470 - Accept No Dare

This week, Georgia covers the disappearance of John Darwin and Karen tells the story of Victorian-era activist Josephine Butler. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes http://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Georgia Hardstark?

  This holiday season, celebrate the ones you know by heart with a gift that says it all. Because the best gifts don't just look beautiful, they mean something too. From engraveable pieces that tell your story, to festive charms that capture special memories, to stunning lab-grown diamonds, Pandora has meaningful jewelry for the people who inspire you and have been there through it all. Give a piece that says exactly what words can't. Pandora, more than a gift. Shop new styles in-store or online at pandora.net. Goodbye.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Hello and welcome.

• 1:23Georgia Hardstark?

  To My Favorite Murder.

• 1:24Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Georgia Hardstark.

• 1:25Georgia Hardstark?

  That's Karen Kilgariff.

• 1:27Karen Kilgariff?

  And we're here to podcast for you women and women lovers.

• 1:31Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right, it's Women's History Month. Can you, do we have any history?

• 1:34Karen Kilgariff?

  No, we haven't done much. There's been, we've just been hanging out, brushing our hair.

• 1:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Waiting to get our rights taken away a little more.

• 1:42Karen Kilgariff?

  You know, guys, we have these pins and they're for sale and we just wanted you to see them in our hands because we love them very much.

• 1:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, they're like, gonna let us like play with our merch now, which is so fun. They let us touch it.

• 1:55Karen Kilgariff?

  So you could get a 12-foot skeleton pin, if you would like to, with articulated arms and legs and, yeah, I was gonna say hips, but it's just the arms and legs.

• 2:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Or this little spinner guy. And like every morning when you wake up, you can spin it and see, is today... Stay sexy, don't get murdered. It's today. Here's the thing. Fuck everyone. Is today, this is terrible, keep going? Or is today, stay out of the forest?

• 2:17Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like a Wheel of Fortune slash advice thing?

• 2:20Georgia Hardstark?

  How cute is that?

• 2:21Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, that's a good gift for the people who know. Ooh, look how cute it looks on here.

• 2:25Georgia Hardstark?

  I put that on my leather jacket.

• 2:26Karen Kilgariff?

  I put this on this.

• 2:27Georgia Hardstark?

  That looks good there.

• 2:28Karen Kilgariff?

  This right here.

• 2:29Georgia Hardstark?

  It actually really works.

• 2:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Instead of an alligator?

• 2:35Karen Kilgariff?

  I was gonna tell you that over on Blue Sky, which is a brand new platform that a lot of people don't know how to use. A user named Obz, handle Obz, said, hey, did you guys know that you're on one of the top recommendations on good reads for women's uh, history month, like autobiography reads?

• 2:53Georgia Hardstark?

  For Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered, our memoir?

• 2:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Our one and only book.

• 2:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Pretty cool, right?

• 2:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Thanks, Obz, for letting us know, because we didn't know.

• 3:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Obviously, we didn't know.

• 3:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Obz is there, making sure.

• 3:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Let's get that book going again. Remember that? That was so fun.

• 3:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, my God. The book days?

• 3:10Georgia Hardstark?

  The book days, like writing that book, and I'm still so proud of it, even though I haven't read it in a long time. It might not hold up, but.

• 3:16Karen Kilgariff?

  That doesn't matter.

• 3:17Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 3:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Really, whose book? Books? They're not supposed to hold up.

• 3:21Georgia Hardstark?

  It's none of our business.

• 3:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Wouldn't it be funny if, like, all the great Russian novelists were like, eh, just make another one. It's not supposed to hold up.

• 3:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Read it while you're, yeah, read it in the moment. I have, speaking of reading, I have an email about my story last week.

• 3:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Perfect.

• 3:35Georgia Hardstark?

  About the great train robbery that I covered. It says, hi, all. On Wednesday, February 26th, I went to a weekly bar trivia with my friends down in San Diego. We've been going off and on to a handful of bars for about 10 years, which I think I want to start doing now.

• 3:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Bar trivia?

• 3:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, absolutely. During the second round, which is typically very easy, they asked the question, what vehicle was used in the 1963 British crime that broke the record for most money stolen at once? But it was Wednesday. As someone who has listened to every episode and mini-sode of MFM, let alone many other true crime podcasts and lots of stuff you should know, I was completely stunned and baffled that I would not know this answer. We ended up guessing a double-decker bus, since it was the most quintessential British vehicle we could think of.

• 4:17Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 4:18Georgia Hardstark?

  I love that.

• 4:19Karen Kilgariff?

  That's so hilariously American.

• 4:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Mini Cooper or something like that. And then the answer was simply train. I was chagrined. And to add insult to injury, the next day, Thursday, February 27th, what pops up on my podcast playlist but the newest episode of MFM about the 1963 British train robbery? As I listen to the episode with mild ire, you mentioned that you were helping stack up intel for someone's pub trivia, remember?

• 4:42Karen Kilgariff?

  What?

• 4:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Because of the Sopranos song that one of the sons of one of the robbers wrote. And we're like, this is good for you for your future pub trivia.

• 4:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 4:50Georgia Hardstark?

  I was stopped in my tracks with the glitchy matrix of it all.

• 4:54Karen Kilgariff?

  That is so weird.

• 4:55Georgia Hardstark?

  That's weird. Anyway, love you all. Thank you. And maybe I'll switch to a Thursday night trivia bar from here on out. Thanks, Alora, like, uh, Laura.

• 5:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Perfect, Alora. Thank you.

• 5:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 5:07Karen Kilgariff?

  That must have really freaked Alora out.

• 5:09Georgia Hardstark?

  I would have been so angry.

• 5:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Also, it does seem like it would be a good idea to listen to all of your trivia-ish or like, kind of like, specific information podcasts before you go to those trivia nights.

• 5:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. But what if it hasn't even come out yet?

• 5:26Karen Kilgariff?

  The trivia?

• 5:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. No, the podcast.

• 5:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 5:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Because it was on Wednesday.

• 5:30Karen Kilgariff?

  You can't know.

• 5:30Georgia Hardstark?

  You can't listen in the future.

• 5:32Karen Kilgariff?

  You can't go around and learn things that aren't out in the world yet.

• 5:36Georgia Hardstark?

  No. You can't know what you don't know.

• 5:37Karen Kilgariff?

  You can't, literally.

• 5:38Georgia Hardstark?

  And you wrote, like, shouldn't probably too.

• 5:40Karen Kilgariff?

  But I think that's what kind of pub trivia nights are all about, is like, you're supposed to know everything in the world.

• 5:45Georgia Hardstark?

  I know.

• 5:46Karen Kilgariff?

  And if you don't, you better go drink in the corner.

• 5:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Or you have enough friends that do.

• 5:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 5:50Georgia Hardstark?

  And make you, like, not seem stupid.

• 5:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Everyone comes in with their specific thing where it's like,

• 5:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 5:54Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm TV from 1978.

• 5:56Georgia Hardstark?

  That's like what I love about pub trivia though, is like, you hang out with people you normally wouldn't hang out with because, like, they're not the people that know everything that you know. And we have this, like, sinky thing. It's like the people who are like, oh, that's random so-and-so, and he knows every single fucking thing about coding or everything, everything about politics. I never see him. And it's like, well, that's perfect for, come to pub trivia.

• 6:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Come and I will talk to you geography guy.

• 6:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 6:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 6:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. What do you got?

• 6:19Karen Kilgariff?

  I just sent this little skeleton friend. I have nothing else. Should we do some highlights?

• 6:26Georgia Hardstark?

  All right. We have a podcast network called Exactly Right, and we want you to listen to all the podcasts on it, which is why we're giving you some highlights.

• 6:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, for example, this week on this podcast will kill you, Erin and Aaron are launching their brand new four-part pregnancy series.

• 6:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Huge.

• 6:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Amazing. So, on Tuesday, March 11th, you can be part of the excitement by going to YouTube. They're doing a special YouTube premiere of the very first episode. So it's a video episode of this podcast will kill you. If you've been listening to the Erins explain every disease and body part and thing to you over the years, you can now go watch them do it, this very important series, and you just get to interact video style with that podcast.

• 7:09Georgia Hardstark?

  So on March 11th at 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, you can watch the show, you can chat with everyone and get your questions answered, your pregnancy questions answered in real time. Please go to youtube.com/ExactlyRightMedia. Make sure you subscribe because we're going to be throwing some cool videos up there.

• 7:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep.

• 7:25Georgia Hardstark?

  And this is just like the very first of many to come.

• 7:28Karen Kilgariff?

  It's video time over here.

• 7:29Georgia Hardstark?

  You could see them in our studios, in our actual, they came and saw us. It was exciting.

• 7:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, the Erins are here.

• 7:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like the characters from another place come and interact in this board game.

• 7:40Georgia Hardstark?

  And the pregnancy thing, I mean, I am a weirdo and I'm fascinated and I know a ton of stuff about pregnancy. And so I love the idea that just like, and I'm never going to do it. But this is a great way to relate to your friends who are.

• 7:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 7:52Georgia Hardstark?

  And will and can and should.

• 7:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Totally. What they go through and all of it and understanding, or if it is what you are going through, you have questions and whatever. These are two amazing doctors who love to teach through their podcast.

• 8:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 8:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Sorry.

• 8:09Georgia Hardstark?

  That's good.

• 8:10Karen Kilgariff?

  I didn't mean to do a speech. Over on Dear Movies, I love you, Millie and Casey take a deep dive into Quentin Tarantino's film, The Hateful Eight. And they also chat with Brian Sore from the Pure Cinema Podcast to tackle an essential question, how to sound like a movie buff without being insufferable. Spoiler alert, it's impossible to do.

• 8:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Absolutely. And on That's Messed Up, Lisa and Cara break down SVU episode 10. Season three, titled Redemption, to explore the wrongful convictions tied to the crimes of Eddie Mosley. And they also sit down with actor David Keith to talk about his time on SVU and his incredible career.

• 8:47Karen Kilgariff?

  They have David Keith on their podcast.

• 8:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Fucking insane.

• 8:51Karen Kilgariff?

  That's like one of my foundational memories. He was on TV when I started to understand there was a TV in the room.

• 8:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 8:58Karen Kilgariff?

  This man is a legend.

• 8:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Legendary.

• 9:00Karen Kilgariff?

  So cool. Okay, also this week on Ghosted, Roz welcomes filmmakers Shannon Alexander and Ashley Rollin White to share some spine tingling stories from Ashley's haunted Brooklyn home, which is the eerie setting of their documentary entitled It's Coming.

• 9:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Hell, yeah.

• 9:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Which is the scariest title I've maybe I've ever heard.

• 9:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Scary.

• 9:21Karen Kilgariff?

  So if you like ghost stories that keep you up at night, go listen to this episode. It's for you.

• 9:26Georgia Hardstark?

  You know, my sister recently had found out she had a gas leak in her house and I was like, have you been seeing ghosts? Because that's my big theory, you know? And she hasn't.

• 9:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 9:34Georgia Hardstark?

  She's just been tired.

• 9:35Karen Kilgariff?

  She's been snapping 18 hours a day. God, that's so scary.

• 9:40Georgia Hardstark?

  And it's been for like a year.

• 9:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 9:42Georgia Hardstark?

  She goes, tell me you're the child of a narcissistic parent without telling me. And it's like, because I ignored a gas leak for a year and said it must have been in my head. Don't worry about it. Don't be annoying. Yep.

• 9:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Don't have needs.

• 9:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yep.

• 9:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Don't need clean, fresh air for you and your family.

• 9:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Okay, anyway, speaking of hauntings, some of-

• 10:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Speaking of sorrow.

• 10:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Some of our most popular merch has returned from its sold out purgatory because you guys loved them so much. For those looking to upgrade their jean jacket, as we said, we have the skeleton pin and the MFM mood pin. They are restocked. These both sold out, so make sure you go get them at exactlyrightstore.com.

• 10:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Yay.

• 10:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yay. The holidays are coming, which means we'll all be spending more time away from home.

• 10:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Whether you're visiting family or doing something actually fun, you want to know your home is protected while you're away.

• 10:33Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why now is a good time to think about home security with Simply Safe.

• 10:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Unlike traditional security systems that alert you after a break in starts, Simply Safe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. These days, you're worried about- At your house, you're out of town and then something comes up and you get to look on your phone. And SimpliSafe is going to show you not only the video of like, it's a raccoon at your front door, but also that they have staff that's sitting there. They already know. And if it was something different or worse, they would have already been on it.

• 11:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I really think that's invaluable peace of mind that just like relying on your neighbors, paying attention is not going to give you. We've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer our listeners their biggest savings of the year. 70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/mfm.

• 11:19Karen Kilgariff?

  That's simplisafe.com/mfm. And when you order, write in MFM at checkout and it tells them we sent you. And it really helps the show.

• 11:27Georgia Hardstark?

  SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.

• 11:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 11:31Georgia Hardstark?

  The holidays are filled with moments that remind us who matters most. The friend who always picks up the phone.

• 11:36Karen Kilgariff?

  The family member who's stood by your side, the people who know your story and help shape it every day.

• 11:41Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why this season Pandora's Holiday Collection is all about celebrating the ones you know by heart with a gift that says it all.

• 11:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Because the best gifts don't just look beautiful, they mean something too. Discover meaningful jewelry designed to honor every connection.

• 11:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Choose engraved pieces that turn memories into keepsakes.

• 11:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Celebrate special moments with festive charms that capture the spirit of the season or surprise someone extraordinary with the brilliance of Pandora's lab grown diamonds.

• 12:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Each piece is thoughtfully crafted to help you express what can be difficult to put into words.

• 12:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Whether you're shopping for a partner, a parent, a best friend, or someone who's been there through it all, you'll find a gift that reflects everything they mean to you.

• 12:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Give a piece that says exactly what words can't.

• 12:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Pandora, more than a gift.

• 12:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Shop new styles in store or online at pandora.net.

• 12:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Turning something you love into a career is exciting. Then come the invoices. Lucky for you, Squarespace can handle the business stuff so you can focus on your business. From consultations to events and experiences, you can showcase your skills with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. With Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a beautiful, professional, online presence that perfectly fits your needs. Fits their brand or business. Get paid on time with professional invoices and online payments. Plus streamline your workflow with built in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Head to squarespace.com/murder for a free trial.

• 13:08Karen Kilgariff?

  And when you're ready to launch, use offer code murder to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Goodbye.

• 13:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. This is kind of, I'm not going to call it a fun one because this podcast is called my favorite murder.

• 13:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 13:23Georgia Hardstark?

  However, it is a caper, I would call it. Like an adventure caper that was really big in the UK in the like early, mid 2000s. Huge story that I maybe had heard of, but like didn't remember. I bet you'll know it. So it's 5:30 PM. It's December 1st, 2007.

• 13:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:46Georgia Hardstark?

  You know, we're at the West End Central Police Station in the middle of London. Busy, beautiful London. You know, people are shopping, there's tourists, people are meeting for drinks after work. They're on the way to the theaters.

• 13:59Karen Kilgariff?

  They're talking in British accents.

• 14:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Beautiful British accent.

• 14:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, scarves.

• 14:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my God, double decker buses.

• 14:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Pipes.

• 14:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Robbing trains.

• 14:06Karen Kilgariff?

  101 Dalmatians.

• 14:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my God. So a man walks into the police station. He appears to be in his mid 50s. He's like clean cut. He's in good health. He's got a tan, which is rare for London, frankly. And he says to the officer, quote, "I think I may be a missing person." So they do some probing and they realize he is a man who very famously went missing five years earlier in 2002. His name is John Darwin. He had set out in a kayak. Here's the thing for the rest of this kayak and canoe are going to be interchangeable because either they're the same thing over there or they're, they are interchangeable over there. But when I say canoe, I mean kayak. When I say kayak, I mean canoe.

• 14:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 14:52Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm going to stick with canoe.

• 14:53Karen Kilgariff?

  The fact that you have said this, though, I'm pretty sure I've seen this made for TV movie.

• 14:59Georgia Hardstark?

  There's a made for TV movie and a great documentary and yes.

• 15:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Is Mr. Darcy the star of the made for TV movie?

• 15:03Georgia Hardstark?

  I didn't watch it, is he?

• 15:05Karen Kilgariff?

  I think he is.

• 15:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh shit, they watched the documentary.

• 15:08Karen Kilgariff?

  No, not Mr. Darcy, but I think I've seen it.

• 15:10Georgia Hardstark?

  But can I tell you who he looks like, just so you can picture it? And it's like a spitting image of, he's a British John McEnroe, the famous tennis player.

• 15:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 15:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Spitting image.

• 15:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 15:20Georgia Hardstark?

  To me. So he had set out on a kayak from a beach near his home and was presumed dead, lost at sea. But John, this guy who walks in, says he can't remember anything that's happened to him in the past seven years, basically from two years before he paddled away. He basically is like, I must have amnesia. He says, quote, "I have hazy recollections of being in a kayak, but I cannot remember the accident or anything leading up to it at all. It is therefore true to say that I do have some form of amnesia," end quote. That's his story.

• 15:50Karen Kilgariff?

  You know how amnesiacs always talk like that where they're like, well, it could be this or it could be that, as opposed to just, I don't know, help me, I don't know where I am.

• 15:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I would imagine. But the neurologist who examines him is immediately skeptical about his amnesia claims. And from there, the story begins to unravel into what will very quickly become a British tabloid sensation. This is the story of the disappearance of John Darwin. The main sources for the story are reporting from The Guardian and a book called Out of My Depth by Anne Darwin, the wife. And the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes. Okay, so let me tell you about the Darwins. Let's back up to the day Darwin first became a missing person. So that was March 22, 2002, and Ally Elkin, my researcher, wrote Nickelback's How You Remind Me is the top of the US charts and at number four in the UK.

• 16:44Georgia Hardstark?

  I love the time and place. Nickelback.

• 16:47Karen Kilgariff?

  That's all you need to hear.

• 16:48Georgia Hardstark?

  That's all you need.

• 16:49Karen Kilgariff?

  It was the peak of Nickelback season.

• 16:51Georgia Hardstark?

  And it's number four in the UK where our story takes place. Beautiful, I love the way she just brought it around. John and his wife Anne live in the seaside town of Seton Carew.

• 17:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Huh?

• 17:03Georgia Hardstark?

  It's on the northeast coast of England, not too far from Newcastle. It's like a beach town, a little bit run down. You know, it used to be a big touristy thing, and I think it's not so much anymore. John and Anne Darwin are a couple in their early 50s. Anne works as a receptionist in a doctor's office, and John is a corrections officer in a prison and seems to get along with the prisoners really well, which is interesting. He had previously been a math and science teacher and had worked for a bank. Before that, and the couple are also landlords. They rent out bedsits, which basically to us would be if you rented like a bedroom and then the bathroom is down the hall and you shared that with all the other tenants. So a bedsit, single room occupancy apartments, basically.

• 17:47Karen Kilgariff?

  That's for when you're writing your novel down by the seaside.

• 17:50Georgia Hardstark?

  It is a beautiful, like old Victorian looking place down by this like, you know, overcast British sea. It's really beautiful, picturesque. The Darwins own 12 houses in the area and they've all been converted into these bedsits. So they're not that expensive. Like that's, that's the thing too about the, the area where they can, they, people who are just have normal jobs can buy these houses and turn it into this and make money off of them. So it's not like, you're not in London, you know?

• 18:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 18:16Georgia Hardstark?

  John has always been involved in side hustles, which AKA get rich quick schemes. One involved, and this is a great idea, breeding snails to sell to restaurants for escargot. Like, yeah, where do the snails come from?

• 18:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Someone's gotta do it.

• 18:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Farm those snails.

• 18:31Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, now I just want to ask somebody all about, like, is there a certain way you have to do it that makes it food grade quality?

• 18:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. And then also like, is it like salmon where you're like, that's farm raised, I can tell because of the color and like, it's better to get it.

• 18:44Karen Kilgariff?

  The texture.

• 18:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Have you ever had escargot? I've had it a couple of times.

• 18:49Karen Kilgariff?

  What do you think?

• 18:50Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a really good chewy thing.

• 18:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you think it'd be as good without all the garlic?

• 18:54Georgia Hardstark?

  No, no, no, no, no. It's the garlic and butter that makes it, and parsley that makes it good in the bread. It's not bad. It's, you don't taste snail, but you just know you're eating snail.

• 19:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Now I truly want to listen to a podcast about how escargot became any kind of a thing that people are.

• 19:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Erin and Erin, this podcast will kill you. Actually, because I, there is that one boy who ate a slug in like Australia and fucking died. Ate it like poisonous slug as a dare.

• 19:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Don't eat, don't do.

• 19:21Georgia Hardstark?

  That and the fuzzy caterpillars are my like worst nightmare.

• 19:25Karen Kilgariff?

  If someone dares you.

• 19:26Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 19:26Karen Kilgariff?

  What you say back to that person is, why is there no one at home with you? What's wrong with you?

• 19:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Why am I a teenage boy?

• 19:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Why are you, what's happening?

• 19:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Teenage boys, oh my God. Okay.

• 19:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Here eat a poison thing.

• 19:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 19:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Which in nature, we know are poisonous because they're like bright yellow or black and white stripes.

• 19:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't do it. Okay. So tell us about snails, snailarinos.

• 19:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, my god.

• 19:48Georgia Hardstark?

  There's gotta be.

• 19:49Karen Kilgariff?

  The subgroup that loves escargot needs to be uniting right now.

• 19:53Georgia Hardstark?

  They're a French subgroup of murderinos. Murder, like, how do they call themselves?

• 19:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Murder.

• 19:58Georgia Hardstark?

  There you go. Thank you. Okay, another get-rich-quick scheme involves painting gnomes to sell at flea markets. Because, you know, they just come into, like, and then you just paint them.

• 20:07Karen Kilgariff?

  I know, red hat.

• 20:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, right. Or like, maybe they're kitschy and like, different.

• 20:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Some have really red cheeks, like me.

• 20:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Some are Irish. By 2002, John and Anne's two sons, Mark and Anthony, what? Are in their mid-20s and kind of hot, too.

• 20:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, yeah?

• 20:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, they're kind of like, you know, hot British dudes.

• 20:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Fit, as the British would say?

• 20:29Georgia Hardstark?

  They are fit. And they no longer live at home. John and Anne live in a big Victorian townhouse in a row of similar townhouses that line this cliff overlooking the sea. Very beautiful. They actually own two properties in this row, the one they live in and then the one next door. That is converted to bedsits. This will be important, I swear. So at 8:30 in the morning on March 22nd, 2002, John sets out in his red kayak, or canoe, paddling out to sea. It's just a hobby of his.

• 20:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 20:55Georgia Hardstark?

  That morning, a neighbor sees John in the distance paddling in the water. He's the last person to see John, and John doesn't come back from his morning paddle. But no one reports him missing until 9:30 that night, which is when Anne comes home from work and running errands, and hears the message on the answering machine from the prison where John works saying that he never shut up for his night shift. So he left early in the morning, and it wasn't until 9:30 at night. By midnight, a huge search and rescue operation is underway and continues into the next day. Five crews from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, two boats from the Coast Guard, and one police aircraft with heat-seeking equipment search a 62-square-mile area around the waters where John is last seen paddling. So this is a big deal.

• 21:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Georgia Hardstark?

  This is this big scary deal that this person could be lost at sea. Police search the shoreline, and at about 1:15 the following afternoon, one of the searchers finds a kayak paddle. It's found by the shore not too far from the town they live in and not too far from where John had set off. Of course, without his paddle, they know John would be adrift, so this is even a bigger emergency. But the rescue teams are puzzled because the North Sea where John was in has been unusually calm, and everyone is wondering how John could have had any issues in such good weather. But the search and rescue teams find no sign of John or his kayak, and people begin to fear the worst. And Darwin asks relatives to go tell her two sons that their father is missing, and that it doesn't look good.

• 22:24Georgia Hardstark?

  And the sons are, of course, devastated. They're even more devastated four days later when the rescue mission is called off. About six weeks later, on May 8th, the wreckage of John's kayak is found. It's in several pieces, but it's washed up on the shore in that same area his paddle had been found. The family confirms that the wreckage is John's kayak. So, April of 2003, the coroner declares John legally dead. At this point, Ann can file a claim on his life insurance policy, which is worth about 250 pounds in 2003, which in today's US dollars...

• 23:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Hold on, 250,000 pounds?

• 23:03Georgia Hardstark?

  250,000 pounds.

• 23:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, you said 250 pounds.

• 23:05Georgia Hardstark?

  I didn't mean that. 250,000 pounds, which in today's US dollars, I mean, just take a wild guess.

• 23:11Karen Kilgariff?

  From 2003?

• 23:13Georgia Hardstark?

  And then you have to convert it from pounds to dollars.

• 23:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Can't do that.

• 23:16Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 23:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Won't do that. Here's my American answer.

• 23:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 23:20Karen Kilgariff?

  400,000?

• 23:21Georgia Hardstark?

  690,000.

• 23:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Damn it.

• 23:23Georgia Hardstark?

  I know.

• 23:24Karen Kilgariff?

  I just want that day where I say the exact number.

• 23:26Georgia Hardstark?

  One day, one of us is gonna get it, and the podcast is over.

• 23:29Karen Kilgariff?

  That's the day that, oh, then the lights immediately shut off and we walk away.

• 23:34Georgia Hardstark?

  The landlord comes in and gets the keys back to his office. It's over. It's a lot of money. And John also had a few pensions from his various jobs. And so Ann is able to collect benefits on those two, and life seems to go on for the rest of the family. Now, obviously, at this point, we know what's going on, you and I and everyone else. Spoiler alert, John had faked his own death, so he and his wife could collect on the insurance money. Shocker.

• 23:59Karen Kilgariff?

  But she, Ann, doesn't know this yet, right? Or does she?

• 24:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Are you gonna tell us?

• 24:04Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm gonna tell you.

• 24:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, sorry. Because I'm trying to remember this TV show, so I'm like, what happened?

• 24:09Georgia Hardstark?

  I'll tell you.

• 24:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 24:10Georgia Hardstark?

  The answer is yes. Ann was in it all along. The way she later tells the story, she says John had put immense pressure on her to go along with his life insurance fraud scheme. The couple were very overextended on all of their real estate. And John came up with this idea of faking his own death to get them out of debt. I think they were like $60,000 in debt and they had all these, you know, rental properties they couldn't cover.

• 24:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 24:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Their mortgage for. So on the day that John went out to sea, and I can't imagine being talked into this. So either he was very persuasive or she was like, let's do it.

• 24:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Here's a fun factoid. The woman that plays the wife in the made for TV, I guess it was a mini series. That was Monica Dolan, who's the same actress who played Rose West in the mini series about Fred and Rose West. Yes. She is a powerhouse British actress, character actress. And playing this kind of beleaguered, put upon wife is, it's, you have so much empathy for her.

• 25:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow, she can do it all.

• 25:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. And she's so great. And she is so harried from the, like freaked out from the beginning. And it does seem a little bit, just from that, who knows the reality. That, that he is kind of like, won't leave her alone and is a little bit like, almost OCD about it and won't leave her alone about it. And then she just has to give in.

• 25:32Georgia Hardstark?

  I, from the documentary, I got that idea too. She was like, like, you know, she had been promised this life because he was like always in scheming and stuff like that and it wasn't happening. And he just was like, this is the way it has to go. And she went along with it, kind of old school.

• 25:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Wifey type of thing.

• 25:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Right, right.

• 25:48Georgia Hardstark?

  You know? On the day when John went out to sea, he made sure he was seen struggling with his kayak down to the shoreline.

• 25:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Oof, ah. Acting, bad physical acting.

• 25:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. He paddled to North Gare where his paddle and kayak had ultimately been found. And it's a five minute drive from his house. So he had packed camping gear and clothes into the canoe with him. And he spent the rest of the day hiding in the dunes. And then he tried to throw the paddle out to sea, but it kept washing ashore. Oh my God. He winds up leaving the paddle close to shore where it was found the next day. He just was like wanting people to find it.

• 26:22Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like, yeah, puts it right there.

• 26:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. He sinks the canoe and in the afternoon of the day he disappears, before he's reported missing, John actually calls Anne at work to remind her to pick him up from his hiding spot that evening. So she's in it from the beginning. She had already been at work by the time John left the house and she says that when she saw that he was calling, she'd hoped he was saying that he hadn't gone through with the plan. But nope, John had gone through with the plan. After Anne picks him up at about seven in the evening, she drives him to a train station in Durham, not the closest one to their home because John thinks police will look at that station's CCTV footage. She parks on a side street, still trying to avoid cameras, and then John gets out of the car with his camping gear and clothes and gets on the first of a series of trains.

• 27:08Georgia Hardstark?

  He winds up in Cumbria. It's a scenic part of northern England on the opposite coast from where the Darwins live. First he stays at a B and B, but then he sees himself on the news on a TV there and so he quickly checks out and camps in the woods for about three weeks.

• 27:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, jeez.

• 27:24Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. He had originally intended to stay away a lot longer, but turns out, living outdoors sucks and he's cold and hungry and so he calls Anne and begs her to pick him up.

• 27:35Karen Kilgariff?

  I just, and, and look, you're desperate, you're trying to put a plan together.

• 27:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Karen Kilgariff?

  But not walking it all the way through to like, what about in one month?

• 27:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 27:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Two months, three months, where it's like, he went and stayed at an air, like a bed and breakfast?

• 27:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Karen Kilgariff?

  The night that he was supposed to have disappeared?

• 27:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. And like, it sounds like an adventure when you're like, mapping it out in your head, I'll live in the forest and I'll have those camping gear and it's like, that, that lasts a week and then you're like, fuck this shit.

• 28:01Karen Kilgariff?

  It's freezing out here.

• 28:02Georgia Hardstark?

  It's freezing out there, fucking shit in a hole, like, no thank you.

• 28:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, there's no crisps.

• 28:08Georgia Hardstark?

  There's no crisps.

• 28:09Karen Kilgariff?

  No one's fit. Also, trying to like manipulate the ocean to do what you want to do to back up your story, just as a person who grew up near the coast, is such a bad idea.

• 28:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 28:21Karen Kilgariff?

  It's never, like, first of all, there's experts that know the tides, they know, they watch it constantly. I mean, it kind of worked, but there were people who were like, right?

• 28:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Karen Kilgariff?

  You say there were people who were...

• 28:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, they were skeptical of the story, but...

• 28:32Karen Kilgariff?

  They're just like, nothing's happening. Why would anything be happening?

• 28:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I think everyone like the insurance adjuster, everyone is like, mm, I don't know about that, but there's no proof otherwise. So, okay. They just didn't have any proof otherwise. But yeah, I think people were not fooled.

• 28:47Karen Kilgariff?

  They're like, this is the one sneaker wave that hits this time of year.

• 28:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Or he went under a boat. I don't know. So he calls in and begs her to pick him up. So they return home and then he now pretends to be a new tenant living in one of the apartments in the house next door, in the bedsit next door. So he's like, I'm gonna pretend to be someone else.

• 29:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 29:07Georgia Hardstark?

  In the exact spot that I just left three weeks ago. It's foolproof.

• 29:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Could have done it from the beginning.

• 29:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. So the two houses actually have several connecting doors in between them. So John's able to hang out in his old house with Ann, have a cup of tea and chill there and like basically live there until people come over and he runs next door to hide. And so no one else knows but Ann. And Ann will later say in an interview, quote, fortunately, we had a gravel driveway. So if cars approached, we could hear them come.

• 29:36Karen Kilgariff?

  So they always had 30 seconds minimum to get to run?

• 29:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. So I'm sure she got sick of him real fast, staying home all day.

• 29:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, and also because he's pulled her into this thing.

• 29:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, yeah, that would get old real quick.

• 29:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Very quick. So he now goes by the name Carl Fenwick as this new tenant next door.

• 29:55Karen Kilgariff?

  God damn it.

• 29:56Georgia Hardstark?

  He, why?

• 29:57Karen Kilgariff?

  I had a mouthful of diapxy and it just sounds so stupid. It's just like, you know.

• 30:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Carl Fenwick.

• 30:05Karen Kilgariff?

  You know me. It's your old pal Carl Fenwick.

• 30:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Hey, look at me. I have a scraggly beard. I have an exaggerated limp for some reason. I'm definitely not John Darwin.

• 30:16Karen Kilgariff?

  For real?

• 30:18Georgia Hardstark?

  And he basically, like, people see him and they know that there's this guy, who, a new tenant who lives there, who helps Ann with stuff around the house, like repairs and the properties. This man, this new not John Darwin guy, also avoids interactions with any of the other tenants in the house who knew John, and he uses the back staircase to access, you know, his room.

• 30:40Karen Kilgariff?

  It's all just waiting for an online sleuth to like pick up on a couple of things and then...

• 30:45Georgia Hardstark?

  There is an online sleuth in the story.

• 30:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Sorry, sorry.

• 30:48Georgia Hardstark?

  No, no, it's great.

• 30:49Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm gonna keep doing that though because I already saw the show and then I'm just forgetting and then remembering.

• 30:54Georgia Hardstark?

  No, it's good that you saw it and I didn't, even though I'm telling you the story. It's a good thing.

• 30:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 30:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Somehow. So then actually about a year after John's disappearance, John, as Carl Fenwick, actually bumps into another tenant. He sees this scraggly guy and he's like, he says to him, "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Like, he knows it's John Darwin, he's seen this guy before. And then John says, "Don't tell anyone about this." And it seems like a couple of people actually thought they saw him or were sure they saw him, and you know, British people, they're just like, "None of my business."

• 31:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Truly.

• 31:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Low-key, they get embarrassed real easy.

• 31:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, like, "I don't want to get involved. I don't want to get involved."

• 31:31Karen Kilgariff?

  No one's gonna start pointing and shouting over there in England.

• 31:33Georgia Hardstark?

  No, there are, there are no snitches in England.

• 31:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Not in the least.

• 31:37Georgia Hardstark?

  They don't do that.

• 31:37Karen Kilgariff?

  No snitches and no stitches.

• 31:39Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right. So John evades detection by authorities. He spends a lot of time playing online computer games in his bedsit.

• 31:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Hmm.

• 31:48Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a good life.

• 31:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Sure.

• 31:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Then he applies for a passport by stealing the identity of a baby who had died in infancy the same year he was born, also named John. And Anne says John got this idea from the book, The Day of the Jackal, and it works. He gets a copy of the baby's birth certificate and is able to use it to apply for a passport under the name John Jones. So we have a third name now.

• 32:12Karen Kilgariff?

  What's the second name? Carl Fenwick?

• 32:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Fanny. We call him Fanny at the local pub. John is like, kind of fairly brazen. He goes out in public. He then also, like, now that he has his passport, he flies to Spain in 2005. I think they go on a couple of holidays, as they call it, with that huge fucking windfall of money.

• 32:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, right.

• 32:33Georgia Hardstark?

  From his death. In 2006, he uses his fake name to sign a petition against planned construction that... Supposed to happen to the house next door. Like, don't put your fucking name down.

• 32:43Karen Kilgariff?

  He's got to get involved. He's got to.

• 32:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. He's kind of just like, well, this is over now and I can move on.

• 32:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Cause he believes that like, the reality he's dictating is reality.

• 32:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Absolutely. What is that? Sociopath?

• 32:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Or like, I don't know. Is it what we're, we all do? And then we're just kind of like, it's a fight of.

• 33:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Delusional.

• 33:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Or something.

• 33:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Karen Kilgariff?

  But I mean, to me, his delusion is that thing of like, it's as delusional the thing he did as now the way he's acting within it. Like, I just don't want to be doing this anymore.

• 33:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. It's not like one is more than the other.

• 33:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 33:14Georgia Hardstark?

  But it's just what he decides. The temperature is that day.

• 33:17Karen Kilgariff?

  It's all a Carl Fenwick style plan.

• 33:21Georgia Hardstark?

  It surely is. So at this point in 2006, Anne and John start making a plan to move to Panama together. Like, she's stuck by this guy's side.

• 33:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Georgia Hardstark?

  She lists both of those properties in Seaton Carew and the house sells. And so she has her sons come over to help her clean it out. Now, the sons never know about the scheme. The sons think their dad was lost at sea, which is really the most heartbreaking part of this whole story.

• 33:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 33:48Georgia Hardstark?

  She has them select items of their fathers that they want to keep, like keepsakes for him. And one of the sons actually selects a book that later they realized was like, was the dad's that they later realized was published after he disappeared. So John and Anne do move to Panama in the fall of 2007. And it's at the same time that the police start investigating them. Basically what happens is, in the lead up to the move, one of Anne's colleagues, who's a snitch, turns out, hears her having hushed conversations on the phone, which is weird. The tone of the conversation is exactly the way she would have talked to her husband. So this chick's nosy as fuck. And she's also, she's always whispering and covering the receiver. Just fishy business.

• 34:30Karen Kilgariff?

  It was tough back then, when everyone used the phone.

• 34:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 34:33Karen Kilgariff?

  And you'd kind of like, stuff would happen and then you'd have to do weird stuff like that.

• 34:37Georgia Hardstark?

  You're in the doc, you're in the doctor's office where you work and you're just like.

• 34:39Karen Kilgariff?

  You pull the long cord around into a different, like into the copy room.

• 34:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. So this coworker just has a gut feeling that she's talking to her husband and she reports her suspicions to the police. So they start re-investigating John's disappearance.

• 34:53Karen Kilgariff?

  What's the? She must have not liked-

• 34:56Georgia Hardstark?

  What'd she get out of it?

• 34:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Or she thinks it's something worse than.

• 35:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Only just because knowing the overall crime, it's so self-serving that it's like-

• 35:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know, a citizen like, I'd like to make a citizen's arrest.

• 35:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it's really law-abiding in a way that like, what was she like? Really?

• 35:17Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know.

• 35:18Georgia Hardstark?

  You know? No shame.

• 35:19Karen Kilgariff?

  No shame, no shade?

• 35:21Georgia Hardstark?

  A little bit of both.

• 35:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Half a cup of shade?

• 35:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 35:24Karen Kilgariff?

  And just a droplet of shame.

• 35:25Georgia Hardstark?

  That's it. And so John and Ann don't know yet that they're being looked into, and so they make that planned move to Panama. But they're only there for three months before John is like, fuck this shit, basically. And has to go back to the UK because Panama had changed its visa rules. So if they actually wanted to continue living there, John and Ann will each need a letter from their local police force back home saying they are of good character. So John, of course, can't do this with his fake identity. And so he's like, I have an idea, amnesia, let's do this. And he flies back to the UK and walks into that police station and is like, I think I'm a missing person.

• 36:04Karen Kilgariff?

  And at this point, when he pitches that idea to her-

• 36:06Georgia Hardstark?

  She's just, what?

• 36:07Karen Kilgariff?

  She's, I'm begging you.

• 36:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm begging you to stop.

• 36:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Just, just please.

• 36:12Karen Kilgariff?

  What are you doing?

• 36:13Georgia Hardstark?

  So that's December of 2007, when he walks back into the police, from the beginning of the story. Again, neurologists are immediately doubtful, but the police still notify John's two sons, who are shocked and then absolutely elated to find out that their father, who they believe was dead for five years, lost at sea, is still alive. The story catches on that the man who was thought dead in a canoeing accident has turned up alive in London, and that he seemingly can't account for the past five years. The detail that his wife had moved to Panama also becomes part of the story. I think people at first were like, kind of believed the story.

• 36:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 36:48Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm sure a lot were like, there's more to it than that, but this is interesting. And it immediately is like, tabloid.

• 36:53Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like you understand why the tabloids pick the stories they pick.

• 36:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Because it's almost like, what's your neighbor up to?

• 37:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 37:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, you think, you think that guy with the beard is just- What's his name? Carl?

• 37:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Carl Fenwick? Yeah. It's sensational. No, that's fucking John Darwin. Everyone's known that. Okay, then here comes our citizen sleuth. This random woman decides to Google something along the lines of John, Anne, and Panama. And when she goes to the images tab, she finds a picture from a Panama real estate agent's office. It shows John, Anne, and the broker all smiling together with a date stamp from 2006 when they rented this apartment or they bought this house. I don't know which is. But Anne, this whole time, had been saying that she thought her husband was dead. And so they find this photo of them from like a year before, smiling. Why would you take a picture? Don't let anyone take a picture of you. Don't sign any fucking forms. Like, basics.

• 37:49Karen Kilgariff?

  But don't you think that's because that is the last remnants of people who did not grow up with the internet? Don't understand the internet.

• 37:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Why would that go on the internet?

• 37:57Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like, it's a picture. It's going to stay in South America.

• 38:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Karen Kilgariff?

  And there will be nothing that brings it out of this area. It's just for the real estate agent.

• 38:05Georgia Hardstark?

  It's 2006. We don't do that shit right now. No.

• 38:07Karen Kilgariff?

  And then it's like, mm-hmm.

• 38:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, totally. So this, like, basically Anne had been insisting that she knew nothing. She thought her husband was dead. Everything falls apart. This woman sends the photo to police and the Daily Mirror. And the Mirror, of course, runs the photo. And the story goes from being kind of a simple, mildly interesting story to causing a complete uproar. And John becomes known around the UK as Canoe Man. Like, front page, the photo of them from the real estate office, smiling like nobody's business. On December 5th, the same day the photo runs in the Mirror, John is arrested for fraud. Which is not surprising at all, right? Like, you just kind of humiliated the police even though they were on to you. But it's been five years and they believe that.

• 38:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, and no one could kind of do anything about it.

• 38:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Anne flies back to the UK and is also promptly arrested. Just a few days after these arrests, Mark and Anthony, the Fitzsons, release a statement saying they had no idea that their father was alive and they are cooperating with police and that they are no longer speaking to either of their parents.

• 39:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Ugh.

• 39:10Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. Devastating.

• 39:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Are truly the victims. It seems like also the wife, but she did go along with it. Cause that is kind of what that whole.

• 39:20Georgia Hardstark?

  She deceived them.

• 39:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Made for TV movie is where it's like, that's the part she can't explain.

• 39:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 39:24Karen Kilgariff?

  And they're like, what the hell?

• 39:26Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, it's almost worse for her because she had to lie to their faces for five years when he could just skedaddle.

• 39:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Georgia Hardstark?

  You know?

• 39:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Typical. I mean, like she's carrying the water for the big plan.

• 39:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 39:35Karen Kilgariff?

  And then when the big plan falls, a plan she doesn't believe in falls apart. She is the scapegoat.

• 39:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Karen Kilgariff?

  She's supposed to be better than her husband.

• 39:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Who would, who would do such a thing? In March of 2008, John pleads guilty to seven charges of obtaining cash by deception and a passport offense. Some of his other charges are dropped in a plea deal. He's sentenced to about six years in prison. And then Ann's case goes to trial in July of 2008. She pleads not guilty to six charges of deception and nine charges of money laundering. Cause the money always in like went to her. It was in her name. You know what I mean? So she, she takes the fall for that and she gets over six years, more than him.

• 40:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Got to remember that part.

• 40:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Karen Kilgariff?

  You are the bag man.

• 40:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. You're still.

• 40:16Karen Kilgariff?

  You're in there.

• 40:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Still in there. Yeah. I know. Her defense team says John forced her to go along with a scheme, but it doesn't matter. She's found guilty. Both John and Ann have since been released from prison and have gotten divorced. Like all that for what?

• 40:29Karen Kilgariff?

  For what?

• 40:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Ann has reconciled with her sons and wrote a book about the scheme called Out of My Depth, which is one of the sources for the story. Ann donated the profits from her book to charities, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which led the search for John when he first faked his disappearance.

• 40:46Karen Kilgariff?

  That's a very decent move.

• 40:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Karen Kilgariff?

  That's very smart.

• 40:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. John now lives in the Philippines and he married a woman who is 23 years younger than him. And that is the story of the disappearance of John Darwin.

• 41:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow, that's good.

• 41:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my God. Can you imagine? No, Vince, I'm not, you can't do that. That's like, I just.

• 41:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey, come on. And then he just keeps bringing it up like.

• 41:10Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a bad, no Vince. It's a bad idea. It's not going to work. No. Let's just paint some more gnomes.

• 41:15Karen Kilgariff?

  We gotta do it. We gotta do it. It's gonna get us so much money.

• 41:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Let's paint some more gnomes.

• 41:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Or, or order double gnomes.

• 41:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Grow some fucking snails. Grow some more snails on the snail tree and like get this.

• 41:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 41:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Jesus. Also, I'm just blown away that that having so much real estate didn't matter. That was like a minus to them.

• 41:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Just the ego there of like, I can do this and then stop doing it whenever I want.

• 41:41Karen Kilgariff?

  And pull, drag in whoever.

• 41:44Georgia Hardstark?

  And like to not consider that your sons are losing their father in their minds and the devastation that comes with losing a parent in such a traumatic way, to not even consider how that's going to affect them the rest of their lives.

• 41:56Karen Kilgariff?

  The traumatic way, that's a lie. And then the traumatic way, that's real.

• 42:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Either way.

• 42:01Karen Kilgariff?

  It's almost, it's like a worse where it's like, oh no, your dad, you didn't tragically lose your dad at sea. He did this to you.

• 42:08Georgia Hardstark?

  With his, your mother. She should have taken all the money from that book and put it into their therapy account because that's going to be forever.

• 42:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Ugh, wow.

• 42:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Karen Kilgariff?

  That was great.

• 42:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 42:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice one.

• 42:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, the documentary is called The Thief, His Wife, and a Canoe. And it's good.

• 42:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice.

• 42:24Georgia Hardstark?

  The holidays are coming, which means we'll all be spending more time away from home.

• 42:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Whether you're visiting family or doing something actually fun, you want to know your home is protected while you're away.

• 42:33Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why now is a good time to think about home security with SimpliSafe.

• 42:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Unlike traditional security systems that alert you after a break-in starts, SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. These days, you're worried about your house, you're out of town, and then something comes up and you get to look on your phone and SimpliSafe is going to show you not only the video of like, it's a raccoon at your front door, but also that they have staff that's sitting there, they already know. And if it was something different or worse, they would have already been on it.

• 43:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I really think that's invaluable peace of mind, that just like relying on your neighbors, paying attention is not going to give you. We've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer our listeners their biggest savings of the year. 70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/mfm.

• 43:20Karen Kilgariff?

  That's simplisafe.com/mfm. And when you order, write in MFM at checkout and it tells them we sent you. And it really helps the show.

• 43:27Georgia Hardstark?

  SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time.

• 43:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 43:31Georgia Hardstark?

  The holidays are filled with moments that remind us who matters most. The friend who always picks up the phone.

• 43:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Family member who stood by your side, the people who know your story and help shape it every day.

• 43:42Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why this season Pandora's Holiday Collection is all about celebrating the ones you know by heart with a gift that says it all.

• 43:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Because the best gifts don't just look beautiful, they mean something, too. Discover meaningful jewelry designed to honor every connection.

• 43:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Choose engraveable pieces that turn memories into keepsakes.

• 43:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Celebrate special moments with festive charms that capture the spirit of the season, or surprise someone extraordinary with the brilliance of Pandora's lab-grown diamonds.

• 44:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Each piece is thoughtfully crafted to help you express what can be difficult to put into words.

• 44:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Whether you're shopping for a partner, a parent, a best friend, or someone who's been there through it all, you'll find a gift that reflects everything they mean to you.

• 44:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Give a piece that says exactly what words can't.

• 44:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Pandora, more than a gift.

• 44:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Shop new styles in-store or online at pandora.net.

• 44:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye. We've all had moments where dealing with healthcare or insurance feels completely overwhelming.

• 44:32Georgia 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.

• 44:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month coordinating their own care.

• 44:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Nobody hands you a roadmap when you're dealing with a diagnosis or ongoing health issues.

• 44:51Karen Kilgariff?

  That's why there's Solace Health.

• 44:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Solace provides personal healthcare advocates who average 16 years of healthcare experience and can help you get answers fast.

• 44:59Karen 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.

• 45:05Georgia Hardstark?

  They can help with appointments, insurance denials, medical bills, treatment options, and understanding doctor recommendations.

• 45:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Research shows 92% of patients report a positive impact on their care from working with an advocate.

• 45:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Advocacy improves outcomes, and Solace advocates are covered by insurance nationwide.

• 45:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Eligibility varies by insurance plan.

• 45:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Advocates do not provide medical or legal advice or services, must be 18 years or older.

• 45:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Go to solacehealth.com/murder to see if you qualify.

• 45:31Georgia Hardstark?

  It takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.

• 45:34Karen Kilgariff?

  That's S-O-L-A-C-E health.com/murder.

• 45:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 45:41Karen Kilgariff?

  All right, well, let's take a turn back to Women's History Month. Let's go back, can we please? Let's revisit it, just for a second, and then, in doing so, also talk about my favorite topic, which is Victorian England. Hell, yeah. I will warn listeners, this story references a very disturbing, old, British police process, which was essentially the sexual abuse of women, and it's very upsetting. So, just listen with caution, please. So today, we're going to talk about a little-known British historical figure, who, despite her very real impact on British society, is not as famous as she should be. Historian Sarah C. Williams wrote a book on this person, and she put it this way, quote,

• 46:26Karen Kilgariff?

  "This woman devoted her life to pursuing justice for women. She played a pivotal role in the movement to gain equal constitutional rights for women in Britain. In fact, she was described by her contemporaries as, quote, 'the most distinguished woman of the 19th century,' end quote. Why is it, then, that we've largely forgotten her?" End quote. Yeah, why is it? Well, given how passionately this woman went after Victorian double standards that overwhelmingly favored men, while fighting for women's access to education, suffrage, and bodily autonomy, and the fact that she wasn't afraid to break social etiquette in the process, probably is what made her much more controversial in her time than,

• 47:11Karen Kilgariff?

  obviously, she would be now. Today, she's known to some as the, quote, "patron saint of sex workers." This is the story of 19th-century British activist Josephine Butler. Okay. All right, so the main sources used today are the writing and research of Sarah C. Williams, including her book, When Courage Calls: Josephine Butler and the Radical Pursuit of Justice for Women. That book is heavily cited. Also, an article by historian Michelle Higgs that was called "How Poverty Drove Thousands of Women to Sell Sex on the Streets of Victorian Britain," and that ran in the British magazine "Who Do You Think You Are?", which I got you a subscription to for your birthday this year, coming up.

• 47:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Also, an article by Kimmy Harris in Christianity Today entitled "Jesus "befriended Prostitutes," so this Victorian-era woman did too. Wow. The rest of the sources are in our show notes. Okay, so we're going to start at the beginning, and that is in 1828 in Northumberland. This is the northern edge of England, and that's the year that Josephine Gray is born. Her family isn't exactly the aristocracy, but they are members of the upper-middle class with serious political connections. Josephine's father's cousin, for example, is a man named Charles Gray, who will go on to become the prime minister in 1830. Politically speaking, Josephine's parents are very, very progressive with their ideals

• 48:37Karen Kilgariff?

  and convictions being firmly rooted in their strong Christian faith. Her mother Hannah breaks from the norms of the day and gives her daughters lessons, like at home schools them, while her father John is a vocal abolitionist and campaigner for social reform who openly discusses the topics of politics with his kids. So in 1852, when Josephine is 23, she marries a classics professor at Durham College named George Butler. George is cutting edge when it comes to Victorian men. He is ideologically totally on the same page as Josephine, and he respects her curiosity and intelligence, which is Imagine that. sadly rare in Victorian England.

• 49:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Curiosity and intelligence were ugly back then. Josephine, in turn, is inspired by George's work in academia, and on the weekends, they like to study texts and scripture together. And then I just wrote, just kidding, the weekend hadn't been invented yet. That's right. Think of all those children working in the workhouses. What's a weekend? Working at, yeah. No weekend. Okay, so eventually, George accepts a job at his alma mater, Oxford University, and the couple packs up and relocates. And at first, Josephine is very excited by the idea of being surrounded by academics and people who value education, but that excitement quickly fades once they settle in.

• 50:03Karen Kilgariff?

  One issue is that Josephine struggles with the bad air in Oxford, which it's described as, quote, "damp," and that triggers respiratory issues that she's been dealing with since childhood. But the other issue is social, because at the time, all Oxford students are men, and they've been encouraged to remain single since having a family is seen as being in conflict with the life of an academic. Many Oxford students are in training to be priests, and much of the faculty are already ordained. So, in short, life at Oxford is dominated by young, single men, who, unlike George, tend to ignore the intellect of women.

• 50:45Karen Kilgariff?

  At the same time, many of these male students and their professors are supposedly, quote-unquote, celibate, and yet they regularly visit sex workers. Even though this is not allowed and theoretically punishable at Oxford, Josephine often sees women and girls being brought into town and picked up by well-to-do men affiliated with the school. Some of these girls look very young, like children, and that especially troubles Josephine. So, of course, many sex workers today find empowerment in their work, but of course, in the 19th century, the polite and publicly prudish Victorian attitude around sex work

• 51:27Karen Kilgariff?

  is very, very negative on all fronts, with the women who sell sex being seen as pariahs. This is despite many women turning to sex out of financial desperation, like they've been widowed, or they are unmarried women with children, or they're flower girls or domestic workers who are not just basically making enough money to live and feed themselves. Historian Michelle Higgs writes, quote, "Refer to as the great social evil, prostitution was an ever-present fact of life in Victorian Britain, and was considered by the upper and middle class to be a threat to society and morality as a whole. Fallen women was the label applied to those who had fallen from the ideal of passive

• 52:09Karen Kilgariff?

  womanhood and lost their purity or innocence by indulging in premarital sex."

• 52:15Georgia Hardstark?

  With the people who are insulting them in that very sentence.

• 52:19Karen Kilgariff?

  With those same fathers and husbands in the families that are turning their noses up.

• 52:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, that are utilizing their services.

• 52:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. So Josephine Butler does not judge female sex workers the way others at the time do, even though she herself is very, very religious. She seems to be the rare Christian who genuinely ascribes to the idea that all people are equal in God's eyes. What really bothers Josephine is the huge double standard around sex and sex work. Michelle Higgs again says, quote, "In Victorian times, the sexual appetites of men and their use of sex workers was considered the norm. Women, on the other hand, were expected to be chaste and passive and to retain their virtue at all costs. Sex workers were punished under the law for soliciting, and yet the men who used their services were not."

• 53:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, like, what the fuck?

• 53:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. This game is rigged and has been since day one. So, at Oxford, Josephine sees how the school turns a blind eye to the male members of their community paying for sex, while local police eagerly arrest and jail the women for providing it. So Josephine starts visiting these women, not to try to reform them or to chastise them, but to befriend them. It's around this time that Josephine learns about a tragic case involving an unnamed teenage girl. It is not clear if she was a sex worker or not. We know that that's an issue from telling stories about women in Victorian times, like in The Five, Hallie Ruben holds the Five, where she's like, "There's no proof any of these women that were victims of Jack the Ripper were also sex workers."

• 53:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. And then also, like, what does that mean? If, like, one time you were literally starving to death and, you know, you did something you had to do, does that turn you forever into a sex worker, or?

• 54:02Karen Kilgariff?

  And also, are you somehow justifying this horrendous murder

• 54:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 54:06Karen Kilgariff?

  of this person?

• 54:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 54:07Karen Kilgariff?

  It's a, "Well, they get what they get."

• 54:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Is that supposed to be the message?

• 54:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Then we don't have to care, is the...

• 54:12Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, this is a lesson we learned year one, where, and a lot of this stuff is handed down.

• 54:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like that super prudish, like, in my case, very Catholic

• 54:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:21Karen Kilgariff?

  approach to that, where it's like, "Well, this is automatically bad."

• 54:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 54:25Karen Kilgariff?

  So here's how you should be judging these people.

• 54:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, instead of questioning everything we've been...

• 54:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Fucking every time.

• 54:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Karen Kilgariff?

  So, here's the story of this teenage girl. She was made pregnant by an Oxford scholar, who then abandoned her. She was left to carry the baby alone, which would be traumatizing and isolating in and of itself. Then shortly after she gives birth, she has no options, she has no future, she kills the newborn baby. So many Victorians see this girl as being the antithesis of what a woman quote should be. But Josephine sees a disempowered, abused, isolated girl being punished for a hypocritical, a morality system that allows the man who got her pregnant to walk away scot-free.

• 55:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 55:09Karen Kilgariff?

  So when this girl is eventually released from prison, Josephine and George do something unthinkable in Victorian society. They take her in as a domestic servant.

• 55:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 55:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Employing this quote fallen woman in their own home could very well mean social death for most well-to-do families. But as a write-up from the Salvation Army explains, quote, "Josephine remarkably retained a respectable reputation due to her additional adherence to the virtuous rules assigned to her sex by Victorian society: marriage, motherhood, morality, and piety." So they couldn't get her. They couldn't scratch her.

• 55:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 55:46Karen Kilgariff?

  And then she's like, and I'm doing this with this social power.

• 55:49Georgia Hardstark?

  I have this and I'm using it for good.

• 55:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. So all the while, George has noticed that his wife is neither happy or healthy in Oxford. So in 1857, he takes a new position as a schoolmaster in Cheltenham College, which is 40 miles west of Oxford, in England's beautiful and idyllic Cotswolds region. And the move is an instant improvement for Josephine. The environment is better for her health, so it starts to improve. Then also the butlers have a lot of space for their growing family. At this point, they have four young children. They have Georgie, Stanley, Charlie, and then their young daughter Eva.

• 56:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Cute.

• 56:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Here in Cheltenham, the butlers live in a large four-story home that's owned by George's employer. So it's big enough that it can house a dormitory of 30 schoolboys, reception rooms for entertaining, and a grand staircase with long banisters.

• 56:46Georgia Hardstark?

  So they live with all the students?

• 56:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Because that's, first of all, it's a college, which means it's a grammar school. It's one of those deals, I think, for the Brits. And it sounds like it's like a boarding school or whatever.

• 56:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Got it.

• 56:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Those are all guesses, so I could be wrong. If you went to Cheltenham College in Victorian England, please write in.

• 57:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Little Victorian ghost.

• 57:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 57:07Georgia Hardstark?

  And you went, please.

• 57:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, we do have something terribly tragic that happens in the family and in that house. One night in August of 1863, the baby of the Butler family, five-year-old Eva, comes rushing out of her fourth-floor nursery to say goodnight to her parents, who are downstairs in the drawing room. But she runs toward the banister, loses her balance, and falls over the banister four stories to her death.

• 57:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, no.

• 57:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Horrible.

• 57:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Karen Kilgariff?

  So, of course, as you can imagine, the Butlers are consumed by grief for years. Josephine will later call it, quote, "a long drought in my soul." The loss stunts her so much that she isn't able to fully reflect on Eva's death for decades, which is totally normal. But it does, in a strange way, awaken something inside of her. Because all the love that she poured into her daughter now fuels her deep desire to improve the lives of little girls like her daughter and the women they later become. So when the family relocates to Liverpool for Georgia's next job, Josephine brings this conviction and her deep grief along with her. And Liverpool opens her eyes.

• 58:20Karen Kilgariff?

  It's the first big city that Josephine's ever lived in, and she sees that it's a place where the rich and the poor basically exist side by side. Josephine will later write, quote, "I became possessed with an irresistible urge to go forth and find some pain keener than my own, to meet with people more unhappy than myself."

• 58:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 58:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Mm-hmm. "It was not difficult to find misery in Liverpool. I had no clear idea beyond that."

• 58:44Georgia Hardstark?

  That's so interesting. Like, in your grief, you want to be surrounded by people who can... Who can understand it.

• 58:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep, relate.

• 58:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I'm not trying to be like with butterflies and fucking sunbeams.

• 58:57Karen Kilgariff?

  No, you just, that's what you need in a time like that. It's just someone who you don't even have to say anything, but it's just like, yep.

• 59:06Karen Kilgariff?

  So Josephine starts at the very bottom. She begins visiting the Brownlow Workhouse, which is home to around 4,000 of the city's most impoverished residents. We've talked about Victorian workhouses on this show before. Their institutions where the poor were housed as they're paying for their, basically their debts to society through grueling labor. Josephine begs to be led into the basement of the Brownlow Workhouse, and that's where the most destitute women are working. The work they're doing is called oakum picking, where they pull apart old ropes and separate the fibers so they can be reused for caulking for ships.

• 59:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 59:46Karen Kilgariff?

  It's done for hours on end in exchange for scraps of food and a very uncomfortable bed for the night. Josephine will later write, quote, "I was taken into an immense gloomy vault filled with women and girls, more than 200 probably at the time. I sat on the floor among them. They laughed at me and told me my fingers were of no use for that work, which was true. But while we laughed, we became friends." So this might sound maybe a bit tone deaf on her part, but Josephine seems genuinely interested in getting to know these women at the workhouse, and these women must have felt that sincerity because she eventually earns their trust and their friendship. And in doing so, she learns that many of them use sex work to supplement their otherwise unlivable incomes.

• 1:00:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Just like the women she met in Oxford, these ladies here in Liverpool have suffered disproportionately under a system that seems to forgive men their every sin and punish women for theirs. So Josephine relays all of this back to her husband, and the two decide once again to open their home to these women, in particular, the sex workers who are dying of sexually transmitted diseases. The butlers offer them a safe place to either rest and recover or spend their final days dying with dignity.

• 1:01:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:01:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. But as the butlers take in more and more women, it becomes clear that they need more space. They will eventually open a hostel and later a more humane workhouse that they build, where steady work is available in a safe environment. Josephine isn't asking anyone to change, she's certainly not forcing anyone to change, and she doesn't see women who do sex work as lost causes. She's just gently offering them an alternative if they want it. And while she's doing that, she's also fighting for women's access to education, which she sees as the key to women's independence and social mobility.

• 1:01:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Karen Kilgariff?

  There's a reason they don't want to fund education, there's a reason they cut education.

• 1:01:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:01:45Karen Kilgariff?

  So in addition to her deep empathy, intelligence, and strong social reputation, Josephine is also said to be good-looking and charming, which of course is an asset in this male-dominated world. So with equal parts charm and skill, she is eventually able to convince the men who run Cambridge University to expand their courses for women.

• 1:02:08Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 1:02:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:02:11Karen Kilgariff?

  She's in the, I mean, I imagine that that means, I could be wrong, but that essentially she's in those cocktail parties.

• 1:02:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Karen Kilgariff?

  She's there with her successful, you know, professor husband. They're in the mix.

• 1:02:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Karen Kilgariff?

  And when she talks, people listen, because she's the real deal.

• 1:02:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Very cool.

• 1:02:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Love it. So after spending years befriending and working with sex workers and becoming increasingly prominent advocate for women's rights, in 1869, Josephine Butler learns about the contagious diseases acts. And these are a group of laws that were put in place in 1864, initially billed as temporary measures to curb venereal disease in the British military. At face value, these laws are geared at protecting public health, but in, of course, truth, they're deeply discriminatory, totally misogynist, and horrifyingly invasive. For starters, they essentially scapegoat women as the reason venereal diseases spread, and completely ignore the role that men play.

• 1:03:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Where do they get them? Where do you fucking think they get them?

• 1:03:15Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it's just, it's truly just like, boys' rules.

• 1:03:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. That's so, like...

• 1:03:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. So on top of that, the laws have real consequences on women's lives because one of the most notorious and horrifying examples of this are provisions in the Contagious Diseases Acts that allow plainclothes police officers to detain any woman they might suspect of being a sex worker and subject them to a brutal, humiliating medical examination.

• 1:03:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god.

• 1:03:47Karen Kilgariff?

  So this is the part we were warning about because she's about to describe how these horrific exams work. Josephine says, quote, "The attitude they push us into first is so disgusting and so painful." And I think by attitude, she's talking about like the literal, physical position. That's my guess. So back into the quote, "And then these monstrous instruments. They often use several. They seem to tear the passage open with their hands and examine us, and then they thrust in instruments. They pull them out and push them in and turn and twist them about. And if you cry out, they stifle you with a towel over your face." End quote.

• 1:04:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:04:28Karen Kilgariff?

  This is if they suspect that that's what you're doing, which means they can do it to anyone they want.

• 1:04:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:04:35Karen Kilgariff?

  So if a woman refuses to cooperate with police, she's put in jail. And if she endures this traumatic exam and is determined to be infected, she's jailed in what they call a lock hospital, which is a medical facility that specifically treats venereal disease. And that woman is only allowed to leave the lock hospital once she's deemed, quote, "clean." After that, as historian Sarah C. Williams writes, quote, "Women were simply sent back onto the streets of Liverpool to be used again at the convenience of men."

• 1:05:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:05:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. So Josephine finds the Contagious Diseases Acts unconscionable, and she refuses to stay silent about them. She eventually joins forces with like-minded women and helps launch the Ladies National Association for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which is often shorthanded as Ladies National Association or the LNA. This group quickly gains momentum, and they gather more than 100 signatures, including one from Florence Nightingale, on a public statement condemning these laws.

• 1:05:38Karen Kilgariff?

  So now Josephine and the LNA take this campaign across Britain. And in 1870 alone, she goes to nearly 100 meetings. And while she does find support, there is a ton of opposition. Josephine doesn't mince her words. She condemns these forced exams as, quote, "steel rape", which is incredibly shocking language for Victorian England.

• 1:06:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, for a woman to use.

• 1:06:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 1:06:04Karen Kilgariff?

  But the truth is that many people just don't like how frankly Josephine Butler talks about sex and sex work.

• 1:06:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:06:11Karen Kilgariff?

  The Guardian reports that one MP will deem her, quote, "worse than a common prostitute", end quote, and some of her own friends abandon her because of this campaigning. Josephine's opponents stoop to new lows. At one meeting, men hurl cow shit at her.

• 1:06:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 1:06:29Karen Kilgariff?

  But by 1871, it seems like all this hard work is paying off. Parliament launches an official inquiry into the Contagious Diseases Acts. And while the committee offers suggestions like raising the age of consent from 12 to 14 and making the so-called medical exams voluntary, members of Parliament ultimately refuse to do anything with these recommendations.

• 1:06:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:06:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Even worse, some of the Conservative MPs defend the current age of consent. And according to writer Kimmy Harris, quote, "asked their fellow lawmakers to consider their past actions and the possible future actions of their sons before criminalizing having sex with young girls",

• 1:07:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Damn.

• 1:07:13Karen Kilgariff?

  End quote.

• 1:07:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Damn.

• 1:07:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Uh huh. Other MPs, quote, "openly defended sexual access to working-class girls as a time-honored prerogative of gentlemen",

• 1:07:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:07:24Karen Kilgariff?

  That's according to historian Judith Walkowitz. But in the face of all this, Josephine does not give up. The same year, she gives a speech saying, quote, "It seems to be that we women shall soon have to fight for the last inch of ground left us. The crudeness of intellect of some of our young male legislators needs to be corrected by the wisdom of the thoughtful matrons of England", end quote. About a decade later, in 1880, a new prime minister takes office. His name is William Gladstone, and he's friends with the butlers. The conservative parliament of the previous years is ushered out. Josephine's fight is no longer falling on mostly deaf ears. And little by little, provisions in the Contagious Diseases Acts are debated and ended

• 1:08:09Karen Kilgariff?

  before the whole law is formally repealed within a few years. By this point, the age of consent is also raised to 13 years old.

• 1:08:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 1:08:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Josephine has won her biggest battle yet, but she does not slow down. Instead, she continues campaigning for women's access to education as well as their right to vote. She also starts campaigning to end covature, which is the law that gives husbands complete control over their wives' wages and property, as well as any children they share.

• 1:08:39Georgia Hardstark?

  She's so ahead of her time.

• 1:08:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean.

• 1:08:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, we need her now.

• 1:08:42Karen Kilgariff?

  We need her now. So, in the mid-1880s, Josephine is in her late 50s, and she joins several activists. She just doesn't slow down.

• 1:08:50Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:08:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Working to expose the issue of sexual exploitation of children, which is something that's disturbed her since the Oxford days. So Josephine and her allies, including members of the LNA, and notably, a famous Victorian-era investigative reporter named William Stead, and they launch an investigation that takes them into actual brothels undercover in search of irrefutable proof of child abuse.

• 1:09:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:09:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Josephine's own son, Georgie, is one of the men who goes in in disguise to investigate one of the brothels. And their findings are incendiary. Josephine and the community of activists around her publish articles and make speeches outlining the sale or abduction of virgins from destitute families to brothel owners, and the subsequent rape and torture of these girls at the hands of members of the aristocracy.

• 1:09:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Josephine will call this "the hardest work she ever does," and the horrors she learns about deeply affect her. She'll even write to a friend about the rooms in the brothels, describing them like this, quote, "padded all over, walls and floor, so that a girl might be flung violently about the room or dash to the floor without any serious bodily injury, for she is valuable property to the brothel keeper, so as long as she continues to have any personal attraction." And then it just says, "Oh, exclamation point, what horrors I have seen."

• 1:10:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:10:19Karen Kilgariff?

  So, these articles come out, the nation is outraged, and Parliament is pushed to act. Before long, the Criminal Law Amendment Act is passed, which raises the age of consent from 13 to 16 years old. It also explicitly makes it illegal to, quote, "procure anyone under the age of 18 for sex work via kidnapping, drugging, fraud, or intimidation."

• 1:10:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 1:10:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. So, for the Victorian era, this is a huge victory for women's rights, but the public anger around this issue has an unintended consequence. It's a huge boon to what they called back then the purity movement. These groups are geared at shutting down any activity that they find immoral, which is basically anything sex-related, from brothels to birth control. Josephine is skeptical of these groups, and in 1885, she writes, quote, "Beware of purity societies, ready to accept and endorse any amount of inequality in the laws, any amount of coercive and degrading treatment of their fellow human creatures, in the fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force."

• 1:11:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:11:25Karen Kilgariff?

  End quote. So, this is something that sets Josephine apart from her feminist contemporaries, who often kind of blend their feminism with their own Victorian attitudes around moral purity. So, it's hard for most of the women at that time, even though, it's just like the intersectionality of, it's like, oh, well, I want feminism for me and white women, a lot of that kind of stuff. So, when you bring in that, it's like, such a huge part of society was that kind of morality.

• 1:11:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, you're bringing in your own biases, even though you think it sounds like you're...

• 1:11:58Karen Kilgariff?

  You think you're like, "I'm for equal rights," but you're like, "I want my kind."

• 1:12:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:02Karen Kilgariff?

  But that's why Josephine Butler is just so different is that that is not the way she was. So after decades of spent lobbying and campaigning for women's empowerment, Josephine becomes a famous advocate in England. She's approached by publishers who want her to write her autobiography. She's already written several books by this point, mostly on feminist topics. But these publishers know that her personal memoir would sell particularly well. Josephine doesn't care. She turns down these opportunities and says, quote, "I would like to make some money, but not by speaking about my own self."

• 1:12:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:12:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, well.

• 1:12:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Who is she?

• 1:12:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, not me.

• 1:12:41Georgia Hardstark?

  You met me.

• 1:12:42Karen Kilgariff?

  She's a legend.

• 1:12:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Karen Kilgariff?

  But as her public celebrity hits its peak, things at home are very difficult. Josephine's beloved husband, George, has been struggling with his health. And in 1889, during the flu pandemic, he passes away. Until the end, the Butlers share a wonderful relationship. And this loss, of course, hits Josephine very hard. But even through this grief, Josephine continues to write and speak out on issues that are important to her, including those affecting women and girls. But also she starts talking about racism within the British Empire, which she explicitly condemns. Now, that it is just like when we were just talking about, she is a bit contradictory because she also supports Britain's expanding imperial footprint.

• 1:13:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:13:28Karen Kilgariff?

  But I do think that's that thing of like, that's how it's always been.

• 1:13:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:13:32Karen Kilgariff?

  So like, we need, you know, our way is the best way.

• 1:13:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:13:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Nevertheless, she will write, quote, "Race prejudice is a poison which will have to be cast out if the world is ever to be Christianized. And if Great Britain is to maintain the high and responsible place among the nations which has been given to her." End quote.

• 1:13:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:13:53Karen Kilgariff?

  So for a woman of that time.

• 1:13:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Karen Kilgariff?

  She's got a B plus for sure. I mean, you can't see what you can't see.

• 1:14:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, right.

• 1:14:02Karen Kilgariff?

  If it's a thing that no one's talking about.

• 1:14:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:05Karen Kilgariff?

  So Josephine keeps writing. It's not her memoir, per se, but she does spend several years putting together what's called Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade. And that book is published in 1896, when she's almost 70 years old. It's Josephine's most well-known book, and it tells the story of the LNA's fight to take down the Contagious Diseases Act. At the turn of the century, she begins to wind down, giving fewer speeches and serving on fewer committees. She's winding down in her mid to late 70s. Then in 1906, Josephine's health begins to decline. She spends her last days with family, reading the Bible with her grandchildren, singing hymns, and getting her affairs in order, before dying peacefully

• 1:14:47Karen Kilgariff?

  in her sleep on December 30, 1906, at the age of 78.

• 1:14:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:14:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Just kind of perfectly at the end of a year.

• 1:14:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:14:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Just like, God, I did what I could do.

• 1:14:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:59Karen Kilgariff?

  While I was here, I did what I could do.

• 1:15:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Karen Kilgariff?

  So even though Josephine Butler was very, very famous and influential in her time, she has since faded into obscurity. And historian Sarah J. Williams thinks her deep faith might be part of the reason. Josephine saw Christianity as the foundation of her feminism, which, despite all of the barriers she broke, may put her a little out of step with later waves of feminism, which often pushed back against organized religion. But others, like historian Elizabeth Longford, think Josephine might have been largely lost to history because, quote, "she did not champion the, quote, 'right women.'"

• 1:15:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Writer Kimmy Harris adds, quote, "The discomfort many of her contemporaries felt over her work to help sex workers continues on in our history books. Josephine accepted this fate because she never sought fame for herself."

• 1:15:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:15:51Karen Kilgariff?

  End quote. At the end of the day, Josephine Butler stands as a great example of not only a true Christian, but an undeniable girl's girl. She genuinely loved and cared about girls and women. And in her book, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, she goes into great detail about the love, respect, and camaraderie that she shared. I gave a little French turn on that. I don't know if you like that or not.

• 1:16:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Camaraderie?

• 1:16:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Camaraderie.

• 1:16:15Karen Kilgariff?

  That she shared with her fellow activists. She writes, quote, "As I look back through our long warfare, their rise before my mind, not only are united band in untiring conflict with injustice, but many pleasant adventures, social gatherings and sweet friendships, taking their rise in a common aim, cemented by fellowship and trial and in hope and ripening year by year." She adds this quote, "Our long years of labor and conflict on behalf of this just cause ought not to be forgotten."

• 1:16:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:48Karen Kilgariff?

  And we agree. That's why I just told you the story of the patron saint of sex workers, Mrs. Josephine Butler.

• 1:16:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:16:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Boom.

• 1:16:58Georgia Hardstark?

  That was excellent.

• 1:16:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Doing the work.

• 1:17:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Doing the hard work.

• 1:17:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Gotta keep doing the hard work.

• 1:17:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Do it.

• 1:17:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Good job.

• 1:17:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you.

• 1:17:08Georgia Hardstark?

  All right, well, we did it again.

• 1:17:09Karen Kilgariff?

  We did do it.

• 1:17:10Georgia Hardstark?

  We did something, we did it again.

• 1:17:12Karen Kilgariff?

  And we'll do it again.

• 1:17:13Georgia Hardstark?

  We hope so, and we hope you'll be here for it. Thank you, guys, for listening.

• 1:17:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Listen.

• 1:17:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Look.

• 1:17:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Stay sexy.

• 1:17:19Georgia Hardstark?

  And don't get murdered.

• 1:17:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah.

• 1:17:31Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right Production.

• 1:17:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

• 1:17:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.

• 1:17:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

• 1:17:40Karen Kilgariff?

  This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.

• 1:17:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Our researchers are Maren McClashan and Ally Elkin.

• 1:17:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Email your hometowns to [email protected].

• 1:17:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder.

• 1:17:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  Cash Flow Crunch. OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover, seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:18:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Calling all amateur detectives and podcast obsessives.

• 1:18:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage sets sail March 20th, 2027, for a five-night escape to Grand Turk and the Beach Club at Bimini.

• 1:18:41Karen Kilgariff?

  As part of the On Air at Sea collection, this immersive sailing brings together fan favorite podcasts, including Disgrace Land, Buried Bones, and Wisecrack, for live recordings, behind-the-scenes access, exclusive meet-and-greets, and crime-themed programming that you won't find anywhere else.

• 1:18:57Georgia Hardstark?

  All aboard our award-winning, kid-free ships.

• 1:19:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Head over to virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot.

• 1:19:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription-maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection,

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  inflammation in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks, and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.