Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Lord Aspinall: The Gambling King of London

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Robert and Ed continue the story of Lord Aspinall, who trades in his gambling house for the deadliest zoo in history. Bonus: murder! Sources: https://www.amazon.com/Gamblers-Aspinall-James-Goldsmith-murder/dp/1844132056 https://archive.org/details/passionofjohnasp0000mast/page/32/mode/2up https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/04/abuse-britain-private-schools-personal-memoir https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.2307/367195 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/41310278.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/02/lynnbarber.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jan/09/politics.past http://www.gambling-stories.com/2015/02/john-aspinall-bio.html?m=1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/2000/jun/30/guardianobituaries?bshm=rimc/2 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jun/30/keithperry?bshm=rimc/2 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coolza media. Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about the worst people in all of history. Today is part two on our series on John Aspenal, the gambling king of London in the 50s and 60s. I'm not gonna lie, that made him sound much cooler than he actually is. Ah, he is fun, he is fun. Today we're going to get a lot of stories about zoo animals,

maiming people. So I hope everybody is ready for that. And I hope our guest Ed Zitron is ready for that. Ed, welcome back. I'm ready. I'm ready to hear about some violent zoo animals. Excellent. All right. Well, here is the fucking story. So John Aspenall, you know, is kind of the the 50s are starting to come to a close. He's pretty happy, right? He's running these rotating games of chance that are in this legal gray area. He's making a lot of money doing it. He's starting to collect wild animals, starting to build his private zoo.

But things are going to have a sudden shift for him. And it's caused by his mom, right? Um, she is sort of, uh, you know, one of the people who's kind of renting houses for their parties. She's a kind of a key aspect of all this. And the lady Osborne makes a mistake one week in 1958. And she rents the wrong house for a shimmy party because it's outside of their usual range and it's under the jurisdiction of the Paddington police

who are not chill with what John Aspenall is doing for reasons that I've never really been made clear to me but this is not a friendly police station. I don't know why. But yeah, so there's, and part of what seems to have happened is I think they pissed off one of these rich people who loses a bunch of money at their game because it looks like he kind of drops a dime on them to the pattington cops.

And so for the very first time, the police carry out a raid on one of these games he's playing. And because this is the kind of game that it is, they arrest a bunch of like lords and ladies, along with Aspen all in his friends, is this like big moment in high society, because like there's footage like pictures of the cops leading out all of these very, very highly born people and taking them into custody. This kind of gives you an idea of sort of the tinner of that night when the police enter the house, lady Osborne demands a list of the charges against them. And the police inspector says that they're being charged with keeping a common gambling house and her response is, young man, there was nothing common in this house until you entered it.

Uh, uh, God is us. God him. Yeah. I'm sure you love that bit. Yeah. I'm sure the cop was like, oh, I understand. Perfectly. Yeah. That makes sense.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, but yeah. What a baddie of a comment. Yeah, it really is. That. Yeah. That makes sense. Sorry. Sorry, but yeah. Well, I'm glad you have a comment. Yeah, it really is. I'm perfect. That's classic England.

Now, that said, if you are an above room temperature person, you're probably not surprised to hear that nothing happens as a result of this legal case, right? Not only does Aspen all have money, but like they have arrested all of the people who are running the country. So it doesn't go anywhere. He's a little bit, yeah. Yeah. Not only are their charges dismissed,

but the arrest of all these people kind of radicalizes a number of influential Britons. And in 1960, Parliament passes what became known as Aspenal's Law, the Gaming Act, which legalizes the... You never want a law named after you. No, it's always a bad thing. Like, it makes it disease also a bad one, like, also a bad one.

But it, uh, this makes it legal for people to run casinos in London, which is what, this is why London becomes the gambling capital of Europe for a while, right? It's because of Aspenal's law. So the downside of this is that like, now we ask while, right? It's because of Aspenal's law. So the downside of this is that like, now he has competition, right? Back when it was this gray area, he'd kind of figured out a sweet spot, there was nobody else really running these chimmy games on the same scale that he is. Now, anyone can run a chimmy game. So Aspenal has to kind of think bigger. And on November 12, 1962, he opens his ultimate gaming hall, the Claremont.

Now, this is in like a neighborhood in London called Mayfair, which is like super rich neighborhood, right? This is like a very central, yeah. It's like a nice place to do this kind of shit. And he, you know, he has this, if you look at videos from this gaming hall, it's like very high ceilings, huge chandeliers. Like, it's a place for the wealthy and the well-born to feel comfortable. Like Prokford, he limits his business

to a pretty select clientele kind of as time goes on, he opens it up more to like new money, but certainly at the start, it's really focused on the ancestrally wealthy. And there's this kind of two tiered membership structure. That's also how the club is run. The people who are kind of technically his employees, although he's not open about this, are called the Blues.

And these are mostly, some of them are like high-born people who don't have a lot of money, but are good gamblers. Some of them are like people of more common stock who are just really good gamblers, but they are his house gamblers. And their goal is not to win in order to get money. Sometimes they do that, but it's largely,

if you're really good, you can kind of influence games to keep them running, right? To keep them going longer, because the longer different games go on, the longer a hand goes on, the more money gets put in, right? And since the house is taking a cut out of every pot, that works out better for you, right?

You don't need your house guys to win, but you need them to keep the game going. So the pot is bigger and you get a bigger cut, right? And so these guys, the blues, they get free membership in the club, and they receive a basic salary for their work. The reds are the marks, and these are the sons of power and prestige

who he's going to rob blind, right? Now a couple of years after the Claremont opens in 1968, John Aspenall opens his zoo doors to I say the public. It's mostly it is a private zoo. So you have to pay to get in. But it becomes like this is the zoo you go to if you're rich, right? You're not going to like the London zoo, right? That's where common people go to if you're rich, right? You're not going to like the London Zoo, right? That's where common people go to look at endangered animals. You're gonna go to Aspenal Zoo, right? Now, the fact that he's opened his home zoo to the public is against the express advice of like expert zookeepers he had consulted

who didn't think that he had like the temperament to safely run a zoo, which turns out to be a wise concern. But he also has this very unique view on the care of animals, right? He thinks that they should be offered different food regularly so that they have like a varied diet and so that their diet is more exciting. He thinks it boars them, which he's kind of right about. And he also thinks that they need constant stimuli, which is true. I'm also sorry, but I never really considered one's temperament a feature of a zoo, just because generally a zoo is not controlled by one person.

Yeah, his is, so he gets to this. That's good. Yeah, it's great. It's good and it's bad. The animals in his zoo, some people argue, seem to have been happier than like most other zoos at the time, because he's feeding them.

Sometimes he'll bring them like, he'll bring his gorillas, gourmet food from the Claremontan shit. And he has, he and his zookeepers spend a lot of time playing physically with the animals, which as we'll talk about is dangerous. That's pretty good. But the animals seem to be happier,

and the best evidence for this is John's peculiar history with gorillas. He meets his first gorilla at the London Zoo, this old silverback named Guy, and because he's got money, he's able to basically like convince the zookeepers to let him try to hang out with Guy, who feed the animal and stuff,

but Guy is an adult silverback. So he's not super like into being buds, but meeting this animal that like won't be his friend makes John obsessed with the idea that like one day I will make an adult male gorilla be my best friend. I'm gonna befriend a gorilla. I am going to befriend a gorilla. Yeah, that is my life goal. I've now, I've successfully defrauded a bunch of rich people. Now I move on to defrauding a gorilla. Yeah, I'm gonna convince a gorilla that we're both. Step one, become the gorilla's friend.

Yeah, what a straight, what a wild life goal. So he's gonna make this gorilla his best friend. So after he moves into howlits, you know, he gets this zoo started. He uses some of his infinite gambling money to buy a gorilla. And the first gorilla he gets, again, anyone can have any animal at this point in time if they haven't have money.

So he finds a gorilla, some other rich guy had owned named Keith. Okay, I was gonna say, how does one purchase a gorilla? Yes, it's through a gorilla dealer, you know, you've, you've got a guy. Oh my gorilla guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a gorilla guy. You got any state, state of gonna gorilla this week.

Yeah. I got some fun cut silver, baby. Well, a lovely one coming in next week. You love it. It'll be your friend. Unfortunately for John and more unfortunately for this gorilla named Keevoo, Keevoo is an abuse victim. This gorilla has PTSD. It's deeply traumatized.

God. Now, to his credit, John recognizes this is a traumatized animal, and he uses human logic to try to comfort it. And he's like, you know what makes a sad man happy? Is a woman. So he gets a human woman, his mother-in-law, to like sleep in bed with this gorilla,

to try to sue that. That's his strategy. My. Now, gorillas, not aggressive animals to people. And so this doesn't go badly. His mother-in-law doesn't get hurt or anything. But he hates that woman. Let's just start there.

Kibu does not seem to like, well, I think John may have disliked that woman. And Kibu keeps it as not respond positively to this. Like again, his gurus are quite peaceful. He doesn't like attack her, but he dies of depression a couple of months into this. Man, that woman was very sad.

Women are evil as we've established. And that one was so evil. Wow, Sophie. And that's the lesson. He died in the same way that Padme died in stone. He does. He does. He does a bad May.

She made that gorilla have depression. I mean, the gorilla was already depressed, Sophie. You made it worse. Yeah, with her like horrible luminous. Well, I did not see this turn from you, Sophie. Man, I'm sorry. It's gonna have a field day with this one. No, they're finally gonna be on my side.

So, you know, John is very sad for a while, but I think this is a commonly known thing. When you lose a gorilla, the only thing to do is double down and get two gorilla. You need more gorillas. You need more gorillas, right? The problem was nothing of gorillas. Yeah. So, the mall kid, I imagine, is quite liquid at this time. So, a lot of gorillas floating around.

Yeah. So he buys two more gorillas, a breeding pair. And he sets about making them happy enough to breed. Now, this had been done. The people had bred gorillas at this point. It is kind of considered one of the, one of like the brass rings of the zoo world is getting gorillas to breed in captivity. It's not easy, right?

Like they are hard to make comfortable enough to be willing to... Talk to like a gorilla horny. It's tough to make a gorilla horny. So John works on these gorillas. He spends a lot of time intimately with them. He wrestles with them, right? He'll play games with them physically.

He'll cuddle with them at night. And they do seem to come to view him as a friend, and it gets comfortable enough that they start to breed, right? Like he does succeed and making them happy enough that they are willing to make more guerrillas. So I guess that's a win for him. He also grows closer with his bearers during this period of time, which is an uneven process, right? One day... What a great other thing to happen in this story. Of course. As he romances the gorillas, he successfully improves his friendship with the peace, like fucking like an RPG.

Well, unevenly, I should say, because one day he like enters the bear enclosure without sort of like, you know, you what there's know, there's a certain way you want to enter your bear enclosure to not spook them. He doesn't do this and they they mall him. They nearly kill him, right? Like he gets horribly injured by these bears. And his mother around the same time is nearly murdered a wolf that he's trying to treat like a dog almost rips her throat out.

Of course he's got a wolf. Of course he's got a wolf. Yeah, you're going to have a wolf. I can't have a gorilla without a wolf. I can't have a gorilla without a bear. Yeah. So his family narrowly escapes anything fatal. But this mix of complete dissociation from reality because he's this wealthy gambling maven combined with spending all of his free time cuddling with wild animals, leads John to kind of believe that he's gone feral himself, right? Sweet.

He would later say, sometimes when I'm pleased to meet a friend, I find myself purring like a tiger. When I make love, I even grunt like a gorilla. That's just how British people sound when they fuck. That's it. Yeah, so that's good. That's good.

He was so convinced that he has gained some secret insight into the lives of the gorillas, that he, he willing to bet his life on it. At one point on Safari in Africa, a friend has to rescue him when a male lion starts roaring at the party. And John, you know, there's a lion outside of your camp that's being aggressive. You want to stay inside the camp, you know, where there's lights and men with guns. John charges out into the night and he claims later, I wanted to reason with it. I want to do it.

Like, yeah, yeah, that'll work on a lion. That's fine. Come on, may I have a word with it? Yeah, they love being recent with it. Let me know how it goes. I will be inside the car. Yeah, one of his friends basically has to like tackle him to stop him from getting murdered by his life.

Oh, man. Don't go down. Let him cook. Let him see what happens. Yeah. So, as his collection is. As his collection is. As his collection is.

Yeah, that one made who saves you from getting eaten by a lion. No, no, I mean, you go strung reason with the lion. Oh, who tries to talk it out with the lion? Got the points down the local. He's all fucking yelling at the lion strung reason. Steve, come down. So his collection expands and how it's becomes, again, it's this kind of the private zoo of the ultra rich. And by the late 1906, again, there's a degree to, he's very irresponsible in a lot of ways, but there is a degree to which he's good at this, because by the end of the 60s,

Aspenal has the largest captive bread gorilla colony in the world. Which is an achievement, you know, dubiously moral achievement, but that is a thing do have done, right? So I genuinely have to say this. Yeah. One through line with this is that this boy was raised kind of cruelly.

Yeah. Like he went through the school system, but weirdly enough, I have to wonder if a lot of these people, gins, the wakist thing I'll say, a genuinely if a lot of these people didn't actually have good hearts, but were just torn up by this hellish system that Britain had created called Britain. And just this is the result of this horrifying school system and this horrifying culture is that you just have this fucking nutter who is only able to really be nice to gorillas to make them fuck. But he's so utterly broken that he does not know how to communicate with animals or humans alike.

He only knows how to exploit them. I was depressing. I was nothing about this as depressing. Yeah, it is like fascinating. Like, if he had grown up like in an environment that was like both more nurturing and also where there was some degree of like rigor placed on like, you know, maybe he could have become like a normal wildlife expert, you know, his, yeah, he seems to actually have a talent for some degree of a gift here. It's just married to this inability to not be crazy about it, right? Yes. Yeah, because he's, he's like effectively like a miniature deity, like at this point in time. Right. He thinks he's craving the hunter. Yeah. It's something else. So while he, again, there's this undeniable element of skill in what he

is, his irresponsibility also gets people horribly, horribly entered and worse in the future. And the first example of this in 1970, he's got this friend Annabel Burley. Annabel is a socialite. She is an aristocratic lady. She's married at that point to a businessman named Mark Burley. And she comes to visit howlits with her young son Robin and her daughter. She's close with the Aspenall family.

These, you know, their kids are gonna hang out together and obviously being children, you take a bunch of children to a place like Halitz, they wanna see the animals. Of course, that's what kids are gonna wanna do. So Lord Aspenall, only too happy to oblige them. Quote, and this is from Pearson's book, The Gamblers. After seeing the gorillas, Aspenall was anxious

to take them all to see one of his young female tigers called Zora. Annabelle was not so keen on this, and wouldn't let her daughter, India Jane, enter the cage with the other children. Like Damien and Amanda, Rupert was used to the animals, but Robin was nervous, though Aspen all persuaded him to approach the tiger and stroke her. Aspen all turned his back for just one moment, and that split second the tiger, sensing Robin's fear, rose on her hind legs, put her front paws on his shoulders, and pushed him to the ground. Snarling, rose on her hind legs, put her front paws on his shoulders,

and pushed him to the ground. Snarling, she shook the boy's head in her mouth. Seeing what was happening, Aspenal leapt towards the tiger, and with a show of strength, somehow prized her jaws apart. By doing this, he undoubtedly saved Robyn's life. Men Aspenal, that's his wife, meanwhile, was tugging at the tiger's tail, trying to prevent its rear claws tearing at the boy's body. Somehow between the two of them, they made the tiger drop her prey.

Rigid with fear at the nightmare taking place before her eyes, Annabelle watched as James Osborne rushed forward and picked up her son, who was still conscious. Rupert and India Jane were terrified and screaming. As James carried Robin out of the cage to safety, Annabelle could see that the lower left-hand side of his face was crushed past recognition. His mouth had disappeared and part of his jaw was hanging by a thread. So maybe don't let children in a cage with it. Tiger.

He lives. He will make a recovery. They like he has to go immediately into surgery. He has like scars forever. Scar is forever. A recovery of sorts. I think it's the way we describe that. Probably some trauma.

One would assume PTSD from getting your also sick by his medicine. Yeah, yeah. It's a, yeah, very risk-bond. This sounds like a story from the 1800s, but this is alarmingly recent. Yes, this is, like Star Trek is on the air, right? Yeah, or close to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty insane. So despite this, everyone is horrified by this kind of butt-ass at all. He's like, well, this tiger had a bad reaction to this kid. Yeah, it's the tiger. It's the tiger. I'm going to keep having my tiger, Tara, sleep and bed with me and my wife, right? That's the good tiger and you know most of his friends are generally

Loath to question his judgment because they're all in debt to him right they're all gambling at the Claire Monter has a bunch of violent animals. Yeah, he has dangerous animals Now kind of by this point the the Claremont set his filled out. Aspenall has made two additional friends to kind of complete his inner circle. And one of these guys is the seventh Earl of Luchen. Nicknamed Lucky Luchen, after a particularly great gambling hall earlier in his life.

Now, Luchen, his like grandfather, is the dude who did the charge of the light brigade, right? That is the family that this guy comes from. And as you might guess from the whole charge of the light brigade, right? That is the family that this guy comes from. And as you might guess from the whole charge of the light brigade thing, his family is kind of a reputation for eccentricity. Um, now this is not always bad. Lukens' father, who's the sixth Earl of Luchen, becomes like a massively influential labor party leader in the House of Lords and is like a very famous progressive in this

period. But his son, the seventh Earl of Luke and does not get along with his dad, he actually hates his father. And part of what this means is that he goes far right, right? Now this makes him fit in very well because all of the old money set at the Claremont are right wing guys.

But he isn't just like conservative. He develops a specific fascination with the Nazis. And in fact, after Bad Night's gambling, he would calm himself down by reading mine comp. Like that's his like, that's his safe place. That's his putting on like, Frazier at night to go to sleep is really mine. I play like Slay the Spire, M.O.B. the show.

Yeah. Like just like something to chill out with, except he chose that book. Yeah, a little bit of Hitler to calm yourself down after a hard day. That's his housewives. That is insane. That's his desperate housewives. It's nothing's a married at first sight for him as Hitler. Yeah. That's his. That's exactly what it is in his married universe. Yeah, wild. So the other friends who joins their circle is this fellow James Goldsmith.

Now, he's the son of a luxury hotel magnate. He's not royalty, right? In fact, he's a Jewish guy. His family has to flee Germany ahead of the Nazis, right? He's gonna be one of these new money people who kind of remakes the ruling class. He's one of these sort of like guys who sort of he comes in during this period and becomes one of the most powerful people in the entire country. He's this he's an etonian, but he drops out before graduating because he's already as like a kid a successful

entrepreneur. And he basically tells everyone, I'm too rich for this high society, cloud game bullshit, right? I've made my money. I don't need your approval now. Now you have to get my approval because you're all going broke gambling and I have the fucking cash, right? And he's a fascinating dude actually. Goldsmith in his older adult life,

Goldsmith is like this corporate rater dude. He's stripping assets and like destroy, he's one of the men who will destroy industry in Britain, right? Okay, so he's stripping all the, and like, strips assets from all these companies, he's this big offshoreing guy, he's going to like play a major role in killing, along with his other due to friend of his slater,

killing like industry in the UK. But earlier in his life, he has this like wildly romantic and sympathetic backstory. So as a young man, he falls in love with this woman, Maria Bourbon. And Maria is her father is this indigenous Bolivian man, right? Who, as he's a minor, basically, and he kind of looks into buying this incredibly rich tin vein, which makes him an incredibly wealthy man. And he then moves to the two Europe

because he knows that like the political situation Bolivia is unstable. And he buys himself a Spanish noble title, right? So he is a, he comes from a very common, you know, he is, he's literally an indigenous man from South America, but he makes himself into a European noble. And he does not want his daughter, Maria, to marry this Jewish man, right? And in fact, tells him when James, like, tries to come to him for his approval to get married, he's like, we are not in the habit of marrying Jews. Now, James is a piece of shit too, and his response is, well, I'm not in the habit of marrying

Red Indians. So, you know, two racists, big oceanic marriage. Racist Uno. Yeah, racist Uno. Now Maria's dad is insanely rich. So when they try to get married anyway, he has his daughter kidnapped and put under house arrest. Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's one of these, and she like, there's this time where he keeps searching, he's traveling around the world looking for her, like she's being kind of locked away, she gets free, and they run to Scotland together, right? And they start, they hide out in Scotland because the way the laws are at the time, if you've been in Scotland for two weeks, you can get married there. Don't ask me why, that's the rule, but that's the rule. So they're like, and like, at the same time same time her dad who like has mercenaries travels to Edinburgh, and so he's got like his mercenaries in private searching for them for two weeks as they're like hiding in the

underground so that they can get married. And it's one of those things. James being a pretty savvy guy, he starts sending letters to a journalist, right? Telling them what they're doing, telling him about the fact that they're, and this journalist starts publishing articles while they're hiding and while like their dad is putting out Bounties for them and it becomes like the biggest story in the country, right? Every if this incredibly romantic tale this couple has alope and they're being chased by this evil plutocrat and like They're hiding out in the Edinburgh underground. Like everyone is obsessed with this story, couldn't be much more romantic, right? It is a pretty cool, so you could make a movie out of this.

Yeah, it's actually really very cool. I would want to be about that. It is a dope story, and they succeed, right? They're able to kind of wait out long enough that they alope, they have this like secret wedding, and then there's nothing that Maria's dad can do about it. So they're able to move back to London where they are, they're not just popular with the rich

because everyone loves them, right? This is such a romantic story. Yeah, it's such a romantic story. And then almost as soon as they get back, she gets pregnant and dies horribly in childbirth. So it is, this guy, yeah, it's this really tragic, like, high dramas story. It is like the most sympathetic backstory a dude would have and the rest of James's life is going to be killing all of this sympathy by becoming like the evil-ist corporate overlord of his day, right? Yeah, it's

just something else. It's jokified. Yeah. And some people argue, because he like, his marriages are purely transactional after this point, you know, he's got this, these mistress, but he never like loves again. Like this seems to have basically, some people will argue this kind of kills his ability to care about people. I don't know if that's the case. Maybe he always would have turned out to be a piece of shit, but I think that it's hard to tell what's inside of Man's Ha, especially when it's British. But it's definitely didn't help. Yeah, it doesn't help.

And he's going to, again, he destroys kind, he helps to destroy the cut like industry in the UK. He makes a lot of his money in tobacco. He's a big tobacco guy. He makes a lot of his money in Indonesian nickel mines, which are not nice places. He's buying and selling forests around the world, including in the US for timber. And he's one of the dudes who will pioneer the modern concept of setting up shell companies and shadow assets

so that he can basically secretly buy up controlling interests and companies without people realizing until it's too late that he's taken them over. Like, he helps to pioneer how you do that in the modern era. That is this other buddy of John A. N. First of all, it is so good at developing people like this. Yeah.

It is a very British story, right? And Luke and then Goldsmith are going to form the nexus of a far right poll in Aspenal Social World. And I say that everyone's pretty right wing. These are all rich people from like families that have always been rich. So England at that time was pretty right wing anyway. England is very right wing at this time.

And Goldsmith, but Goldsmith and Luke and are like fascists, right? And in fact, in 1994, like one of Goldsmith's first things, he is like the first brexit or before the EU is even a thing. He's like fighting like the first brexit or before the EU is even a thing He's like fighting like hell to stop the creation of the EU and to stop England from being a part of it That doesn't work and he gets he's as kind of a response to failing to stop the EU He writes this book in 1994 called the trap and the basically the argument is the trip and the trap is that like

US style attitudes of free trade, which bring with them mass migration, right? Which open borders that people can travel between borders is a trap because it will lead to non-white people taking over, right? That's the, yeah, that's, get, this is like. He's a great replacement guy. Yeah, he's like, this is like the BC version

of the great replacement theory, right? Like it's a little bit underdeveloped when he starts it, but you can see the bones of it and the book that he writes. Yeah. Yeah. So that's cool. Anyway, you know who doesn't support the great replacement as a narrative? This the podcast or the sponsors of our podcast. Oh, okay. Yeah, they don't do that. So buy them. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So the end of the year is coming up.

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I knew she was doing something, but she wouldn't admit it to me at first. Join me on a journey to uncover what really happened to Libby Cazwell. Everyone deserves no detruth and if there was something that was not right and someone should be held accountable. I think the law is set up to punish families in a situation. Libby's case stands out in my mind and keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. It's something that I need to know.

Listen to what happened to Libby Caswell on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, we are back. We're having a good time over here. So James Goldsmith is a mercantilist, right? He feels basically that wealthy, and this is kind of the attitude of the Claremont set. Wealthy business owners should hold all political power, and the government should primarily

be used to stop poor people from entering Europe through force, right? That is the belief that this guy has not an uncommon one today You see the descendants of Jimmy Goldsmith all over the place But this is weird because he's He and Aspenall are the two independently wealthy like actually wealthy not just inherited money and squandered it members of the Claremont set So he is the only guy in this social circle who's willing to tell John, hey, your zoo experiments are insane.

Like you're a lunatic. And in fact, on the day that you notice your tiger roops someone's face, so. Yeah, he actually bad. He tries to warn Annabelle the day her son gets maimed. He's like, oh, I would never get in the cages with these animals. They're wild animals.

If they get frightened, you never know what they're going to do, right? Like you can't, you can't trust them with your safety. She's just in the jack office. She's just in the jack office. She's in the whole time. Yeah. She's ignoring it. No, no, no, throw the kid in there. Yeah. All right, my, ooh, dude. The tiger's fucking pregnant. It's wild. So at the end of the 60s, Jimmy opens his school to, again, the public provided that they can pay. And he has expanded by this point to a host, a wide variety of animals.

He starts to get less interested in the Claremont at this point, right? Gambling has kind of gotten boring, and nothing compares throwing down money, which he has plenty of, on a game. It's not nearly as exciting as like cuddling with a tiger, right? So at the start of the 70s, he sells the Claremont outright. I think he sells it to Hugh Hefner. I may be wrong about that. But he sells it so he can focus on his new passion. Now, Aspenal has been dying every day.

Nearly dying every day to animals, to wild animals, maming him. Now, in sort of a period as he's gotten experienced with this zoo and kind of gotten bored of gambling, Aspenal has also begun to develop a peculiar set of theories about the world. Right. Not just, yeah, some of them are based on Goldsmith and his buddy, Luke, and their outright Nazism has an impact on Aspenal. But Aspenal is also heavily influenced by his close contact with wild animals.

His idea, the idea that he comes to believe is this. In the ancient past, human beings and animals had been equal, but then mankind had betrayed them, creating a world in which animals were little more than beasts of burden. Aspenal saw himself as the appointed defender of the animal world from man, and in his eyes, the oppression of animals was not caused by rich men like him, who keep them in Zeus, or who like by and sell forests,

like his buddy James Goldsmith, but it's caused by poor people, mostly non-white people, right? Right. Yeah, who are cluttering up the world with their filth. And that somehow controls the animals. Right. I'm going to quote from an article in the telegraph that's kind of writing about him. He castigated the human race as a species of vermin and positively welcomed natural disasters as a means of reducing the plague

of homo sapiens. He would gladly end his own life he declared if he could take another 250 million with him. There was something to be said, he felt, for Hitler's ideas about eugenics. Broadly speaking, he said, the high income groups tend to have a better genetic inheritance. And like, he meets, he's, he becomes buddies with Richard Nixon at one point. Obviously, of course, of course he and Nixon are friends.

And you know, they're hanging out one day and the Claremont Nixon's like, you know, we have some of the nuclear weapons we've got to kill two million people if they hit the right place. And fucking Aspenal's response is like, well, that's not nearly enough. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to up those numbers if we're gonna get rid of enough people.

Yeah, let's get the work. You Americans have gotten cocky. You're atrocities are nothing compared to the British Empire. Yeah, it is good to know. We're gonna go into a conversation that must have been. Fixed it. Which one of the tigers nearly killed someone? And I sleep with the gorilla.

No, he doesn't like Americans. Yeah, I do not think a gorilla would have a good reaction to dick nicks. I voted Johnson, sorry. Yeah, this gorilla actually loved escalation in Vietnam. would have a good reaction to dick mix. I'm sorry, Johnson, sorry. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, this gorilla actually loved escalation in Vietnam. Couldn't get enough of it. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha quote, having identified so closely with his gorillas, he started to imbitate their habits and showed a marked preference for the rules governing the world of animals to that of human beings.

From watching how the dominant old silverback gorilla ruled the females in his entourage, he concluded that the idea of women's rights and women's liberation was not only ridiculous, but also contrary to nature. He also decided that an authoritarian paternalistic setup was the natural model for a human family. He's a, he's a literal guerrilla mindset, dude. He is quite literally a guerrilla mindset, dude. That's so funny. The guerrillas have taught me how human relationships out of work.

Mike Soutavitch is going to listen to this and be like, oh, wow. No, it's not a point. It'd be clear here. I'm not saying he's right about how guerrillas throw. I don't know much about guerrillas. This guy is a disgraceful piece of shit and I hope he burns in hell, but also he does kind of live his dream.

It's not like he's saying I have the guerrilla mindset and he owns these guerrillas and indeed interacts with them. Cuddles, what I think he believes is appear. Yeah, you have to give him credit. He's not a delitant, right? He is committed to living like an animal. So I'll give him that.

I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying. You don't go to hand it to him, but you don't get a hand to him. He'd be, he's not a casual. Yeah, there are, if you read interviews with him, I have read two separate interviews with him that he gives at his zoo with a journalist, two separate interviews, where he is mauled by an elephant while giving the interview. That happens twice. More me one shame on you. Yeah, it's something else.

So we'll continue that quote. From studying how the animal kingdom operated in the wild, he reached some even more alarming propositions. The first of these was that just as the survival of the fittest seems to work in nature, we should willingly accept the position of the powerful and successful as natural leaders of modern-day society. He also believed his firmly in selective breeding for humans as he did for animals

and proclaimed that since animals had as much right to exploit the planet at its human beings, the time had come to call something like a billion humans from what he called the urban biomass. If the world as we know, it was going to survive. So that's great, that's great. That's good.

Yeah, now his evolving guerrilla minds. Imagine Elon Musk dealing with any of these people. They would kill him. Yes. Yeah, actually. Yeah, the guerrilla looks pretty epic to me. Yeah. He would try to cuddle with a lion and get his head crushed.

Just immediately die. Which might have been the best thing, honestly. This could save us all a lot of problems. Yeah. So his evolving guerrilla mindset, this is why he, he, he, like, leaves his, like, so he and his first wife split up, she cheats on him, and he decides to keep her, he, like, locks her away from their kids, right? Like, she has no contact with the children.

So he marries this next woman who is, like, a wonderful partner. She loves his animal. She's, like, in every way way a perfect match, but she delivers a daughter with a heart defect who dies after birth. So John dumps her because like, well, human should only mate to breed because that's what gorillas do. And obviously we can't breed. Okay. Goodbye. Yeah. Okay. Gross. His third wife, um, he, he marries because she has a famous ancestor. And he wants that those genes in his children. Like, was the ancestor? Was it like Merlin? No, no, no, I wish.

It's a, oh, shit, I've forgotten. I had it written down somewhere here. But yeah, she has a famous ancestor that he admires. And when they have their first kid, John waits until it's six months old. And then he takes it into his gorilla enclosure and hands it to the dominant mother father pair in the guerrilla. Right? And I'm going to quote from Pearson here. The gorilla appeared inside its nappy to see what sex it was with the baby tucked under her arm, swung up into the trees and showed him to the other

females in the community. When all the female guer gorillas had thoroughly examined the baby Baza, his gorilla mother brought him down to Earth and returned him safely to his human parents. That was not how I thought that one was going. No, it works out fine. So that's good. That's actually kind of strange.

Yeah, that's a wild experience to have a baby. Yeah. It's a wild experience to participate in evil as an observer. Yeah. And it's wild. Let me just send the baby off to the gorillas. Sally marries them after this anyway. She's like, yeah, fine.

Why not? The baby is fine. Nothing to complain about, Jesus. It works out fine. So the early 1970s are a bad time for the Aspenals and they're rich friends. But for reasons divorced from getting mulled by wild animals, the economy tanks at this point, right?

Aspenal, not just in the UK, but like Aspenal has, he's gotten over gambling on gambling and is gambling on the US stock market and he loses his fucking shirt when the US stock market takes a tumble in the early seventies. A new kind of exploiter exploded him. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. And only. No, really, it is just human beings will create new systems to exploit other human beings. He created one and then another and then someone created one to exploit him. It's kind of beautiful. Yeah, it is. It's like a smash for Ryan's. It's about it is. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's that's really what yeah, George Lucas. Yeah.

He's able to, he doesn't lose everything just because his friend Goldsmith, right, is still rich and Goldsmith basically floats him so he can keep paying for his exotic animals during this period. The other members of the Claremont set do not fare as well. The new membership of the club won't give them IOUs, right? So these guys are all still horribly addicted to gambling because they never started businesses or zoos. They have, like, Lord Lucan has nothing in his life but gambling and he's bad at it, so he can't afford to gamble without Aspenall running the Claremont. Um, now, Lucan is, this starts to kind of drive him crazy,

the fact that he is actually poor now, like he still has his fancy manor house, he's still a lord, but he has no money. That drives him crazy, and then in 1974, a labor government takes over in the UK. And that drives these guys, these Claremont members, into a sense of mania, because to them, the way this is, this labor government, these are communists. Communists have taken over, and they are in the process of uprooting the natural order of society. This is a conspiracy against the rightful ruling class based on my Gorilla studies.

Yeah, but the ruling class that got there through gambling on an insane game. Yeah, yeah, it's something else. So they're not good rich people like us, where we got money through gambling. They're not rich people who got it through some other method. Do they don't really understand? They did something shady for it. Now, no one's mind has degraded more by this point

than the formerly lucky Lord Lucan. His luck had turned sour years ago. And again, he is broke now he's increasingly obsessed with fascism and this is all related to the fact that his marriage has collapsed right and become clear like his wife is is going to take the kids right so he just is losing his mind increasingly and anytime he'll meet with his clear monday's with aspenal because they're all still hanging out Aspenal will cite these theories based on gorillas of how inferior women are so Luke and takes from that

He he tries to force his wife into a mental institution so he can take the kids. He does this several times This would have where I think Aspenal probably aspenal had wanted to like force a wife into the mental institution He had the juice to do it. Luke isn't good at anything. So he can't, he can't even work this kind of evil scheme, right? He's just, he's not even able, even with his like, social position to make this happen.

Thankfully, right? That's good. And also his rationale is based on gorillas. Yeah. His based on his friend's gorillas. Yeah. So who told you the gorilla for our right gorillas. Yeah, he's based on his friend's gorillas. Yeah. So who told you the gorilla for our right? Yeah.

So Lord Luke in his mind is a mix of his buddies, gorilla theories, and he buys this 1930s translation of mine comp, which he reads feverishly. And his also is after World War II as well. Well after World War II. He's one of the losing guy's handbook to racism. Yeah, yeah. He does, he has one other idol.

Unfortunately, that idol is Mustafa Kamal of Turkey, who is a dictator and one of the Armenian genocide guys. Yeah. And the book is called Grey Wolf, which is today the name of a fascist organization in Turkey. So that's good. Not good, yeah. So these are his two buds, right, which is today the name of a fascist organization in Turkey. So that's good. Not good. Yeah.

So these are his two buds, right? Hitler and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and Ingluting a gorilla. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha He did have very right wing views, some might describe them as fascist. I didn't know he was indulging an extremist reading matter in 1972, although I knew he listened to recordings of Hitler's speeches at Nuremberg rallies. Well, was that not a warning? I did. Yeah. When did you think he got the idea? Did he just like walking down the street? Yeah. Someone talking about it.

Was it his weird guerrilla friend? Yeah. I also just like, I don't know the gorilla man again. I didn't know he was reading fascist books. I just knew he listened to neuromburrowies a lot. He just wrestled a lot. Wild. So this increasingly conspiratorial obsession with race theory, communism and communism

and the only possible solution to a labor government infected the whole Claremont set. And I'm gonna quote from a really interesting, interesting 2009 article in the Guardian here. communism and the only possible solution to a labor government infected the whole Claremont set. And I'm going to quote from a really interesting, interesting 2009 article in the Guardian here. There is no suggestion that Luke and was in any way anti-Semitic or supported the final solution. But he and his associates, who included Casino owner and party host John Aspinal and

the tycoons, Sir James Goldsmith, were increasingly convinced Britain had fallen victim to a socialist conspiracy. Daily Express journalist Charles Benson, one of Luke's friends, said, he was very right-wing and never watered it down in front of liberals. He would talk about hanging and flogging and use the inward in order to get a reaction. One biographer, Patrick Marnam, said, seen from the Claremont Club, the country was starting to resemble the less stable years of the Weimar Republic. Sir James Goldsmith began to develop his theory of the communist infiltration of the Western

media over the smoked salmon and lamb cutlets, the talk turned to the pros and cons of a British military coup. And that is what these guys are going to come to support. Now, so what if he was just the guy who claimed he wasn't right wing, who walked around saying the end word to get a reaction around a bunch of people who were kind of about to be around him, just like podcaster. Yeah, just he's a podcaster. Yeah, he would have been a great podcaster. He would have been like, he would have been a he would have been on, um, was it Lex Friedman's podcaster? Oh, yeah. He would have been like Friedman. Yeah. So what is that?

You think, oh, the gorilla guy, huh? Actually, no, a guy, you seriously, a guy who's just like, yeah, I learned everything I learned about woman from watching my gorillas. That guy would be a insanely popular YouTuber. Oh, yeah, he would be huge. Now, it's also, it's worth noting one of their good friends here. When I talk about them supporting a military coup, a member of the Claremont set who's tight with all these guys

is this dude Sterling who creates the SAS. And Sterling is going to make a private army in the UK with the goal of using them as the sort of right wing counter counter-vailing force. It doesn't work out for a variety of reasons, but like, these are their social set. And by late 1974, things have gotten to a pretty toxic level.

And we're going to talk about what Luke and does next in this mine state. But first, there's some ads. In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDR, which means just don't look right. My name is Melissa Jeltson. I've spent the last year talking to Libby's friends and family, uncovering details of her life and the secrets that may have endangered it. I knew she was doing something, but she wouldn't admit it to me at first.

Join me on a journey to uncover what really happened to Libby Caswell. Everyone deserves no detruth and if there was something that was not right and someone should be held accountable. I think the law is set up to punish families in the situation. Livy's case stands out in my mind and keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. It's something that I need to know. Listen to what happened to Livy Caswell on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever

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Yeah. Yeah! And moments like this. And this. Have you ever been attacked by a bear? Yeah. Yes! And moments like this. I have an applause for you to come to space here. No. And my whole leg from my knee down in my foot burnt until it's full of big bubbles. And this, kale chips are delicious. They're too oily when I go.

They shouldn't be soft at all. They should be really crispy. That's what I said every single time. You are yelling at me. And this? Do you want to go to the Clipper game with me tonight? Do you have 25 references of mutual friends that can tell me that you're not a murderer? And this.

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I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist. We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you. But it will be entertaining to a very select few because you don't make it to your mid-40s with IBS

without having a store your two to tell. Join me as I take my place among podcast royalty like Joel Olstein and Lance Bass. Those are words I hope I'd never have to say. Listen to Toss Show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! So, late 1974, the lucky Lord Luke and his grown-ups assessed with his need to rescue his children and destroy his wife, all of which fits in with his Nazi guerrilla beliefs about power and masculinity.

So he starts telling, ask, but he tells his friends, he's open about like, they're like hanging out playing cards and he's like, gonna kill my wife, decided it, gonna murder her. And they're all like, yes, sounds like a good plan, man. Like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is some debate as to like whether they thought he was bullshitting or not. And to be fair, I do think it's not uncommon for these guys to joke about murdering their wives.

Um, yeah, that's the kind of culture it is, right? But also the culture is one where a guy owns multiple guerrillas and some anything could be happening. I'm not saying they should have ignored this. I would believe it. Yeah. I'm just saying, I think I'm bringing this up not to like defend them, but more to say a lot of them talk about murdering women.

He's not the only one, right? And there is evidence. That doesn't surprise me. There are a bunch of fucking ethno-vacish freaks. We'll never know precisely, but Pearson's book makes a very strong case that like not only is he joking about this, but they provide him with resources to carry out a murder, right? And again, some of this is up obviously these guys are not stupid enough to be completely open about what they're doing. But one of his friends loans him a car that he's going to like use as

like his getaway vehicle to dump his wife's body after he murders her. One of them like he's broke and he figures he needs 10,000 pounds sterling to bribe a guy with a boat to like dispose of the corpse, right? There's a couple of bribes. Indie be made, right? And goldsmith, interestingly James Goldsmith being the smartest of them doesn't want to get involved in this. He doesn't want to be directly tied to this murder.

So he's like, I will give you 10,000 pounds to commit this murder, which means that he doesn't have to give the money to him. Because as a noble in the aristocracy, you can't take a gift, right? Luke can't be given $10,000. He has to be loaned it. So his other friends loan him the money, right?

This is actually Goldsmith's clever way to not get tied to this is by offering it as a gift because then Luke and won't take it. So his other friends loan him the money, right? This is actually goldsmith's clever way to not get tied to this is by offering it as a gift because then Luke And won't take it. I don't know wild culture, but a tax dodge what the yeah, so Luke and gets a loan from other friends of his and he gets this car. There's some other Tools he probably gets and the plan he cooks up is like I am going to kill my wife, like Bashar head in, throw her in like a sack, drive her to this boat, and then the boat will like way down the sack and toss her in the fucking ocean, right? Like that's, that's the idea. Pearson describes this not as just his plot, but as a conspiracy involving other members

of the Claremont Club. There's this anonymous financier who he calls Mr. X. I think because he's scared to bring this guy's name in, that works as both a high-end legbreaker for gamblers and is like involved in organized crime. This may have been Adnan Kishoki. I think it's possible who is like this arms dealer, but it's that's not the only guy. It could have been a lot of other guys, right? There are a lot of guys involved in organized crime because Aspenal's a gambling maven, right? Obviously, he knows dudes who are dangerous criminals. You know some randomly violent cellos.

Yeah, so the basic idea is that Luchen's gonna murder his wife. She's just gonna disappear. No one's gonna know there was a murder because the body will go away. All of the people he's disgusted with while gambling Yeah, right other than his gambling buddies and then he'll live happily ever after with his children, right? This is his plan to save his plan. Yeah, perfect Now the only hole in this perfect plan is that Lord Luke is a useless rich kid who has never developed a skill in his life

Other than losing all of his money gambling so I have a conservative man in his life other than losing all of his money gambling. So, he heads into his mouth. Yeah, he heads into his London home with this metal pipe wrapped in surgical tape. And he swings it at the first small dark-haired woman to come down the stairs. Unfortunately, well, I'm not gonna say unfortunate. This is all unfortunate, right?

A fucking horrifying thing to do, just like, not even, not even look. Not even premeditated, right? But then the slap, the weird like weird like slap shot nature of him. He killed the other lady didn't he? He kills his maid. Yep. Who people would say, oh man, now your house is dirty.

Yeah, it's one of those like she kind of had a casual resemblance to his wife, right? So he doesn't even look. He swings. He shatters her skull and he kills her instantly, right? This very brutal, horrible, horrible thing. Now, the lady Luchen is right behind her maid, and she comes down the stairs next, and this is from Pearson's book. When he heard Veronica, that's the lady Luchen, coming down the stairs from the sitting room to find out what was going on, he started attacking her as well, hitting her around the head as he had Sandra Rivet. Somehow, she managed to slide down between his legs and grab his balls.

The agonizing pain made him stop. And suddenly, he seemed to come to his senses and realize too late what he was doing. This was not a gamble or a lethal fantasy. He had just battered to death his children's nanny and was now doing his best to do the same to their mother. That is so cool. It is pretty dope of her. You gotta give that to your wife. That is so cool. It is pretty dope, Avera. You gotta give us the right. That woman is, that woman is hardcore.

Yeah, that is fucking not your feet. That is fucking not your feet. Yeah, good for you, good for you. Honestly, you're so complete head on a swivel. Also, she grabbed them so tightly that he was like, whoo, maybe I shouldn't have meant more. The humorous murder, her blitz. Yeah.

This was the point at which Luke and did something that seems so incredible in the middle of a bloody murder that it actually becomes credible. He apologized to his intended victim. He did more. He sat back down and found himself telling her that they must talk to try to work things out. Then, noticing blood was pouring down her face,

he went to the bathroom to fetch a towel to help clean her up. This gave her the chance she needed to make a quick escape, stumbling down the stairs. She got out onto the street and ran to the local pub, the plumber's arms where she burst into the saloon bar screaming, help me, help me, somebody's just murdered my nanny. Now, Luke in escapes after this disappears.

Somebody, you're defending that man. I'll get, she has suffered ahead injury at this point. I don't know what was clear to her. escapes after this. Somebody disappears. Girl, you're defending, you're defending that man. She has suffered a head injury at this point. I don't know what was clear to her. Like maybe it may have been a thing where like, because she gets hit in the head, she's not immediately aware. She has to pit put it together.

I'm gonna, I'll give a lot of grace to someone who's just been hitting the head with a fight and had to fight their way free, right? Who knows what's going on? There are no huts. So it's very funny that he was like, yo, one minute, let me get a towel. Yeah.

Let me get a towel. All right, I gotta click. It's this, she can wait right here. I will not kill you. It's like, she grabs his balls and it resets him back to like, polyphyrus to get the little, getting like a pin for you to reset at the vice. It's wild.

Yeah. Good to know. Luke and goes missing. He is still missing to this day. Right? He's been declared dead at this point, obviously. Nobody totally knows what happens to him. Right? It is generally agreed that he committed suicide. The kind of most common story is he takes a boat out to see and he drowns himself

because that's like the most romantic or aristocratic way of killing yourself, right? Is to like throw yourself into the ocean. But we don't know that that's what happened. And Lord Aspenal's mother, she gets, I think it's his mother was wife, she's interviewed later and she kind of insinuates that like his friends got rid of him that he was murdered by his friends

because he might expose them. There's some suggestion that maybe he was fed to Aspenal's Tigers. That might have happened. Not embossed. I believe that. I would absolutely believe that. I would definitely believe that he was just like, yeah, go with the Tiger.

I trained this Tiger to protect from wives. Yeah. And it's unclear. He could have killed himself. Pearson's attitude is that like this was, he was too much of like a weirdo narcissist to kill himself. I don't know if I think that's credible, but he doesn't know more about Luke and then I do. His suggestion is that like, Luke in using these kind of, like Mr. X and these other sort of overseas connections, Aspenall has, Luke can get spirited away to Switzerland. But because he's the most famous murderer in Europe, he can't, he

has to be stuck in a house for the rest of his life, right? You can't let this guy out ever, and Luke and can't handle that. He still wants to get his kids back and like return to high society. He kind of convinces himself, someone else killed his wife. And so, Pearson's theory is that like,

well, once these guys who are hiding him realize that he's a danger to them, he's going to expose himself somehow, they murder him, right? Because they're like, well, this guy, we can't, we have, it's the only thing to do, you know? guys who are hiding him realize that he's a danger to them. He's going to expose himself somehow. They murder him, right? Because they're like, well, this guy, we can't, we have, it's the only thing to do, you know? That's also perfectly possible. I, my theory is he probably died in some sort of stupid way.

Like it's like a Mr. Bean death, but. Friends, I hope it was the tiger. Yeah, maybe the tiger. Maybe it's more likely he pissed off one of the multiple rich and violent and crazy gambling people and was like, ah, I am lucky Luke and then got killed by a guy in the street. Totally possible. He strikes me as the kind of guy who dies in a very boring and funny way. Like, you know, a bar in Switzerland.

Yeah, he's just gets drunk with the wrong people. Now, I mean, but think about it. If he's this rich, racist, horrifying, bigger, who hates woman, the people he's gonna associate himself with, wherever he ends up, are going to be equally shitty and unreliable. And also, yeah, someone probably fucking looked in the paper and went, hey, aren't you that famous murderer who

got like gay sucks fucking idiot? Because also, but also, I would also fully believe that they all had him done in. Yeah, totally possible. Because his Lucan's whole thing Even I'm 37 years old so obviously The whole Lucan thing happened a lot longer before I was born, but it's It's interesting his legend is still around even though most people myself included until this podcast did not know anything about how this happened Yeah, yeah Yeah, which is Not a great story for him. Yeah.

Yep. Big, big no no on most of this stuff. Yep. The gorilla stuff sounds interesting though. Yeah, the gorilla stuff's fine. So, yeah, for his part, Lord Aspenall would never condemn his friend for murder. He talks to journals about that. He's like, I get why he did it.

I think he was, I think he was within his rights, you know? He did it for the good of his children. Aspenal's attitude is he was only trying to save his children from the worst fate imaginable being raised by a woman, right? Well, as we established earlier in the pod, women being evil. Yeah. Now, and the other thing, so Luke and because he, or, or Aspenal, because he kind of goes broke in 74, in 76, he starts another gambling hall, right? Which he makes another fortune in. And he sets up in the hallway, these like busts of like famous gamblers from history.

And one of them is a bust of his friend, the murderer, Lord Luke and, like, the initial inscription on it basically says he did it for his kids Something else this guy So after his friends disappearance Aspen all continues to devote most of his time to his zoo He makes a couple more fortunes. We're talking millions tens of millions each time But then he loses them often by like pampering his animals because it's just it's expensive to run zoos like this. They never make money. He does open a second zoo like a few years later. So he has two zoos that

he's operating. And these become increasingly large and influential. Through the 80s and 90s, he grows obsessed with the idea that his zookeepers like him can only do their job properly, if they're getting, if they're willing to get dangerously close to the animals. And this is a bad idea. In 1980, he, he has two Siberian tygresses and they viciously mall and kill two zookeepers in the same year. Force him. The only thing, yeah, that's his attitude.

He's angry that he has to shoot these tigers to death because these zookeepers got murdered by them. Which should be fair, not the tigers fault, but it is your fault, dude. You had them cuddling with them. I mean, you also had tigers. I put people in for, I just... Yeah, that's not the end of it. In 1984, one of his zookeepers is crushed to death

by an Indian bull elephant. In 1994, the head zookeeper at Howlitz is massacred by yet another Siberian tiger. This fucking guy went into the 90s with this shit. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Right afterwards, another keeper, Damian Cockroll, is crushed to death by the elephant lapatite in its enclosure. So, he is running through these guys very quickly.

This is a deadly zoo. I'm going to quote from the Guardian again. In 1996, Aspenall won a high court case to maintain the controversial practice of keepers, mingling with lions. Even though in May of that year, a boy was awarded 132,000 pounds because his arm was ripped off by a chimpanzee in 1989. This is again, it would have asked for all facilities. And as irresponsible as all that is, he's still in some ways good at what he's doing,

because his second zoo opens, yeah, both howlits in his second zoo, Port Limfney, are renowned breeding centers. He produces 73 captive bread gorillas and six black rhinos. People die, but the animals fuck. The animals fuck. Yeah, it's wild. And by the time, in the 80s, zoo professionals who had rightfully been this guy as a maniac started taking some of his lessons on raising animals, because he's got, by this point, 80 breeding species.

And he is one of his projects in the Congo is the first to successfully introduce captive bread gorillas back into the wild. So it's this mix of like wild incompetence that gets people killed. And also like, this is the first program to get captured bread gorillas back into the wild. So I don't know what lesson you want to take from that. It's just a thing that happened. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. I think the lesson I'm taking from this is we need to learn a little bit about gorillas from this guy. Yeah, the sky is.

Throw more people in front of gorillas just to see what happens. It's kind of a bummer he doesn't die from like being eaten. No, I thought that was where this was going. No, he was going to get killed by like a domestic cat. It's literally the opposite of that because he does die of cancer in late June of 2000, but his final regret in life is that cancer has made him too sick to like cuddle with his dangerous wild animals. Anyway.

That's John Asperger's mate. Yeah. Aspers, as his friends called him. Yeah. There you go. How you feeling? I'm just like, yeah, aspers, as his friends called him. Yeah, there you go. How you feel? I'm feeling great. Yeah, I love the fact that Britain, I feel like Britain's freaks are just very different

to America and honestly. This is a unique kind of freak. Yeah, but it's only something that could be created by the horrors of the colonial empire. Yeah. Just not just like the obvious repeated atrocities that to this day are visited upon the world as a result of the British Empire. It's also just the insane, repressive, violent nature of Britain in that hundred year period.

I don't even think it's truly stopped, but we've just tamped down how violent and horrifying we are. Yep. And what's insane is nothing happened to this guy. No. Nakedly corrupt guy who led to the deaths of several people and by proxy one made. Yeah.

And he's fine. He died of cancer. And his last thing was like, Oh, yeah, I didn't get the cuddle with my animals as much as I wanted to. I never got maimed one last time by a tiger. Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't say I'm not going to let God kill me. My gorillas will do it. Yeah. Make my make my gorillas do it. You're really right there. Yeah. It's like I refuse to let go. Like this giant silverback gorilla, I've been breeding specifically to kill me

when I get cancer. Yeah. I mean, I will say, I'll say this for gorillas because I think it's important to push back on this myth sometimes. I've voiced the gorillas. Gorillas are gonna fucking light us up in the promise. Yeah.

They are not the animals that kill people, right? Because it's actually like a so, like gorillas, it's kind of hard to get the gorillas are gonna fucking light us up in the comments. Yeah. They are not the animals that kill people, right? Because it's actually like a, like gorillas, it's kind of hard to get to the burglars. Human beings do. No, as we establish, just get, take your mother-in-law, and, and, uh, she'll depress the gorilla, and that's it. Yeah, yeah.

So I guess that's the lesson here. Everyone go get a silver bat gorilla. It's completely safe. It's totally fine. You will be fine. Yeah. Buy one today. Yeah.

Do you have any pluggable spur, I said? Just find me at where's your ed.at if you want to read some excellent tech journalism and if you want to hire a PR for easy PR.com. Yes. Most excellent. Easy PR.com check out where's your Ed At and yeah that's going to be it for us at Behind the Basterds this week. You can subscribe and free to our shows at what is it called Sophie. Cooler zone media. Yeah do that. All right we're

done. Behind the Basterds is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media visit our website coolzonemedia, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDRLR. which means just don't look right. On season two of my podcast, What Happened To? I take a closer look at Libby Caswell's life and death. Libby's case keeps me awake at night.

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