgia Hardstark? I'd be disappointed in him, you know? But I don't think I'd divorce him over that.
1:25:40 Karen Kilgariff? Because it isn't really, it's liquor.
1:25:43 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:25:44 Karen Kilgariff? It's just liquor he doesn't have the right to sell.
1:25:46 Georgia Hardstark? Right. And you could like argue about sticking it to the man. Although I don't know if, I don't know if Buffalo Trace is the man.
1:25:52 Karen Kilgariff? Are they?
1:25:52 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know.
1:25:53 Karen Kilgariff? Bullet. Let's call the Labor Board.
1:25:57 Georgia Hardstark? Excuse me. AreTheyTheMan.com needs to be called. Get the hot dog phone.
1:26:03 Karen Kilgariff? DoTheyDeserveToBeStolenFrom.com. It's a family business, then no.
1:26:07 Georgia Hardstark? No. Wow. Good one.
1:26:11 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
1:26:11 Georgia Hardstark? Such a good one.
1:26:12 Karen Kilgariff? Up note.
1:26:13 Georgia Hardstark? True crime, but up note.
1:26:14 Karen Kilgariff? This is what we try to do.
1:26:16 Georgia Hardstark? Fun and flirty, but also like serious.
1:26:18 Karen Kilgariff? Summertime.
1:26:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:26:20 Karen Kilgariff? It's a very hot dog phone coded episode.
1:26:23 Georgia Hardstark? It is. And that's all we try to give you people.
1:26:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that's right.
1:26:27 Georgia Hardstark? That. Is that it?
1:26:28 Karen Kilgariff? I think that's it.
1:26:29 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. Thank you guys so much for doing this with us again.
1:26:33 Karen Kilgariff? Also, you know, I have to say, after six years of not going on the road, George and I were very scared to find out whether or not anybody would care if we were going on the road again. And your response, you know, hopefully, we've said this already, but it really means the world to us that you still give a shit and want to come see us and are doing what you can to do that.
1:26:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we can't wait to be in front of you guys.
1:26:57 Karen Kilgariff? Screaming and pointing at you.
1:26:58 Georgia Hardstark? In cute dresses.
1:26:59 Karen Kilgariff? And talking about our, the pockets.
1:27:01 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:27:01 Karen Kilgariff? Stay sexy.
1:27:02 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
1:27:04 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
1:27:05 Georgia Hardstark? Elvis, do you want a cookie?
1:27:13 Speaker 03 Hey, it's Lola Blanc. And Megan Elizabeth. We're so excited to announce the return of our podcast, Trust Me, on Wednesday, July 30. Trust Me is a podcast about cults, extreme belief, manipulation, and high-control groups. And we know all about it because we're survivors ourselves. Each week, we talk to former believers, experts, and sometimes even the people still inside to analyze how these systems work and how smart everyday people get pulled in. Because it's not just robes and compounds. Sometimes it's your friend group, your yoga studio, your unlicensed therapist. We know what this experience feels like, and we're here to make sense of it. And now you can find us on the Exactly Right Podcast Network. That's right. We're so excited to announce that Trust Me has officially joined the ranks,
1:27:58 Speaker 03 along with Exactly Right's captivating true crime hits like My Favorite Murder and Buried Bones. Same show, same us, new charismatic leader. So if you're into cults, coercion, or just wild human behavior. You're in the right place. Trust Me returns on July 30 and drops new episodes every Wednesday, now on Exactly Right. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're going to want to hear this. Trust me.
1:28:39 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right production.
1:28:41 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
1:28:44 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
1:28:46 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.
1:28:48 Karen Kilgariff? Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
1:28:51 Georgia Hardstark? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
1:28:54 Karen Kilgariff? Follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
1:28:57 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:29:02 Karen Kilgariff? And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.
1:29:07 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
1:29:15 Karen Kilgariff? Vacation planning should feel like a breeze, not a deep dive into countless travel sites searching for the best deal.
1:29:20 Georgia Hardstark? With CheapCaribbean's Budget Beach Finder, you can search every destination and every date all in one search.
1:29:26 Karen Kilgariff? You'll save time and money with the Budget Beach Finder.
1:29:28 Georgia Hardstark? Say goodbye to endless scrolling and tab hopping and hello to budget beach bliss at your fingertips.
1:29:34 Karen Kilgariff? Go to CheapCaribbean.com to try out the Budget Beach Finder and see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.
1:29:40 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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