Going West: True Crime - Murder on the Bluebelle // 359

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

In November of 1961, five passengers on a luxury sailboat bound for Florida were murdered, one by one, by someone on board – with a single occupant surviving the attack. Days passed as she floated in the ocean awaiting rescue, hoping to live to tell the tale of what really transpired that night on board the ship. This is the story of the Murder on the Bluebelle, otherwise known as the Duperrault family massacre. BONUS EPISODES Apple Subscriptions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-west-true-crime/id1448151398 Patreon: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Honey: https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/women-who-survived-terry-jo-duperrault-sea-orphan-found-stranded-at-sea/1bdfb4c9-d89c-4461-9d37-1a83b27e6f41 2. The Kansas City Star: https://www.newspapers.com/image/658844283/?terms=terry%20jo%20duperrault&match=1 3. Extraordinary Lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf4ICs4my2E 4. The Today Show: https://www.today.com/popculture/orphaned-sea-tere-now-tells-story-wbna36964672 5. American Air Museum: https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/person/julian-arthur-harvey 6. Fort Lauderdale News: https://www.newspapers.com/image/271875944/?terms=terry%20jo%20duperrault 7. Green Bay Press Gazette: https://www.newspapers.com/image/190427828/?terms=arthur%20duperrault&match=1 8. CBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-em-alone-orphaned-on-the-ocean/#:~:text=Terry%20Jo%20then%20spent%20four,1961. 9. All That's Interesting: https://allthatsinteresting.com/terry-jo-duperrault 10. The Today Show: https://www.today.com/news/murder-rampage-left-girl-orphaned-adrift-2d80555998 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host Heet. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody. If you celebrate, we hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving. He then I got to hang out with my family and we had such a good day and ate amazing food. It was so so wonderful. And then we went to the pub. Yeah, we went to the pub the next day. Very hungover, but I think it helped a little hair of the dog. Yeah, it was good stuff. And also I want to give a big thank you to Cindy for recommending today's story. This is a wild tale.

It's such an interesting story for so many different reasons. And this is one that I feel like should be a way bigger story than it actually is that I found out about because of Cindy. So thank you very much Cindy. Yes, thank you so much Cindy. Well, let's dive into today's crazy episode. Alright guys, this is episode 359 of Going West, so let's get into it The first life that a serial killer takes, it tends to be someone he knows. An all new original series.

You grew up in crime scenes and you think this is one too, it's not. Storing of a goren, Ruth Marley, and Clive Owen. I think they're covering something up here. Why is it wherever you go? Death follows. FX's, her murder at the end of the world, streaming November 14th, only on Disney Plus, signed up today for $7.99 a month with ads. You're flying to meet with a new supplier to keep your business growing.

And with the business platinum card from American Express, you can earn $820 in new value and more, which includes a $200 travel credit toward your flight. Now a boarding business class. American Express, don't do business without it. Terms and conditions apply as at mx.ca slash business platinum. In November of 1961, five passengers on a luxury sailboat bound for Florida were murdered one by one by someone on board, with a single occupant surviving the attack. Days passed as she floated in the open ocean awaiting rescue, hoping to live to tell the tale

of what really transpired that night on board the ship. This is the story of the murder on the blue bell, Wisconsin were as tight-knit in all American as they come. Forty-one-year-old Arthur Dupro was a prominent optometrist in the area, and not only did he operate his own practice, but he was dabbling in the rapidly expanding field of contact lenses. Rounding out the family were Arthur's wife, 38-year-old Jean, and their three children, Brian, who was a 14-year-old freshman in high school, Terry Joe,

a six-grader, and Renee, the baby of the family, who was seven and in second grade. The family was active in their community and in their local church, and they were all very gifted athletes. Actually Arthur, who again was the dad, was known for being one of the state's top handball players, and regularly competed in tennis tournaments

with his son, Brian. Jean was also a tennis player and enjoyed showing off her skills by competing in local championships as well. Arthur loved the outdoors, which is something that he had in common with his daughter, Terry Joe, who we're going to be talking about a lot today. So these two had a particularly close bond. They were both very adventurous and shared a love of playing outside sports together.

But as devoted a father as Arthur was, his job kept him super busy, so he very much yearned to spend more time with his family. A veteran he had sailed the China Sea during World War II, but he dreamed of embarking on a boating adventure with his wife and kids someday. So finally, Arthur wanted to give his family the gift of a relaxing week at sea. So in the fall of 1961, Arthur chartered a 60-foot long twin-masted sailboat to head from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to the Bahamas. He hired Captain Julian Harvey, a former World War II fighter pilot, to helm the boat. And when Julian asked if he could bring along his wife Mary with him,

Arthur obliged, actually hiring Mary to do the cooking for the entire family. So, Arthur agreed to pay the couple $515 for the week, which would be the equivalent of over $5,000 today. Well, let's talk a little bit about Julian Harvey. So he was born and raised in New York City and had started his career as a model before enlisting in the Air Force. And after the conclusion of the Second World War, he continued to work for the Air Force and was also deployed during the Korean War. But then, in 1958, Julian was medically discharged.

Though he appeared to be a war hero to those who didn't know him very well, others knew better. Because Julian had a dark past that he kept concealed from the public. Now, in 1949, while driving his wife and mother-in-law to an outing, he somehow lost control of the vehicle. Well, Julian managed to escape the vehicle, but the car, still containing his wife and his mother-in-law, careened off a bridge and into the river below, killing them both. Their deaths were ruled accidental, and Julian received a handsome insurance payout from

this incident. In his career, Julian had also crashed two planes and sunk two ships, although he was not found to be at fault for any of these occurrences, which just kind of seems like, I don't know, you sunk two ships and you took down two planes. And then... And you killed your wife and her mother. Yeah, it's just...

A lot of about things going on with Julian. Yeah, it seems very sketchy just, you know, from the outside look. And Mary, his wife, the woman who was coming aboard the Dupro's boat, was his sixth wife. So Julian had a son from at least one of these unions, but his son stayed back during the Dupro's outing. So the family set off from Green Bay, Wisconsin on October 13, 1961, with the children preparing to miss about a month of school, but carting books and classroom assignments in tow.

A family friend of the Dupros said Arthur Quote had been working very hard and felt that it was time to get a little bit closer to his family. They took their time driving down to Florida from Wisconsin and spent about two weeks prior to this trip exploring, relaxing, and going to the beach in St. Petersburg. Arthur and Jean had even discussed uprooting their family from the Midwest because they were enjoying Florida so much. Obviously, they live in Wisconsin, going to the beach sounds like a great thing to do if you live in the Midwest, because you probably don't get to go that often.

So Terry Joe wrote in a letter to a friend, quote, "'I don't think we'll ever come back.'" Which is really eerie, unintentional foreshadowing. Yeah. So from St. Petersburg, the family made their way to Fort Lauderdale, where they set sail on November 8th, 1961 again bound for the Bahamas. They first stopped in Bimini, which is just off the coast of Miami, and then the group headed to Great Isaac K before stopping at both Gordakay and Sandy Point

on Great Abaco Island. On November 12th, the family planned ahead from Sandy Point back to Fort Lauderdale, and that day was like any of the others that they spent at sea, except they were sailing towards Port at night at this time, which is something that they had not done any other evening on the trip. The last thing 11-year-old Terry Joe remembered

of that night was heading to bed around 9pm while her parents and the Harvey's chatted upstairs. The following day, November 13, 1961, around 12.35pm, an oil-tanger came upon Captain Julian Harvey, a drift aboard a dinghy in the open ocean, claiming that he was the captain of a ship that had sunk in the midst of a violent storm the previous night. Julian had been spotted by a crew member of the oil tanker the Gulf Lion, which was bound for San Juan Puerto Rico. He was frantically signaling for help and yelling that he had the body of a dead child on board with him.

Beside him in the dinghy, young Renee Dupro lay deceased still in her life jacket. When he and the body were pulled aboard the Gulf Lion, Julian explained that the boat had run into a massive wave at 830 the evening prior. The wave had snapped the mass, tearing holes in the deck and the bottom of the boat sinking it rapidly. A fire then broke out as the boat was engulfed by water, and Julian claimed that he was unable to get any of the others amid the flames. He had grabbed Rene as the boat went down and dragged her into the dinghy with him, realizing too late

that she had already drowned. And Renee's cause of death was later confirmed by an autopsy that she had indeed drowned. So this tanker, the Gulf Lion that had picked up Julian and Renee, docked in NASA Bahamas and Julian then was flown to Miami, Florida to speak with the Coast Guard about what had happened that night, while Renee's body was taken to the mortuary. Now as Julian reeled from the tragic events of that night on the open water, the Coast Guard began their rescue efforts, scouring the water off the coast of Sandy Point, hoping that one of the five other people on board had made it out alive. And to Julian's shock three days later, he found out that someone actually did. So on November 16th, in the midst of a line of questioning about the course of events

that led up to the sinking of the Blue Bell, Julian was alerted that 11-year-old Terry Joe had been found clinging to life on a raft. The owner of the Blue Bell, Harold Pegg, who had rented it to the Duporow family, recalls that the news of Terry Joe's rescue really shook him up. So after hearing of her rescue, Julian, again the captain, asked to be excused from the interrogation for the time being, claiming that he was still exhausted from the entire ordeal. Then, that night, he checked himself into the Sandman Motel on Biscayne Boulevard under

a fake name, and the next morning, Housekeeping discovered him dead in his room. And this was a very apparent suicide because Julian had slit his wrists, legs, and throat and then he bled to death. He left a very strange and inconclusive note behind that read in part quote, I was tired and nervous, I couldn't stand it any longer. However, even with this note, he didn't admit to any murder, lies, or wrongdoing, so this confession was very vague. Not yet knowing what Terry Joe had endured, police surmised that Julian had been, quote, in a deep state of shock and was devastated at the loss of his wife, as well as racked

with guilt about losing control of the boat and the apparent storm that claimed almost an entire family, and that he didn't necessarily do anything wrong otherwise. But boy were they in for a complete shock because they were totally wrong. As puzzled police officers cordoned off the motel room for the bizarre crime scene, Terry Joe lay in a nearby hospital in a coma for two whole days. Then on November 20, Terry Joe awoke, finally alert enough to tell her side of the story. So let's go back to the beginning. On the evening of November 12, again this is 1961, Terry Joe explained that she had been

asleep downstairs when she heard her brother scream, help daddy help! Alarm, she left her room and wandered upstairs, but came upon her mother and brother, collapsed unconscious in a pool of their own blood. She froze in horror, later saying quote, I didn't know whether they were dead or not. I didn't touch them, they were not moving." Later, Terry Joe also described the scene by saying

that there had been, quote, blood all over. Shocked, she began looking for her father for help, but instead bumped into Captain Julian, who shoved her roughly down the stairs yelling, quote, get back down there. In that moment, she claims that she thought there had been an accident or that there was an imminent threat and that she should flee to safety.

I mean she trusted Julian and she did as she was told, just waiting downstairs to hear from another one of the adults or her little sister. But as she waited sitting on her bed, she noticed water flowing onto the floor at an increasingly rapid pace. Then, Julian burst into the room wielding a gun. He looked her dead in the eyes and then just left. To this day, Terry Joe claims that she doesn't know why she was spared and just assumes that Julian thought that she would stay on the boat and drown.

We're going to talk about that a little bit later though. So terrified, she remained in her room, but the water just kept getting higher and higher. When it reached the bed that Terry Joe was sitting on, she again left her room to seek help. On the deck, she saw Captain Julian with the same eerily vacant, wild-eyed look on his face. She watched as he threw the dinghy and the soul lifeboat overboard. She asked him if the boat was sinking and he simply replied, yes. Then, she watched as he jumped off the boat and disappeared into the darkness. Because remember, this is happening in the night.

In the chaos, Terry Jill remembers, quote, �The captain came toward me and threw the dinghy line to me and said, �Here, hold this� and the dinghy got loose and he came back and dove overboard toward the dinghy and he just left me there. I could tell the ship was sinking, and I remembered where this quirk float was. Just as I got it flipped over, and over the side of the boat and got in,

the boat was gone. So let's talk about this raft for a second. We're gonna post photos all across our socials if you guys wanna actually see it. It's basically this small, which works for her in a way, because she's 11 years old, but it's this small oval, like, kind of inflatable raft, and then there's netting throughout the whole bottom. It has this like oval, inflatable raft around the edges. Right, so it's not, so it's not like there's, there's not like an inflatable bottom to this at all. It's just netting on the bottom.

It's oval-shaped and then it's just like raft material blown up around the edges. Exactly. So if she is sitting in this, she is submerged in the water and her body is sitting against this netting. So this is not a good thing to be in the middle of the ocean when you're by yourself because you are in the water the entire time you're sitting on it. Exactly. So a float in the dense blackness of the night's open ocean.

Terry Joe didn't make a single sound because she feared that Julian would realize that she had survived and possibly come back to finish what he had started on the boat. As the blue bell sank into the depths beneath her, she waited in shock until morning dawn, and she could finally see that she was alone. I mean, that is so insanely traumatic, like biggest fear first of all, you're in the middle of the ocean by yourself, you're only 11 years old, and you have no idea what happened. For all, when she got on that boat and for the time that they were on it and enjoying their time, Captain Julian was somebody like I said that she trusted.

He was manning the ship, you know. His wife was cooking the meals. They were having a great time as a family. Suddenly she sees her mother and brother dead and she has no idea what's happening and now is suddenly alone in the middle of the ocean with no information. Yeah, she doesn't know where he's gone. Right, and she doesn't know where her father is either.

But the thing here is that, the fear of being out there alone in the ocean wasn't her only problem, because now she's got no drinking water, she's got no food, she has no shade, obviously it's in the Bahamas so it's probably very hot during the day and she just wasn't kind of last very long in this open water. Horrifying. Yeah, seriously so terrifying and again, she's on this kind of makeshift raft, it's not really even a raft, it's got netting in the bottom, so if she does, you know, lay down, she's submerged in water.

So she remembers that during her time on this raft, Rainbowfish pecked at her dangling feet until they bled. Oh my god. Wearing just pink overalls and a white blouse, the nights were cold and wet, and the days were impossibly hot and sunny. As morning broke, Terry Joe called out and waved furiously, just hoping that someone, anyone, was looking out for the wreckage. But as far as the eye could see, all that surrounded her was just water.

As night fell and she was nearing 24 hours aboard this raft, she finally succumbed to her exhaustion and fell asleep. According to Terry Joe, she had a dream that she was landing on an airport runway and that her parents were waiting for her on the other side. Eager to make it to them, she leapt towards them, only to find that she had been dreaming and she had just jumped off her raft. So that's even more horrifying because at this this point she's getting delirious, so she's having a dream that she's seeing her parents,

and then all of a sudden she wakes up and she's in the water and not on the raft anymore. Yeah, and so sad that she believed that to be true, and now she wakes up and she's in the ocean, in the open ocean, out of the raft. Right. So after this incident, she scrambled to get back on, now too fearful to fall asleep, but the dark ocean below her and all around her. And imagine how deep those waters are. Oh, yeah. And, you know, we're talking about other things too. Like, obviously, we talked about rainbow fish, but there are definitely sharks in those waters as well.

Yeah, we're going to get into the other wild. I know that that's your biggest fear of all time. Ever. This would be my absolute nightmare. Yeah. So when Don brought her second day, which was Tuesday, November 14th, Terry Joe was thrilled to see a small red plane circling overhead and begged for their attention, flailing her arms, screaming

and even removing her blouse and waving it wildly like a flag. So she later described that the plane descended so close to her that she felt as if she could reach out and touch it. She hoped that they would circle back for her, but sadly, they didn't. Because the white of her life raft blended in with the white caps of the waves, and the plane had never even spotted her. So Terry Joe headed into another agonizing night at sea. She later said that she spent her time daydreaming about her parents and family, hoping to be reunited with them. At one point, a school of friendly purposes

swam alongside her for a time, keeping her company and actually giving her hope. And for those who don't know what a purpose is, because I didn't actually, they kinda look like dolphins, but they're more like in the narwhal family. Yeah. So just picture that, but they were friendly and they were riding along next to her

and she actually That made her feel good maybe protecting her if you believe in stuff like that. Yeah, totally So in addition to the small red plane She also spotted a few ships passing by but as small and weak as she was With the strength of the current and how quickly the boats were moving She just knew that she had no hope of paddling to them. And good for her noticing that if she had gotten off that raft, it could have drifted away from her, and then she was really screwed.

I know, that's why I'm saying she's so smart. She was only 11 experiencing this amount of trauma by herself. Like, I just, it's an unbelievable story. So by the morning of her fourth day at sea, November 16th, Terry Joe had finally lost hope. She continued to see ships and planes pass by but no longer had the energy or even the positivity to try to flag them down. Sunburn dehydrated, starving, and just wasting away. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. But then, a freight boat traveling along the Northwest Providence Channel

spotted something white among the white caps of the waves. The boat, bound for Houston, Texas from Antwerp, Belgium, employed a lookout, perched on the bridge of the ship who spotted Terry Joe with his binoculars. The Greek freight ship, the captain Theo, raced to Terry Joe, who is now in a nearly comatose state. Around her, sharks circled, eyeing her dangling feet, and crewmembers warned her not to jump off her raft.

They hung empty oil drums over the edge of the boat, and a crew member descended into the water to grab hold of her and hoist her on board. The crew recalled her sunken cheeks, lifeless eyes, swollen lips, and sunscore skin, her hair bleached white by the sun. The men carried her to their living quarters and rested her on a bed out of the harsh tropical sunlight, and they just dabbed her with wet towels and spread Vaseline on her lips and alternated giving her sips of water and orange juice. Meanwhile, the captain attempted to get her name or any information about what had happened

to her. Terry Joe later recalled that he had said to her quote, Can't you tell me your name or how you found yourself in the water? I want to report to the Coast Guard that we have found you. If you will tell me your name, I can send information to your relatives that you are still alive. And Terry Joe simply shook her head, giving him a thumbs down. So the captain offered quote, you can't be sure they're lost. Maybe some other ship saved them. She shook her head feebly again, pointing out at the ocean. But all she could manage to say before falling

unconscious was bluebell. It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get a need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get a nice rank on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Gold tenders no, but chicken tenders yes, because those are groceries, and we deliver those too.

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Questions like, where's the data going? Is it secure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure you're sure? Get answers you can trust from Salesforce at AskMoreVi.com The Captain Theotelligraph, the Coast Guard in Miami, writing urgently, quote, picked up blonde girl, brown eyes from small white raft, suffering exposure and shock. Name Terry Jo Dupro was on Blue Bell.

Now, a helicopter came to a rescue, removing her from the freight boat and headed for a Miami hospital. Terry Joe had floated 200 miles, or over 320 kilometers from where the blue bell had sunk, and she had spent a total of 84 hours at sea. That means every hour she went over a mile. She traveled over a mile every hour that she was in that raft. In Sain. So she was found north of Great Stirup K and the Northwest Providence Channel.

As far as the Blue Bell goes, it had sunk off the coast of Sandy Point, and Julian, the captain, the piece of shit, was rescued from in between the two. What was left of Terry Joe's raft was recovered a day later on November 17th, northwest of where she had been found. The waters in which she was rescued were described as, quote, shark infested and could reach depths of up to a thousand feet. Oh my God. In the media frenzy that followed, Terry Joe came to be known as the sea orphan. Her kidneys were near failure, she was in shock, and her temperature hovered around 105 degrees.

After finally being able to squeak out the name of the boat Bluebell, Terry Joe had slipped in and out of consciousness and fell into a coma for two straight days. Doctors described her condition as serious but stable and said that they hope that she would make a full recovery. And if you're wondering what happened to Renee, they actually returned her body back to Green Bay, but held off an a burial in case further examination would shed more light on what had happened that night on board the blue bell, because obviously they need to make sure that there was no foul play. Since it seemed there certainly was with the rest of the family, so a few days later on November 20, 1961, Terry Joe was finally coherent enough to deliver her version of events.

She spoke to both the FBI and the Coast Guard, telling them what she had seen that night, and that Captain Julian Harvey had been behind it all. However, as far as a motive went, both Terry Joe and investigators came up empty. They just couldn't figure out why he would do something so drastic and unimaginable. And it's interesting to look at his past, you know, like you said, he's weird that all these things happen. He sunk ships and crashed planes and killed his mother-in-law and his wife. And it was on his sixth wife at that point. Yeah, and he's like, this guy's really sketchy obviously, and he, so it just, it feels like he kind of has this dark past behind him,

and now he does this, and it's like, what is going on? Most likely this guy is an opportunistic serial killer. If he thinks he's going to gain something out of a situation, he does not mind taking somebody out. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, so the thing is, he was kind of struggling financially at this point in time, and he stood to gain $20,000 or $200,000 today from his wife's life insurance policy,

which he had just taken out on her, by the way, and the policy paid out double if the death were a tragic accident. I see. Well, now that makes a whole lot of sense. So it's possible that the DuPro family were just, you know, they were just collateral or just, you know, victims of this adjacent crime. Exactly. And that is what the police were thinking. So they kind of theorized that he brought his wife Mary along, just kind of was like a pawn in his scheme

to collect her life insurance policy payout, and that he had always been planning on throwing her overboard or killing her aboard the ship, or maybe dumping her body at sea. And then while he was carrying out this plan, maybe he had been interrupted by somebody or somebody walked in on him or caught him in the act, and then he killed everybody on board. Right, no witnesses.

Exactly. And then, obviously, as we know, when he was found, he comes out and says, oh my God, I was on this ship and I was the captain and there was a horrible storm and everybody died. And if it wasn't for Terry Joe living they probably would have believed that story. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think in his wildest dreams did he actually think that Terry Joe was going to survive?

Yeah, of course, because she's 11 years old. She was probably going to go, what are the chances that she survived four days on the open ocean and that she was found at all? Right. But this is what Terry Joe has to say about her survival. She said later, quote, I always believed I was saved for a reason. I think he probably thought I would go down with the ship.

As investigators reeled from all these shocking revelations, Terry Joe's aunt and uncle raced to Miami to be by her side. There were actually offers to adopt her, flooding in from all over the country, but Terry Joe chose to move in with her dad's sister Dorothy and Dorothy's husband Fred. Which makes sense, this is her family, they live in Wisconsin, it's not too far-fetched. These are people that she has known her whole life. Right, not random strangers, people that she knows. Exactly.

When asked if she could grasp the tragic deaths of her entire family at such a young age, her Aunt Dorothy responded, quote, we didn't talk to her about that, but I'm sure she knew what was going on. We were told not to talk to her about that. She was a very mature 11-year-old. She was a lot like her father. She was very capable of handling the situation at that young age. I mean, she doesn't fly off and cry. She keeps a lot of things to herself.

After just over a week in the hospital recovering from her horrific journey, Terry Joe was released to the custody of her aunt and uncle, who flew back to the Green Bay area using false names to prevent the media from catching on. Upon their arrival home, her new guardians issued a statement to the press, thanking quote, the whole country for their prayers, thoughts, love, and concern. The family asked for their continued discretion and good taste, and explained that Terry Joe's mental well-being was of the utmost importance at that time. The statement read QUOTE, No personal interviews with Terry Joe will be permitted, nor will anyone be permitted

to question her about any aspect of this experience. Above all, they hope that she could resume some semblance of a normal childhood alongside her three male cousins. On April 25, 1962, the U.S. Coast Guard officially ruled in favor of Terry Joe's explanation of events, claiming that Julie and the captain had intentionally sunk the Blue Bell and murdered those on board. But with the only suspect deceased, the public would never have answers past Terry Joe's recollection of events.

So we'll never know exactly what started the conflict that night, how the family were picked off one by one, or why Julian chose to spare Terry Joe, which in my opinion I don't think he meant to. But these questions nagged Terry Joe, with the most burning among them being what happened to her father. Because she never saw his body and was unable to surmise how he had died, but sometimes allowed herself to believe that he hadn't. She later said quote, because I didn't see my father dead, I believe that he was still alive

somewhere. It was something I kept in me for many, many, many years, and I kept thinking that one day he would show up. It was my hope that he had amnesia on an island, and he was going to be coming to me soon. I did have some psychological problems facing that, very understandably. And it was so psychologically tough on her that when Terry Joe was a senior in high school, the family's attorney asked that she admit out loud that she believed her dad had perished that night on the blue bell. Though she asked we asked, she claims that she still held out hope that one day they might be reunited.

Thus, on every beat she ever visited until she was in her 30s, she searched the coastline for her dad. But let's go back a little bit again, so when she returned home to Wisconsin, a friend of hers brought her a kitten to help her cope with the loss. She assimilated into her aunt and uncle's home quickly and said that she thinks of them as her parents and her three male cousins like her brothers, and the feeling was extremely mutual as her aunt Dorothy called Terry Joe her only daughter. At 16 Terry Joe officially changed her name to Terry, still pronounced Terry but spelled T-E-R-E instead of T-E-R-R-Y to avoid connection to the tragedy. She also withdrew from the public eye and didn't conduct a media interview for decades,

choosing instead to focus on her new family and forging ahead in her new life. Siddling in Wisconsin, she got married and had three children, and when that union ended in divorce, she remarried a man named Ron who also had three children, and when that union ended in divorce, she remarried a man named Ron, who also had three children from her previous marriage. Ron really helped Terry find her voice when discussing the tragedy, even speaking in interviews with her about what happened all those years ago. In a rare interview in 1999, so nearly 40 years after it happened. Terry said, quote, we don't want to dwell on the gore and the violence.

I don't want them to say, gee, that poor little girl. I'd like them to say, she has gone on with her life, that there is a happy ending. I think it is happy, even though I've been up and down on the roller coaster for all these years. And fit as a fiddle and mentally doing very well these days. She claimed that the idea of inspiring others who suffered unthinkable trauma fortified her enough to speak out about her own, adding, quote,

quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote,

quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, In 2010, Terry took her healing one step further and co-authored a book about her experience. Together with Richard Logan, a PhD in expert in psychology of solitary survival, Terry penned and published a loan, orphaned on the ocean, which is a harrowing account of what happened if anybody wants to go read it. So in the book she again sought to appeal to survivors, saying quote, I've always believed I was saved for a reason, but it took me 50 years to gain the strength to be able to give other people hope with my story.

I'm a survivor trying to reach other survivors. It took me so long, but I want people to understand that there's no timeline with healing. It is never too late. One positive aspect about her experience is the maritime regulation it affected. Because of the white color of her life raft, she was obviously invisible in the white caps of the waves. So since then, regulations have been updated worldwide, and rafts and life rafts are now required to be a bright color Which are usually orange

Of this legislation Terry said proudly quote the Coast Guard after hearing of my ordeal changed boating regulations And that is why we now have the bright international orange on life rafts This was recommended in 1962. I'm humbled knowing that my rescue and survival led to something that has followed all over the world. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and on Tuesday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into.

It really is crazy that she had this white raft, and that is why she wasn't rescued hours or days before she eventually was, and just the chances like we said earlier of her being found at all because of the fact that she was on a white raft. Just really amazing that they made these changes because of this story. And again, this feels like the kind of story

that would be a household story. Like everybody would know this story. And it probably was back in the 60s, but probably kind of fell off over time. But yeah, it is a crazy story, but the one thing that really pisses me off about this case is the fact that there was no justice really served. Yeah.

Like Julian was just a piece of shit, and probably they would have found out about all the other things that he had done previously about his dark past, and he may have gone down for those crimes as well. Well, he probably knew that was gonna happen, which is likely why he took his own life, because he was like, whoops, I'm gonna get caught now. He's a scammer and a skimmer and a very evil man,

so rest in peace. Oh my god, never heard that. I'm never heard that somehow. But yeah, I mean, amazing that Terry was able to survive so horrible what happened to her family, but I'm really glad that she has taken her experience and is trying to help others with it. I just hope that she is leading an amazing life for herself. And how awesome that her aunt and uncle took her in and that she really does feel like they're her parents. Exactly.

She has a family that she feels very, very close with and that's super special. Somewhat of a happy ending, which we rarely see on this show. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. Thank you again to Cindy for recommending this story. If you guys have a case that you want us to cover on the show, we have a massive list

but are always accepting new recommendations. You can just email us going westpodcast at gmail.com. That is the only way that we are gonna see it. So go ahead and do that if you'd like and we'll see you in a few days. Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you