National Park After Dark - An Island Murder Mystery: Galapagos National Park

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

This week we travel overseas and back in time to visit Galapagos National Park. Floreana, a small island in the archipelago has acted as a siren, lulling people from all over the world to her shores. Although her call was heard by many - some wanted her all to themselves. Come along as we learn about the history of the island, and discuss a real life Clue story, where we ponder 'who dunnit?' in what has gone down in history as the Galapagos Affair. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Aurate: Fine jewelry that is ethically sourced and sustainably made. Get 20% your first order with code NPAD. For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're not talking the last person with your family's last name or the last of your friend group to leave your hometown. I mean truly the last. Meaning once you're gone, that last single candle you hold will extinguish, leaving darkness where there was once light. That's what happened to Lonesome George. Thought of as one of the rarest creatures on the planet, he was a giant tortoise from the island of Pinta. in the northern regions of the Galapagos and was the last known survivor of the Pinta tortoise. When George shut his eyes for the last time on June 24, 2012, he served as the end of thousands of years of a legacy. At roughly 100 years old, he was considered young for his species.

A hundred years of living also means 100 years of observation. As a tortoise, George probably spent most of his life on the island prior to his capture by the park service, eating, sleeping, and watching, peacefully surveying life on the island, sun up to sundown, year after year. Memories of those years tucked away in the mind of an old man, who for the most part had far surpassed the lives of those who made up his memories. And while George may have been docile and pure, he may have also acted as an oracle. In the Galapagos, legend has it, these animals can perceive the motives of visitors to the

islands and through their gaze you will be marked with either approval or impending death. In the 1930s, a certain group of visitors, instead of rushing off their boats, kicking up sand as they ran up the beaches to their new homes, may have wanted to heed the Georges of the island. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Welcome back everyone to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle. And my name's Cassie. Are we doing an animal episode this week again? Absolutely not. We are not. Sorry. I teach it a little bit with Lonesome George, who we will be revisiting again at some point in the episode. But it is not about him or any other animal on the islands of where we are visiting today, which is Galapagos, Galapagos National Park. We had our fix with your episode. We're going back. I was going to say, like we're doing it twice in a row. I was stoked. I mean, I'm down to learn about some turtles and you really sold me on George. But I agree. I agree. I would love to do another animal episode, but that's not what we have in store today.

Today we have a really interesting story. It is very reminiscent of the game Clue. There's a lot of different characters, a who done it type of situation. So it's like Susie killed Max in the kitchen with a fork, essentially, only not at all. But you have to think there's all these different characters and you get to meet them and their background. and then there's a situation. I'll just say there's a type of situation going on that you kind of have to put the pieces together

because this is unsolved. There's a lot of mystery surrounding what happens here on the islands in the 1930s. What has gone down in the history books, it is known now as the Galapagos affair. You may have heard of it. There's a documentary about it in several books. about it and we'll get into that but you have got me very intrigued well before we kick it off i know

cassie has some exciting news she's just bursting at the seams about so go ahead it's fat bear week wednesday september 29th to october 5th is fat bear week if you haven't been monitoring yet start monitoring you can vote for which bear you think has eaten the most food so basically it's the fall time and during the fall bears go into this process called hyperphasia where they just eat and drink nonstop because they have to put weight on before they go into hibernation for the winter. And in Catmine National Park, they monitor the bears and they take before and after pictures and you get to decide who you think ate the most and gain the most weight and you get to vote on who is the fattest bear. And it's just a fun

little way to monitor the bears and you can watch them on a live cam. And it's just a fun thing that I've been looking forward to for the past three months and it's here. So I already know it's Bear Junior Week while we're recording this episode. So last week. So you missed it if you haven't voted for them. But I'm voting for my junior bear that I hope makes it into the final round this week. But it was so funny. She sent it to me.

She's like, okay, they were injured, got quilled in the paw, but they're not out of the running. I'm like, okay, you're very invested in this. Like, she was born small, but look how. much bigger she's gotten. She's doing great. I'm voting for her. She's going to do, like, I feel like you're in one of those sports, um, like the brackets. The sports brackets where you put money in and you're like, I'm going to bet on this one, except it's just like me talking to myself and no one's interested. Well, I feel like a lot of people are interested because I remember last year, I think when we were recording the first, or no, we were talking about it when we were recording the

Timothy Treadwell episode and we were looking at that previous year's results and the before and afters are just so fun. And the iconic bead nose who just blew everyone out of the water with how much weight she gained. I'll never forget her bead nose. Beed nose 2020. All right. Well, other than fat bears, do you have anything to say? Because we're going somewhere where there is no bears. No, I'm just stoked for Fat Bear Week, but I'm also very excited for your episode because you talked about some turtles and in the beginning or a turtle in the beginning and then there's a bunch of people dying so i i just want to know what's going on now okay so yeah this story is pretty twisty and turny and there are a lot of characters involved in it i'm going to try and make it as easy as possible to follow but there are

several groups of people and each group has several people within that group so i'm going to try and do it as best as i can but this one you got to pay attention to because it does matter who is who so the information for today's story primarily came from a documentary called the Galapagos affair, Satan came to Eden. And it's a documentary that was really cool to watch for research purposes. It's directed by Daniel Geller and Dana Goldfin. Highly recommend. It's a few years older, but it has a ton of vintage film in it. So you get a real sense of the people involved and the island. It's all black and white, of course. But, but it has a ton of vintage film in it. So you get a real sense of the people involved. of course, but it's a really cool film.

And then I also use some information from the Telegraph, the Smithsonian National Geographic, and BBC. If you want a full list of our sources for this episode, you can visit the show notes. But here we go. We're going to the Galapagos. Okay, so the Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles west of Ecuador.

They consist of 13 major islands and six smaller ones for a land total of about three. thousand square miles which sits on about 23,000 square miles of ocean. The islands were first officially discovered quote unquote by the bishop of Panama in the 1500s, although it is debated if Inca's were maybe the first people as human visitors to the islands. But on official record, it wasn't until the 1500s when this guy came. And I guess he wasn't that impressed. And throughout the 1500s, other expeditions were sent to the island, but the islands were deemed ugly and barren, and there wasn't really a lot of desire for them.

I haven't been there before, but aren't they, like, very beautiful tropical islands? So they are very beautiful islands, and this expedition and these teams did note that there was a variety of different animal species in flora and fauna, but there was also smaller little islands dotted throughout it that were pretty barren that didn't have any freshwater sources. So they were just like, no, we don't like it. Yeah. So they're kind of like passed up on that. They were nicknamed Las Ilas and Cantatas, which meant enchanted or bewitched islands.

Fast forward a couple hundred years and Charles Darwin enters the picture. He really helped put the Galapagos on the map for most of the world. even though we had known about them, Charles Darwin really pushed this area to the forefront. I mean, that's how I learned about them when I was in college in biology classes. I learned about Charles Darwin and his expeditions to the Galapagos. So he visited the islands in the 1830s, and his scientific observations and research of the species that he encountered there, he consolidated into his famous book called The Origin of Species, which I totally had flashbacks of. I read that in evolutionary biology in college.

Did you ever read it or hear about it? I have heard of it. I've never read it personally. Yeah. I mean, it's not super thrilling from what I remember, but it was very interesting. And his whole journey there and everything that he did and saw and could be an entirely other podcast. Like not even just an episode, a whole other podcast. And we're not going to go deep into it.

But Charles Darwin, Galapagos, they kind of go hand in hand. Galapagos National Park, Ecuador's first national park, was known first as a wildlife sanctuary in 1935, and then became official in 1959. The Ecuadorian government declared 97% of the Galapagos Islands as protected through the Galapagos National Park, with conservation at the forefront. These islands are arguably most famous for their flora and fauna, some of which are endemic, meaning that they are found exclusively to a particular area or their confederate. find to a particular place. So, in other words, there are species here in the Galapagos that aren't found anywhere else in the entire world. So some examples of these species include the Galapagos tortoise, the Marine Aguana, the Galapagos Finch, aka Darwin's Finches, the Galapagos Furseal, and the flightless comerance, which are flightless birds. In the 1970s, the islands were designated as a UNESCO World

Heritage Site, and in the 80s, the Galapagos Marine Resources Reserve was created to protect the surrounding ocean. So this area is highly protected for its biodiversity, which is awesome. Today, the Galapagos are home to around 25,000 residents and thousands of annual tourists. Activities in this national park revolve mainly on the water. They include snorkeling and scuba diving and boating. Hiking on the islands is only permitted by guide, and there is also a Charles Darwin Research Center, which is home to a tortoise breeding center. Mid-June to early September and mid-December to early January are peak seasons for visiting the park. And a cool thing about this park, I think mainly because of the fragile ecosystem, there's a limited number of tourists

permitted per island per day. So is it something that you have to get reservations for then? Yeah. Based on my reading, that seems to be what you have to do. You have to plan ahead. You have to reserve time. You have to reserve boats, obviously way to get there and things like that. So you can't just walk up and plan to hike around on your own. And it's just a way different experience, I think, than what we're used to in national parks here. Cool. So as exciting as it sounds to visit, we're not staying here in the present. We are going to go back in time to the 1930s.

So our story today is going to take place on the island of Floriana. This little island is like really little. It's only 67 square miles, but it has a really big history. It was named after Juan Jose Flores, who was the first president of Ecuador, and was a favorite stop for whalers. I think a lot of us think of Charles Darwin as kind of putting this island and the Galapagos in general on the map, but Floriana has been visited for hundreds of years before him. This island in particular was a favorite stop for whalers. It had a relatively flat surface. It had freshwater sources on the island and plenty of animals.

So whalers would stop here to hunt tortoises for meat, drink from the streams, and rest before moving on. Sailors frequented it so much, in fact, that they actually nailed a wooden barrel on a post, like a bamboo post, and it served as a post office. One that would be used for hundreds of years and actually still exists today. It's called Post Office Bay, and although it doesn't have that original wooden barrel from, you know, 16, 1700s, it still does send and receive letters to and from far off places. Wow, that's really cool. Yeah, so little dot speck of, you know, land in the middle of the ocean, it has a tiny little post office.

In 1820, the island was set on fire, accidentally. Members of the Nantucket whaling ship, the Essex, were fooling around, pranking each other while they were taking a break on the island. A man named Thomas Chapel lit a fire, and it raged out of control and swept all over the island. and it burned for days, destroying almost the entire island. This fire, along with over hunting of the tortoises prior, caused the demise of the tortoises on this island, and their population was entirely killed off. So by the time Darwin arrived a couple years later, there were actually no tortoises left on this particular island.

And a very weird turn, but I had to include it, especially because it's like the Essex, New England, Nantucket, It's close to home for us. After this ship, the Essex, left the island. It's burning, blazing in the background. They're sailing away. A sperm whale sank their ship. The crew had to jump ship, and for several months, the crew drifted in lifeboats. They were slowly starving to death and baking in the sun.

They had to turn to cannibalism and would draw straws to see who would be food for the rest of them, and then again for who would have to be the one to kill somebody. Only eight of the 20 original crew members survived. They were allegedly found emaciated and gnawing on human bones off the coast of South America. And their story inspired Herman Melville's novel, Moby Dick. Wow, I never knew that side of Moby Dick before. Inspired by a true story. Wow.

All stemming from this little island, Floriana. That's wild. Also, I couldn't imagine setting up that system and then being the person to draw that short story. straw and it's like all right sorry you're next yeah and then you have to do it again to see who's going to have to kill them like because nobody wants to do it yeah it's just a horrific that's a whole another so i mean that's a whole other thing but i remember learning about this not in this particular instance but the whole drawings of straws and being a drift at sea and things like that like when i was a kid like my dad told told me about that i'm like thanks for telling me i'm nine i don't need to know

but okay. I'm nine. Like, SpongeBob would be fine. Can you leave me alone with this? But anyways, so for a short amount of time in the 1830s, Floriana also served as a penal colony, which is a distant settlement established for the sole purpose of punishing criminals by forcing them to do various labor and as an isolation from society. So it was kind of like, here's a deserted island.

your criminal go work and do hard labor and stay away from the rest of us. It was shut down due to brutal conditions, both from the guards and from the environment. It was just desolate, I guess, where the colony was. So they shut it down. So over history, it seems like this place isn't really an idyllic paradise, but some actually did view it that way. And that's where our story begins. So like I said before, this story involves a few different groups of people.

So let's meet the first group. They're a group of two. We have Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dor Strouche. So these are, everybody involved is actually German. So we'll just kind of say that now. But Friedrich was a doctor from Berlin who practiced Nietzschean principles. And I had to look it up because it kind of sounded familiar. Have you seen the sinner?

No. I think you can just assume that every single show that you ask if I've seen the other. there will be no. This whole like Nietzschean, I know I'm probably saying it wrong, but it's difficult to pronounce. This whole like school of thought and way of thinking kind of bubbles up in season three of the center. So I kind of connect the dots there, but it's just a very different way of thinking, just being like super elite and thinking of yourself as not better than everybody, but kind of. And I don't know, I'm not deep diving into it. It was just part of the way that he thought. of himself and other people that kind of separated him from everybody else.

He was also really rough around the edges, to put it lightly. He served in World War I with his brother and definitely came home a bit changed, according to his friends and his family. And he started saying that war is fixed in the human gene. So people are just prone to fighting and war. And he began to despise civilization and organized society and, people in general. He just wanted out. He did not want to be a part of civilization at the time. He was definitely an obsessive type of person and one of his obsessions was mastication.

And mastication is just the fancy word for chewing, the act of chewing food. But he did it to an extreme. So much in fact, he wore his teeth down and actually had them taken out, like removed from his mouth and then he had a set of steel dentures that he would wear instead. Ew, chewing is like my, it's one of those noises that I hate. Me and him wouldn't have gotten along well at all. That's like my least favorite noise. And if you're like a really loud chewer, I have to leave. What's the name for it?

Mastication is like the process of chewing. Oh, the process of chewing. Okay. Yeah. He was like super extreme and everything that he did. not just chewing food and with hitler gaining power in germany at the time he kind of took that as his sign that now was the time to leave civilization and civilized life and go out on his own he had been thinking about it for years but at this point he was in his 40s he was 43 and he

made the decision to get out of dodge one of his patients dorr strouche felt the same she dreamt of life uninfluenced by modern society and she wanted to go with him she was almost disgusted by the modern day housewife and wanted no part of it she was not going to be someone's stay-at-home wife cooking and cleaning and being like this dopeful woman that would stay at home while the men were outworking like she just did not she did not like that so when this doctor her doctor that she looked up to and really admired was saying all these plans of leaving and starting a new life, she was on board. So when they heard about the Galapagos, these tiny little specks of land on the vast ocean at the ends of the world, pretty much the farthest away from life in Germany that they could imagine, they left their spouses because they

were both married, they left them and set sail. Wow, okay. On July 4th of 1929, the pair sailed from Amsterdam to Ecuador, which took almost four weeks. There, they spent the entire month of August waiting for a boat to get them to the Galapagos. They sailed past inhabited areas of the island chain to avoid people. Like one of the main islands is Santa Cruz, and it already had European settlers. Like, this isn't just a desolate group of islands at this point. There are already people living on some of them, but they wanted to skip over that because they had come this far to be away from people. So they chose the island of Floriana, and their nearest neighbor was going to be 60 miles away. Wow, they really hated people. We're going to sail away to this island that is so far removed that there will

literally not be a person for 60 miles. Like I feel that some days. Some days I'm like, I just want to be alone. I could some days today was one of those days for me. I'm like, I could sail away. But like actually doing it, because I don't actually dislike people, just like occasionally. I know. It's like, okay, are you sure you just don't want like a small break? Yeah, like a month or a week or like a long holiday? They first set foot on Floriana on September 19th of 1929. The beach itself was rocky and desolate and not very homey.

So they made their way inland. They traveled almost a mile and the island opened up to green, lush growth with fresh water. They chose a spot and they dubbed it Frito, which is a combination of their names. So Friedrich and Dorrit. It's like, what is it? Benifer or something? Ben Affleck and Jennifer. Side note that I just thought of side question.

Do you know, were they both Jewish? I have no idea. It didn't say that they were fleeing because they were worried of Hitler. I think they made it clear that they did not agree with Hitler and that whole regime climbing the ranks and coming into power, but they weren't fleeing out of fear. Okay. So if they weren't fleeing out of fear, they probably, that was just kind of where my mind went that was maybe they were leaving because of all of the stuff going on.

But even if they're not Jewish, a lot of people were forced into war and things like that as well. And he had served in World War I. He had seen what was going on. He just like did not want to be a part of any of that. So I think, although it wasn't the main reason for him. him leaving, it was definitely a significant factor in pushing him to the decision. Yeah. Frito, back to Frito. So this was their homestead and they worked tirelessly on it.

They started first off with getting a garden going. They had some seeds that they brought from Germany and this is where most of their food would come from because they were vegetarians. So they relied heavily on their crops and they wanted to get them going. The work was seemingly endless and exhausting. So the two of them, Dorr and Friedrich, met in Germany years before, as remember she was his patient. So she came to him for help with her multiple sclerosis diagnosis. He told her that the power of thought would help cure her and that she just had to really have the mindset that she was going to become well again. She just had to think about becoming healthy again and that she would be fine.

He took a woman with MS to an island with no people and no hospital, no medical care at all. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So that's that on that. And I mean, I don't know what the treatment for it was back then, but I mean, if you're going to enjoy your life, a tropical island sounds like a nice place to do it. Yeah.

And from what I saw in the documentary and through her writings, it didn't. seemed like it was severe enough to inhibit her to the point that she was unable to get around and work and do things on her own at this point. But she still did have MS. You're right. And MS is progressive. So it only gets worse, especially back then. I mean, I know that the treatments for it now that they really still don't have that much. So I imagine back then that there was even less. So shockingly, the whole think about being well and you'll be cured didn't work out. And she kind of wrote, so I should say, the whole documentary is so cool, mainly because a huge chunk of it is from, so the whole reason we have this information about this story is from letters of all of these people that they wrote back and forth to people at home. So obviously, because they were the only ones there, there's nobody to witness this story. story. So everything is being put together through letters firsthand accounts by all the different people that were going to meet. So in her writings, she was saying that she was very excited to be there,

but pretty soon after they started doing all the hard labor for building this homestead, she did feel the complications from her MS diagnosis, kind of inhibiting her a little bit, like she would get more tired. And I will say in the documentary and in some of the other stories that are sources that I read, it didn't highlight much about her MS other than saying she had it and that it sometimes affected her work there. But that's pretty much it. Okay. All right. So fast forward a year and a half.

And their dynamic started getting a little strained. The constant work coupled with Friedrich's harshness towards her began to put a big damper on what she thought their experience would be. Originally, they had both thought that their life on this island would be full of peace, tranquility, they intended to spend a lot of time practicing their spirituality and essentially just being Zen on this island away from everybody else. But based on their writings, it seemed like this was not the case. They argued a lot, and Dora wrote Friedrich never seemed satisfied and was mean to her. This seems to be confirmed through some of Friedrich's writings where he didn't write kindly about her at all and would sometimes harp on her disease and her downfalls in his writing. So she was on this remote

island in a toxic relationship with a guy who didn't, who wasn't sympathetic to what she was going through. And it's funny that you say that in this relationship because in several of the articles, it'll present them in a romantic relationship, which it seems that way, I mean, they left their significant others, sailed across the world together to be on a deserted island with one another, but in the documentary and through her writings, it does seem that she looked up to him more so as like a teacher and a guide and an inspirational figure versus a romantic partner. And there is no evidence in any of the writings that they ever had a romantic relationship. Interesting.

I can't imagine there wasn't something there, though. Just for like, just as a person needing companionship, I couldn't imagine that there was nothing there. Like maybe it wasn't like in love, but... Yeah. Well, you can imagine. I mean, we're all human. Like, we crave attention and compassion and connection.

And I'm sure she felt that. So initially she looked up to him, but as time we're on and he was getting more harsh with her, she realized that he's not exactly all that he cracked up to be. Any time that he had when they weren't doing physical labor or things associated with the homestead, he spent that time alone writing and reading and not really spending much time with her and she wrote that she really really missed attention and being loved and human interaction and she actually spent a lot of time with animals on the island she had a burrow and she spent a lot of time with it and there's there's footage in the documentary of them like dancing it's

like a mini burrow and she has its front legs and they're like dancing around and it's really Aw. Really sweet. So she really loved animals and really loved spending time with them. And it filled kind of this little hole that she had for human interaction. But Friedrich hated it. Like he said that basically her relationship and how she viewed animals was stupid and a waste of time. So he's kind of a dick.

He's totally a dick. I would be so upset to be stuck on this island with this guy. She was getting desperate for other people. And she did write about it often. And speaking of writing, they did do that a lot. And many of their letters, they sent via that little wooden barrel that in the post office bay. So they would send letters home to their friends and family. And periodically, they would receive some back along with newspapers, even though they were all months behind.

Like, there's no such thing as up-to-date news and current affairs. Like, they were getting things several, several months behind. And while they may have felt isolated, alone, and forgotten by society, across the ocean, it was a total other story. It turns out that their letters were leaked to the press and eventually they realized their story was big news and unsurprisingly exaggerated. So they received newspapers. They started receiving newspapers that had their story on it. And they were upset about the way that they had been portrayed. They were painted as like these insane recluses or recluses.

How do you say recluse? Reclose. I say recluse. So they were painted as these people that were insane. And living off the land as like nudists and they were psychos and it kind of like a zoo attraction without being like a circus side show. Like wild hippies kind of thing. Yeah. When their intention was not that at all.

But in 1932, Dor got her wish for here. human interaction. That January, the ship, the Valero 3, came to the island. This ship had a crew of scientists visiting the Galapagos to collect and document rare species. They wanted to stop specifically on Floriana because they had heard of the modern-day nudist Adam and Eve. So they heard of these people through the papers and they're like, all right, well, we're here for science, but we also hear there's some shit going on over here, so we want to see what's going, what the real story is. So they get to the island. They take a dingy from their boat to the shore. And they were really surprised because Doran and Friedrich greeted them happily and warmly on the beach.

And they noticed that they first of all had clothes on. So they weren't wild nudist. And they were very kind and seemingly normal. And they showed them around Frito. So they brought them to their homestead and like, look at my look at our homestead. This is how we live. This is what we do. do you know they just seemed normal the crew invited them back onto their boat and this is where dora was overjoyed she even cried tears of happiness like she was so psyched to be around people again but at the same time friedrich seemed pretty uncomfortable and although he initially was warm and welcome to them they noted that he kind of like started closing up as the day wore on So they left, the ship and the crew left, but they did leave them with gifts like lamp oil and chocolate and a rifle, like just parting gifts and said, you know, we'll be back eventually.

In his writing, Friedrich expressed that he was really content with the Valero crew, but mostly because it was temporary. He mentioned that he would resist any sort of community anywhere near them. And at the time, land was free to take in the Galapagos. you can just get there, set up shop somewhere. You were your own master. You made the rules. No one was telling you what to do. It was his personal paradise.

That is exactly what he was looking for. So he didn't want anyone basically coming in and ruining it for him. But it wasn't his for long. Word was getting out about Floriana. And unbeknownst to them, others were coming. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want.

Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So enter the second group of people. In August of 1932, a boat came to the island and it carried the Whitmer family, Margaret, her husband, Heinz, and Heinz's son Harry from his first marriage. They had spent their entire life savings on this move.

Again, they were from Germany as well. They had heard of the story of Doran Friedrich and they wanted to follow in their footsteps. Of course, they wanted to live a different type of lifestyle, but the main driver for their move was actually their son. Harry. He was ill and his family wanted him to live on the island for, you know, a happy and healthy life. So they sold everything and went to Floriana. But not surprisingly, they were not exactly welcomed with open arms. Friedrich and Dora made it very clear that they viewed them as intruders. They did not want them anywhere near their settlement and they led them actually more than an hour away from Frito to an old cluster of pirate caves that were literal caves underneath this hill.

And we're like, okay, you can live here away from us. Still hating people. Still. Which is, I kind of looking back on it, it's kind of odd because she was so, Dor was so excited about the prospect of people and human interaction. So it seems a little odd that she was also hesitant. Well, I wonder if it was more him and then they're kind of a duo, you know, because he clearly wasn't interested in the other people. So maybe when they got there, he was like absolutely not. And they kind of rely on each other for survival and their settlement.

So she couldn't be like, yes, if he's, and he kind of seems like he's kind of a jerk anyway. Yeah. As far as Margaret goes, she was pretty disappointed. Some of the reason that they chose Floriana in particular is because Friedrich, was there. She was five months pregnant at the time and she wanted to be on that particular island because she knew that Friedrich was a doctor. So she wanted a doctor around in case she needed him while she was pregnant. But she quickly realized that Friedrich did not want to help her at all or anyone for that matter and she was shocked that he was really pretty heartless, especially someone who's

a doctor committing their life to helping others. Like she was just kind of confused and let down. She just sailed across the world to be there. And he was like, actually, don't even look at me. So Friedrich was adamant about not practicing as a physician on the island at all. He was resentful of the Whitmer's and said that he was happy to put them on the next boat. Months passed as the Whitmers made a successful homestead of their own. Everything was pretty normal and relatively peaceful until two months later with the arrival of the Baroness. Eloise Baskett de Wagner, aka.

Eloise Bosquette de Wagner, Wernehorn, aka Eloise Wagner de Basquette, known to the press as the Empress of the Galapagos Islands, known to her soon-to-be neighbors and to us for the rest of this podcast because I'm not going to say her name like that. We're going to call her the Baroness, and she was a wild woman in the best of ways, depending on who you asked. She was a secretary in Constantinople during World War I, but ended up as a cabaret dancer after the war. While she was working as a dancer, she caught the eye of a French merchant named Bosquette. They married and went to live in Paris.

And this is a little confusing, and I'm not sure what the motives are behind this, but her new husband's mother, so her mother-in-law, started to introduce her to other men, like other eligible bachelors, even though she just married her. son. So she didn't approve of her? It seems like that. She's like, yeah, I know you just got married, but what about this guy? Like, wouldn't he be a better match? Like, get out. Yeah, that seems to be the undertone of this. So it worked pretty soon. She was introduced to two men, one named Rudolph Lorenz and the other Robert Philipson. And in the process of meeting these people and whatever, her husband filed for divorce. So they got divorced. And now she was involved with these two guys, Philipson and Lorenz. And they became a trio.

They were in a polyamorous relationship. And they eventually heard of this far off land of Floriana as well and what it offered. But the baroness did not have peace and seclusion and isolation in mind. She wanted to do the exact opposite. She wanted to attract people to the island. And her plan was to get there and build a luxurious hotel to attract millionaires. Not a bad idea. I throughout watching her, obviously all the footage in the documentary, and it's all over online.

Like, you can look up videos of her on YouTube easily. It's all silent film, silent black and white. But just like she emanates this energy. She's always smiling and like dancing around. And she's just like a wild free spirit. And she's on this island. She has these two boyfriends. Like she's very outspoken, especially for the time, the 19th.

30s. Like she is just, I think, very cool. But not everyone liked her, especially on the island. So in October, the Baroness, Philipson, and Lorenz arrived together to the Whitmore's homestead. They just rolled up on some donkeys. They're like, hey, we're here. And the Whitmore's were super surprised by her arrival, but more so of her behavior. She made herself more than welcome. She was exuberant and boisterous and she got there promptly went over to their stream, sat down, and had one of her boyfriends wash off her feet. As she was telling the Whitmore's of her grand plans that she's like, okay, so you have a little orange grove over here. I'm going to just set up shop right next to it. We're going to live here while I build this like huge luxurious hotel on the island.

So hope you're cool with that. Bye. And then she left. And they're just going to kind of sitting there like what the hell just happened like she's washing her feet their street that's where they drink like that's where they get their drinking water and she just like rolls up and is like I'm here she's just taken over she doesn't care she's going to walk all over everybody but it's interesting because she like went up and introduced herself and she does the same thing like next on her list she's going over to friedrich and door like she she isn't mean by what i've gathered through research and accounts and things like that, but she's just very, she knows what she wants and she's very headstrong and she's not going to let anyone get in her way and she's kind of just like,

it is what it is, this is what I'm doing type of person. So she actually was quoted as saying that women are capable of everything and they have a much greater resolve than men do. So she's like, okay, later days to the Whitmore, the Whitmore family and makes her way over to Friedrich and Door. again, shows up with no warning and just plops herself down right on their front porch area and ask them for tea. And she's like, okay, so if you could give me some tea, I'll let you know what I'm about to do with this hotel. And she just tells all her plans to them. And as you can imagine, this did not go over well with them. They were wicked pissed. They were like, what, who is this person and what is happening? She's like, hi, I'm at your house. Please cater to me

while I tell you about how I'm going to take over this whole island. Thank you. Thank you, goodbye. And, you know, Floriana was supposed to be this secluded paradise and the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. She wanted to bring people there, not get away from them. Needless to say, she was not making a lot of friends. So the Whitmore's, Dorr and Friedrich found her vulgar and offensive,

but I found her compelling. So it just depends on your lens. But being there and being in that situation, I can imagine she's just disturbing the piece. Yeah. And just another way to paint a picture of her a little bit. When questioned about her polyamorous lifestyle and how she went about relationships, she believed that variety is the spice of life. I love that.

Yeah. So December rolls around. And at this point, Margaret is starting to go into labor because remember she was pregnant when she first got there. It was a really, really difficult labor. and it went on for a long time, like over 24 hours. She was blacking out, in and out of consciousness. She was an excruciating pain. And finally she gave in and she's like, okay, I need the doctor.

I need Friedrich. Even though they weren't friends. And he was kind of mean to them. She really needed him. And surprisingly, he did. He came and helped her give birth. So he helped deliver the baby. They named him Rolf.

And he was the first baby to be born on the Galopon. Apogos as far as we know. And then Margaret ended up having a daughter as well five years later. So they were having a family here on the island. But despite the tension between everyone, the birth of Rolf actually kind of brought people together a little bit. I wouldn't say that they were exactly friends, but they were friendlier. Like the baroness brought the baby different clothes and everyone exchanged gifts. Like everyone was pretty peaceful at this point. Or I would say not, yeah, I'm not friendly, but at least tolerable to each other. I mean, what are you going to do? You're the only people there and you're just going to hate everyone. You know, you got,

you got to rely on each other or have some type of communication at some point. You might as well be civil. Right. So in January, so a month later, the Valero came back and like they said they were going to, and they were intending on visiting Friedrich and Doer and they were going to bring them more gifts and just check in on them. But they were surprised. because when they came ashore, they found a big handwritten sign in lipstick about the hacienda. So the hotel. And they're like, what the hell is this? Like at this point, they don't know that anybody else is there.

They just think it's the original too. So they made their way to Frito. They were like, okay, what's going on? And they filled them in on what everything that has happened and the Baroness and the Whitmore's and all that. Of course, the crew wanted to meet her. So they were led to her and they were super impressed by her. She was obviously very outspoken, friendly to everybody. She spoke eight different languages.

She was very intelligent. And she was way different from all the women that they were accustomed to. And then next they went to the Whitmore's where they met the couple and their kid. And they decided to bring them all aboard the ship. They're like, let's have a big party, like a big celebration. Well, that didn't work out too good because as soon as they brought everybody aboard the ship together in close quarters, there were heated exchanges. and they ended up having to separate all the groups for the rest of the night. Sounds like a kid's birthday party that went wrong.

You stand over there. Don't look at each other. Like, yeah. Originally, the crew was bringing gifts for Doran Friedrich. And when they brought the gifts to them, the baroness was pretty upset. She's like, okay, well, I think now that we're all here, we deserve to all share. And that really pissed Friedrich off. Like, he was really upset because he's like, okay,

here's this woman, again, causing more problems. This wouldn't have been an issue if you weren't here. Like, these are civilization problems. Like, this is what I'm trying to avoid. So she was just getting on his bad side. And the crew left thinking that the baroness was eccentric and neurotic, but also very personable and charming. They had thought that Doran Friedrich were hermits who were upset by others moving in and they were generally troublemakers. But they commended the Whitmore's for succeeding on living off the land. So they had all these thoughts about the different groups of people, just as outsiders, seeing what the whole vibe of the island

and everybody living on it, what that was like. The captain of the ship really was taken by the Baroness. Like, he really liked her and said that he was gonna come back and when he did that they were gonna make a film called The Empress of Floriana, which would star her as like the main character. Like, and I'll be your third boyfriend. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I really like you. So, and it's funny because I don't know if the entire thing is in the documentary. I think it is because it's like one of those silent short films that will have like a short scene and then it'll go to a screen with just text and wording of like what's happening and it'll cut to another scene. Okay. And it's very short. It's only a couple minutes long, but they do play it in the documentary and it's funny. So that was in December when they visited.

Now we're jumping forward to May, May of 1933. The Ecuadorian government came to the island, and they ended up giving four square miles of land for the hotel to the baroness. And that pissed off the Whitmore's and Doran Friedrich because they were only allotted 50 acres each. So they're like, all right, well, we were here first, and you're giving all this land to her and you're just going to give us a little bit. It didn't go over that well. In October, word had gotten to Floriana that their island was all over the headlines, mainly about the baroness.

There were headlines that read more husbands than wives, nudist empress, evil and Eden, curse of the Galapagos. Like she was being portrayed in the media or in the newspapers at the time as this crazy, eccentric, polyamorous, wild woman. And at first, everyone was laughing about it, like tall tales, like media exaggerating things. But eventually people started to think that maybe she fed all of that on purpose to the newspapers to sensationalize herself, to draw attention to her and to her hotel to like get people to want to come visit and see for themselves like what this wild woman was about. So she just can't win. She's like, she's either being a bunch of lies told about her and she's, has nothing to do with it, or she's the one who created it, and now she's bad as well. So, like, either direction you think about it, she's the bad guy. But I think personally, based on everything,

I think she enjoyed it. Like, I think she enjoyed the attention and how people thought of her. I think she ate it up. It was probably a little bit comical, especially, I guess, being so far removed from the people who are actually saying it, I feel like it would be a lot different if she was walking down the street and people were like accusing her of being all these weird things. But if you're reading it from thousands and thousands of miles away and you're just sitting on your little island, be like, wow, that's really funny. Literally none of that is happening. Right. Exactly. And I think she did play into like the polyammer's lifestyle. Like she was a different type of woman for the times. And I think that she used that to her advantage. I think that she was not maybe not proud of, especially not all

of the things. I don't know if she was proud of everything, but I think she found entertainment in it for sure, because she was, to some degree, larger than life. So in March, a drought came to the island, and the heat was insufferable. It reached up to 120 degrees in the shade. Lack of rain and the grueling heat dried up most of the freshwater on the island. It withered the vegetation, killed their crops. It was killing the animals on the island, both the native animals and their livestock as well. and all of the families were suffering. But the baroness's property suffered the most. Supply ships did not show for months.

And during this time, Lorenz wanted to leave the baroness, and he often was staying with the Whitmer's. He would come and go from the Whitmer's property, and he would leave, come back, and he was crying, he was really upset and saying he never wanted to see her again or see her in the other man again. And it seems like he was either, being emotionally or physically or both abused to some degree.

And it's unclear what, but obviously the relationship was really strained because it seemed as though the baroness was starting to prefer Philipson over Lorenz. I'm just kind of pushing Lorenz out of the picture, or at least that's how he felt. And this combined with the drought and all the complications that came from it, the settlers started to fear tragedy was coming. and they were thinking that their homesteads would break down and they would have to leave and there was going to be big issues. And man oh man, did issues come? So on March 27th, 1934, Friedrich and Dor heard a woman scream but didn't think much of it.

Although in Doar's writing, she described the scream as long and drawn out. But they were just like, oh, whatever, and just went about their day. Which is weird because it's like, okay, you're one of like six people on the island. So I think you should be concerned. Like maybe you should check in on that. Like, yeah, this happens sometimes. Well, a couple days later, Margaret appeared with Lorenz to Doran Friedrich, where Lorenz gave them the following story. So Lorenz said that the baroness had visitors a few days before, and the visitors were from a yacht.

A millionaire had come, and they were visiting with her. And they concocted plans to leave the island. allegedly the baroness had sought out Margaret to ask for Lorenz because remember at this point Lorenz is staying with Margaret on and off so she goes to Margaret asked for Lorenz but he was out with Margaret's husband Heinz at the time somewhere else on the island and she told Margaret that her and Philipson were going to go to Tahiti because there was better opportunity there for the hotel and they wouldn't be coming back to Floriana so it was up to Lorenz to look after everything that they left behind. And then she left. She was like, okay, bye, Margaret. I'm out of here.

So Lauren said that he went back to the hacienda, so back to their hotel, the area where the baroness and they all lived and found it deserted. Over the next couple of days, he said that he checked the post office bay to see if there were any letters, either in the box, coming to the box, like any word from them. He said that there were only footprints of donkeys and humans in the sand. like there was no trace of the baroness or phillipson or their visitors or whatever he said that they had left him behind and he had no money they didn't leave him with anything other than the homestead and some of the belongings there because they didn't take everything but he had no money and he was now asking margaret hines friedrich and door for money because he said he didn't have any but he really wanted a

ticket to get off the island so he was asking if they wanted to go to the Baroness's property and buy anything that was left there. He's like, I know you're not going to just give me money, but you can take some of the stuff because now I'm in charge of it. She left me in charge of all this stuff. So at this point, the Whitmer's built a house of their own. So they weren't living in the caves anymore. Lorenz, Doran and Friedrich stopped by their house first. And for the first time, Doran Friedrich entered.

Like, they had never been to this new house before. And they walked in and immediately noticed something very first. familiar. They noticed a pink tablecloth, which Dorr immediately recognized because she had seen it before at the Baroness's home. Getchy. And this is all through writing now. So all of these accounts are through letters from each individual person. So Friedrich said that he was very suspicious of this story that Lorenz was spewing to everybody. He had not seen a ship in weeks. Like he would have seen a millionaire's yacht coming, an activity of people coming and going. Right away, he was just like, this is kind of weird.

And then, obviously, Dorr with the observation of the pink tablecloth was sketchy as well. So now they left that house and moved on to the Baroness's property. And they were shocked because it was certainly abandoned. But all of the Baroness's items were there, still intact. Not like, okay, there's some things, bigger things left behind. that we're not going to ship out everything, but like literally everything was still there. Like she didn't pack anything to leave? Nope.

So they observed that on her bedside table there were still cigarettes in the ashtray. Like she always smoked cigarettes and they were still sitting there in the ashtray. And next to them was the smoking gun. So it was her most valued possession. That most valued possession was a copy of the book, the picture of Dorian Gray, which is a novel by Oscar Wilde. And she toaded that thing everywhere. She said it was her lucky charm,

and she always had it with her and never went anywhere without it. So that just showed something happened to her. So this is all very suspicious. And Doar thinks that in her writing says, straight out, I think Philipson and the Baroness were murdered. She had initially wanted to, the Baroness to leave. Like she did not like her. She wasn't a fan of her.

But at the same time, she said she didn't want to see her die either. Yeah, you can not like someone and still not want them to be murdered. With all the suspicions going on between Dorr and Friedrich, they kept them their suspicions to themselves because they didn't know if Lorenz or the Whitmer's were involved. Like they didn't want to say anything out loud and they didn't want to be next or involved. Like they didn't want to out that they knew something was up. So their thought is that Lorenz killed them and maybe had some help by the Whitmer's or Margaret. alone or Heinz alone or what like who done it like this is going back to the clue thing like who is involved there's all these characters and we don't know what's going on the whole story was she's in tahiti

she's gone to tahiti she's she clearly is not in tahiti because there's some weird stuff going on here time went on the next month which is april of 1934 the rains began again and everything started coming back to life on the island so they came back from the edge of drought so at this point lorenz really wants to get the hell off the island and go back to Germany. And he was writing letters and sending them in the post office box begging any ship to take him away. Like, please someone come take me off this island. That's so hard because you have to wait for some. There's no way until someone comes and gets you. So he's just waiting for someone to take him away. And that eventually happens in July. So this was in April he wanted to go. Finally in July, a boat comes

for him. And it was a small fishing vessel and there was a journalist on board because he wanted to come to Floriana because he had heard about this wild woman, this baroness. Like he wanted the actual story. He heard all these elaborate stories in the newspaper of her and he wanted to see her for himself. He gets there and is told of her disappearance four months before. They're like, oh yeah, she went to Haiti. And he's like, what? He starts putting all these details together of like, okay, this does not seem real or accurate or right. Like something is going on here. And so he took that story and went back to the papers and now her disappearance is all over the place.

She's in the papers all the time. But this time it's because she's missing. Door writes in her letters that they're still keeping their suspicions close to their chest. Like they don't want to tell the journalist what they think. Because they don't want it getting out. And then the Whitmer's to hear or Lorenz to hear. Well, no one's there to protect them either. If they think someone murdered someone and then you go out and say it and then they're like,

all right, I'm going to leave and go report on this now. You're alone on this island with these people. Exactly. I'd be like, yeah, she's in Tahiti. Sounds just like her. Back to Lorenz. He's super happy to get off the island. But allegedly, and this is all based on Doors writing, that as he was getting onto the ship,

he said to her, like under his breath, I don't know why, but I am afraid of this trip somehow. The plan was for his trip that he was going to leave Floriana and head to the island of Santa Cruz, which is a bigger island in the Galapagos, which has a lot more people. And then from there, they were going to go to another island called San Cristobel, and then from there, they were going to head to Ecuador. So it was not a direct, almost at a direct flight. It's not a direct path from Floriana to Ecuador. So there was going to be a lot of stops involved. They wish him well, off he goes.

That's it. In August, Friedrich brought back mail from the mailbox, and they had received word that on Lorenz's initial transport from Floriana to Santa Cruz, Lorenz had spotted a larger vessel, because at this point he's just on a small fishing boat, and he sees that there's this bigger vessel, and it's on its way to San Cristobel on an expedited route

to his final destination, which is Ecuador. And he really begged the captain of his current boat to anchor quickly so he could catch a ride on the larger ship. And the captain was really hesitant to sail that day. They weren't planning to sail that particular day. They were planning on doing it the next day. And that's because this captain was very superstitious. And this just happened to be Friday the 13th. So he's like, I am not sailing on Friday the 13th.

I don't care if you want to get on that boat or not. So he was warning him like, I don't want to sail. It's not, it's bad luck, et cetera, et cetera. But Lorenz was desperate. He had spent enough time on the islands and he wanted out. So he offered him a lot of money to bring him that day to sail him on Friday the 13th. So he agreed. He's like, okay, fine.

Money talks. I mean, so they left on Friday the 13th. And this letter says that no one has seen them since. I knew this was coming just by the way you were saying it, but still. Friedrich is reading this letter. And in the letter, it does say that there were search parties sent out for them. but there was no trace of them. And at this point, there has been no word from Tahiti either.

So the Baroness hasn't sent word that she made it to Tahiti, and it's been months. So fast forward to November of 1934. And Dora writes that Friedrich said that he was content to die on Floriana. She said that at this point, they had went from having kind of a strange relationship to all of a sudden having a harmonious relationship. and there was peace between them at this point, and that Friedrich had turned from rough and harsh to consider it and tender. Their dynamic was totally different. But in Margaret's writings,

she says that Friedrich came to her personally and said that Dor was increasingly difficult and that they were fighting a lot. So we have two different stories going on here. And this is important for what happens next. Does she murder him? I don't know. This is how the story goes. Doran Friedrich were having a lot of difficulty growing their crops at this point.

And remember, they're vegetarians. So they relied heavily on their garden for all the vegetables to eat. So at this point, they had to turn to the option of eating chicken because they had chickens on the island, but they never ate them. And at this point, they're like, all right, well, we're not really having another option here. So Margaret and Heinz visited Frito, their little homestead, and saw. that Friedrich and Dor were boiling chicken and canning it. And they remember saying that it didn't look great. Like it wasn't the nicest looking food. Like it was slimy and gross looking. And they remember Friedrich offering them some of the chicken, but they were like, no, thank you. We're good. That looks

nasty. And they're glad that they refused. Because that same day, Door writes that they had to end up eating the chicken. And a few hours later, Friedrich laid down in bed because he just wasn't feeling great and he was in pain. And she remembers reading to him throughout the night from some of his favorite books that he had with him on the island. And that next morning, she realized that he wasn't just sick. He was, he was dying. And at this point, his tongue was super swollen, like he couldn't speak. He was having an allergic reaction. From her writing, it said that he was unable to move. His tongue was super swollen and he couldn't speak and he was in a lot of pain. So she goes off to get the Whitmer's asked for help. And when they came back, Friedrich was in and out of consciousness having a really

difficult time. And then all of a sudden he sat up, outstretched his arms and had a tranquil look of peace and acceptance on his face and then sat back and passed away. And that's according to Doar. But let's take a look at Margaret's view. So Margaret writes, Dork did come to get them and she was very worried for Friedrich and they get to the house and they get to his side and he was. His tongue was swollen. He was unable to speak. He couldn't move. Like get up and walk around or anything.

But he did reach out for a pencil and a piece of paper and he scribbled down some words and showed it to Dore and said, I curse you with my dying breath and then died. And he's a doctor, so I bet she, like, poisoned him or something, and he knew the symptoms that we're having. That's a theory, because now Margaret and Heinz are super suspicious. First of all, why did you take so long to come and get us when he was feeling sick? And second of all, if you guys were both eating the chicken, why are you fine? So why all of a sudden is he super ill and now dead? And where's the baroness, Dor? A serial killer on her hands.

So here's the thing, though. I think of that meme of the office when they're all pointing their finger guns at each other in a group, and they're like looking at each other suspiciously because it's like everyone is suspecting everybody else. Everyone has a motive here. At this point, Dorr wrote to the captain of the Valero, her friend, and said, you know what? This island is cursed. It's haunted grounds. and I fear like I'm going to be next.

Like I'm going to die here and I want out. Fast forward to November of 1934, Captain Hancock was alerted that two bodies were found next to an overturned boat off of the island of Marchina. So Marchina is a small island, 60 miles northwest of its nearest Galapagos neighbor, so it's super isolated. And it's a tiny dot of an island.

It's a remnant of an ancient volcano. And this island has food sources. but it has no fresh water. The crew took a dingy to the shore and saw a small overturned boat with a bamboo pole and an old gray coat as a distress signal.

And there they found the mummified bodies of the sea captain and Lorenz. So what happened? They think that, or they know that they set sail on Friday the 13th. And the theory is that either the boat malfunctioned

or they ran out of gas and they were basically a drift in between the islands and the wind and the waves and current pushed them up where they finally landed on the shores of Marchina and they were stranded there. There's lizards and like food sources and birds, but there's no freshwater. In this documentary, and you can look it up on YouTube, there is footage because the Valero crew came to the island rolling their film, rolling film, and there's footage of the little dingy with the distress signal and there's two bodies, their mummies. They're modified bodies. So it's really sad. They died of, they had no water. Yeah, they had no water. But some people

view that as karma. They're like, well, Lorenz killed the Baroness and her other boyfriend, so that's what you get. Like, they think that he was responsible for the death of the Baroness. Whether or not that's true. Who knows? Because there are other people on the island. Like Dor. Like Dorr, or Friedrich that did not like her at all and what she was going to do. So we have no idea if it was Lorenz or somebody else that was responsible for the disappearance of the baroness and her other boyfriend, but Lorenz, we do know what happened to him and he died on the island of Marchina. So that was in late November. And in early December, they head to Floriana. And Dor is just so happy to see them. She wants to get off the island. And they asked about the

baroness and what happened because remember the journalist put her story out everywhere. They're inquiring about what happened to her. So they asked her her story and then they go to the Whitmore's to check on their story, only to arrive to their house to see their entire house full of items from the baroness's estate. So they just took everything she owned. Right. So it's like not a great look. No. And they maintain that she went to Tahiti. They're like, well, she left all her stuff and isn't coming back. so we're taking it. So finally, Dora leaves the island with Captain Hancock. She leaves the Whitmore's in charge of her homestead because they buried Friedrich on the island.

He's gone. She wants out. So whatever was left of the homestead of Frito, she stopped at the governor's office to help issue Friedrich's death certificate and then headed to the mainland. And she had intentions of taking Friedrich's writings and publishing them into like a manifesto, his manifesto because despite all of their ups and downs and things, she really did still believe that he was a genius and that his teachings and thoughts and outlook and all that was notable and worthy for a memoir, although that was unsuccessful. That never went anywhere. And the day after she left the island, the Whitmore's received a newspaper from the PO box, the post office box that had an article in it

that said Friedrich had written a letter stating that Margaret and Heinz knew what happened regarding the disappearance of the Baroness. So when he was still alive, he had written a letter and said, you know what, I know that something's up with them and they were involved in her disappearance. And they received word of that months later after he had already died. So they're pissed. So in the end, the Whitmore's were the last of the first settlers on the island of Florida. And they were really content and prideful of their accomplishment.

They had been there for nearly three years. People didn't believe in them. And here they were, the last one's standing. Doer returned to Germany where she, like I said, failed at publishing Friedrich's writings. She did publish something of her own though. It was an account of her time on Floriana, and it was very successful. And it was called Satan Came to Eden. I will say that there are two accounts of how she died.

One of them, which I wrote first, is in the documentary, and it says that she died from MS complications in Berlin in 1935. So not long after she returned back to Germany. But there are a couple other sources that did say she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and died when a bomb from the war hit the building. It seems a little far-fetched, and I really didn't dive deep into the legitimacy of that. It was very different. I don't know, but I wanted to include them both.

The Whitmer's moved from the inland of the island to the beach where they ended up building a hotel for tourists. Their son, Harry, that they brought originally to give him a better life, ended up drowning on the island in 1962. But their other son, Rolf, the one that was the first baby born on the island, founded Whitmer Torismo, which is an upscale yachting Galapagos boating company. And his sister, who was five years younger than him, ran the first. the family's hotel. So this family took over the baroness's idea of the hotel? It seems to be that way. If you go on TripAdvisor, you can go to the Whitmer Hotel. Huh. Interesting how that worked out after she disappeared and went to Haiti. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So Margaret ended up writing a book herself called Floriana in 1959, which she gives her own account of the events that took place there.

So there's Doors account and Satan came to Eden and then there's her account in Floriana. Margaret ended up living a very long life. She died at the age of 95 in the year 2000. But after publishing that book in the 50s, she never spoke about the incidents again. She never publicly spoke about them. She was, she wrote her book and that was that. and lived the rest of her life not speaking about it. And when she died, she was the last of the eyewitnesses

to what actually went down there on the island of Floriana, now known in the history books as the Galapagos affair. To this day, the remains of the Baroness and Philipson were never found, and no one ever heard from them again. So no one really knows what truly happened to the Baroness, to Philipson or to Friedrich. no one except for maybe the tortoises. The end.

You can kind of make your own conjecture and see, you know, whatever you think happened. And one thing for sure in my mind is that the Baroness and Philipson were killed. Because she was the type of person that would have been screaming from the rooftops as soon as she got to Tahiti. Like there would have been word from her in some way she performed that she made it to Tahiti. and the fact that she left all of her belongings to go on a trip, and there were no ships nearby, and she wasn't well-liked, and she had this idea to bring in all this money to the island. I don't know. At first I thought it was Dorr because I thought that she killed Friedrich,

but now I'm really leaning towards the Whitman's because they didn't like her idea or whatever, but then she disappears and they completely take over her idea and become millionaires, I assume, off of it. But what about Lorenz? He was like a scorned lover. He was part of the triangle of the Baroness and Phillips and him. And I mean, so I didn't mention it before, but so Phillipson and Lorenz were both an architect and an engineer.

Really, so they weren't just like some guys that she found off the street. Like they were prominent people in their community when they first left Germany. to come to Floriana and they were all in this lovey three-way relationship and then things started to take a turn and he was getting pushed out so maybe he was upset and jealous and killed them and then wanted to leave the island like you never know it's true he was very quick to leave after and he was i mean at least according to the Whitmer's he was very upset when he was going back and forth between the baroness's house and their house and there's a lot going on so who knows yeah that's true everyone everyone here you could twist to make have a motive right so it's like but only or you know

maybe multiple people were involved or maybe they were all involved like who knows who really knows but what we do know is what's going on with floriana today so i just wanted to end a little bit on what's going on with the island okay out of all of the galapagos island the island of Floriana is actually one of the most altered by the presence of humans and invasive feral goats. Okay. Not where I thought that end of that sentence was going. Your face. I just thought you were going to say like a ton of people came in and like ruined the environment and then you're like, it has been invaded by goats.

Like, okay. Yeah. So the goats. It's just weird because, of course, we mentioned before that it was a big stop for whalers back in the day. And they left their mark. Obviously, they burned the whole island down. They were hunting the tortoises. Like, they were obviously altering the landscape.

But back in the 30s, when we were just going through our story, it was largely uninhabited by anybody else. So it seems like it was an untouched area. Eventually, through time, it becomes one of the. islands that is most impacted by human behavior. The goats were introduced. I think I read it started with three or four goats that were brought there and then they just exploded. Because another thing you have to think about with the Galapagos is there no, I looked up the apex predator, like the biggest predator on the islands and it's a hawk. Oh, okay. So there's really not they're going to go after the smaller things anyway yeah so these goats were like in a paradise and they

flourished and the problem with the goats is they were decimating the vegetation they eat what did they eat everything so they were decimating all of the vegetation on the island which in turn was affecting other animals that relied on the vegetation like it was obviously everything's interconnected so it was a big big mess the national park service in the galapagos wanted to combat that problem. The goats and some of the other invasive herbivores were completely removed by the park service in 2007, but the landscape was devastated, essentially. So now there's a lot of conservation work focused on restoring healthy populations of the native flora and fauna of the Galapagos on Floriana. And circling back to Lonesome George, in the last two decades,

a team of scientists and researchers from Yale have been studying the genetics of the Galapagos giant tortoises. And while no pure Pinta tortoises have been found, so George was a subspecies of the giant tortoise, found on Pinta Island, he was the last of that subspecies. They have found hybrid Pinta tortoises that have been found on other neighboring islands. So they have a hope that they may be able to restore some of the tortoises to Pinta Island, which, where they are not found currently. And there's a little plaque on the outside of Lonesome George's enclosure, where he once lived. And it says,

whatever happens to this single animal, let him always remind us that the fate of all living things on Earth is in human hands. And that is really the end of the episode. That's such an impactful statement because it's so true. Yeah. Just the devastation that we could have or the amazing things. that we could do depending on what we want to do with our knowledge and our just our choices in the world. Yeah, so true. You're so right. We do have a lot of power and it's what we do with

it that makes all the difference. So I hope that we all make good choices. Have a great week. I hope you enjoyed our trip to the Galapagos. We will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at NPAD podcast at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Come hang out with us on Patreon for more monthly bonus episodes and exclusive content. And when you support our sponsors, you're also supporting this show. For more information on our sponsors, you can go onto our show notes. For more information on our show, our book

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