And That's Why We Drink - E281 A Gossip Corner Dinner Trap and Facts Served Up on a Celery Dish

Episode Date: June 26, 2022

It's episode 281 and celery vases are so out but celery plates are in! First Em dishes it out with their story on the Emlen Physick Estate in Cape May, adding a personal twist as well as a deep dive into the history of the high end Victorian celery market. Then Christine covers the notorious cold case, the Springfield Three. And if anyone has a lead on a celery vase from the Titanic, please hit us up... and that's why we drink!

good morning my little early bird here's the thing every time we record if you go back and listen to all the times we record we both start talking at the same time i wanted to reserve my spot and make sure that i said something before you even got the shot christine okay well you did your job thank you so much that was everything i needed what's going on in this crisp 9 30 a.m i want to go back to bed because it's my one day where blaze gets to uh wake up with a baby and i was like oh yeah i get to sleep in but i'm still tired oh yeah it's a 6 30 wake up how are you i am shockingly more awake than you are i guess i don't know uh you got your little sleepy eyes i also have sleepy eyes but i'm further away from

the camera mothman got my mothman mug from m schultz themselves i'm sorry you mean cletus hems i mean cletus hems man of the hour yeah that oh i'll take that absolutely man of this ungodly hour it is an ungodly hour i'm pretending like i'm awake right now but wow you're trying to like override my um yes I woke up at 9 20 um and we record at 9 30 and I somehow managed to put on like I brush my hair make a coffee I don't know how I did it but I did it and I'm here I'm proud of you thank you and you've got your little classy trashy headband and Christine you're wearing that zip up you love so much I love my little zip up you know I had a dream that I wore it and then I realized that I was also wearing pants this is really weird that I dreamt about my hoodie but um wow you really love that I really love that

wow okay I dreamt that I was wearing the hoodie and then in my dream I realized I was also wearing uh it says comedy comedy works it's from Denver I was wearing the hoodie and then in my dream I realized I was also wearing uh it says comedy comedy works it's from Denver I was wearing matching comedy works sweatpants and I was like oh Christine that's too much um you know what I'm happy for you that's okay I'm in clothes that I really should have changed out of like more than 24 hours ago I just keep I keep devolving into a gross a grosser monster than i mean you're at home like your child at home i feel like that's just what happens you know sure i'm also just um a mess in general i feel like i'm always wearing the same clothes for a little too long but no

one ever knows umbrella term for both of us at all times um i also wanted to say it's my fault that we're doing this because i have rimecades um i also wanted to say it's my fault that we're doing this because i have remicades so i should stop complaining oh it's your fault you've got a chronic illness you were asking for it oh my gosh christine you're right boohoo me i love when you're like uh this is my year i am going to absolutely work on my boundaries also i'm so sorry that i have to go to remickin trash at everything i try to accomplish no it's actually my fault because uh let's just say i have i found out some um local gossip that i need to do some investigating on later that will not be mentioned on the show

unfortunately but it's just like personal gossip that i don't even think anyone here has an inkling of. But I told Christine, I was like, hey, I know you have Remicade, but I'm going to need you to get up early anyway. But I have dinner plans. But I have dinner plans because I'm being told if I arrive, I'm going to get information that sounds cool, but like, I don't know. I think the problem too, i'm excited for that uh although slightly afraid i feel like i need you to be on some sort of like uh i don't know i listen to too many true crime podcasts to feel comfortable with you saying oh i'm gonna go just like see see what's going on in this little gossip corner i mean it's 100 a perfect bait trap and

i'm eating it up so like if this is that eating it up. So like, if this is our last... That is the way you would go, though. If this is our last recording, know that I went out wanting this a little bit. I was like... Choosing it. Honestly, at least they, I mean, they picked the smartest trap to just walk me right in. I have gossip. Are you in? Absolutely.

Yeah. Blindly following. Yeah, I'm okay with it um so anyway i know we're a little bit not in a little bit of a hustle because you want to make sure you get to your remicade on time and i certainly want to get back to nap time so more importantly yeah exactly we both have important things we've got to get to so we can rush this right along are you drinking anything before we get into this absolutely i'm drinking my coffee out of my um oh right man are you i'm drinking another can of my my ld oh yeah i just feel so cool with it which is obviously i it's the closest thing to a beer can i've ever

held in my life so let me let me have this uh i'm 30 in the morning i'm 30 but i feel like like a 12 year old who like thinks they're tricking everyone with a beer can i love it i'm still having that so anyway okay i think you're really gonna like this story but more for the tangents than for the actual story no offense to the story um but i it's a it's another haunting i'm shocked how many ghosts i've covered um and uh this is in cape cod and this is the story of the uh emlin physic estate oh uh emlin physic is a name by the way i did not that's a human name wouldn't have guessed me either it sounds like a like there's like a spell to it sounds like a gremlin it's my name and then l-e-n m-l-n oh that's like you and leona almost not really

it's like me and a dude named len which is my grandpa's name actually which is also leona's grandpa's name so there you go hey look okay sure i'll take it however you want it we're gonna do that so the emlin physic estate and then physic is spelt like physics but with a k at the end so it's sick so the emlin physic estate um so like i So the Emlyn Physic Estate. So, like I said, this is in Cape Cod. It is called Cape Cod's Original Haunted House. So I guess that means oldest? It's the original M. I don't know what more information you need. Right, the OG, my bad.

And also, I feel like we don't talk about this a lot, but to remind everybody, if you did not know, Cape May is one of the most haunted towns in the U.S. I have had my own fair share of ghost stories in Cape May. Really? Don't worry, I have it as a bullet point. Cape May is part of Cape Cod. I don't think I knew that. Is it part of Cape Cod? No, I thought you were telling me that. Oh, no, I know Cape May is in New Jersey. Yeah, that's why I was that. Is it part of Cape Cod? No, I thought you were telling me that. Oh, no. I know Cape May

is in New Jersey. Yeah, that's why I was confused. Oh, okay. I thought you were saying Cape May is part of Cape Cod. I was like, I didn't know that. Oh, did I say Cape Cod? Am I that tired? Wait, now I'm confused. Oh, did I ever say the words Cape Cod? Yeah, the entire time. oh i don't did i ever say the words cape cape cod yeah the entire time oh have i i'm like 99% sure am i i don't know what's going on all of a sudden you said cape may and i was like oh cape may oh shit oh no cape may this entire time no cape cod oh my god i'm so sorry okay see i am also tired i need my nap i was like ready to go because i was like i've been to cape cod like blaze's family i'm so sorry everybody this is already starting real bumpy um okay one bulletin cape may only no cape cod only part of cape cod and you're like oh

is it and i was like i don't fucking know did i say that i mean i could be completely missing it but i really thought i don't even know why like i'm looking at my bullets i'm like what sentence was i leading into that could have even sounded like that like where i would have inserted so stupid whatever okay cape may it is in cape may uh and it's known as cape may's original haunted house okay now i'm following oh sorry everyone cape cod's screaming right now okay um so cape may is one of america's most haunted towns i have had my own ghost stories there i used to um go on some trips to cape may and uh we stayed in some haunted hotels and uh apparently came a one of the reasons that it's so haunted is because its beaches have a higher level of courts and then also there was a big um uh the victorian era there was pretty

booming which was also around the time that spiritualism came out for the first time so i think maybe a combo deal of both of those um might have done it so speaking of my cape may ghost stories um i thought i'd tell you one real quick yes so uh when i was there there were two stories that happened at the same time so i was 13 ish and i had gone with my mom my mom mom's friend, and her kid. Okay. And the kid was 15. We were only a few years apart and we kind of grew up together from like until we graduated high school. And then after that, you know, we didn't see each other as much. But we would go on family trips together

and one of them was to Cape May where we stayed in this hotel that was known to have a babysitter that had either died there or she died and then loved the place so much she would still visit this hotel i guess the hotel used to be a family home and she lived there as the nanny and she would always watch the children so the story always went that she still babysat the kids that would go there today no thanks and so my mom and her friend were like okay we're gonna go to have like our own dinner down in the lobby uh like there was a restaurant down there um the two of you kids just stay in the hotel room don't cause any problems and as soon as she left the tv turns on by itself no and my friend she was not believing me the entire time because

she was i think in the bathroom like shaving her legs or something like she was like something that cool teenagers did back then yeah something i wasn't doing yeah so and uh and so she thought i was trying to like trick her and like turn the TV on, turn the TV off. And eventually she comes out of the room to be like, can you stop it? And I'm just sitting there with there's no remote. Petrified. Petrified because the TV turns on, off, on, off. And then it would turn the volume would go all the way up. And my friend was like, we're going to get in trouble.

Like someone's going to complain that our TV is too loud. Turn it down. And as she would, because we couldn't find the remote anywhere right she would walk up to the tv to manually turn down the volume and as she got to the tv it'd turn off by itself and then as she would leave to come talk to me the tv would turn on again and the volume would go all the way up and all the way down like it was playing with us ew it was really gross and so eventually it freaked us out so much because it happened for like a half an hour where every time we try to do something intentional with the tv it would do the opposite right before we could get to the tv so we freaked out and we like ran down to the lobby i'm sure our

parents were like we just got away from you what could you need we just got a glass of cabernet delivered to our table exactly and we were just freaking out being like there's something in our room we just know there's something in our room and when they went back up to for us to show them what had been going on just to gaslight us into looking super crazy when our moms walked in the remote was sitting in the center of the room on the floor no, no, no, no, no. On that same trip, there was a I saw a woman dressed in purple who knocked over some stuff on a bookshelf. And my mom thought it had been me. And the books, the storekeeper came over and was like, oh, do you need help cleaning this stuff up? And my mom was looking at me like I had thrown things on the floor to like cause a problem and i

was like no that was like the woman dressed in all this purple and apparently the woman in purple is like a thing at the store and she has like been known to throw books off the shelves and i saw her bump into it oh and the storekeeper was like oh yeah she's uh she's a regular don't worry about exactly yeah yeah anyway those are my two stories from Cape May. Those are good. Thank you. I've never heard those before. Those are two of my mom's favorites because she was actually there for them.

And you were causing problems. Yeah. What? I was just scared the whole time. I think those were the two times I was freaked out because I had seen things that people were telling me didn't happen. Hi, Junie. Junie is driving me up the wall he was just eating my zipper just chewing like chomping on the metal of my zipper like what are you doing oh what a great cats are reckless so anyway this cape may house the emlin physic state uh in 1879 it was built for dr emlin physic

junior and he was 21 years old at the time and he moved in with his widowed mom which is what every source called her okay uh couldn't couldn't just be a mom um widowed mom her name was francis ralston and he also moved in with his as all the sources put it maiden aunt never married uh and her name was Emily Parmentier uh by the way I had never heard the name Emlyn before so I did look it up and it means eager or industrious in case anyone cared nice apparently there was family drama one source i don't i i wish i wrote down this source in particular to give it a shout out but this felt like if you in the middle of the night like you just unraveled a thread by accident and went down

a rabbit hole because there was one website that i had found about the emlin family and it had nothing to do with the history of the house it was just someone had found about the emlyn family and it had nothing to do with the history of the house it was just someone had discovered like the family tree and saw all the drama in it and just like did a blog on that it was like it said but she's a widowed mother but did you know she wasn't actually married at all to emlyn's father she was married to someone else and then i mean it was all questionable why they keep insisting she's a widow it's like okay but like what are you trying to prove you know yeah it's like why why are we focusing on this so we like slight of hand don't notice the rest of it and

so anyway i really appreciated whoever that blogger was because she clearly went into this with a different plan and then ran with whatever she found um and so yes there was some family drama plus in many versions of the family's history another aunt is apparently lived in the house with them it wasn't just the one maiden aunt there were two maiden aunts oh my gosh so uh her name was isabelle or isabella and she was left out of a lot of the history because she was, quote, sickly. Oh, dear. She had epilepsy, which I am shocked. It's just wild that there was a time where that was enough to be ashamed of a person.

Like, yeah, they were looking for anything, weren't they? Oh, yeah. and like they were they were looking for anything weren't they oh yeah um so i guess isabelle isabella she had epilepsy to a point where she was wheelchair bound which i don't know if that was just like an 1800s way of settling that or if maybe her epilepsy was really bad and she couldn't you know be left alone standing for too long i don't know but we do know that during social activities in the house she was hidden upstairs away from everybody because it was an embarrassing that she was is so fucked so fucked so you're already setting up a lot of negative energy in the house yeah um but she ends

up dying shortly after moving in so uh i don't i don't know how long she was having to deal with living in that house, but she wasn't there for very long. Okay. Another fun fact that's not fun at all. Apparently, Isabel was left out of so much history on the Emlyn Physic estate that the original tours given here didn't even mention her because they didn't even know about her. So they like wrote her out of fucking history rough yeah i hope isabel's at least like feeling a little redemption of like so too like i was there hello what's that what's that like nikki minaj sound of like you can't get rid of me bitch i'm still here like or something like that um okay so when the the father died when emlyn was young so uh emlyn's mother remarries a mr ralston who died and uh so emlyn physic is obviously of the

physic family uh who ironically because i think of like physic physical the word sick is in their name the family was a notorious family dating back to the 1700s with some of the best physicians of the time okay that's probably why they have that name mate i don't know at that time i guess you could just pick a name it's like well that works sure i feel like it would have to be something like that right because i mean like if you think about names like table maker like it's from it's from like when they were carpenters back in the day and stuff or maybe the last name carpenter or the last if you were being a little too literal didn't have any creative right yeah bone in your body sure but no it does it does make sense that somewhere down the line someone needed to be named physic to then be a physician so maybe they were the original ones and physicians after them well so the family is so notorious um for being in the

medical field that emlin's grandfather uh dr physic also he invented a lot of medical tools that were and still are used to this day including the stomach pump whoa and he was called the father of surgery whoa so big shoes to fill for emily seriously and he planned to go into the family business and he went to uh upenn for med school um but eventually after his father died he left medicine and took the inheritance to be a farmer um and he used the inheritance to build his estate and in case anyone's wondering the inheritance he got at the time in the 1800s was seven million dollars so probably like two around 200 million dollars today oh my gosh so this guy was like why on earth would i work why would i be pumping stomachs if i could just like

have an estate you know exactly so uh the estate was the largest and grandest estate in the city at the time it had four acres 18 rooms apparently nine outbuildings i don't know if those were all there at the same time or anything apparently the house was in a stick style which um i have a picture of stick style for you because i didn't i didn't know how to describe it on my own so um i'm gonna send it to you on text. Okay. It feels a little like... Oh. Dutch? Is that the right word?

I don't know. I think it looks quite German to me almost. Like very Bavarian. What's the right word? Oh my gosh. I'm going to show it to people on here if you're watching the YouTube. Yeah, it's... Wow. my words aren't working today. But yeah, it has a lot of lines, like sticks.

Yeah, I think that's why it's called stick style, right? It makes sense. So anyway, I just wanted to show you a picture of it. But yeah, so stick style. And I guess it really is because it looks like there's a bunch of sticks on your house. I don't know. It looks good. It's not like, oh, we just glued a bunch of branches to the to the house. If you're just listening and don't know what we're talking about.

It's fine. Fine stickery. Oh, it's fine stickery. Exactly. The finest. And the estate was designed by an architect named Frank Furness. I wonder if he created the furnace or if his grandpa did based on names. And he is said to be one of Frank Lloyd Wright's inspirations. Whoa. So a big deal. And very few buildings are left in the U.S. that were designed by him.

Some of the other ones are the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, UPenn's Fisher Fine Arts Library, and the 6th Pennsylvania Calvary Monument on the Gettysburg Battlefield. So, big deal to be a stick style by Mr. Furness. If only I could be. Weird children's book. Okay, so in 1915, Emlyn's mother dies, and a and a year later emlyn dies i think they both died in the house too um and having never married himself he ends up leaving the house to his aunt emily and when she dies she leaves the house to the neighbor because the neighbor took care of her

as she was passing away and getting older um so the neighbor now has the house and in 1946 sells it to a power couple which is two doctors dr harry and dr marion newcomer here's the thing though so marion dies only three years later and harry's still living in the house by himself and he remarries he marries his assistant and eventually they had to leave the home because his new wife was so fed up with the ghosts and couldn't take it she was like this is too much for me and i guess harry had also been experiencing a lot of crazy sounds and activity there but over time just got used to it or stopped stopped looking around to see what was causing it what year did uh they move in sorry 1946 wow so it was a a

female doctor back then that's pretty cool i know right yeah i don't know how that's possible i feel like that's our a very separate history deep dive that we could be getting into. We got to get that blogger back to go back in that that family's history. The one who. Yeah. Found all the drama. Obviously. Also, maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but I would maybe it's Dr.

And Mrs. But it's the couple was spelled in all the sources as doctors harry and marion oh well there you go so i don't know um but yeah so they move in in 1946 three years later marion dies and harry and his new wife are living there and the new wife is like i'm out we can't do this and i guess uh harry had told people about the. He was open about it as a doctor. And he was saying, this is a quote from him on what he said to people. As a man of science, it was baffling to explain how ghosts that should not exist and could not be proven under scientific conditions truly exist in his home. Ooh.

So I appreciate that he's like, look, logically, it should not make sense, but I cannot explain that. I love that. So in 1967, they end up selling the house. I don't know if they sold it or if it got sold to somebody else in the middle. But at any rate, by 1967, the house is sold to Cape May Inns Incorporated. And the original plan was for developers May Inns Incorporated. And the original plan was for developers to turn it into multiple buildings. But the town hated that because the building was going to get demolished and it wouldn't stay preserved. And the uproar led to the town coming together to create an organization called the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities.

And they call it MAC as a shorthand. and humanities and they call it mac as a shorthand so in 1970 mac was officially formed and began leasing the property from the city and they did a full restoration on the home and brought it back to its original 19th century look nice all the sticks are back all every one of them maybe maybe they threw an extra stick in there just to see if they couldn't get enough of it so mac still preserves and maintains the estate to this day as well as the kate may lighthouse shout out sandy schieffer and the world war ii lookout tower so they maintain all of those wow um mac uses the estate as their headquarters and they have turned the estate into a museum about uh the family and general victorian living cool um which i love because i guess half of it is they talk specifically

about what the physic family was up to but also they take the opportunity to be like if you're in a victorian mansion we should just show you how they did things cool it's i think it's so cool i would love to go visit me too let's do it let's go i by the way we're gonna get back to this general victorian living in a second but oh good um before we do i got a couple more notes just to finish this out so they offer uh tours um some of the tours are actually combined with trolley tours i fucking love a good trolley god i love a trolley i love a good trolley they also offer ghost tours and they also now offer a virtual tour for remote visitors so you can see the fun you see the

whole house for yourself and the estate also to keep it extra family friendly they have an educational scavenger hunt on the grounds i fucking love a scavenger hunt let's do that and it gets even better because they also offer high tea oh okay you know what you know i love a scavenger hunt. Let's do that. Let's do that. And it gets even better because they also offer high tea. Oh, okay. You know I love a good tea. They've got tea. They've got scavenger hunts. They've got ghost tours.

They've got trolleys combined with these tours. They've got sticks. They've got sticks. And the high tea is held in the carriage house where the way that they have framed out and arranged the space is that each table that people are sitting at is in one of the old horse stables in the carriage house so it feels kind of like super cool like oh well horse used to be here i don't know why they don't call it i don't know why they don't call it tables in the stables

i'm just saying wasted opportunity they might now that you said better if you're listening kate may i found a way in tables for tables in the stables um man then they do afternoon tea and then you can go on a ghost tour later it's very i'm into it i'm so into it so almost 60 000 visitors visit annually and in 1981 just to make it better the estate was used as a filming location for the horror movie the prowler ew i know and fun fact this is where we get into our general victorian living um this is a quote from their website uh on something you could learn about with their tours on Victorian Living. Are you ready? Uh-huh.

You'll learn about the hottest vegetable of the time, celery. What? What? And because we're not in New Jersey, I thought I would do the deep dive myself. So here is everything you need to know

about the hottest vegetable of the time i'm so glad you didn't leave me hanging so here's a quote about celery in the victorian era it was quote as fashionable as today's dry aged ribeye or avocado toast wow that is saying something and here's why in the 1800s it only grew in the wetlands of East Anglia. Am I saying that right? God, I'm so sorry, everybody. It was somewhere in Britain, but it only grew in like, kind of like, danker wetlands. And this was in the 1800s. Plus, the labor was so intensive during, like, from the beginning to end of growing celery people had like people had to dig trenches just so you could put the celery in there and then they had to keep like digging it up so you could find the white stock of the celery it was just a real mess and it had to be in certain vegetation conditions with the wetlands so it was just super difficult to grow and even harder to obtain and so obviously like the wealthy class

was like we have to have this apparently celery at the time cost 33 shillings which is equivalent to 220 dollars now i'm sorry not your average dry aged ribeye situation holy shit it became such a hot commodity that even they had to come up with a punishment for thieves trying to steal celery out of these trenches and apparently the punishment was two months of jail time if you stole enough celery oh my god and because it was so hard to grow this is where it gets extra silly or Or should I say silly, silly celery? Because here's the thing. The upper class, they were, once they finally were able to have some celery in front of them,

they were like, they would feel guilty about even eating it. Because it was like, they wanted to just show it off at a nice dinner of like, look, we have celery. Don't eat it. We have celery. Don't eat it. We have celery. That's all that you need to know about how exquisite and fine this place is. What the fuck? And so enter celery vases. No. No.

Because they wanted to present it on their table more than they wanted to eat it because they wanted to show how elaborate and how exquisite and expensive this meal was celery vases were there i have a picture of a celery vase for you oh what my goodness it literally just looks like a very nice vase boss i suppose if it's that nice and the idea was since you didn't want to eat your celery you just wanted to display it for people in in the center of your dining room table you put the celery up right in these vases and it would look like a bouquet of celery in this vase and so it was mainly to see not to eat i assume at some point after everyone left, at least you ate it. Otherwise, you bought it for like 300 bucks to not to watch it rot.

I mean, the thing with celery, though, is like it's fine, but it's not like it tastes like a delicacy. Right. Like it. Right. It's not like that special to eat. I feel like. I don't know. Humans are so stupid.

We're like, oh, it's hard to find this random ass vegetable. Yeah. And also, I'll pay $300 to stick it in a vase. So now it's super important. I mean, they would probably freak out about ants in a log if they knew. They'd lose their goddamn life. What do you mean? You're smearing peanut butter in that thing.

Peanut butter. You're making it. Giving it to three-year-olds. Oh, my God. You're making it look like bugs are on it what is wrong with you a sham a full sham oh it's so crazy i mean wow that's i just that's next level so eventually i guess there were farmers in kalamazoo michigan and these farmers had come from an area that

or they immigrated from an area that had a bunch of wetlands. So they knew how to handle that kind of vegetation. Oh, hell yeah. So then they moved to Kalamazoo and I guess they were able to find some wetlands there and started growing some celery. And they were able to by the way, this is apparently

unbeknownst to me until this exact moment this is why Kalamazoo has been nicknamed the Celery City. Shut up. Because they saved us from the priciness of a celery stock. Oh, it's so sad for all those celery vase makers, though, who were like, I got my industry set. I make celery vases. And then all of a sudden it was like no we don't put those on display anymore you are onto something christine because when this happened the price dropped

incredibly incredibly uh and celery became a common man's food wow how stupid must you have felt if like you had just bought three hundred dollars worth of celery and then everyone was like oh that's like it hasn't even gotten shipped to you yet yeah yeah oh that's so sad yeah you just have to wait for it it's like getting like clothes for a party and then the clothes come after the party and you're like what was the point man so now that anyone could have celery more easily people started eating their celery instead of displaying it because it wasn't that big of a woohoo. And they were like, why are we so obsessed with this? It tastes like water. Okay. Yeah. And celery vases didn't make much sense anymore, except as fashion pieces on dinner tables. So for a while, people were still showing celery vases.

Have a celery vase and be like, oh, yeah, I used to have a lot of celery. It was like hipster art. Hipster art. Yeah. I like celery. I had celery before you could have it exactly that's a good point however celery vases officially became out of style when a famous chef of the time he wrote out to or he like made it i don't know if it was a press release or he wrote it in a cookbook or something but he said that celery vases had become quote exceedingly common and they were now being quote discarded at fashionable tables and the celery is now laid upon very long and narrow dishes so celery vases are out celery plates are in so enter celery dishes okay celery vases are out

celery dishes are in did Did you hear the news? Did you hear it? It would be like, can you imagine TikTok at the time? Oh, no. Can you imagine? What did I say in the last episode? 60 seconds? 60 seconds. Can you imagine a 60 seconds alert on TikTok about the celery dishes that are in versus out? I think you'd need more than 60 seconds because that is something I would like to learn a lot more about. I also am going to go by, let's bring celery vases back. So apparently they were created, I think it was like until the 1870s where they weren't super pop or where they were very popular up until the 1870s. And then they were kind of slower. They weren't

made as often, but they were still being made up until the 1910s i'm gonna find some so if you find one i would really appreciate if you could find one that was made out of uranium because then it also glows under black yeah i could make like a very niche tiktok account where i'm like i'm looking for uranium glass celery vases tiktok do your thing also like if you happen to be someone from the 1800s that's listening right now and you own a uranium celery vase you don't want anymore you just send it on over to me with your pigeon or something i don't know to me okay either one here's the thing so when the chef wrote that out and said, no more to these celery vases.

Ladies Home Journal, they wrote an article where they followed it up, and they were like, the main man on campus said so, so, you know, here's the thing. We also agreed, Ladies Home Journal, that gets sent to every woman at this time. Every Suzy Homemaker that is the Suzy Homemaker has this magazine. And

we're telling you you the vases are kaput and celery dishes are in and when that announcement came out celery vases dropped like flies wasn't even didn't stand a chance oh i'm so sad for the celery vase makers oh can you imagine just on the outs you also know the celery vase was expensive because why at the time why would you buy one if you couldn't put celery in it? So you had to be rich to even get the vase. Exactly. It's a crystal number. And so since the chef put out his article and the Ladies Home Journal followed it up or backed it up, that was when celery was officially in every day and every man's food. that was when celery was officially in every day and every man's food so celery started being served served in all sorts of ways and people were experimenting with it now they could finally eat

it and not feel bad about it so celery was now getting like all the credit weirdly like they it was on every goddamn dish in the early 1900s so it was being served with every game bird you could think of it was like a huge thing next to chicken it was a huge thing next to duck it was being served with every game bird you could think of it was like a huge thing next to chicken it was a huge thing next to duck it was a huge thing um it was also it's a great texture i get why it would work like to add to food well on top of it being uh often accompanied with game birds it was also considered a palate cleanser after soups or fish right okay and so palate cleanser accompanied with game birds is how it became the side dish to wings also one of the first things that people started uh messing with with celery of course was cheese

so people started making celery au gratin which uh which led to it later being served alongside uh cheese as like a pre or post dinner snack and this eventually with celery and cheese led to the snack of celery and cream cheese and because i said earlier that it was often served with game birds, it was celery was the side dish next to the gross foie gras that was served and first class cabins on the Titanic. Whoa. Even in the 1860s, it was served as part of the salad list as plain celery. That was literally a salad option, plain celery or dressed celery, which was celery with mayonnaise. And these were on the menu at the Omni Parker Hotel in Boston, which I covered in episode 154. Oh, my God. Celery with mayonnaise i know so anyway that's all the

celery i've got for you today but i i hope you like that i dished it out for you what a freaking tale m i knew you would like at least the tangents of this oh i am enamored with the concept of a celery vase like if we don't have one by the end of this year yeah okay oh sure if you can find one that also like amazon primes in the next two seconds let's do it for sure i am mesmerized by these guys google salary celery vase because there are some like really next level ones that have like intricate carvings and stuff um i also decided that ass makers all of a sudden have a chill down their spine because of the sales and celery vases they're about to be asked they're like what the fuck it's all of the grandsons of the people who made celery vases they're like why are my ancestors proud of me today i'm about to make lives change

oh you're gonna change my life for sure i mean some of these are wild looking um i would love to find the vase celery vase from the titanic that they were serving you know what i mean that's what i want oh yeah is that too much to ask probably not well i'm sure now when i think about it like how many flower vases have I walked by in an antique store? And it might have been a fucking celery vase. It might have been. I'm just telling you. Anyway, there's your celery facts.

I know you needed them today. I needed them. And now on to the ghosts. Okay. I was like, is that the end? That would be wild. Can you imagine if I was like, there's no ghosts here, but like is that the end that would be wild and i can you imagine if i was like there's no ghosts here but there is celery i was like maybe i didn't realize that they got too caught up with the celery and forgot about the ghosts i want you to know i literally in my notes it's all

black text except all my celery notes and they were bright green they better have been green okay so that is um one of the hot tips you'll learn in general victorian living if you go on a tour at the emblem physics we're gonna be those people on the tour who are like well actually celery vases can you imagine no we get on the tour and the tour guide doesn't mention celery and i'll be like i'm afraid you've messed this up very badly for yourself. I thought you wanted a tip today. Hang on. Last I checked, there's a whole lot of celery we got to talk about. Okay.

So anyway, that's your fun fact, your wealth of knowledge, if you will. Love it. If someone goes to a pub trivia tonight and learns that saves them, I'd love to hear about it. Tell me. Okay. As for the ghosts as of last year country living called the estate uh one of 27 most haunted houses in america and it was the only place uh from new jersey that was on the list wow weird that you'd pick i never understand these listicles that are like one out of 27 it's like you really couldn't just do 30 no like what's happening sounds

more intentional you know it sounds awfully intentional uh so some of the ghosts that people experience are seeing shadow figures going down the hallways they hear footsteps they hear voices they hear barking because another fun fact for you dr emlyn physic loved himself a good puppy dog and and during his time living there he had 14 dogs holy shit i guess he just wanted to be a farmer and have his own land and just have a bunch of animals so why not a bunch of dogs yeah he was also uh one of the founders of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals hey spca we love an activist so uh yeah he had 14 dogs at the time and so i guess people still hear them barking away and they must have had a great time i imagine if your owner is the founder of cruelty prevention and you get a whole four acre estate to run around you're probably not

gonna leave that location when you die i like the sound of it that's a good point yeah yeah it's like i'm having a goddamn blast i was the luckiest dog of my time yeah people also see doors open and close people feel touched by unseen hands and people also see a woman quote in vintage clothing in a mirror standing next to them good night i'm not interested in that so a lot of people think that is probably his mother or his aunt maybe um there have been noises throughout the house that have been so intense that construction or cleaning crews have up and left oh um and also the main spirit thought to still be in the house is aunt emily and also aunt isabel now that we know that she existed right um and one medium even picked up on the name bell long before the discovery of isabel living or dying

there happened so many think that the sense of sadness people will feel in the house is lingering from isabel's time here um i don't know if that's because they think isabel would be sad based on the conditions she lived in or if she is just sad because people didn't fucking remember her for so long oh okay that's true too yeah um meanwhile so that's aunt isabel she's probably she's the sadder feeling one but there's's Aunt Emily where people have said that when you feel her, it's a very intense kindness. But it's also a very intense, like, social, butterfly, joyous feeling. One person even described going into Emily's room, quote, like visiting an old friend. That's really lovely.

And people know her spirit to feel like a party girl okay and uh she i guess when they've done ghost tours or investigations they've been like oh yeah she would be having a blast here if we if she were here to do this with us so that's kind of nice so some say that when you hear the dogs barking, it actually means Emily might be around because she used to secretly let them in the house. And so some have seen dogs also, by the way, running around on the grounds. One guy saw dogs like running in the garden together. Oh, I like that. It's very sweet. One quote that I saw about dogs, which which i thought was interesting was ghosts of cats are

common but ghosts of dogs are not dogs are people-centered and if they haunt they are usually haunting with their former master which i think is very precious to know that if you and geo go away you'll probably still be romping around together he's stuck with me or he'll be in little doggy heaven and you'll be in the flames i don't know which one it'll be who's to say we'll find out shortly yeah uh i'll be happy to report um so they the thought is that they might be hanging around emily who liked them so much or maybe if emlyn's spirit is still around he obviously cared for them a lot so he's nice if you hear the dogs if the theory is right that dogs are usually haunting with a master or with an owner or with a loved one then if you hear the dogs you can probably expect emlyn or

emily nearby that's so interesting um one medium in particular who frequents the estate is named Craig McManus, and he's written three books on Cape May's ghosts. Maybe more since this since my resources. And he actually leads one of the ghost tours offered at the estate called Midnight at the Physic Estate. And I guess he takes like a lucky group of people around and, you know, they get to see him in action. like a lucky group of people around and you know they get to see him in action uh he's suggested that there is another spirit in the carriage house but we don't know who it is and he thinks it might be a driver i like to think it might be a horse oh yeah i feel like if there's enough dog energy there maybe a horse is there i just don't like that the horse is just stuck in the stable like i wish it were out running around he's not he's at the table in the stable having tea with you you're right he's having a

goddamn blast silly me and he his little hoof pinky out and when he's drinking if he disagrees with you he goes nay you know and he will always disagree with you he loves a disagreement yeah um so craig mcmanus he also thinks that maybe emlyn may have already passed on from the house um and he also thinks that maybe the mother has passed on but he he thinks the residual energy of the mother is still there because apparently she was a very tough woman and maybe a little mean and her room when people go in there still feel a coldness to it they feel like kind of intimidated they feel claustrophobic they feel depressed so even if she her even if her spirit is not there there's still something lingering in yeah uh there is it was like kind of fucked up there was one show that i watched where

investigators were going in to look at the room and the guide during the walkthrough literally called the mom's room quote the cold heart of the mansion whoa okay like damn you do not like the mom harsh so the uh second floor in particular is haunted because that was the mom's bedroom where Isabel stayed and died, or that the mom's bedroom comma where Isabel stayed and died comma where another bedroom was where I think Dr. Physic died in. So the second floor is one of the managers of the Preservation Society, they went into one of the front rooms and saw a book page standing straight up out of the book by itself. Huh? Like book open on the table and one little page was just standing up straight. What did the page say? Oh, I don't know.

It must be a message. Nobody checked. They just shut the book it was a receipt for a celery vase it was that women's home journal and it was like oh right cellar vases are out stop putting them on display you're making us look bad so the ghosts apparently here's another theory is that because the ghosts are so um active here or because they they move around easily throughout the house or they're responsive to um you trying to talk to them some think that there might be a portal in the home uh-huh and the only show that i could find that has done an episode

here was a show that i hadn't watched before, but now I'm absolutely going to. Ringing endorsement because they nailed it. It's called Haunted Towns. It is a Discovery. No, it's Destination America, which you can find on Discovery Plus. But Haunted Towns, it was season one, episode six. And damn, I've never seen more immediate, intelligent responses happen one right after the other really yeah almost to a

point where if i were watching it with a skeptic they i would not be i i wouldn't blame them for thinking that the show was completely rigged because it like this investigation was working for them wow what's the show called haunted towns haunted towns season one episode six they did a kate may episode and so they did a few locations but the first 20 minutes was the physical state and uh so it's all it was only a 20 minute segment for me which was nice because usually i have to watch like a whole hour of bagel bites and this was a nice uh bite-sized experience um yeah, they were getting instant responses the whole time. When they first did the walkthrough, they were getting lightheaded. They felt icy cold.

One of them felt like something hit them in the head in the mom's room, which she was known to be kind of mean. And then at one point, one of them goes to turn the lights off in the mom's room and you hear a male voice say thank you like thank you turn the lights off let's go out of here or leave me alone please go away when they so they were asking like oh can you knock to show that you're here and every time it was like working for them they said can you knock on something and they got a knock and then they said can you knock three times and it took a while took like a good like couple minutes but maybe not even a couple minutes i would say one whole minute they got three knocks in that one minute um then they see something in the mirror which is a common thing there and when they say was that you the light goes off next to the mirror that they had just seen uh then they say you can come over and touch me if you want and in the next shot you can see that there's four fingerprints on

his neck one of these investigators here let me just wrap my hand around your neck right let me just five star you in the neck uh and then when they go into emily's room where she's supposed to be like super kind of fun and intense uh they heard a female voice when the investigators asked to show yourself if you want to talk they got a female voice then they said can you tell us your name and the mel meter on the bed starts freaking out and then it stops and they say oh was that you emily can you touch that again if it was you and the machine goes off then uh one of the guys says like he's just kind of talking to the rest of the investigators and he's like you know what's so weird is i usually get more interaction from spirits when i'm not trying and as he says that the flashlight goes off in his lap oh no and then

he says can you tell us what your name is and the flashlight starts flickering by itself oh my gosh it was just all like kind of bam bam bam bam bam all after all one after another and you could see that their hands aren't doing anything they're not causing it it just is happening it was just very spooky but anyway if you want to watch it it's haunted town season one episode six uh if you want to go learn about uh celery uh you can do that there's a lot of articles about how it was like the victorian era's filet mignon so enjoy and that is the story of the emlin physic estate that was worth getting up early for it the celery thing really took me out and also i was it was one of those things

where i was like i only have so much time to like sleep i really need to go to sleep and then i was like i should see what the celery thing's about and then i went on another hour-long tangent learning everything about celery so i just sacrificed even more sleep for for that conversation but it made it so much honestly it was worth it for me so hey i'll take it i'm literally in a room the color of celery i was thinking that i'm just saying it was all meant to be i was thinking that um okay so i have a story for you today and that i have heard of and didn't really know much about and once i started researching it and reading the notes i was like oh this is not kind of what i thought it was going to be so i'm that was me with that you

that was me when i was like oh i'll do the backdoor theory or something oh yeah literal astrophysics and you're like yes this is what people want i was like people won't shut up about this that's so crazy and then it was not what people were asking for oops uh yeah so hopefully this is what i think uh it is and what people are expecting to hear this is the story of the springfield three oh i couldn't even begin to guess what this is going to be about okay great well it is a cold case. So at the end, we will be going over, you know, what to do if you have any information. And I also want to say that I feel like this is a longer story than I thought it was going to be. So I might have to do a little two-parter, depending, just because of my Remicade. I have to leave in like 45, 50 minutes. Okay. Well, okay. I tried to sprint through that for you. I hope I hope I gave you enough time. No, I think it's definitely

not you. I think there might just be more in here that I than I thought. Might I crack into it? Oh, that's beautiful. Okay. As as water just sprayed all over the microphone the microphone just sparks you know all of a sudden i'm not gonna sound that good anymore we're okay you sound great to me all right this is the story of the springfield three so the springfield newsleader the local newspaper in springfield missouri, where this case took place, published a story in 2002 with the following headline. They disappeared after graduation parties. A decade later, the case still haunts the Ozarks. Oh.

So this is a very haunting story because pretty much it has no closure. It's never been solved. So it's still very troubling for the people who live there. And obviously the families. So on June 7th, 1992, 19-year-old Susie Streeter, her 47-year-old mother Cheryl Levitt, and 18-year-old Stacey McCall vanished without a trace. Never been seen again. No sign of them. No clue what happened. Wait, did you say it was a mother and daughter? Yeah.

Yep. 19-year-old Susie Streeter, her 47-year-old mother, Cheryl Levitt, and 18-year-old Stacey McCall. So Stacey was funny, bubbly. This is the 18-year-old Staceyccall was described as funny bubbly and she would do things and we called her spacey stacy because she would come up with things that would be kind of space cadet things that's a quote from stacy's mother um and like to me the word spacey is kind of like not the nicest like kind of means scatterbrained or whatever but i guess or like airheaded and yeah yeah yeah yeah but i guess they meant it more as like a compliment like she was very creative and inventive like her head was always in the clouds but in like a create like because she wasn't on earth

she was just on a in a creative space in her own world maybe yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly i can get into it i like i mean sure spacey stacy also rhymes so it's good i think that's why i can get into it i'm like that certainly helps so she was just graduating high school and was set to go to missouri state university in the fall um according to suzy's best friend his name is i'm gonna it's n-i-g-e-l but it's pronounced like nigel with a g hard g but his name when i first read it is nigel holdberry and who does that remind you of nigel thornberry yeah okay just want to make sure we're on the same next next uh so i was a little disappointed when i found out it was nigel not nigel but that's okay

close enough he changes it later when he marries uh the rest of the thornberries oh and starts his big grand adventure in the jungle okay so according to suzy's best friend nigel suzy was outgoing fun happy a creature of habit and not the best use of the phrase but he described her as almost ocd to some degree. Great. Yeah, where she parked her car in the driveway was always the same. And Susie was going to become a hairdresser like her mother. And again, you know, I'm fully aware that OCD

is not just, you know, a fun descriptor for people who like to be organized. But, you know. It's a quote from the times. And it gets the point across, you know fun descriptor for for people who like to be organized uh but you know that it's a it's a quote from the times well and it gets the point across you know yeah yeah yeah yeah so cheryl levitt suzy's mother is described by her sister as pretty fierce a pretty fierce lady she didn't do a lot of half measures in her life so she didn't half-ass things she like if she was going to do something she did it a hundred percent. Got it.

Stacey and Susie were childhood friends who grew apart after grade school. Susie started to run with a more popular crowd and notably dated a notorious bad boy. Not that that's really relevant. Ultimately, I don't think to the case. It kind of puts her in a weird light, I think. I see. But just full disclosure so stacy was pretty she worked as a local model for bridal shops and she was said to run with the goofy crowd class clown the goofy crowd uh like class clown types sure their mutual friend from childhood stacy's best best friend, Janelle Kirby, was sort of

the glue that held the group together. So near graduation, Stacey and Susie rekindled their childhood friendship. And on June 6th, the pair planned to go to several parties together after their graduation ceremony at Kickapoo High School earlier that day. Great name. Yeah. Great name. After the ceremony, Stacy ate with her family, took photos with her mother, Janice McCall, in the backyard, and then met up with Susie to go party. So the plan was to drive to Branson at the end of the night to stay in a hotel with friends. And then in the morning, they were going to go to Whitewater, which was a water park. So they were all going to stay the night in the hotel and go to the water park in the morning.

a water park so they were all gonna stay the night in the hotel and they'd go to the water park in the morning janice uh the mother was worried about late night driving uh and car accidents and was relieved when stacy called around 10 30 and told her plans had changed she and suzy would stay at a friend's house nearby and drive the hour to branson in the morning so they would head to the water park in the morning okay suzy and stacy planned to end their in the morning. So they would head to the water park in the morning. Okay. Susie and Stacey planned to end their night of partying at Janelle Kirby's house instead and leave for the water park altogether in the morning, but the house was full of Janelle's visiting relatives and there was no room to sleep comfortably. So Susie said,

Hey Stacey, why don't you come back to my place? I just got this gigantic water bed as a graduation gift oh my gosh but very much like you don't have to tell me anything else about the deck the decade for me to know what era we're in literally your birth year okay 1992 like my parents had a water bed yeah i think, at that point. I mean, classic stuff. So she'd gotten this waterbed as a graduation gift. At around 2 a.m., both girls left Janelle's for Susie's and would never be seen again. Okay.

Earlier that evening, Susie's mother, Cheryl, was on the phone with a friend while painting drawers a little after 11 p.m. After hanging up she would never be heard from again either. So in the morning Janelle and her boyfriend were waiting for Susie and Stacy because they were all supposed to go to the water park together and Janelle called Susie's house several times but didn't get an answer. And, you know, it was the 90s. If the landline was ringing and nobody was home, you weren't going to get an answer. There was no way to, like, call a cell phone if somebody didn't have any other phone to speak of. So according to a Crimewatch Daily interview with friends and family of the missing women, Susie's friend Nigel also called that morning to find out when they'd leave for the water park. Also getting no answer, left a message on the machine. Stacey's mother,

Janice, was also getting nervous. She expected Stacey to call in the morning before heading over to Branson for the water park. And Stacey was the type of girl to always stay in touch and update her mom on their plans. So Janice called and left a message on the machine as well. She wasn't like super alarmed, but she was just a bit irritated that her daughter hadn't called her and was getting a little bit worried. Around noon, Janelle figured the girls overslept and headed to their house with her boyfriend to be like, let's go wake them up. They're clearly like, we're supposed to head to the water park. They boyfriend to be like let's go wake them up they're clearly uh like we're supposed to head to the water park they're not here let's go wake them up they must have overslept sure when they what oh it's a fair thought i would think the same thing yeah yeah i mean it makes sense they're a bunch of teenagers partying after graduation

makes sense to me when they got to her house all three cars were in the driveway so there was suzy's stacy's and cheryl's suzy's friend nigel said in an interview that it was weird that suzy's car wasn't parked in its usual place oh right because she's usually so routine with that so hashtag ocd right right right uh she wondered if someone had already been parked in Susie's spot when the girls arrived in the night. Maybe somebody who could be connected to their disappearance. Like maybe somebody's car was already there. Or like it was maybe like a setup and someone, the person moved their cars. Put the car there.

And didn't know what the normal spot is. The usual spot. Yeah, exactly. The glass globe cover from the front porch light was shattered on the porch. Oh, okay. Weird to me. Weird. Janelle's boyfriend swept it up with a broom as a courtesy to Cheryl.

And because Janelle had driven there barefoot. So I guess they're going to the water park. So they're like. Fair enough. Shoes not needed. But I don't think I want to. Not even a pair of shoes to get into the park. She was like, I am already two steps ahead of you. Two naked, bare steps ahead of you.

Bare steps ahead of you. You know, so they swept up the glass. Neither of them really would have considered at the time this was a crime scene. So first kind of piece of evidence just swept up, but not really their fault. They didn't know this was a crime scene. They were just trying to do something nice. So sources get a little bit wonky here. Some say Janelle and her boyfriend were the first to arrive and that Janice was elsewhere with family. But one source says Janice was with them either way it's consistent across all sources that the door the front door was unlocked so after they kind of swept up a bit uh janelle

and her boyfriend went inside the house was quiet the tv was left onto a static channel which freaks me out wow that's bone chilling isn't that ominous yeah i don't like it like left intentionally or like the tv had been broken in a struggle and was oh i don't know it just says it was on on a static channel well i hate that yeah it's not good uh and there was no sign of any struggle robbery etc suzy's y Yorkie cinnamon was there and seemed anxious and relieved that someone familiar showed up. And so as the day wore on, people started to get a little nervous. Eventually, friends and family all arrived at the Levitt house, including Janice. The house itself seemed quiet and orderly, but things started to kind of fit together in like

a weird puzzle piece. So all three women's purses were still in the home to kind of fit together in like a weird puzzle piece so all three women's purses were still in the home and all of them were in suzy's room which is weird because cheryl is suzy's mother like why would cheryl leave her purse in her daughter's room it's kind of weird i think yeah i don't know i don't know will never know. I could come up with like maybe they were looking through her purse for something or I don't know. Yeah. And maybe they were all testing the waterbed together. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. You know, there have been so many times where even my mom has like come in from work and like thrown her purse in my room to like talk to me for a little bit. I mean, yeah guess that's fair yeah that's true who knows so cheryl's purse um when they looked through it had nine hundred dollars of cash in it oh so

someone wanted to rob them they totally could have ding ding ding uh along with a pack of cigarettes in her lighter and cheryl was a chain smoker who was known to never leave her smokes behind if she left so very weird that she would have left those behind yeah or so so open and like not in a safe the nine hundred dollars yeah the nine hundred dollars yeah just kind of sitting there um in suzy's room there were either makeup wipes or washcloths with makeup on them depending on the source suggesting the girls had gotten home from janelle's and washed their faces so like you could tell that Janelle's and washed their faces. So like you could tell that somebody had washed makeup off their faces that night.

Stacey's shorts that she had been wearing the night before were folded neatly in Susie's room. Jewelry and watch were in the pockets and placed on top of her shoes. And Janice insisted Stacey couldn't fit in suzy's clothes so police think stacy must have left the house in only a shirt and her underwear because her shorts and shoes were in the room and if she couldn't fit into her friend's clothes right what clothes would she have been wearing so right another huge red flag because it's like even if they did run out somewhere like why wasn why wasn't she wearing pants? You know, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, yeah. So, unsure of what to do, friends and family began cleaning up the house.

Yeah. They didn't know better. They didn't know, exactly. And it's kind of like, makes you want to pull your hair out, but like, we probably all would have done the same thing or you know you don't know what we would have done but or like maybe i mean i don't maybe they thought something was suspicious but maybe they felt like oh they must have just ran out to get gas before we go or they like for all you know like you're just helping them you're just tidying up while you're waiting for them to get back home that's kind of exactly what the vibe was so it's almost like they're just waiting and what else are you going to do besides sit and wait like you can be useful make yourself useful you know wash some dishes

the eeriness of being able to look back and think like wow i was just wandering around a house that only hours before probably had such like sinister energy. Yeah. And evidence that I just swept up and put in the trash. Yeah. That's got to not be a good feeling. No, no. So in later interviews, everyone involved explained that they truly thought the women had just gone out without telling anyone and would show up soon. And so they were just kind of like twiddling their thumbs waiting and they were like, we might as well do them a favor and clean up and yeah, I don't know, sweep up and do the dishes, etc. And I guess sort of relevant, like this is before people would have known. I feel like maybe if

you're listening to this podcast or other true crime podcasts, maybe your mind would go there more quickly to like something terrible has happened. But this was like before the huge boom in true crime popularity and that kind of thing. But the people involved did say that murder and abduction simply didn't haunt the collective consciousness of people that in that time period. People weren't just assuming something went terribly wrong. I mean, a lot of places just left the doors unlocked back then still. Also, it was a time period before like internet and cell phone and the culture of instant contact with anyone. It was just like, oh, I must have missed them. Like it was just normal to think. You just had to wait. You just had to assume situations and be like,

oh, I guess they, you know, maybe their mom insisted they get breakfast before they hang out with us today. Exactly. I mean, it was so normal to not be able to get a hold of people. That's exactly what it was. And so people, they had no idea that they were, you know, doing anything to ruin a crime scene or ruin evidence how long did they wait until they started getting worried like did they did they eventually just say like well let's leave a note and go to the amusement park or did they wait until it got dark or so they uh so they basically cleaned up the house uh destroyed any potential evidence unknowingly they emptied ashtrays vacuumed clean dishes and even made themselves coffee

damn so they first of all they waited a long ass time for their friend to get back like they basically did a whole spring cleaning of the house they did they cleaned the whole house janice felt uncomfortable even because she that was one of the house they did they cleaned the whole house janice felt uncomfortable even because she that was one of the mothers because she expected cheryl to return any moment and ask what everyone was doing in her kitchen she was like i felt weird like making coffee in her coffee maker because i thought she'd come home be like what the hell are you doing um but they just had nothing better to do than wait so by the end of the day the house was pristine and remember they were leaving in the morning but so they came over to wait they were like that's weird they're

not here let's just wait for them um so basically a whole day goes by the house is pristine the entire crime scene is pristine fully contaminated yeah gonzo and uh this is the worst part, like, as far as evidence goes. So there was a strange and upsetting, possibly overtly sexual and aggressive voicemail on the answering machine. Someone listened to the machine and didn't save the messages. Are you fucking kidding me? No. That part feels like overkill with the cleaning cleaning it's like what did you write them down somewhere else or i they it was like one of those machines where i i assume they saw it flashing and

thought oh maybe they left us a message to let us know where they are and then they listen through and it doesn't save afterwards listen through it doesn't save you had to like purposefully save a message like you get one try at hearing a message better write it down and if you're not recording it onto a tape or whatever then it's gone um so the message was deleted before police ever heard it uh you couldn't really trace local calls so there was really no hope of recovering the message and following that as a lead um and i don't even know what the message said like we don't even know what it was but uh it was just described as like upsetting and overtly sexual you would think after hearing something that disturbing then you would start looking around and being like oh yeah i don't know maybe not but i would at least but

then again it's a different time i know exactly it's hard to know and i don't know. Maybe not. But I would at least. But then again, it's a different time. I know. Exactly. It's hard to know. And I don't know who listened to the messages, like if it was just one of the friends who was like, that's creepy and like deleted it, or if it was like a parent. I don't know who listened to it. Maybe. Yeah. So throughout the day, Janice hesitated to call 911 because as she said, quote, that would mean it was an emergency and she thought the three women would come back any minute so they just were like well it might be overkill to call

the police when like we don't even know where they are um but the evening wore on and so this is sort of answering your question of like how long did they wait they literally waited all day oh god so the evening wore on police were finally called police showed up they looked around the house um they considered all the strange details like the purses being left behind the car in the drive cars in the driveway and they decided pretty quickly that this was officially a missing persons case with foul play suspected so that can't feel good as the friends and family who are like in the house. I would honestly, I would use that as an excuse for the rest of time to never clean again.

I'd be like, I would probably have like a level of trauma to that. Like just imagine the, it's a combination of like survivor's guilt and just general guilt. And I would just be like, I don't want to touch anything because who knows what I'm accidentally throwing away. I would never want to clean again. Yeah. I completely understand that. Um, they asked Stacy's mother if she had Stacy's dental records.

Uh, and Janice of course was shocked because again, in her mind, like they were going to come home any minute. And now the police are asking for dental records to potentially identify remains and it's like yeah what a jump what a leap the police even left a notice on the front door telling the three women to call the police station if they made it home to cancel the missing persons report but obviously that never happened so the missing persons's report remained so sad and now

the police had a big problem an investigator on the case said in an interview that the way a case ends depends on how it begins and by that they meant the first steps investigators take determine the ultimate outcome unfortunately the usual first steps were impossible because the crime scene had literally been swept up uh so you couldn't get gather dna evidence you couldn't get uh fingerprints because now there were fingerprints from the entire family and friends group that was there yeah the mysterious voicemail was gone and they didn't have any immediate leads. So in two days, CBS's 48 Hours featured the case and this got national attention for the case. Janice McCall, Stacey's mom, and others distributed thousands of flyers depicting the women's faces and information. And on June 9th, the FBI officially

became involved. In the following weeks, police received a lot of tips. None of them really led anywhere. A neighbor claimed she saw Susie driving a green van while a man yelled at her something like, you better keep driving. Police bought a van matching the description of that green van and put it outside the police station, hoping to jog someone's memory. They even pulled people over who were driving similar vans for questioning. But this led nowhere, so investigators turned to the women's histories and what they were doing that day to look for clues.

So Janice said they found books about devil worship and satanic things in Susie's bedroom. But this reeks of our favorite satanic panic i was gonna say and also this was like the uh that was the time for that to happen right exactly it was 92 so it was like on the tail end of all the like huge satanic panic nonsense that was happening yeah um so we don't really know what that means i mean it could very well have just been like a nirvana album true like yeah it really could have just been that or like the ambityville horror was a book sitting next to her bed or something right

so when janice said they found this uh devil worship stuff in suzy's bedroom this called to mind one person of interest suzy's ex-boyfriend dusty who had been arrested for grave robbing with his friends by the way when i am unsurprised with his name being dusty i feel like that's like no offense to any dustins out there but if your name's Dusty and also you dig up graves, for some reason, those completely correlate. It fits, doesn't it? I like I have no no no. Hmm. I'm not a doubting Thomas in this situation.

It's very, very alarming. I was like, wow. OK, so satanic panic might be exaggerating, but like her ex was arrested for grave robbing. That's pretty wild to me. I'm not saying all Dustys do it, but I am saying if you told me one Dusty in the world has, I believe you. And I'm telling you right now. And there's the fact for you right here on a silver platter on a celery dish. Right for you.

Thank you. Celery vase, actually. Celery vase. right for you thank you celery vase actually celery vase suzy's friends said that is why suzy broke up with dusty uh and she was even scheduled to testify against him in the grave robbing trial in a few months oh okay that's may have been a motive if dusty and friends wanted to keep her quiet however her ex dusty and all his friends passed a polygraph test. And of course, there was no evidence of them or anyone at the crime scene. So it was sort of a dead end. Can you imagine whoever did do this?

Like the breath of relief they must have had to find out that all of the evidence was wiped away and they were like 99% likely going to get away with it. Right? like 99 likely gonna get away with it right i was just thinking that like oh wow her ex was arrested for grave robbery what a perfect like yeah red herring yeah i mean like i not obviously like it's it's horrible but at the same time like if you were to commit a crime you could only hope that a bunch of people would wipe all the evidence away like yeah exactly exactly it uh it seems a little too convenient for whoever actually committed this crime which is obviously very tragic because you know it'd be really convenient as if uh the two kids going to the amusement park were the ones who did it and then they cleaned their own evidence away oh and they were like mom do the dishes yeah i feel like that would be a conspiracy twist on this but yeah you

know just shooting any idea out there yeah yeah yeah um i have a feeling that unfortunately wasn't them wasn't them but you know it would have been in the in the like adapted novel version. Maybe maybe that'll be the plot. Susie's older brother, Bart, had also struggled with his family relationship and addiction in the past and had no solid alibi. So they thought maybe that's a person of interest we could talk to. But he also passed a polygraph test and couldn't be linked to the crime scene i mean quite frankly nobody could be linked to the crime scene so it feels like that's just going to be a pattern um so basically they were hitting one dead end after

another okay so then a woman in florida named dorothy zellers saw the case on television and felt like she knew the answer so in 1978 her own 19 year old daughter sharon zellers had been violently murdered after being abducted while driving home from her job at a disney park and robert craig cox who was a highly trained army ranger who by the way fun fact was once awarded soldier of the year uh was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. So it was later ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to support the verdict, and the verdict was reversed on a technicality. But the Zellers remained convinced that Robert was responsible.

And this is where the twist is. Coincidentally, Robert had recently moved to Springfield, Missouri, and even worked at the same dealership as Stacey's dad. Okay, that by the way, that feels like a humdinger. That's like feels I mean, I know it's all circumstantial, but like, it's pretty strong circumstantial in my opinion. Oh, totally. So there was no proof he had ever interacted with Stacey at length. But like I said, he did have that connection with her dad, working with her dad. In a 2002 interview, Dorothy Zellers said about the Springfield Three case,

I just knew it was him. I just knew it. I said to myself, Cox did this. Oh. Robert was questioned, but his then girlfriend provided an alibi for him, claiming he had been at church with her the morning of the 7th. Of course. Of course. Sorry. Maybe maybe he really was but that is wildly hey spoiler he wasn't okay oh okay uh and with family the night before so they obviously had no evidence to link him to the

house so they had to let him go on new year's eve months after the disappearance america's most wanted shared an episode on the missing trio which uh was now called the springfield three and someone called it's it's finally clicking don't worry yeah we got there oh good uh someone called the hotline with alleged information on the case and the operator tried to connect him to springfield detectives but the call was dropped uh they think maybe the caller hung up there's not really a clear indication what happened but the call was dropped and the caller never called back okay one source says the call was traced to a store in louisiana but they weren't really able

to to track it to a specific person, and so it was just another dead end. So feeling defeated, Cheryl's sister Deborah Schwartz said that after a long time of hearing about bones being found and new suspects that always led to nothing, she just stopped believing in things or that closure would ever happen. Sure. In 1993, a man named Stephen Garrison claimed he knew what happened and where the women were buried. Sure. tell you what happened to the springfield three i want uh leniency on my charge i want a plea deal

on my charge he claimed that uh at a party a drunk man confessed to killing the women and burying them at a site where police had previously searched for bodies in an unrelated case in 1990 he allegedly shared information that police knew but hadn't released to the public so his tip was treated as extremely credible. Interesting. Okay. A judge issued a gag order so Stephen and investigators couldn't discuss the case or release updates on the search sites. And once again, most defeating line ever.

It just led nowhere. Dead end. Oh, I really thought we were getting somewhere, Christine. You really teased me into that one yeah yep yep well in 1995 robert craig cox that guy for the soldier of the year yeah was arrested again this time in texas for robbery his ex-girlfriend who provided the alibi that he was at church with her uh recanted her al, admitting that she lied for him in 1992. And police went to question him in Texas, but he remained silent. So another attempt at a lead, but nothing. Great.

So in a 1996 interview with a reporter, when asked about the springfield three cox said i know that they're dead i'll say that i know that the reporter replied that's not a theory cox said yeah but i know that they're dead that's not my theory i just know that girl what okay so wait so he was responsible or he knows who did it he knows something he's saying he knows something like he's saying i know with confidence not like an oh i know because i've done this before like this is he really sounds like he's saying he knows it for sure why why is he bragging like i don't know that's like if he ends up being the person who did this by the way the fact that all he had to do was keep his mouth shut and he would have gotten away with it is going to be so,

and I don't know, not infuriating, but just like, I wanted to smack him in the face and just be like, well, for a lot of reasons, but like a, what were you thinking moment?

Yeah. So at this point, police, he's telling this to reporters. So police are like, okay, well, we're going to question you again.

So they questioned him again. He refuses to admit to anything. He said he would not give specifics until his own mother is dead. What? Okay. I think he means, like, I don't want her to hear what I've done. I mean, so he's just, like, slowly but surely confessing. He's just, like, owning up to it, almost.

Unless he's just, like, toying with them. Oh, maybe. That's a dangerous game though like also i know this is no surprise to anybody but it's also a horribly mean game it's a cruel cruel thing to do exactly yeah so the trail stayed cold um and as time passed weeks months years later tips never stopped coming in police followed every lead they searched fields in other counties they even went as so far as to follow circling buzzards in the sky in case the buzzards were like circling a body i mean it's it's smart but also yeah i never heard that before i thought that was really dark um Tips were often bizarre. Some suggested alien abduction theories. Janice McCall, who provided her home phone number to receive tips, which must be excruciating.

Every time your phone rings, you're getting like, oh, your daughter was abducted by aliens. And it's like, fuck off, you know. She says she sometimes got hateful phone calls because people are just fucking hateful and cruel like why you would look at that phone number be like i'm gonna call and make her life more miserable like i don't know why you would do that but here we are investigators form their own theories they later shared in interviews um it's generally agreed upon that the women disappeared between 2 a.m and 8 a.m that morning after the parties and before the water park one investigator believes one of the women was being stalked long before the crime took place and that

the others were basically just like caught up in whatever collateral damage collateral damage yeah in whatever plot like as additional victims. Another believes that investigators have even spoken to the person responsible but cannot share who or make any evidence stick. As I mean, I sounds like Robert Cox to me, but whatever. Right. Right. Right. As of a 2017 interview with investigators by Crime Watch Daily, tips were still occasionally coming in about the women. Susie's friend Nigel Fields feels the perpetrator must have been someone the women uh suzy's friend nigel fields

feels the perpetrator must have been someone the women knew because there wasn't a struggle um but others theorize that someone like robert cox could have maybe subdued them he was uh like a specialized army ranger maybe he just knew how to kind of surprise like ambush people and that's a good point they couldn't struggle who knows bizarrely a springfield reporter named kathy baird and this gets a little weird uh eventually came forward and claimed a psychic told her where the women were buried beneath the foundation of a nearby parking garage which at the time of the disappearance was actually just a dirt lot which at the time of the disappearance was actually just a dirt lot i'm waiting for you to tell me that it happened that that was where the bodies are

no no it's a cool case remember okay oh right god sorry i just keep hoping for something good um so however according to investigators this tip uh like i said came to her from a psychic. And apparently it's a dog psychic. And that's not a psychic dog. Like talks to dogs. Talks to dogs. Correct. And did a dog relay the message or something? Yes.

So apparently the psychic asked Cinnamon, the dog, what happened to its family. Okay. And so now this reporter is like oh the dog psychic told me that cinnamon told her that the bodies are buried under this garage but how would the dog know that that's what i was wondering i was like how would the dog would they follow them there i don't know how like wouldn't the dog be able to say well if the dog can also also read clocks like oh at 3 30 a.m this is what happens like yeah or like oh they were like i i just wonder how much animals know like does the dog know to report whether or not she was wearing pants or if the if the mom had a had a purse with her or not like it just seems so wild that if the dog had this kind

of information how would it know that they were where they were buried yeah wouldn't it just know like you said like wouldn't it just know oh well they were taken by a man at this time yeah whatever i just think it's so wild like how would he know that unless he like was in the car with them yeah i'm the garage hesitant about this yeah so they tell the police this and the police are like sorry we're not going to demolish an entire building based on this tip um fair enough fair enough so this reporter who was like still dead set on this theory from the dog psychic hired a guy to scan the garage with ground penetrating radar and he did report three images consistent with what he sees while imaging old grave sites oh shit but the police wouldn't demolish the garage still based on this and they also um explained that the construction on the

garage started a year after the disappearance during which time the construction workers almost definitely would have discovered the bodies while they dug up all that dirt to lay the concrete foundation. But Kathy is still convinced that this is absolutely what happened. So in 2017, Kathy said she believes she knew what happened to the women. They were killed before morning. She said the target wasn't Stacy. And when pressed for details, Kathy started to get cagey. Stacey and when pressed for details Kathy started to get cagey and she claimed that Stacey was collateral damage caught in the crossfire when someone came after Susie or her mother.

That was Cheryl. She refused to talk about the motive and when asked by the interviewer and producer who were getting like really frustrated because she was like dodging all these questions they asked her why she came to be interviewed if she wouldn't give out any information she claimed to have she said she was doing the interview because their story needs an ending that's why but that she was afraid for her safety and that random people were approaching her in public asking her name and then telling her quote the people i work for make people like you disappear too oh i think kathy's just gone a little too far into this. Yeah, I agree.

That's my personal opinion. I don't know. I don't know. That's a fact. I would agree with you, though. It's just like, if you have information, why are you not sharing it? Is my thought. It's a good thought.

She said, I've been advised to leave this case alone, but she vows she won't. She said to be careful who you trust and, quote, there's a reason this case hasn't been solved. It's just very. I just feel like frustrated with her because it feels like she claims to have all this information, but then it's just like vague and ominous about it. It's not really doing anything. She isn't helping anybody. Whatever. Yeah.

So in 2017, a local bar owner at the Coyote Adobe Bar and Cafe showed that he kept the missing persons flyer from 1992 still up in his front window. After decades, he promised Janice McCall in 1993, I'll leave it up till they come back. And there it remains, although it's aged and weathered now.

That's so sad, though. It is. Bill Stokes of a local barbershop made a similar promise. He said, I wasn't going to take that down until they solved the case. I was hoping they would solve it. Now I think it will probably just rot off the wall. Oh, yikes. What a specific thing to say i was thinking that

too i was like whoa whoa it's harsh but i also i get it but it's also harsh right after five years susie's and cheryl's family took the steps in court to declare the two women legally dead janice mccall does believe they're probably gone but she says until their remains are found she has to believe that they're still alive and well there's a website called the Streeter family blog where readers can find case information persons of interest television spotlights interviews and updates and that web address is Streeter like street with er at the end, familyblog with two Gs,.blogspot.com. One of the most recent posts is from this March, so March 9th, 2022. And that post reads, happy birthday, Susie.

You are loved and missed. God, that's so sad. I know. The website includes phone numbers to contact with any new tips or leads, along with a reminder that there's a $42,000 reward. And there's one quote that's pretty powerful that I'm going to kind of close up here with. Okay. So this is a quote by Janice McCall on the website of the Surviving Parent Coalition, the SPC.

And she said, wasn't it yesterday that she, Stacey, left our house after graduating from Kickapoo High School, that long hair flowing back below her waist in her new flowered shorts and yellow ribbed shirt? The image of Stacey walking away, basically one final time, graduating high school, moving on to the next chapter in her life, and then never seen again is just very, I don't know, powerful and tragic. Eerie and dark and sad and heavy. So it's been almost exactly 30 years. So June 7th of this year was actually the 30-year anniversary. exactly 30 years so June 7th of this year was actually the 30-year anniversary and this is when a vigil was held in Springfield hosted by Stacey's parents Janice and Stu there were 100

people in attendance and Janice McCall who literally suffered multiple heart attacks the week before the event made it out to speak and she said I hope that these candles being lit will be just one way of lighting their way back to answers. If you know someone who has the answers, please let them know that it's okay to come and tell us. All we want is answers. And I love you guys. And that is the story of the Springfield three cold case. Whoa.

I got to be honest. It's a real bummer that there are that we never got an answer after 30 years but i i was really hoping by the end i know you said it was a cold case but i was just hoping i wish i don't know i wish there was just something that was like a thread or something we could hold on to that's like you know they're researching this and i mean maybe when that truly maybe when that guy's mom dies maybe then he'll yeah but then still it's like i mean not i i don't think i'm saying anything that would shock anybody but i feel like if they never came back after 30 years, we can just kind of guess at this point that something. Yeah.

I think they're probably, probably gone. Like their family members say, but I mean, just to even have an answer or like bring someone to justice would be. Yeah. Boy, we'll see.

Wow. Springfield three. Mm. Hmm. Really, uh, really takes a really bums me out i was trying to like give everyone a a high with that celery stuff you know you did and once again i do regret how we decided to situate these stories back to back it was very unwise our finest hour oh well i'm sorry d and now you have to go wow

bumming yourself out and then you get to go do remicade for a job with a needle how long does it last again um like four to six hours oh yeah it's not great i'll be honest with you so you woke up on the one day you should have slept in told a story that's awful and now you have to go do remicade what what other terrible things happened today oh um or is that all of it well you know the night is young we'll find out we could get sadder that's fine i get home at like 5 p.m that's wine time that's one time you know what everything goes uphill at that point i think until you come back and realize that there's no more wine that's how the day gets worse i am out of wine that's not a joke wow this is not your

day go back to bed i need to go to sleep i'm tired oh okay Okay, well, I am sorry. I don't know what to tell you. I hope you have fun getting stabbed in the arm. Thank you so much. I can't wait. I don't know how to end this. Do you? And that's why we drink.