Futility Closet - 193-The Collyer Brothers

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a smoker's protest to a whistled language. This is episode 193. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In the 1930s, brothers Homer and Langley Collier withdrew from society and began to fill their Manhattan brownstone with newspapers, furniture, musical instruments, and assorted junk. By 1947, when Homer died, the house was crammed

Starting point is 00:00:39 with 140 tons of rubbish, and Langley had gone missing. In today's show, we'll tell the strange, sad story of the Hermits of Harlem. We'll also buy a bit of Finland and puzzle over a banker's misfortune. At dawn on March 21st, 1947, someone called the New York Police Department and said there's a dead man at 2078 Fifth Avenue. He said there was a smell emanating from the house. When they asked who had died, he said Homer Collier. That wasn't entirely a surprise. Homer Collier had become a peculiar celebrity in 1940s Manhattan, and his death had been reported many times before, sending police repeatedly to the Collier house. Today, they arrived at about 10 a.m., a police inspector

Starting point is 00:01:23 and about 15 patrolmen. They knew they'd have trouble getting in. There was no doorbell or telephone, all the doors were bolted, and the basement windows were covered with iron grills. They chopped a hole in the front door and they found what they knew they'd find, a solid wall of junk. Sawhorses, frying pans, umbrellas, bicycles, baby carriages, Christmas trees, chandeliers, toys, and thousands of newspapers. For two hours, the police tried to force their way into the first floor while a crowd began to gather behind them, including newspaper reporters, photographers, and cameramen. In some sense, New York had been waiting for this. Homer Collier and his brother Langley had lived in this three-story brownstone for 38 years and now had

Starting point is 00:01:58 packed it almost solidly full of objects so that the only passage to be found was through an elaborate network of tunnels. A little afternoon, the police gave up on entering the first floor, and the fire department extended a ladder to the second story. A patrolman named William Parker climbed through a bedroom window there, and after a breathless pause, shouted down, Homer Collier's body was lowered to the street in a canvas sack. He was 65 years old, and this was the first time in seven years that he'd left the house that he and Langley had packed with 140 tons of junk. The brothers did not seem destined for this ending. They belonged to an illustrious family. They liked to boast that their ancestors had arrived in Massachusetts a year after the Mayflower in 1621. Their father was a gynecologist who worked

Starting point is 00:02:39 at Bellevue Hospital, and his sons got a first-rate education at Columbia. Homer studied admiralty law, and Langley studied engineering and chemistry. Langley was also an accomplished pianist who played at Carnegie Hall. In 1909, their father moved the family to a new townhouse in Harlem, in an era when Harlem was largely white and fashionable. The parents eventually split up. The father moved out in 1918, and the boys remained with their mother, living as though time had stopped.

Starting point is 00:03:02 As Harlem began to decline and the townhouses around their mansion were broken up into tiny apartments, Homer continued to practice law on Wall Street, and Langley accompanied his mother downtown to the opera. One acquaintance said that even in this relatively normal time, quote, they wore old-fashioned clothes and looked funny. When the parents died, they left their belongings to the boys, who stored them up in the 12-room mansion. By 1929, they were alone there. At first, things continued as usual, with Homer practicing law and Langley working as a piano dealer. Both of them socialized and left the home regularly. But in 1933, Homer lost his sight due to hemorrhages at the back of his eyes,

Starting point is 00:03:35 and Langley quit his job to take care of him. They withdrew from society and gradually grew fearful of the neighborhood as Harlem declined during the Great Depression. Asked later why the two chose to shut themselves off from the world, Langley said simply, we don't want to be bothered. Rumors began to spread about them, and the attention increased both their fears and their eccentricities. Teenagers threw rocks at their windows, so they boarded them up and wired the doors shut. As rumors spread that there were valuables in the house, Langley began to use his engineering skills to build booby traps to catch invaders. The house became a maze of tunnels, and Homer and Langley lived in nests amid trash that was now piled to the ceiling.

Starting point is 00:04:09 Langley spent most of his time tinkering with inventions, such as a device to vacuum the insides of pianos, and he took care of Homer, feeding and bathing him, reading him Shakespeare and Dickens, and playing piano sonatas for him. He fed Homer a diet of 100 oranges a week, black bread, and peanut butter, saying this would cure his blindness. Both brothers distrusted doctors, so they refused to seek help even when Homer developed rheumatism. Eventually, Langley would leave the house only after midnight. He walked for miles all over the city to get food for them, sometimes picking it out of the garbage or accepting handouts from sympathetic grocers and butchers. As he traveled, he picked up trash and abandoned items to bring back to the house.

Starting point is 00:04:43 As he traveled, he picked up trash and abandoned items to bring back to the house. By the early 1930s, their building had fallen into disrepair, and the utilities were cutting off service because the brothers didn't pay their bills. Langley said they didn't care that the telephone was disconnected because they had no one to talk to. When the electricity, water, and gas were turned off, he tried to generate electricity using a car engine, and then he and Homer lit the house with acetylene lamps. In the end, they used kerosene to light the house and to cook, and much of the time they simply lived in darkness.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Langley would fetch their water from pumps in nearby parks, and he made a battery-powered crystal radio to get news from the outside world. Homer had become a hermit, and the people who still met Langley described him as cultivated and crazy. His clothes were held together with pins, he had a drooping mustache, and he wore a boating cap from 1910. He wouldn't allow anyone to see or speak to his brother. Shortly before Homer had gone blind in 1932, he'd bought the house across the street, hoping to develop it, but he'd never gone through with this.

Starting point is 00:05:33 The man who'd sold it to him, a real estate agent named Claremont Morris, became the only person the brothers ever invited into their home. He told a reporter, the windows, what was left of them, hadn't been washed in years. Those broken by neighborhood boys had been replaced by boards. Great piles of newspapers, boxes, and old wood were heaped in the hall. Beyond the scattered sections of the automobile stood a couple of pianos. Langley told me he had more, ten, I believe. Even in daylight, it was so dark Langley held the lamp to guide me. They visited Morris once later at his home.

Starting point is 00:06:02 They talked about music, art, and literature, and Langley even tuned his piano. But when Morris offered to accompany them back to the mansion, he found that they intended to walk the whole distance, a hundred blocks. He convinced them to take the train instead. He said later that was the last time they came to call. 1934 and walked around the block with him. Homer told him he was going blind and would never leave the house again. Morris said he seemed quite philosophical about it. He said there was no use to go out if you couldn't see and no need to go to your office if you couldn't read. Now, shut up in the house, the brothers lived quietly for a few years, but in the late 1930s, the media began to give them some unwelcome attention. First, in 1938, they refused to sell their home to a real estate agent, and the New York Times ran a story about it. Rumors started up that they lived in splendor and were rich. Neither of these was true. They made the news again the following year when Con Ed forced their way into the house to remove

Starting point is 00:06:51 two old gas meters. A thousand onlookers gathered to watch Langley's protests. In August 1942, the Bowery Savings Bank threatened to evict them because they hadn't made a mortgage payment in three years. That November, the bank began eviction procedures and sent a cleanup crew to the home, and Langley yelled at them from the window. Sheriffs and locksmiths eventually forced their way in, but the house was so choked with trash that after three hours of work, they burrowed less than two feet into the drawing room. Langley called out to them from behind one of the pianos. He said, I've been sick for a number of days and couldn't attend to affairs. Homer had a feigning spell while the rumpus was going on. We're both sick, but won't have any doctor, if you please.

Starting point is 00:07:25 John McMullen, the Collier's lawyer, told Langley that they had to pay the bank $6,700 or be evicted. Langley gave them a roll of bills, closing the mortgage with a single payment, and the intruders withdrew, shuttering the windows and replacing the doors. Two months after the eviction fiasco, the federal government decided that Homer owed $1,900 in back taxes. He'd stopped paying income tax in 1931. Tax agents threatened to seize the house across the street, the one they'd planned to develop. The brothers had thousands of dollars in unclaimed savings accounts, some left by their mother, but Langley wouldn't cooperate and eventually the government had to buy the building because no one else would bid

Starting point is 00:07:56 for it at auction. The brothers never registered for the draft when World War II came and they never applied for ration stamps to get sugar or meat. They seemed oblivious of the Harlem race riots of August 1943. In 1946, Langley said he hadn't voted in years. He toured the neighborhood each night around midnight, feeding cats and scavenging trash bins, dragging a box of junk at the end of a rope. The neighbors called him the ghosty man because he only came out after dark. Through all this, Homer lay on a pallet with his legs doubled up to his chin to ease the pain of his rheumatism, waiting for the diet of oranges to cure his blindness. Langley said, He really never sleeps. I have to care for him day and night. I cook his meals and have to cut up his meat into little cubes so he can eat it with a spoon. I have to bathe him and tend to all

Starting point is 00:08:36 his wants. In 1947, when that anonymous call finally brought word of Homer's death, the patrolman who climbed into the bedroom found Homer's body hunched on the floor about six feet from the window with his knees pulled up to his chin. He wore a gray dressing gown and his hair and beard hung to his waist. He was emaciated. A mortuary ambulance took him away. The medical examiner confirmed his identity and said he died of neglect. He hadn't eaten or drunk in at least three days and he died of chronic bronchitis, gangrenous bed sores, and senile pulmonary emphysema. The police initially thought that Langley had placed the anonymous call and then fled the house. A policeman was posted to wait for him, but he never turned up. When Langley didn't show up for Homer's funeral, the police began to suspect that he too was dead or dying, perhaps in the house.

Starting point is 00:09:18 On Monday, two days after Homer was found, 2,000 people filled Fifth Avenue to watch the police attack the mansion again. Newspaper reporters, photographers, and cameramen took up their places as the police broke through a skylight and began to toss junk up through the hole to the roof, then down into the backyard. They started at the top because engineers had warned them that the house was rotten and might collapse if junk were pulled out of the lower floors. The junk might literally be holding the place up. So the police threw an endless succession of items into the backyard. Two dressmaker dummies, two bicycles, a dozen chandeliers, a doll carriage. They worked in relays because the stench made it impossible to stay in the building more than 10 or 15 minutes. They came out covered in dust and cobwebs. At the end of the day, they boarded up the windows and

Starting point is 00:09:58 vowed to continue in the morning. Three different people in Brooklyn reported seeing Langley that day. There were many rumors. Maybe he'd departed as soon as Homer had died. Maybe he jumped in the river. Maybe the hunt had scared him away. The next day, someone said they saw him on an F train. The police stopped seven F trains but didn't find him. Meanwhile, two dozen police and housing department workers continued to work through the junk on the third floor.

Starting point is 00:10:18 The first truck from the Department of Sanitation carried away 6,424 pounds, the second slightly less. The department ordered that its workers be sprayed with DDT before they entered the house. They found pistols, shotguns, rifles, bullets, shotgun shells, a cavalry saber, a French bayonet. Langley's booby traps threatened the investigators every day. A patrolman named Raymond Stack was nearly caught in an avalanche of jugs, fluorescent tubes, lumber, baled papers, metal scraps, and old radio parts. Detectives who climbed through a narrow passage on the stairs to the second floor triggered

Starting point is 00:10:48 another trap that brought down two chunks of concrete, each two feet square and weighing 75 pounds, as well as a cascade of tin cans, crowbars, and urine and excrement preserved in jars. By the end of the second day, workers had cleared 19 tons of debris from the first floor hallway alone. Langley's photo was wired around the country. 1,500 photos were posted in hospitals and train stations. An FBI bulletin was sent to 11 states, and all 11 reported sightings. Many police still believe that Langley was dead somewhere among the

Starting point is 00:11:14 junk, but after two weeks, 100 tons of trash had been removed, and there was still no sign of him. At the end of March, the task was turned over to a six-man crew of professional movers. They ripped out the basement entrance and removed a clavichord, a trombone, a cornet, an accordion, a cello, and a fake two-headed baby suspended in formaldehyde. An x-ray machine was found on the first floor. They found a wooden crib containing two human skulls, a spine, hands, feet, and a ribcage, which, hopefully, had been used by the brother's father in his medical studies. They found a brand new shirt, size 15, and a scarlet tie with a birthday card that read, To Langley, with many happy returns this day, Pop. It was dated October 3, 1918. The New York Sun reported, amidst hundreds of tons of garbage, they found

Starting point is 00:11:54 family oil portraits, hope chests jammed with unused peace goods, silks, wool, damask, and brocade, a half-dozen toy trains, 14 upright and grand pianos, chandeliers, tapestries, 13 ornate mantel clocks, 13 oriental rugs, five violins, two organs, and Langley's Certificate of Merit for Punctuality and Good Conduct from Public School 69 for the week ending April 19, 1895. On March 31, two detectives and five laborers searched for eight hours and concluded only that Langley wasn't in the basement library. At that rate, it would take two weeks to determine whether he was in the house at all. Finally, on April 8th, Detective John Lowry was scraping around the rubbish when he saw a foot sticking out. It was Langley. He was pinned between a chest of drawers and an old bedspring, caught in one of his own booby traps no more than 10 feet from where Homer had died. He was wearing four pairs of pants, no underwear, a herringbone jacket, a red flannel bathrobe, a gray dungaree jacket, and a morning coat. He had died around

Starting point is 00:12:50 March 9th, so he was the source of the odor that neighbors had reported. Apparently, he'd been carrying food to Homer when the trap fell. The New York Times reported that Langley, quote, stretched his gnarled fingers toward his helpless brother. He'd been unable to free himself or to call for help and had died there, and with no one to care for him, Homer had starved to death. It took police more than two hours to dig Langley's body out of the debris. At this point, 120 tons of junk had been removed from the building. They buried Langley next to Homer in the family plot at Cypress Hills. Two months after his body was found, the most valuable items from the mansion were put up for sale. Proceeds from the auctions went into a pool that the heirs could claim. 56 people vied for the estate, most of them had never

Starting point is 00:13:28 even met the brothers. Eventually, a surrogate court ruled that 23 people could divide the estate, which amounted to only $51,000 after debts and back taxes were paid. On May 9th, the city building commissioner ordered the house demolished as a public menace. Since the 1960s, the site of the former brownstone has been a small fenced plot named Collier Brothers Park. To this day, New York City rescue workers refer to a dwelling that's dangerously packed with junk as a Collier's Mansion. We often tell you that Futility Closet would not still be here if it weren't for the support of our listeners, and that really is the case. We appreciate all the different ways that many of our listeners help the show,

Starting point is 00:14:15 but the backbone of our support really is our Patreon campaign, which gives us an ongoing source of support so that we can commit to the time that the podcast takes to make. Patreon also gives us a good way to share some extras with our show's supporters, Thank you. you'd like to learn more about our Patreon campaign, you can check that out at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of our website for the link. And thanks again to everyone who helps make Futility Closet possible. After episode 189, Jesse Onland wrote, On the latest episode, Greg remarked on how it was interesting that a treatment for scurvy was discovered long before the mechanism by which it worked was understood. In fact, this is true of many, perhaps even most, drugs. For example, work is ongoing to determine

Starting point is 00:15:15 how exactly acetaminophen, paracetamol, relieves pain, and surely this is one of the most commonly used drugs in the world. Here is a 2016 article in The Scientist about this and several other very common drugs with unknown molecular mechanisms. The article in The Scientist that Jesse sent the link to quotes Peter Imming, a pharmaceutical chemist who said, if we threw out all the drugs for which we do not know the molecular mechanisms, we wouldn't be left with a lot. And looking into this a bit, I find that this actually does seem to be the case. Paracetamol, or acetaminophen as we call it here in the U.S., was discovered in 1877,

Starting point is 00:15:59 is claimed to be the most commonly used medication for pain and fever in both the United States and Europe, and is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines. But scientists still don't completely understand its mechanisms of action. Wikipedia actually has a list of 63 drugs that it calls drugs with unknown mechanisms of action for drugs in which the specific mechanism of action relevant to therapeutic effects is unknown or unclear. And this list of 63 isn't even a complete list as I looked up some drugs that I happen to know have unknown mechanisms of action and discovered that they are described that way if you go to their specific Wikipedia pages, but they weren't even in the list of the

Starting point is 00:16:34 63. Another example from this list that was very surprising to me is general anesthetics. These have been widely used for surgery since 1842, but the exact location and mechanisms of their action are still considered to be largely unknown, despite a large body of research that's been conducted on this question. Wikipedia says, there are a number of theories, both outdated and modern, that attempt to explain anesthetic action. So this fits right in with finding a treatment for scurvy without understanding why or how it's a treatment for scurvy. That's really scary, though.

Starting point is 00:17:07 So they just find that a certain substance has a certain property that's useful. And just market it as a drug. Right. Because you would think, I would have thought, and I think a lot of people think this is how it works, is that they decide, okay, we need a molecule with these properties, and then they craft it deliberately. Not at all. And it sounds instead like they just realize.

Starting point is 00:17:27 They stumble onto something and say, hey, this seems to be doing something useful. Let's market it for this application. Right. Dan Fingerman sent a follow-up to the Burner Street hoax, which was a massive prank in 1810, where someone ordered goods and services from hundreds of London merchants for a Mrs. Tottenham at 54 Burner Street, causing the street to be positively jammed with crowds of delivery people. Dan said, Hi, Greg and Sharon and Sasha. You might be interested in this blog post by Bruce Schneier about modern versions of the Burner Street hoax,

Starting point is 00:18:02 which you covered in the Futility Closet podcast number 26 and blog. Schneier is a computer security expert. He asked his audience for comments about whether the modern version is qualitatively different than older versions. I believe all the comments thus far were about incidents in the last 30 or so years. I posted a short comment about the Burner Street hoax in 1810

Starting point is 00:18:22 and gave you a shout out, with links to your podcast and blog post. So thanks for the shout out, Dan. We always appreciate that. Schneier's blog post links to a Boston Globe article entitled Harassment by Package Delivery about women getting creepy surprise deliveries of personal and sexual items from Amazon. These women are tending to find it rather frightening to receive multiple anonymous deliveries ranging from things like bras in their correct size and other lingerie to various sex toys and other intimate items. One of the women interviewed for the story, Nicole Slaughterbeck, said, I've been basically living in fear of a stalker due to the contents of the packages. All of the orders seemed to be made from recently opened

Starting point is 00:19:05 Amazon accounts by buyers using gift cards instead of credit cards in order to hide their identities. When Slaughterbeck looked into the situation, she learned that the name on the Amazon account and its associated email address were made up of a random sequence of letters and numbers, and the only mailing address on the account was Slaughterbeck's. After Amazon shut down the account, the packages still kept coming from an account using a new string of letters and numbers as the new name and email address. Slaughterbeck also learned during her many calls to Amazon that apparently she and the sender are in the same zip code, a fact that Slaughterbeck understandably found very alarming. that's really creepy it is very creepy and these

Starting point is 00:19:46 women have that receive these items have tried going to the police the fbi the federal trade commission and even the secret service but have not been receiving any kind of help one woman was asked by the police if she maybe just had a secret admirer when slaughter beck went to the police with a whole bag of the items she'd been sent, she said the police basically laughed, asked her what was illegal about it, and shooed her away. And I guess that's partly the problem, that it's not clear that there is anything actually illegal about sending such items to people. And even if it were clearly illegal, there still might not be much recourse for the victims. Just as I was preparing the story this week, I read an article about how little help there is in the U.S. for victims of cybercrimes, as state and local law enforcement

Starting point is 00:20:30 usually doesn't have the equipment or training to try to investigate such crimes, and often doesn't even have the jurisdiction, as the crimes can originate in other states or even other countries. I was going to say, who really, the world's turning too fast now. Whose job is it to address a crime like that? Apparently, your best bet is the FBI, but they are just so swamped with cybercrime cases that they end up having to prioritize the largest of them to investigate. So there really often is just no recourse. And I guess it's so much easier to commit such a crime than to solve it. Yes. That the criminals will always be nine steps ahead. Well, hopefully not always, but they apparently are right now, at least. As Dan noted on his blog, Schneier questions whether these recent cases are

Starting point is 00:21:16 that different from pranks that have been ongoing for decades pre-internet. In the comments on his post, people describe various pranks of ordering embarrassing or annoying items for other people. But as Schneier points out, the Internet makes this even easier and the prepaid gift cards can make it easier to stay anonymous more easily than in the past. The Boston Globe article that Schneier linked to was actually a follow up to an earlier article in the Globe about a couple in Massachusetts who have received a great number of mystery packages from Amazon. The Galavans started receiving packages they hadn't ordered back in October 2017, and they just keep getting them. They've received, among other things, plastic fans, phone chargers and cases, USB cables, a computer vacuum cleaner, a USB-powered humidifier, high-intensity flashlights, a cigarette lighter keychain, a rechargeable dog collar, a facial mask, LED tent lamps, an outdoor TV cover, and automobile trash bags.

Starting point is 00:22:14 The Galovans have gone from initially thinking this was rather funny to finding it annoying and concerning as they started to worry that they were the butt of some kind of scam or fraud. as they started to worry that they were the butt of some kind of scam or fraud. The most likely explanation is that the Galavans are being used in a scheme to manipulate the Amazon ratings for different products. A seller appears to be purchasing these items with a gift card and then sending them to a random person who just happens to be Mike Galavan. Then the seller, who controls the supposed buyer's email account, writes glowing reviews of the products to boost their rankings on Amazon. And by getting the products actually shipped to a recipient, the reviews are deemed to be verified, which then gives them more weight on Amazon's site. Amazon's got a lot of problems

Starting point is 00:22:54 I didn't even know about. Yes. And apparently, from what I've read in these articles, Amazon is not doing very much to be able to stop these problems. They just are finding themselves at a loss for how to control this kind of thing. The effect of that really is just like the Burner Street hugs, though. I mean, just this list of inexplicable, unrelated items that show up in your doorstep one after another. Right. And that's, you know, on Schneier's blog post, he questioned whether these are different or not. But it seems to me that the motivations, you know, on Schneier's blog post, he questioned whether these are different or not. But it seems to me that the motivations, at least, are kind of different. The earlier pranks, including Burner Street, were more in the way of practical jokes.

Starting point is 00:23:33 Whereas the Amazon deliveries, in the case of the women, just seems either kind of stalkery or sexually motivated. And with the Galavans, it's an attempt to manipulate the rating system. So at least the motivations underlying it is pretty different yeah and we have another follow-up to episode 79 and the quaker oats promotion to get a square inch of the yukon as we've been periodically reporting on the show there have been a variety of promotions and programs involving giving people ownership of a very small piece of land and now a listener let us know that you can buy a bow tie and own a bit of Finland. Apparently, a company called Woodenavia bought a large area of forest in Enantekiya, Finland,

Starting point is 00:24:16 in order to protect it from logging. And now they are selling handmade wooden bow ties that come with ownership of 100 square feet or 10 square meters of the forest. This is apparently available on the UK version of Amazon, but alas, does not ship to the US. According to the Amazon page for the product, whether you're an environment-caring person or just searching for elegant Nordic accessories, here's a solution. I think that saving a Finnish forest is a nice idea, and I'm sure this makes an interesting novelty item. I'm just not so sure that there were that many people searching for elegant Nordic accessories, and how many of those would consider a wooden bow tie to fit that bill. But if you've

Starting point is 00:24:56 always wanted to own a bit of Finland, this might be your chance to do so. As for how well this product might go over in Finland itself, the company's website says, Finns are typically humble and hardworking, but there's times when one dresses up well and awkwardly tries to socialize with one another. The concept of small talk doesn't exist in Finland, but we figured that, hey, that's a pretty okay-looking bow tie. Might work.

Starting point is 00:25:21 Though a regular Finn would reply just, thanks, and maybe crack an uncomfortable smile. Thank you to everyone who writes in to us. Your comments and updates really help contribute to the show. So if you have anything you'd like to say to us, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange-sounding situation, and he has to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Tommy Houghton with a minor rewording by me.

Starting point is 00:25:57 A banker makes a bold investment that works out well for him and earns him significant money. He makes the same investment again, but this time he's arrested. What happened? Did this really happen? Yes. Makes a bold investment. Okay, is the fact that he's a banker important? I mean, could anyone have made this investment?

Starting point is 00:26:13 No. No, not anyone could have? Correct. I'm trying to think of answers. Too many questions at once. It's negatives in trying to answer the negatives. Is the fact that he's a banker important? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:25 Okay. And he made the investment through a bank? Maybe I'm going too narrow here. No. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. Made an investment the first time and did quite well, meaning he had a good return? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:41 On the investment? Yes. Okay. When he made the first investment was the investment illegal is that i mean is the point that it became illegal whatever this is he did uh i don't understand your question well you said he was arrested the second time yes so presumably that was because he'd broken the law is that the truth yes yes okay would is the fact that he wasn't arrested the first time because it wasn't illegal at that time. No. No, that's not the case.

Starting point is 00:27:05 No, that's not the case. So it was illegal right the way through. It was illegal both times. Yes. Am I? Yes. Well, it's. It's more complicated than that.

Starting point is 00:27:16 A little bit, yes. But that's not the point. I'm just saying that's not the point of the puzzle. Right. Okay. So he made the same investment twice. Yes. He wasn't arrested the

Starting point is 00:27:25 first time and he if a cat wandering all over the place and uh was arrested the second time yes would it help me to try to figure out what the crime was that he'd committed um possibly yeah yeah i mean i think that's okay it had to do with the nature of the investment right it's sort of not exactly he was you said he was arrested after making the investment yes would you say it was because he made the if he hadn't made the investment he wouldn't have been arrested is that fair to say i think that's incorrect i think that's incorrect he would have been arrested in any case perhaps yes oh well that's a very strange thing to say. Yes. You look very careful. All right.

Starting point is 00:28:08 But you say it's not worth pursuing why, why he was arrested. He's arrested because he committed a crime. Yeah, the nature of the crime is important. The nature of the crime is separate from the nature of the investment, which is the complicated part. Did he undertake the crime knowingly? Yes. Did he do it in some way connected of the investment, which is the complicated part. Did he undertake the crime knowingly? Yes. Did he do it in some way connected to the investment? It was some necessary preliminary step in order to enable him to make the investment?

Starting point is 00:28:34 That's good thinking. Yes. All right. Good. Does this involve his identity in any way, disguising his identity? Oh, no. Nothing like that. Are there other people involved?

Starting point is 00:28:44 There were, but that's incidental to the puzzle. In the real story, there are, but that's incidental to the puzzle. Okay. Does it have to do with getting... Did he invest... Maybe you don't know. Cash?

Starting point is 00:28:58 I mean, it was money of... Yeah. Oh, he's a banker. Was he using the bank's money to... Yes. I should have seen that. Okay, so both times, a banker basically embezzles money from a bank. Yes, exactly.

Starting point is 00:29:10 In order to make... Yeah. So he was caught the second time. Yeah, and that's close enough. In 2007, a bank manager in the Hebei province of China was embezzling money from the bank to play the lottery, with the idea that he would win enough to pay back the bank and have some extra left over for himself. This turned into the largest bank robbery in China's history, with a total embezzlement of the equivalent of about 6.7 million U.S. dollars.

Starting point is 00:29:37 And Tommy explains, he borrowed money from the bank he worked for and used it to pay the lottery. Amazingly enough, he won and was able to place the money back without getting caught. Emboldened by his success, he enlisted another manager in his scheme and they took out significantly more money, only this time they lost. They stole even more in a last-ditch effort

Starting point is 00:29:55 to save themselves, but were only able to recoup a small amount of the millions they stole. They went on the run and after being the most wanted men in China for a brief period, they were caught and eventually put to death. Wow, that's really dramatic. That is really dramatic. So if they'd stopped after the first time... He would have been fine, right. Wow. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:30:13 because he was able to pay the bank back the money he'd stole, so nobody would have been the wiser, probably. But he went ahead. Yeah. Wow. So thanks to Tommy for that puzzle, in which nobody died during the puzzle, but they did after it. We definitely do not recommend robbing banks in China. But we do recommend sending in your puzzles for us to try. And you can do that by sending them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast would not still be here today if it weren't for the generous support of our listeners. If you'd like to help support the show, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:30:54 While you're at the site, you can also check out Greg's collection of over 10,000 quirky curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store to see the cool penguin adorned swag you can get, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast, with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's phenomenal brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 193-The Collyer Brothers

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