Futility Closet - 122-The Bear Who Went to War

Episode Date: September 19, 2016

During World War II a Polish transport company picked up an unusual mascot: a Syrian brown bear that grew to 500 pounds and traveled with his human friends through the Middle East and Europe. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll meet Wojtek, the "happy warrior," and follow his adventures during and after the war. We'll also catch up with a Russian recluse and puzzle over a murderous daughter. Intro: In 1956, U.S. Navy pilot Tom Attridge overtook his cannon rounds and shot down his own plane. At Petersburg, Va., during the American Civil War, a Union and a Confederate bullet met in midair. Sources for our feature on Wojtek the shell-toting bruin: Aileen Orr, Wojtek the Bear, 2012. Karen Jensen, "Private Wojtek, Reporting for Duty," World War II 27:3 (September-October 2012), 54. The Wojtek Memorial Trust raised £250,000 to build Wojtek's memorial statue in Edinburgh. "Scottish District News," Glasgow Herald, Nov. 21, 1947. "Smarter Than the Average Bear ... by Far," Edinburgh News, March 28, 2007. David Sapsted, "Private Wojtek the 'Hero Bear' to be Honoured in Edinburgh," Abu Dhabi National, Jan. 7, 2012. David McCann, "Soldier Bear Wojtek to Be Given Statue in Edinburgh," Berwickshire Advertiser, Dec. 28, 2012. "Krakow Votes for WWII Soldier Bear Statue," Radio Poland, April 26, 2013. David McCann, "Prince Street Gardens Statue of Polish Army Bear," Scotsman, May 29, 2013. Alistair Grant, "Polish War Hero Bear Wojtek to Appear on Bus," Edinburgh Evening News, Nov. 11, 2014. Wojtek's unit, the 22nd Artillery Support Company of the 2nd Polish Corps, adopted this design as its emblem. In Wojtek the Bear, Aileen Orr writes, "It was very much 22nd Company's trademark; the bear logo even appeared on regimental equipment. Within weeks of its being created and approved, shortly after the Battle of Monte Cassino, the Wojtek military logo was everywhere. The bear had pretty much become a legend in his own not inconsiderable lunchtime as curious Allied soldiers from other regiments inquired about the badge's significance." Listener mail: Some recent photos of Agafia Lykov can be seen on this Facebook page. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was composed by Greg, who gathered these corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a fighter that shot itself down to two Civil War bullets that met in midair. This is episode 122. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. During World War II, a Polish transport company picked up an unusual mascot, a Syrian brown bear that grew to 500 pounds and traveled with his human friends through the Middle East and Europe. In today's

show, we'll meet Wojtek, the happy warrior, and follow his adventures during and after the war. We'll also catch up with a Russian recluse and puzzle over a murderous daughter. In April 1942, a Polish military convoy was traveling through Persia, along what is now the border between Iran and Iraq. The convoy had stopped by the side of the road for food and a rest when a barefoot boy appeared carrying a burlap sack. He was starving, so they gave him some food, and after he'd eaten, they asked him what was in the sack, which they noticed was moving. The boy replied in a dialect that they didn't understand, and when they loosened the bag's ties, a bear's snout poked out.

They lifted him out, and he turned out to be the cub of a Syrian brown bear. He was a few months old and obviously not properly fed, but very cute. So eventually they traded some goods for the bear and named it Wojtek, which is the pet name of the Polish Wojciech, which means happy soldier or happy warrior. And they appointed the oldest of their number, a soldier named Peter Prendis, who was 46 years old, to be the bear's guardian. They found that it was too young to eat meat, but it loved drinking diluted condensed milk from an improvised baby bottle that they just made out of a bottle. They hoped to keep all of this secret from the senior officers, but of course that lasted only about two days.

Once, just a couple days later when playing, Wojtek was apparently hunted. He was fleeing a predatory bird and ran for safety into Peter's truck where he ran right into the arms of the company sergeant. But they found that the commanding officer liked him and realized that having a bear made a good mascot and was an enormous boost to morale. So they made a small tent that was made available for Peter and the bear. Peter sort of became the bear's mother. He fed and cared for him, and Wojtek would scamper after him like a young child whenever he was released from his tether. Wojtek had his own bed, but he'd often slip into Peter's bed in the middle of the night, seeking warmth and comfort.

The soldiers teasingly began to call Peter Mother Bear. When Wojtek was frightened or tired or wanted affection, he'd run to Peter and whimper until Peter lifted him onto his knee, and on chilly evenings, Peter would fasten the bear inside his army greatcoat with him, where Wojtek would fall asleep to the sound of the men's voices at the campfire. He adapted remarkably quickly to the company's routine. He would play tag with the men in and out of the trucks. When he grew bigger, they'd engage in these mock wrestling matches, where he would stand upright and put up his paws, and you would put your hands against his paws and try to push him over backward. When he was relatively small, they could sometimes succeed at this, but a fully grown Syrian brown bear weighs 500 pounds and stands more than six feet tall, so that quickly became

impossible. And they fell to just throwing themselves in groups at him, and he would knock them over, roaring with delight. This sounds terrifying to me in just reading about it, but apparently play fighting is natural to bears. It's a necessary part of learning new skills and developing muscle tone, but still, if you're listening to this and there's a bear nearby, I wouldn't try it. For most of a year, Wojtek's base camp was in Gidera, which is a village on the fringe of the Negev Desert in what was then Palestine. This Polish unit that he'd become attached to was a military transport outfit, so the men were obliged to ferry supplies, sometimes troops, all over the Middle East. So Wojtek would sometimes take trips with them to Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon.

He would sit in the cab of Peter's truck with its side window open, just staring out, I guess like a dog, sort of. At home, at the base camp, on most mornings he would leave Peter's tent before Reveille and go for a walk around the camp, hoping to encounter the morning's duty NCO, who usually had a biscuit or a sweetmeat for him. Then he'd go to the cookhouse for breakfast, which included cereal, milk, bread, and marmalade, biscuits, and whatever else he could get. He loved fruit and honey in particular, which the men gave him from their own rations. And then he'd usually look for someone to play with.

When he was a cub, when he was relatively small, one of his favorite playmates was a large Dalmatian, which belonged to the camp's British liaison officer. They became fast friends with chasing one another through the camp, and the dog quickly figured out that it could usually win by letting the bear get close and then suddenly stopping, and the bear was too heavy to stop quickly and just go tumbling. That happened over and over. That's pretty smart of the dog yeah i guess if you have to talk you have to learn pretty quickly how to get things done uh during a visit to he was constantly getting in sort of good natured trouble that people would let him get away with he would raid kitchens and things a lot of his life centered around getting food during one visit to an allied

military camp in iraq he spotted a washing line of women's underwear and stole it. The women had to hide behind a tent, watching as he left with things wrapped around his head. The women turned out to be part of a Polish signals unit and were irate. They had just acquired the underwear in a trip to Tel Aviv. Peter and his companions retrieved the things and took the bearer to apologize, where he did what he always did in situations like this, which was to hide his snout behind his forepaws and whimper piteously and then peek out to see how well this was working. The bear learns pretty quickly, too. And they were charmed. It worked perfectly fine.

But after that, they detailed a couple of soldiers to act as vortex minders at unfamiliar facilities. Another adventure, in June 1943, he captured an Arab spy, or happened to, inadvertently. The company was camped near Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a region whose oil fields were disputed and allied troops weren't welcome there. As an adult bear, Wojtek loved to take communal showers with the men every day. He discovered that if he pulled the string, it would bring a cascade of water. Generally, it takes an enormous amount of water to wash a bear, and water is pretty precious in that area, so they didn't often let him into the shower. But he found one day that the showers were open and went in, where he inadvertently cornered

an Arab man who pleaded for help. He was marched off for questioning, where he admitted he'd been spying. He'd been hiding in the shower hut, awaiting an opportunity to locate the camp's weapons arsenal, and then hoped to accomplish reconnaissance for a raiding party the following night and was unnerved to be trapped by a bear there, so he gave up the names of his conspirators. Wojtek was celebrated for this, given sweet meats and beer and granted an extra long shower. In December 1943, Wojtek and his friends sailed from Alexandria, Egypt to Toronto, Italy. This is part of the Allied push up from North Africa into the continent along the Italian peninsula. There was some concern that he wouldn't be permitted to go, but at the last

minute his special travel warrant was approved. Some accounts say he was issued paperwork declaring him an official member of the unit in order to skirt British prohibitions against troops bringing animals on board. I can't quite track that down, but in any event he did get to go to Italy. His most famous adventure happened at the Battle of Monte Cassino which opened the road to Rome for the Allies. At first when he was exposed to actual warfare, this is the first encounter with it, he refused to go out into the open air because of the sounds of the explosions and gunfire but within just a few days he was climbing trees to look around and see what was going on. The most famous single story about Wojtek says that he

carried boxes of live shells from trucks to gun emplacements during the battle. I can't tell whether this really happened. There are claims on both sides. Of the supportive accounts, the most disinterested one I can find is from a Scottish infantryman named John Clark, who in April 1944, in the build-up to the final battle, was foraging for food with a friend in the village of Acqua Fondata, six miles from Monte Cassino. He wrote, I remember it clearly because it was my 20th birthday. We were making our way through the deserted fields looking for stray hens and eggs when a nearby artillery unit opened fire. We went to look and found a battery of Polish gunners setting up for a barrage. The gun sight was hidden in a clearing within a large wood. As we watched, suddenly out of the wood came a large bear

walking on its hind legs. It seemed to be carrying something. Both Vincent and I shouted a warning to the gunners that a bear was going towards them, but nobody responded. The bear went up to the trail legs of the artillery gun and placed a shell on the ground. The bear then went back into the wood and reappeared with another shell. By this time, we'd realized the bear was tame and most likely a circus bear. We just went on our way. That's the story in a nutshell. After the war, Clark told this story to his wife, who flatly refused to believe it and would sometimes make him recount it for friends at social gatherings

and mostly was met with incredulity as well. But at one function, which is attended by Polish veterans, he told the story, and one of the Poles just said, ah, yes, that would be Wojtek. In Kraków in Poland, Clark later meant Tomasz Skrzynicki, who had helped to care for Wojtek, and he says that Skrzynicki claimed to have helped to train the bear to do this, to carry artillery shells. Also, I find that the last living veteran of the Polish company, 88-year-old Wojciech Nurebski, said the bear helped soldiers to load ammunition onto army trucks. So those are the pro accounts I can find about whether he did this. On the con side, Stanisław Krawczyk, platoon commander, says the story about carrying ammunition didn't actually happen.

He says the writer of the first popular book about this interviewed the soldiers about it, and they just sort of, as a joke, told him that this had happened, and he believed them. Krawcheck said, there were efforts to teach Wojtek this skill, but he could not grasp an artillery shell, even though he was strong enough. In spite of everything, he was only a bear and not an animal

with a near human intellect. So I guess you can make up your mind. I don't know whether even an intelligent bear that wanted to do this would be physically capable. I don't know, I guess, that much about bears. Anyway, whether or not he did it, he became famous for doing it. And in fact, the unit made an insignia to help commemorate his role in the battle, which shows Wojtek carrying an artillery shell and also features a truck steering wheel to indicate that this was a transport company. And the Poles wore this insignia either as a cap badge or on their combat tunics. I'll put a copy of it in the show notes.

At the end of the war, Wojtek spent many idyllic months swimming in the Adriatic. When he was reluctant to leave the water, a soldier would start the truck, which always worked as Wojtek was afraid of being left behind. Indeed, on many of their trips inland, he would wait alone in the cab of the truck, which they found discouraged petty theft. No one will steal anything from your truck if you leave a live bear in the passenger seat. There's a good tip. At the end of the war, even though they were a Polish company, they didn't go back to Poland because that was occupied at that time by the Soviet Union. Instead, they went to Scotland.

In September 1946, they set sail from Naples for Glasgow, with Wojtek officially listed on the passenger manifest. As on the trip from Egypt to Italy, he was the center of attention, and they held wrestling matches on the boat while he was going over, which became a highlight of the voyage. And here, from what I understand, he was registered officially as a private in the Polish army. That came through on St. Valentine's Day in 1945. Some other accounts that I can't confirm state that he was actually promoted from private to corporal, but even becoming a private is pretty good. It's more than I've done, certainly.

At Scotland, they arrived at the Winfield Camp for displaced persons, which is near Hutton and Berwickshire on October 28th, 1946, and thousands of Scots lined the streets of Glasgow to cheer him and his Polish regiment as they marched through the city. He was known to them, and as were they, he was somewhat famous by this time as a war hero. By that time, he had spent 26 months traveling through the Middle East and then 32 months in Italy. He had, from spending this much time with soldiers, he'd acquired some bad habits. I'm sorry to say he drank two bottles of beer a day and would eat lit cigarettes. In fact, they had to be lit. You could throw a cigarette to him, and if it wasn't lit, he'd spit it back out on his paws. One witness said he had one puff and

then swallowed it. I was amazed. It was funny and it never seemed to do him any harm. He played in the River Tweed where it sometimes took six men to pull him out. They also made a swimming pool for him from a concrete storage tank and took him occasionally to the shore at Berwick for romps in the sea. While he was at Winfield, he attended a Scottish country dance because he loved home baking and loved showing off for crowds. Apparently he also loved violin music. He also attended local opera and amateur dramatics. In 1947, his friends could finally go back to Poland, and they determined that it probably wouldn't be best to bring him with him, so they actually put him at that point into the Edinburgh Zoo, which he took fairly well. His keeper all this time, Peter, was distraught, and the zoo director, Thomas Gillespie, wrote in his

memoirs, I never felt so sorry to see an animal that enjoyed so much freedom and fun confined to a cage. But he spent many years at the zoo with relative happiness, it appears. Isabella Brodzinska, chairwoman of the Scottish-Polish Cultural Association, came to Edinburgh in 1957 and said she could remember being taken to see Wojtek at the Edinburgh Zoo when she was a teenager. She said, my dad used to take me to see him. He told me to speak Polish to him and his head would turn. He was a lovely big bear, very sad looking. But when you spoke Polish to him, he turned and made a sound.

He missed the Polish soldiers. I'm getting a lot of this from a book by Eileen Orr, who lived in Scotland and whose grandfather knew the Poles and spent a lot of time at the camps. And so she learned a lot about him through them. She said, she visited him also at the zoo. She said, Polish friends taught us the Polish word for wave, and we went to the railings and waved and shouted it. He was like an old man and waved back. He was very good looking bear and very well fed. He obviously liked being the center of attention and liked human beings. Some of the Polish soldiers eventually would come back sometimes to Scotland just to visit him, just to see him.

And to the horror of the zookeepers, they'd actually climb into the enclosure and wrestle with him, letting him hold their necks in his jaws. He never hurt them and was delighted to see them and seemed sorry when they left, but they just couldn't stay there indefinitely, you know. He died finally in December 1963 at age 21, and it was commemorated with all sorts of plaques and books. He was quite famous by this point. He's actually remembered with two different statues. One is in Kraków in Poland, which was unveiled at the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. The other is in Edinburgh, which was unveiled to mark the 50th anniversary of his death.

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but that he couldn't find any more recent information about her. And several of our Russian-speaking listeners stepped up to see what they could find out for us. It seems that the recent news reports on Agafia are all written in Russian, so thank you so much to everyone who wrote in to help us out on this. We're lucky to have you. Yeah, we definitely wouldn't have been able to do this for ourselves. We were very glad to hear that by all accounts, Agafia is out of the hospital, back in her house in the taiga, and as of late August, is apparently in good health.

Good. Rini Rica reports that Agafia was rather eager to return home from the hospital because she was worried about her farm and her helper, an old believer named Georgi, who joined her in the Taiga in the autumn of 2014 and has lived with her since. Rini notes that the governor of the region visited her in the hospital, and Rini says he wished her health and gave her a warm shawl and a vest. She was also given some supplies for her home in Taiga, some drains, flour, sugar, chinaware, new chainsaw, and some food for her animals. She owns chickens and a goat. Rini also included an update on Yerofei Seedolf, a geologist who was part of the original party that found the Lykov family and who had been living near Agafia. Unfortunately,

he passed away in May 2015, so it was good to hear that she does have somebody else living with her now. Michael Fridman reports that the governor of the region had Agafia flown home by helicopter, but there was no mention of how she reacted to the flight. Because I was thinking of how you had said about how she, you know, didn't really like the airplane ride she had had to take. Yeah, but it didn't just completely freak her out. You would think someone who spent the first 35 years of her life knowing nothing but the forest would be just beside herself,

but she took the airplane relatively well. I remember her saying that she just couldn't wait for it to be over, but maybe she felt the same way about a helicopter. I don't know. Michael and some of the other listeners who wrote in mentioned that a group of university students had recently visited with Agafia to help her get prepared for the coming winter. Michael says they helped prepare wooden logs, mowed the lawn, brought supplies, etc., and also recorded some of her old Russian sayings, idioms, and songs. Mow the lawn. She's 150 miles from civilization. It's funny, too, because she spent the first half of her life, she'd be in her early 70s now, she spent the first half of her life knowing

nothing but her own immediate family and the wilderness, and now she's more popular than anyone I know. Well, yeah, university students don't come visit us and cut our lawn, right? And Peter Gostev added that the students helped to cut the grass for goats and chickens, prepare wood, collect the crops, gather the pine cones, and do some minor house repairs. Peter also notes that a doctor was part of the visit and concluded that her health was satisfactory and left her some medicines and instructions on how to take them. Although, as I remember from your story, you said she wasn't always very good about taking her medicines. Peter included a link to a Facebook page, I'm presuming, of one of the students that visited with her, and that has two photos of Agafia and what appears to be her little

house. So I'll have a link in the show notes for anyone who wants to see that. You're on your own for the Russian descriptions on the page, though. And lastly, Kim Wyrock noted that the students also brought to Agafia her favorite treat, which is watermelon. It's my understanding that watermelon plants need warm temperatures and a rather long growing season, so I would be highly doubtful that she would be able to grow that for herself in the taiga. Yeah, I'm sure. So it's nice to hear that somebody brought her some. So thanks so much to everybody who wrote to us. And if you have any questions or comments for us,

please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to work out what's actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This one's for me. Ah. A girl shot her father with a shotgun, though she had no grievance against him. After an investigation, she was sentenced to a few years in reform school while her mother served 10 to 25 years in state prison. What had happened? Okay. Is the time period important? No.

Are there specific identities important? Are these specific people I would have heard of? No, this is a true story, but it's no. You don't need to know the identity. Is the location important? No. Like it doesn't matter, like it was in a country with particular laws or something? No.

Okay. Does it matter what the ages of any of these people were? No. Do we need to know anything about their relationship to each other other than that they were mother, father, and daughter, like you've said? Okay. Okay. No. Let me test the relationships,

because you had trouble answering that question. A girl shot her father. Yes. Her biological father? Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. a girl shot her father yes her biological father yes okay okay um her mother served time in prison right were the mother and the father together as a couple would you have put said they were a couple yes they were a couple they were married yes okay i asked you about their relationships and you know i'm just i'm so

terrified now because you're so like perspicacious but I have to try to avoid telegraphing anything. I'm trying to be methodical. Okay. So her mother spent time in prison and she just spent some time in reform school. So was her mother charged somehow with the crime of murder? Yes. Okay. Even though the girl was the one the crime of murder? Yes. Okay. Even though the girl was the one who shot the father?

Yes. So the mother had some instigating effect? Yes. Did the girl know what she was doing when she did it? Yes. Was the girl old enough to comprehend? She was 15. Okay, okay.

And that accounts to some degree for the lighter sentence, but not, that's not most of it. Because I mean, you know, she could have been like two and had no idea what she was doing. Okay, so, okay. Does this hinge on something

that the mother said to the girl? Is that? No. Okay. Did the girl know it was her father when she shot him yes was she uh suffering under uh the delusion or impression of some false information about her father no okay like it wasn't like her mother convinced her that the father was going to

kill the family or that the father was a naz or that the father was... That's correct. Okay. So it doesn't hinge on something that the mother told the girl, but something that the mother did, would you say? Yes. Something that the mother did immediately before the girl shot her father? I can't say immediately, but fairly soon. As you know something she'd been building up for two years no no no yeah okay did the mother pretend did the mother in any way convey that somebody was in danger whether it was the mother the father or the girl no okay um so the mother did something did she impersonate the father somehow

no okay and you said it doesn't matter where they were that's right doesn't matter that it was a shotgun that was used no okay and the girl did this understanding she would be killing her father yes and the mother had done something

was the girl awake yes good question free of substances like drugs and alcohol? That's right. Okay. Hypnotized? No, not hypnotized.

Not hypnotized. Something similar to hypnotized? In a trance or something? No, not like that. Okay. No. I mean, would you say she was fully conscious and aware? Yes.

Okay. So what had the mother done? Was the mother in the immediate proximity to the shooting? Yes. I'll say, I don't know if this is a clue or not. Prosecutors claimed that the mother had convinced the girl to pull the trigger, but the girl insisted that she hadn't. the mother had convinced the girl to pull the trigger, but the girl insisted that she hadn't.

And you said it wasn't that the mother conveyed information to her. I said it wasn't something she said. Was the girl deaf? No, she wasn't deaf. You asked if the mother had told her, said something. Right. So it wasn't that the mother said something, but the mother did convey some information. Yes. Okay. But not verbally? That's right. Well, not orally. Not orally, but the girl wasn't deaf. That's correct.

Was the mother deaf or mute? So it wasn't like they were using sign language? No. Had the mother conveyed something in writing? You could say that. You could say it was in writing. Had she conveyed something in some other way that would be closer to what I should say? Yes.

Like with body language or facial expressions? No, she was using something. She was using... I'm trying to think of a clue. Okay, does this need to be taking place relatively contemporaneously because of technology or electronics or something that we use? No, nothing like that.

Smartphone text messaging or something like that. I'll just tell you it was 1933. Okay. It was 1933. Something in the newspaper? No. Something the girl... Was it something the girl read?

Did the girl read something that was germane? Yes. Okay. Something the mother had written? In a technical sense. Technical sense. The girl and the mother were doing something together shortly before she went off to kill her father. Okay. Were they using some kind of printed material on paper? I am going to say yes. Okay. A book? No. Could I ask questions like that? Yes, you could. Yes, and that would be helpful.

Like what was a book or a magazine? No. But some kind of printed, they were looking at something that was, would you say printed, like with typeface? Yes. Like published, would you say? Only barely. Only barely. Like something written on a typewriter?

I mean, so this isn't handwritten. No, and I think you'd have to say that the message emerged rather than that it was just there to be read. Okay. Was it coded in some way? No. A message that emerged. I mean, I know you can write

things in like lemon juice and have them show up when you do certain things, something along those lines. Not quite that, but. A message emerged in a crossword puzzle. I'm trying to think where do messages emerge? They were doing an activity. They were working together on something. A jigsaw puzzle. No, but you're sort of in the right vein. Okay. Were they working together on something a jigsaw puzzle no but you're sort of in the right vein um okay were they working together on something that you would consider a recreational activity normally but not a crossword puzzle not a jigsaw puzzle uh does it involve cooking like a rest using a recipe um no would you say they were building something or no assembling? No. The girl believed that the message had not come from her mother.

Okay. Okay. Did she believe it had come from God? No. Did she believe it had come from the government? No. Some authority figure? No.

No. No. So she received a message somehow that the mother had actually caused to be there in some way. That's the key, is that the mother— actually caused to be there in some way. That's the key, is that the mother— Did she believe that the message was from her father? No. So on whose say would you kill your father because a message emerged?

Did it make her afraid of her father, the message? No. No, she felt she had to do it. But not to save herself or her mother. That's correct. The country wasn't at war did she believe something was very wrong with her father no um she and the mother were doing something recreationally during which a message emerged that the daughter took to heart but the the mother the jury eventually decided the mother had imparted that message but the girl insisted to the end that

she hadn't oh a ouija board. Oh, a Ouija board. They were using a Ouija board. Yes. I'm trying not to give away the whole thing. Oh, my gosh. They were using a Ouija board. Oh, so she believed some spirit or ghost. Had convinced her to do it.

Do I need to know more than that? No, that's basically it. Oh, my gosh. This is true. On November 18, 1933, 15-year-old Maddie Turley shot her father, a 46-year-old retired naval officer, in the back with a shotgun because a Ouija board operated by her mother, quote, told me to kill daddy so that mother could marry the cowboy. They had just moved to Arizona and her mother had fallen in love with a handsome cowboy. According to the prosecution, the mother, Dorothea Irene Turley, used the Ouija board to convince Maddie that spirits wanted her to kill her father and that she wouldn't be punished for doing it.

Maddie said later, quote, the lights were low and the room was filled with spooky shadows. We sat at the Ouija board. Mother asked most of the questions. It was like a terrible nightmare watching that pointer move around as though it were some ghost out of the night. Then it spelled out that I was to kill father. I shrieked. Mother told me the Ouija board couldn't be denied that I must go ahead. According to Maddie, the board told the pair, quote, to shoot daddy after he had milked the cows, which would make it look like an accident. When they asked the board whether anyone would find out, the planchette swung to no. Maddie pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sent to a state school for girls until her majority, Mrs. Turley, who insisted the girl was talking insanely, was convicted of intent to murder

and given a prison sentence of 10 to 25 years. Wow. There's a legal puzzle here, which I think is interesting. The jury assumed that the mother had been deliberately spelling out this message, but it's conceivable that this was innocent, that they were just fooling around with a Ouija board and innocent and unconsciously spelled out this message, in which case, I don't know who's at fault. You can't put handcuffs on a spirit.

Well, if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, whether or not somebody dies or not, this is another fatal one. You can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you value our podcast and learning about bears who are privates in the Polish army and all the different ways that people can die in lateral thinking puzzles, then please consider helping us out so we can keep on making the show. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us, so we are really grateful to everyone who chips in to help keep the show going. If you would like to help support the podcast, please see the Support Us section of the website, where you can make a one-time donation or learn more about becoming a patron. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9,000 enchaining crumlets.

At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.