Bittersweet Infamy - #21 - The Galápagos Affair

Episode Date: July 11, 2021

Taylor tells Josie about the saga of sex, murder and mayhem that unfolded on remote Floreana. Plus: the infamous Puebla sinkhole.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy. The shocking, the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Today we're 21 years old, dude. We've been doing this podcast for 21 years. We're 21 episodes old today.

Today. Every episode is a milestone, truly. I know, 21. We can drink. We can purchase marijuana in California and other participating states of the United States. 19 in British Columbia. 19! Bullshit! Love it! God damn it! No. We always, so we were always 19. Pretty much everything major of note is 19 in BC, except I think voting is 18 because that's like a federal thing.

Have you heard about this ginormous sinkhole in central Mexico? I've heard about a ginormous sinkhole. I don't know where, but possibly the same. Okay. I mean, there's there's sinkholes everywhere. Some of them are naturally occurring. Others are freakishly coming out of nowhere and scientists have no idea how this could happen. coming out of nowhere and scientists have no idea how this could happen like the ginormous sinkhole that is still growing in central mexico the state of puebla about a month ago a farmer noticed that part of his field had kind of collapsed in and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. No, I don't like it. With a few rainy days, it is the rainy season or coming up.

It's not even the rainy season yet. I think it's coming up. Oh, no. The rainy season is just getting started. Exactly. It has grown over 500 feet wide. Oof. It's big.

It's really big. It's, the other week, it ate up. I know I shouldn't love, but I love the language of, like, a hole eating something. Yeah. Because that's kind of what it does. It ate up a house. Oh, my God. You're doing hole shit again.

Doing hole shit. Love holes. Yeah, no. When you were talking about that hungry hole, I was like, wait a minute. up a house oh my god you're doing whole shit again doing whole shit love holes yeah no when you were talking about that hungry hole i was like wait a minute i've had this dirty thought before yeah dude oh yeah this hungry hole ate up a house which is very sad because it's the farmer's house and they they spent years and years saving up money for it. But luckily, the government of Puebla has said that they will help relocate the family and pay for the construction of a new house. That's good.

So that's good. But nearby neighbors and I think at this point tourists to the area have come by to look at the hole. They stand a certain distance away, of course, and notice how fucking large it is. There's water in the base of the hole, which is kind of strange because it's moving water as well. So they think scientists are not certain what is creating the sinkhole the land has always been supportive enough because there's some areas maybe more towards southern mexico like the yucatan peninsula it's all limestone and that has sinkholes um and those cool cenotes they're like swimming holes at this yeah yeah yeah right But this is a little different because it's just, it's, it's not limestone, which creates a cenote. This is just dirt. This is just like a little hole in your backyard that all of a sudden grows and grows and grows

and eats your house. Was there possibly some sort of underground explosion of gases that compromise, like, I'm not a fucking geologistologist as we well know they the scientists think that it may have something to do with depleted aquifers okay in the area because this is a farming area it could be some type of other geological thing i think if it was a man-made explosion they might have been able to rule that out at this point but but who knows because that could have happened miles and miles away and could have affected this particular area for some reason but the nation is captivated by it there was at one point a few weeks ago where some neighborhood dogs were playing near the hole and they fell in like part of where they were playing. The ground gave way and Spey and Spike landed in this huge growing sinkhole.

And I did say that there's water at the bottom, but they were up on like a dry area, almost like a shoreline on like a little beach within the sinkhole. And people were really upset everybody was kind of like tweeting about it and sending out all these social media stuff and so finally after about four days they sent firefighters down to rescue spay and spike they are now safe okay good don't worry but everybody is following the sinkhole very carefully. And it's captured a lot of imaginations. There's a new bread that has been created that like recreates. Like the pastry? Yeah, like a pastry.

Like a pan dulce. A pan dulce that has been created to like look like the round sinkhole. And apparently some people. Some bakers even like drew in. With icing. Spay and spike the two dogs in the sinkhole. Oh that's so cute. There's a cumbia song that's out about it. But in addition to like the songs. And the pastries and stuff.

There's also a whole bunch of memes. That are coming out about it. Like one of them is Shrek is taking a bath in the sinkhole. And it's just kind of taken over. Thewaves and front pages of Mexico right now. So it's a meme. It's a meme sinkhole. It's a total meme. Yeah.

Crazy. I know. What an age we live in. It's still growing. So they're not certain when this thing will end either. Let's stop it. Let's stop it. certain when this let's stop that either let's stop it let's stop it this summer we're doing an episode a week until the beginning of august and we are just chatting up storms and storms

about infamous things come and listen to us share stories every week keep your summer bittersweet. I want to coattail that with something that's very sweet that's coming up. This isn't my story, but it's just something I want to wedge in. Ooh, love a wedge. This episode, I don't know when exactly it'll land, July something, but it's close to July 14th. I think it's a little bit before July 14th. Bastille Day. And so it is. But even more than

Bastille Day, this is the first day of the most auspicious stretch of the year. All of the black-eyed peas are the exact same age. Oh my god, this is a very tight frame, time frame, right, that we get into. Yes, this is like July 14th to I forget when it ends. I think it's sometime October, November. Then one of them has a birthday. And we move to less fallow spiritual times. Yeah.

Oh my god. But yeah, all four. Fergie, Apple D App, Taboo, Will.i.am. They will all be 46, I believe. Will.i.am too. Wow. So follow your ideas follow your your new business you know start a family it's it's uh the best time of the year i uh i think i have a good

one for you this week it's a perfect bittersweet summer story um i have come to the table with a classic desert island story oh that's why i had you put on that chapstick okay thank you thank you this is a common trope as far as like exclusively western stories where people leave everything whether it's by choice or by shipwreck or whatever it is, wash ashore on some new mysterious isle and are kind of left there to forage for themselves. There's Lost, there's Survivor, Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, Gilligan's Island. Gilligan. There's a million of these. Tom Hanks.

Yeah, Castaway, exactly. Yeah. Rugged individualism. Is that what you think? Because what do you think the draw is of the story, of the genre? I think there's a mix there. I think one is a is tropical island vacation. That kind of thing. And I think a third one in here is maybe like survivor porn, you know? Like I could never do that. So I'll watch somebody else do it or like, I can do that. There's also something tied up in like colonialism and capitalism and all of these forces

there. Insofar as like people feeling like they need an escape from the rigid structures of society. So they go and they settle somewhere else in the notion that like basically by aping the lifestyles that we effectively colonized out of existence, we can find a simpler, more essential way of being. You know what I mean? Ooh, yeah. Yeah. We can access the noble savage, quote unquote. Exactly. Big, big scare quotes on that. And there's a bit of that in this story, and I'll name it when it happens. This is one of my favorite stories. This is, to my mind, the best desert island story ever. Shit, dude. So if you were on a desert island, this would the best desert island story ever shit dude so if you were on a desert

island this would be your desert island story yes precisely okay but i really want you to so for this story i want you to go full summer mode i want you to close your eyes i want you to hear the waves washing against the shore those seagull And just really, really feel the heat on your chest and just come with me on a trip to Floriana. Floriana? Okay. Floriana is also the name of my Animal Crossing island, by the way. Oh. The year is 1930.

The place? A remote desert island in the Galapagos Archipelago. Okay. On the beach stands a lonely barrel, used since the 1700s as an informal maritime post office. One day, sailors aboard the exploration yacht Mizpah check the mailbox where they find an urgent note to the captain of any passing vessel. check the mailbox where they find an urgent note to the captain of any passing vessel. The note, which is written in German, says that two people are living on the island and they badly need supplies and medical attention. Oh, fuck.

A search party is formed and eventually the writers are located. Dora Strauch and her partner, Dr. Friedrich Ritter, Friedrich? Frederick? Dr. Ritter, Friedrich, Frederick, Dr. Ritter, have been living on the island since they moved there to start a new life together five months earlier. They explained that not only did Dr. Ritter crush his arm while felling a tree, but their supplies, including their rowboat, had been stolen by a mysterious pilot. Pirates.

Not pilots. Pirates. had been stolen by a mysterious pilot. Pirates. Not pilots. Pirates. The sailors give them a year's worth of food, medical supplies, soap, ammunition, dynamite, etc.

Whoa. Yeah, bookmark all that. And set sail for their next port. The owner of the yacht, E.F. McDonald Jr., sends a radiogram, don't know what that is, to a friend at the Associated Press informing him of the unusual inhabitants of this remote island. And in doing so,

he unwittingly sets into motion a series of torrid events drenched in sex, violence, passion, crime, intrigue, and murder. This is the Galapagos Affair. So my two main sources were a book written by one of the people in the story. It's called Satan Came to Eden. And this is Doris Stroh. Doris, these people have all aggressively German names.

This is Doris Stroh's these people have all aggressively German names. Good. This is a Doris Stroh story. Okay. And she is not what I would consider a strictly reliable narrator. So I just want to put that into the air. And then there is a documentary called The Galapagos Affair, Satan Came to Eden. That is, it kind of tells the, it's not just Doris story tells it's not just Dora's story it kind of just tells everybody's story

and it has a lot of interviews with like people whose parents settled on the Galapagos and now and their families were around to hear all this at the time

because they were settling other islands and whatever okay yeah our story starts in Germany in the 1920s with a young woman

named Dora Stroh. Dora's a supporter of workers' rights, which is a huge issue in post-World War I Germany as class tensions grow. Yeah. She's also a big philosophy buff. She's obsessed with living ethically. She reads Nietzsche. She reads Schopenhauer. She only eats fruits for a year and a half for moral reasons.

Fruititarian. She becomes anemic and drops it. At age 23, she gets married to a schoolmaster named Herr Kerwin. He is a much older family friend. He's stern and stoic, but Dora is a fixer and she thinks she can coax him out of his shell. The marriage is a disaster. She resents her husband for trying to make her into the German bourgeois ideal of a Hausfrau. Okay, she's into the philosophy. Okay, I hear it.

And she suffers a major setback when early in the marriage she's diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Ooh. While she's convalescing, she sees a doctor and is, by her own account, as this may be a quote, attracted to the deep furrows in his forehead, the extremely harsh expression of his eyes, and the complete lack of amiability in his face. Wow. So it's not her husband. That's maybe it. It's a big, she got a big, angsty German boner for this very stern looking doctor. Right, yeah.

The man introduces himself as Dr. Friedrich Ritter, and he tells her that she can use the power of thought to make herself well. Oh, okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And under his tutelage, she does see a general improvement in her health. They start an affair, even though not only is Dora married, not only is Dr. Ritter married, but he's also in love with a third woman, his 20-year-old niece. Ooh.

Fred and Dora have a great deal in common. He, like her, is a misanthrope. He's wary of people and the mores of the prevailing society. He's also big into Nietzsche as well as Lao Tzu. He's blunt and eccentric and demands that Dora try to transcend the emotional impulses of the typical woman. The typical woman. You're not like those other girls. No, you're basically a guy, You're not like those other girls. No, you're basically a guy, is what it should be. He's a vegan for moral reasons, but when he tries to solve the world's problems of dietetics,

he includes meat in his sample tables for the working classes, which makes Dora wetter than a lagoon. With the meat or the solving world hunger? He's solving world hunger, but even though he is a vegan, he's like, it would be immoral of me not to give the poor his meat. They're not as enlightened as I am. And Dora thinks that's just like the most fab shit she's ever heard. Wetter than a lagoon. I hope all of the similes and metaphors that we encounter have to do with tropical islands. That might be the only one.

Damn it! I'm sorry. I have set forth a task for myself. Henceforth. So the two of them friend Dora become more and more obviously a couple. Dora tells her husband about the affair. Okay. He tries to stop it, but when the relationship persists, he basically just keeps quiet to avoid scandal.

Honestly, not super emotional, dude. Yeah, okay. The oddball pair feed into one another's eccentricities. For example, they detest the civilized shoe. Gross. Disgusting. And so they wear special leather foot pouches that Dr. Ritter makes. And they walk around in those this is the 20s right yeah yeah 20s 20s like berlin okay all right welcome and bienvenue welcome

in the evenings they meet on the roof of his clinic and look out over the city and dream of a solitary life on a remote island where they can devote limitless time to personal refinement and solving the great ethical questions of the universe. And eventually they start. Yes, exhausting, right? They start taking strides to make this dream a reality. The one thing standing in their way is Dora's guilt over betraying their respective spouses she she can't sleep whatever so she devises a plan dr ritter's wife frau ritter is a uh not her real name is is a plain and ordinary woman who wants to be a housewife so dora's like what if my husband

hires your wife as a housekeeper and they just fall in love that way and we can just swap spouses is this like a say by the bell episode just set in like post-world war one germany like yeah it's got a whiff of that it's got a little bit of like uh we've got a zach's zach's got to make some money because he dented screech's car or. There is a little bit of that going on. Yeah. Yeah. They bring the idea to their spouses. Oh, so they're not trying to like matchmake or whatever.

They're just like, listen, we want to leave you, but here's what we're offering. Yeah. And the spouses are livid, but also agree. Oh. Fuck you you but okay yeah no apparently like they won't even look they're fucking they're not even looking them in the eyes anymore but they're like this is what you've left us with so we might as well try to make a go of it okay yeah so as a thank you dora throws a big housewarming party for frau ritter although it's secretly a going away party for Fred and Dora. So like half the party is upset and the other half has no idea why.

Dora also invites this random girl that she had a falling out with to just like patch things up. And that girl like doesn't know what's going on. Oh, yeah. Who's Frau Ritter? What's this party? Why is that person crying? What are you confessing to me? Why are you wearing real shoes?

I don't know what that pouch on your foot is. Are you ill? Is your toe okay? Despite the misgivings of their families, you'll be shocked to hear Dora's parents didn't like Dr. Ritter, and she could never figure out why. Oh, hmm. They depart Europe for their new island life. Okay.

Okay. They make their way to Ecuador where they acquire last minute supplies, although this does not include hats, which Fred refuses to wear under the beating sun of the equator because hair is the best protection for the human head. Okay. I'll get into it in a bit but they didn't pack well for this um obviously if hats are off the list okay they hire a boat skippered by a man named captain brunes who's an old salt with a colorful past full of capers cons and close shaves uh they ask him to bring them additional supplies. He takes their money and disappears. Don't worry, he'll be back.

Oh, ooh. So, okay. Hmm. Like the tide. Eventually on September 19th, 1929, the settlers arrive on an island in the remote Galapagos archipelago called Floriana. remote Galapagos archipelago called Floriana. Floriana is an uninhabited volcanic island of 67 square miles or 173 square kilometers. Okay. While it has never been home to any of the local indigenous peoples that I could find, many failed attempts at settling the island have given it a

colorful and ominous history. Okay.7 an irishman named patrick watkins shipwrecked ashore lore remembers him as a bloodthirsty pirate who deceived sailors into working for him by getting them drunk and then stranding them and then ultimately murdering them oh god in 1820 floriana was burned to the ground by the helmsman of a whaling ship as the result of a prank gone wrong a prank gone wrong i don't what prank bro like i don't fucking to me destroying an ecosystem isn't a very good prank but i'm maybe in the minority on that one also strangely in my head i'm like pranks were invented like in the 50s right like no people been doing back in the day when it was caveman you just like smear some poo on your hand and, like, put it in your... That was a prank back then.

People been pranking. Pranking me, Ralph. In 1837, exiled soldiers were forced to live on Floriana after a failed coup attempt on the mainland. Ooh, okay, okay. That's a brief history of Floriana. Ecologically, this is a shit-kicker of a place to try and live. Okay. Okay. That's a brief history of Floriana. Ecologically, this is a shit kicker of a place to try and live. Okay. Water is scarce. The foliage is dense.

The soil, while nutritionally rich, is shallow. Okay. The island is built upon an active volcano with exploding sulfur deposits. Oh. That's why I was in the mind of exploding things during your minfamous yeah with exploding sulfur deposits and sharp lava rock that cuts your feet apart uh dora specifically says floriana lava would cut through iron like cheese oh damn then vampiric sand fleas lay eggs inside your wounded feet oh yeah that's no good imagine gilligan gilligan's

island like this is one of the episodes well this is this is part of it too is that i like there's two kinds of rugged survivalist fantasy one is the monkey butler's version and one is the really grim reality that if you were forced, if most people who fancy themselves a desert island type were forced into that situation, there would be a lot of unexpected challenges. Yes, the vampiric sand flies being, perhaps. During the raisiny season, there are even more bugs, ants, roaches, flies of every kind to eat your food and torment you while you try to sleep. Yeah. However, there are also various fruits and nuts. There are four springs whose water is potable.

Rudimentary huts and homes dot the landscape left behind by other attempts at settling. Okay. Including at Post Office Bay. And so there's like a building right there that some Norwegian would-be settlers had set up there. Okay. And there are many kinds of wild animals left by previous attempts at colonization, including bulls, boars, horses, donkeys, and wildfowl. Whoa, that's a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot. And then you think about them getting let loose on a fucking Galapagos island. Oh, that's really, yeah, that's not very sustainable. No. Not very kind. Uh, you can live here if you try, although it's telling that every attempt to this point has failed spectacularly. Dora and Fred are entirely unprepared for the adventure in front of them. They didn't bring fucking hats. Uh, for example, they have packed a single plate knife and fork. I'm sorry, that's like so dumb. Like there's two of you. There's two of you.

They were very like fly by night as they left and specifically Dora dressed like a man. She was like, I don't, we can't have scandal. These two are like legends in their own mind. It's ridiculous. Dora brings her beloved Nietzsche as well as Greek and Latin texts, but no matches or lantern. Too much Nietzsche, not enough, like, survival guide. She leaves behind all of her practical clothes to Frau Ritter, who she later finds out never wore them. She doesn't know why. Later on, when they're on the island, they actually, like, she writes to Frau Ritter

and is like, I heard that your marriage to my husband fell apart. You can come live on the island with us if you want. And again, Frau Ritter does not return the message indoors. Like, I don't, I thought I was being nice. That was a really kind thing that I did. I don't understand. I reached out. I sent her a text.

Instead, she brings silk garments, which are immediately eaten by cockroaches. I really don't like a cockroach yeah like eaten off her body oh not even like in the trunk thing whatever i'm sure that too i'm sure that too god speaking of eating before coming to the island dr ritter has all of his teeth removed having worn them down to nubs through the excessive mastication that he practices for spiritual reasons. I'm sorry that I was so upset about the one plate and the utensil set, because I feel like I may be, now I have to like be so appalled.

No teeth, eh? So he's one of those, like you need to chew an almond 50 times for spiritual reasons though. He also said that he hoped his gums would harden enough to become like teeth oh yeah that's a thing that has happened in the history of humankind this man is a physician he told her she could cure her ms through positive thinking oh she has ms yeah oh yeah she has fucking ms by the way god she's in like roachy and clothes

yes he hoped that his gums would harden enough to become like teeth sadly he had to settle for steel dentures and then later on floriana he extracts all of her teeth with garden implements and they share the same pair of dentures wait what for what reasoning would he extract her teeth with no anesthetic? Her teeth were like, she couldn't take care of them on the island. This is like years in. Right. Okay. Years in. We're talking years. There's years? We're talking years? This story goes for years, baby. Oh, MG. I just like, if I started dating a guy and he told me not to wear shoes, I'd be like, let's not continue. But let's get those molars out.

How about that? Yeah, that one is a little bit of a harder no. That's in their early days on the island. Stroke and Ritter are accompanied by a young indigenous man named Hugo, who they've employed to show them the lay of the land. So I love, love, love, love this story. I'm a firm believer though in you got to examine the flaws and the things that you love, you know, whatever. Yeah. Hugo is one of the very few named indigenous characters in the story. There's a lot of, so there's a lot of comings and goings in this story. Like as I said, a yacht

discovers them and after that yachts kind of start pulling up more regularly and on these yachts often come workers who are indigenous or ecuadorian or black or whatever and they're not really assigned any personhood in this story like they were they were pretty they were pretty invisible to the white people whose primary accounts we are consuming yeah one because they're fucking crazy and two because they're white yeah true to form they happily infant infantilize hugo they cast him in their minds as like a simple savage again big scare quotes around that dr ritter's small dick syndrome kicks in and he becomes desperately jealous of this young man and his facility with the outdoors

because he's just like a sunburnt german man in stupid foot pouches getting cut up by lava rock no hat no teeth no hat yeah he's he's embarrassingly ill-prepared and dr ritter like cannot handle that this man who he regards as his inferior in so many ways is like better than him at this thing that he that is his big dream right they frequently ignore his advice resulting in constant mishaps and injuries eventually they decide to set up camp near one of the springs he goes like this place is cursed patrick watkins murdered a guy right where you're standing undeterred they they start the difficult task of transporting their supplies and building their new home,

which they call Frido, a combination of their first names. Okay. Friedrich and Dora. Yeah, yeah. So F-R-I, not F-R-E-E. F-R-I-E-D-O. Okay, okay. For what it's worth, Dora Stroh also believes that this story is about a curse.

She thinks this is about a curse. She thinks this is a cursed island. Okay, so she's trying to absolve herself of some responsibility here, obviously. Okay, cool. Let's find out. Much conflict emerges in these first days. Fred refuses to help Dora accommodate to island life in any way and becomes cold and strict. He chastises her for doing things like adding sugar to her tea deeming it frivolous your 23 year old wife has ms and you drag her to an island chill

out man i know you won't let her wear shoes you pull out her teeth yeah okay yeah it's fucked to help ease their burden they capture a horse they call el viejo uh but they work him to death within two weeks. Ooh, ooh, ooh, that's rough. As vegans, comma, they take moral issue with Hugo's hunting, but they, uh, also feel compelled to use every piece of every animal he kills, which stresses them out because they're two vegans and they're like, oh my God, we've got to eat all these bull testicles. Like they're, they're losing it. Eventually Hugo gets gored by a bull no hugo he's not dead he's not dead okay they're amid much drama they're able to save

his life but he departs the island and never returns oh by the way before he left one of the random white people from one of these boats took all his shit like like stole all his money that's what he found when he was getting back to get on the boat he found all of his money was gone oh my god yeah so uh after hugo leaves the island they kill his hunting dogs which they rationalize as a kindness and then they killed the wild dogs that fed on his kill which they also rationalize the veg vegans. The vegans. They're super loosey-goosey about their morals on animals. At one point in the story, there's so much absurd shit that happens in the story

that it doesn't even really merit a mention. But at one point in the story, they try to blow up a boar with dynamite. Jesus. Which doesn't even rank in this story. And I wouldn't care about it if they weren't on their fucking soapbox about everything. Right, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, God. Because I think that we all have, like, we all have innate moral conflicts. Like, I... Yeah. No one can make all of their morals fit beautifully into a perfect puzzle. There are, like, weird little pulls of the heart and brain, right? Yeah.

But their whole thing is literally, we just need to go create a morally perfect society on an island. By blowing up a wild boar with a stick of dynamite yeah exactly uh life at frito is an ongoing project but they set up a habitable home including an iron roof wood floors rudimentary plumbing and irrigation a chicken coop and uh dora's flower garden which dr ritter destroys three separate times because flowers are useless in nature and merely decorative. But they're not. No, that's stupid. He's the he's he's he thinks he's really smart, but he's just a dumb misogynist. Oh, my God. Sugar. Dumb. Flowers. Dumb. Hats. Dumb? Question mark. She also adopts a pet donkey named burrow and several island cats although fred

becomes so jealous of her paying attention to them that she has to train them to stay away from frito you can there is video in in um in the galapagos affair the documentary of her just like with burrow like they're kind of slow dancing together it's very very cute. Buro's very, very cute. There's a weird abundance of footage in this documentary, way more than you'd expect because interested people, journalists, yachts people would bring around news cameras and just film this B-reel of them and take pictures and stuff like that. Right, yeah, yeah.

To the point where, honestly, the first time I watched this documentary, The Galapagos Affair, I went online to see if it had actually happened because the things that occur are so improbable in outlandish. And then also there was abundance of footage that was unexpected. Yeah, yeah. For two people who are on a desert island, there's a lot of primary footage. Yeah. Yeah. Weird. Oh oh by the way

you know who plays dora in the documentary like the voice of dora reading out her kind of first person accounts helen mirren kate blanchett oh similar caliber you were close you were close thank you thank you on may 5th 1931 their solitude is disrupted when they receive 46 letters from total strangers as well as a stack of sensational newspaper articles portraying them as mad eccentrics who fled society to forge their own eden as a modern adam and eve and they were upset by that sounds pretty like i don't know straight on they were really frustrated um they felt that they were misrepresented they thought that like well what if we do an interview and they do do an interview but it doesn't really have the desired effect oh yeah it's a mix of like

i say that guy from the yacht called his friend at the associated press but also i think some of their letters home got leaked somehow you mean frau Ritter was, didn't feel it very important to keep their privacy intact? Oh my God, I never even thought about it, but I think you've cracked the case, Gumshoe. That's what I would do. Totally. Frau Ritter. Of course it was Frau Ritter. I feel like a swimming pool in my backyard.

Do you want these letters? Let's have a chat. From there, they're frequently visited by passing yachters, journalists, photographers, and most frustratingly, would-be settlers inspired to make Floriana their new home. Oh, potential kinfolk. But they're not cool enough. They don't read enough Zarathustra. Oh, right, right, right, right.

They're wearing hats. God. Yeah. These adventurers include, and these are just nobodies. You can forget about these people the second I tell you about them, but they're just funny. Cool. A chain-smoking English doctor described by Dora as alternately dully and violently miserable, who came to Floriana to run away from his wife and his work at a sanitarium.

Okay. And a German woman festooned in silks and diamonds, seeking to turn Floriana into an animal sanctuary, who departed after a week, leaving the monkeys she brought to die of starvation. And parrots. She left some parrots behind too. And more notably, there was the return of the long absent Captain Brunes. Yes, yes.

Who was asked to bring supplies and... And then vanished. Right. He, upon his return, announces that he will be setting up a fishery at Post Office Bay. He also reveals that he was the one who, do you remember at the very beginning of the story when they're like, someone stole our supplies? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He reveals that he was the one who had stolen Fred and Dora's supplies all those months ago, saying that he assumed they had abandoned them. So then Dora is like, that's bullshit because you knew we weren't there because our rowboat was there. By the way, you still have our fucking rowboat. And he's like, yes. And she's like, can we have that? And he's like, no. I gave it to my nephew.

He's having a great time. Oh, no, he still has it. He uses it. He uses it in front of them. Oh, God. Oh, no, he still has it. He uses it. Oh, fuck. He uses it in front of them. Oh, God. Oh, man. Bruins sets up the fishery and his workers, including a young man named Arenz, who will come back later.

Like the tide. One day, Dora is at a high point of Floriana on a clear, sunny afternoon. Like a hill, you mean. Not like a mental high point. Okay, yeah. Like a cliff. Like a hill, you mean. Not like a mental high point. Okay, yeah. Like a cliff. Like a cliff. Okay, okay.

A rugged, toe-eating lava cliff. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And she's watching Bruins fishing in their rowboat. It's gotta sting. It's gotta sting. She's thinking about how much she fucking hates him for stealing it. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. for stealing it. When all of a sudden, an Antarctic current comes and whisks Bruins and the boat away to the near-eye island of Isabella. He improvises a sail and attempts to return to Floriana. The sail is quickly shredded and the boat starts flooding. His indigenous companions bail out, but Bruins stays with the boat. It's quickly overtaken, and he disappears beneath the surface. Eventually, his co-workers find his body on the shore, not drowned, but dashed to death against the rocks. Ooh. They bury him nearby with a cross bearing his name, and that's the end of Captain Brunes. Bye.

After that, the other settlers, including Arends, largely vacate, and Dora and Dr. Ritter are left alone for a time. Their solitude is once again compromised in 1932 by the arrival of a German family called the Whitmers, comprised of husband Heinz, pregnant wife Margaret, and 13-year-old son Harry. Oh my. Okay. Relations are immediately chilly. Heinz initially arrives in this like kooky getup with like these felt bedroom slippers and Dora and Fred are like, what the fuck is this guy wearing?

He's trying too hard to fit in. That's why. He's like, I heard you don't wear shoes, so I thought I'd wear some slippies. And then he admits that he was trying to appeal to their eccentricities and they hate him even more for that oh shit so so you called it he came up to their table in the cafeteria and was like so i've got a cool lunchbox like you guys too yeah and they're like that's not the right one ours Ours. What a loser. Ours chose the band after this album came out.

It's that shit. Exactly. Additionally, the Whitmers ask Dr. Ritter for help with Margaret's pregnancy. Well, yeah, because she's fucking given birth. Dr. Ritter feels the exact opposite. He resents this. He's like, why are you trying to make me? I went away from society

for exactly these reasons you know i mean you can still not like somebody and still help them but he doesn't believe in help he's about like help is for the weak those flowers are merely decorative it's true knock that sugar out of you it upsets me when you pay more attention to your donkey than me yeah if he's gonna be jealous of a cat he's not gonna help a pregnant woman gotcha okay so ritter leads the family to a cave in the middle of the island uh it's it's patrick watkins old cave actually the pirate it's his old cave the murderous pirate the murderous pirate okay he leads them to this cave and it's an hour away from frido which is their settlement and he's like here you go and he leaves them to set up camp so they're like a healthy they're a

healthy distance apart like dr ritter made sure that that boundary was set yeah the original settlers don't think much of their new neighbors they think the whitmers are normies with bland personalities and trivial interests not cut out for the island life, exactly the kind of people that they came here to get away from. But if they were put out by the Whitmers, they could never expect Floriana's next inhabitant, who would arrive in November to bring the residents of the formerly quiet island to their knees,

a character rivaled in fierceness and sheer natural power only by Floriana herself. Introducing the Baroness. Whoa. Baroness Eloise, where born to Wagner Boss Skett, arrives on the back of a donkey, flanked by her two lovers, Robert Phillipson and Rudolph Lorenz. Is she on a boat on a donkey? On a raft, just paddling in.

No, she's been dropped off here. She's got a donkey and a plan and she's got her two hot boyfriends with her. Okay. I mean, if you escape society, the last person you want to see is a baroness. I do have to say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, baroness in the in the conventional sense is is feudalism right like fuck that yeah she's got dyed platinum blonde hair that becomes obviously darker over the course of the story a big red mouth and a flashy sense of style she brings a pistol and a whip with her everywhere she goes she's always armed and always has a whip. Always. On a desert island. I kind of like her. She's talkative, flirtatious, and superficially charming, but upon their first meeting, Dora instantly understands that this woman is bad news. The dynamic between the Baroness and her lovers. Okay, yes, yes, yes. It quickly becomes clear that Lorenz was originally the Barononess's main squeeze but that

he's since kind of been nudged out of the picture a bit by phillipson which he's really distressed about because he's still obsessed with the baroness okay she bosses lorenz around like take off my glasses darling get this take this rock out of my shoe like like really menial like bosses him around like a dog. Take my glasses off. Yeah, take my glasses off. I like that one. The relationship between the trio quickly becomes abusive as the Baroness and Philipson,

whom she refers to as her husband and her minister, they basically use Lorenza's slave labor to build their ultimate goal, a luxury hotel for American yachtsmen. Oh, fuck. The Baroness sets up a sign written in red lipstick advertising the name of the hotel, the Hacienda Paradiso.

Oh, my God. Is the Baroness German? I think I just... Austrian. She's Austrian. Oh, okay, okay. Everyone in this story is German. All of the main white characters in this story are

german except for the baroness who's an austrian who lived in paris although you're gonna be shocked to hear that her life story is a little bit imprecise okay okay the woman who writes who creates a luxury hotel on a desert island and writes the sign in lipstick okay and explicitly what um what she wants is she wants floriana to be the new miami okay yeah she's trying to make like miami too this time on an incredibly remote island in the galapagos gotta hand it to her she's got vision you know she's optimistic she says quote woman is capable of everything from the highest to the lowest certainly she is greater and more resolved than the male amen sister i bet dr ritter had something to say about that oh yeah flowers are useless

in pursuit of this goal she sets up camp immediately next to the Whitmers, the family. Right, in the cave, in the murder cave. She lives in their orange grove now. Nuts to butt. Okay, yeah. Neighborly relations, you're going to hear this phrase a lot, neighborly relations sour from the outset. Oh.

But they briefly warm when Margaret Whitmer has her baby. Okay. It's touch and go, but eventually Dr. Ritter swallows his pride and helps her deliver the child. Baby Rolf is born on New Year's Day, 1933. There's a feeling of light, a baby born on New Year's, the first, the first person recorded ever born on this island. Yeah. Everyone's very, got a little bit of joie de vivre. wounds are kind of healing we're exchanging gifts yeah um rolf rolf is here rolf is here vilkomen dr ritter says quote i hope his upbringing will be stern enough to make of him a worthwhile character oh good that's the blessing you always want to give on a

a newborn yeah he also advises them don't give him a soft bed he'll be lazy make him sleep on the lava sharp rocks can we send him to his own island the problem with this experiment is that we've been civilized he needs his own island that's true yeah that is true but the joyous times don't last the baroness steals supply deliveries meant for the whitmers and then resells the goods to them at a markup. She's pre- she's having baby! Jesus. She does this first with a delivery of rice and then later with supplies meant for the Whitmers baby. Oh my god. Can you imagine the audacity of like, listen, I know you need baby food and your baby food supply just never came. Unrelatedly, I forgot to mention that I have this baby food. Yeah.

I will sell it to you. Like the huevos of that is pretty significant. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say so. She also does things like drop Dora's pet burrow in the Whitmer's front yard. So they shoot him accidentally. Oh no.

Yeah. R.I.P. burrow. the pet burrow burrow yeah yeah oh he was dancing earlier in this story and he has there's a whole story he like has a baby with like a wild donkey and it's so sad and she and now they're left widowed and orphaned it's so sad poor burrow in general she mistreats animals and she has a habit of shooting wild dogs non-fatally so she can nurse them back to health and they'll be loyal to her ew it's like it's very like cruella oh yeah this chick is nuts in that way she says dogs are like men you need to bring them low and then build them back up and they're yours forever. Fuck, dude.

What is she doing here? That's what, like, why isn't she in Vienna doing this? Like, you know what I mean? Because she's got a, she's making a new Miami. She's got a big plan. That's right. I forgot. She has a vision.

She wants to be in on the ground floor of this. And I imagine that having to deal with, like like actual fucking human people has not been favorable to our pistol wearing baroness with two boyfriends. So maybe she's like, let's let's go somewhere where society won't get in the way. Yeah. Okay. Okay. She threatens visitors to the island with her gun, which is like a big scandal. She hires an Ecuadorian man named valdiviezo to get settled and when he leaves the island she has him take the whitmer's boat with him just to be an asshole

like just for the head fuck oh god she's self-absorbed abrasive lies pathologically for no reason and needs constantly to be the center of attention one way that she finds the limelight is to sneak down to post office Bay and rewrite everyone's outgoing mail so that it's all about her. This is like Housewives of Floriana. I've thought about, dude, I've been like, she missed her, she was fucking 70 years too early, alas.

Yeah, she would have made great reality TV. She sends autographed photos of herself to a tobacco company in an attempt to get free cigarettes. She plants completely false sensationalized stories of island life in the tabloids. And all of a sudden, the residents of Floriana receive all of these newspapers full of the fabricated tales of the, quote, lust mad Empress of Galapagos. Who is supposed to, there's rumors that she like took Dr. Ritter, she took Dr. Ritter away in chains and she has a machine gun. And this version of events is only enhanced when one of the island's frequent visitors,

Captain G. Allen Hancock, brings a film crew to make a four minute silent film, The Empress of Floriana, starring the Baroness as a pirate queen. Dope. silent film the empress of floriana starring the baroness as a pirate queen dope so you can watch this in the um documentary the galapagos affair and uh it's pretty fun it's like a guy and his wife get shipwrecked the wife is like a one of the shipsmen in a wig and the the husband's the filmmaker or whatever and then it's the baroness as the pirate queen um and she's got like a see-through top on so you can see her whole titties um she's got like she's got like a nice big desert island armpit hair situation going on the plot of the

film is just her like causing chaos with all these men and she like kills philipson and steals the uh steals the husband and the the the last scene is her pulling a gauzy curtain over their faces so they can kiss behind it oh my god wow so she did so she's a movie star now she's a movie star but i was gonna say like she she understood that she was good fodder for entertainment yep and the stuff that wasn't good fodder she made it into good fodder by just making shit up yeah so wow so the ritter camp and the whitmer camp these are our main camps now by the way these three camps are where we're riding this story out okay okay yeah i mean if you're gonna add another one in there, I'd be like, holy fucking shit. So I'm, you know, like we've reached max drama, I feel. The Ritter camp and the Whitmer camp both write letters to the government of Ecuador demanding arbitration or at the very least a psychiatrist.

Like legit, like, can you at least send somebody over to look at this woman? The governor himself arrives with seven soldiers in 1933 and he is so charmed by baroness wagner that he grants her a title of four square miles of land for the hotel including access to the whitmer spring oh fuck that blew up in their face big time yeah i feel so bad for ecuador having to like deal with this you know because at first when you said they called in ecuador for an arbitrator it's like dudes you don't you're not even ecuadorian like what the i think that there was almost an encouragement from the ecuadorian government to for people to settle these uninhabited islands as some sort of like economy mover post-world War I. Well, especially if the Baroness was like, I'm going to set up a luxury hotel

and you'll make beaucoup bucks. Which, by the way, the Hacienda Paradiso is a shithole, by the way. It's a decrepit shithole. Like every time, every time anyone goes into their camp, they're just like, how the fuck do you live like this?

Straight up. And it's just like Lorenz lying in some fucking dirt while philipson and the baroness kiss on top of him speaking of which uh relations continue to deteriorate amongst the crew at the hacienda paradiso the baroness returns from a trip to the mainland with a third lover do you remember how captain brunes had an employee named orens yes i do he's back and now he's shacking up with the baroness oh in a shack literally in a literal shack in a shack paradiso so philipson is now bumped down to number two so he's angry about being displaced as number one they fight often at one point the bar Baroness whips him in the face.

Another time, she hurls a bowl of scalding soup at him. Oh, God. They had soup, though. That's great. They had soup. If nothing else, they had soup. If Philipson is on the outs, then Lorenz is an indentured servant. She's making

him call her Baroness again instead of Darling. Oh, oh no he's paying more and more calls to frito so fred and dora it's amazing how the baroness just takes over this story huh yeah yeah uh so lorenz meanwhile is doing a lot of like maudlin late night visits to fred and dora's place yeah where he just like bends their ear about how miserable he is and he has to sneak away because she's got people watching him and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Payne more and more calls to Frito and in so doing, he reveals the true origin story of the Baroness. She is not, as she claims, from a distinguished Austrian family. The juice, the juice, the juice! She's not even a Baroness.

Well, yeah. She learned her manners from movies. She had a husband who left her for constantly cheating on him. She met Lorenz at a knick-knack store that he owned, and she flirted her way into becoming business partners with him. Then she took over the bookkeeping and ran the business into the ground. She read about floriana in a magazine and she convinced lorenz and phillipson to join her there with lorenz

supporting her financially oh so just some like hardcore fin dom cock fetish like she controls this man's life yeah big time the haciienda Paradiso love square takes a blow upon the arrival of a handsome German journalist named Joseph. Oh, goodness. Whom the smitten Baroness invites out to the Pampa to go shooting with her and her many boyfriends. But unfortunately, rather than the fauna, it's new boyfriend Renz who catches a stray bullet. Oh. The Baroness points the finger in all directions, but by tending to the patient and piecing together the various accounts, Dr. Ritter figures out what happened. Oh.

Remember how I told you that the Baroness would shoot dogs and then nurse them back to health, and how she said dogs were just like men? Oh my god. How is Dr. Ritter the sane one in this right now like fuck it seems she tried to employ that method on poor sexy journalist joseph and the even more unfortunate arens accidentally wandered into the way at the last moment oh arens who was shot who was captain brunes guy taken off the island to convalesce, gone from this story forever. Bye, Arends. Good for you. Bye, Arends.

The German journalist leaves as well, so we're back down to our initial love triangle. The Baroness, Philipson, Lorenz. Okay. Ugh. Simple. By 1934, a grim sense of foreboding has set in around Floriana, not helped by the worst drought since Fredendor arrived in 1929. Wait, what year are we, is it currently? It's now 1934. They arrived in late 1929.

So five years. They're okay. Yep, they're hanging in there. The springs have dried, the vegetation is dying, and the heat is unbearable. Things have gotten worse at the Hacienda, if that's even possible. They've burned through all their money. Lorenz wants to leave, but the Baroness won't give him any of his things or any money to survive. He tries to get them by force, but Philipson incapacitates him, and the Baroness flogs him while he's unconscious.

Oh, damn. Baroness flogs him while he's unconscious. Oh, damn. Everyone from Lorenz to the Whitmers to Fred to Dora is at the end of their rope with the self-styled Empress and her minister. March 19th, 1934 is a lazy day at Frito. It's unbearably hot, so Fred and Dora can be forgiven for thinking they're hallucinating when they hear a woman's scream ring through the jungle. can be forgiven for thinking they're hallucinating when they hear a woman's scream ring through the jungle. Some hours later, they haven't received their weekly visit

from Heinz Whitmer. Instead, Lorenz shows up and he's in a great fucking mood. Giddy. Oh. Oh. He explains that he's broken it off with the Baroness and moved in with the Whitmers. He says, I've told her once and for all where she gets off.

Dora says, will she remember it? Lorenz replies, I think she will. Whoa. Shortly afterwards, Lorenz and the Whitmers visit Frito together. This is unusual because while Lorenz and Heinz Whitmer often visited Frito on their own, Margaret almost never came. She was always doing family stuff at the cave. She was probably doing all the work, to be honest.

So apparently the Wittmers, in spite of the initial diagnosis made of them as normies who couldn't cut it, apparently they took by far the most easily to the idea of functionally living on this island. They were determined to be normies who couldn't cut it by Ritter and Dora who were sharing a pair of dentures. So. Yeah. One plate. One plate. So Margaret almost never comes.

And it's doubly weird because in this visit, Margaret does all the talking. Okay. And she tells a very strange seemingly rehearsed story full of like extraneous details and little contradictions about how

Philipson and the Baroness suddenly decided to join old friends on a cruise to the South Pacific leaving all their possessions behind. Lorenz is eager

to start selling off their things to fund his own return to the mainland. They take Dora and Fred to see the undisturbed hacienda, where they see the Baroness's most treasured possession, which she never travels without. It's her good luck charm.

It's a copy of the picture of Dorian Gray. Oh, God. And she never leaves the house with it. Like, she always, pistol, whip, picture of Dorian Gray. I'm good to go. My grandma used to have on the back of her door, it had a list of, like, things she needed. It was, like, wallet, keys, cell phone, cellular phone. I'm sure she wrote out the word cellular.

Like, purse, hat. Like, all these things it was, like, she kept forgetting. And now, and she like she was taking computer classes so she like put it in a cute font and had it printed out and stuff i'm just imagining the baroness with something written in lipstick i guess right yeah scrawled on the side of just some piece of mud yeah whip pistol so dora's literally like yo this feels a lot like an estate sale like aren't aren't you guys worried that they may return for their stuff? Yeah.

And Lorenz replies, don't worry. There's no danger of that. Not anymore. Oh, fuck. So this goes on. There's like a refractory period between where Lorenz kills the Baroness. Maybe, I don't know. I was gonna say, okay. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. But wherever this strange thing happens, and, and for what it's worth, Fred and Dora are absolutely convinced that Lorenz has murdered the Baroness,

and that this is all a weird story. The Whitmers are in on it. Yeah yeah and we just need to not say anything or rock the boat so we don't get killed too right and also like who cares the Baroness was kind of a shitty person anyway so there's a guy and I don't I I don't know that I agree with this statement but there's a guy in the documentary uh the Galapagos affair who says a line to the effect of like there's some people who are just begging to get killed okay the baroness was kind of begged she was throwing her weight around she was fucking around in resources she was really cruel to everybody she was stealing things she was killing people's pets right yeah yeah fuck whipping people in the face? Throwing scalding hot soup? No, thank you. Shooting people so that she could bend them to her whims?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. As you can imagine, this is a very tense time these months where we're all living on the island and just outwardly pretending that that the baroness and philipson weren't murdered right yeah but lorenz is able to scrape together enough money to convince a visiting norwegian fisherman named nougarud to take him off the island to nearby santa cruz and then on to gayakil as we know sailors can be superstitious. Nougaroud expresses concern about sailing on Friday the 13th. Mm-hmm. But Lorenz is able to ply him with cash, and the two vanish over the horizon.

Dot, dot, dot. Oh! Wait, really? They're never seen again? Dot, dot, dot. With the Baroness and her lovers out of the picture, things grow calmer on Floriana. In particular, it's a time of peace and serenity for the residents of Frito. Dr. Ritter has finally unconditionally accepted Dora as his intellectual equal. Oh, that must, wow, that's a big one.

Their quarrels have ceased. They found the true harmony that they came here to find. Wow, was not expecting that, to be honest. Was not expecting that. This makes it all the more tragic when Dr. Ritter falls ill. Oh. Due to the drought with all the dead vegetation, they're forced to abandon their vegan principles for the 80th time and consume some jarred chicken yum dr ritter instantly gets sick he's in pain he's nauseated his tongue is swollen and from there it's a matter of time dora tries to nurse him back to health while tenderly reading to him from his beloved zarathustra. He tells her in his last words to mark a particular passage

and remember it always for him. He gradually deteriorates and by the end of the night, he's gone. They bury him in his favorite corner of the garden and Dora carries his spirit with her always. Fuck, the jarred chicken did him in, hey? That's Dora's version of the story. Here's a different one.

Margaret Whitmer claims that the story of Dora and Fred finding harmony in their later days is bullshit. Okay, okay. She says they were fighting more than ever, and Dora had become super paranoid. Dora is the one who fed the chickens the spoiled pig meat that killed them and then fed that same chicken to Ritter. They only have Dora's word that she ate any of it. She says Dora looked like the picture of health, that she inexplicably waited hours to go fetch the Whitmers for help. And that when she got there, Frederick was staring at Dora with eyes, quote, gleaming with hate, punching and kicking the air any time she drew near. And as for Fred's romantic last words, by the time Margaret arrived at the camp, Ritter was too sick to speak, but he did manage to use pen and paper to scratch out one last message.

I curse you with my dying breath. Woo, woo, woo. Damn. High drama. The fates of the remaining citizens of Floriana. The Norwegian fisherman, Nogorod. Right. Yes, Friday the 13th, the disappearance.

His worries about sailing on Friday the 13th were prescient. Weeks later, the mummified corpses of Nogarud and Rudolf Lorenz were found on the beach of nearby Marchena Island, having washed ashore and died of exposure and dehydration. Ooh, shit. Lorenz's body was found with one hand clutching his heart and the other feebly attempting to shield him from the beating sun. Oh, fuck, dude. Baroness Eloise Wagner and Robertipson were never seen again presumably their luxury cruise to tahiti is ongoing okay okay doris stroke returned to germany she died in berlin of complications

from multiple sclerosis in 1943. Not before writing this book, Satan Came to Eden. Right, yeah, yeah. To her dying day, she maintained that the events that took place on Floriana were the divine will of island spirits, which used the inhabitants as puppets to act out a grim predestined tragedy. She says there were some places where no man was meant to live. Right, so that's her firm belief that the island is cursed. The island cursed her into maybe killing her husband. Who can say? Or not husband. They didn't believe in that sort of bourgeois. Yeah, blah, blah, blah.

So in her in that book, is it the friendly chicken story? Yeah. Yeah. Her book is the friendly chicken story. The documentary is the escandalo chicken story. Yeah, that's why I had to watch the documentary again, because I was like, I need to get the details right. And Dora obviously doesn't include that. So the one of the great unsaid of this story is that like, literally everything that she attests to prior to the arrival of let's say the Whitmers is right, arrival of let's say the whitmers is right it could be what could be anything because other than the like so she wrote this book margaret whitmer also wrote a book which i didn't read okay and then her though and then those two the baroness and dr ritter all kept diaries

other than those first person accounts so this shit she's saying about how like she saw broons and the antarctic current and the robot and da da da yeah who's to say yeah because no one else survived right everyone else died anyway as dora says there are some places where no man was meant to live if that's the case nobody told the whitmers whose descendants flourish on floriana to this day. Whoa. The last of the original family, Margaret Whitmer, wrote her own account of the Galapagos affair called Floriana, A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galapagos. She died March 21st, 2000 at the age of 95. Oh my god, on Floriana? Or was she like, shipped in? She died on Floriana, I think. Wow. Until the very end, she maintained her version of the events around the Baroness and Philipson's disappearance.

After writing her book, she refused to discuss the events of 1934 ever again. She is quoted as saying, en la boca cerrada no entran moscas. No flies will enter a closed mouth. No entran moscas. No flies will enter a closed mouth. Rolf Wittmer. Yeah. The baby born in the cave. Yeah, cave baby.

He's still alive. And he runs a tour boat company on the island. The family hotel, the Wittmer Lodge. So they ended up going, they ended up jacking the Baroness's ID in the end and made a hotel. Right, okay. The family hotel, the Wittmer Lodge, has a four star rating on trip advisor uh although one dispassionate review describes it as a haunted ghost hotel straight from scooby-doo um which sounds fun to me i know yeah that's kind of a selling point as well if you decide to stop in be sure to leave a piece of mail at post Office Bay, which remains operational.

Legend has it, if you leave a letter behind, the ghost of Baroness Eloise Wagner will rewrite it to make it about her. That's not a real legend. I just added that. Well, it's true. You know it's true. The end. How did you find this reality TV story that, like, predates any TV whatsoever? This is just so Housewives. It's like the real world 1930s Desert Island. It's crazy.

The real world Floriana. Yeah. No, the first place that I heard it was they did an episode of My Favorite Murder, which is another very popular murder podcast. Yeah. And so I heard their version of it, and it's good. So I heard this, I heard their version of the story, and then I immediately watched the documentary, which was, which was fab.

What's the name of the documentary? It's. It's called The Galapagos Affair, colon, Satan Came to Eden. Satan, okay, okay okay so i was and like i say after i watched it i was like is this some sort of like blair witch-esque viral marketing fake documentary because this can't be real why do they have all this like footage of these people on this island this is this is a scam and i'm gonna get to the bottom of this is all arg you know this is a beautiful scam yeah But no, it seems to have happened.

The way that it kind of came back into the public consciousness, though, was... Oh, and one thing I should add is I had never read Dora's book before this. And I'm glad I did because a lot of the details, a lot of the stuff about like Arends and Bruns and all those people don't even appear in this documentary. They just really trim it down to the three main camps right i mean there's a lot going on so i could see where you need to snip and tuck yeah yeah but i i read dora's book for the first time uh for this and and really enjoyed it but it's the way that this came back to light uh was there was a guy i've got his name down here so i might as well shut him out let

me just scroll you know yeah okay so in 1993 a guy named uh joseph troisi i think it's spelled like boise with the tr at the front uh he was doing some research on a luxury yacht for the sausalito historical society and it was one of, it was one of these yachts that I guess back in its day had been one of the pleasure yachts that came around to visit with the people on Floriana. And he was examining the ship's log and he's like, this sounds fucking nuts. Why have I never heard any of this?

Yeah. So he looked at other ships logs that were kind of contemporary to that ship and kind of one piece together this strange story and two learned that D and kind of, one, pieced together this strange story and two, learned that Dora Stroh, one of the women, and then also Margaret Whitmer, had actually published books on this that just kind of had been lost to time or hadn't gotten much notice.

Yeah, well, I feel like they might not be in a position to do a lot of promotion for it, too. You know, Margaret being on a desert island. Yeah, Margaret being on a desert island and Dora being dead for many years. But one thing that I wanted to mention, and this is important, and I didn't, this is also not reflected in the documentary. This is something I kind of realized from the book. There are at least two people who very likely died in the course of this story. very likely died in the course of this story um one of them was a young indigenous guy who uh disappeared in the after he was one of the dudes who bailed out ship on captain brunes he

disappeared afterwards right yeah and then similarly when when nougaroud and lorenz left together he had like a black worker on board with them who also disappeared the friday the 13th sailor had a crew yeah the friday the 13th sailor had a crew yeah the friday the 13th he didn't his body didn't wash ashore like theirs did so whatever happened happened on the water for him it seems like um but i just wanted to acknowledge that like there are because of who is telling this story e.g this white lady from the 1930s who was just obsessed with like her stupid dumb philosopher bro boyfriend right and also ship ships logs uh that were written by western white people yeah exactly so i just wanted to acknowledge

that like yes it's very likely that at least two other people died for whom i don't have names yeah which is which sucks this is taylor checking back in from the editing booth after i had this conversation with josie i was able to find out the name of the person who was on the ship with nogurud and lorenz he was called jose pasomino and apparently he was only 12 years old which is even more upsetting thanks to a podcast called Fresh Hell for that information. Back to the show. But yeah, that's the old, that's my bittersweet summer contribution, the Galapagos affair. Fuck, I think that is definitely the story that if I only could bring one story with me to a desert island, it would be that. It's a real helpful primer on what not to do.

It's a desert island, desert island story. It's a desert island desert island story it's a desert island leave your nichi at home yeah yeah yeah that's the moral of the story we haven't we haven't done one of those in a while retro a little retro this uh maybe not demands but it certainly asks for a moral everybody's there for some moral reason and then they abandon all morals so yeah a moral might need to come back yeah that's true i think and yeah yes okay if this were still going on yeah you know uh the real world floriana yes would you visit would you like get on one of those pleasure cruises no because i feel like more people was not the answer to the problem that island has no no yeah and like decent chance the baroness thinks you're cute and you catch a stray bullet and that's that yeah that's that. Yeah, that's true. That's that.

I think this island may have been cursed with drama. That's the curse, Margaret, is too much drama. The curse is haters. Just live your best life. Exactly. Dab it out. Fuck the haters. Thanks for tuning in.

If you want more Infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find your podcasts. We usually release a new episode every other Sunday. And you can also find us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. And if you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just tell a friend. Stay sweet. The two main sources that I used for this episode were the book Satan Came to Eden, written by Doris Stroh, and that was re-published in 2014 by Troisi Publishing.

I also watched the 2013 documentary The Galapagos Affair, Satan Came to Eden, directed by Daniel Geller and Dana Goldfein. I read Patrick Watkins, the first man that lived in Galapagos permanently, published online by Galapagos Center Expeditions on December 30th, 2016. And I read an excerpt from the book Galapagos, Both Sides of the Coin by Peter Oxford and Graham Watkins. That was published by Imagine Publishing in 2009 and excerpted online by Galapagos Conservancy under the title Galapagos Colonists. The song you're listening to is T Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening.