My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 433 - Deduction Junction

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

On today’s episode, Karen tells Georgia about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Great Wyrley Outrages. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Hello and welcome to my favorite murderer. That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Kilgarafe. I can't tell our voices apart at all. I heard a clip the other day.

Oh, really? And didn't know who was talking. Oh, no. Mm-hmm. That's insidious. It's tough when you're editing a clip, I'll tell you that. It was just weird. It was like a surreal feeling of like, wait, who's that?

Oh my god. And then I also couldn't remember who talked. So it was like the current experience. And then like I didn't, I was like, what is this from? I recently listened to an episode first, a project we're working on, and I listened to it at 1.5 speed because I just wanted to get through it, you know? And then I listened to another one at normal speed and I was like, these chicks are so fucking slow. Hurry the fuck up. Which is insane because we're so fast.

We are so fast. That's how my brain works. My brain works better at 1.5. It might be good at a nice three. Just really get it up there. Oh no, that's meth Georgia. She's gone. She had her place.

Bless her heart. She had her use. Sweet baby angel. R had her place. Bless her heart. She had her use. Sweet baby angel. RIP. Wait. Wait. So this is just real quick a vacation episode. So we're recording these.

We pre-record them slightly shorter than the normal episodes so that we can go on vacation and you guys still have content. So it's basically the same as a regular show. We're just doing less. Quick intro and then one of us is going to read a story only. And that's going to be for two weeks, and then we're back in your arms.

You won't even have time to post in Reddit. It's funny that just as we get back in the studio, it's like, bye. Bye. We have got to go. Oh, I have something. I have a comment I wanted to read you that someone put on our Instagram account.

Her handle is babe on the go-go. And it says, hi, Georgia and Karen. Her handle is babe on the go-go. And it says, Hi, Georgia and Karen, I've been a murderino from day one. I'm competing in the Miss New York USA pageant and my platform is Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, as well as ending the backlog. Whoa. As of 2024, the Miss USA contest changed the rules to allow women over 27, I'm 40, and married women, as well as moms, mother of two, to compete. So I've decided to go for it because if not me, then who? Shruggy emoji. I say this all to say I would love if you both would go to MissNewYorkUSA.com and vote for me for

people's choice. My name is Andrea Hill, number 69. Also, followers, if you're reading this vote, thank you in advance. Maybe a long shot, but I really hope you all see this. I mean, sorry, that's a 40-year-old woman of color who already made it and she's now just running for, like it sounds like she's representing New York already. Yeah, and missing and murdered indigenous women. And has a platform that actually could affect real important change. That's not your dad's beauty pageant.

I'll tell you that. It's definitely not your red hat's beauty pageant. So yeah, let me say it again. It's smissnyorkusa.com. Her name is Andrea Hill, number 69. Andrea, thanks for being a day one listener. We have all kinds of questions about vaseline in your teeth and hairspraying your bathing suit to your butt.

But congratulations on, you know, breaking the. Well, maybe she didn't do it. Maybe it already got done. But, you know, it's just part of a really cool change. A Miss contest that a 40 year old is in. Oh, can you imagine 40 year olds can still fucking work their shit? Hell, yeah. Can still twirl a baton with the best of them and fucking represent. I mean...

Amazing. Do you have anything? I just have a really good attitude. Do you have anything going for you? That's not real? Yeah, I know. This has been... It's the day before we go on vacation and it has been a long several weeks. What are you gonna do on your vacation? Oh, staycation.

Oh, nice. I really, I realized that all of my time spent at my house for the past four years has been deemed as work. Yeah. So I'm gonna clean out. I have junk drawers that almost can't be closed. They're so full of junk. Oh, the satisfaction.

I have so many wires to my phone cord charger, phone jack charger that don't fit the phone anymore or don't fit the jack anymore. Yeah, but you don't know which because you haven't tried them, so you just leave them all for now. So it's like they're all in a drawer and they've become entwined and they're like a rat king. Rat king. A rat king in my drawer.

Yeah, so I'm going to try to go in and fight them. Okay, I'm proud of you. What are you going to do? Vincent and I are going to Michigan and we're going to have like a little Michigan road trip to like the pretty places. Oh nice. Like lakes and stuff they have there. Did you know?

Yes, it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. I think he's just like, let's take a look here. Yeah. Wants to show me another way to live. Yeah, he's like, can you imagine a life outside of Southern California? I don't think he can, honestly, anymore. So it's okay.

You're like, where are all the freeway overpasses? Yeah. All right, so short episode. Short, so yeah, so that's the end. And now? That's the end, but also we need to actually tell you we're back on, with full episodes, July 4th. Yeah.

Which is a holiday. Your favorite holiday. It's number one in my book. And also you can find merch including t-shirts, stickers, and tote bags for all Exactly Right podcasts at ExactlyRightStore.com. So please check that out. And if you want to support this particular podcast using promo codes, which kind of is the name of the game. Right.

I don't know if we've ever given that away, but I mean advertising is what makes podcasts happen. And so when they give promo codes in the ads that we do, when you use those promo codes, they track it and then they go, we love that podcast because they actually use their promo codes. Yeah, it's crazy. So use ours. Well, and you can go to myfavoritemurder.com and you can find all of them and use anyone you want. It doesn't have to be simultaneous. Yeah, absolutely. Get that discount. Also, you guys did this last time we asked for it,

and it was so fucking incredible. If you could rate and review this show, wherever you like to listen to podcasts, especially if it's on Apple podcasts, we got screen grabs from last time you guys did this. The nicest messages. Lovely. Thank you so much.

It meant so much. I know you don't think of doing that very often, but that is another thing you can do to support your favorite podcast is rate and review. That's right. And you don't actually have to write anything. You can just review it and it counts and it just is, it's good to show that your audience is active and stuff. You don't have to compliment us.

You don't have to say how pretty our beautiful black hair is. You don't have to do any of that. Five stars is great. Four if you don't like the cursing. I totally understand. Three if you're sick of the talking at the beginning. I don't care. Maybe I could just fast forward though. Okay, express yourself. Hey, Karen, are you like me?

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Goodbye. All right, you're going this week. I go first this week. That was that was weird You moving that move mine Stop it! I'm moving the entire unit That's oh my god, the on is grabbing her hair Just a slight slide if this microphone doesn't work the whole time this podcast is over. Okay This is actually I'm so excited for to tell you this story. It's perfect for a short episode, but I do have to do a kind of an intense listener warning at the top. Okay.

Because this story mentions the killing of horses and the mutilation of livestock. Oh, no. None of the stuff we talk about is nice ever, but we all understand the con- we get what's coming at us. Right. Sometimes things like that, especially horses. I mean, have you ever seen the play Equus? It's horrifying. Majestic creatures.

OK, so we start with a name everyone knows, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Hey. The man behind one of literature's most iconic characters, Sherlock Holmes. Of course, one of the several television shows I fall asleep to, the old Sherlock Holmes BBC, I think, starring Jeremy Brett. Unbelievably wonderful, I think, like

late 70s, early 80s British television. Beautiful. Could be the 90s. It all looks so long ago. Anyhow, if you're at all familiar with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose name I can't seem to break up comfortably. I'm not going to call him Arthur. Artie? Conan Doyle is odd, but that's what I ended up, that's what Marin ended up writing. So we're going with that.

S-A-C-D? Call him that. Sacked. Sacked. So the Sherlock Holmes series is just one part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's varied and very rich and varied life. He was a complicated man. On one hand, he was larger than life.

He was a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction. He was a practicing doctor. That's a lot. And he was an avid sportsman. He was also a world traveler at a time when world traveling was very difficult and a huge undertaking and he did it. More controversially, he is remembered for cheating on his dying wife, passionately supporting British imperialism and fully endorsing spiritualism, which we talked about in the Harry Houdini episode. If you want to go back and listen, it's episode 363, Landed in Marshmallows.

And just so you know, spiritualism was a popular belief in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's a belief that the living can communicate with the dead, essentially. Think seances with old Victorian people and Ouija boards and- Yeah, crystal ball type shit. Yeah. Got very, very popular at the turn of the century. Houdini was a huge skeptic. He thought that basically spiritualism was hijacked by frauds and he fought against it vehemently.

It was around the time of some big war. Oh, it was after the Civil War. Some big war. Some big fucking war. He was kind of the original, like, canceler, if you think about it. Like, trying to cancel people. Yes. He was also, like, the original

fight back with David Horowitz. Did you ever watch that show? Yes. Oh, my God. We're like, here's a wrong, and David Horowitz is like, I'm gonna write it. And the audience is like, yeah, get that small business. It's like, yes, exactly.

This used car lot made this lady pay this much money. Yeah. Oh, fuck. Fight back with David Horowitz. That's like, that's why in the early 80s, we're all so placid. It was like, well, someone's going to take care of it. Some dude in a weird tie and a bad blazer

is going to take care of this. Nine News will do an undercover. Come on. Can we get David Horowitz on the show? Oh, could you imagine? Yeah, just interview what was life like then? How many fraudulent bullshit claims did you guys? Wait a second.

I'm going to cover fucking David Horowitz on this show. Get out of my area. Done. I'll never bring it up again. Don't look at my paper. Don't look at me. Okay. And it was either Houdini's fight or it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's kind of insistence

in believing in spiritualism that ended their once close friendship. Sorry, their once close friendship. We'll say it that way. I got it. But there is another part of Conan Doyle's life and legacy that a lot of people don't know about, and that's his real life investigation into a grisly Victorian era crime where he played the part of a real-life Sherlock Holmes. This is the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

and the case of the great warly outrages. The main sources of this story are the book Conan Doyle for the Defense by Marguliet Fox. Marguliet. Beautiful. And the book, The Mystery of the Parsi Lawyer, written by Shrabanee Basu.

And Shrabanee is a woman with she-her pronouns. And then also from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's own writing and what he basically wrote about for all this, the ultimate source. And then the rest are in our show notes. So just to start us off, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is born in Edinburgh, Scotland in May of 1859. He's the second oldest of nine children in a, you guessed it, devoutly Catholic household. He has a not great relationship with his father, who's an alcoholic, but he is very close with his mother, Mary. As a boy, Conan Doyle is sent off to be educated in Jesuit schools, and that's where he discovers

his love of writing. And it's probably influenced by his mother's love for books and stories. But ironically, Mary encourages her son to take a different career path. She wants him to study medicine, so he does. He enrolls at University of Edinburgh. He finds his studies super boring, but there is an instructor who completely fascinates him, and it's a surgeon named Dr. Joseph Bell. Conan Doyle describes Dr. Bell as, quote, a very skillful surgeon, but his strong point

was diagnosis not only of disease, but of occupation and character, end quote. So Dr. Bell has this remarkable ability to figure out the details of a patient's life just by observation. In one instance, Dr. Bell correctly guesses that a new patient was recently discharged from the military, served in a Scottish regiment, and was stationed in Barbados. What the fuck? It's crazy when you shut the fuck up and listen to all the information that someone will give you.

They just know it. It's right there on you. He explains to his students, quote, you see see gentlemen, the man was a respectful man, but he did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British. Wow. Click. Fucking deduction. Junction.

That was me saying click was that Dr. Bell taking a selfie right after he said that. He's just like, what else do you fucking want to know? Mic drop. It is really cool. So obviously, Dr. Bell is the man that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on. Nice. So cool. So by 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle is not only a practicing physician, he's also writing

stories. He's regularly submitting those stories to magazines. And this is the year he debuts the first Sherlock Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet. It's a colossal hit. People go nuts. It immediately spawns a rabid fan base. Yet despite the extreme popularity, Conan Doyle soon gets tired of Sherlock constantly overshadowing his other books, especially his historical novels. Mm. Boring. Everyone's like, no, thank you.

Get to the mysteries. Get to the talk about what their fingernails look like and how that means that they're from France. They're like sacked. Am I right? Sacked. Get out here. In fact, Sherlock Holmes has such a hold on the public that people sometimes mistake Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes. Writer Sherbani Basu says, quote, when a delivery of shirts Conan Doyle had ordered arrived marked to Sherlock Holmes, it was the last straw. So in 1893, Conan Doyle kills off Sherlock Holmes in the story, The Final Problem. Bam. That's six years after his debut.

And of course, they all freak out. Yeah. Everyone goes crazy. It's reported that after the stories published, quote, young city men in London went about with black crepe in their hats and mourning bands on their arms. Wow, goth. Which is actually, did you ever watch the new series

with Benedict Cumberbatch? No, no, I know I should. It's really good. If you ever have a long weekend and you want to lay around. It's so good and well done. And all the people in it are so good. Andrew Scott is... I know. I found that out recently, Hot Priest is in it.

And I was like, well, okay, maybe I can watch this. He plays a villain that is so scary you get scared in your house of him that he's going to come somehow into your house. He's so creepy. I think I've been putting it off because my mom's the one who keeps telling me to watch it. So I'm like, no! I'm not having a baby and I'm not watching the new Sherlock Holmes. I'm not going to do either anytime soon. Well don't make the mistake I made when for like three years my sister said you have to watch Friday Night Lights

and I was like, I don't care about football. I don't care about football. Ugh. Come on. Do you care about great writing and acting? Do you care about being alive? Cinematography? Humanity? Okay. So now Conan Doyle shifts his focus to his historical political writing snooze.

And then at the turn of the century, I'm sure it was really good. I'm sure it was great, but. Probably pretty good. Yeah, I'm sure. But you can't beat fucking Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is the best idea. He's like a detective on cocaine that's kind of in love with his partner, Dr. Watson. It's the best... I mean, and like ride those royalty checks into the wild, wild west, man.

Do your best. Don't make it trite have there be a point but like it's like sir arthur conan doyle was like in the band pavement yes where it's like don't fucking sell out yeah we're not telling him it's like okay it's been 40 years and like you and like what now yeah just we're all here to sell out sorry sorry. Everything's cringe, sorry. Don't sell out, but buy in. Right? Greed is good. No, it's terrible. We're going back to the 80s now.

Oh my God, we're going back to our past now. Okay. So then at the turn of the century, Conan Doyle volunteers to be a doctor during the Boer War in South Africa. He writes extensively about this war and Britain's role in it, and it earns him a knighthood in 1902. This is when Sir actually gets at it to his name. And if you don't know, like I didn't know, the Boer War was a conflict between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics in South Africa, which were set up by Dutch-speaking settlers.

And they basically did it so they could get access to the gold mines and expand the British Empire. Colonialism. It's everywhere. So basically, thanks to a mix of the public's ongoing desperation for more Sherlock Holmes stories and the huge payday from publishers, Arthur Conan Doyle brings back Sherlock Holmes in the now classic story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. How does he explain away that he's dead? Is this like a misery type of situation?

Well, if I am... Kathy Bates. He just points to Kathy Bates and says, let her tell you. And she says, you're welcome. You're welcome. I did it. Now, if I am correct, based on all the episodes I've seen, he goes and fights Moirarty, his ultimate enemy, and they have this fight near a waterfall.

And then everyone sees them both fall off the waterfall and like basically to their deaths. Oh yeah. He knew it was coming back. Yeah. He left it open for sure. And then it was like then to basically prove that Moirarty did the thing that he did, Sherlock Holmes had to

go live somewhere else for like three years, you know, and like collect the evidence or whatever. Please write in and tell me all the ways I was wrong about that. But that's my guess. Actually, I'm too early. It's me Sherlock Holmes. Paul F. Tompkins has a bit about praying to Sherlock Holmes because he's atheist. Dear Sherlock Holmes. It's atheist. Dear Sherlock Holmes.

It's one of my faves. So even though he seems jaded by the success of his detective novels, Conan Doyle does start emulating Sherlock Holmes in real life. In 1907, when a disbarred lawyer named George Adalgee, who's in his early 30s, writes Conan Doyle a letter, George insists he's been wrongfully convicted for a horrible crime, and he wants Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to help him clear his name so he can practice law again. Mm-hmm. It's like the wrongfully convicted podcast. Right. Exactly. But just these guys in the late 1800s.

But no podcast. It's just the two. So when he reads this letter, Conan Doyle's interest is piqued, and before long, he is knee deep in George Adalge's case. So Conan Doyle describes George's story as, quote, a chain of circumstances which seems so extraordinary that they are far beyond the invention of the writer of fiction. And as Conan Doyle sifts through the documents and letters that relate to the case, this is what he learns. That the Adalji family live in a small English town called Great Worley. It's a farming mining community that's right in the middle of the country. George is biracial.

His mother Charlotte is a white English woman. His father, Shapurji, was born in India and is a devout convert to Anglicanism. So he's the vicar at the local church. It's reported that Shapurji is the first South Asian person to hold this position in all of England. Holy shit. So we're in Victorian England. It's a small town at the height of Britain's imperial dominance in India.

Imperial dominance? Yeah. Well, imperial dominance in India. Influence. Yeah. Well, imperial dominance in India. It's all to say that there's a lot of locals believed in deeply racist stereotypes. They are very racist about Indian people. They do not like having an Indian man or a man of Indian descent or just a man that's not white as the head of their church. So now it's 1888, Jack the Ripper's year.

Oh, shit. of their church. So now it's 1888, Jack the Ripper's year. But also this is the year after Arthur Conan Doyle published a study in Scarlet. So just getting you the timeline of like, we're kind of switching back and forth, but it was basically right after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kind of exploded onto the scene. In Great Whirly, the Adalgis start receiving increasingly threatening anonymous letters in the mail.

In one, the writer says that they're watching the family and they threaten to, quote, shoot Reverend Adalgie dead. Damn. Yeah. So then one morning, the family wakes up to a broken window on the property. Then soon after that, another letter arrives promising more windows would be broken and it has the same handwriting as the first letter. Then someone comes onto the family's property and scribbles the words, quote, most of the

adulgees are wicked on the wall of an outhouse. So most of the adulgees are brown, except for the one. So it's obviously what that's about. The family, of course, is understandably upset by the letters and by this racist harassment. They reported all this to the police and an investigation is opened. Officers interview everyone at the church and the people who work in the Adulgie's home, and they eventually arrest a domestic worker named Elizabeth Foster because they prove that she was the one who wrote the message on the outhouse.

So the police claim that Elizabeth had paper and writing materials that matched those used by the anonymous letter writer. And she's also reportedly caught trying to burn documents. It's unclear what they were or if they were letters. In 1899, Elizabeth is tried. She pleads not guilty. Her lawyer directly implicates her in the letter writing, perhaps to minimize her actions in court. So Conan Doyle notes, quote, her solicitor pleaded that

it was all a foolish joke and she was bound over to keep the peace. An attempt had been made to contend that she was not guilty, but I take it that no barrister could make such an admission without his client's consent." Yay. Yeah, end quote. So can't know for sure whether Elizabeth was the letter writer, but it at least seems possible that she was scapegoated by the investigators because they had no other viable suspects. Conan Doyle later cites people who knew Elizabeth and say that she was, quote, animated by bitter feelings of revenge after the

verdict. That said, the letters stop following her conviction only to resume again a few years later in 1892. So that year hundreds of letters smearing and threatening the Adalgis are sent to multiple addresses in Great Worley. Oh my god, hundreds. Arthur Conan Doyle writes, quote, many were directed to the Vicarage, but many others were sent to different people in the vicinity, so malevolent and so ingenious that it seemed as if a very demon of mischief

were endeavoring to set the parish by the ears. So the letters seem to be written by someone other than the author of the first set of letters. This handwriting is not the same. The language used by the new writer indicates he or she is more educated than the first

writer. But what really differentiates the batch of letters is how fixated these ones are on George, who is just a teenager at the time. Oh, shit. So it's unclear why the letter writer went after George, but Conan Doyle suggests it's discrimination on multiple levels. The darker color of the Adalgie's skin

already made them stick out, but George is also described as having unusual facial features, specifically large bulging eyes. This might have made him more of an outcast, but these letters are callous and heartbreaking. Conan Doyle bookmarks one address to George's father, and it says this, quote, every day, every hour, my hatred is growing against George Adalgie. I would dispatch him to hell in five minutes.

Jesus. Do you think that when we want, we cannot copy your kids' writing? Our only reason for not forging their signatures and yours is that you all write such a vulgar hand that no manager of newspapers would suppose it was written by a parson. May the Lord strike me dead if I don't murder Georgia Dalgie, your damned wife, your horrid little girl. I will descend into the infernal regions showering curses on you all." Regents showering curses on you all." Oh my god. Crazy.

Yeah. Karen, I don't think we talk enough about the power of a couch day. Let's change that now. I plan to treat myself to a good couch-sush very soon. And when that day comes, fire up the DoorDash app. You can get everything you need delivered right to your door. They curate the options so that you can easily see what's closest to you or most popular in your area. Plus, they have restaurants that only deliver with DoorDash. Treat yourself to a comfort meal from your favorite local restaurant on DoorDash.

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is with audiobooks. You'll be inspired by new worlds and new ways of thinking. With thousands of titles released each year, Audible has the best selection of audiobooks, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible originals. And it's all in one easy-to-use app. The latest installment of Audible's Words and Music series features Mariah Carey. It'll take you on a rare journey into her songwriting process, and you'll listen to fan-favorite songs and learn exclusive details about her next project.

Enjoy Audible anytime, even when you're doing other things like chores, travel, commuting, you name it. You'll find endless inspiration and entertainment without needing to set aside extra time. So, Vince and I are about to go on a road trip, and so we picked an audiobook to listen to together, and we chose Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, a total classic.

If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend it. It's a great road trip. Listen. There's more to imagine when you listen. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash murder or text murder to 500 500. That's audible.com slash murder or text murder to 500 500 to try A audible for free for 30 days audible.com slash murder. Goodbye. So then they reference that thing of forging signatures. Well, then that actually starts happening. So someone starts placing orders using the reverend's name and the family receives alcohol. They get clothes, books, furniture, even musical instruments that they didn't order and that they cannot pay for. Worse, clergymen are told to travel to burial sites for funerals or to visit dying parishioners on the reverend's orders only to arrive and

find that the parishioners were never sick and there is no funeral. Dude. Mayhem. Yeah. So George is also the victim of forgery and impersonation. Paid advertisements run in the local paper under his name that he did not write. And in them, quote unquote, George claims to have sent the first batch of letters himself and apologizes to Elizabeth Foster suggesting that she's been wrongfully accused. Oh my God. Again, the police struggle to identify a suspect. The letters were mailed from various locations across England, sometimes delivered by hand.

They just couldn't track them. They couldn't track how many people were involved. Just they did not know what was going on. And then in 1895, the letters stop again. But before they do, the anonymous writer makes one last disturbing threat that sticks with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He reports, quote, on March 17th, 1893, this real or pretended maniac says in a letter to the father, quote, before the end of this year, your kid will be either in the graveyard

or disgraced for life, unquote. So now it's 1903. It has been 15 years since the first batch of letters arrived at the Adulji House. It's been eight years since they finally stopped. George is in his late twenties. He's still living in Great Whirly, working as a lawyer at his own legal practice. And things seem to have finally quieted down for this family, even though no one's been arrested for the second batch of letters or for the forgeries. But this peaceful stretch ends abruptly with a series of bizarre livestock killings that take place in Great Whirly.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes the first event as a horse being, quote, ripped up during the night. Oh my God. Horrible. Over the following weeks, horses, cows, and sheep are all killed in a similar way. They're attacked with a sharp instrument and left to die in the field.

Oh, you're right. So the town's in shock. This situation draws comparisons to Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel murders from 15 years earlier. And just like their counterparts in London, the residents of Great Whirly are furious, terrified, following police investigation very closely. They just want to find out who is doing this. Then the letters begin again.

Oh, come on, man. And this time they blame George for the brutal animal slayings, which are now known as the Great Whirly Outrages. So not catchy, too hard to say. But George has no history of violence. He is just a humble, hardworking lawyer, and he does not fit the profile for someone capable of such a heinous crime. Still, investigators focus on him as a suspect. Oh, yeah. Conan Doyle writes, quote, Now here, the results of the police are absolutely illogical and incompatible. Their theory was that of a moonlighting gang, Adalgi is condemned as a member of it." So they're kind of like putting a story together to justify how this could be happening.

There's no proof that George Adalgi was ever part of a gang. And as Conan Doyle reviews the case, he becomes convinced that the consistencies between the killings indicate that they were carried out by a single person, not by a group of men. Despite this, another horse is found dead and George Adalgie is arrested within hours. To the morning of the arrest, police search through George's belongings and they find dirty pants, a razor, and an old housecoat stained with reddish marks. The pants and the coat are described as, quote, damp, which stood out because it had rained in the daytime hours before the horse was killed and the ground would have still been wet that night. So investigators also discover short fibers on the coat that they thought looked like

pony hairs, along with muddy boots that they claim matched some shoe prints found at the scene. So please take all that circumstantial evidence and build a theory. George Adalji was wearing his house coat and boots when he killed the horse in the rain. They believe he used the razor for the killing, and in the process of committing this crime, George stains both the blade and his coat with the animal's blood, picks up a few pieces of pony hair on his clothing and tracks mud onto his boots. So George is like, this is not true. I am innocent, completely maintains his innocence. He actually tells police he was home the entire night and his family can validate his alibi. But public opinion quickly

turns against him. One newspaper reporter in particularly racist language writes, quote, many and wonderful were the stories I heard propounded in the local ale houses as to why Adalgie had gone forth in the night to slay cattle. And a widely accepted idea was that he made nocturnal sacrifices to strange gods." Oh dear. End quote. So, George Adalgy is tried and found guilty and sentenced to seven years hard labor. Wow.

Yeah. So, because of this, he loses his ability to practice law. They let him out after three years in 1906 because so many people make a stink about the fact that this case is so weak. But officially, he is still considered a violent felon once he gets out, and the police continue to surveil him. So now it's 1907, and this is when George writes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the letter, and Conan Doyle joins George's fight for justice.

So the really brilliant thing is that the Adalgie family identifies Conan Doyle as someone with a large platform who could really make a difference if he was investigated and was on their side. Yeah, he's an influencer. Yeah, completely. It's very smart of them. So once Sir Arthur Conan Doyle looks at this case, he almost immediately is able to poke holes in almost every single piece of evidence that they have, starting with that housecoat. Conan Doyle argues that if George had been out the night before maiming horses, his house coat would be damp with rainwater and blood, but the reddish stains were dry

and set into the fabric when police found them the next morning, suggesting they weren't fresh. As Conan Doyle notes, the inspector, quote, had only to touch the blood stains and then to raise his crimson finger to the air to silence all criticism, but he could not do so. So not only do you have somebody on your side, but you have somebody that's so good at like- Deduction. Making these statements. Yeah.

And kind of like making it all clear. Then there's George's muddy boots and wet pants. George had admittedly been outside hours before the horse was killed when it was still daytime while it was raining. This Conan Doyle explains is why the pants and shoes got wet and muddy. Plus, he points out, quote, it is an interesting point that the mud at the place of outrage was yellow-red, a mixture of clay and sand, quite distinct from the road mud which the police claimed to have seen upon George's trousers." It's like he's getting into forensics

super early. And finally, the pony hairs. Conan Doyle discovers that the police never actually took samples of those hairs. They simply looked at them while they were searching George's things and then decided that they were pony hairs. So whether or not they actually were, whether or not there was something else like thread, which is what George Adalge's family claimed it was, it's unknown because the police didn't take in evidence or preserve evidence. Most importantly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who has extensive ophthalmology training, points out George has terrible eyesight.

This never comes up in George's original criminal trial. Conan Doyle writes, quote, The idea of such a man scouring fields at night and assaulting cattle while avoiding the police was ludicrous to anyone who could imagine what the world looks like to eyes with Mr. Adalji's myopia. Then Conan Doyle alludes to the racism tied up in this case, adding, quote, But such an operation, so hopelessly bad that no glasses availed in the open-air grave, the sufferer a vacant bulge-eyed staring appearance, which when taken with his dark skin, must have made him seem a very queer man to the eyes of an English village, and therefore to be associated with any queer event.

Therein a single physical defect lay the moral certainty of his innocence and the reason why he should become the scapegoat." So in 1907, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wraps up his review of George's case, and then he publishes his findings in the Daily Telegraph. And then he requests that they run it with a headline that reads, quote, no copyright, which means other newspapers can freely reprint that article. So unsurprisingly, Conan Doyle's coverage makes waves. It's a Sherlock Holmes case come to life and readers devour his first-person true crime commentary. The story of George's case becomes a sensation and the public is outraged by his shoddy trial.

And it puts pressure on the British government to get involved. So within months, the Home Secretary orders a review of this case, and the conclusions are strange. George is exonerated for the animal mutilation charge, but the review still claims that George wrote the letters, except the letters blame George for the mutilations. Yeah. That doesn't make sense. It makes no sense. And most frustratingly, the Home Secretary uses this claim that George did commit an offense by writing the harassing letters to deny him any compensation for the three years he spent in prison. There we go.

Yeah, there it is. Conan Doyle reacts to these conclusions by stating, quote, It is a blow upon the record of English justice. So even though George is exonerated for the most serious charge against him, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle still can't let the animal slaying case go. He is fixated on identifying the real culprit and he begins to zero in on a young man that works as a local butcher's apprentice. Conan Doyle even hires private detectives to trail him. The apprentice has a bad reputation and a documented history of animal abuse. According to a Conan Doyle biographer named Russell Miller, he also, quote, had a hankering

to go to sea and found a berth on a ship out of Liverpool in 1895 when the hoaxes and letters ceased. And he did not return until 1902, shortly before the first horse was maimed. Damn. Mm-hmm. So Sir Arthur Conan Doyle feels confident that he has solved this case, but he doesn't reveal the young man's name, believing that the police and the legal system should handle the matter. So he hands his findings over to investigators, but the information goes nowhere.

Decades later in 1985, Conan Doyle's investigation is published and a book and this person's name is revealed. However, as the Great Whirly Local History Society points out, quote, ironically, Conan Doyle's suspicion was based on circumstantial evidence. It was an over-reliance on this type of evidence in the first place that had resulted in Adalgi's flawed conviction. So, officially, the great Whirly outrages are still unsolved to this day. And as for the anonymous letters,

Conan Doyle thinks some of them, particularly that last batch, could have been linked to the person who was killing the animals, written either by the culprit himself or someone close to him in an attempt to frame George to protect the real killer. But Conan Doyle also believes that some of the letters, as well as certain forgeries,

are linked to Elizabeth Foster or someone close to her. Conan Doyle points out that the second batch of letters, quote, openly championed Elizabeth Foster, not to mention the forged public statement that was attributed to George and ran in the newspaper, went out of its way to exonerate her. So the theory is that she, because she was so filled with bitterness and wanted revenge, that's what she, it was happening in those letters. So on the upside, with the help of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his crusade, George Adalgy is finally reinstated to the bar.

The two men maintain a lifelong friendship and when Conan Doyle marries his second wife, Jean Leckie, George actually goes to their wedding. According to biographer Daniel Stashauer, quote, Conan Doyle claimed that there was no guest he felt prouder to see. Oh my God. I know. Isn't that sweet? Yeah.

George eventually moves to London to practice law. And meanwhile, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle maintains an active life until his passing in 1930 at the age of 71. George dies in 1953 at the age of 76. He never receives any compensation for his wrongful conviction. And according to Srebani Basu, he dies in semi-poverty. Oh man. It's horrible. Yeah. And according to Srebani Basu, he dies in semi-poverty. Oh, man.

It's horrible. But all these years later, George's case continues to be deeply important to English society and not only opened the public's eyes to failings in the country's criminal justice system, especially connected to race, but this is the case that directly leads to the creation of a criminal appeals court. Hmm. It hadn't existed in England before this case. So the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907 formally established England's Court of Criminal Appeal and has introduced the same year that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes about George's case

in the Daily Telegraph. And that's the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's real life investigation that exonerated an innocent man, George Adelge. Wow. Never heard it. Right? Yeah. They made a four part TV series. Some British people did. I've seen it so many times because I start it, every time I look at it, I go, oh, I've never seen that. And then I start it and then I'm like, yes, I have. And then I watch it again anyway.

Wow, that was amazing. Great job, great standalone story. Right? So that's what we're doing for you guys. That's what we're trying to do. So we can have our vacay. Yeah. Should we see what are you guys even doing right now?

Why are you listening to this? You guys have been telling us, so here's one. Oh, this one is good for Pride Month. Oh, good. Hi, lovely people. You asked what we were even doing while listening. So I'm listening right after coming out as trans to my family.

Wow. I told them my new name, and I feel like I'm finally living as myself. This podcast has been alongside me throughout my teenage slash early adult years and has been a grounding feature during some really tough times. Thank you and happy Pride, Lee Baevem. Congratulations, Lee. Yeah.

Well done. You did it. Wow. What a strong Pride month. What are you even doing right now? I know. You guys hashtag on our whatever, you know, when you comment on our Instagrams or TikToks, tell us what you're even doing right now when you listen to the podcast. Here's another one. This is from Tony underscore B underscore 983. And it says, hashtag what are you even doing right now?

Spiraling at work because after 45 years on this planet, I am just now learning that the classic mayo with the blue label I know as Hellman's is actually called best foods and renamed for the East Coast. What is even real? Please tell me you have Heinz ketchup. We got so much more mayo feedback than any other feedback we've ever gotten.

Were people fighting between mayonnaise and Miracle Whip? They wanted us to know that Miracle Whip is a fucking dressing. And how dare you, right? What's the one that you tasted and was super sugary? That's actually a dressing. It's not even claiming to be a mayo. Yes, it is claiming to fucking be a mayo. You don't just get to change how people interpret

Miracle Whip. This is a great way to keep getting comments on like, government people's algorithms. Keep going. Start, start. You fucking assholes. How dare you? Don't touch my fucking mayo. I'll make, what about aioli? Let's go aioli. I going. Start. You fucking assholes. How dare you? Don't touch my fucking mayo.

What about aioli? Let's go aioli. I'm so sorry. Let's go fucking aioli now. It's a dressing. It's a dressing. So you're reading this small print on the front of that label and telling me that Mrs. Packard did not put Miracle Whip on a bologna and cheese sandwich and fuck up my day. You're saying that didn't happen and that's not valid. Sounds like they're questioning your memories now. It sounds like you think a dress, just the words dressing somehow vindicates anything. And we need a vacation. I'm so furious right now.

And this is why we're going on a vacation. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squillace. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com.

Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at MyFaveMurder. Goodbye!