Futility Closet - 267-The Murchison Murders

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 gorilla's love poem to a message for the moon. This is episode 267. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1929, detective novelist Arthur Upfield wanted to devise the perfect murder, so he started a discussion among his friends in Western Australia. He was pleased with their solution until local

Starting point is 00:00:38 workers began disappearing, as if the book were coming true. In today's show, we'll describe the Murchison murders, a disturbing case of life imitating art. We'll also incite a revolution and puzzle over a perplexing purchase. In 1929, Arthur Upfield seemed to be just another worker in Western Australia. He worked in a lonely region known as the Murchison, maintaining the thousand-mile fence that kept rabbits out of farmers' wheat fields. But as he worked, Upfield was thinking about murder. He was an aspiring novelist, and his second book had had some promising success. He'd come up with an Aboriginal detective named Napoleon Bonaparte, who solved difficult cases by finding subtle clues.

Starting point is 00:01:22 The character's popularity had led the mystery writers of America to invite Upfield to join their society, making him the first foreigner to do so. Now he needed a good idea to cement his success. He thought he had one. Most classic detective stories followed a pretty standard set of rules. The detective was confronted with a body and had to figure out who the killer was. But Upfield thought, what if the killer left behind no body at all? If he destroyed it utterly, leaving no trace, the detective would have an uncommon challenge to prove that a murder had been committed, how it had happened, and who had done it. As he turned it over in his mind, Upfield came to see this as a perfect plot idea,

Starting point is 00:01:58 what he called a nugget of gold, like the ideas behind Tarzan of the Apes and The Prisoner of Zenda. He felt sure it could be the basis of a great book. But it could work only if he came up with a perfect method of murder. The story would take place here in Western Australia, and he had no trouble inventing a cast of characters and even planning the action. But he couldn't start writing until he thought of a simple and effective way to destroy a corpse. He called this Problem No. 1.

Starting point is 00:02:23 The method had to be available to anyone in the Murchison, so that ruled out a crematorium or a vat of acid, and it had to destroy the body completely. If the killer only dropped it down a well or even collapsed a mine shaft onto it, it would still exist and might somehow come to light. In the early winter of 1929, Upfield stayed for several weeks at the Camel Station, a five-room homestead that stood along the fence. At the station lived an overseer named George Ritchie, and one night Upfield said he'd pay a pound for the answer to this problem. To his surprise, Ritchie said, easy. He said the killer should lure his victim out into the bush where there was plenty of dry wood. There he should shoot him and burn the body. When the fire was cold, he should work the ashes through a sieve

Starting point is 00:03:03 to catch any traces that had survived the fire, such as bone fragments, buttons, and boot nails. The metal pieces could be thrown down a well or dissolved in sulfuric acid, which every station in the Murchison kept on hand for tinsmithing. And the bones could be crushed into dust in a dolly pot, which is an iron cylinder in which prospectors crush rocks to assess their gold content. Those, too, were common in the area. Once the bone dust was thrown to the wind, nothing would remain of the body. To make an excuse for the fire, the killer could shoot some kangaroos and burn them in the same spot. It was a common practice to burn carcasses to keep them from breeding flies.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Upfield paid Ritchie his pound. He had solved problem number one. Anyone could use his method, using tools and materials that were available to any local worker, and it would completely destroy the body, leaving nothing to show that a murder had been committed. But that raised problem number two. If a killer committed such a crime, how could a detective solve it? How could he convince a judge and jury that a murder had taken place? Upfield couldn't think of an answer to problem number two, and neither could George Ritchie, and neither could any of their friends who worked along the fence. At one point, Ritchie accosted a local stockman named Snowy Rolls and said to him, Hey Snow, if I was to shoot you stone dead, drag your body over to that dead scrub, burn it thoroughly,

Starting point is 00:04:16 then come back tomorrow with a sieve and go through the ashes for the bones and the metal objects on your clothes, dump the metal objects down a well and dolly your bones to dust, how could my crime be discovered? Rolls turned around and took off on his motorcycle, and Ritchie realized that he'd been holding a.22 rifle as he'd asked the question. Weeks passed, and then the solution popped into Upfield's mind. In his story, the victim could have a steel plate in his head,

Starting point is 00:04:40 unbeknownst to the killer. If a bullet carried off this plate, it would survive the destruction of the body and provide a crucial clue for the detective to find. That solved problem number two, and Upfield set to work writing his novel, which he called The Sands of Windy. It was published 18 months later. While all this was happening, life on the fence went on as it always had. The Murchison was a huge region, and men constantly came and went as they sought work. Late in the year, Snowy Rolls left his job on Narnedee Station and set out to the northwest with two other men, a stock contractor named James Ryan and Ryan's mate George Lloyd.

Starting point is 00:05:13 They seemed to get along well together. Before they left, Ryan sang some songs in a fine voice, while Lloyd accompanied him on a brand new accordion. Word of the three occasionally got back to the station. After a week, Rolls told a local prospector that Ryan and Lloyd were looking for timber among the scrub in order to build a sheep yard. And on Christmas Eve, Upfield ran into Rolls on the steps of a local hotel. Rolls told him that he'd borrowed Ryan's truck to come into town. None of this seemed to miss, and Upfield

Starting point is 00:05:39 thought no more about it. But some months after this, word spread that a different man had disappeared. Louis Caron had resigned his job at Ouija Station and set out with Snowy Rolls in May 1930. Caron had never been seen again, and Snowy Rolls had cashed his paycheck. The missing man was a prolific letter writer and had promised friends that he'd let them know how he was faring in his search for a new job. But he never did this. At length, a friend of his named John Lemon sent a telegram to Knowles asking for information. He never got a reply. Three weeks after this, an inspector brought even grimmer news. James Ryan and George Lloyd, the two men who had set out with Knowles from

Starting point is 00:06:14 the Camel Station in December 1929, had not been seen again either and were now considered missing. And Lewis Caron had been found, or rather some charred remains had. Twenty miles north of the Camel Station, the remains of a large fire had been discovered. The side of a coffee tin several feet from the fire was badly burned, showing that it had been quite hot, and light trails of ash led from this fire deeper into the bush, where two more heaps of ash were found. The grass under those was unburned, which showed that the ashes had been carried there when cold. Among the ashes of the carried there when cold. Among the ashes of the larger fire, police found what they believed to be pieces of a skull, human and animal bones, charred woolen material, and a bone button.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Among the smaller heaps, they found artificial teeth, gold clips from a dental plate, metal eyelets from some boots or shoes, a wedding ring, a burned human molar, and several strange wire stitches. Karen's friend John Lemon confirmed that Karen had worn false teeth, and these were identified by Karen's dentist in New Zealand. Lemon also confirmed that Karen wore a wedding ring, and the ring was later identified by Karen's wife and by the man who had sold it to her in 1925. The stitches had come from two boxes that Karen had received from a jeweler in Perth. He had sent them two watches to be repaired. That jeweler said that the same watches had sent them two watches to be repaired.

Starting point is 00:07:28 That jeweler said that the same watches had later been sent in for further work, and they'd been sent, this time, by Snowy Rolls. All of this disturbingly parallels the fictional murder case in Upfield's novel. In the real case, police examined the ashes of a large fire ten months after Lewis Caron disappeared. In the novel, Napoleon Bonaparte did the same thing two months after the murder victim was reported missing. In both cases, vital evidence was recovered from the ashes that was linked to the missing man. In each case, police also found melted lead equal in weight to a bullet. In both cases, police found evidence that the killer had crushed the bones of his victim. And in both cases, animal bones were found among the ashes. The difference was that in the

Starting point is 00:08:03 novel, the killer had worked assiduously to destroy the remains entirely. In the case of Lewis Caron, the killer had apparently been careless, leaving behind important evidence. The trail of the other two missing men, James Ryan and George Lloyd, was colder. Ryan had last been seen in a mining town called Mount Magnet, but nothing further was known there. But on driving south, Detective Sergeant Harry Manning found the sites of eight fires similar to the one that had been linked to Lewis Caron. Among the ashes were the eyelets of boots or shoes, the metal parts of an accordion, and the remains of some bones that had been broken up so finely that no expert could tell whether they had belonged to a human or an animal. The site of the northern fire, where it seemed Lewis Caron's body had been destroyed, seemed to have been chosen

Starting point is 00:08:43 deliberately. It was rarely visited, but a fire there would not have seemed unusual, and the items at the southern site would not have been burned by an innocent man. For example, an experienced bushman who no longer wanted an accordion would simply have dropped it, not tried to destroy it. Whoever had burned Caron's body knew the plot of Upfield's book because he was following the method it outlined of destroying evidence of a murder. The bones found in the southern fires might only have been animal bones, but it remained to be explained why they had been broken up so finely. All three of the missing men had last been seen in the company of Snowy Rolls. If Rolls wasn't himself the killer, it seemed likely that he knew what had happened to these men. If he was the killer, it seemed very unlikely that he'd committed

Starting point is 00:09:22 three killings in the heat of the moment without planning. His motive might have been gain. He had cashed Lewis Caron's paycheck and now owned James Ryan's truck. Manning found roles at Hillview Station and recognized him as John Thomas Smith, who'd been convicted of burglary in 1928 but escaped from jail. Among his possessions were the two watches that Lewis Caron had sent out for repair. He was taken to Perth and charged with jailbreaking, which allowed the authorities to hold him while they built their case against him. It appeared that Arthur Upfield's murder method had worked very well. There wasn't enough evidence to charge Rawls with the murder of James Ryan or George Lloyd, and in the case of Lewis Caron, a few pieces of skull were the only remains that could be identified as human. If the killer had broken those up more carefully, it could not have been proven that a human body had been destroyed at all. In fact,

Starting point is 00:10:08 if Karen's killer had more carefully combed the ashes for a few incriminating metal objects, he might have escaped justice altogether, because the Crown had to prove that Karen's remains were in the ashes before it could prove that Rolls had killed him. The trial began on March 10, 1932. Public opinion was strongly against Rolls, but most of the witnesses, including Upfield, still wanted to believe he was innocent. They knew him well and found him personally likable. He'd been a good friend and a conscientious worker. Also, they knew that the remote region where this drama had unfolded was not like the city. In the bush, a man could disappear and his skeleton not be found for years,

Starting point is 00:10:42 and the population of central Australia was so transient that sometimes, for his own reasons, a man might choose to disappear. But Snowy Rolls was not behaving like an innocent man. He told three different stories as to how he'd acquired James Ryan's truck, and the relics that had been recovered from the ashes had been identified at an inquest by Lewis Caron's wife, jeweler, and dentist. Rolls' story was that he and Caron had simply fallen out and parted ways. He said he hadn't even learned of Karen's disappearance until the week before the trial, when he read about it in a Murchison newspaper.

Starting point is 00:11:11 But various witnesses contradicted that claim, and the Crown prosecutor caught some outright lies in other parts of his story. Arthur Upfield was not accused of any wrongdoing, but found himself in the dreamlike position of having to testify that he'd invented this crime as a piece of entertainment and then watched it apparently put into practice along the rabbit-proof fence. At one point, trying to discredit him, Roll's defense attorney said, oh, so you go around the Murchison discussing plots for murder stories with the various people you meet? And Upfield had to say yes. In fact, by this time, his novel, The Sands of Windy,

Starting point is 00:11:43 had appeared in print, and its story now seemed almost like nonfiction. A murderer burns his victim's body, sifts the ashes for bones and metal, justifies the fire by burning three kangaroo carcasses on the spot, dissolves the metal in nitric acid, crushes the bones in a dolly pot, and scatters them to the winds. Crucially, Upfield testified that he remembered a discussion at the Campbell Station homestead on October 5, 1929, at which Ritchie, Rolls, Upfield, and two other men had discussed this method of murder. The psychology of this whole thing is what fascinates me the most, and I couldn't get an answer on this. Upfield wrote here and there about this experience, but he never quite says what his own personal feelings were about it. And he must have had some real, I guess the word is chagrin or misgivings about,

Starting point is 00:12:27 it doesn't seem that Snowy Rolls contemplated murder until he thought he had a foolproof way to get away with it. I wonder about other murder novelists. I mean, anybody who writes a murder novel in a way is maybe providing instructions to somebody on how to do it. I wonder if anybody considers that when they write such a novel, especially if you come

Starting point is 00:12:49 up, I mean, in this case, he specifically wanted something that anybody in the area could do. And so it wouldn't require getting a hold of any kind of specialized implements or anything. And without intending to, he sort of assembled a whole committee of people to think about the problem over several weeks to come up with an answer. And looking, you know, that's perfectly innocent. No one ever thought that he was doing this for any reason but just to write a book. But in hindsight, I just wonder what his feelings were, realizing what had happened.

Starting point is 00:13:21 In summing up the case for the jury, the judge said, the interesting subject of discussion was how a human body could be destroyed without leaving any trace. The indications are that the method then discussed was carried out in this case, but whether Rawls did it is a matter for you to decide. They decided in two hours. Snowy Rawls was guilty of the murder of Lewis Caron. Asked whether he had anything to say, Rawls replied, I have been found guilty of a crime that has never been committed, meaning that there was no conclusive evidence that Lewis Caron was dead. The judge said, is that all? Is that all you have to say? Rolls remained silent, and the judge sentenced him to death. He appealed twice, but both appeals were rejected, and Snowy Rolls was hanged in

Starting point is 00:13:57 Fremantle Jail on June 13, 1932. He never confessed. George Lloyd's relatives urged him to say something about Lloyd's fate, but he never did, and formally the disappearance of never confessed. George Lloyd's relatives urged him to say something about Lloyd's fate, but he never did, and formally the disappearance of James Ryan and George Lloyd was never solved. Whatever his misgivings, The Sands of Windy turned Arthur Upfield into one of Australia's best-known authors. The cover of the book even included newspaper clippings from Snowy Roll's trial. The fictional detective Napoleon Bonaparte would go on to solve 29 mysteries through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and was featured in a TV series. In the novel, Napoleon Bonaparte would go on to solve 29 mysteries through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s and was featured in a TV series. In the novel, Napoleon Bonaparte even praises the killer's resourcefulness. He says, identifiable portions of it in existence, the likelihood of their being charged with murder was nil. For my part, as a criminologist, I doff my hat to them. To them are due my

Starting point is 00:14:49 sincerest thanks for the entertainment the problem they set up has afforded me. Futility Closet would not still be here today if it weren't for the generous support of our Thank you. If you'd like to make a more ongoing donation to our show, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to bonus material like outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, our dedicated feline mascot. You can learn more at our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of our website for the link. And thanks so much to everyone who helps support Futility Closet. We really couldn't do this without you. The main story in episode 259 was about the Astor Place Riot, a deadly New York City brawl in 1849 that originated with a dispute between two Shakespearean actors. Alex Baumans wrote,

Starting point is 00:16:13 Listening to your discussion about the Shakespearean riots, I was reminded of our own Belgian national history. Our revolution of 1830 against the Dutch king was sparked by an opera, La Muette des Portes. Now, of course, revolutions don't happen because a tenor sings an aria. The situation in the southern provinces was already very tense, and the opera, a stirring tale of heroic resistance against tyranny, provided a rallying point for the young Brussels intellectuals who wanted political change. During the performance, things got out of hand, riots started, and the rest, as they say, is history. This is another example of how theatrical performances could focalize

Starting point is 00:16:51 political and social tensions in the early 19th century. I suppose in those days, it was one of the easiest ways like-minded people could gather in large crowds. In August 1830, there was a three-day festival in Brussels to celebrate King William I's birthday, despite the rising tensions there against the Dutch government. The opera, to be performed on August 25th, had been chosen to cap the festivities. Wikipedia states that nationalist disturbances during a performance of the work around the time of the July Revolution in Paris, had caused the opera to be temporarily banned, but the ban was lifted for this performance.

Starting point is 00:17:28 According to a Belgian government website, it appears that the revolt may have been orchestrated in advance, as posters had supposedly appeared in the city advertising that the program for the festival would be Monday, fireworks, Tuesday, festive lighting, Wednesday, revolution. Whether planned in advance or not, the crowd rose up after the rousing aria, Sacred Love of the Fatherland, to pour out into the streets and begin the riots that marked the start of the Belgian Revolution,

Starting point is 00:17:56 which did eventually end with Belgian independence. That sounds a lot, I mean, he's right. It reminds me a lot of the Astor Place riots. As this recedes into history, we tend to notice the most striking parts of it, which is that there was this bizarre brawl over Shakespearean actors. But there were a lot of social tensions in the United States underneath that that are just less visible or less striking, and so you don't notice them as well. as well. Yeah, the other thing that struck me was that they don't know for sure whether this aria acted like a pre-planned signal for the start of the riots, or whether it was really

Starting point is 00:18:32 more like just a final spark that ignited what had been an increasingly heated situation. Like, it's not clear how orchestrated in advance this was. And I think I remember you saying that about the Astor Place riots, too. Yeah, it was a funny thing to research that story, because you're right. To us today, it looks like it was the sort of thing that erupted spontaneously. But some of my sources said that it had been sort of planned to some extent. Like troublemakers, at least some of them hoped for this outcome. That's another thing, is that the whole... The thing about Astor Place is that the centerpiece of it is the institution of theater in the United States and in Britain, which is this one institution, one place that people from all walks of life would physically

Starting point is 00:19:16 journey to and get together to sort of observe and interact with one another. And in today's society, we don't have anything like that anymore. I mean, we're all so atomized now, we hardly even meet each other. So it's hard even to imagine what that society was like, because it's so different from what we have today. Yeah, I just think it's interesting that they don't know for sure, that they can't know for sure how planned in advance this was, because I thought that would be really interesting to know, but I guess nobody would have written it down,

Starting point is 00:19:43 or written it down in a way that other people would have found. No. I mean, there were some, I'm trying to remember the details. There's some evidence that there were some people who were hoping for some kind of... Right. Yeah. But here with the Belgian Revolution, it's, I mean, there were reports that these posters showed up, although they didn't mention, you know, at this aria, we're going to all rise

Starting point is 00:20:02 up in riots. So it's, it's just hard to know. But it is, I mean, if you were sort of a political firebrand, and you're hoping for some kind of conflict, that would be the place to try for it, because that's... Right, and everybody, everybody in the audience who maybe wasn't in on it would be all stirred up, right? And all those tensions are right there to be sort of exploited. Alex also said in his email, I have been able to find very little on Google about

Starting point is 00:20:26 Jean-Francois Lafouillade, the tenor whose aria sparked everything off that night. I wonder what it does to a singer's ego to know that you have started a revolution. I can imagine it would hurt your chances of employment among the royal courts of Europe at the time. That's a good point. Jim Devlin wrote about a different aspect of the Astor Place riot. Hi, Greg, Sharon, and of course, That's a good point. and thespians may refer to the Scottish play to avoid this. And Greg informed me that there were actually three productions of Macbeth being performed in New York City on the night of the riot. And while it wasn't that unusual at that time to have Shakespearean works being performed at more than one of New York City's half a dozen theaters, it was pretty unusual to have three of them performing the same play on the same night. The theatrical superstition

Starting point is 00:21:26 around this play, which some call the Scottish Curse, holds that saying the name Macbeth while inside a theater, other than as part of a script, will cause some kind of disaster. There's a variation of the superstition that also prohibits quoting any lines from the play while in a theater, again except as part of a rehearsal or performance. To avoid the taboo word, the play itself may be referred to as the Scottish play or the Bard's play. The character of Macbeth may be called the Scottish King or Scottish Lord, and his wife may be referred to as the Scottish Lady. Legend has it that the play was cursed right from the start when a coven of witches objected to Shakespeare's using real

Starting point is 00:22:05 incantations in the play, and so they put a curse on it. It's said that the play's bad luck showed itself in its very first performance around 1606, when the boy actor playing Lady Macbeth died suddenly and Shakespeare himself had to take over the part. There are a number of other stories of misfortune connected to the play, such as a real dagger being used instead of a prop that resulted in the death of an actor during a 17th century production and an actor being killed during a battle scene in 1947. Besides several other deaths of actors or directors connected to the play, there are many accounts of accidents, including a stage weight that narrowly missed hitting Laurence Olivier during a performance in 1937, and very painful burns suffered by Charlton Heston during a performance in 1953 from his tights apparently having been laundered in kerosene.

Starting point is 00:22:56 In addition to the Astor Place riot, at least two other productions of the play were the center of riots in 18th century London, and there are even stories of bad luck dogging the Verdi opera that's based on Macbeth. Now, it seems to me that any very popular play that's been performed for hundreds of years is likely to have had its share of misfortune, and that selective attention could make people remember any accidents connected with Macbeth and forget the presumably thousands of rehearsals and performances that have gone off without a hitch. Wikipedia suggests that the origins of the

Starting point is 00:23:30 superstition might stem from its being such a popular play that it was commonly staged by theaters in financial trouble, or that the high production costs of the play itself might have landed theaters in financial difficulties, starting an association between the play and theaters going out of business. The Telegraph suggests that for actors, the play might have been dreaded because traditionally theater owners would use Macbeth to replace a struggling production. So if you were performing in a play and started hearing about Macbeth, that tended to mean that you were about to be out of a job. That's interesting.

Starting point is 00:24:02 So that would make it sort of taboo, like, don't speak the word Macbeth to me, right? I don't want to hear that it's coming in. So assuming that you buy into the idea that the word Macbeth must not be spoken in a theater and you accidentally say it anyway, what do you need to do? Well, the Royal Shakespeare Company claims that in this situation, you can avoid catastrophe by exiting the theater, spinning around three times, spitting, cursing, and then knocking on the theater door to be let back in. History.com has a similar prescription of leaving the theater, spinning around three times, spitting over your left shoulder, and then either reciting a line from Shakespeare or cursing. Wikipedia lists a similar cleansing ritual and even has some examples of lines from

Starting point is 00:24:45 Shakespeare that are commonly used for this purpose. Wikipedia also notes that some production groups insist that the offender may not re-enter the theater until invited to do so, therefore making it easy to punish frequent offenders by leaving them outside. So that would be a reason in itself not to do it. Jim also said in his email that he lives in Scunthorpe, UK, as he says, subject of one of your previous podcasts, I used to work at the local hospital and I can recall that the internal email system crashed when they introduced a profanity filter. And for those who are a little hazy on the details of episode 217, Scunthorpe contains in its name a string of letters that make up a rather offensive word.

Starting point is 00:25:31 So the name of the town caused a lot of problems with software obscenity filters in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was interesting to hear from someone who actually had firsthand experience of this. Yeah, it's probably not funny to them because they had to live through it. But it does seem kind of amusing today.

Starting point is 00:25:49 And we heard from one of our younger correspondents, Scarlett Casey and her feline companion, with some follow-up to episode 250's story about a 1904 steamboat disaster. Scarlett sent an email with the subject line, Botter Meinhof strikeskes Again, and wrote, To the penguins running the best podcast ever and their feline emperor. You'll never guess what we recently learned in history of science and technology class. We learned about steamboats.

Starting point is 00:26:16 Recently, we had a quiz and three questions happened to be about the one and only General Slocum. So it is kind of funny how these somewhat obscure topics seem to pop up elsewhere after you learn about them, but I was glad to hear that our show might have some actual real-world utility for at least some of our listeners. Three questions on the General Slocum, though. Wow. Yeah, I'm glad that's getting taught, though.

Starting point is 00:26:38 It's an important story, and it was almost forgotten. Yeah, well, it was interesting that it was in her History of Science and Technology class. Yeah. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your follow-ups, comments, and questions. So if you have any that you'd like to send to us or our feline emperor, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I have to see if I can work out what's actually going on, asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:27:17 This is from listener Jim Power. A woman was shopping for her favorite chocolate at a specialty store. It came in many package sizes, although she was primarily concerned about the cost per piece, and despite the fact that she would have loved to buy the biggest package and eventually eat it all, she elected the smallest package, which had the highest price per piece.

Starting point is 00:27:34 Why? Okay. So she's shopping for chocolate at her favorite store, did you say? At a specialty store. Oh, a specialty store. Does it matter where she is? No.

Starting point is 00:27:47 Oh, shoot. I was thinking. Yeah, no. I was thinking like she's in an airport or she's in another country and she's going to have to pay customs or I don't know, some special tax or something. No. So no. So the location doesn't matter in any way.

Starting point is 00:27:59 That's right. Does it matter what kind of specialty store it is? No. They just have a lot of different packages of chocolate. Does this have anything to do with the fact that chocolate melts? So it's not like she's afraid she won't get through a larger package before it all melts? Oh, that's good. I like that.

Starting point is 00:28:15 You know, like it's a hot day or it's a hot summer. Could this be something other than chocolate and still work? You mean she might have behaved the same way with a different good with a different with a different product yes okay does it need to be a food product no so it could be soap yes okay so therefore stop thinking about chocolate um so does she does she have a limited amount of money to spend? No. Or is she trying to spend a limited amount of money or a set amount of money?

Starting point is 00:28:53 No. Is she trying to make change? No. Okay. You know, like you need to break a big bill or she's trying to use up a certain amount of currency. No, that's a good guess. Nothing like that. So you say she buys the smallest package available?

Starting point is 00:29:08 Yes. Even though that's probably not the best cost per ounce, let's say. Right. In fact, he says this has the highest price per piece. The highest price per piece. Does it matter per piece versus per weight? No. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:23 Okay. And she does this um and it doesn't matter that it's chocolate okay does it matter what's going to happen next after the purchase yes does it matter anything that's happened before the purchase no no so it matters what's going to happen next. Is she going to travel? Yes. Someplace other than back to her home? Yes. Okay. Is she traveling now? While she's buying it?

Starting point is 00:29:55 Yeah, like she's on a trip. No. So she's going to go on a trip? Yes. Is she planning to bring the chocolate with her? Yes. Does it matter what way she's going to travel, whether it's like by ship or by plane yes she's going by plane no she's going by ship no car she's gonna walk she's going hiking she's gonna ride a camel um uh is it some typical man oh she's going into space yes she's

Starting point is 00:30:22 going into space and there are weight restrictions. Oh, my. She's locked right up to that. Well, I was trying to think what was I missing for means of traveling. The woman was an astronaut and was going to the space station. Astronauts are given a very small weight allowance for personal items, and she wanted to bring her favorite chocolate as part of that. She wasn't worried about the price of the chocolate, but rather the cost of sending it into space. part of that. She wasn't worried about the price of the chocolate, but rather the cost of sending it into space. That varies between $9,000 and $43,000 per pound, depending on the launch vehicle.

Starting point is 00:30:50 Oh, oh my. So you better worry about the weight of your chocolate. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, whether it's set in space or not, and I forgot to ask if it was, you can 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'd like to become one of our awesome supporters,

Starting point is 00:31:20 please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support a section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 10,000 compendious amusements. Check out the Futility Closet store in case you want a penguin-themed shirt or mug or apron. 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. All of our music was written and performed by my extraordinary brother-in-law, Doug Ross.

Starting point is 00:31:58 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 267-The Murchison Murders

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.