Futility Closet - 254-The Porthole Murder

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 battlefield reflex to a reversed perspective. This is episode 254. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1947, actress Gay Gibson disappeared from her cabin on an ocean liner off the coast of West Africa. The deck steward, James Cam, admitted to pushing her body out a porthole, but insisted she had died of natural causes and not in a sexual assault. In today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:44 we'll review the curious case of the porthole murder, which is still raising doubts today. We'll also explore another fraudulent utopia and puzzle over a pedestrian's victory. On October 10th, 1947, the passenger liner Durban Castle left Cape Town and headed up the west coast of Africa, bound for England. The ship was relatively empty and the first-class passengers were mostly elderly, but among them was a 21-year-old actress named Eileen Isabella Gibson, known as Gay. She was headed home after seven months in South Africa, where she'd been visiting her father and performing on the stage. There weren't many other young people on board to spend time with, so she spent hers with Frank Hopwood, an official of the Union Castle line, and a wing commander Bray. They said she was friendly and easy to get along with, but quiet. On Friday, October 17th, the three dined at their usual table

Starting point is 00:01:39 and took coffee afterward. They stood on deck, leaning over the rail until about 1240 in the morning. Then Hopwood escorted her to her cabin and said good night. Just after 3 deck, leaning over the rail until about 1240 in the morning. Then Hopwood escorted her to her cabin and said good night. Just after 3 a.m., the senior night watchman, James Murray, and his assistant, Frederick Steer, were sitting in the first class galley. At this hour, all the cabin bells had been switched through to this galley. If a passenger wanted something, it was the night watchman's job to answer the bell. The ship was steaming north at 18 knots with 90 miles of shark-infested sea between her and the West African coast. At 2.58 a.m., a bell rang above the watchman's heads.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Someone had summoned a steward to cabin 126 on B deck, where Gay Gibson was staying. When Steer arrived at the cabin, he saw that two lights were illuminated outside, green and red. That meant that both the steward and the stewardess had been rung for, which was odd. Usually a passenger would ring for only one or the other. The light in the cabin was on. Steer could see it shining through the grill above the door. He knocked and tried to go in. The door opened a few inches and then shut in his face. Steer had a glimpse of a man's face, his right hand, and his body, which was wearing a sleeveless singlet and dark trousers held up by a belt. He recognized James Cam, the deck steward. As he shut the door, Cam said, all right.

Starting point is 00:02:51 Steer went back immediately to Murray to tell him what had happened, and together they returned to the cabin. The red and green lights were still on, and so was the light in the cabin. It was quiet inside. They waited for four or five minutes, watching and listening, but still there was no sound. It was now about 310. Murray left Steer outside the cabin and told the officer of the watch what had happened, but he omitted the fact that the man in the cabin was Cam, not wanting to get another crew member into trouble. The officer told him the morals of the passengers were their own affair and dismissed him. Murray went back to the cabin and saw that the light was still on. When he checked again 10 or 15 minutes later, it had gone out.

Starting point is 00:03:26 The cabin was still quiet. He decided to have nothing more to do with the matter and went back to his duties. At about 7.30 the next morning, the stewardess, Eileen Field, knocked at cabin 126, got no answer, and tried the door. It was open. That was unusual. Gibson normally locked it at night. The cabin was empty.

Starting point is 00:03:43 Field didn't immediately think that was a miss because Gibson might have gone to the bathroom. But the bed seemed more disarranged than usual, and she noticed one or two stains on the sheet and the pillowcase. She started to tidy up the cabin, but as time passed and Gibson didn't return, she became anxious. She went looking for the missing woman, but no one had seen her. She reported the matter, and at 9.57, the captain, Arthur Patey, sent an appeal over the ship's broadcasting system asking for any news of Miss Gibson. There was no response, and at 10.20, he ordered the ship to reverse course. They also radioed a message to all ships in the vicinity to keep a lookout. After an hour, though, he realized it was hopeless to search such a vast area and decided

Starting point is 00:04:19 reluctantly to get underway again. In the meantime, inquiries had begun. Steer had told the master of the ship that it was James Cam he'd seen in cabin 126, and at 11 a.m., Captain Patey told Cam he was suspected of having been in the cabin. Cam immediately denied it, saying he hadn't been near any passenger cabin or passenger accommodation since he'd gone to bed that night. At midday, Patey put an extra lock on the door of cabin 126. He put the keys in his safe, and the cabin stayed locked for the rest of the voyage. The captain asked Cam to submit to a medical examination. That found scratches on his neck and wrists. Cam said he'd scratched

Starting point is 00:04:54 his wrist three or four days earlier when he'd been in bed and felt hot and itchy, and the scratches on his neck had been caused by vigorous rubbing with a rough towel. He said he'd gone to bed between 1 and 2 a.m. on the night of Gibson's disappearance and hadn't left his cabin until he'd got up at quarter to six. When the Durban Castle reached England on October 26th, Cam was taken to the Southampton Police headquarters. When investigators told him they'd established that he'd been in cabin 126 on the 18th, he decided to change his story. He said Gibson had asked him for a glass of rum earlier in the evening, and at about 11 p.m. he'd visited her cabin to ask whether she wanted some lemonade with it. She'd said no, and he'd gone back to his duties.

Starting point is 00:05:30 They told him that they'd found fibers on the rim of the porthole, suggesting that Gibson had been pushed into the sea. He asked if he'd be charged with murder. They said they couldn't say, but if he had a reasonable explanation of her death and disappearance, he should stop denying that he knew anything about it. At that, Cam said, You mean that Miss Gibson might have died from a cause other than being murdered. She might have had a heart attack or something. He said he'd like to make a statement. He said the two of them had made arrangements to meet, and when he'd finished work about 1 a.m., he'd

Starting point is 00:05:56 gone to her cabin and the two of them had had sex. In the middle of it, she'd suddenly clutched at him, foaming at the mouth, and then lay very still. When he felt for her pulse, there was none. He tried artificial respiration and was surprised when the night watchman had knocked on the door and tried to open it. Now he was panicked. He thought he'd be found in a compromising position. He still could find no signs of life, so he lifted Gibson's body to the porthole and pushed it through. He was fairly sure that she was dead, but he was terribly frightened. He went forward to bed. It was about 3.30. They told him he was going to be detained, and at 1.30 p.m. on October 26th, he was charged with the murder of Eileen Gibson. The case quickly became known as the Porthole Murder, and it immediately became a sensation in the media. A young, beautiful actress disappears from a liner

Starting point is 00:06:38 in mid-ocean, producing a murder trial with no body. The newspapers had started publishing reports while the ship was still at sea. Incidentally, this is sometimes called the first English murder case without a body. It's not. There'd been another one 13 years earlier, and in fact, the case of the Campton Wonder, which we covered in episode 125, took place in 1660. Obviously, such cases have to be handled carefully, but we don't want a system where a body is necessary to charge someone with murder. Otherwise, we'd be telling people that they can get away with murder if they can dispose of the body cleverly enough. Here, no one disputed that Gay Gibson was dead. The question was how she died. The trial unfolded over four days before a packed courtroom. The prosecutors even presented the bed

Starting point is 00:07:17 from cabin 126, the porthole itself mounted in a wooden frame, and the bell push that had summoned the night watchman on the morning of Gibson's disappearance. Cam pleaded not guilty. The prosecution contended that he'd forced himself on Gibson, that she'd pressed both bells to summon help, and that she'd scratched Cam during their struggle. Either he'd strangled her to keep her quiet, or he'd overcome her resistance, raped her, and then threw her unconscious body into the sea to hide his crime. No one disputed that Cam was with Gay Gibson when she died, and no one disputed that he'd passed her body through the sea to hide his crime. No one disputed that Cam was with Gay Gibson when she died, and no one disputed that he'd passed her body through the porthole and into the sea. All that remained to be decided was whether Cam had killed her or whether she might have died a

Starting point is 00:07:53 natural death, as he'd claimed. Two bloodstains had been found on the upper sheet of the bed. They were group O, and Cam's blood was of group A, so presumably this was Gibson's blood. Also a contraceptive appliance, a diaphragm, had been found in presumably this was Gibson's blood. Also, a contraceptive appliance, a diaphragm, had been found in a suitcase in Gibson's cabin. Some of the most eminent pathologists in the country testified that the characteristic signs of death by strangulation were present. They fit the idea that Cam was strangling Gibson. She was trying to pull his hands from her throat, and she'd scratched his wrists. There were also traces of urine in the bed, showing that Gibson had voided her bladder as she died, which is another common feature of strangulation.

Starting point is 00:08:27 But one of the pathologists said that death could equally well have occurred from natural causes. He said it was possible that Gibson had an aneurysm that had burst or heart disease that might have caused sudden death. Both of those possibilities were consistent with blood at the mouth, the finding of urine, and clutching that could cause scratches. the finding of urine and clutching that could cause scratches. The defense suggested that Cam had gone as a welcome visitor to Gibson's cabin, that she'd consented willingly to having sex with him, and that she'd died in the act. He'd cast the body into the sea because he was overcome by panic and afraid of losing his job. In the witness box, Cam said that he'd struck up a friendship with Gibson during the voyage.

Starting point is 00:09:04 She told him she'd been acting in Johannesburg and was in love with a man named Charles. She said she might be pregnant, but it was too early to tell. By October 17th, they were on extremely friendly terms. When he visited her cabin to ask her if she wanted lemonade with her rum, he said he had a good mind to bring down a drink and join her. She said something like, please yourself, it's up to you. He'd gone to her cabin that night and they started to have sex, but suddenly she heaved as if she were gasping for breath. He got off the bed and she seemed to be in a faint. Her mouth and one eye were slightly open and there was a line of blood-stained froth on her lips. He stood stunned for a moment and listened and felt for a pulse, but her heart seemed to have stopped. He was trying to revive her when there was a tap on the door and it opened. He pushed it closed and said, all right.

Starting point is 00:09:40 He was convinced he hadn't been recognized, but he thought a report would be made and he panicked. If he was found in a woman passenger's cabin, he'd lose his job and forfeit any chance of employment with another shipping company. He looked again at the woman and could see no movement. Again, he tried artificial respiration, but her body seemed to be growing cold. He concluded that she was dead and decided to dispose of the body. It was slack and awkward, but he managed to lift it up, got it to the porthole and pushed it through and into the sea. Then he returned to his quarters and went to bed. He was certain he hadn't pressed the bells or received any injuries.

Starting point is 00:10:10 On cross-examination, the prosecution showed that he'd lied over and over to save himself, but he said he was worried about his wife and the consequences if she found out he'd been unfaithful to her. Gibson's acquaintances from South Africa described her as hysterical and neurotic, but one said he'd seen her faint on one occasion and her lips had turned blue and produced a line of froth. He said she'd also complained once of a sharp pain running down her left arm to her fingers, which could be a sign of coronary heart disease. But there was nothing to suggest she was promiscuous, that she'd invite a deck steward to her bed only a few days after meeting him.

Starting point is 00:10:41 In its closing speech, the defense asked the jury to see Cam as a man in a panic, worried about his career and his marriage, and reminded them that the medical witnesses had said that Gibson might have died in the way that Cam had described. But the jury was unpersuaded. They found Cam guilty and sentenced him to death. As it happened, Parliament was debating the abolition of capital punishment, and he was given a life sentence instead. Winston Churchill said, the House of Commons has, by its vote, saved the life of the brutal, lascivious murderer who thrust the poor girl he had raped and assaulted through a porthole of the ship to the sharks. Cam was released on parole in 1959, but was convicted in 1971 for sexual offenses against schoolgirls and sent back to prison. He was released in 1978

Starting point is 00:11:21 and died the following year. If I had a tidy conclusion to make, this is where I'd make it, but I don't have one. No one knows what happened in cabin 126 of the Dublin Castle on the night of October 17th, 1947. There's no question that James Cam pushed Gay Gibson's body through the porthole and into the sea. The question is whether he caused her death. And no matter which way you come down on that point, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. To begin with, who rang the bells summoning the steward and the stewardess, and why? Cam said he hadn't gone near them. The circuit was tested and found to be in good working order. Gibson can't have pressed the buttons accidentally during her struggles because they required a certain pressure.

Starting point is 00:11:56 The prosecution argued that the only answer is that she'd pressed them deliberately to summon help. That point is really sticking with me, though, because he said he hadn't pressed the bells. Clearly, he hadn't seen her press the bells, because you were saying that there was like, oh, two lights were still on outside her door, and he worked on the ship. So presumably, he would know how these worked and how to turn the lights off, and you would think if he saw her press them, he would have turned them off. Yeah, it's hard to believe, too, that he could know that she, I don't know. I mean, it seems like even if they were just talking and she got kind of a skeezy feel from it, she could have...

Starting point is 00:12:34 Right, and pressed the bells to summon help. Right, you would think he'd leave. Yeah. So somebody somehow turned on the, pressed the bells and turned on the lights outside the door without him knowing it somehow. Yeah. It's hard to, they, in the testimony, the one who they asked most about this is Eileen Field, who was the stewardess who discovered that Gibson was missing in the morning. And they asked her all kinds of sort of hypothetical questions like, well, if there was a book on the dressing table and it fell over, could it manage to hit both buttons accidentally?

Starting point is 00:13:03 And she had to say, I don't know. I've never seen that happen. You know, it's kind of an impossible question to answer. But you said it wouldn't be likely that Gay Gibson could have turned them on just by flailing, like that if she'd accidentally hit them or something that seemed unlikely that that would have turned them on. So that is really puzzling. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:23 I mean, it depends what happened in that cabin. That's what we don't know. I mean, if she had an opportunity to press them. That he didn't see somehow. Like, even if there was a struggle, if she managed to do it just before, you can think that could easily have happened just to get someone to the cabin. I don't know. One point that's in Cam's favor here, when the night watchman tried the door, he found

Starting point is 00:13:42 it unlocked. If Cam had known that the Bells had been wrong or was committing a crime, it seems reasonable that he would have locked the door. Two, if Cam was innocent and Gibson died of natural causes, why did he dispose of the body? Why not summon help or at least leave her in the cabin to be found? That's the bit that sticks with me. Like, let's say everything he says is true, and they were just having consensual sex and she died. And he thought, oh my gosh, she's dead. This could be the end of my career and my marriage. I understand that much of it,

Starting point is 00:14:09 but why does disposing of the body change any of that? I don't understand why you would do that. I guess if there's no body, you can't prove she's dead. But if he did think there was any chance he'd been recognized by the person who did come when the bells were pushed, right? I mean- But that's even worse

Starting point is 00:14:24 because now there's a... The passenger is missing and he's still linked to the cabin just as much as he was before. It doesn't erase... If he's been recognized there's no... Yeah. There's nothing to be done about that. I guess it would be that he would have had to have been panicking. And probably it's a crime. Like he couldn't have been absolutely positive

Starting point is 00:14:40 she was dead when he pushed her through. So seems to me like he probably committed a crime even if he didn't actively kill her. her. Seems to me like he probably could have charged him with something. Three, the fact that Gibson had left her diaphragm in her suitcase seems to show that she wasn't expecting to be intimate with Cam that night. But the defense pointed out that she believed she was pregnant, in which case there'd have been no point in wearing it. Jeffrey Clark, a barrister who wrote up the trial in 1949, points out that Cam didn't make a statement about how Gibson had died until the police had suggested

Starting point is 00:15:09 to him that her death might have a reasonable explanation. Then he'd said, you mean she might have died from some other cause, heart failure or something. So possibly he'd killed her and it hadn't occurred to him until that moment that he could invent a false cause of death. We don't know. Cam seems to have been a thoroughly awful person. He was unpopular with the other crew members who thought he was conceited and a womanizer. On the way to South Africa on the Durban Castle, he had assaulted women passengers on at least three separate occasions. On two, he'd gone to their cabins and made advances on them, and in the third, he tried to strangle a woman in a shelter on deck. This wasn't brought forward in the trial because of

Starting point is 00:15:42 a principle in English law that said that evidence of a man's character must not be brought forward until he was convicted. But James Cam was certainly capable of assaulting Gay Gibson. But in recent years, some new information has come to light suggesting that Gibson's health wasn't good. Last March, Doreen Mantle, who had shared a dressing room with Gibson in the weeks before her trip, said it was understood that Gibson had a heart condition and was, quote, not a well girl. She said that Gibson fainted during rehearsals and that her lips would often go blue. Mantle hadn't given evidence because her father had persuaded her not to get involved. And in 2015, writer Antony M. Brown got access to the case files through the Hampshire Constabulary History Society. He says that they show that Gibson had a weak chest and was subject to

Starting point is 00:16:21 fainting fits in which her mouth, hands, and nails turned blue. He suggests that this points to congenital heart disease, meaning she may have died of natural causes. He said, James Cam was certainly up to no good that night, but I don't think he was a murderer. I have some updates to some much older episodes today. In episode 60, the main story was about how in 1916, a circus elephant named Mary was hanged after she killed a man. David Nino Mia wrote, There was something on NPR that I'm sure tons of people wrote to you about, but just in case they didn't,

Starting point is 00:17:02 a bunch of people are trying to improve the image of Irwin, Tennessee, where they killed that elephant Mary like 100 years ago. And David, only two people wrote in about this, so thanks for being one of them. The other was Chaim Schramm, who wrote, to save elephants, write-up occasioned by a student-made podcast about the hanging, winning NPR's podcast challenge. So yeah, this story only got some coverage because a group of high school students made a winning podcast about it for NPR's student podcast challenge. Irwin is a pretty small town with a population of about 6,000 and has been known for the last century mainly as the place where an elephant was hanged. Even 100 years later, the town was still receiving angry emails and letters from various countries about the incident, and angry tourists would visit the town to complain about it.

Starting point is 00:17:53 So a group of the town's residents started a campaign to change what they see as the town's historical black eye, and in 2016, the 100th anniversary of the hanging, Irwin held a week-long festival to raise awareness of and funds for an elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, about a six-hour drive from Irwin. They placed eight fiberglass elephant statues painted by regional artists in the downtown area and then auctioned them off at the end of the summer, a process that they've been repeating yearly. The goal is that people will ask, what is the deal with all the elephants? And the downtown merchants will say, we love elephants, and we support the elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald. Irwin is now starting to be known for their elephant statues, and people come from around the region to see them each year.

Starting point is 00:18:38 Irwin's mayor said that this has now become the town's new identity. That's got to be hard to be, to have to carry that through history, you know, as you're, what you're known for. Yeah, you didn't have anything to do with it if it was 100 years ago. Yeah, I'm sure everyone who's actually involved in an incident is gone now, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Starting point is 00:18:54 And I do have to mention that for the podcast, the students interviewed a local musician about his band, the Swinging Packaderms, and their song, Murderous Mary, though unfortunately they didn't play the song on the podcast. The puzzle in episode 80 involved a hog farmer during Prohibition who won a prize at a county fair for having the largest pig and then was arrested for making alcohol,

Starting point is 00:19:20 as a law enforcement agent realized that the farmer was feeding his pig spent grain, a byproduct from brewing alcohol. Lawrence Miller, who sent the puzzle, said that he'd heard that during Prohibition, federal agents would go to county fairs and look for the fattest pigs, as in that era spent grains were the most potent animal feed available, but that despite his efforts, he couldn't discover whether this was all true or not. Patrick Steinkuhl wrote, I've been listening to the podcast from start to finish and just got to episode 80, where the lateral thinking puzzle

Starting point is 00:19:49 was about prohibition officers scouting state fairs for large pigs. Being the grandson of prohibition era ethanol entrepreneurs, I wanted to offer a few thoughts around this. And Patrick said that feeding spent grain to pigs was a common practice, but that it's not the case that the pigs got particularly large because it was such an effective food. Patrick said, It was really a story of economics. Farmers at that time were rarely specialists. You grew crops and livestock. They fed the pigs mainly table scraps and farm scraps

Starting point is 00:20:18 and only used animal feed or grain when absolutely necessary, because they were selling the grain also, and you could make more money selling corn to a human than feeding corn to a pig. So the guys distilling had a large quantity of spent grain, corn that had been fermented and then distilled. There was much less sugar in the grain due to the fermentation process, so it was less nutritious than regular corn. It was just that these guys had it in abundance. So they used the pigs as a method of disposal, and as a result, the pigs grew faster than their counterparts eating regular scraps. I'm sure as I listen further, you've had other folks weigh in on it as well, but the puzzle got us discussing old family stories.

Starting point is 00:20:54 So Patrick, you might not hear this for quite some time if you're doing the shows in order, but you will discover when you get here that you were our first follow-up on this topic, so thanks for the explanation about the spent grain. I guess we still don't know for sure whether federal agents actually did look for fat pigs at county fairs to bust the owners for making alcohol, but we do now know that there likely were fatter-than-usual pigs connected to these operations. Yeah, that's a clever thought. In episode 150, the main story was about how in 1821, a Scottish adventurer invented a fictional Central American republic and convinced 250 people to set sail for this imaginary utopia. Alan Ricks wrote,

Starting point is 00:21:36 Salutations, Sasha and her human underlings. A while back, you did an episode on Gregor McGregor, who tricked European colonists to going to a non-existent Central American colony. I recently became aware of Marquis de Reis, a French nobleman who tricked four expeditions to pay him to go to the non-existent New Guinea colony of New France. The most famous one, the third, known simply as the de Reis expedition, was 300-odd Italians who paid him for the privilege of settling in the new colony, but only had jungle disease and starvation greet them. More than a third of them died until they escaped aboard a near-derelict ship to a French penal colony, then Britain rescued them and brought them to Australia, where they were forced to undergo servitude in a bid for assimilation

Starting point is 00:22:19 before eventually founding the settlement of New Italy. before eventually founding the settlement of New Italy. Charles-Marie Bonaventure du Bray, usually called the Marquis du Rays, was born in 1832. Launched about 60 years after MacGregor's disastrous scheme, du Rays' New France scheme was probably the largest fraudulent utopia scheme in history. Reportedly, a fortune teller told du Rays when he was rather young that he was destined for greatness and that he would become a king over a utopian nation, which he then seemed to believe was his divinely ordained mission. He spent the first part of his adult life failing in several professions in various countries, and then in 1877, at age 45, he announced to the world his plan to create a utopian society in the South Seas. world his plan to create a utopian society in the South Seas. He originally planned to claim two-thirds of Western Australia, an area about three times the size of France, and was astonished

Starting point is 00:23:11 when the British government, who held the area at that time, wouldn't permit this. He'd managed to convince himself that he had a perfect right to start such a settlement there, but he eventually gave up and looked elsewhere for his utopia. He read an account of a ship commander who more than 50 years earlier had spent a few days on New Ireland in what is now part of Papua New Guinea and who described it in glowing terms. Although de Reis had never been anywhere near New Ireland, he now declared it to be an absolute paradise, completely contradicting, for example,

Starting point is 00:23:41 the known health problems of Europeans who moved to the tropics, claiming that climatological studies of this magnificent oasis prove that epidemics are unknown and impossible there. Someone who would die in our Europe would live a long life under this beneficial climate. In contrast to de Reis's description of inexhaustibly fertile soil that would be ideal for farming, a British official who inspected the area after the expeditions described the soil as of a sandy, unfertile nature which made agriculture impossible. Another European who had been to New Ireland described it as the most sodden, dank, squashy, and appalling place on the globe. Wow. I myself hold it from God. Never allow your authority to be questioned. Even should an

Starting point is 00:24:45 execution be necessary to enforce your will, do not hesitate. There is no evidence that de Reis ever intended to actually go to this paradise for himself, although it reassured those considering the expeditions that he stated that he would be living there with his family, though he would only be joining the settlement after all the necessary steps had been taken in France, which apparently never happened since he never went. But about 570 emigrants sailed to New France in four ships between 1879 and 1881, most of them French, German, and Italian. The largest and most well-known of the expeditions was the Third, a group of 340 Italians who departed in 1880 from Barcelona, as the governments of both France and Italy had declared the expedition to be a scam and were attempting to stop it.

Starting point is 00:25:31 Instead of the thriving settlement the colonists had been promised, complete with housing and cleared farmland for them, they arrived at an unprovisioned swampy wasteland surrounded by natives who were not thrilled to be displaced by these newcomers. Although they made a significant effort to form some sort of a settlement, the colonists were poorly prepared, the promised supplies from France never materialized, and 123 of the 340 died from disease, starvation, or attacks from the native people before the emaciated survivors managed to get to Australia. And as horrible as that fatality rate is, some reports that I've seen of the other three expeditions cite even worse ones. That's awful.

Starting point is 00:26:10 It's hard to tell from the description whether DeRace was, you know, sort of maliciously defrauding people or just deluded himself. Yeah, it was hard to tell. I mean, if you read some of the things that he wrote, like, he really believed that he could just take part of Western Australia. Like, he could just do that. But maybe he sincerely thought that. Yeah. On the other hand, he made no plans himself to go there. So I wonder if it's sort of a little bit of a mixture of both. The Marquis, who had received over 7 million francs for these calamitous expeditions, was arrested for fraud in Spain, where he had fled in 1882.

Starting point is 00:26:45 He was extradited to France, where he was tried and sentenced to four years in prison, on top of the 18 months he'd already served. When he was released in 1888, he tried several more fraudulent schemes, such as selling ground granite as a tooth powder, or selling a luxury world cruise that was exclusively for titled ladies that never did sail before his death in 1893. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. If you have any updates or comments, please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And if anyone has ever mispronounced your name, please do me a favor and tell me how I should say it. has ever mispronounced your name, please do me a favor and tell me how I should say it.

Starting point is 00:27:33 It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Carl Hiscock. The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg puzzle is one in which the objective is to cross all seven historical bridges of Konigsberg, connecting the islands of Nifof and Lomps to the northern and southern shores of the Pregel River and to each other, once and only once. The puzzle was famously declared impossible by Leonhard Euler in 1736. However, in 2009, a man successfully crossed all the bridges in the area exactly once without breaking any of the rules. How did he do it? Well, when he finished, was he back at his starting point? No, and you don't have to be for the puzzle either. So the puzzle is to cross all seven bridges once each? Once and only once, yes, yes. I'm trying to remember. I've heard of this,

Starting point is 00:28:24 but I can't remember what the map looks like. Yes. And you don't have to worry about, I mean, it's apparently famous in graph theory and stuff, but you don't have to worry about that aspect of it. It's just how do you manage to do an impossible task that was impossible in 1736, but somebody managed to do it in 2009. Is that part of it that it would, if you had a time machine and went back, it would still be impossible back then?

Starting point is 00:28:45 Yes. Oh, so something changed. Yes. Does that have to do with technology, the way he crossed them? No. So he was on foot? Yes. Crossing bridges?

Starting point is 00:28:54 Yes. The way I would? Yes. Okay. And you say the layout doesn't really particularly matter. There are seven bridges he has to cross once each. Yes. That's the original puzzle. That's

Starting point is 00:29:06 the puzzle. But you're not asking what the route was. No, no, no. Yeah. You don't need to worry about the route, but the puzzle is to cross the bridges. Okay. Were other people involved? He did it with his brother, but that's not relevant. He could have done it alone. Yes. Did he actually do this in Konigsberg? Yes. Oh, that's real. I had no idea this happened. It's now Kaliningrad, Russia, but yes. Okay, so what you've got there is seven bridges is what you've got. No?

Starting point is 00:29:34 No. I said that so innocently. So there aren't seven bridges? Not currently. Okay, there were seven bridges back then. Yeah, something has occurred between 1736 and 2009. Is it that one or more of the bridges has been taken down? Yeah, Carl says two of the seven bridges were destroyed during World War II and were not rebuilt,

Starting point is 00:30:01 meaning the puzzle is now possible when accounting for only the bridges that were part of the original puzzle. I just bumbled into that. I still like that puzzle. Carl sent a link to a blog post by Matthias Stahlmann, who's a professor of computer science at North Carolina State University right here in Raleigh. And in 2009, Stahlmann went to what is now Kaliningrad, Russia and followed the path and says, practical applications of this particular solution are limited to follow the planned route. you have to start on one island in the River Pregel and end on another. Helicopter drop-off and pickup can be arranged for a price. A far more interesting challenge is getting to Kaliningrad in the first place. See if you can do it within 24 hours, starting without a Russian visa. That's likely to be the lower bound.

Starting point is 00:30:51 The current upper bound is two to three weeks. And Stallman's family was actually originally from Kaliningrad, which is why he really wanted to do it on his father's side. They were actually from there. That's a really good story. So thanks to Carl for that puzzle, which was fatal only to some bridges. And if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to send, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our amazing listeners. If you like our podcast and want to help support it so that we can keep making it, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futility closet. If you become one of our wonderful patrons, you'll also get outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, the official Futility Closet

Starting point is 00:31:37 podcast. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see our website for the link at futilitycloset.com. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 compendious amusements, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and 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, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's awesome brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 254-The Porthole Murder

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