Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 506 - New York Favorites About this episode On this New York quilt episode, we revisit Karen and Georgia's coverage of the New York Zodiac Killer from July 25, 2024 and pioneering investigative reporter Nellie Bly from November 2, 2023.
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Transcript 13,679 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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2:01 Georgia Hardstark? Hello.
2:02 Karen Kilgariff? And welcome.
2:03 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder. This weekend, we're heading to New York City to perform live at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn. It's our last live show of this freaking tour.
2:12 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. So because of that, we're going to bring you a quilt episode today where we combine two of our favorite New York stories. So the first up will be Georgia telling the story of the New York Zodiac Killer.
2:23 Georgia Hardstark? And then Karen will tell you about the fearless investigative reporter, Nellie Bligh. I love the story.
2:28 Karen Kilgariff? So please enjoy our New York quilt episode.
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2:45 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye. The holidays are right around the corner, which means people are about to do a lot of shopping.
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4:06 Georgia Hardstark? I'm first, right? Yeah. Okay, so it's 2:00 in the morning on Thursday, May 31, 1990. We're in Queens, New York, in the early 90s. Okay. Look at it. This is the year New York City's homicide rate peaked with 2,605 killings. 1990? Uh huh. And for context, in 2023, New York had 386 homicides. Compared to 2,000? 2,600. Oh, my God. And it hasn't had more than 500 since 2011. So that is a big old number. That's important to know. Right. The early 70s through the early 90s are what people called the bad old days. And while there's currently a lot of fear mongering about crime in New York going back
4:51 Georgia Hardstark? to those levels, it's nowhere close right now. Yeah. So in the wee hours of Queens in 1990, when an elderly man is shot in the back, a special police unit devoted to violent robberies against the elderly is dispatched to the scene. The 79-year-old man named Joseph Proci is alive when the first responders arrive, and he's rushed to the hospital. Joe is a World War II veteran and a retired ice truck driver, and the assumption is that this was an attempted mugging. That is, until Detective Michael Ciravolo from the Senior Citizens Robbery Unit, like, they had to have a whole unit on senior citizens robbery. He examines the crime scene a little more closely. There are no fingerprints, but police do recover a lead bullet, and the sides of the bullet are smooth without the grooves
5:36 Georgia Hardstark? that a barrel of a traditional gun would make. And this tells police that the weapon was a homemade zip gun, they're called, which is something that wouldn't be particularly accurate and would have to be fired at a very close range. A zip gun can be made from materials as simple as a length of pipe, a nail, and a rubber band. It's like an elaborate slingshot, but you have to be close up. Wow. Yeah. On Joe's front steps, there's a piece of paper held down by three rocks. And at the top of the paper, the first paper, there is a circle with three wedges drawn in the lower left corner, almost like a pie chart with three little areas. In each area, in each little slice, there's a symbol.
6:17 Georgia Hardstark? They're crudely drawn astrological signs, Scorpio, Gemini, and Taurus stand for them. Hmm. Right? Gemini. That's me. Taurus. That's me. Oh, my God. Get ready. At the bottom of the piece of paper is a familiar image, a circle with crosshairs drawn through it. Oh, I know where that's from. Yep. In between the two pictures, the two drawings, is the sentence, "This is the Zodiac. The 12th sign will die when the belts in the heaven are seen." Belts? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. This is the story of the New York Zodiac. What? Yeah. I've never heard of this. I know. So the main sources are an episode of the Netflix show Catching Killers and reporting from the New York Times. The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes.
7:01 Georgia Hardstark? So Detective Cirovello sends a copy of the note to California to be compared with the notes from the known Zodiac killer. The Zodiac killer hadn't been active, as far as anyone knows, in about 20 years. So this is a surprise to everyone. And from the hospital where he's fighting for his life, Joe Proci tells the police that the man who had shot him had asked for a glass of water and possibly money. Joe had tried to brush him off and walk into his apartment when the man shot him from behind, but he can't tell them anything about what the guy looked like. The police basically move on. You know, it's, the precinct is Queens and Brooklyn border. Obviously, it's overwhelmed with new homicide cases that keep coming in, so they don't linger on this case. Yeah. Then, almost three weeks after the shooting, another note materializes.
7:45 Georgia Hardstark? This one had been sent to the New York Post, and a similar one is sent to 60 Minutes. The notes are a lot like that first one and have the same picture with the three zodiac signs. And this letter also includes a list of victims. Like the first one, it contains some spelling and grammatical errors. And it kind of just explains and gives dates and times of when he, when the New York Zodiac attacked other people. It turns out that all three of the shootings in the note correspond with real shootings.
8:15 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
8:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they, he had already done them. So there was two that happened in March. They had not been on the police's radars, being connected at all. But in each shooting, the victim had actually survived. And each shooting had taken place in pretty much the same area of Brooklyn in a neighborhood called East New York, with Joe's shooting being just over the border in Queens. So all in the same area, and now they're all connected.
8:35 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
8:36 Georgia Hardstark? Every time, the men who were shot had been vulnerable in some way. The first shooting victim on March 8th was a 50-year-old man who used a cane named Mario Orozco. Mario had been walking at night and was shot in the back as well. He had told police that the shooter had worn a mask, and the shooter then held a gun to his head after he fell, but he didn't pull the trigger. And the second victim on March 29th had been a 34-year-old man named Jermaine Montanestro. Jermaine had been out with friends that night. He had been drinking. He was walking back to his father's house in the same area of Brooklyn and couldn't really give a description of the shooter. So it just seems like the shooter had been prowling around for people who seemed vulnerable until the police make one additional
9:21 Georgia Hardstark? discovery. Each victim's birthday coincides with the astrological signs that were drawn on the note.
9:28 Karen Kilgariff? Oh. Whoa.
9:30 Georgia Hardstark? So, yeah.
9:31 Karen Kilgariff? What?
9:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Isn't that creepy?
9:34 Karen Kilgariff? That is... So it's not random and it's not like just somebody wandering around?
9:40 Georgia Hardstark? In case, unless it's a huge coincidence.
9:42 Karen Kilgariff? Oof.
9:43 Georgia Hardstark? But he's saying it's, you know, not, so.
9:45 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
9:45 Georgia Hardstark? Mario's a Scorpio, Jermaine is a Gemini, and Joe is a Taurus. And it seems to police that this shooter's plan is to try and kill one person from each of the 12 signs of the zodiac. But they have no idea how the shooter would have known his victims. None of them recall a stranger ever asking for their birthday. And all of them were conscious when the shooter fled, so they would, he didn't take out their wallet and look at their birthday. I mean, which would have been a crazy coincidence still. Right. Right after the police make these realizations, authorities from San Francisco get in contact and they analyze the letters and they are not from the original Zodiac Killer, obviously. Or, I mean, that would have been huge. Yeah, we would have known about that for sure. Exactly. Each of the three shootings is 21 days apart.
10:28 Georgia Hardstark? The New York PD brings in an astronomer and an astrologer to analyze the patterns between the shootings. They did. Uh huh. The astronomer notes that each of the three shootings took place on days and times when three specific constellations were visible in the night sky. Orion, Seven Sisters, and Taurus, your favorites. The astronomer says that the next time the stars will all be visible will be the very early hours of June 21st, which is only a few days away from that point. So there's a fucking pattern with astrology. That can basically anticipate what's gonna happen next. That's like straight out of a 90s movie. Yeah, it's very, um, what was the movie? Seven? No, wait, what's the one with, what's in the box? That is Seven. Seven, yeah. Mm-hmm. Got those vibes.
11:13 Georgia Hardstark? The police have been begging the press, particularly the New York Post, not to run any big stories on the case and the theory of the Zodiac links between the shootings. They don't care. They run a huge story and publish all the notes and all the details. So people start to freak out, obviously. The police chief gets on TV and tells New Yorkers to just be cautious if anyone approaches them and asks them for their birthday. And then also on that specific night, when it's predicted he'll strike again. Yeah. So on that evening, on June 20th into the morning of June 21st, police flood into East New York, hoping to catch the shooter. And the story here could be its own story. It's a lot about the discriminatory stop and frisk policing that becomes a huge part
11:58 Georgia Hardstark? of New York City for the next 30 years or so. Yeah. That happens a lot that night and they kind of just stop anyone who looks suspicious, you know, which of course ends up being a lot of people of color. Yeah. You know? Right. So the sun rises on East New York and a lot of men have been stopped and frisked, but the shooter hasn't been found and no one has been shot in a way that matches the New York Zodiac's MO. It's like, people have been fucking shot.
12:22 Karen Kilgariff? They've been shot, that's for sure.
12:24 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely. That is until later that morning when Detective C. Rubello gets a call from a detective in Manhattan who tells him that somebody in Central Park had been shot. The most recent victim is an unhoused man who had been sleeping on a bench in Central Park named Larry Param. He had been shot in the torso and there is another note at the crime scene, much like the others, but this one has extra lines insisting that he is, in fact, the San Francisco Zodiac. He's like, no, no, no, I swear I am.
12:53 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, he's communicating now directly with like the media?
12:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, and the cops.
12:58 Karen Kilgariff? Going like, you're wrong.
12:59 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
12:59 Karen Kilgariff? You have the theory wrong.
13:01 Georgia Hardstark? Right. So then there's another slice of that, you know, pie chart and in it is a cancer symbol. And it turns out Larry, the unhoused man who had been shot on the 21st, just like they predicted, just in a different area because he probably knew they were going to be there, was a cancer.
13:17 Karen Kilgariff? How?
13:18 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know. He survives the shooting, can't tell the police anything. He had been asleep. He does however, remember a stranger asking him his birthday in the days or weeks leading up to being shot.
13:29 Karen Kilgariff? Ooh.
13:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Which like, I don't know, would you notice that?
13:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
13:33 Georgia Hardstark? If someone asked you your birthday?
13:35 Karen Kilgariff? For sure.
13:36 Georgia Hardstark? Hey, when's your birthday? Like a random person on the street.
13:38 Karen Kilgariff? Because truly, if you move to a city.
13:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
13:42 Karen Kilgariff? This is the thing, just being from a hometown, just anyone says anything to you, who needs to know?
13:48 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
13:48 Karen Kilgariff? Is the first thing back. What do you need my birthdate for?
13:51 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely. But there's also the thing of like, you're in a big city, there's all kinds of, you know, personalities going on and you're interacting with the city and some guy on the street's like, hey, when's your birthday? I can tell you like about, you know what I mean?
14:05 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah, like, yes. Almost like they've gotten smart enough so that they're doing it in a way that's hidden in something that's normalized.
14:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
14:13 Karen Kilgariff? But what would be normalized? If people were guessing your birthday or asking your birthday besides like a nurse or something?
14:20 Georgia Hardstark? Like pick a card, any card. Okay, what's your birthday? Okay, put it back in the deck and then they run away. But you'd remember that, probably. I don't know.
14:28 Karen Kilgariff? Well, this guy did.
14:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but it's still not a lot to go on, even though he does remember this person. He doesn't remember any details about him. Right after Larry is shot, Joe Proci, the elderly man who had been shot in the back in the beginning of our story, dies in the hospital, succumbing to his internal injuries. So in one of the recent shootings, the letter that appeared has some additional drawings in it, occult stuff, some sketches, 666 is written on them. It's kind of hard to see what the shooter is getting at with all these additional occult references. But one of the letters does bring a break, a partial fingerprint, and there had been no prints on any of the previous letters or scenes. So New Yorkers, obviously, are freaked out. It's only 13 years after David Berkowitz was arrested for the Son of Sam murders.
15:13 Georgia Hardstark? So it kind of has that MO as well, which freaks everyone out.
15:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, just the wandering shooter, the night wandering night shooter.
15:20 Georgia Hardstark? With maybe like, who's maybe got some premonition about birthdays, too?
15:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
15:26 Georgia Hardstark? Which makes it seem supernatural and even more scary.
15:29 Karen Kilgariff? Right, that there's some kind of theory behind it that we couldn't understand.
15:33 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
15:35 Karen Kilgariff? But, you know.
15:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, a smart criminal, you know, that's scary.
15:38 Karen Kilgariff? An astrological criminal.
15:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:40 Karen Kilgariff? Such a Virgo.
15:43 Georgia Hardstark? So at the end of the next 21 day cycle in July, people hold their breath, police again ramp up their presence across the city and because now they know that they could strike anywhere, but no shooting comes, it doesn't come the next month either, and the shooter just disappears. Police officers know he hasn't been arrested for another crime because they have a print on file now they would have found him. So both of the main detectives on the case, Mike Sirivallo and Larry Milanese, retire feeling like they let the shooter get away. They wonder, you know, did he die? Where did he go? And then in August of 1994, so we're being fast forwarded like four years or so, the New York Post gets another letter and sends it to the police.
16:27 Georgia Hardstark? So the detectives originally on the case have retired. The new lead detective in the East New York precinct is named Joe Herbert. The new letter takes credit for five additional attacks that had already happened, starting in August of 1992, so two years after their original spree. None of the people in the letter are mentioned by name, but just by physical details and time and place they were killed and a brief description of the crime. So the detectives have to go back and identify those exact crimes and do they match the MO? The attacks don't follow the 21-day schedule the previous ones had, they're kind of random now. The letter does not include any mention of the victim's signs, although among them, there will only be one repeat.
17:12 Georgia Hardstark? Sign? Uh huh. Oh. A second Taurus in addition to Joe Proche. Karen just fist pumped because she's a Taurus. It is a silent fist pump for some reason, that's, uh, yeah. So, the first attack on the list is from August of 1992. It's the most brutal one and it's immediately recognizable to police as one of their unsolved murders. A 39-year-old woman named Patricia Fonti had been killed while walking late at night in Highland Park, which is near that same part of the Brooklyn-Queens border where the first shootings happened. Patricia had been stabbed more than 100 times. Oh my god. I know. And at the time her murder was investigated, no one found a gunshot wound and no one found
17:53 Georgia Hardstark? a bullet, but in this letter, they're saying, "I shot and stabbed this woman." I mean, 100 times. I know. Ugh. I know. And Patricia had been a Leo, her neighbors remember her as a lovely person, and at this point, the NYPD is overwhelmed with somewhere around five homicides every day. So Patricia's murder had tragically just been added to a growing pile of open investigations. Yeah. In addition to Patricia's murder, the letter takes credit for four other shootings, all a year later in 1993, and all in or near the same area, Highland Park. In June of 93, a 40-year-old man named Jim Weber, a Libra, was shot in the leg while he was walking. He survived.
18:33 Georgia Hardstark? In July of that year, a 47-year-old man named Joseph Diakon was shot in the neck at point-blank range on a pedestrian walkway, and he died. He was a Virgo. So they're all different, except for the, it's just like... Then in October of 93, a 40-year-old woman named Diane Ballard was shot in the neck. She survived but was paralyzed, and Diane is the only repeat that she was a Taurus as well. So the letter references a fifth victim, also shot in Highland Park in June of 94. All of the other victims had been easily matched to the police reports. But this one doesn't match anything the police have on file. They searched Highland Park extensively with like dogs and helicopters, and they never find any trace of this last unknown victim, which is so eerie.
19:19 Georgia Hardstark? So at the time, there's no computer database to match fingerprints. So investigators go through manually comparing prints to the print from the letter recovered in Central Park. Can you imagine? It's just, it's just wild to think about that, that anyone got anything done at all. Totally. Horrifying. Totally. They don't find anything. The case is tabled yet again, and Detective Joe Herbert, who was now the lead on the case, he moves on in his career and he becomes a hostage negotiator. Oh, wow. And because of this one decision, this isn't a cold case. Wow. And it's wild. Okay. So a year later, after that letter, in the summer of 95, it's time for Joe Herbert to do his very first hostage negotiation. He had been trained.
20:03 Georgia Hardstark? This was his first like on-the-job actual thing. Phew, what a day. I know, scary, right? That's big, yeah. Yeah. And it's the summer and it's like in New York and everyone's, you know. Everyone's in a bad mood. It's humid. Yeah. A 28-year-old man, Roberto Seda, has shot his 17-year-old sister Gladys and is holding her boyfriend hostage in an apartment in East New York. Hundreds of police officers swarm the area, and after basically several hours of back and forth, exchanging some gunfire, Joe urging Seda to come out of the apartment and let his sister get medical attention, Roberto finally surrenders and comes out. So Joe, of course, is thrilled. His first hostage negotiation was a success.
20:46 Georgia Hardstark? No one has gotten additionally hurt. The sister's taken to the hospital for surgery. She's expected to survive. The bomb squad goes into the apartment, removes two pipe bombs, and Seda writes out a confession saying he shot his sister and held her boyfriend hostage. End of story, right? Except when Joe takes a look at the confession, his blood pressure drops. At the bottom, there's a little cross. There's no circle around it, but it does look like crosshairs. Then he reads the confession again, and it's written in handwriting that he's looked at 1,000 times before.
21:20 Karen Kilgariff? No way.
21:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yep. He shows it to one of his colleagues who had also worked on the New York Zodiac shootings since the beginning, and that colleague says, quote, "It looked like my wife's shopping list. That's how familiar that lettering was," end of quote.
21:33 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
21:33 Georgia Hardstark? They just looked at the paper and knew it was his handwriting.
21:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:36 Georgia Hardstark? That's good detective work.
21:38 Karen Kilgariff? Well, also, it's a predator who is trying to, like, brand himself with that writing. So why would you ever, like, why wouldn't you, as that then unc caught serial killer, just use some cursive?
21:53 Georgia Hardstark? Well, because he wouldn't think that this random people would connect him. Why would they? It's like such a different, I mean, you have to shooting, but it's like a different crime altogether.
22:02 Karen Kilgariff? Why not type? I'm just saying.
22:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
22:04 Karen Kilgariff? Like, he could have made an effort.
22:06 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely.
22:07 Karen Kilgariff? He deserves everything he's getting.
22:08 Georgia Hardstark? Yes. Maybe he wanted to get caught. Who knew?
22:10 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, maybe he did.
22:11 Georgia Hardstark? You know? Seda's fingerprint is quickly determined to be a match to the fingerprint from the Central Park letter, but under questioning, he denies being the Zodiac killer. And it's only when detectives show him pictures from Patricia Fonti's murder, the woman who had been stabbed, that he finally confesses to her murder, and then he confesses to all the other shootings in order. And authorities find at least 13 homemade guns in his apartment.
22:34 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God. Also, the two pipe bombs.
22:36 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
22:36 Karen Kilgariff? That were just thrown in there. Like, did they know that was in there? I wonder if he, like, threatened people about it or something.
22:42 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
22:43 Karen Kilgariff? Good God.
22:44 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Over the course of the investigation, several other frustrating details emerged. For one thing, Sada had sent his very first taunting letter to the police in way back in 1989, before he had shot anybody, and the police had dismissed it as a hoax. Which, I mean, being so bogged down, I bet they get shit like that all the time. You gotta look into it, but what would they have found? Nothing.
23:05 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, there's a lot of that kind of stuff where it's just like, and then they threw it into the pile.
23:09 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
23:09 Karen Kilgariff? And it's just like, I wish they hadn't.
23:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
23:11 Karen Kilgariff? I wish it mattered.
23:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Secondly, he was known to police officers in his neighborhood, not as a criminal, but as a sort of vigilante. He tipped them off about local drug dealers, and he was known to recite Bible verses to them sometimes. But that's the thing where these killers sometimes want to involve themselves in the police department's actions, or, you know, want to be part of it. He had been expelled from school and had tried to join the Green Berets, but failed the entrance exam and moved back home with his mom in New York as an angry loner. He says he saw a documentary on PBS about the Zodiac Killer, and he said, quote, "Holy smokes, this guy terrorized a whole city and never got caught. I got nothing to live for. I don't got no job. I already got those skills. I could be famous. I could do that." End quote.
23:57 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
23:58 Georgia Hardstark? And the weird thing about him asking for people's birthdays, that I didn't want to say, is that he's conventionally attractive. He's a young man. He looks clean cut. If he had come up to someone on the street, I don't, they wouldn't have equated him with a murderer, you know?
24:12 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, especially if he was being charming.
24:14 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, good-looking people get away with a lot.
24:16 Georgia Hardstark? They fucking do.
24:17 Karen Kilgariff? That's very true.
24:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:19 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I told you that story, but the time I was like, how much we talk about, like, lock your fucking door and everything on this podcast. I was walking the dogs one day, and this guy walked up and he was like, he, I think he said one thing about the dogs that was complimentary.
24:31 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
24:32 Karen Kilgariff? And then I was like, I live up there. And I gave the whole game away.
24:36 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:36 Karen Kilgariff? And then walked away going, what is wrong with you?
24:39 Georgia Hardstark? It's so easy.
24:40 Karen Kilgariff? It's very like, there's a lot of human psychology involved in that.
24:43 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely.
24:44 Karen Kilgariff? But, I mean, still.
24:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:46 Karen Kilgariff? He could have also said, what sign are you? Which was like, parlor of the day in the 70s.
24:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it didn't have to be birthday.
24:52 Karen Kilgariff? It didn't have to be exact, yeah.
24:54 Georgia Hardstark? But your sign.
24:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
24:56 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm. And then in March of 94, Seda had been arrested for possession of a homemade gun and was fingerprinted, like two of the things that could have connected him.
25:07 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
25:07 Georgia Hardstark? But the charges were dismissed before the fingerprints had been filed. Why? I don't fucking know.
25:12 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
25:12 Georgia Hardstark? And that had been after all of the attacks, except the last one, which is the unknown male victim in Highland Park that they never found. So Seda's trial isn't until 1998, and over the course of the six-week trial, he acts erratically, yelling at the judge multiple times. The prosecution connects him to the crimes with DNA evidence from one of the stamps on one of the letters he sent. They also present evidence from the tools found in his home, linking them to the guns and bullets used in the shootings. Seda is convicted of three murders and six attempted murders and is currently serving multiple life sentences in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora in upstate New York.
25:51 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm.
25:52 Georgia Hardstark? He has since said that he really doesn't know anything about astrology.
25:55 Karen Kilgariff? Just a construct for the, like, the character of this killer.
25:59 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, exactly. No one has ever figured out if he asked all of the victims their birthdays at some point, or if almost all of them having different signs was just a coincidence. I doubt it, right? Especially when he's calling himself the Zodiac Killer.
26:11 Karen Kilgariff? Right, right, right.
26:11 Georgia Hardstark? That doesn't make any sense. Anyways, that's the story of the New York Zodiac, who tragically killed three people, possibly one more, and wounded six others.
26:21 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
26:22 Georgia Hardstark? New York Zodiac.
26:23 Karen Kilgariff? New York's, well, I gotta say, first of all, that was really good. And I do love when there's a serial killer that's just, like, brand new.
26:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
26:33 Karen Kilgariff? Especially one that's like a copycat like that. But it is actually kind of great that I've never heard of him, because that's what he did it for.
26:40 Georgia Hardstark? Exactly.
26:40 Karen Kilgariff? That's what he wanted.
26:41 Georgia Hardstark? That's why we know, yeah, we know now. Don't shine a light on these fuckers.
26:45 Karen Kilgariff? Right. All right. Great job.
26:47 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
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28:04 Karen Kilgariff? of a website or domain. Goodbye.
28:08 Karen Kilgariff? I'm very excited. I've been waiting to tell this one for a while. Today, I'm going to tell you about a pioneering investigative reporter with no formal training who overcame incredible odds to report and break one of the most important stories on the infiltration of a notorious, what they called back then insane asylum-
28:28 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
28:29 Karen Kilgariff? -in the 1880s of New York City. This is the story of Nellie Bly.
28:34 Georgia Hardstark? This is amazing. I'm so excited. I thought you were going to say Geraldo Rivera.
28:38 Karen Kilgariff? No. Oh, my God, that one, though? You mean the one?
28:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
28:42 Karen Kilgariff? The one?
28:42 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah.
28:43 Karen Kilgariff? One of the most... So, basically, this is the turn-of-the-century version of that same exact story.
28:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
28:50 Karen Kilgariff? And which is, if you haven't seen that, Geraldo did basically the same thing about Willowbrook. The patients were being treated so terribly. The video is a nightmare. Like, please be careful. I think there are horror movie directors that watched that original video and then based some of their ideas off of that.
29:08 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, A Legend of Kropcy came from that, right?
29:12 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Well, that's where it took place.
29:13 Georgia Hardstark? But Nellie Blythe, that is incredible. Great idea. I can't wait to hear this.
29:19 Karen Kilgariff? So the main sources used for this story today that Maren used are the book 10 Days in a Madhouse, which is a collection of articles that Nellie Blythe wrote and that first ran in the New York World newspaper in 1887. Also, a 1997 episode of PBS's American Experience called Around the World in 72 Days. The Book Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th Century New York by writer Stacy Horn. And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
29:49 Georgia Hardstark? We're right in the Jack the Ripper territory right now.
29:52 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, we are. That is where this whole thing takes place, which I always notice when stories are turn of the century or Victorian or whatever. If anything is near 1888, I'm like, Jack the Ripper is about to happen, or Jack the Ripper started.
30:07 Georgia Hardstark? Now I know. Like, I didn't fucking know that shit. I mean.
30:10 Karen Kilgariff? Now you're in it with me.
30:11 Georgia Hardstark? Maybe you were right. Maybe these seven and a half years when you've been telling me to fucking read They All Love Jack and talking about Jack the Ripper, maybe you're...
30:22 Karen Kilgariff? But wait, didn't I do the exact same thing to you where you recommended something twice and then I was like, okay, you have to read this book. And it was like five years after?
30:30 Georgia Hardstark? And I want to double down for you because I just finished the book I told you about last week, Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. It's basically historical fiction about some of Ted Bundy's victims. I finished it. I cried. It is incredible. I'm doubling down on it. You need to listen to it.
30:46 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, I will.
30:47 Georgia Hardstark? But sorry, yes, I'm going to stop interrupting you. Let you.
30:49 Karen Kilgariff? No, no. If you stop interrupting me, I'll be all alone.
30:52 Georgia Hardstark? This podcast won't exist.
30:54 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, for real. So. In May of 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochran is born in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Cochran's Mill, which was founded by her dad and named for his business, the town mill. He also served as a county judge. So, growing up, Elizabeth lives a charmed life in the upper class with all the luxuries that come with wealth and prominence. And from a young age, it's clear that she's a true individual with a big personality. She loves wearing fancy outfits and bright colors, which at the time, most children wore brown and black. And her favorite color was pink, so her friends and family nicknamed her Pinky.
31:35 Karen Kilgariff? That's how weird it was for children to wear color because they were so depressed from their factory jobs that they were just like, forget it.
31:44 Georgia Hardstark? It's funny that nowadays, I'm always like, I can't find black shirts to get my nephews ever. But back then, it was like, no, that's
31:50 Karen Kilgariff? Required. Yeah. When Elizabeth is just six years old, her father dies unexpectedly, and worse than that, without an updated will. So, the majority of his large estate goes to his ex-wife and his many children from his previous marriage. So, suddenly, Elizabeth's mother, Mary Jane, is a widow who's struggling to keep food on the table. And soon, the family loses everything, including the large house that they lived in. So, eventually, Mary Jane remarries, but her new husband is a violent and abusive alcoholic. How many stories start like this?
32:26 Georgia Hardstark? Truly.
32:27 Karen Kilgariff? Then and now. She eventually takes steps to end this marriage, which in the mid to late 1800s, is a highly stigmatized and extremely difficult process for women to undertake. When Elizabeth is 14 years old, she has to testify at her mom's divorce trial. So, all of that leaves a huge impression on Elizabeth. Obviously, she becomes determined to be self-reliant so that she never has to depend on anyone else, especially a man, ever again. Of course, it's the Victorian era, and there are strict social rules involving the sexes. So, women are forced to live private lives in their home. They're not
33:07 Karen Kilgariff? supposed to have ambition for anything beyond getting married and raising children. Elizabeth can't worry about that, though, because her struggling family needs her financial help. And she wants to work, and she wants to pitch in. But the problem is she can't find a job that pays well. Unlike her brothers who land decent paying jobs despite having no formal education. Elizabeth is mostly offered low paying factory jobs. And at 15 years old, she decides that she'll go to school to become a teacher. But after one semester, she runs out of money and she has to drop out of school. So she has to go back to Pittsburgh and help her mother run a boarding house. By 1884, Elizabeth is 20 years old.
33:51 Karen Kilgariff? She is unhappy and unfulfilled. Which, by the way, we've said this a million times on this podcast, but you're supposed to be unhappy and unfulfilled when you're 20 and when you're 25 and when you're 30. And it continues on until you go through a bunch of different versions of your life until it starts working. Anybody that's acting like they stuck the landing on the first try is fucking lying. Don't fall for it.
34:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, that's what life is, is constantly striving. When you stop having that striving feeling, like, what do you do?
34:26 Karen Kilgariff? What do you do? It's not bad luck. You're supposed to always want more and better for yourself.
34:32 Georgia Hardstark? Right, because you deserve it.
34:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yep. And in between, you can have a Twix.
34:36 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
34:37 Karen Kilgariff? One day, I don't know why.
34:39 Georgia Hardstark? What was that?
34:42 Karen Kilgariff? I think it's because I, here's what's hilarious. I have Halloween candy in this cookie jar that's on my counter. I bought it like when my family came to visit a month ago. So I keep thinking Halloween's over because the candy's almost gone. And usually I buy it closer to Halloween and then eat it for a month after. So I had a little tiny Twix earlier. I was so excited there was still one in there.
35:05 Georgia Hardstark? And that's your joy of the week.
35:07 Karen Kilgariff? That really is.
35:08 Georgia Hardstark? For a Monday is a tiny Twix.
35:10 Karen Kilgariff? That's how I get through the day. I guess your 50s are also quite difficult, but look, who gives a shit? One day, Elizabeth picks up a copy of the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper, her local newspaper, which she read every day, and she sees a column entitled, quote, "What Girls Are Good For." No. And in it, the columnist argues that women should be kept out of the workforce, confined to the house, where they should practice the domestic arts and raise children. Oh, go fuck yourself. Right? By the time she's done reading, Elizabeth's blood is boiling. It's not just that the writer is a chauvinist and basically just saying, like, why would you even need to be stating this? Right.
35:51 Karen Kilgariff? But he's completely overlooked the women who have no choice, the ones in her exact situation, who have to work outside the home to make ends meet. So Elizabeth pulls out a pen and paper and writes a scathing rebuttal, and she signs it "Little Orphan Girl" and mails it to the dispatch office. Mm-hmm. Her grammar and spelling aren't perfect, of course, she has no formal education, but her voice is clear, it's passionate, and it is captivating. The dispatcher's editor, George Madden, reads the rebuttal letter and is so blown away that he commits himself to finding this little orphan girl. You know what she did? I think what they used to call "clapped back." That's right. The old clapback. Ye old clapback.
36:35 Karen Kilgariff? So George Madden places an ad in the next day's newspaper, asking the little orphan girl writer to come forward. Mm. Elizabeth sees the ad. It's easy to assume she hauled her ass down to the dispatcher's office to say, "Yes, it's me. Hey." George Madden asks her if she'd be interested in writing a piece on, quote, "the women's sphere" for the newspaper, and she happily accepts. It's all very fateful. Yeah. So cool. Very cool. And what did she do there? She took pen to paper and she said what she actually felt and meant and was authentic and passionate. Damn. And then she got rewarded for it. She was the original blogger, I feel like. She was. Women's bloggers. Good for her.
37:19 Karen Kilgariff? Good for her and for all bloggers. Elizabeth's first article pulls no punches. Her headline reads, quote, "The Girl Puzzle," and it addresses the discrimination and sense of hopelessness that poor women regularly experience. She calls out the wealthy residents of Pittsburgh. Fucking listen to this shit. Saying, quote, "Women in poverty read of what your last pug dog cost and think of what that vast sum would have done for them. Paid father's doctor bill, bought mother a new dress, shoes for the little ones, and imagine how nice it would be could baby have the beef tea that is made for your favorite pub or the care and kindness that is bestowed upon it."
38:00 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God. She's fucking telling it like it is.
38:05 Karen Kilgariff? She is, and she also has this huge advantage of having grown up among rich people, so she knows what she's talking about.
38:11 Georgia Hardstark? And she's also like, "Adopt, don't shop." Like, there's so many things in this story. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had to say it.
38:18 Karen Kilgariff? If she could have thrown in a spade new to your pets, what an article that could have been. Okay, so in the 19th century, most female journalists are writing under pen names. Elizabeth is no exception. She publishes "The Girl Puzzle" as the little orphan girl, and her column makes a big splash. George Madden decides to keep giving Elizabeth assignments at the rate of $5 a week, which is worth around $160 a week now.
38:46 Georgia Hardstark? That's a lot, though. Like, I feel like for back then, right, for a woman to earn.
38:50 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, because that's when, like, a cup of coffee was three cents and shit.
38:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
38:54 Karen Kilgariff? And also, it was definitely more than she would make as a factory worker, a little more than she would make as a factory worker. But she's also doing what she's supposed to be doing.
39:03 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
39:04 Karen Kilgariff? So she starts churning out more and more articles that become increasingly popular. So people like her writing. Before long, a group of men at the newspaper decide she needs a catchier pen name, and they pick Nellie Bly, which is a reference to a popular song of the time, and it sticks. By the way, I just have to say, George is barking because there's coyotes outside, and he can't be calmed down. So there's background noise for this. As she gets more famous, Elizabeth starts going by Nellie Bly, and so that's what we'll refer to her as for the rest of this story. So of course, she takes her new job very seriously, even though she's limited to covering items for the women's page, which is a dedicated section of the newspaper that covers things
39:47 Karen Kilgariff? like fashion and the arts and homemaking. But Nellie makes no secret of the fact that she is not satisfied with this kind of reporting. She wants to do the same hard-hitting pieces that her male coworkers are covering. So she starts pitching stories that deal with the politics of being a 19th century woman. Pieces about divorce laws that harm women and sexism in the workforce, two things that she has had firsthand experience with. Wow. And it doesn't take long before Nellie Bly is a hit. She develops a real following, and she manages to parlay her name recognition into a gig as the Dispatch's foreign correspondent to Mexico. Wow. Yeah, she spends several months in Mexico, and then she even draws the ire of the Mexican
40:30 Karen Kilgariff? government after reporting on official corruption. Oh dear. But when she comes back to Pittsburgh, her editors are for the most part still assigning her fluff pieces for the women's page. By 1887, Nellie's a self-made 23-year-old, and she is getting very sick of her constant battle to be taken seriously at the Dispatch. So she does what ballers do. She sets her sights on a much bigger playing field, New York City. And she does it so geniusly, she pitches a story to her editor that she wants to do on how tough it is to get a job as a female reporter in New York City. And he says, "Yeah, go do that story." So basically, she's going to get paid to go interview and figure out how she can get
41:15 Karen Kilgariff? a job in New York. So Nellie sets up interviews with editors all over New York City, and she asks them all... What chance does a woman have in journalism? And these editors, who are of course all men, tell Nellie that women have no chance at all. Nellie is not discouraged by this. She writes her piece for The Dispatch and then she cuts ties with them soon after. Ooh. She does the story, she puts it in, and she's like, bye. Spicy. She moves her entire life to New York City before she's even gotten a job. And then one afternoon, she goes to the downtown office of legendary publisher Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, The New York World, and somehow talks her way into a meeting with its managing editor, a man named John Cockrell.
42:00 Karen Kilgariff? So Nellie asks him for work, and surprisingly, he offers her an assignment. But as writer Maureen Corrigan puts it, quote, "It was something of a dare. If you really want to be a reporter, let's see what you've got." Hmm. So John Cockrell wants Nellie to write an expose on the infamous New York City asylum on Blackwell's Island. Holy shit. So today, New Yorkers know Blackwell's Island as Roosevelt Island, which is a skinny two-mile-long island that sits in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. It has apartment buildings, parks, an iconic tramway, and scenic views of the city. But in the late 1880s, Blackwell's Island is not a place where people go willingly.
42:43 Karen Kilgariff? Instead, it hosts some notorious facilities operated by the city. There's a prison, a house for the poor, and a so-called workhouse where people convicted of minor crimes are sentenced as punishment. Oh. There's also a public mental hospital with separate women's and men's facilities. At the time this was named the New York City Lunatic Asylum, in this story, we'll just call it the asylum or Blackwell's Island, because, you know, it was a different time. And, as it turns out, the people in this asylum did not always have mental illness issues, which is the scariest part of the story. Absolutely.
43:24 Karen Kilgariff? The asylum on Blackwell's Island opened in 1839, about 50 years before Nellie's arrival in New York, and it was meant to provide compassionate care for people who couldn't care for themselves, regardless of whether they had the money to pay for it. It was supposed to be guided by Victorian ideals around moral character, charity, and public health. But unfortunately, the city blows through its budget and the facility winds up actually being built way smaller than it was originally planned to be. But that is not taken into account when they open the doors and start admitting people. It becomes immediately overcrowded. It gets worse and worse as the years pass, and orders
44:06 Karen Kilgariff? from families, physicians, police, judges, as well as voluntary admissions, send more and more people to the island. Soon, hundreds of patients at this asylum are regularly sleeping on the floor because there aren't enough beds. And at this period in time, mental health is not well-understood. So people are actually sent there for a huge range of psychiatric symptoms, some without any discernible mental illness whatsoever. And this includes new US immigrants ordered to Blackwell's Island by city officials who just don't know where else to house them. Aye, aye. Yeah. As if having an overpacked, underbuilt healthcare facility isn't bad enough,
44:47 Karen Kilgariff? for decades, the asylum on Blackwell's Island is underfunded, and as a result, it struggles to retain talented, compassionate doctors and nurses, let alone basic necessities like healthy food or good blankets. And naturally, the situation inside the asylum spirals into chaos. Mm-hmm. Now, none of this is new information. The asylum at Blackwell's Island has long been on the radar of writers and journalists. And actually, in the 1840s, Charles Dickens visited there while he was on a tour of the United States, and reportedly, he, quote, "left in a hurry" because of the facility's hopeless atmosphere. So the asylum also hosted many journalists from respected outlets like the New York Times and Harper's, who were
45:32 Karen Kilgariff? given open access to patients. But instead of using the story to advocate for change, journalists would just pen salacious stories that mocked the people in the throes of severe mental illness and distress. So it was... Not a great time, not caring, sensitive time, just kind of, you know, it was what it was. But Nellie's not interested in entertaining the asylum as an outside observer like Charles Dickens did. She wants to capture an authentic depiction of what life is like inside. And the only way to get that story will be for Nellie to arrive on Blackwell's Island as a patient, not a journalist.
46:11 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, that idea alone, it seems like such a, what's the word I'm looking for?
46:16 Karen Kilgariff? Total nightmare?
46:18 Georgia Hardstark? Total nightmare, revolutionary.
46:20 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
46:21 Georgia Hardstark? Like, what a great idea. It's terrifying, but that's like a real journalist, a real investigative journalist. Like, that's what your brain has to be like, is someone who wants to get in there and see what's actually happening, not just like write a fluff piece about it. It's so fucking awesome.
46:39 Karen Kilgariff? It's so inspiring. And also, I don't think, and I mean, this is just my opinion, but I don't think she would have been at that point where she would have been up for this. I mean, we know she was pinky and she was kind of the OG, right, from birth? But at the same time, years and years of being told to write about house coats and ironing and trying to compete and not being allowed to compete gets her to the point where she's like, hell, yes, I'm gonna do this. Just back to that thing we were talking about before, where it's like, kind of being like turned down, being held down, whatever. It's not always a bad thing if it leads to something big and brave and great.
47:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:20 Karen Kilgariff? So Nellie assumes a new identity. She checks herself into a woman's boarding house under the name Nellie Brown. Knowing that immigrants are often the targets of discrimination and suspicion, she tells the landlady she's recently moved here from Cuba. Throughout the evening, Nellie starts acting confused and paranoid around the other lodgers. She isn't doing anything aggressive, but her behavior alone frightens everybody, and soon the landlady calls the police. So she's taken down to a downtown courthouse where the judge takes one look at the white, pretty young woman in his courtroom, takes pity on her, and says, quote, "I would stake everything on her being a good girl. I am positive she is somebody's
48:03 Karen Kilgariff? darling. Poor girl, I will be good to her, for she looks like my sister who is dead."
48:07 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
48:08 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. So then reporters are called to the courthouse to write stories on this mysterious woman from Cuba, who's basically being like thrown to the mercy of the court. And the Times prints a headline that says, quote, "The mysterious waif with the wild haunted look in her eyes." Oh, my God. And meanwhile, The Sun runs a story that the headline is, quote, "Who is this insane girl?" So now, of course, Nellie's freaking out that someone like will recognize her and blow her cover, or that another journalist is going to sniff out her real identity and, and basically bust her. So fortunately for Nellie's plan, that doesn't happen.
48:51 Karen Kilgariff? And when no one comes forward to claim her, she's taken to Bellevue Hospital. And there, a team of doctors determine that she suffers from, quote, "dementia with delusions of persecution." Hmm. So she's just pretending. There's actually a part, after she accepted this assignment, she went home and practiced like wildly staring. Wow. But the whole thing is an act. So it's kind of disturbing that it's that easy for her to be diagnosed that way. It's decided that there's only one place fit for an anonymous immigrant woman who's experiencing a mental health crisis, Blackwell's Island. Nellie's taken to the asylum by boat. When she steps on land, she's greeted by two nurses spitting tobacco on the ground.
49:34 Karen Kilgariff? Nellie asks them where she is, and someone responds, quote, "Blackwell's Island, an insane place where you'll never get out of." Horrifying. So now Nellie drops her act completely. She starts talking and acting as herself, but the asylum staff either don't notice or they don't care. By dinnertime, Nellie realizes these patients' most basic needs are not being met. The women are drastically underfed, and what little food they are served is basically inedible. So she does a whole write-up on this, that the food isn't salted, and they can tell some of it is clearly spoiled. So they try to make it taste decent by dousing it with things like mustard and vinegar,
50:18 Karen Kilgariff? which usually makes it taste worse. But the problem is if they don't eat their food, they're threatened with punishment. And if they do eat it and get sick, then the staff makes fun of them and basically just ignores them. So. As Nellie will eventually write, quote, "In our short walks, we passed the kitchen where food was prepared for the nurses and doctors. There we got glimpses of melons and grapes and all kinds of fruits, beautiful white bread and nice meats, and the hungry feeling would be increased tenfold."
50:49 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my God.
50:50 Karen Kilgariff? So there's definitely an argument for corruption here where the city is giving this hospital money and the money is not going to take care of the people that need to be at the hospital.
51:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:00 Karen Kilgariff? They're just keeping it all up at the top.
51:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:03 Karen Kilgariff? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nellie will later write about being forced to take freezing cold baths once a week where the women are stripped naked, plunged into a large tin tub filled with bathwater that's already been used by a bunch of patients.
51:18 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah, I read about that in the book about, oh, just like everyone uses the same bathwater.
51:23 Karen Kilgariff? They're using the same bathwater to the degree where eventually it becomes a sort of sludge, which is so disgusting.
51:30 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
51:32 Karen Kilgariff? Nellie reports, quote, "They said if I did not want to bathe that they would use force and that it would not be very gentle. I shivered. They began to undress me as one by one they pulled off my clothes. The water was ice cold and I began to protest. I begged at least that the patients be made to go away, but I was ordered to shut up. My teeth chattered and my limbs were goosefleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head, ice cold water too, into my eyes, my nose and my mouth. I think I experienced some of the sensations of a drowning person as they dragged me gasping, shivering and quaking from the tub."
52:11 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my God. At that point, she's like, oh shit.
52:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. She's like, I just got here. And this is already what it's like.
52:19 Georgia Hardstark? Fuck.
52:19 Karen Kilgariff? So after being washed, Nellie's wiped down with a sopping wet communal towel.
52:23 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
52:24 Karen Kilgariff? Sent away with wet hair, given a wet slip, sent to bed in a freezing cold room where the only thing she has to cover herself is a scratchy blanket that's too short to cover her body. That idea like stopped me as I was writing where I'm like, I'm right now furious at that.
52:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
52:43 Karen Kilgariff? It, how little it would take. To just have the basic comforts, it just needs to be a blanket long enough to fit the whole bed.
52:50 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
52:51 Karen Kilgariff? So that people can just have a decent, like, rest.
52:54 Georgia Hardstark? And that's people like, we're thinking about ourselves, like, we're of sound mind, let's say, to be, like, suffering from a mental illness that is so bad that you had to get sent to this island and then to be treated that way, I mean.
53:07 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
53:07 Georgia Hardstark? It's abhorrent.
53:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's like they're doing anything they can to make everything that much worse for you. There's no comfort or care or quiet or anything.
53:17 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
53:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, horrible. She writes about the other women that she's seen being bathed who are visibly sick and worries about what the cold night might do to their health. In one heartbreaking example, Nellie says that, quote, "Nearly all night long, I listened to a woman cry about the cold and beg for God to let her die," end quote. So Nellie sees that same woman the next day, and she's elderly and blind, and the nurses treat her absolutely terribly. She later reports, quote, "Sometimes the attendants would jerk her around, they would let her walk, and heartlessly laughed when she bumped against the table or the edge of benches."
53:54 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, God.
53:56 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. So this also is this sort of kind of institutional housing gone unchecked.
54:02 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
54:03 Karen Kilgariff? If there's no funds, no one's getting paid, they're having the bottom of the barrel type of people working there, then that invites people with that personality.
54:13 Georgia Hardstark? Right, cruelty.
54:14 Karen Kilgariff? Cruelty, maybe you're a masochist, maybe you're a sociopath, they're so exposed and so vulnerable.
54:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
54:21 Karen Kilgariff? "The cruelty that Nellie describes at the hands of the asylum's nurses is unbelievably sadistic and terrible. She sees or hears about women being taunted, hit, choked, and psychologically tortured." Nellie experiences some of this herself. She writes about how she and the other patients are forced to sit on an uncomfortable bench for long stretches of time and simply stare at a wall. The women are punished if they don't maintain perfect posture, or if they readjust to get more comfortable. Nellie says, quote, "Take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on straight back benches. Do not allow her to talk or move during these hours. Give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world
55:06 Karen Kilgariff? or its doings. Give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane." Holy shit. End quote. Yeah. These are columns being delivered just in people's regular newspapers. They suddenly have this access and insight to something that's happening right there, right, right by them. It's hard to imagine a more awful place for someone experiencing mental distress. These patients are hungry, cold, and subjected to constant abuse and humiliation. But there's another harrowing aspect to Nellie's reporting. She realizes that many of the women in the asylum aren't there for any justifiable medical reason. This includes a young woman named Sarah Fishbaum,
55:49 Karen Kilgariff? whose, quote, "husband put her in the asylum because she had a fondness for men other than himself." Nellie also befriends a woman named Josephine Despro, who moved to New York from France, where most of her family still lives. Josephine tells Nellie that before being sent to Blackwell's Island, she'd contracted a severe viral illness and nearly died. And while she was very sick, she was taken to some sort of station, and it's unclear if it was a police station or a firehouse, where she was unable to communicate with the staff because of the language barrier. And for seemingly no other reason than she didn't speak English, Josephine was sent to Blackwell's Island. Oh, my God. Nightmare. So she's like sick and like doesn't know what to do.
56:32 Karen Kilgariff? So she goes to like the first kind of place she thinks is supposed to help her. And this is the result. It's unclear how long Josephine has been at the asylum at the time of Nellie's visit, but enough time has passed that she now seems to be able to speak decent English.
56:50 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
56:52 Karen Kilgariff? Sarah Josephine and other women in the asylum tell Nellie that they are, quote, "without hope of release," meaning that they believe they're stuck there forever. And Nellie probably relates. She's been on Blackwell's Island for an entire hellish week, has no way of contacting anyone on the outside. She's exhausted, famished, and on edge. She'll later write that being in the asylum is, quote, "a human rat trap. It's easy to get in, but once there, it's impossible to get out."
57:20 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
57:21 Karen Kilgariff? But thank God, Nellie has the one thing that no other woman or person on Blackwell's Island has, and that's Joseph Pulitzer's legal team. On her 10th day in the asylum, Pulitzer's attorney shows up and informs the staff that he's there to pick up a New York World reporter who has been admitted under the name Nellie Brown. This is presumably a mortifying and horrifying moment for the asylum's administrators. Nellie is rescued and now has a story to tell. But leaving is difficult. It's very difficult. And she would later write, quote, "Sadly, I said farewell to all I knew as I passed them on my way to freedom and life while they were left behind to a fate worse
58:04 Karen Kilgariff? than death. There was a certain pain in leaving. For 10 days, I had been one of them. It seemed intensely selfish to leave them to their suffering." Days later, the New York World publishes Nellie's first article on Blackwell's Island, and she becomes an overnight sensation.
58:20 Georgia Hardstark? Damn.
58:21 Karen Kilgariff? In the coming days, her reporting is reprinted in newspapers across the country. And I'm about to read you part of one of those columns, and all of them, all these quotes I'm reading you from Nellie Bly. It all gets turned into her book, 10 Days in a Madhouse.
58:36 Georgia Hardstark? Got it.
58:37 Karen Kilgariff? So this part, she says, "I always made a point of telling doctors I was sane and asking to be released, but the more I endeavored to assure them of my sanity, the more they doubted it. What are you doctors here for?" I asked one, whose name I cannot recall. "To take care of the patients and test their sanity," he replied. "Very well," I said. "There are 16 doctors on this island, and accepting two, I've never seen them pay any attention to the patients. How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it's useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination." Try every test on me, I have urged others, and tell me, am I sane or insane?
59:21 Karen Kilgariff? Try my pulse, my heart, my eyes. Ask me to stretch out my arm to work my fingers as Dr. Field did at Bellevue, and then tell me if I am sane. They would not heed me, for they thought I raved. Again, I said to one, "You have no right to keep sane people here. I am sane, have always been so, and I must insist on a thorough examination or be released. Several of the women here are also sane. Why can't they be free? They are insane," was the reply, "and suffering from delusions." After a long talk with Dr. Ingram, he said, "I will transfer you to a quieter ward." An hour later, Ms. Grady called me into the hall, and after calling me all the vile and profane names a woman could ever remember,
1:00:04 Karen Kilgariff? she told me that it was a lucky thing for my hide that I was transferred. Oh my God. So as more and more people are reading Nellie's harrowing firsthand expose, the heat on the asylum administration starts to get turned up. Eventually, she is called to testify at a grand jury hearing about the abuses she witnessed at Blackwell's Island. Her testimony includes returning to the asylum with the jury to inspect the asylum and compare it to how she described it in her columns. So here's another part of her book. She says, "The jurors then visited the kitchen. It was very clean, and two barrels of salt stood conspicuously near the open door.
1:00:47 Karen Kilgariff? The bread on exhibition was beautifully white and wholly unlike what was given us to eat. We found the halls in the finest order, the beds were improved, and in Hall 7, the buckets in which we were compelled to wash had been replaced with bright new basins."
1:01:02 Speaker 00 Bullshit.
1:01:04 Karen Kilgariff? Right? "The institution was on exhibition, and no fault could be found. But the women I had spoke of, where were they? Not one was to be found where I had left them. If my assertions were not true in regard to these patients, why should the latter be changed, so to make me unable to find them?" Ms. Neville complained before the jury of being changed several times. When we visited the hall later, she was returned to her old place. Mary Hughes, of whom I had spoken as appearing sane, was not to be found. Some relatives had taken her away. So that's good. Where they knew not. The fair woman I spoke of, who had been sent there because she was poor, they said had been transferred to another island.
1:01:48 Karen Kilgariff? They denied all knowledge of the Mexican woman and said that there never had been such a patient. Mrs. Cotter had been discharged and Bridget McGinnis and Rebecca Farren had been transferred to other quarters. The German girl Margaret was not to be found and Louise had been sent elsewhere from Hall 6. The Frenchwoman Josephine, a great healthy woman, they said was dying of paralysis and we could not see her. If I was wrong in my judgment of these patients' sanity, why was all this done? I saw Tilly Mayerd and she had changed so much for the worse that I shuddered when I looked at her. I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me after they saw everything different from what it had been while I was there, yet they did
1:02:32 Karen Kilgariff? and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I had proposed. I have one consolation for my work. On the strength of my story, the Committee of Appropriation provides $1 million more than ever was given before for the benefit of the insane. A million dollars, that's amazing. So the expose pays off. The court orders the asylum to make significant changes in patient care. They increase the asylum's funding by $1 million, which is the equivalent of $32 million in today's money. Holy shit. Unfortunately, after a few years, things go back to the old ways and Blackwell's Island Asylum is once again neglected by the city. And within a decade of this reporting,
1:03:17 Karen Kilgariff? of Nellie's reporting, not my reporting, I'm not a reporter. Quick reminder for everybody. Within a decade of Nellie's reporting, it closes for good. So essentially, they increase it. But where does the money go? If the people in the administration are corrupt or they're siphoning stuff. They have no problem treating their patients like that. Totally. So Nellie Bly becomes such a star after her expose on Blackwell's Island. It actually starts a trend across the country where publishers start hiring what they call stunt girls to take on their own socially conscious undercover assignments. Wow. Right? They tackle everything from the importance of ambulances to abortion access. Wow.
1:04:02 Karen Kilgariff? And some of these stories lead to meaningful reforms, laws and policy changes, which is like an amazing detail that I never knew in basically like women journalists. That's incredible. Meanwhile, the New York World continues to send its star reporter on assignments that involve increasingly elaborate setups and disguises. Over the years, Nellie poses as everything from a chorus girl to a domestic worker to a quote unwed mother to expose the baby buying trade.
1:04:34 Karen Kilgariff? Holy shit. But amazingly, Nellie doesn't reach the height of her fame until 1889 at the age of 25.
1:04:45 Karen Kilgariff? 25. Old lady at that point. This is when she sets out to beat Phileas Fogg's record and travel around the world in less than 80 days. What? So that novel Around the World in 80 Days had come out about 15 years prior. Yeah. And a play based on the book ran in front of sold out audiences in New York City and no one had ever tried to actually circle the globe in such a short amount of time. PBS estimates that even the most adventurous 19th century person might be able to pull it off in around a year. And a historian named Mitchell Stevens says, quote, "When Nellie Bly actually decided to go all around the world, I mean, that was like going up in the space shuttle." Holy shit. Right?
1:05:30 Karen Kilgariff? She is armed with just one small bag and what will become her signature checkered overcoat, and Nellie sets off on her adventure from New York. She takes trains, ships, horses, rickshaws, anything she can find to complete her journey. In addition to sending regular dispatches back to the New York world, she also talks with reporters along the way and continues to wear her politics on her sleeve. When asked about her ambitious journey, Nellie tells a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, quote, "Oh, I don't know. It's not so very much for a woman to do who has the pluck, energy, and independence which characterize many women in this day." Yes. So she's just repping, repping, repping.
1:06:13 Karen Kilgariff? Rapping. I love it. Maron always includes stuff like this, which I adore her for, but the Smithsonian writes, quote, "Nellie's observations during her trials are astute and frequently humorous, though some of her characterizations will seem racist by today's standards." Oh, dear. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 1889. This is the way it is. Sure. It's all problematic. Life is problematic back then. We all see each other in very narrow, desperate ways. Yeah. Just being fair and balanced. Maron put that in. So, the New York World promotes Nellie's travel stunt, and they basically make it this huge event. The public cannot
1:06:54 Karen Kilgariff? get enough. According to PBS, quote, "Nellie Bly songs were being sung in music calls. A Nellie Bly housecoat was advertised." That's kind of ironic. "The World," the newspaper, "not afraid to cash in on its star reporter, even marketed a parlor game called 'Round the World with Nellie Bly.'" When they announce a contest for fans to send in guesses on how long it'll take Nellie to complete her trip, nearly a million people participate. Holy shit. I hope she got a cut of the earnings. I know. I hope she got a cut of that housecoat. So in the end, Nellie beat Phineas Fogg by over a week. She makes the trip around the
1:07:35 Karen Kilgariff? world in 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds. And with it becomes the most famous woman in the world. Wow. Before long, Nellie's brand of stunt reporting is seen as somewhat passe. That's how it is. Time passes. But she's not ready to hang up her hat or shy away from taboo subjects. PBS reports that, quote, "In 1893, she interviewed one of the most controversial political figures in the country, anarchist Emma Goldman. When social unrest seemed to be tearing the nation apart, Bly went to Chicago to cover the Pullman Railroad strike, and she was the only reporter to tell the story from the striker's point of view." Wow.
1:08:20 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. So around this time, Nellie also gets a high profile interview with a serial killer that you might remember because I covered her at our 2017 live show at the Beacon Theater in New York City. It was Lizzie Halliday. And Nellie was somehow able to compel Lizzie to share information that she had previously never shared before about her private life. So she was a great reporter. Yeah. And then in 1895, when she's 30 years old, Nellie marries a 70 year old millionaire, manufacturer, and businessman named Robert Seaman. And she becomes involved in his companies. Plot twist. Wow. Right? Yeah.
1:09:04 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, look. Look. Listen. Look, listen. She nailed down a millionaire. Yeah. She took care of business. She's a smart lady. Whatever. Whatever. She's doing her thing. Who are we to judge? I'm just trying to think of like, what actors are 70 right now. Although I bet you an 1895 70 year old is like 140 year old in today's money. I think so. But yeah, who knows? Here's why Maren thinks, and then of course, I agree with Maren because she's the researcher, that it was a positive and like, it was actually a sincere relationship. Because she becomes involved in his companies, she invents and patents a milk can and a
1:09:48 Karen Kilgariff? stackable garbage can under her married name. Wow. So maybe he's the only one who like took her seriously and like wanted her in his business and in his.
1:09:58 Georgia Hardstark? World and not just treated her like a, you know.
1:10:00 Karen Kilgariff? She certainly wasn't just sitting at home like painting her nails and being like, yay, I'm a millionaire's wife. She's like, I got some ideas.
1:10:08 Georgia Hardstark? I dig it.
1:10:08 Karen Kilgariff? Me too. She and Robert have a happy marriage until his passing 10 years later. Then after his death, Nellie runs his factories and she sticks to her tried and true principles. She provides employees with generous healthcare benefits and access to recreational facilities, among other things. But even though she's a good boss, she struggles to manage the large company and her biographer Brooke Kroger reports that she was, quote, "hopeless at understanding the financial aspects of her business and ultimately lost everything."
1:10:41 Georgia Hardstark? Oof.
1:10:41 Karen Kilgariff? But it's Nellie Bly. So she's down, but she's not out.
1:10:45 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:10:46 Karen Kilgariff? Instead, she throws herself back into journalism, heads to Europe and reports from the trenches of World War I.
1:10:54 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, what?
1:10:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, yeah. I'll let you know how horrifying World War I is, everybody. It's me, Nellie Bly. She also uses her byline to help find homes for orphaned children. And she profiles the Women's Suffrage Movement and Susan B. Anthony. And according to Kroger, quote, "Anthony had been interviewed scores of times during a half-century in the suffrage movement, but never had she revealed more information about herself than she did in her exchange with Bly."
1:11:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
1:11:27 Karen Kilgariff? So she is the shit.
1:11:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:11:29 Karen Kilgariff? In January of 1922, Nellie Bly dies of pneumonia. She's just 57 years old.
1:11:36 Georgia Hardstark? Wow, so young.
1:11:38 Karen Kilgariff? To this day, Nellie's considered a pioneering investigative journalist and early feminist icon. She's been the subject of countless books. She's been depicted on a postage stamp. She's the namesake of express trains, amusement parks, and even a species of tarantula.
1:11:54 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
1:11:54 Karen Kilgariff? Her story has been featured on multiple television shows. Today, if you go to Roosevelt Island, you can visit a monument built in Nellie Bly's honor. It's the same spot where Blackwell's Island Asylum used to stand, and the monument is called "The Girl Puzzle," which was the title of Nellie's first article for the Pittsburgh Dispatch that demanded women and girls be given more opportunities to thrive in American society. According to the monument's website, quote, "The Girl Puzzle honors Nellie Bly by presenting on a monumental scale faces of many women who have endured hardship but are stronger for it. The monument gives visibility to Asian, Black, young, old, immigrant, and queer women.
1:12:39 Karen Kilgariff? Their stories and lives are forever commemorated alongside Nellie Bly, whose face is cast in silver bronze." And that is the spectacular story of legendary reporter Elizabeth Pinky Cochran, who's better known as Nellie Bly, the woman who caused a sensation by reporting on the world from a woman's point of view.
1:12:59 Georgia Hardstark? Damn. Damn.
1:13:02 Karen Kilgariff? That one was Maren McGlashan. That was her idea. She found that story. She's such a good researcher and such a good writer. I mean, that just makes me happy. I didn't know that woman existed. Why don't we know this woman exists?
1:13:15 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, I knew that vaguely story. I mean, I thought it was Geraldo Rivera, of course, at first. So, shave on me, but I didn't know she was such a fucking force. That's amazing.
1:13:27 Karen Kilgariff? It's amazing.
1:13:28 Georgia Hardstark? Well, great job. You killed that one.
1:13:31 Karen Kilgariff? I really loved it. I guess that's the importance of getting an education and learning history, which I never really understood before and wish someone had pointed out, which is just like, there's lots of people that have come before us, that have kicked ass, and then gone away, as we all do.
1:13:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it's those people that make like incremental... Movements forward that as a whole, you've put all the people together and it's this big movement, but like each little story and each life contributes so much to how you and I are able to talk about ourselves and women and how we're able to be these confident women who we owe, we owe a lot, you and I owe a lot to this female investigative journalist who spoke the truth, you know?
1:14:15 Karen Kilgariff? And when people are brave in the face of like, when everything else is telling them they shouldn't be brave.
1:14:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:14:22 Karen Kilgariff? And you read about that and it's not 2023, it's 18, fucking 89. And she's 20 and she's an orphan or, you know, the orphan girl, basically where she's like, hey, how about you shut up and I tell you how it actually is? Like, we think people are just starting to do that now on social media, but it's like, no, no, there's a long history of very intelligent, smart women who have been doing this for a long time and then having people either erase their accomplishments or step in front of them and take credit for it.
1:14:54 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:14:54 Karen Kilgariff? And it's great to be able to highlight.
1:14:56 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely.
1:14:56 Karen Kilgariff? Somebody like that.
1:14:57 Georgia Hardstark? I love that. Great job. Thank you to all of you for listening and hanging out with us and being our friends.
1:15:04 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, you are all future Nellie Blythe in your own way.
1:15:08 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
1:15:08 Karen Kilgariff? Get out there, give them hell and stay sexy.
1:15:11 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
1:15:13 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
1:15:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah.
1:15:25 Georgia Hardstark? This has been an Exactly Right Production. Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci. Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns to [email protected] . And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder. Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can watch us on YouTube. Search for My Favorite Murder, then like and subscribe. Goodbye.
1:16:00 Georgia Hardstark? You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.
1:16:03 Karen Kilgariff? Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.
1:16:06 Georgia Hardstark? Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals, it's designed to relax and prepare you for a night of rest.
1:16:11 Karen Kilgariff? If you need a reset after your day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine.
1:16:16 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.
1:16:23 Karen Kilgariff? Something like this is just like, it's simple, it's easy, and it actually works.
1:16:26 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.
1:16:32 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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1:17:03 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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1:17:30 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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