My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 228 - The Season of the Abyss

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Karen and Georgia cover the St. Francis Dam Disaster and the kidnapping of Elizabeth Shoaf.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music, Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. To my favorite murder, the podcast. The podcast that you tune into every what? Thursday morning? You do your best. Afternoon, nowadays. Maybe Friday, maybe a Friday evening. Sure. Life is, life is changing. You're changing. Things are busy. Who knows what day it is anymore? Yeah. In this season of your life, that, you know, that, that's what the influencers are saying now, like the beauty, like the lifestyle influencers are calling like the part of your,

like in this season of my life where it's like, you're changing. I'm going to have to ask you to check out of whatever that's entire culture is that you're talking about right now. It's a cult all right. It sounds horrifying. I'm picturing a lot of felt hats, people speaking that it were wearing felt hats at the same time. That's right. The word autumnal comes up a lot, probably even when it's not autumn. There's a lot of people that pull their sleeves down over their hands to talk. Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks. No, thanks. That's Karen Kilgara. Oh, that's Georgia Heartstart. Hi. Well, how are you? What's going on? Just got back from a nice trip with the fam. And again, in this season of my life, it feels like I can't tell how much time is passing. So,

I literally one day turned to my sister and went, I've been here for three weeks. She was like, I don't care, stay here. I was like, no, I can't, I can't just leave my home and dogs in life. Yeah. But it was really nice. So, I got to be up there for Father's Day. A lot of lovely well wishes on Twitter for home gym, which he pretended he didn't care about, but then had already looked at by the time I got to his house for Father's Day dinner. No, he does. Of course, he does. He's a, he's now a legit Twitter lurker. Like I can't really be myself on Twitter anymore. Oh, no. Because my dad's there. What if he just doesn't follow you? He'd like lyrics everyone else's stuff. He's really into Chrissy Teigen and all of the things she makes in her beautiful

kitchen. She's fun. She's fun. You know, she's legitimately funny. Yeah, that would be so typical. How have you been? Fine. This season of my life revolved. What season? Is it winter? Absolutely winter. It is the winter of my life and existence and I'm in pajamas right now. Fuckin' stayin' home. Right? Yeah. I mean, it does feel like a lot of people have decided they're just not quote unquote doing quarantine anymore. Totally. Well, the numbers skyrocket out of control. I mean, it's almost like the layers of this seven day layer dip of horror. They just keep coming where it's like, I thought already had guacamole. Now here's another one of guacamole horror where people are pretending the pandemic ended because they want it to.

I read some quotes like there were these gals in Florida who like 16 of them went to a bar when they opened. They all got it. And the gale was like, I was just done. I just needed to get out. I was done. And it's like, well, but the global pandemic isn't. So it doesn't care that you're done. And also, we're all fuckin' done as whole. We're all done. No one likes it, okay? Like no one likes it. You know what I really miss? I miss missing Vince. I bet. I bet. I just like, when I went down to record just now, I gave him a kiss and I was like, I'll miss you. And then I was like, will you? Will I? Let's do your best to miss Vince. This is nice. I would love to. You know, this will be our first three hour. My favorite murder.

Just so you can miss him a little bit more. That'd be great. Thank you so much. It's very strange. It's like, well, it was nice in Northern California, they're not doing that up there. They've been very serious since the beginning. I understand the thinking of like, I can't do it anymore, or I need to socialize like the people in their 20s. Like if I was in my 20s in a quarantine, I would have gone insane. Totally. I would have, absolutely. So it's not like there's not empathy, but it's also like too bad. Are dating apps still like happening or more than ever? Or now more than ever? Now more than ever. No, how would I know? I don't know. I know you. I want to ask you,

but you don't fucking do it. I would love to know. I would, I would love to know. I just, not, yeah, I could never, I couldn't do it even just to be, just to peek around and have the gossip. I know. Come on, make up a name and, and let's know. I mean, look, by the end of this, I might have to simply because, you know, being cut off from humanity really, it really puts your, you know, it helps you put your pride aside. Sure. When you're like, oh, no. Oh, I have no, no pride left. I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday when I got up and I was just like, you can't go another minute without a shower. Like I keep looking at my hair and I'll do, I have this thing where I pull my bangs back and pull my ponytail in. So it doesn't matter

that my hair is a greasy mess. And it was, my hair was just like, hmm, it's, there's not another moment. I forgot what a real, my sister's real clean, cleaner, clean neck, real. So she, her season of cleaning is abundant. It's nonstop. It's year round. She did not like, she'd always be like, are you going to take a shower? And be like, why? We're going to Safeway. Like who cares? But she was not into it. So that was kind of, it was good to be around people and it was good to kind of have that check every day of like, why not put on a little lipstick? It's not, you know, why give up just because there's a pandemic and total social upheaval and the exposure of a, of a completely white supremacist

system and government and people who are supposed to be our peers. And we're like, who are you? Who are you? But now we know, but, but, but we have to talk about, we have to keep it positive because the best thing that I would have never been able to envision for this season of our lives. I would have never, I've never been able to know that this was possible. And the, the tick talkers and the K-poppers made it happen. They put in, and everyone already knows this story, but I just want to say it anyway, if you've, if maybe you're out on the tundra and you haven't heard about this for the Tulsa Trump rally, which was such an offense, was so gross. They originally planned it on Juneteenth, June 19th of this year, and they did it in Tulsa.

Which is the day of emancipation, that emancipation went through and in Tulsa, sorry, you were saying it and then I just stated it over you. But it's true. I mean, like it's the kind of thing where it, it's almost like these facts of reality of what this, these people do and how offensive it is and how gross it is. It just doesn't land anymore because it's one thing after the other. But I was like, yeah, if there is some kind of serious rioting because of this, it's deserved that what kind of fucking bullshit is this that they're like, oh, oh, we're going to go to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Black Wall Street massacre took place on Juneteenth and we're going to have a Trump

rally. If you don't, if that isn't fucking on purpose and like a fucking fuck you to Black people, then I don't know what is the season of the abyss has happened and turned. Yes. Right now Slayer song. Yeah. Oh, the season, the season of the abyss. It was one of my high school boyfriends, sorry, he was a fucking metalhead. And so Slayer seasons of the abyss was our song. I thought you were just making that up. I'm not. I'm a cheese girl. I'll just bust it out on air guitar with Vince or he'll start singing it and I'll bust it out on air guitar. Fucking good. It's the season of the abyss. It's so true. Right. Fuck Slayer, get your felt hat on because we're here. It's here. Get the patches sewn into your sweaters.

It's here. Make your, is Slayer the one that had that S that was like a line and then a thing? Yeah. I think that was all over. That was carved into every desk in my high school. I think Slayer was big, big in my high school. Well, it's funny you mentioned that because I have a show. The perfect segue. It's funny you mentioned that. Okay. So there's a new, did you know there's a new Perry Mason, like a remake of Perry Mason? Wait, is it on already? Yeah, it just started this last week because it's the guy from the Americans. That's so awesome that Matthew Reese. Yes. You think it's I think he's Welsh. Holy crap. Is it good? Oh, okay. First of all, there's no, they did not, I'm going to go ahead and do what they should have done, which is trigger warning

dead baby, like full on trigger warning dead baby. Oh, no. It's very, it's, it's a really gruesome, like dark show. British, right? No. Oh, it takes place in LA in the 20s. It's nothing like the old Perry Mason. He's not even a lawyer. He's like a detective. Cool. Okay. Yeah. It's dark and it's good. And it's like noir and a little over the top. And then you remember that it's Perry Mason and that was a little over the top. So it fits. It's not, it's good. I like it. It's like, I want to watch all of it and get into a deep dark depression. Well, I feel like, you know, yeah, like a period peace depression. Yeah, it's, you know, it reminds me of Boardwalk Empire, which I really want to watch again for the outfits, outfits, fucking everything. It's good.

Do you, did, were there, are there shots of LA where you're like, I know that spot that they're remaking in this, you know, yeah, it's angels flight. They're an angels flight. And when they show it with the buildings around it, because that's, you know, that's how it used to be. It's exciting. I love it. It's good. Good old noir LA stuff. Perry Mason, that's amazing. Oh, and then trigger warning. Enormous surprise dick. Don't ruin it. Take a shot when you see the surprise enormous dick. Now is it what is it? It's skyscraper or what kind of how big is it? How big? I don't want to, I don't know. I mean, you know, do you know what channel it's on? HBO. Oh, sweet. Yeah. A gritty reboot of Perry Mason. Gritty. I wish I could have been there for that pitch

meeting. People are like, huh? Huh? Yeah, it's not what I expected. And it's, yeah, it's good. I should be, to the, to counter that, I should be talking about Marcella right now because season three is out. I watched one episode when I was at my sisters, but I had to wait till Nora went to bed because I didn't want to see anything bad. And of course I fell asleep four minutes in because they all have Irish accents. And it was like, it was like me, me old grandmother lullaby me to sleep. Or I just always go to sleep at 1030. But, but I did last time start for true escapism. There is a television show. It's British, but it's on Netflix and it's called 100% hotter. And it's like a makeover show.

No. 100% hotter. They get these British people. And I think I, I mean, not to say that Americans aren't absolutely like this, then you couldn't absolutely cast this show in four minutes in Los Angeles. But there seem to be a lot of people in England who are like, decided that they're going to be, um, I, I, what was that? What's that girl's name? There's, you know how they have like the page, it's like the page two girls or something from the tabloids. I don't know if that's the right page number, but basically like, it's like super sexy where like you save up all your money to get humongous implant. You're like, you're like, uh, like Kim Kardashian type. Right. Like perfect, but like a Bratz doll way. Yes. It's a Bratz doll going way over into the like

performatively sexy, like beyond. Yeah. And so they take, there's a couple of people like that, then there's a couple of people who just have very strange style. And there's a girl, there's a girl who's doing a full on Harajuku look where she has two different color contact lenses and like, hello kitty stickers on her cheeks and shit. So they take people with a look with it, with a really extreme look. And then they make it's, it's the classic like reality show where then they, there's people on the street looking at pictures of them and suspiciously all of the people on the street giving ratings because they're like, I would give this a three out of 10. I would, and the people are shocked. They're like, what? Um, I'm really hot. How could I be at three or

whatever? The people on the street that are being interviewed about the ratings, all are wearing scarves, different beautiful scarves. Or I'm like, sorry, you're cast because this is a scarf commercial. It's, is this sponsored by scars, et cetera? You know, you know that store scars, et cetera. Scarves, et cetera. Yeah. But it's a good like just put it on. Here's the thing. It's an amazing makeover show because at the end of the day, who doesn't love a really good haircut and really good makeup and the, and also the outfits are amazing. Do they turn them into like, like classy, like a classier look? They basically try to take what they want to look like and just make it more like,

if you're walking down the street, people won't run into a pole because you walk because you have stickers on your face. Yeah. Or because you, there's one guy that is like the one of like an industrial goth where he has a wig of like dreads made out of rubber. Oh no. You know, that kind of thing and goggles, you know, that, oh yeah, that look, it's pretty extreme. That sounds fun. They read, just redo everybody. But what it is is just awesome makeup, awesome hair. It's just really satisfying. The Harajuku girl, when she gets redone, because you can tell and everything is like, it's gets very philosophical. We're like, we're all wearing masks. We're all wearing different masks. But like the Harajuku girl, she gets all, takes all her stuff off

and the makeup woman's like, look at your eyes. What do you do? And then gives her this, this makeup where in the girl is just like this really beautiful young girl who goes, I never thought I could look like this. Like it's the cutest thing. Oh, what's it called 100% 100% hotter, hotter. And the hair guy is such a legendary hair guy where he himself has my sister's hair from 1989, like, like a spiral perm, I think amazing hair guy. And he gives the best hair cuts. What about the show where I get turned into a club kid? That's what I want. I want the opposite. I feel so fucking boring now. You want to go back? I want to go back to when I was 16 and had huge fucking crimped pigtails. Yeah, I can cut your bangs all fucked up. Okay,

vinyl pants, great. And then I would put stickers on my face too. Really? Absolutely. Now, was that the drugs telling you to put the stickers on or was that your style choice? The drugs were the stickers. Oh, they're going through the skin. What's that called? Absorbing it through the skin. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What else? Well, there's season two of Dirty John has started. Okay, I haven't done that yet. It's the Betty Broderick story. Yeah. Which you did. I did it. She's the woman down in San Diego. Yes. And it is, it's very dirty. It's very much dirty John season one. They have this style about it. That's kind of like, it's outfits and it's, it has almost a shoulder feel to it. Yes. Because this, it happened in the 80s. So everyone has

real 80s outfits. The problem that I have is Amanda Pete is playing Betty Broderick and Betty Broderick, one of the main issues going on in that relationship was her husband was leaving her for a younger, hotter region. Right. And no one's leaving Amanda Pete. Never, ever. Sorry. Like she is, she's Hollywood perfection. Yeah. So I got that she is a great actress and she's playing the intensity and she's really good as a character. But there's a whole piece of that character that I, that should be there. Yeah. And I think I wonder if it's because they didn't want to like in the, you know, the year 2020 put someone in like a fat suit or fat, but like that's part of the issue and part of the story is that she was a mom and, you know, wasn't tiny

and wasn't, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's TV for you, you know, they TVed up Betty and then in, in doing so, in my opinion, she doesn't even resemble, she doesn't even resemble her. Maybe not even a little, the brown hair, I guess. She was blonde. She was blonde. The blonde hair. Oh, yeah. But it's good. Definitely watch it. It's a good story and it's, and, you know, it's Christian Slater and Amanda Pete. So it's so watchable. Yeah. Guys, unless you hear the, the amazing music that Steven puts under an ad, we're not, this is not us pushing any of the new shows. We are being paid $0 by Amanda Pete for talking about it. Amanda Pete has never worked for us a day in her life. Not once has she called or DM'd. I've asked her to catch it.

She fucking refuses. Can you imagine? I'm scared. I'm scared of her. Oh, she was so good in togetherness. Is that still on? Can you find that anywhere? Remember that show? The, um, the Duplass Brothers vehicle. Oh, yeah. I don't know. But she was so good enough. She's so good in most all things I see her in. Yeah. Boss her heart. I don't know because I don't watch TV alone anymore. There's no like, like neither Vince nor I watch what we want to watch because we're always watching together. You know what I mean? I'd be careful of that. Why don't you get a second TV? We have one, but then it's just like, is it weird if I go downstairs? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, it is weird. Yeah. It means you don't want to be around me. Say if you're mad. Just say

it. Are you mad at me? Just tell me. It's totally fine. Look, I'm going to follow you to the kitchen if you don't admit it. Can I tell you that I have cried more since I turned 40 than I did my entire 30s. What, what's going on? Two weeks, three weeks. I don't know. PMS. And then I also found a psychiatrist. So my meds are getting tweaked a little. Oh, yeah. So that's fun to be like, that those two weeks of like, will they or won't they work? Or what kind of insane side effect is it going to give me that I, that I won't remember is it is a side effect? So I'll be like, I can't stop sweating. What's wrong with me? Well, then cry it out. Who cares? You're at home. It's been. Oh, what? I was gonna say, oh, but you meant for Vince, like it's yeah, because you're next to

him watching TV on the couch constantly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, life. Oh, and then the I'm so excited for the, the Golden State Killer show. Oh, yeah. That one Karen Kilgariff friend, best friend of the podcast friend of the pod. I'm an insider. I like to say I've been listening since episode one. That's right. I haven't seen that trailer yet. I'm too like it. But yeah, yeah, I've heard a lot of feedback that people are excited and excited to see it. Can you watch yourself? Are you going to do it? No, no, no, no, no. Okay, we'll do it for you. Please do. And then just say nice things. I don't care. Of course. I don't care if you don't like it. Only compliments only. I used to say that after my stand up show. Nice. I just like going

somewhere with people afterwards. I'd be like compliments only. I only want to hear if you thought I was the best one on the show. Keep it to yourself. Totally. Yeah. No critiques. This isn't this isn't fucking critique time. Unless you're funnier than me. No critiques. Right. Yeah. Should we do exactly right corner? Sure. So our podcast network exactly right is a thing. Isn't that great? We like it. And we're adding shows just by I would say every three months. Every season. Every season. There's a new fucking show. It takes so long, guys. But they're coming. They're coming. They're in the works. We're, you know, they're all great. And the newest, um, the newest, uh, for example, the newest, I said, no gifts has the great Andrew

Michonne on it, who is from podcast, but outside that podcast I recommended on the show long ago. But Andrew's a great standup that's friends with lots of people and knows everybody. So and my friend, my friend, Mamrie Hart is on bananas this week. And she's been friends with Scotty for decades. So they have decades. They're so young. Um, a decade probably. Sure. Sure. Just one. Just one. And she's so funny. So listen to bananas. And they, oh God, this podcast will kill you is they're talking about what's the disease that, um, it's affects cows. It's called render pest render pest. Yeah. So that's I haven't listened to that one. And I'm really looking forward to it. Cause that sounds like the worst, uh, thing of all time. Yeah. Um, sure. You know,

it's not the worst thing of all time is from our, our, one of our favorite podcasts, um, do you need to ride Chris Fairbanks has a new standup special that's coming out called rescue cactus and it's available for rental and digital download. Uh, now on what is it on? Nice one. Thank you. Well, he's a new standup special. Yeah. Look up Chris Fairbanks. He's so hilarious. He's hilarious. It's, um, he's, I'm sure it's on his Twitter or his Instagram. Um, and we can, and we will, you know, we'll put it on our website so that you can find it. My friend was there. He filmed it in Portland. And so my friend Jason, um, our stage mother, Jason, who always the, the, the show love him, text notes, Francis Stephen. Um, he went and, and watched it and said he, it was so great

and that at the end he cried. That's how good it was. Cause there was like a touching. Wait, Chris cried or Jason cried? Jason. Okay, good. But there was like, you know, there was some touching. I watched one joke. I watched just a, you know, a quick clip of one joke and it's, it was one of the best jokes I've heard the masturbating, the masturbating one with the parent. Yeah. Yeah. He's really, he's really legendary. I mean, he's, you know, he's, Chris is the real deal and he really is like one of those truly unique comedy voices. I mean, like, you don't get the sense of it on our podcast cause we are taught, are constantly interrupting each other and, and, and one person's trying to tell a story and then somebody else starts talking about something else.

But when Chris does stand up, you know, I've seen him in like, in aside from being on the road and stuff in rooms around Los Angeles, like him destroying a room when he's just up to do a 10 minute set. It's one of the most like thrilling, breathless, amazing things you've ever seen. Cause it's a very hard thing to do. People who are good at it, make it look so easy. Totally. Yeah. And he's one of those people. So it's, yeah. If you're looking for a good laugh, I think Chris Fairbanks, he'll help you out with that. Also, please check out our merch store where we have our black and white logo pin. It's a really cool enamel pin. It's 10 bucks. And all the proceeds are going to the black emotional and mental health collective. So that's really

exciting. And we have some new merch in there. We have a puzzle and some fun stuff to check out. That's on my favorite murder.com in the store. Yeah. We're very, I'm very proud of that puzzle. There's a puzzle for everybody that's corn that's, that still believes in the quarantine and the puzzles. It's puzzle season. It is puzzle, truly puzzle season. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. HelloFresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.

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hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay. This case I'm doing, it's less of a case and more of a, it's a disaster story. Okay. And so this is the St. Francis dam

collapse. Oh, shit. Yeah. I feel like I've started this one many a time. Yeah. I can't believe we haven't done this at LA, a live LA show. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's one of these stories. And I'm sure you feel the same that I've always kind of heard about in the background. Everyone knows Chinatown is loosely based on the water wars that came before it. And it's always just been this like eerie story that I didn't know that well. But I think being from California and Southern California, you hear little things about it. Yeah. But it's been forgotten kind of in history a little bit too, because it happened right before the stock market crash and the Great Depression. So like nobody cared. Yeah. Sorry. I was just going to say that would be an amazing book

to a book of all the stories that got buried by huger stories. Yeah. Didn't we just talk about something recently that it was like, but then 9-11 happened. And so this story got buried. Yes. Yes. It was a documentary I was watching or something like that. We were like, how could you not know about this? Right. It was, I think it was Macmillan's. Oh, yeah. It was something like that where it was like, it wasn't a, you know, it wasn't a horrible story or anything like that. It was more of a like, huh, how could this happen? And then just got erased by 9-11. Right. Or like, or like the hearing was in late September. And so nobody gave a shit at that time. Yeah. Yeah. This is like that. So let me quickly read my sources. I got some info from history.com.

On lithub.com, there was a section from the book, The Mirage Factory, Illusions, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles. And that's by, I know it does not sound good. That's by Gary Christ. And then there's scvhistory.com, Smithsonian Mag, KCET article by Hadley Mears, waterempower.org. Some great information and photos from there. I called down to the DWP. They gave me a little information. They let me come look at their microfiche. It was great. An article on a, there's a website called Failure Magazine. And I think it's just failures. Just like, yeah. There's a web, there's a page about the book called Flood Path, the deadliest man-made disaster of 20th century America and the making of modern Los Angeles.

They all have these fucking names. That's by John Wilkman. And then did you know there's a song by Frank Black from 2001 called St. Francis Dam Disaster? No. And there's these like unofficial music videos, a video from the disaster and photos from the disaster. It's cool. Jesus. Yeah. Okay. So St. Francis Dam Disaster is known as the worst American civil engineering disaster of the 20th century. And it's kind of compared to the Triangle Shirtways factory fire in that it kind of led to this movement of safety legislation because so many people lost their lives. So before we can get into the collapse of the actual dam, we kind of need to go over some history. And that is California's water wars. And that'll give us some context. By the end of the 1800s,

Los Angeles was still a relatively small settlement. And it got all its water from the LA River via a system of reservoirs and these open ditches made that were made there called Zanjas. And that had been used since the Los Poblidaros built them in 1781. But by the early 1900s, there's a huge population boom in Los Angeles. And over half a million residents are now living in LA and the city's growing. So does the need for water. But it's we're in a desert, you know, so there's a bunch of drought. City planners wanted Los Angeles to become a major American metropolis, like these people who had money in and stake in the city growing. And that could but that can only be achieved if there is water, you know. Yeah. So greed. Right.

Oh, I thought you said and greed. So it's like, yes. And greed. Greed is a big part of it. Yes, I need to make that point. Greed and water. What more does one want? So the student Fred Eaton, he's the mayor now, and he used to be the superintendent of the Los Angeles water company. And so he fucking knocks on the door of the new superintendent of the water company. And that and he's like, let's build an aqueduct. Like, that's how we get water to the city. And that new superintendent is William Mulholland. Oh, I've heard of him. Yeah, you have. So, you know, like Mulholland Drive, everyone knows. So let me do a quick sidebar on William Mulholland. He's got this fancy storied fucking life. So William Mulholland is

he's born born in Belfast. And in 1855, he's born into a family of modest means. And he leaves home at 15 with his brother and they go to America. And he ends up in LA around 1878 at 23 years old. He's got $10 in his pocket. So he gets a job in LA as a zonharo, which is digging those wells in what is now Compton. And he uses his downtime while he's not working a fucking crazy job with manual labor, because he's really interested in engineering. So he starts studying engineering, geology, hydrology and mathematics, you know, as you do weekend stuff. Exactly. Casual stuff. It was like the 1857 version of 100% hotter. What do you think of this engineer on the street with their scarves? There's no water. Please just give me a glass of water.

So he actually becomes a self taught engineer, which doesn't seem like it should be a thing. It should not be a thing. Well, that's fucking some what's it called right there? Four shadowing. Thank you. So for the next 20 years, Mulholland rises through the ranks at the water company, he becomes a foreman. And then it comes to superintendent until 1902, when the city officially forms what becomes known as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, what you and I pay every fucking month. And he's named the chief engineer, which is super impressive. However, I feel like like maybe as a surgeon or there's certain jobs you don't want self taught. You want you want a paper degree that says you learned all of it,

right? Yeah. And that people who already knew everything taught it to you, not you taught it to you. That's right. And you're like, I got everything. I got all of it. You're like, how do you know that? Oh, it's me, Bill Mulholland. I know everything. Oh, okay. I bet he was really tall. So everyone would just listen to everything. Yeah. Yeah. It always happens with tall guys. I think even as a young man, he looked like a grisly old man and people believe him, you know? Yeah. So he earns a good reputation when his projects are built under budget and ahead of schedule, which I also think is bad. Like take your time and use the money and build it right. Like don't make it quick and cheap, right? Yeah. He's like a sellout engineer because usually

engineers are like, no, it has to be right. And that means if we go over budget or over schedule, it still has to be right. He's like, Hey guys, hey, moneymen, are you happy? Then I'm happy. Exactly. Doesn't matter. And one of those projects that he got a good reputation for includes friend of the podcast, the Silver Lake Reservoir in 1906. Would you agree? I think it's a friend of the pod. I think it is a friend of the pod. It is Silver Lake Reservoir. Yeah. They are at our live show. That's right. So back to the water wars. Mulholland is now tasked to transport water. They look for water where they can like divert it from a certain part of the state and bring it to LA. And they find that in the lush Owens Valley,

which is located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. It's about 200 miles away. Looks like it's right on the Nevada border, basically. So you know, it's over where no one goes ever. Exactly. Where you have to drive through to get to Vegas and it looks really hot and deserty. Yeah. So meanwhile, though, the United States Reclamation Service, which was responsible for settling the Owens Valley, which is this like lush place where lots of things grow and people are fucking thriving. They had settled the Owens Valley in the late 19th century with farmers and ranchers. And they are like, we're going to use the Owens Lake to build irrigation systems to help these farmers in the area. Like we're going to grow this area. Yeah, we have plants. It's our

water and we're making plants for it. Exactly. So there's this whole water war over who's going to get that Owens Valley water. I mean, that's a whole book in itself. So I'm not going to do it justice. Read me the book. Okay. Page one. Unfortunately for the farmers and the ranchers and the people who live there, the Stude Eaton has extensive political contacts, of course, including the president of the United States. And he and Mulholland aren't above using like dubious tactics like bribery and deception. So after these fucking long water wars, and by the end of 1905, they're able to acquire enough land and water rights in Owens Valley to block the irrigation project. And they are going to build their aqueduct. Wow. And when this canal project goes public,

people fucking lose their shit because everyone in LA knew that like their livelihood and them staying there and working and building families and more people coming to Los Angeles depended on this water. So finally, you know, there's a front page headline that Los Angeles finally has water. People celebrate property and real estate prices. The day it's announced, double within a day. Wow. Yeah. People are just squirting hoses straight up into the air. Right. Use it all you want. We got more coming. Exactly. And so in 1907, with a budget of $23 million, which I looked it up and that you can't even go that far back. You could only go to 1913 on this calculator.

I didn't look for another one, which I just realized I could have. That would have been $600 million in 1913. Jesus Christ. Yeah. But don't worry. Mulholland won't use it all. You know how he is. Yeah. That's right. He loves to come in under budget. Oh, that's right. So construction begins on the Aqueduct in 1907. Around 4,000 laborers work at top speed. They use new technologies like, for example, a caterpillar tractor, fucking new thing. Wow. They set records for miles tunneled and pipe cut, which I wrote, which is like, slow down guys, get this right. He and I wrote. Also, how hideously were they abusing those manual laborers that they were making record that's in the desert. So they're working under

the fucking blaring sun in the desert. There's no such thing as bottled water. Not even Dasani. Everyone's least favorite water. Not even Dasani. It tastes like plastic. Dasani. And it is really, I mean, once I started looking into this and like looking at photos and, you know, reading about it, it is a really impressive feat. It's 200 miles that they were able to take from this lake in Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley. And in 1913, construction of the 200, it's 223 mile aqueduct is finished in 1913. At the time of completion, it's the world's longest aqueduct and the largest single water project in the world. Wow. Yeah. So it's super fucking impressive. It's a self-taught kid from fucking Belfast who made it happen. He becomes this big

hero. And while we're talking about it, Derry is not Belfast, although it's also in Northern Ireland. And just call it Derry. Okay. I got, I got a, I needed a pick me up the other night when I was watching TV alone and which I know I said I don't do. So I started watching Derry Girls again. Yeah. It's just so comforting. It's so comforting. It's the greatest. So the city of Los Angeles is stoked, you know, something like 40,000 people come to see the dam get, you know, turned on the thing. What am I doing right now? You're doing some bathtub. Exactly. Turners? So they turn on the faucet, the faucet. Oh, a big faucet. They open the big faucet. During the opening ceremony, Mohon famously says to them, there it is. Take it. About the water.

There it is. Take it. You know, which is like so, I think he got a really big head and became really cocky about all the things he could do. And it almost is like he's got like where he's giving them this like essential, you know, thing. Yeah. He made it happen. He made it happen. He made it happen. And it's true. Like a lot of people credit him with Los Angeles becoming what it was because it wouldn't have without the water. And he should also be credited for how bad people have allergies here because it's the water that then made the non-native plants get brought in. And there's all kinds of weird plant combinations here that don't make sense. And you could have no allergies your whole life and you moved to LA, you're screwed.

Yeah. I have them. But damn you, Mulholland. Mulholland! The next time your hay fever hits Steven, that's Mulholland talking through your nose. He was a great orator. He was a great nasal orator. Is that the right word? Okay. He becomes this local hero and Los Angeles is able to overcome its drought issues and virtually overnight becomes a boom town. The San Fernando Valley is transformed from a grain-raising community dependent on the rainfall, essentially, for water. It becomes an empire and quickly becomes one of the richest agricultural communities in the nation. Wow. So a lot of people make a fucking shit ton of money, essentially. Because they had, this is where they had, at least I know when I lived in Burbank,

like it was all citrus groves. It was like tons and tons of orange and lemon groves. Yeah, I grew up in Orange County and that's why it's called that. But meanwhile, back in Owens Valley and by 1924, so much water has been diverted from the area that the actual lake, Owens Lake, is drying up and the agriculture economy is fucked in the valley because they don't have access to the water anymore. And a group of pissed off farmers start to protest and one of the things they do is that they use dynamite and blow up parts of the aqueduct. Not just sabotage it, but so they can get the water. Like they blow up certain parts to get the water to start flowing to their areas. Yeah. And there's all these underhanded things like

they won't, Los Angeles County won't give the farmers an adequate payment for their land so they don't want to sell and they're threatened and it's just like this, it's really shady and underhanded. So there's just all kinds of legal action going on and that's what the water war is. And because of the water wars and the aqueduct controversy and the fact that he long realizes that his aqueduct could be sabotaged really easily and they'd be screwed. So he thinks, you know, what we need to do is make these smaller storage systems closer to Los Angeles so that if something happens to Owens Lake or the Owens Valley aqueduct, we'll have, you know, these little pockets of water that can sustain us while we fix it. So in the early 1920s,

he starts to build major reservoirs closer to LA with concrete dams. There's the one where rich people live above in Hollywood, the Hollywood Hills. Oh yeah. Yeah. I went to a rich person's party once and saw that and it's gorgeous. It's just this like beautiful reservoir. The Hollywood Reservoir, you can walk around it and it's actually like being in nature in the very middle of Hollywood. It's crazy. Right. And you can see the Hollywood sign from there, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of right below there. Okay. And that's the one that when there was a drought here, what was that like six years ago or something when it was really bad and I would go up there to take my dogs to that dog park, which is now no longer a dog park

sadly, but I would come over that hill and that reservoir would be going down and down. And my anxiety and panic was constantly going up based on the water level until a man at the dog park explained to me that that is not drinking water and it's actually not really used that way. So don't worry about that. Don't worry about the reservoir. I was like, thanks. He's like, excuse me, miss, I've been seeing your face every time you come here and you look sadder and sadder. You are freaking out and you don't mean to take a deep breath. Well, here's the bottle of Dasani. Don't worry. It's me, Dan Dasani here to comfort you about the reservoir. It's the season of plenty. Okay. So he built that and then he's like, another one we need to build

is in the San Francisco Canyon, which is 40. It's a canyon that's 47 miles away from LA and he's going to name it the St. Francis Dam. So it took that long to get to our dam for no reason why it's there. Construction begins in 1924 and in his haste and with he has this kind of, Malham has this confidence in his abilities so much that he is just like plows through making this dam. He breaks ground without extensive consultation with geological experts. It's just like here and points to a place and they start building a dam. That's not true, but something like that. And essentially, Mulholland, he also keeps raising the height of the dam as they're building it. So it keeps going up by 10 feet of what the plans were, but they don't widen the base

of the dam to match that. And so it's super dangerous and it fucks with the structural soundness of the dam. So when the dam is completed in 1926, it's able to hold 12 billion gallons of water from the aqueduct. So the water from the aqueduct goes there. There's 12 billion gallons of water and it's enough for two years worth of reservoir water in case something happens. And the main structure reached a height of 205 feet of this concrete, these concrete walls damming this lake and it spans 700 feet. And you can look at, there's so many photos which is fascinating before and after the disaster and it is, it's huge. It's like, I think it was like the precursor to the Hoover Dam. Oh, wow. So it's a big fucking giant concrete structure.

And the Hoover Dam, I can assure you, was built by college educated engineers. That's exactly right, Karen. I mean, this is a guess for sure, but I would bet my arm on it because what in the fuck are you doing building something that big? Right. With no, I mean, but at the same time, like the aqueduct never fell. None of the other structures fell. It was just... Yeah, but aren't aqueducts, don't they just go flat along the ground? They're just taking the water and running it as opposed to like... Barriers. Yeah, no, you're totally right. I realize I'm being highly critical of Bill Mulholland. I'm not on his side. Seriously. I'm not gonna argue for him. This is hubris. I'm seeing it and I know where this ends. It is hubris. So over the next two

years, cracks and seepage appear in the dam, but inspections show that they're all within normal range for a dam the size of St. Francis. So they're just sealed up and patched. But on the morning of March 12, 1928, the damkeeper named Tony Harneshveger, he discovers a new leak during his morning inspection and this leak worries him because the leak has blood in it. There's a finger sticking out of the hole coming from the... No, there's a ghost sound. There's a ghost in the fucking dam. There's a dam ghost. No, because the water is muddy, which means that the water is eroding the foundation of the dam and bringing up the muddy water. And so he calls out Mulholland. Mulholland comes to the dam.

He takes a look and he and his assistant are like, nope, looks good to us. All is fine. And they take off and go back to Los Angeles. But Tony, the damkeeper and as well as the powerhouse workers who live in the nearby hydroelectric power plants nearby. And so there are these powerhouse workers who live there. And the farmers who live in the small towns in the valley below, they're not convinced. Like they can just see that something ain't right. And they can also see that the mountain above is soaked in water. So workers start joking. See you later if the dam don't break, like it becomes a joke. And one farmer is so wary that he sleeps in his barn with the door open. So that same night... Why not just get out of town? You know what? That's a great

point. I really wish they had that. But at the same time, it's like they almost live in a rural area. You know, it's so far away from anything, especially with those little cars they had. So on that same night, the night of when Mulholland was like, all looks good. It's fine. I'm going back home to eat or an expensive dinner. The concrete begins to shatter. No surviving human sees the dam break at about 11.58 p.m. The damkeeper, Tony, who lives in a small cottage right below the dam with his six-year-old son, Cotter, and his girlfriend, Leona Johnson, are speculated as the first victims. So Leona's body is later found fully clothed and wedged between two blocks of concrete near the base of the dam, which suggests that she and Tony

may have been inspecting the structure right before it collapsed. Oh my god. So seconds later, as the water rushes from the dam, nearby power lines are swept away, leaving the whole canyon without power and in total darkness. The residents of the San Francisco Canyon are awoken to shaking and rumbling and some mistake it for an earthquake. We're in California, you know. However, within moments, the canyon is filled with 12.6 billion gallons of rushing water. And I've always pictured, when I heard this story in the past, I've always pictured like shantytowns, you know. It's like the 20s and you think it's just like, you know, tents and stuff. But no, these are, you can see the photos. These are communities of houses, of homes.

Yeah. This is not just kind of, you know, pup tents and shit. Right. It's not, yeah. It's not like workers' cabins that are just nearby. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, these are real homes. They're towns. They're towns. They're actual towns with infrastructure and with, you know, livelihoods. So at 12.03 a.m., a wall of water more than 10 stories high sweeps into the community of 74 people at the powerhouse number two. An LADWP employee, Ray Rising, who lives in that area with his wife and three daughters, remembers being asleep in his wood-framed house when he hears a roaring that he said sounds like a cyclone. The water is so high, they can't get out the front door and the house just disintegrates around them. And Ray gets tangled with an oak tree,

he swims to the surface and then he gets wrapped with electrical wires. He's able to grab the roof of another house that's floating by and jumps off. He gets onto the roof and he jumps off the roof when it floats by the hillside. So he lands on the hillside. Oh, by himself? Uh-huh. He's standing there. He's got no clothes on. It's a freezing cold night. There's, you know, no light because all the electricity went out. And the only other person on the hill with him there is his neighbor, Lillian Curtis Eiler, and she is holding her three-year-old son. What happened with Lillian was a few minutes before midnight, Lillian had woken up in bed and noticed a strange mist. And she and her husband instantly knew it was the dam. I think it was a worry on everyone's mind.

And he shoved, her husband shoved their son into her arms, pushed her through the window, and he's like, I'm going back in to save our daughters. But he and his daughters are swept away with the rest of powerhouse, the powerhouse number two community. And the concrete powerhouse itself gets swept away, which just tells you how strong, you know, this rushing water was. And so the three lone survivors on this little hillside huddled together and wait for rescue. Oh, my God. And you see this 200 feet tall dam completely collapses. It's not a hole that's punched in it. There's one structure in the middle that people end up calling the tombstone. But on its right and left, these enormous concrete structures completely crumble. And

those big pieces of concrete also start flowing with the rushing water as well. Oh, God. Yeah. So from there, the water continues to surge. It's rushing at a rate of 18 miles an hour. And it's causing catastrophic damage to the towns of Castaic, Saugus, Fillmore, Santa Paula, and Sadakoi. Wow. So, you know, when you're driving down the five to get the fuck out of town and you drive past Magic Mountain and, you know, all that shit on the right. Those towns, yeah. Yeah. That's where it is. What's that called when you drive down the fives? Well, I call that if I'm on my way up, that's the first leg of the journey. It is. And if I'm on my way home, it's the last leg of the journey.

So it takes 45 minutes for the reservoir to empty completely of water. God. The idea of 10 stories of water is very upsetting to me. It's, it's, I really don't like it at all. Fresh bloods are a big fear of mine. Yeah. And rightfully so. I mean, it's horrifying. And it, but that idea, because it's like, they didn't even have skyscrapers that tall or buildings that tall. I mean, I guess they did in like downtown LA or whatever. But I mean, like that. No, not there yet. I don't think. It's, it's just like so monumental and horrifying. Yeah. And, you know, beyond like, it's just that idea of all of a sudden something's happening that you could never imagine. And in the middle of the night to wake up to that, you know,

and to not know what it is or to, I feel like it's worse to know what it is. Yeah. That's coming your way. Yep. Yeah. I mean, the chance of survival is tiny. Oh, also to see your neighbor naked would be, I'm just, and I know it's not as a big of a deal, but it just be like, did she just go, hey, look, we just lived. Who cares? Get over here. And I guess there wouldn't be an awkward moment if you both, if you and your son and your neighbor are the only people in your town that live through something that you'd just be like, standing there. Yeah. You'd have to be in deep shock beyond. It's horrifying. It hurts because I think of so many people who woke up and immediately their lives are over, you know, their entire house disintegrating around you is such a crazy

visual because also it's water is so powerful. Yeah. It's scary. Right. You have to think of it like that where it's not like, no, you just swim to the surface. No. And it's carrying so much debris. It's carrying all the houses and all the cars and the concrete from the dam with it and wires and it's just, it's horrifying. And it takes 45 minutes for the reservoir to empty. So this fucking flood is happening for 45 minutes and 12.4 billion gallons of water flood the canyon and the Santa Clara River Valley. Residents who are able to get out of their house in time, grab onto whatever they can. It's said that a woman, some people see a woman on top of a water tank dressed in evening wear. I know a woman and her three children hold onto a feather mattress

as it's swept away in the flood for two miles they hold onto it. A man named William Spring swims a mile with his infant around his neck holding his infant while his wife had climbed up an orange tree and just stayed there till she was rescued. A man named Cliff Corwin of Fillmore. He's trying to out drive the flood in his car. When it picks him up, picks his car up and he had a passenger with him, I guess, and the passenger was like, said, quote, I won't be caught like a rat in a trap and jumps out of the car and is killed. But Cliff himself stays inside the car until it almost completely fills with water and then he hangs onto the hood and he is carried to safety. Oh, thank God. I know. Sorry, that just reminds me of member the tsunami and the video of the car

that did that's driving like this and then has to do a three point turn really fast and it just is staying on the edge in the front of the Japanese tsunami. Yeah, horrifying. So five miles downstream in camp, a group of 150 workers for the Edison company are asleep in their tent camp. So the night watchman, this guy named Ed Locke, he sees the flood coming. He tries to wake up as many people as he can in their tent and 84 workers die of the 150 workers and the people who do survive, they survive because they had zipped up their tents and they were able to float. Like what the fuck are the chances? Oh, because also that's such a zipping up your tent is like, I just don't want this to be happening. Right. Or like maybe it works earlier in the night or

whatever. Oh, like you just never got out of it. Right. So I thought it was like a reaction of like unzipping. Oh, no way. Later days. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. And Ed Locke himself dies and he's considered to hear one of the like bigger heroes of the disaster. Yeah, God. The first official alarm is sounded at 1 20am via the Pacific Long Distance Telephone Company. So there's telephone operators Louise Geippe and she's in Santa Paula and Resell Jones in Santa Coy. I didn't even think of the fact that they were in the flood zone. So they were, they were like potential victims themselves, but they refused to leave their post and start calling residents in lower areas to warn them to get the fuck out of their house and leave a higher ground. They're later nicknamed

the Hello Girls for some reason. Oh, that just gave me chills. Like they understood what was happening and tried to call everybody. Yeah. Holy shit. Wake up and get the fuck. So they probably saved so many lives because they called the people that were like further down. Oh my God. One of those operators, the woman Louise, she calls this dude Thornton Edwards. He's a California highway patrol officer and he becomes known as the Paul Revere of St. Francis of the St. Francis Flood because he goes door to door. He's in his, he's on his motorcycle, blaring his siren, warns residents to get the fuck out. And then also Deputy Sheriff Eddie Hearn rides his motorcycle up the Santa Clara River Valley toward the flood with his siren blaring, making people wake up

and get the fuck out. He makes it as far as Fillmore before he runs into the flood and gets swept away. Many residents are able to rush to safety in the hills because of these two and the women operators. And there's a monument to the officers in Santa, Santa Paula called the Watchers. Meanwhile, okay. Meanwhile, in the cozy, I'm sure, opulent home of William, William Mulholland, the phone starts fucking ringing. In the middle of the night, his daughter answers and she brings her dad the phone. And when he goes to reach for it, he says, quote, please God, don't let people be killed. Please God, don't let people be killed. So like, she must have been like the dam collapsed. And he's immediately like, you know,

yeah, knows what's knows what's happening. The flood damages whole towns and farming communities for a 54 mile stretch before emptying into the Pacific Ocean south of Ventura. Whoa, 54 miles at 530 AM with a wave still two miles wide and traveling at six miles an hour. It's carrying debris. And it's also carrying bodies with it. It's thought that at least 500 people are killed. Oh, and that could be anywhere between 500 and 1000 because there's a lot lots of people who were, you know, migrant workers and undocumented. So it's it's hard to exactly say. And victims are recovered from the ocean as far south as the Mexican border. And many are never found because they just got swept to sea. The the the wave itself and the like the river it turned

into was two miles wide. I mean, that's like, I can't even, I can't wrap my head around it. The B school district in the area lost 13 of its 15 pupils. The Ruiz family, a family of farmers in the canyon that had been there since the mid 1800s. They lose six family members, Rosario and Enrique Ruiz and four of their children age eight to 30. And many of those who were hit the hardest were Mexican American farm workers. And aside from the loss of life, there's also a huge devastation to the land. And, you know, these are people's livelihoods. Over 1200 homes are destroyed. Orchards are ripped from the ground. Livestock are killed in the thousands. And the Red Cross quickly sets up a headquarters near the dam site. And men search the muddy debris

as high as 20 feet in some places for survivors. And there's actually video that you can see that people took of this, you know, silent video of them bringing bodies out of these cars from back then. And so they sort through the rebel volunteers, wade through all of it to find bodies more bodies and survivors and makeshift morgues are set up some in the fucking local dance halls. And crowds form at the morgue as people look for their loved ones. And, you know, they want to search through the night. So actually, Universal City studios loan them giant spotlights to use. Oh, a 10 year old girl is found under brush, still alive. She had been carried 10 miles from her home. Oh my God. Yeah. She lived. She lived. It's said that a baby thought to be dead starts

crying at the morgue. She's still alive. And a man, a man is found stuck in the mud up to his neck still alive. And a 12 year old girl is found by her neighbor in a tree. And she's naked. Yeah. So news and aerial photos of the collapsed dam spreads across the nation. People fucking lose their shit. It's a relief fund is set up. And telegrams and monetary donations roll in from all over the country. And then so the investigation starts at least a dozen official inquiry panels by the federal state, county and city government are immediately set up to investigate the collapse. And eventually, there's so much, of course, the collapse is attributed to four factors, unsuitability of the foundation. And so actually, they later find out that there had been an ancient

Paleolithic landslide on the exact spot where the dam had been built, which there was no way to know that actually. And then an uplift thing is called an inadequate design. So ultimately, a coroner's inquest determines who's responsible for the disaster. And during the inquest, William Mulholl and says, and he okay, so he does seem genuinely devastated by he must be what it's he it's all his fault. He knows it and he takes responsibility. He says, well, whether it's it is good or bad, don't blame anyone else. You just fastened it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human. I won't try to fasten it on anyone else, which is like, yeah, you're to blame. But it's also like, I can't imagine someone these days taking that much responsibility

for their obvious mistake. Right. You know, it's, it's very laudable for sure. Yeah. So the inquest decides that Mulholland and the governmental organizations that oversaw the dam's construction are at fault, but they clear Mulholland of any charges that they do. They're basically like construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the sole judgment of one person, no matter how eminent that person is. So like, you got to get a second opinion, essentially. William Mulholland, who's been looked upon as Los Angeles's savior for so long is now seen as a murderer. People fucking turn on him. People across the region even put up signs in their windows that read kill Mulholland. Oh my God. So he's devastated. He retires from the

Bureau of Water Works and Supply in 1928. His reputation is ruined. He retreats into a life of semi-isolation. His granddaughter Catherine says she remembers him sitting in silence at family gatherings, just lost in his thought. He dies in 1935 of a stroke at the age of 79. The victims are compensated for lost lives and land. And by 1931, the tragedy is pretty much completely swept under the rug. And in fact, there's a book about California water that doesn't even mention the disaster. Wow. Yeah. In later years, Mulholland's reputation is restored. And the Mulholland dam in the Hollywood Hills, Mulholland Drive, Mulholland Highway, and the William Mulholland Memorial Fountain in Los Feliz, the pretty colorful one, are all named in his honor.

There are still remains of the St. Francis Dam that are like weathered, broken chunks of gray concrete at the site where the dam was that you can see today. Wow. Isn't that creepy? On a positive note, in response to the disaster, the California legislature creates a dam safety program and soon has some of the strictest oversight laws in the country. In 1929, the California legislature also passes laws to regulate civil engineering smart and creates the state board of registration for civil engineers. And there is no more self-taught engineers. Good. No, no, no, no. Yeah. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is considered to be one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and remains the second greatest loss

of life in California history right behind the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Wow. The exact death toll remains unknown. Recent estimates say it's around a thousand. And since original counts didn't include the number of Mexican American migrant workers or transients, remains of victims continue to be discovered in that whole fucking area every few years until the mid-1950s. Wow. So they continue to find bodies. The remains of one victim is found deep underground near New Hall in 1992. Oh my God. And other bodies believed to be victims of the disaster are found in the late 1970s and in 1994. And that is the story of the St. Francis Dam disaster. Wow. Amazing. Sorry, that was so long. There's just so much fucking information. Well,

also, yeah, you needed kind of the backstory, but wow, that's incredible. It's amazing. Yeah. All right. It had been so long since I've done a survivor story that I figure it was high time that I needed one personally and emotionally and morally. Okay. And I can't go back to my old, the old ever loving well of I survived stories because now I survived has its own podcast. They basically have taken all those stories and there's an I survived podcast. So and now you can just go and hear firsthand the people tell their own stories. Cool. I was the Band-Aid in between the time where the people from I survived understood this was a needed thing. Now it's happening. You're welcome, America. So go listen to the real firsthand I survived stories

because there's so many, there's so many good ones. So when I was looking for this, I was looking for one I'd never heard of before that and that wouldn't count as an I survived story because there's there's a couple of them that are so unbelievable that they haven't only been on I survived. They've been on like a couple other different kinds of shows. This is one I had not heard of. It's The Girl in the Bunker. It's the survival story of Elizabeth Showoff. Have you heard of this one? No. Okay. I get it. Let's do it. Okay. So sources for this are the state newspaper. That's in Columbia, South Carolina, A&E.com, the inside Dateline blog on MSNBC.com, LA Times, Wikipedia, did I say that today.com and the Lifetime movie, The Girl in the Bunker.

Yes. Starring Henry Thomas, Henry Thomas, Elliott from E.T. As an adult or as a kid? Adult. It's a recent movie. He plays the bad guy creep and he's really good at it and it made me really sad how good he was at it. Because I love, I mean, he was one of my first great loves. Sure. Is Elliott from E.T.? I was just like, why do I love him so much? When he was dying, I was dying. Totally. Okay. So it's September 6, 2006. And 14-year-old Elizabeth Showoff has just gotten off a school bus and she's walking up her driveway. And so her driveway basically runs through this wooded area. It's a very rural area where she lives. It's outside the unincorporated community of Lugoff, which is, the population

is just over 8,300. Wow. In South Carolina. So she's about halfway up her driveway and she hears a man call out her name and she looks over and there's a man in a sheriff's uniform standing alone in the woods. Nightmare. Nightmare. Just it's off. Any uniform alone in the woods. No. Yeah. And he calls her by name, Elizabeth, and he waves her over. And so she complies because it's a person in uniform. Totally. She's a 14-year-old girl and she asks what he wants and he explains that he's with the Kershaw County Sheriff's Department and that she's under arrest. And she is totally confused and asks why and is really freaked out, but he's already handcuffing her with her hands behind her back. He tells her that the Sheriff's Department has found a bunch of

marijuana plants at the house and that she's in a lot of trouble. So she's really freaked out, confused, scared, but she also asks to see her little brother who's already home. He gets home before her and they're home by themselves after school because their mom works. So the officer starts walking her through the woods and says, that's where I'm taking you to him right now. But they walk further and further away from the house and she starts to realize that something is really wrong. At one point they are walking along a riverbank and he makes a point of keeping her off of the sand so that her footprints aren't in the sand and his aren't either and she starts to realize there's something really wrong. So she finally gets up the courage to ask him

where they're going and he stops and tells her, you know I'm not a policeman. Like 14 is that perfect age of being naive and starting to have an understanding of the world. Yep. But you're still so young. Mine is 13 and she's so young, but she's like, but she's kind of, you know, she's definitely getting more mature by the second, but they're still their babies. They really are, like they really are. So at this point he puts a collar device around her neck and tells her that it's a bomb and that if she tries to run or get away at any point, he'll detonate it and she'll be dead. She says she won't and that she'll comply. When he asks her if she's a virgin, she's so scared she can only nod.

So when Madeline Shove calls from work to check on her kids like she usually does every day, Elizabeth's little brother tells her that Elizabeth hasn't come home yet and Madeline doesn't think much of it and says she's going to call back. She'll check back in a little while. So when she calls back a couple hours later and Elizabeth still isn't home, she knows that something's really wrong. So she leaves work. She tells Bobby to walk down the driveway to see if, for some reason, Elizabeth is down there like hanging out with her friends and because she has a friend who lives across the street. When he does, he sees Elizabeth's friend walking down her driveway too. She's looking for Elizabeth as well because Madeline called the

friend to say, do you know where she is? And so basically they started looking for her. So Madeline gets home, calls the police. She waits for over an hour for someone to show up at her house and when no one shows up, she calls back and finds out only to find out that they had gotten the county wrong and they had sent an officer to another county. So finally, after several hours, an officer shows up only to tell Madeline that she's overreacting. He says that most teenagers run away for a day or two. No parents ever think they're kids the type who would run away. Elizabeth is probably at a friend's house or off with her boyfriend somewhere. And Madeline's trying to convince him, no, this is not her at all. Every day she comes home and takes care of her little

brother, makes him food like this is not her at all. And the guy says, I see this all the time, don't worry about it. He explains he can't put out an Amber Alert for her because it's too soon. He assures her Elizabeth will come back and he leaves. So we're back in the forest. After walking for more than an hour, Elizabeth's kidnapper stops at the side of a hill, reaches down to the forest floor and pulls up a perfectly camouflaged door. It's the hatch to a bunker. And there's a man made like a homemade ladder made of branches that lead down eight feet down into total darkness and he makes her walk down into it and follows her. It's pitch black as her eyes adjust, she sees it's a 15 foot long space that's dug into the forest floor.

So it's the floors are dirt, the walls are dirt. It has a six foot ceiling, there's a well, there's a bed, there's a stove with a chimney and there's a battery operated television. The walls are lined with shelves that are stocked with canned goods, guns, other weapons, porn. She said she would later say that it looked like something out of a nightmare. And now this man chains Elizabeth to the wall by her neck and sits her on a man made bed that he, that he, a bed he fashioned out of branches, swimming floats and comforters. So it's really weird and janky and creepy. Elizabeth looks over and sees an inflatable doll in the corner and she starts to cry. But the man tells her there's no point in crying that she needs to get

used to it because this is how it's going to be for her now. He says that he's not going to hurt her and very soon after that he rapes her. So this man is 36 year old Vincent Filia and he's an unemployed construction worker whose father died when he was a year old. So his mother remarries a man with a substance abuse problem and so Vincent begins his binge drinking at age 14 and he'll go on to be treated for alcohol abuse 10 different times. And this is the drinking problem that ends up getting him fired from his job as a construction worker and will eventually leave him with alcohol induced brain damage. So he's got, he's got a bad drinking problem. And just a year before Elizabeth Schoff's kidnapping,

he is charged with sexual assault of a 12 year old girl. But when the authorities go to arrest him, he's nowhere to be found. So the authorities assume he left the state, but it turned out he was right under their noses the entire time and their feet. Okay. So obviously after a couple days, the police begin a search with this show family keeps going back to them and saying you have to start looking for our daughter. So they put up, they, you know, distribute flyers with her picture on it and then they start doing searches and they start walking the forest. And there is a point where they are sitting in the bunker and they can hear the searchers walking above them. But, but the, it's so perfectly camouflaged that no one sees it or notices

anything about the bunker at all. So after five days of captivity, Elizabeth has built a bond with her captor. So this girl, she's 14. She's really innocent. She is really sheltered. She is so fucking smart. Like it's mind blowing. I, I don't know what she, I don't know how she knew any of this stuff, but she knew to make that she needed to make sure that this guy knew she was a person. So she would ask him what his interests were and she would pretend to be super into what he was into and she talked to him all the time and she basically slowly won his trust and like establish this bond with him. Wow. So like when they hear the searchers, he holds a gun to her head and tells her if, if she screams, he'll kill her. And when the voice has fade, she tells Vincent

that she likes him and that she wants to be down there with them and she never would have screamed. So she's basically like establishing this kind of like, I like being here with you, like you wanted me to be here with you. I want to be here with you. Yeah. Getting him to trust her. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. She soon builds enough trust with him that he lets her leave the bunker so that she can go take a bath and like wash dishes in a nearby pond. And so when, yeah, so when she's there, she pulls out strands of her own hair and leaves it around the side of the pond so that if they ever have dogs searching in that forest, they'll be able to find her. She also, one time when she goes to the pond, leaves her shoes behind just in case someone might see her

or the dog again, if there's tracker dogs. That's so smart. It's genius. And then like when she's, he says, where did your shoes go? She's like, I must have left them at the pond. I can't find them. Like, and he believes everything she says because she's so sweet and innocent and like, and, and playing it so perfectly. Yeah. The most genius thing and like of all the genius things she does, though, in this nightmare situation is building enough trust so that when she asks him if she can play a game on his phone, he lets, oh, yeah. So she basically waits enough time. And, and, you know, basically builds the builds the trust enough. And because she'd gone to the pond and not run away. Yeah. So she'd done all these things and not done anything to break

the trust. She was convincing him that she liked him and that they had this kind of like a relationship. So how long, how long after she had been there that she asked for the phone? Day five. Wow. So, or I believe day five or day six. So she starts playing games on his phone. Now he figures, yeah, she didn't run. He can trust her. And also there's they don't have phone service in the bunker. Right. So it's not like he, she can't make a call. So it's safe. Yeah. So she'll use his phone, play a game, give it back. And that's like a thing that, that he starts getting used to her doing. So on the eighth night, when he's asleep, she climbs up the makeshift ladder and holds the phone out the bunker door and text, and texts her mother. Holy shit. Yep. She writes,

it's so genius. She writes, Hi, mom, I'm in a hole across from Charm Hill, where the big trucks go in and out. There's a bomb call police. Can you imagine being a mother and getting that fucking text? Especially after that amount of time where the police haven't helped you. Yeah. They've argued you. Then it turns out your child is missing. Then everything that happens is like that nothing, they're not finding anything. There's nothing coming of any of the searches. There's no results of anything. And then suddenly she was actually on her way to a vigil that night. They had been, they'd started holding vigils for her. She was headed out of the house for a vigil. And she looked at her phone and that text was on her phone. She probably, I mean, would she think it's

a hoax or like someone messing with her in the beginning? Well, no, she immediately was like, this is Lizzie. The family called her Lizzie and she knew it was her because she knew it was her daughter. When she showed the police, they called the police and showed the police, the first officer that came to the house said she might have gone away with her friends and now she's trying to establish a lie to come back. And at that point, she was like, are you fucking kidding me? But then the sheriff shows up and also the little brother, this actually happened in the lifetime movie. I'm not sure if this was what happened in real life, but it was a kind of a genius moment in the lifetime movie because the first cop that says she might be trying to establish

like an alibi is going to call back on the phone. And the little brother goes, yeah, isn't that a bad idea? Because what if she took the phone and that's going to get her caught? And the cop's like, oh, I think I'm the one that's the policeman here. And then when the sheriff shows up, he's like, we don't want to call because that could put her in danger. And the little brother just looks the cop like, so they don't respond to the text. Instead, they run the cell phone number, and it comes up registered to a woman. And when they drive out to the address this woman's house, the sheriff recognizes the area. This is where they served the warrant over a year ago for the child rapist who had fled. So they're now starting to put it all together. So they end up searching

the property while they continue to question the woman who lives in the house. And it turns out that it's his girlfriend slash common law wife. And that when they search the property, they find what they think is a trash like a trash hole. And she ends up telling them this is a bunker he dug here. And then they find there's like an abandoned car somewhere on their property because it's all in this foresty area. And she admits that she had been leaving food for him. She'd been going and buying food for him and leaving in that abandoned car for him to come and pick up. So now they know he's nearby. Oh, okay. So he'd been hiding out and she'd been eating and abetting him. Exactly. And so now they know he's within walking distance because he's hiding out somewhere else

but near enough to come and get supplies. Wow. So so but what they decide to do is they realize there that the theory is that he's a coward. He's not he's gonna run. And this is not he's, you know, he's a child molester rapist. And but he's not a serial killer or whatever. So the chances are that if they leak this to the press, that the mother has actually gotten a text and that this girl might be somewhere alive and that they're going to go on a manhunt now that he'll probably run. And so that's what happens. They leak the story to the local press. Meanwhile, down in the bunker when the 11 o'clock news comes on, Elizabeth and Vincent are watching on their weird little TV and he sees the entire report of Elizabeth's mother got a text. Now she

that now they the cops know that she's being held nearby and now there's a huge manhunt on. Of course, Vincent loses it. He's enraged. He's panicking. He's freaking out. And he's screaming at Elizabeth and she's like, I would never do that to you. She's it's so amazing. She convinces him that she didn't do it. And she basically says, well, couldn't it be the woman that's leaving food for you? How does she know about that? Oh, he told her that because she's getting the food. Yeah. Okay. Like she knows everything. She's like in his life now. Whoa. And basically, she convinces him it's not her that she didn't do it. And so then he's like, he basically goes, well, then what should I do? And she and she says, you should run because

they're going to come and catch you and they can't catch you down here. You should definitely run. And so he does he listens to the 14 year old girl. And he collects. What a gamble he could have just fucking killed her in anger. Right. But but she's so smart. She's able to fucking she's so smart. And she later on on that and it's a it's called Inside Dateline. It's this blog on MSNBC.com. And so she wrote a thing on there that was really it was so it was so young girl of her where she was like, but she basically said he was really stupid. So she realized after a while that it wasn't like she didn't think he was going to be violent. Like she thought all the things he was doing was kind of like out of desperation. She realized she could outsmart him. And so she just

knew basically she got him to do exactly what would get him caught. So he took he took all his weapons and the pipe bombs that were down there and some night vision goggles. And he told her, I really love you. And I really want to marry you. And she was like, yeah, I totally want to marry you too. And he's like, okay, well, I'm going to run. But then I'm going to I'm going to find a way to come back to you. And she was like, okay, sounds great. You better go. And he's like, don't leave here until tomorrow morning. And also while she had been staying there with him, the whole time he was telling her how the whole thing was booby trap, the whole bunker was booby trap. Oh my God. And that there were bombs and different things every everywhere all around. So

even if the police did come, you know, he could make it blow up. So he leaves and then she waits until the next morning. And then she comes out of the bunker. Now, meanwhile, the morning of September 16, authorities had set up a line search and they were walking the woods to because they knew that she was somewhere in the vicinity when they hear someone yelling help. They find Elizabeth standing alone outside the bunker. And the officer got who got to her first and she was like, be careful, there could be bombs that could be booby trapped as he was like running toward her. And he later was quoted as saying, I received credit many times for saving her. And I did not that child saved herself. Vincent's fill yaw is found the same day kneeling on the side of Interstate 20

in Richland County. So he just basically went and gave himself up and got arrested. Wow. Holy shit. At his trial, moments before his trial happens, he pleads guilty to kidnapping 10 counts of first degree criminal sexual assault, two counts of second degree sexual assault, possession of explosives, attempted armed robbery, and impersonating a police officer. And he is sentenced to 421 years in prison. And at his sentencing, the judge told fill yaw, this position requires I be the conscience of the community and the community is outraged by your acts. Many people have difficult paths and they don't commit the heinous crimes you committed. You have prayed upon helpless victims with violence and in a savage manner. Good luck to you, sir. Wow. And

then on that MSNBC Dateline blog, the great Keith Morrison writes this about his experience interviewing both Elizabeth and Vincent for the two hour Dateline special episode. They interviewed him. They interviewed both. They interviewed him from jail and they interviewed her. Whoa. They did a whole thing about this whole case. And here's what Keith Morrison said. When Vincent snatched Elizabeth just 14 years old, she had never dated a boy, never once spent even a single night away from home without a family member. She was taken by a wily wolf of a man who had just spent the better part of a year alluding the efforts of law enforcement. She endured unspeakable horrors, faced what seemed to her certain death and she prevailed. The contrast Vincent to Elizabeth

was quite remarkable. Where his story was self serving, claims shifting back and forth to suit whatever version he was trying to sell. Elizabeth was open and brutally candid. Where his fearsome behavior wilted in the presence of a television crew, Elizabeth seemed to gain strength from telling the experience. And having come through it with her dignity and humanity fully intact, she smiled a smile to light up the room. Every once in a while, a dark tale turns out well. And the worst in human behavior is overcome by the best, which is why it was quite an honor to tell the story of Elizabeth Shueff. And that is the harrowing kidnapping story of Elizabeth Shueff, the survivor, 14 years old, 14 years old. She's so smart and strong. She's unbelievable.

Oh my god. Hell yes, girl. That was great. Great job. Thank you. I needed that one. We held it. To find that Keith Morrison quote at the end. I love him. God, those guys, those date line guys are like, they're legends. Do you follow Josh Mankiewicz? He's so funny on Twitter. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He's my, he's my Twitter friend. Friend of the podcast. Friend of the podcast, Josh Mankiewicz. He's the greatest. Wow, great job. That was, yeah, I think we all needed that for sure. Yeah, it's been a while. Speaking of, it's been a while. Should we do fucking hurrays? Oh yeah. This is from A underscore Gilchrist. Wanted to drop my fucking array here for y'all.

For years, my dad and I have been on separate sides of the Colin Kaepernick protest. No matter what I said, he just always felt quote, it wasn't the right venue. I don't want to talk about it. I never gave up trying to help him to see, but I figured he was pretty set in his ways. This morning, I got a text from him that said quote, I was wrong. I was Drew Brees. I didn't get Kaep. I do now. I cried and told him I was proud of him. He said, I'm proud of you. So no matter how long it takes, no matter how uphill the battle seems, we must continue to push for our black community. Pedal to the metal. Love you guys. Hashtag Black Lives Matter. I love that. Well, mine is similar. The subject line is, um, Birmingham says,

fuck you and your Confederate Memorial. This is from Shannon P. Hey there, murder pals. My fucking hooray is that in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama during their protests on Saturday, local DJ, funny main Johnson declared that it was the goal of himself and the crowd gathered there to finally tear down the Confederate Memorial that has been an eyesore in Lynn Park for too long. This Memorial has been surrounded by plywood for years because last time folks tried to pull it down. That was the state solution for protecting it, but also hiding it kind of the perfect metaphor for American racism. Let's cover it up instead of dealing with it. It is needed to go for far too long. After a few hours of protesters pulling away plywood, the city's mayor, Randall

Woodfin, entered the crowd to speak with funny main. He said he didn't want anyone to get hurt, so he would like for them to let him tear it down and promised it would be gone by Tuesday at noon. They agreed and the crowd dispersed. True to Woodfin's word, the Memorial was removed Monday night. It's been the source of contention in the state for years, and the state's Attorney General Steve Marshall said that he would sue if Birmingham tore it down. What a dick. Woodfin said, I don't fucking care, paraphrasing, and tore it down anyway. What a hero. Both he and funny main are. I am so proud of these hometown heroes right now. Hell yeah. That is, I love that that's happening everywhere. Yeah. People aren't messing around anymore. It's so important. It's so important

for dignity's sake. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, that's really good. Those are two nice ones. Please send us your fucking arrays. You can just comment on our Twitter or our Instagram or send them in via the website. The fan cult. The fan cult. That was good. Thanks for listening. Thanks for always being our rad friends. Yeah, I hope everybody's doing good. Stay strong. Stay, make sure you log off every once in a while and just, you know, go sit by a tree if you possibly can. Please wear your masks. Please tell other people to wear their masks, but most of all, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis. Elvis, you want a cookie? Good boy. That was right on the money.