My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 269 - Big Hot C'mon

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

On this week's episode, Karen and Georgia cover spontaneous human combustion and the Paris Is Burning murders. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. 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. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstar.

Thank you. That's Karen Kilgariff. And you're welcome. And here we are to fucking talk to you today about multi-level marketing. I honestly, and I tweeted this the other day, but it was genuine. I've left the house for the first time in weeks. I went down to the drugstore and every person I saw in the parking lot was strikingly beautiful. And I was like, oh my God.

Oh, I think you missed faces. You must miss. Look at him. Yes. I'm like, if you don't look like a dog, I'm like, wow, what have you, what products have you been using? I have the complete opposite situation where now that I have a dog, a puppy, who is everyone's best friend and wants to meet everyone.

So I take her out and walks into the dog park. I'm seeing more people than I ever have in my life every day. I'm talking to more people. And I'm definitely like, it's clearly making me in a better mood, just like the experience is making me talk to more people and be more social, which is a huge thing for me. So I have the opposite where everyone's ugly because I just keep seeing faces. Because secretly you're being really negative about your positive thing. Yeah.

I just choked on my own lie. I'll let you cough that out a little bit. Unfortunately, I only have the most disgusting drink right now. No, everyone's gorgeous. Everyone has a beautiful face. Everyone's skin looks amazing because they've been covering it with a mask for a year. Yeah. You know?

Or just letting your skin go back to super greasy, which is actually probably better for us. Right. I realized. You go. Mine was gross, but it was like last night. Last night as I was going to bed and I truly was just diving straight into bed and then I was like, you have to brush your teeth because you can smell your own mouth.

Oh my God. I went outside in the morning to walk cookie and I was like, this mask stinks. No. It hit me at like a few steps later that it was my own, the reverberation of my own breath. Yeah. I was horrified. These are the basics that I think you get up when you get up and you get ready to go to work and you leave, you're like, oh yeah, I did all the, I flossed, I brushed, I did

a rinse, whatever. Yeah. No. The basics of human life don't like normal human life don't apply anymore. No. And I was thinking about this is the first time in my life since childhood where the majority of the year I haven't worn makeup. Yeah.

It's been 20 days maybe for meetings that we've had and like fan call videos that I've actually worn makeup, which feels incredible and I feel like a new different person. It feels incredible until I was talking about this the other day, until the meeting's over and then I'm walking around my house alone with a full mask of clown makeup where I'm just like, well, this is tragic. Pointless. Like now I'm just going to go sit in front of the TV with a bunch of mascara on. This is not for you.

This is for everyone else. I will say it's a great time to take a buttload of selfies with your cats so that you have them in the role so that you can then post them throughout the rest of the month where you don't have makeup on. That's what I do. Do you plan your selfies ahead? Absolutely. Lately.

They need a shit. Filters aren't going to fucking cut it with this hyperpigmentation. But then also to complain about makeup again, then for the next three days you have the black ring of the Mascara, the waterproof mascara that won't fucking wash off so you look extra tired. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know.

Did you feel, sorry, this just popped into my head because also my sleep schedule, I've never bothered to fix it because I was like, you know what, I think this is, I'm just going to be like a weird baby where I'm going to work this out naturally. I'll basically keep staying up so late that I'll start waking up early in the morning. I don't know. You're sleep training yourself. I'm sleep training myself by letting myself be monosorry. Wash your feet.

But in the middle of the night, a couple nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night wide awake and then I was like, did you take your mascara off? Can't remember. Go do it. Then I was like, wash yourself, wash your face with a washcloth. That's going to feel really good. Exploitation. I started doing some stuff and then I was thinking, why am I so wide awake?

It's like four in the morning and then that earthquake hit. I didn't. Karen, you're psychic, right? I think I'm psychic. This is just one more piece of proof that I wonder if there was a little pre-shock that woke you and started your adrenaline that you didn't even notice. Could have been. And then you got out.

I didn't feel it. And I love earthquakes knock on wood when they're not killing people. But I love feeling them. And Vince woke me up. I missed both of them. It was weird because it was a hard jolt that was loud and then a shaking. And then the, uh, and then the dog, George was just like, I demand answers now. She would not stop barking.

She was just like, I don't understand what just happened. I don't like what the hell. Show me a chart and explain to me how on earth the fucking entire ground just moved. The ground was moving and the noise. It's so funny that you bring up sleep training because one of my suggestions or recommendations this week is about sleep. It's all right. Let's hear it.

Okay. Let's hear it from me right now. Let's hear it. Me. Go. Here she goes. So this is actually recommended from my therapist. So you know, it's like, it's not just me being all who, hi, whatever, whatever.

Um, this, this podcast called the Hooper, it's called Hooberman lab. The students name is Hooberman. Um, and he just, he explains a lot of, you know, my, like a lot of stuff about the mind and how it works and, and studies and, um, practices and stuff. So he's smart. He's super smart. Like if my, if a therapist believes in what he says, you know, then it's like double time. So he, she sent me this, this episode called, um, understanding and using dreams to learn

and forget. So it's almost like the sleep cycles and how to use those and, um, EMDR, uh, I movement rapid desensitization, something and ketamine and how these things, um, affect your sleep, how to get good sleep, what matters with good sleep. It's not eight hours a night. It's whatever works for you consistently. So if you always get six hours of sleep, then nine hours isn't good for you the next night. You know, um, it was really fascinating and like taught me a lot because I'm really obsessed

with sleep as someone who has sleep apnea. And it helped me be like, you got to wear your CPAP even though you look stupid. So I highly recommend that. And it's also like a lot of his episodes are like about childhood and how those things affect you as an adult. So if you have kids, it's, it's great to, to learn that stuff. So sorry. It's, you say it's a podcast though.

It's a podcast. Yeah. So he has a lot of episodes about different things, but this one's called understanding and using dreams. So H-U-B-E-R-M-A-N lab, Huberman lab. Yeah. I mean, is it always about sleep or it's always just about a bunch of stuff? No, no.

It's about a bunch of stuff. Let me see here about episodes. So like the most recent one is the science of sexual development, the science of emotions and relationships, how to increase motivation and drive. And it's just science-based learning and facts. Kind of psychology stuff. Exactly. Exactly.

Really cool. That sounds very cool. Yeah. I know someone who worked in a sleep lab and they said that the big things that when you're trying to sleep is you have to, it has to be all lights out. Yes. You can't keep like a TV on or keep a thing on. I'm not.

I am blackout curtain girl. Blackout and even a little maybe a little mask. I love sleep masks. So many sleep masks that I've stolen from all of the flights that we've taken. That's right. I keep, I keep them all and also good to have it be cold in the bedroom. I've heard that too, but I hate being cold. But you get a big duvet.

You're not cold just to air around you. Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah. That's good. Airplugs are great. I love to. I feel like some of them, if there's like, if you're wondering how to make an amazing

podcast, talk about other podcasts that talk about sleep. I think that's the, that's kind of the key when we give our, our big talk. You mean riveting, riveting content, riveting sleep. Yeah. Like stick with, you know, it's sticky. It's viral. It is what people are saying now. Simulate me with sleep talk.

Uh, keep your air conditioner at 67 degrees. A nice side mask, a nice free stolen eye mask is a great way to get yourself in the mood of her sleep. Also, if you check into a retirement home, that's very restful. Now close your eyes and picture me with a CPAP full face mask on and then lull yourself to a fucking sleep. What are you listening to? Oh, I was going to say, uh, I, I've gone back to the Ram Dass podcast, which is, I just

kind of can't believe it's all sitting there as a free podcast. If you are, if you are kind of like in the mix with yourself, feeling like you have a lot of thoughts that are bumming you out or doing a lot of, uh, circular thinking or weirdness, whatever. I think that's our, that's our podcast listenership, essentially. I mean, I would think so. It's very modern. It's very how people are living these days.

Uh, we all live in our heads, right? And we have these very believable conversations in our heads about what's going on between you and other people, what's going on with other people away from you, things you're jealous of, things you're afraid of missing out on, whatever. It's all made up. It's all made up. And it's all different versions of things to try to make you feel better or intentionally make you feel worse.

Oh, it's comfy there. Dip in on some Ram motherfucking Dass, never done about it. It's, I swear this stuff he says is so fascinating and wise. And it is this thing of just like all of life is suffering. The whole idea is less suffering. And the way to do that is to acknowledge that your brain makes you suffer. It's your brain and that you can exist outside of your mind and the bullshit that goes on. I mean, we always talk about it and are aware of it, that it's not true.

It's your brain is lying to you when it's like that, but you and I can talk about it all the time and still believe it. That's how it works. It doesn't matter. Yeah. When you're out in the world, it doesn't matter when you're in that, you know, when you're in that CVS parking lot and you're just like, what, everyone else got beautiful and now I'm even uglier, like that's not, you don't realize that's what you're thinking.

It's just what's happening. Yeah. There's no like in your brain. There's no, there's no observe observation. It feels like you. Yeah. That's so funny that you mentioned that because on my tissue box of therapy where I keep forgetting to bring paper into my therapy session.

So I just write on my tissue box. We just talked about how panic is an anxiety as a circle. It's a circular thinking. This is happening. It's catastrophic. I'm this catastrophic. I'm this. I'm that.

And a great way it's like, here's a circle. And if you pull the, pull it straight, it unravels. And the way to do that is to make a list of your anxiety. So it's pulling the string into a horizontal line and it just immediately makes your brain unravel the circular anxiety. Another great way to do it is just to splash cold water on your face even because it just jolts you out of that. So something to try lists are my fucking obsession.

So I can do that. Yeah. Just don't make lists and all the while continue talking to yourself because that's ultimately the problem is you're buying into your own story. Yeah. Ultimately, the thing that we're really afraid of doing is letting go of our ego and just hanging out. It's like the God forbid that you just sit there.

Yeah. God forbid you don't say anything. God forbid you just see what happens. God forbid that there's quiet and slowness and rest and you know what I mean? Yeah. And not frenzy. But I think for me, lists are a way to put it aside, you know, like it's there. If you need to go back to it, you'll, you're not going to forget it.

You're not going to forget the obsessive thoughts you're thinking of and they're there. So you can now go take a nap or have a meditation without, Hey, whatever works. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like make your list. Do, do whatever. But it's the idea of interrupting the reality.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are you watching? Same stuff. Oh, I was going to say there is somebody that wrote in so last week or the week before

I talked about listening to West Cork. Yes. And I specifically mentioned how the person said they're, they want to put me in the home for the bewildered and a listener named Emer McNally wrote in and said, LOL, home for the bewildered is a very normal thing to say in Ireland, especially lately, especially in West Cork. And then in parentheses it says, I am from Cork. And then it says, I'll hashtag that because I'm a nerd, hashtag home for the bewildered.

I mean, that, that puts an end to it. We're moving to West Cork. Exactly right, all employees now part of the plan is that you, Steven, sorry, you're fucking moving to West Cork. No, I love Ireland. I wouldn't. Of course. That's right.

We're going to do it, guys. What are you listening to? Nothing. I'm reading a book called Fire Keeper's Daughter by Angeline Bully, B-O-U-L-L-E-Y, I might have gotten that wrong. And it's, it's a young adult book, but I love those. And it's about, and a girl named Donis, she's 18 years old. And she's the da, it's, this is the description.

She's the daughter of a dead Native American man and a white woman. And she's just starting college and living between those two worlds. So she doesn't fit into any of them and how different those, her families are and how they feel about each other, you know, her, she can't be part of the tribal membership because she's not full-blooded Native American. It's just this really, and then she meets this fucking hot dude and like there's just, it's her struggle, but you know, it's about the drug problems in her community, her friend gets murdered.

And so there's all these- Spoiler alert. You want to hold up- No, it's in the description. It's in the description. It's like kind of a true crime, not true crime, but it's like a crime, suspense fiction, but that's in the description. So it's, it's got a lot of layers, Indigenous culture, and it's really beautifully written.

It's a big book, so you can kind of snuggle into it and it's great. It's great. Firekeeper's Daughter. And I think it's going to be made into a movie too, which is really cool. I started watching on Amazon Prime. There's nothing left. There's nothing left. I know.

I'm still on Sopranos because I just don't care about looking for anything else anymore. I can't, like, I just want a series like that that has a couple seasons to dig into. And I feel like I've, I watched everything immediately, like the second quarantine started. I found this Italian series on Amazon Prime called The Miracle. It's from 2018, is when it aired in Italy. But it's about the, these cops find they raid a mafia, like a mafia don's place and they end up finding this statue of the Virgin Mary that cries blood and they can't figure out how it's happening.

And then all the different ways the people's lives that are like basically come in contact with that statue, how all the lives are affected. It's really well done. I love that. It's really well acted and directed. Like I was so surprised at, because usually there's kind of like a, there's a style difference that stands out where like, oh, I don't know, like it's an interesting thing to see other TV and then from other countries in the way, the way it's produced.

Yeah. It's so well done. I kept going, I bet this was on the HBO of Italy. This feels like big time in HBO series. Yeah. It's so good. What's it called again? The Miracle?

The Miracle. That's great. Oh, did you watch Eric Andre's new movie on Netflix? I have not watched it. Hold on. Let me see what it's called. It's a bad trip. Bad trip.

Okay. Eric Andre's new movie, Bad Trip. It is so, I laughed so hard that Mimi jumped off my lap and with her claws dug into me at the same time, Tiffany Haddish is a fucking dream in this. It's just, just watch it. If you need a laugh, light hearted, we watched it on like a Saturday afternoon or whatever. It's like part prank show, which really stresses me out all the time. Yeah.

But yeah. But you don't have that in that, in my mind. I'm like, they're extra so they knew something was going to happen. So they're not horrified, which is like the only way I can watch that kind of thing. And then part road trip friend movie. It's like Lil Rel, who's so hilarious, Eric Andre. It's just such a spirited, fun movie. I've seen tons of people on social media say the exact same thing and just be like, I can't,

I don't remember the last time I laughed this hard. Oh my God. Mimi, I'm scarred for life because of this movie. I'm going to sue, but you know, I still loved it. Oh, good. Yeah. I don't have anything else. I don't have much either this week.

Oh, just this other listener, Shayna at Shayna 18 on Twitter said, just from about our last episode, this week's MFM episode was fucking fire with an extra sprinkle of flour on top. And then a little fire emoji and a hard emoji. We'll never live it down. Thanks, Shayna. Thanks. We appreciate your support. It made me laugh so hard when I first saw that.

Should we do exactly right news? Sure. Well, so this week on Do You Need A Ride, we have the great comedian Solomon Giorgio, who's so hilarious. It was a very delightful episode. Fun. On Bananas this week, the performer Peppermint, epic, epic person, joins Scotty and Kurt to discuss the weirdest news stories that they find and they're on fire with those stories.

Turns out there's no shortage of them. Yeah. And Erin and Erin, this week on this podcast, we'll cover the story of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells and basically all of the contribution that Henrietta Lacks and her cells brought to the field of biomedical science. That's an incredible story. Incredible story. So good.

Yeah. Really great. Cool. And there's so much more on the network. Let's just look up exactly right network on wherever you listen to podcasts and support all our incredible podcasters and friends. And we've got new podcasts coming up. We do.

That's very exciting. This summer, it's going to be a podcast summer. It absolutely is. Hey, and also if you want a keychain, we have a bunch of MFM keychains in the store right now. They're all stocked up. Myfavoritmurder.com. Check out the store.

You know, because you're going to start leaving the house much more and you're going to need to remember your keys. I wonder if there's going to be a whole system of things like when people start leaving the house and going to work or going places and it's like, I left my phone. I left my keys. I locked myself. I literally locked myself out of the house today. I didn't put it together just now, but cooking into the groomers, Vince was gone.

In my scramble to put on my mask when she got home, I closed our door and was locked out. The groomer, the lovely person. It's just Rona grooming the second powerhouse celebrity groomers, a friend of ours. Let me call Vince, who had to come home from like the 18th hole golf, whatever he was doing. And let me in. I felt so bad. You don't have any like kind of here's the way I get in when I block myself out.

Well, I do now. Yeah. Oh, good. I feel like it's one of those things where I still feel like this is a new house, even though we've lived here for over a year. So we haven't done anything like that. And when would we ever lock ourselves out of our house? We're too smart to do that.

I learned my lesson today. Well, let this be the lantern that goes in front of you with all the new things that are going to be happening like this as life becomes more complex. When will that happen? Today. I don't know. Yeah, it started for Georgia today. For me, not so much.

Let me be a lesson to all of you that it's just in a moment, you are fucking shit out of luck with your puppy. It's clean. A clean puppy that smells amazing, but not great. There really is nothing like having an area by your door, figuring out an area by your front door so that you kind of have that habit built in. Yeah. Yeah.

It's lockbox time for me. MFM lockboxes or MFM fake rocks where you could put the key. Yeah. The fake rocks for sure. We should definitely put out a line of fake rocks. Real rocks too. We might as well trick people. I got nothing else really.

I can't really. Me neither, man. I'm trying to think of something that's been going on, but there really hasn't. I mean, today I actually went out and sat because there was there's always like there's a painter in the house now and there's somebody working on stuff, which is nice. So I just went down when the dogs did and went out into my backyard that's kind of a little bit like a small field, which I never do because I'm like, oh, that's kind of where the dogs go.

Yeah. It's just like down there. And I just took a cup of coffee down there and was listening to the old round us and sat there and it was so just like looking at some nice grass blowing in the wind and just like totally checked out. It was really, I don't know. Peaceful. I think I'm coming up on being totally done with being in quarantine.

I'm just like, this is a wrap. You're there. You're there. For me. Yeah. I think that's fair. I want to be a homebody because I like to be at home, not because I have to be at home and because I might get deathly ill if I leave the house.

Right? Yes. But if those, if those issues aren't there, you're saying you want to do it by choice. Yes. That's what I meant. Yeah. Yeah. I get that.

I want to do it by choice, but I want to appreciate the choice by doing something else. Right. Having to do other things and being like, oh, finally I'm home. Yeah. Gosh, it's nice to come home from nowhere for the past year. Oh. Oh, from my backyard. Just something, just some kind of, yeah, just something, some interaction.

The game night people are like, let's plan the first in person game night. It's so funny. Chomping at the bit. Yeah. To get those. But it's good because it feels like everyone's getting or has gotten their first shot or right around the corner. Yeah.

At least in California. Yeah. It feels like spring fever or something. It does. Cabin fever. Yeah. It's coming gone. So he hath risen.

Oh, yes. Thank you. He hath risen. Thank you for bringing that up. Great. Who goes first this week, Steven? I believe you do, Georgia. All right.

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You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, I thought this week I'd pay tribute to everyone's favorite childhood bathroom reading material, time life books. Nice. Yeah. Do your your mom let you have those books in the bathroom? I was like, National Geographic, what's she going to talk about? I think they were for us.

I don't think she cared about them. You know what I mean? So yes, they were there for us. It was either not or the they weren't for guests. Yeah. Once we got sick of the back of the shampoo bottle, it was like all bets are off. So that's gross. Okay.

So I thought I would go ahead and cover spontaneous human combustion. Nice. Okay. Great. So that is in its fifth year and it can be whatever we want it to be the end. It's ours. It's ours and all and yours too. So my sources are history.com, a how stuff works article by Stephanie Watson and Mark

Mancini, a lay thumbs quarterly article by Colin Dickey, BBC NPR doctors review article by Jackie Rosen Heck, an anomaly info, a Tampa Bay Times article by Gabrielle Khaleesi and a book called American Medicine by John Knot. So let's start with the beginning. That one of the first known mentions of spontaneous human combustion dates back to 1641. Oh. Did you know? No.

There was this Danish physician named Thomas Bartholin and he publishes a piece about a strange medical phenomenon. Bartholin includes a story told to him by direct descendants of a 15th century knight named ready. Are you ready for my Latin? Yes. Polonis vorstius. Forstius.

Forstius. Amazing. Thank you. As the story goes in 1470, voraceus voraceus is in his Milan home drinking wine when he starts get ready for this belching fire. No. Bartholin sounds awful, but fucking flames. Yep.

And then he bursts into flames and dies right in front of his parents. So I know. So following Bartholin's piece about this, people start questioning how something like this could even happen, you know, the topic of spontaneous human combustion becomes more popular after a noble woman dies of mysterious circumstances. So what happened was on an evening in early 1731, the 62-year-old countess named Cornelia Zangiri Bondi of Cessna, Italy, we're back in Italy. She's eating dinner at the Pasta Fajol based on Sopranos, I'm assuming, when she suddenly

starts feeling, quote, dull and heavy. So she goes to her room, she stays up for about three hours, she's talking to her maid and like praying before bed. And it's possible that the countess also sprinkles herself with brandy mixed with camphor oil in her bath, which I guess was a treatment at the time. And she does that when she's not feeling well. So contribution, maybe. After the countess falls asleep, the maid shuts the door and leaves her alone for the

night. The next morning, the maid calls out for the countess, she's still in her bedroom, which isn't normal. She doesn't get an answer, so the maid enters the room and finds the countess. She's four feet from her bed near the window and her body, this gets graphic. Her body is in a, quote, heap of greasy, smelly ashes. Her legs from the knee down are completely untouched and unharmed and they're still in their silk stockings, which that's highly flammable, you know?

I'm assuming I've never worn silk stockings, nor do I ever let them from whatever, teen hundreds. Exactly. I've never taken a Zippo to them, so we just got a, that's speculation. And three of her fingers are only blackened, not burned to dust. The countess's part of her skull is between her legs, like it had fallen, and her brain is still fully intact. Whoa.

So part, like it doesn't make any sense, rhyme or reason, parts burned, others didn't. The room is full of soot. It's all over the furniture, has even made its way to the neighbouring kitchen. So it's, it's extensive. And there's a smell in the room and the thick yellowish, quote, fat substance staining the floor and ceiling. And the bed has no fire damage, even though she was four feet from it. The blankets and the sheets are turned up on one side of the bed, showing that she had

gotten out of bed, seemingly calmly. There's an oil lamp covered with ash on the floor, but there's no oil in it. And there are two candles on a table, which are melted and late, but their wicks are still there. So a religious scholar named Giuseppe Biancini is asked to investigate the countess's death and determines that the countess died from spontaneous combustion. Then Biancini investigates other similar fire deaths, and in each case, rules out external sources of ignition, like a lamp or a candle or whatever, as being the cause.

And he finds that the victim's torsos were destroyed, but their extremities weren't in all the cases. And objects near the bodies were undamaged by the flames and that the fires spread quickly because of the victim's lack of movement, like they're not, you know, how you see in movies of running around on fire. Right. Biancini's findings are translated to English, and those findings become more widely known. People start researching spontaneous combustion, which leads to more theories.

So in as early as 1783, a new theory emerges, similar to how a string down the center of a candle absorbs wax and keeps the flame going. I don't understand that, but it sounds right. An extra... Well, are they not, are they not talking about the wick? They must be. I don't know why this word string is in there, but let's just go with it. I mean, isn't the string down the center?

The string down the center of a candle, a wick? It absolutely is, so thank you. So similarly, an external source ignites the victim's clothes quickly. So fat is released and reabsorbed into the clothing, which helps keep the fire going. Spontaneous combustion believers argue against this new theory, saying the fire would burn slow enough that anyone would be able to put it out and the fire would never get hot enough to burn bones into ashes. So that's their theory.

This theory, which is still around, is later named the wick effect. Not the string effect. Thank you, the wick effect, you know, yeah, no. So in 1799, a physician named Pierre Lear, or Lear, reviews multiple cases of spontaneous combustion and finds multiple reoccurring characteristics, including many that'll be and sheenie found that victims are typically over 60 years old, female and have some extra weight on their body. The victims also lead inactive lives and drink excessive alcohol.

So I'm fucked personally. In this review, Dr. Lear, I'm going to go with, even ranks alcohol by its likelihood of combustion. So here's what not to drink, everyone. One is the most likely to cause it, followed by brandy, whiskey and rum, no word on beer or wine. So I'm going to assume they're safe. Dr. Lear finds that the scene of the spontaneous human combustion is usually near an external

flame, of course, like a candle or fireplace, which seems like it'd be kind of obvious. Most of the time, the combustion is extremely rapid, typically starting in the trunk of the body and leaving the head and extremities intact and the flames are often difficult to extinguish. The victims typically produce a strong burnt odor, which seems obvious, logical. And the areas surrounding the body are usually coated in that thick, yellow, greasy film. Not pleasant. Kind of gross.

Yeah. Dr. Lear also finds that the accidents usually occur during fair weather more often in winter than spring, which is odd and interesting. Basically, Dr. Lear blames spontaneous human combustion on consuming alcohol. That's his theory. He says that the victims, which seems like a, you know, nagging, oh, don't you think? Like not nagging, what's the word? Like you're being attacked?

Like seems. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's it. He says that the victims had drunk enough alcohol to make themselves flammable. Victim blaming. I see. You know. Also, just having been around many drunks in my life and having been one.

Congratulations. I thank you. I don't. Have you ever seen one of them come burst into flames? Yeah, it's not like it's that I get, I get that someone's trying to put a theory together and basically be like, here's what makes the most sense, which is fine. But I think it would happen much more often if that was the determining factor. It seems so rare and so like unmistakable of what it is.

It's not like the, you know, investigators would come and call it something else. You know what I mean? Even a small flame could have set them a fire and cause their bodies to be consumed quickly by fire. So that's the alcohol theory. Those against the alcohol theory cling. Wait, sorry. Those against alcohol, of course, the prohibitionists or whatever, cling to this new theory and

use it as part of their message that drinking is bad. So it's fucking political. They're going to go that far with it. And also drinking is bad because you explode. Yeah. So that's all I'm going to say about it. And only will it cause this, but you'll explode every one. And there's just people on the streets fucking exploding all the time.

See? Okay. The idea that alcohol is the cause of spontaneous combustion continues for another century. So it sounds like everyone was a lot of fun those times. Dr. Layar's findings are later contested, thankfully. And there are many questions about the validity of his scientific methods. So it's probably just him being like, there's a cat. It exploded.

You know, it's just, he didn't really do research. But isn't it, but also isn't it the kind of thing where it happened and someone had to make sense of it? And so it was a difficult job to be like, how come there's legs, no body and a skull in the lab? Well, I don't even think it was his job. I think it was his want to prove that alcohol was bad. And he was studying that and jumped on to that theory, you know, using it.

He's using it. So fuck him. So still, that's right, still the theory of spontaneous combustion doesn't really hit mainstream until the 19th century, the spooky 19th century, when none other than Charles Dickens publishes a novel called Bleak House. And in the novel, Dickens kills off alcoholic character Crook with spontaneous combustion. So it's like taking current events and making them into your book. So people do that.

Also, there's a wonderful dramatization of Bleak House that everyone's best friend Jillian Anderson is in. Love her. Among many other people, it's a very good adaptation. I believe you can stream it on Britbox or Acorn. From a code murder. No, don't use that. That won't work.

I've watched. Yeah. Don't try. Don't use that. The new adaptation of Bleak House, I've seen it five times. Wow. I love it. You're so cultured.

I love Dickens. I love Victoria in England. It's so creepy. Children had jobs. Ash was everywhere. People were exploding. Those high collars, children drink beer because water is fucking trash, basically. Yes, exactly.

I am weird. It was the weirdest time, there was low level smog all over London, people lived in weird rooms filled with hay and a bunch of other people. It was just really fucking bleak. Wash basins and fucking all these things. Yes, crazy. Hard pass. Hard pass.

I love it all. You can go, but I'm going to stay here. So after reading this Bleak House novel, I said that in what might be the first case of trolling in history, readers are upset that Dickens killed off a character in such an illegitimate way. So they're mad at a fucking piece of fiction. Sure. They're trolling.

Of course they are. The shit out of him. And then I said since Dickens doesn't exist yet, the theory that you're not supposed to feed the trolls and respond to them, he responds by writing a preface to the book where he says spontaneous combustion is a real cause of death and that there are at least 30 historical cases proving him right, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're stupid. Yeah.

Why don't you go to the library? Emoji, emoji, emoji, sad face, fire emoji, flower emoji, go to hell. So by the 20th century, people don't seem to really talk about spontaneous combustion anymore. Scholars and those in the medical field seem to avoid the topic completely. If a strange fire death occurs, it's likely attributed to either the wick effect, which is the old school thing, or said to be the gases produced in decomposition being set on fire by external sources.

So essentially, the person had already passed the gases in their system, which alcohol actually could totally play a role in that. It's not the cause of it. But you know, there's electricity in the air, we're all fucking molecules and bacteria and shit, hold on a second, I'm a scientist, I'm going to stop you because here's the thing, the wick effect still is spontaneous combustion, even though they're saying this is the reason it's happening. People are still catching on fire by themselves.

That's like the whole fucking point of it is like, however you're going to be like, here's my theory, gin or whatever, I'll let you get to it. But I'm thinking of a very specific picture that's in one of these books that I'm sure you looked at. It's the famous one, I'm going to get to her. It's the famous one, which I love, like I love that this was back when you couldn't really prove it because even if it was in the newspaper, it'd be like an illustration, whereas like we actually got to the point where people were able to start taking like forensic photography

of people who spontaneously combust. Because it wasn't just back in the 1700s where the drawing would be happening, it continues to happen. So let me tell us, let's tell us about that while there are hundreds of reported spontaneous human combustion cases, only around 12 have been investigated in actual detail. One of the world's most heavily investigated case of possible human combustion is from that photo, that of 67-year-old Mary Reiser, R-E-E-S-E-R of St. Petersburg, Florida, which seems like it'd be highly electricity, high, you know, all the fucking lightning around

there and shit. Maybe. Scientist again. On July 1st, 1951, at around 9 p.m., Mary gets ready for bed, takes a few sleeping pills as you do. She sits in a chair and starts smoking a cigarette, which is kind of her thing, no shame in the game. The next morning, Mary's landlady, named Pansy, which I'm so glad that has kept in the historical

records because what a name, shows up to Mary's apartment to deliver a telegram. Pansy finds that the apartment door is warm and the handle is too hot to touch as it would be in a fire. Like, guys, test the fucking doorknob every before you go in a room. I mean, not every room, just potentially fire rooms. No, go around the world. Everywhere you go, always be worried. There's a fire on the other side.

Those fire rooms. You know, in your house, you have the basement, you have the family room, you have the fire room. There's the fire room. Okay, so the firefighters arrive, make their way inside and find a soot and smoke filled apartment with embers still burning. When authorities are able to look around the apartment, they find an intact foot, and I'm describing this photo, an intact foot still wearing a slipper on top of a pile of ashes.

They also find coil springs from the chair that Mary was sitting on. They also find part of her backbone and her skull, which has been, quote, shrunken to the size of a cup. And I don't know if that's her skull or her brain. It sounds like it would be the brain, but that's what is in the books. The tops of Mary's walls, aka, oh yeah, not the ceiling, the tops of her walls. Different thing are stained with smoke and the electric switches are all warped. The lower part of her walls are clean and the electrical switches down there are normal.

I mean, it's flatly fire and smoke rises, but you'd still think that it would cover the whole wall. Yeah. I think that would affect everything uniformly. There's also some melted candles with only the wicks left. I feel like it's the wicks fault in every case here. I would say, wouldn't just the wicks still existing disprove and lift flers? Karen, explain this hypothesis to me because I don't get it.

Didn't the person say that the wick theory was saying that just like that it burned down the way a wick burns inside a candle is what's happening inside a person's body. I'm still lost on this theory, but so yes. That's what I was hearing it as, but then this proves that the wick didn't burn, that the fat of the candle or whatever it is, the wax of the candle is what went away. I thought it was made of fat back then. I'm going to back you up here. Back in the 60s?

No. Okay. So after Mary's death hits the papers, the theory of spontaneous combustion is thrown around and the story makes national headlines. And that's when the police chief asks for the FBI's help, which is like, bravo. We'd like to see that. The FBI finds no evidence of any accelerants used in the fire. They rule out lightning striking Mary's apartment.

So there goes my theory as well as spontaneous combustion. They rule it out as well. The FBI says that they believe Mary died of the wick effects. They just keep fucking tossing that wick effect around. They alleged that the rayon acetate nightgown she was wearing. You remember nightgowns up until we were 12. So like the mid 90s were made of asbestos and fire retardant, you know, we all had those. So they alleged that the rayon acetate nightgown she was wearing caught fire from the cigarette.

Fine. And then they said Mary's fat eventually caught on fire. However, Wilton Krogman, an anthropologist and fire researcher, says that if the FBI's theory was correct, that Mary's head would have exploded, not shrunk. Wow. So Mary's cause of death is ruled as accidental death by fire of unknown origin. But even today, people still speculate that Mary was killed by spontaneous human combustion. Which seems like it could be both could be true, you know.

It's like it doesn't rule out that that exists, as we were talking about. Right. And I think the theory of that her nightgown caught on fire and cigarette and blah, blah, blah, if you were on fire, you'd run somewhere. Totally. Totally. That's the thing about spontaneous human combustion is, like you said, they stay in one spot.

It just happens and that's that. Right. It's spontaneous, big, hot. Come on. Big hot. Come on. Exactly. Come on.

Another case of possible spontaneous human combustion happened on December 22, 2010, in your favorite place. Didn't you guess? It's truly one of your favorite places. Oh, true. I'm not making. I'm not making. Pittsburgh?

No. It's not. Want me to give you another hint? It's not in the US. You're at what? Oh. Galway, Ireland. Oh.

Oh. I literally almost said Hawaii. That's my favorite murder for you, everyone. The continental. That's our guarantee to you. We don't know where anywhere is and we refuse to learn. Go listen to a geography podcast if that's your thing. So Galway, Ireland, December 22, 2010.

So pretty recently, around 3 a.m., a fire alarm goes off in Michael Faraday's home. So a neighbor hears the alarm, goes outside and sees smoke coming out of Faraday's house. The neighbor bangs on his door and gets in a response, so heads to a nearby house to get help. So inside that house, in the sitting room of Michael Faraday's home, police find 76-year-old Faraday dead, nearly burned up. He's lying on his back with his head closest to a lit fireplace. The only damage is to his body, the ceiling above him, and the floor underneath him.

That's the only damage. The fire from the fireplace never left the sitting room, but the rest of the house is smoke damage. So it's not like the house caught on fire, but there's smoke throughout, which seems like it would have stayed in the room if it wasn't on fire. You know what I mean? Right. On the mantle piece, on the mantle, is a pack of matches untouched, unharmed.

So you'd think there's a fire going if that caused the fire, obviously, the pack of matches as you would often do as a kid when you'd light the match and then light the whole matchbook on fire, which was the most fun we had, would have just disintegrated completely. So during a nine-month investigation, forensic experts determined that there was no trace of an accelerant again and that the fire in the fireplace was not the same fire that burned Faraday. So I guess there's different types of fire, you know, probably hotter or like less aggressive. I'm guessing your dad would know.

Your dad would tell you. Woody? I don't know. I don't trust your dad on fire anymore. I don't even think it was a fire. I think that was all it. He would just leave the house every day with a fire, a toy fire hat on and be like... Yeah, that's right.

And he'd go sit at the train station and pretend to be a fireman. That would be amazing. Dr. McLaughlin feels like he's left, he's only, quote, left with the conclusion that Faraday's death fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, which so finally a doctor is like, yeah, it's true. And that's the first he's ever seen in his 25 year career. So cool. Let's finish with a case where the victim doesn't die.

And I remember reading about this and being fascinated by it. A 43 year old woman in Orange County, California, Stephen and I have been there, visited the San Onofre State Beach, beautiful place and happened upon some pretty rocks of cool colors. And so, you know, she took the rocks. The rocks were, quote, hamburger patty sized and cute. That's the description. So the woman puts them in her pocket of what we can only assume are her super fashionable cargo shorts, as you do.

A few hours later, those rocks combust and they're still in her cargo short pockets. They catch her cargo shorts on fire, leading to her suffering, this is awful, second and third degree burns to her leg. Can you imagine? As well as burns to her right hand. So, you know, probably went to put the fire out. Her husband came to her aid and subsequently also suffered first and second degree burns to his hand while he was trying to help put out the fire, love, love, love their love.

Local health officials say that two of the rocks contain, quote, a phosphorous substance, but there still is no definitive explanation as to why they might have caught on fire. So this, I feel like, leads us, we can look back on these other cases and wonder what they had in the room, what kind of stuff they collected, you know, what things were made of back then that could have actually been the cause. Right. But I haven't found any research into it. So the local health officials say that two of the rocks can, okay, I told you about that.

I think what's more reliable than the local health officials is that a nosy neighbor speculated to the press or someone that the rocks caught fire, quote, due to friction, which I think also is a great hypothesis. Friction lights. Yeah, I mean, I can say that too. What else does anything catch fire due to than friction? I feel like nosy neighbors, though, are the new doctor, you know? She's like hanging over the fence.

Hey. Hey. Over here. You know what I did. I've got a theory for you. Hey, this is what I think. It's not the wick there. It's different.

Can you be the nosy neighbor, please? I was doing it. I know. Then I want more. I knew you'd end quick. But here's the, here's, okay, two hamburger patty shaped rocks per cast. I have seen YouTube footage of a guy standing in like a 7-Eleven and his key catches on fire nets because his phone battery.

What is the most troubling, fascinating video I've ever seen? It's crazy and it feels very similar to this, but obviously I think if she had her phone on her person, they would have said it, right? Yeah. And it was also, maybe she had her beeper on her because it was her flip phone. Oh, it was the 90s. No, this was 2010. So it was a flip phone or a razor, you know, and I don't know.

So I actually, I have always been fascinated with this story that I heard a long time ago. So I was like, great, they must have updated it. I literally couldn't find a news article that was past 2012 when it happened. Not a fucking thing, which of course leads me to believe that it goes all the way to the top, right? Because why else wouldn't we have a better explanation than phosphorus covered rocks? There's no period at the end of that sentence. And why would said rocks even have been on a public beach?

You know, like that's, I don't think that's naturally occurring. It is. Unless rock people want to, and Karen, want to tell me other one. It is. Great. Great. You know, like, you've seen, you know, when like the, the, every once in a while, this doesn't happen that often, but like, there'll be like a tide that you can see at night.

Oh, and they're all green and lit on, lit on phosphorus. Thank you. That's that shit. So we're not geologists, we're not marine biologists, rockologists. None of those things. But we know the theory of rock and roll. But what I'm saying is that's why I'm just like, I don't buy this hamburger patty rock theory either.

And maybe they're for two different reasons, but here's another piece of this. No one but the CIA, oh, I said this, no one but the CIA and FBI know the truth and they're not coming forward. But here's something interesting. Well, so some people speculate that these phosphorus rocks or whatever they are might have something to do with the fact that nearby this beach where she found the rocks is the Santa Nofri nuclear generating station. Oh shit.

All the way to the motherfucking top. And close by as well is the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. Gasp. I did it for you. And if you've ever heard of Flint, those are rocks that you can make fire with as well just by slapping them together. Are you a rock doctor? Look, look, I've known two things so far in this story and I've had a strong opinions

about the WIC theory. Okay. Even today, let's close this out. Even today scientists, they're still arguing over the possibility of even spontaneous human combustion even exists. And the general consensus seems to be that it's not real. It is. It is.

The general consensus on my favorite murder is that it is. And that's entirely real. And that's the final word. Non-believers often conclude that the cause of the fire comes from an undetected flame source at like a match. Oh, what a great solution that is. Great. Thanks so much.

That explains none of it. Since most victims of supposed spontaneous combustion have been found next to a fire source, non-believers think it seems likely that the victims accidentally set themselves on fire while lighting a match or smoking a cigarette. But for those of us who still believe in spontaneous human combustion, the leading cause includes, this is what I think it is, bacteria such as methane in the intestines. What happens in your intestines is so powerful and I think we're learning so much more about that and even like mental health and how they're connected.

There's so much, as you can tell, I'm the gaseous person you've probably ever met. So like there's a lot of stuff going on in there that is still to be explored. So hopefully I don't light a fire. What happens in the intestines stays. Not in my case, unfortunately. Other theories are static electricity buildup, which seems totally plausible, excessive consumption of alcohol, which I think could add to it, but I don't think it's the cause. Pandora buildup of acetone, which can be a result of alcoholism, diabetes or a specific

diet. So I'm going to rule out, I'm going to say no more cauliflower for anyone and not, but none of these theories have been proven true. So let's hope there's more info someday. That is the theory and stories of spontaneous human combustion. Are you scared now? I just gave myself a little moment to think about the legs in the nylons and the shoes that are that they just stop, like it's legs and then a chair that has a big black ashy

thing on it. And I'm not sure which story that one is from, but I don't know, I remember just staring at it. It's from the one we just talked about. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, I love when people just try to dismiss when, yeah, it only makes sense.

Actually, people like us believe stronger, so stop it. Yeah. All right. Good job. Thank you. So this week, the murders I'm going to cover are actually, the story has been suggested several times to us over the years, but especially because of what's going on, you know, in politics right now, I figured that it would be good to talk about the murders from Paris is burning.

So if you've never seen the documentary, Paris is Burning, which is from 1990. And it is about the, basically the Harlem drag ball scene in the, it's like through the 80s. It is one of the most unbelievably amazing documentaries that shows you, it brings you into a world you'd probably, chances are never have the opportunity to be a part of or to be able to see. And you get to meet some of the most unbelievable people and some of the most creative, dynamic, fascinating individuals.

And you can stream Paris is burning on, I think Apple TV right now. So if you haven't seen it, go see it cause watch it. It's pretty legendary. I think most people have seen it. It's life changing. It's like a whole new world that you didn't know existed. If you're a fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, if you are a fan of Ryan Murphy's TV show Pose, if you like Madonna song Vogue, this is all straight, straight.

This is Paris is burning and the people that participated in the drag scene in the 80s in New York city in general, but especially in the Bronx and in Harlem are basically the creators of that, the uncredited creators of a lot of current, of our current pop culture. And that's when we get into those discussions about cultural appropriation and attribution and visibility and all that stuff. This is all kind of part of that and the importance of giving people credit and kind of pointing to where things are from. And if you don't know and people tell you where it's from, then updating your kind

of knowledge base and language, lots of different sources on this, obviously the documentary itself, but there's also a 1994 article from New York magazine by a writer named Jeannie Russell Kaisendorf. There's an article in Atlas Obscura, which is a friend of the family. Yes. Great, amazing website, Atlas Obscura. There's an article in the New York Times, Billboard Magazine, FilmDaily.co. There's a blog called ZagriaBlogspot.com and their post is called A Gender Variance

Who's Who. That's fun. Which is very cool. Wikipedia and the Reddit Unresolved Mysteries thread. Love, love, love late night. That's my jam. Yeah, right. Okay, so essentially, okay, so Paris is Burning is about the Harlem drag ball scene and the

Bronx in the 80s and it's looking to an incredibly rich and ornate world that's also very rarefied. And a lot of the footage you see in the movie is from a drag competition called A Ball. So we'll walk through just the basics. A drag ball is a part modeling contest, part fashion show, part dance competition, and a part almost like cosplay contest depending on what category you're performing in. And different houses of drag performers, which are basically like their name for teams, but it's much closer than that. A lot of the performers live together and the houses have a mother and that's the person

who's kind of in charge of the house. So there's House of Ninja, House of Extravaganza, House of Corey, House of Dupri, House of Le Beja, Peppa Le Beja. I can't say Le Beja without singing Peppa Le Beja. And essentially, they perform in whatever category that they're performing in and then up against people, then they do dance offs. There's lip syncing. All kinds of stuff.

It's really amazing. So the website Decider has the documentary and their description for it. At the end of it, it's a very, this very telling sentence that says, Paris is Burning provides an all too rare platform for the under amplified voices that continue to indelibly shape widespread culture. So that's kind of what this, when this documentary came out and like my friends and I went and saw it, it was that kind of thing of like, these are the art makers. These are the ultimate, the original creators that are doing it for each other and for themselves.

And because that kind of art is so authentic and from such a real place and such true self-expression, it's usually very high level, it's very good, and it gets ripped off all the time. That's what happens. So one of the standouts of this documentary is the legendary drag queen, Dorian Corrie. She is a mother of the house of Corrie. And she's the one who explains to the audience what shade is. Oh! Like throwing shade?

Yes. Wow. And it's such a good, like everyone in it is, these personalities and who they are and how they speak is just so compelling. And at the, she also gives, I've actually read this speech that she gives at the end of this documentary on this show before. Oh yeah. And it, where she says, quote, I always had hopes of being a star, but as you get older,

you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world, and then you think you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it. And a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better just to enjoy it. Pay your dues and just enjoy it.

If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you. I mean, the most would be beautiful. So there's a story behind Dory and Corey's story that you do not hear about or know about in this documentary. So I'll set the scene for you. And in May of 1993, Dory and Corey is performing at Grammy night, which is an annual event at Sally's two drag bar on West 43rd Street in New York City. So, oh, sorry, I don't know if I said already, the director of Paris is Burning is named Jenny

Livingston. I don't, I don't think I've given her. She's the director. Okay. So this is three years after the movie has come out. And so Dorian was already a drag legend. She had been doing it since the 60s. But in her performance that night at Sally's two, she's wearing a white gown dripping with

pearls with a marabou feather coat draped on her shoulders while she lip syncs if I could by Regina Bell Wow. What no one could have known is that this would be Dorian's final performance. A few months later, on August 23rd, 1993, Dorian Corey passes away from AIDS related complications at Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. And she's just 56 years old. So in the days leading up to her death, Dorian tells her close friend and caretaker Lois Taylor, who's also a drag queen, that to repay Lois for her kindness, she can keep any of

Dorian's old costumes that she wants to keep. And then she can sell the rest and keep the money. So about two months after Dorian's death, Lois brings some people, some potential customers up to Dorian's fourth floor apartment at West 104 Street. So as they're looking through this back room where Dorian kept all of her, imagine a room full of drag costumes that she's been wearing since the sixties for 30, 30 years of drag costumes. Right.

And like, so a huge closet of amazing clothes, you know what that is? Treasure, historical treasure, true treasure. And so many, you know, the levels of feather boa in that room. Yeah. And the, and the stories is that each of those outfits could tell. I mean, yeah, that's it's a whole other movie. Yeah. So as they're looking around this room, they come upon a green plaid garment bag that's

on the ground. So the bag is very heavy, Lois can't lift it. So she hands one of the customers a pair of scissors and says, cut it open. The second they cut it open, the most terrible smell comes pouring out of the bag. So they stop and they call the police. Wow. So when the police arrive, they, they start, they, they open the bag into everyone's shock and horror.

They find a partially mummified body of a man lying in a fetal position and he has a bullet wound in his head. Holy shit. Okay. So I'll give you a little of Dorian's background. So Dorian Corey is born in 1937 and raised on a farm near Buffalo, New York. Wow. Yeah.

So she begins performing drag in her hometown at a very early age. And in the 1950s, she gets a job doing window displays at Hengerer's department store. Cool. So she ends up saving it up for, with that job, saving up enough money to move into New York City to go to, she studied art at Parsons School of Design in Greenwich Village. I mean, she had to be so talented just to get those chops and credentials. Yeah. Absolutely.

So even though she was, she had already started doing drag. She is now, you know, making it in the big city and totally free to be a drag performer. So she ends up getting a spot in a cabaret drag act called the Pearl Box Review with three other drag queens, Jay Joyce, Clyde McCoy and Tony LaFrisky. So this group tours up and down the Eastern seaboard. This is yet another, another movie we don't want to watch. And Dorian is the group's snake dancer. She performs every night with a live boa constrictor.

I'm going to, I'm going to have a cigarette outside when that, when that shows going on. So during this time, Dorian's getting more comfortable in her skin as a woman. She starts hormone therapy and she undergoes top surgery so she can live her life as authentically as she is. By the seventies, Dorian establishes herself as a force and in New York City ball scene. She forms her own house, the house of Corey, which becomes one of the top voguing houses in New York City. And over the, over the course of her career, Dorian wins more than 50 grand in prizes from

her own performance at voguing. Holy shit. And today's money is like, that's all a lot of fricking money. 70s, 50 grand is today's 1.2 million dollars. Okay. That might be, that may be an overness. Let's just say it. Cause that sounds good.

Okay. So the other part of this is, and you, you learn this as you watch Paris is Burning is that most of the people don't have the money to buy like for the fashion aspect of these drag balls. Sure. There are some people that can like somehow figure out a way to buy like fashion items like designer clothes, but most of the people part of what you're winning for is if you make the clothes yourself, which lots of people do, and Dorian is known as a master seamstress.

And so the people that are in the house of Corey, she always prefers people who can make their own clothes over the buyers. Cause that's just, that's where the art is, that's what it's all about. And that's the real self-expression. During one of her most famous ball performances, Dorian wears a 30 by 40 foot cape that she designed herself, which covers almost the entire ballroom floor. And then mid performance, she takes the cape off and with the help of a couple other people, transforms it into a tent that covers half the audience.

Oh my. Do you think she won that night? Yes she did. I don't know. Oh my, I'm just picturing it in my head and I want to cry. Okay, so she ended up actually, these skills, let her decree her own clothing label, Corey designs. And on and off the ballroom floor, Dorian Corey is a force to be reckoned with.

She's witty. She's wise. She's always composed. When you see her in this documentary, she is, so has been around the block. Like she is, she seems like the wisest woman in the world. Been there, done that, asked me about it. Yes. So when she makes her debut to a wider audience in Paris's Burning in 1990, she easily becomes

one of the documentary's most cherished presences. So just a little bit about this documentary, it's one of the most important LGBTQ plus films ever made. And it gives viewers an honest look of the way in which race, class, gender and sexuality weave together and sometimes come to a head in America. Named after the annual Paris's Burning Ball, which was hosted by Drag Queen Paris Dupree, the documentary zeros in specifically on ballroom and drag culture in New York City in the 80s.

But it isn't just about the performances at the drag balls. It's also, you get to see the performers telling their own stories about how different ways they've been shunned or cast aside by family, friends, society and how they basically came together to build their own community and finding love and safety with each other. So the people in the film aren't without their struggles, but it's really about their resilience and their desire to live fully and be themselves and be themselves in the world. Being in a world that basically doesn't accept them at face value, but then on the ballroom floor they have this unbelievable opportunity to shine, to be adored, to be famous and to

be successful in their own right. So as Drag Queen Peppa Lebeige says in the film, quote, you can become anything and do anything right here right now. It won't be questioned, I came, I saw, I conquered, that's a ball. So it's really, it's really cool, you guys see that movie. So now we're back in Dorian's apartment, 1993. So the first thing the police do when they find this body is they start pointing fingers at Lois Taylor and Lois immediately shuts them down.

She says something that's really funny because I guess she was very petite. So they were, they were basically saying like before the police can even finish their sentence of warning her about like, we'll be able to pick up your fingerprints on this bag. She cusses them out and it's like, I fucking weigh 135 pounds, I couldn't even pick that bag up. You will have my fingerprints on the top of it and that's it and don't, you dare trying to, you know, we called you type of shit. So the body in the bag is reduced to a partially preserved purple and yellow decay of the bodies

wearing tattered blue and white boxers and just one sleeve of a t-shirt. Investigators discovered that the body was preserved by being covered in baking soda and wrapped tightly with tape and Nogahide of fake leather material before being sealed in the bag wrapped up along with the body are several pull tabs from flip top beer cans, which is a relic of the 60s and 70s. And they officials determined that the body has been sitting in that closet for at least 15 years. What?

How? That's, and how did the smell, I mean, that's some like, yeah, they, she did some stuff, or I'm assuming she did some stuff to cover it up, but that's not like the clothes would you think would be permeated in that smell? I mean, but I think if it's one of those just like you were just saying about the nightgowns and stuff of the 70s, if it was a garment bag from the 70s, it was a plastic bag that was sealed. Yeah.

So then if the body's wrapped and then the plastic bag is sealed, I don't know. So the body is partially mummified. It's still decayed enough that the only way to ID the body is through fingerprinting. And you need all 10 fingerprints to get a proper ID. So a fingerprinting expert named Raul Figueroa uses his own special technique to harden the softened delicate skin on the hands so he can get 10 clean prints. And when he, he gets them and when he runs those prints, they get a match. And it's a man named Bobby, Robert Bobby Warley, and his alias was Bobby Wells.

So Robert Bobby Warley is born on December 18th, 1938. He's the youngest of seven kids. His dad runs an ice plant in Fairmont, North Carolina. In 1956, Bobby's brother, Fred, moved to New York with his wife and young son. And so Bobby ends up following him, but but he doesn't tell his brother that he's in the city right away. And so then a couple years later, 1963, he gets charged with rape and assault. And he gets a three year sentence at Sing Sing.

When he's released in August of 1966, he changes his name to Bobby Wells. And a year or two later, either in 67 or 68, he moves in with Fred and the family in the Bronx. He's a heavy drinker, drinks vodka straight from the bottle every night. And his brother, Fred, tries to help him out of this wayward lifestyle that he's in, but it doesn't work. And at the same time, Bobby starts a relationship with a neighbor woman who who has a couple of kids and one day, three months after moving in with Fred, Bobby and the woman get into

a fight. And Bobby ends up assaulting her seven year old. So the woman threatens to call the police. And with that, he disappears. That's the last time any of his family, anyone in his family saw him was in 1968. So at the time of the initial investigation, the police are reluctant to give out more than the basic details about the case, partly because it's an active investigation and partly because it's the case of a poor black man found murdered in a drag queen's apartment.

And they're basically the, the authorities aren't giving it the attention that it deserves. There's a reporter from New York magazine. Her name's Jeannie Russell, um, Kazendorf. And she paints the picture of her 1994 interactions with, um, the commanding officer of the 26 detective squad, um, asking about the case saying that they're standoffish at best, um, by the nineties. So like it's been in the nineties. So when she asks if they've seen the movie, Paris is burning, um, the sergeant says it's

not on my list of home movies. So as a result, no one's ever arrested or tried for the murder. Only two people will ever know what happened. And that's Bobby Warley and Dorian Corey. And they're both unfortunately long gone. But there are several theories that have surfaced, um, given Bobby's criminal record and his reputation for burglarizing, most of Dorian's friends believe that Bobby attempted to break in and rob Dorian in her apartment and that she shot him in self-defense.

Some friends say that Dorian left a note with the body that said this poor man broke into my home and was trying to rob me, but the police deny ever that such a note ever existed. Dorian did have a gun, a 22, um, this is according to her friends, but many people in the drag community do being that she's a drag queen, that basically her assumption, no police officer would believe herself defense story if she called the cops is very understandable. She's queer, black, living in poverty. Basically she's her only, her only first line of defense herself. Um, so the problem with this theory is investigators estimate the body was around 15 years old

when it was found in 1993, suggesting that the murder took place around 1978. But Dorian didn't move into the apartment on West 104 street until 1988. So following this timeline, some believe it's more likely that rather than Dorian taking the body with her from one apartment to the next, the body may have already been there when she moved in. Oh my God. I have chills. That's the creepiest, right?

Either that or she was hiding the body for a friend because he disappeared in the 60s. So well, his family did see him right after 1968. Right. Yeah. Okay. Uh, to complicate things further, investigative reporting after Dorian's death indicates that she may have had a secret, but passionate relationship with Bobby Worley while covering the case, Jeanie Russell Cazendorf, um, interviews Bobby's older brother, Fred, and she asks

him if Bobby knew any transvestites, which was the word people used at that time. Right. Um, so he says, Oh yes, I think they had a relationship. He, um, I didn't know this was in him until one night when he was living with me. He was obviously stewed. He called our house well after midnight thinking, um, he was calling his friend and he talked and talked and I listened. So he, so Bobby was calling his brother thinking he was calling Dorian is what his brother

is alleging. Yeah. And then, uh, he tries to remember Dorian's name, but can't. And that's when the reporter offers is a Dorian and he says Dorian, that was it. That's, that's who he called. Um, so Fred says his brother was a macho guy and he wouldn't be surprised if Bobby had gotten violent with Dorian, which is an all too common occurrence for trans women who get into relationships with cisgender men who are ashamed of their attraction to trans

women and take their anger out on their partners. So none of Dorian's friends can ever recall her dating a Bobby. They, they say it's possible she kept the relationship a secret at Bobby's request, which is also a common thing. Plus later on in 1994, Lois Taylor recalls some writing of Dorian's that she found and gave to police. And basically according to Lois Dorian was writing a story, um, something about revenge and revenge wound up in murder.

Um, it was a fictional tale, but there were a lot of real life events, including mentions of the pro box review. Um, so we don't know for sure if that was. A true story, if it was just fiction. Yeah. But what we can gather though is that basically when someone's forced to live in society's outer edges, they can't count on the usual systems that society has in place to serve and protect them.

Amen. So Dorian Corey and trans people like her still to this day have been left to fend for themselves most often. So that's that's basically kind of like the headline. That's the one that, that, um, that's the, did you ever hear of, of the story of Dorian Corey? Right. The murder that actually is, uh, talked about in the documentary, um, is the murder of Venus

extravaganza. And that's, it's so tragic and it, it turns the end of the documentary has such a, like as a heavy, sad twist, um, with in what is ultimately such a kind of beautiful, like the whole, um, drag ball scene and all the people in it are so incredibly alive and positive and amazing and with each other. And it's such a, like, it's such a stark, like left turn, but we'll, but we'll talk about it. So one member of Dorian Corey's house of Corey, um, is the promising talent Angie extravaganza.

Uh, so under Dorian's tutelage, Andy is so successful in the drag scene that, um, when the house of extravaganza founder Hector Valley passes away in 1985, Angie extravaganza takes over as house mother. Right. Um, so as house of extravaganza gains notoriety, um, Angie takes another young mentee under her wing and that's Venus extravaganza. So Venus, um, who's been a drag performer since the age of 13, identifies as a trans woman and finds community in Harlem's drag scene.

Um, but the budding drag star's career tragically ends on Christmas day in 1988 when a stranger finds her body stuffed under a bed in the duchess hotel. She had been strangled to death and left in the hotel room for four days and she was only 23 years old. So Venus extravaganza was born on May 22nd, 1965 in Jersey city, New Jersey to, um, Italian American and Puerto Rican parents. Venus was one of five kids. She had four brothers, um, and from an early age, she loved dressing up in designer clothes

um, starts performing drag in our early teens, but she keeps it a secret from her family. Um, she just wanted to live life as a normal girl, but when her family catches her dressing in drag, they don't disown her, but her identity basically becomes a thing they don't talk about. Yeah. And because she doesn't want to embarrass her family just heartbreaking, she moves to New York city on her own when she's 15 years old. Man, um, so it's 1980, um, and she's introduced to the first gay man she ever meets whose

Hector Valley, he's the vibrant Puerto Rican and founder of the ball scenes house of extravaganza. Amazing. Um, they connect right away. It's Venus's 15th birthday. So Hector throws her a party and buys her a cake to celebrate. So she starts, Venus performs, starts performing in New York and Hector isn't just a friend and a mentor, but then he also becomes like her number one fan in 1983. He invites Venus to join the house of extravaganza.

Usually a drag queen would have to perform and win in a ball competition in order to earn a house spot. It's all very, you know, specific and very competitive, but Hector likes Venus so much he gives her a spot anyway, um, cause she has a sweet down to earth demeanor and she wins the hearts of everyone else in the house too. Um, she says in the documentary that she wants nothing more than to be a quote spoiled rich white girl because quote, they get what they want whenever they want it. Um, but this desire coupled with the foolishness of youth and without having the safety and

privilege that being right, white and rich provide leads Venus to be somewhat careless with who she hangs out with. She does sex work for a while to make money. And as she explains in Paris is burning, she might perform sexual favorite favors to get something that she wants like money for clothes or purses. But she says that's not dissimilar to what a cis woman in the suburbs might do for her husband when she quote wants a washer and dryer. I hope, I hope they would be aiming a little higher than a washer and dryer.

So of course sex work is not without its dangers, uh, more so for a trans woman. On one occasion, Venus is with a client who when he realizes she's trans freaks out, um, starts calling her a homo and a freak who's trying to give him AIDS, um, then he tells her she should that he should kill her and scared for her life. She drumps, jumps out of a hotel window and runs off. So when Venus's body is first found, authorities find their way to Angie extravaganza. That's Venus is now current house mother and mentor. And Angie has to confirm Venus's identity.

And then Angie is tasked with breaking the news to her family. Oh my God. Wait, hold on a second. I think I missed something. She jumps out the window and runs away, right? That's where we left off. No, no, no. That was just an example of another thing that happened.

Okay. Like another John. Got it. But when did she get killed? That's the thing I just said. I didn't go into it because they don't know anything about it. Okay. So it's just like her body was found, her body's found, and then she finds out and asks, okay,

got it. So here's a quote from Angie. We used to get dressed together, call each other and say what we were going to wear. She was like my right hand as far as I'm concerned. I miss her. Every time I go anywhere, I miss her, but that's part of life and that's part of being transsexual in New York City and surviving. And the years since her death, according to Venus's nephew, a Mike Pellegotti, who was

just 15 months old when Venus was murdered, her family has gone through a combination of sadness and guilt. They were, according to Mike, they were as understanding as they could be given the era and the time. Right. So Venus's grandmother was always so proud of her that she kept all of Venus's dresses and trophies after her death. And Venus's killers never found.

There's almost no publicly available information about the investigation. And her nephew, Mike, chalks that up to a combination of a lack of forensic evidence and basically just the police not taking the case seriously. Of course not. The prevailing theory is that Venus most likely died at the hands of a transphobic John because violence against trans people, especially trans sex workers, isn't treated with the same care that the average homicide case is given now. So Paris is burning a mortalized Venus extravaganza as a real iconic figure in the queer community.

But as Venus's nephew would later say, she never, quote, envisioned herself becoming a transgender martyr, and in fact, based on the quiet, vulnerable monologue that Venus delivers in the documentary, she was focused on a much more hopeful future, quote, I want a car. I want to be with the man I love. I want a nice home away from New York, somewhere far where no one knows me. I want my sex change. I want to get married in a church in white.

I want to be a complete woman and I'm going to go for it. After watching Paris is burning and seeing Venus perform at a ball, there's no way to remember her as anything but a complete woman. So those are the two murders from the movie Paris is burning. And one of the main reasons I wanted to talk about those this week was because last week on March 31st was the International Transgender Day of Visibility. So we'll talk about that for a second. That was a holiday that got started in 2009 when trans activist Rachel Crandall realized

that the only existing holiday for trans people is Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is about the trans people who have died or been killed. So instead of focusing only on trans suffering, Crandall sought to have a day that honors members of the trans community who are alive and thriving, which is a much more hopeful example for transgender youth to aspire to. So although visibility is increasing for the trans community, this year alone has seen some of the worst anti-trans legislation being pushed across all the nation. States like Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah and more have introduced bills that would

ban health care for trans youth with one state trying to make it a felony offense for doctors to treat trans youth. Other states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Dakota and more have introduced bills banning trans athletes from competing in sports entirely. And then this past Monday, April 5th, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson vetoed HB 1570, which is an initiative that makes it illegal for trans youth in Arkansas to receive life-saving trans-related health care. He cited the bill as a product of the Cultural War in America, correctly asserting that it

creates new standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people. But that veto and that win was short-lived because this Tuesday afternoon, April 6th, Arkansas Republican-controlled House and Senate voted to override that veto. So now physicians in the state of Arkansas are legally prohibited from providing their transgender patients under the age of 18. So transgender children, they are prohibited from providing children with life-saving gender-affirming medical care.

It's illegal. Let's all say it. Fuck you. That is immoral. That is not whatever fucking religious beliefs you have that does not support them. You're a horrible person. So in the wake of the override, the ACLU put out a statement saying this law will drive families, doctors, and businesses out of the state and send a terrible and heartbreaking

message to the transgender young people who are watching in fear. And Chase Strangio, who's a deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU's LGBTQ and HIV project, assured citizens of Arkansas that on CNN that the ACLU is preparing litigation as we speak. And Strangio, I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, Strangio, also took to Twitter after the override saying, in all caps, we will sue you. But then, and not in all caps, but you already hurt so many people stop attacking trans youth. And he's right, the Republican officials of Arkansas have delivered a gut punch to

the children of their state. So in some ways, the damage is already done, but legislature cannot erase human beings. And if we are to learn anything from the Dorian Corey's and the Venus Extravaganza's and the Marsha P. Johnson's of the world, and all the legendary trans role models living and dead, it's that trans people are incredibly strong and incredibly resilient people. So to every transgender kid out there, we see you, we love you, and who you are matters. And so to help fight anti-trans legislation, we're going to donate $10,000 to the ACLU to fight this shitty legislation.

A fucking men. And that is being done in the name of Venus Extravaganza and Dorian Corey and Marsha P. Johnson. Yes. We already talked about with the Stonewall story. And that is my story of the murders of Paris is burning for this week. Karen, that was beautiful. I'm so glad that you shared that.

Amazing. Trans women. Sorry. Let me just say, I have to thank Jay Elias. Yes. So now works in our development department, but he still, thank God, does my research. And he nailed this and knocked it out of the park. So thank you so much, Jay, because that was really amazing.

Yeah. I told him yesterday, that's what I wanted to do, and he was like, got it on it. I love you. I'm so excited. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm so glad you guys did that. We, trans women or women, trans men or men, don't fucking forget it or get it twisted.

I'm so glad you shared that. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And it's, I think it's, there's so many, it feels like there's so many things going on right now. Yeah. The stuff that like these attacks on Asian people, attacks on trans children.

Children. Like this is very, it's extreme. And it's the kind of thing I think that we have to be strong for people who are, for the people who are being attacked, we have to be, we have to take the action that we can. Yeah. You know, all of us in little ways. And if you, if you can't donate to the ACLU, what you can do is the kind of thing that

was on the, the murdering know, um, uh, board that we, when, when murderers were walking yeah, Asian people who didn't feel safe in New York City. They were giving people like, if you need to walk somewhere, let me know and I'll walk with you. Totally. There's like basic stuff that you can do. Wait outreach. You can do, um, visibility is so important.

Yeah. And just kind of like, and if I don't know if there are people, I feel like the trans issue really gets scapegoated and used in this way where it's just like, we're talking about human beings. Yeah. Do, do your homework. Yeah. Like, yeah.

It's also like, it's also one of those things of like just, you think it doesn't affect you, but it, all humans suffering affects all of us and you can't pick and choose who you want to support because they look like you or they don't have a lifestyle like you. So you don't have, you don't have to bother. Maybe you're not quote unquote the problem. You're fine with everyone. It's like it doesn't, that's not enough. Yeah.

Amazing. Amazing job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Uh, great job. Yeah.

Let's end on a high note. Uh, you know, thank you guys so much for listening where I was always humbled by the murdering presence. We love you dearly. Um, yeah, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Steven's not. Yes.

Yes. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yes. Elvis, do you want a cookie?