RedHanded - Break-ins, Booby Traps, and the Eccentric Gynaecologist

Episode Date: May 21, 2019

Courtesy of our friends at ADT. Please hop over to www.adt.com/podcast In 1947 the NYPD had to break down the door of the infamous Collyer Mansion in Harlem after the smell of death was reported by a neighbour. A rabbit warren of tunnels made from junk, lined with booby traps waited for them on the other side.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti.

And welcome to our second bonus episode in three weeks. I literally just worked that out yesterday. Aren't you the luckiest listeners in the world? That's nuts. Five episodes in three weeks. We're on fire. We're on fire and so tired. A big tired fire over here. Today's episode is actually courtesy of our friends over at ADT, who are the number one home security company. They can give you and your family real protection

right now, this very second. All you need to do is hop over to ADT.com forward slash podcast to see what they can do. And if you go and have a look at it, that helps us out significantly. So please do that. We're going to give you a proper rundown of all of the high tech and fancy things ADT can do a little bit later on. Break-ins are scary and ADT can help. And while thinking about how we were gonna even come at this bonus episode, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole into the history of house alarms, which who knew I could spend three days on that, but somehow managed it. So we're going to give you a quick rundown on how home security systems came about. And then

the second bit of the episode, we have a corker of a story for you. It's got burglary, break-ins, booby traps, and an eccentric gynecologist. What else could you want on your Tuesday? For the love of God, tell me what else you want. I don't think I want anything else. No, I mean, I don't think I want anything else. But what I also definitely don't want is a gynecologist where the adjective used to describe them is eccentric no probably not i would like boring overly uh natural over retriever yeah overly boring gynecologist thank you very

much but also did very very well at vagina school but you're gonna have to wait for the eccentric gynecologist, I'm afraid. Before we get going, please, please, please do not forget that this episode is brought to you by ADT. And ADT home security is real protection. If you had to pick a animal to guard your home, what would it be? And I'm not allowed to obviously pick a dog because that's boring, right? No. And also, as I learned, not the best answer oh really well um i have spent a few nights camping near penguins and what i've realized is they are the loudest creatures i've ever heard in my entire life so maybe that maybe

a penguin i think birds in general are quite a good shout. I've been thinking, I've been spending some time with this thought. I still don't know. My dog's shit. Really shit. Like Puddle, she just couldn't. No, Blue's a good guard dog. Oh, really? He's so loud.

He's so loud. Barks at everything. Puddle doesn't really make any noise. She only barks at the postman and she only ever barks once. She is also quite old though, isn't she? Bless her. She's always been like that though. It's not like she'd slow down in her middle age.

Oh no. She's like 56 in human years or something. Oh no, I can hear Blue barking now. And I think probably someone's just walking past the house. So he's a pretty good guard dog. Yeah, we had that. I think I told the story at the live show, but we had a false alarm break-in a few months ago at my parents' house, which was very interesting.

You told it in Car Chronicles, I think. Oh, did I tell it in Car Chronicles? Okay, in that case, for those people who are just committed red-handed, you're just going to have to hear the story again. So we are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, middle of the night. Apparently it all kicks off downstairs. My brother goes downstairs to get a glass of water is convinced that he hears somebody downstairs and his response to this was to walk back up to the landing outside my door and just start screaming that there's someone in the house my dad's up my mom's up they're all running downstairs

i slept through the majority of that and then the three of them ran into my room together to wake me up. And then I don't sleep with trousers on a lot of the time. So I'm just like, what is going on? Can everyone just get the hell out of my room? No, there's someone in the house. Call 999 is all I'm hearing from my mum. I'm like, oh my God, fucking hell. And genuinely, I felt genuine fear that night. And I called 999. I'm on the phone to this woman and I'm like whispering, telling her that someone's in the house. And my brother's like, Blue's not barking. And I'm like, yeah, so someone can't be downstairs because he's being quiet. And my brother was like, no, it must mean that they've done something to him. They've stabbed Blue. And I'm like,

oh my God, what the fuck? We go downstairs and Blue's like cowering in a corner. My brother's got like a fucking bat and my dad's like carrying something else. And he's like cowering in a corner. My brother's got like a fucking bat and my dad's like carrying something else. And he's like, look how scared he looks. I'm like, of course he looks fucking scared. We're like running down the stairs in the middle of the night screaming. Turns out there was no one in the house. And then the 999 woman wouldn't put the phone down because it obviously could be that someone's telling me to tell her that there's no one in the house. Took a long time to convince her to hang up the phone on me. Eventually, I just put the phone down. Every time I hear that story, it gets better. Just like running around,

fearing for your lives in deepest, darkest Letchworth. Yeah, it's not the one to be woken up in the middle of the night with three people screaming at you that the dog's been stabbed and there's someone in the house. We just called it a dry run and I failed because I didn't get out of bed. I thought it was just them just like having a nightmare. I genuinely remember hearing my brother scream and thinking, oh, for fuck's sake, and turning over and pulling the duvet over my head. So yeah, you don't want me to be your guard dog, basically. But yeah, maybe a penguin, maybe not. I don't know. What is the best one? We're quite used to the idea of guard dogs, but thousands of years ago, the Romans actually used geese,

which I thought was pretty clever because geese are fucking horrible. They are horrible. They're nasty, they're loud, they bite you. I got bitten by a goose once when I was a kid and I fell in a pond. Very clear memory. Your house will be full of shit, though, if you use geese. But they're not in the house. They're in the garden in front of your house so someone's approaching the house they're like the outside of your house will be covered in shit i mean i do pick up my dog shit because it's like

the law but i wouldn't pick up a goose's shit no once a um goose uh shat all over me while i sat outside the library of my university like while it it was flying over me, I had to go home and shower and I just had to throw the bag away because I couldn't get the smell out. I do actually have a few more university stories in this week's episode, so stay tuned for that. Now, before we get there, the first sign we see of what we would recognize as a home alarm system showed up in the early 1700s when a British man called Mr. Tidesley? Tidsley? Who knows?

Couldn't find his first name, so anyone's guess. We don't know how to say his second name. Exactly. Let's go with Tidesley because that's how it's written down. But yeah, we have no idea what his first name is, so we're going to keep it really quaint and just call him Mr. Tidesley from the 1700s. If you can find it, like honestly, have a home alarm medal because I could not find it anywhere on the internet. Anyway, he connected his door lock to a set of chimes so that when an intruder attempted to use a skeleton key or something else to open the door, the chimes would sound and ideally wake up the home dweller. I'm

not convinced that wind chimes would wake me up though. Maybe if we're programmed and waiting for them. How do you train, how do you Pavlov's dogs yourself into being awoken by wind chimes? I don't know but you can do all sorts of things to trick your brain. I remember when I was a kid I had a book of how to improve your memory skills. You're such a dork. And there was this thing in there that said like you know if you want to remember something the next day I don't know why you wouldn't just write it down but like apparently this is a memory trick you think about it before you go to bed and you like make something look a little bit weird in your room like you put your lampshade on tilt or something and you go to sleep

and when you wake up in the morning and you see that your lampshade is tilted you'll remember the thing that you wanted to remember when you set it up to look like people tying knots in their hankies i've heard about that exactly so there you go it doesn't make you any less of a dork i'm afraid i never cleaned it would be over a hundred years before anyone would have a better idea than this whether we think wind chimes would wake hannah up or not and in the 1850s, the better idea came from a Bostonian, Augustus Pope. And that is the last we will hear from Britain in this episode. Because it turns out that after its initial inception, the burglar alarm became a distinctly American idea.

Now, who revamped the home alarm with electricity and magnets? How do they work? I've been trying to entrap you into an insane clown posse joke for two years and i just did it and i know you don't get it i don't get it i've never listened to the insane oh my god i'm just gonna leave that as a joke for the listeners oh no if i explain it it won't be funny okay fine what is it that their followers call themselves uh juggalos and juggalettes and they go whoop whoop and they have um a big convention every year i think you'd fit right into a juggalo convention you know you're not the first person to tell me that oh my god can

you imagine how much i wouldn't fit in a juggalo convention do you know how much i want to go to the juggalo convention and make a documentary? Like, so hard. Oh, I think I've seen one in there. Was it Louis Theroux? I don't know. Never mind. I don't think there was a Louis Theroux.

I think there was a Weiss or something. Oh, Weiss, of course. Classic. Now, anyway, so this guy who came up with this sort of, like, revamped home system, his system included mounting bells on top of windows and doors in a person's house. And if someone attempted to open any door or window, the electrical circuit would close via a spring fitted to the door and the bell would sound. Quick question here. What about like, you know, Temple of Doom shit?

Can we say if the Egyptians had all these booby traps in there? Is that like the earliest type of home security system, tomb security system? Yeah, I suppose you could say so, but it's not an alarm, really. It's more of a death machine. I see, I see. I see what you're saying. I suppose it's sort of like the history of

making people aware that something bad is happening inside your house. Got it. That makes sense. I just wanted to ask because i just saw this no i think it's a very good question i just think it's like oh it's all started in the 1700s in britain and no one before that was doing anything but i was like maybe but it may be all right maybe i mean technically i said it sounded thousands of years ago with the

romans and their geese but let's not fight oh this is true this is true no it's just because i saw this hilarious meme on the internet and i can't find it. And if someone can find it and post it to me, I will be eternally grateful. I've made some very odd Google searches to try find this meme and I just can't do it. So I don't know how we've managed to go into the world of like racial talk on a bonus episode with ADT. It never takes that long. Not with us, the tired fires over here. But basically, it was a meme that was like pictures of like ancient things in Europe. And it was like, oh, wow. Oh, wow. Our ancestors. And then it was a picture of like the pyramids and like things

from Asia. And it was like aliens. And I just that just made me laugh so hard because it's so aliens or thousands and thousands of slaves but I mean it's the idea that it's like these were all absolutely made by our white ancestors but those brown people couldn't have built these pyramids it had to have been aliens and it just really made me laugh and I can't find that meme I'll keep looking or someone send it to me please this goes out on Tuesday you'll'll have it by wednesday morning can't wait i've tried googling racist alien meme all of that i can't find it it's so funny i'm putting that on your gravestone here lies tide fire colon racist alien meme why is this tombstone so shit So shit. Quotes, not in this economy. There you go. Great. Done.

So what are we talking about? So the closing of the electrical circuit making a bell sound is where we're up to. We're in the 1850s. And this system was patented by the Bostonian Pope. When I first was reading about Augustus Pope, I was just like skimming an article. And there was a wonderful 30 seconds of my life when I thought the Pope invented home security alarms. Good. Maybe he did. He could say whatever he wants, couldn't he? He so did it. Oh, God. Anyway, so Pope, right, so he patents the home alarm system in 1853.

And if you think patents and this story are boring, you are incorrect. It's about to get pretty tense in Home Alarm Town. Somewhere between 1857 and 1858, Pope caught typhoid and sold his patent to a chap called Edwin Holmes for $9,500, which back in the black and white times was a pretty sizable sum. It was nearly $300,000 in today's money. That is a lot of money for a patent, I think. $300,000. I can't think of a single idea I would buy for $300,000. Really? I don't know. I feel like patents are quite expensive. I feel like that sounds about right. But I don't know who's like hanging out in the patent shop being like, hey, you want to buy a sund. But I don't know who's like hanging out in the patent shop being like, hey, you gotta,

I mean, you want to buy a sundial? We never claim to be experts in patent buying and selling. But yeah, I reckon. Speak for yourself. How dare you? We'll continue. Please carry on. Sorry.

Yeah, I know you're all on the edge of your seats. Pope died of typhoid in 1858 and Holmes moved the burglar alarm business to New York, where according to him, all of the country's burglars made their home. In 1959, improvements were made to the alarm system by George Millican. His system had the alarm in the room where the homeowner was sleeping rather than on top of the windows and doors themselves. But sales were tricky. People were still pretty scared of electricity in 1859. But Holmes didn't let that stop him, and he continued his relentless hard sell.

Could I give you a top tip for people who are scared of electricity and don't want to get an electrical home security system? Though you definitely should, because this episode is courtesy of ADT. You should go take a look at them. But if you are, would you like to hear how I used to have a non-electrical safeguard system in my room at uni because I was so convinced people were coming in and out of my room at night I have never been more impressed by a sentence you said so yes tell me everything so when I was in my third year really random shit kept happening to me so things kept going missing things kept like disappearing

oh I know this one the shoe story yeah and then turning up in other places the shoe story but also the folder story oh I'd forgotten about the folder very important yeah so quick preci on the folder story so I'm in like approaching the end of my final year my third year at university and I've got one particular module that it was like 40 credits in a three hour exam. I have an entire folder full of notes that I have amassed over the course of a year. And went to the library one day, came home, had it on my bed, went to sleep, woke up the next morning, folder's gone. And the people who went to the library with me can absolutely attest to the fact that it came home with me and it was on my bed because my housemate

was sat on the bed next to the folder for a while. Vanished. I was fucking hysterical. Went to the library, checked there, checked all around the house, tore this flat apart. And it was a new build flat, so it wasn't like loads of nooks and crannies it could have like fallen into. Just couldn't find it. Bright purple folder. Even my, like the guy who lives next door helped me. Lifted up my bed, we took everything apart, wasn't there. Then after the exam's done, I'm like packing to go home, open up a suitcase in my room. The folder's in there. How did it get in there? Someone was doing shit, right?

Or you slept walked and put it in there. I don't know. I just don't think I, the only time I've ever slept walked in my life, I remembered what I was doing. And I don't think I did that and I was in an ongoing feud with the girls who lived beneath me because they used to play really really fucking loud music all night every night so I'd go down there and I would like bang on the door and I've called the police on them multiple times because I just wanted to sleep um so I was pretty sure they were coming into my room and doing shit I used to sleep with a like big wooden board against lent against the door and an open bag of flour.

So if somebody came in, it would all get knocked over and it would whip me up. I think the exam stress got to you quite significantly is what I think. No, it's true. And a pair of my shoes went missing and turned up in a fucking totally different street that I'd never been to.

I have no idea, no idea what was going on. But anyway, we're all past that. But yeah, there you go, open bag of flour. My mum suggested that, so there you go. And did you ever find any footprints? No, it wasn't about the footprints. It was that if somebody had not opened the door and knocked the flour over,

they wouldn't be able to clean it up or put it back as it was. Right, right, but did that happen? No, it didn't happen. Just checking. But then after I started putting the flower there, nothing went missing again. So maybe they just knew. Maybe it was someone who was close to me and they knew I was putting flower there.

Tune in next week for the Flower Chronicles, where we will be interviewing the people who used to live underneath Saruti, who she called the police on, apparently. She fucking deserved it. Anyway. son apparently she fucking deserved it anyway they say hollywood is where dreams are made a seductive city where many flock to get rich be adored and capture america's heart but when the spotlight turns off fame fortune and lives can disappear in an instant when tv producer roy raden was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real.

From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. Anyway, Augustus Pope certainly was not encouraging people to leave bags of flour in front of their doors because he had just spunked 300 grand on this home alarm idea. But luckily for him, gradually, people did start to buy his alarm system. By 1866, he had 1,200 customers, which in a city like New York, even back then, not very many. But better times were around the corner. He also made nice wooden boxes for the alarms to go in, so they weren't big ugly bells little and nice

ornate boxes nice touch. In 1880 electricity was installed in street lamps in the United States so people had had a lot more time to get used to the idea of electrical currents and particularly of having them inside their house and in 1905 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company which you may recognize under their new name AT&T brought the Holmes burglar alarm business and linked it to the emergency services. So for the first time in 1905, the police and the fire department would show up if your alarm went off. Before that, it was just making a lot of noise. Another upturn in sales was just around the corner. The end of World War I in 1918 brought with it an increase in crime rates, which in turn meant that people were keen to invest in ways to protect their

property. It was reasonably common for people to subscribe to a service called door shakers, and they were a group of men who would come around your house after dark and shake your doors to ensure that they were locked. Why can't you do it yourself? I don't, that's what I don't understand, because that sounds terrifying. Maybe in case you've forgotten or, but yeah, it sounds really scary. A big group of men coming to your house in the dark to waggle your doorknob. That sounds absolutely horrendous. When you put it like that, it definitely does. Now around this time too, insurance companies offered discounted rates to homeowners with alarm systems. So the consumer demand for home alarm systems increased significantly. And the release of George Orwell's 1984 brought surveillance into public discussion

in a way that it had never been before. A lot of people claim that London is the most CCTV'd city in the world. And I think we've spoken about this before on the show, and we definitely did mention it on Harmontown. But now there is another contender. According to some sources, Beijing has now actually overtaken London. But because in the UK there is no law that requires anyone to register their CCTV systems with anyone, we have absolutely no way of knowing just how many cameras are actually watching us in the capital. According to the Reader's Digest in 2013,

there were 6 million security cameras in the UK. So if we take into account that the population of the UK is 66 million, or at least it was in 2013, enter Carol Vorderman, if we have 6 million security cameras and 66 million people, is that about 11 cameras per person? I don't know. Yes. Yes, it is. Is it? Did I do it right? You just divide 66 by 6. That's 11. Okay, but I didn't know that that's how you did it. You did it. You did it. I did do it,

but I didn't know I was doing it, which in some ways is better. Bravo. 2013, at the very least, one camera per every 11 people in the UK. And again, that number is very likely to be much, much higher than that because nobody has to tell anyone when they get a security camera. This is very interesting, actually. The first ever home security system to integrate video recording was invented and patented in 1966 by Marie Van Britten Brown, a woman of colour from Queens. She felt anxious when her husband was out of the house. He was an electrical engineer, so he was gone sort of all hours. And Marie especially didn't like answering the door without knowing who was on the other side of it.

So together, her and her husband devised the first ever closed-circuit television for home security, complete with a two-way microphone and an alarm button should the person in the house feel under threat. By the 70s, the Brown model was widely in use as video footage became totally integrated into home security. But although the system was patented by Brown, she never made a penny off her and her husband's invention. As a black woman, she had no chance of infiltrating a male-dominated white marketplace. By the 80s, home security systems included motion sensors, infrared, fiber optics,

environmental control, and ultrasound technology. And by the 90s, home security was brought down to a reasonable price point. And that brings us right up to now. We are in 2019, in case you'd forgotten, and the people who have brought you this very special extra episode of Red Handed have the answers to all of your home security questions and needs. ADT is the number one smart home security provider. Here are just some of the things that they can do. ADT offer their customers a secure smart home with video doorbells, indoor and outdoor cameras, smart locks and smart lights, all controlled from the ADT app or with just the sound of your beautiful voice. ADT will custom design a security system for your home, which can include monitored carbon monoxide and smoke detectors,

and safety on the go with the ADT app. With ADT, homeowners get the latest innovations and 18,000 employees safeguarding you. And they also have a connection straight to first responders. To find out more about all the things we just said, all you need to do is go to ADT.com forward slash podcast. So get on over to ADT.com forward slash podcast to learn all about how ADT can design and install a secure, smart home for you and your loved ones, and even your brother who you don't like very much. Now, as promised, we have a story for you. Straight out of olden time in New York, we have the Collier brothers. I am obsessed with this story and I have been for probably about how long have I been back? Five years, six years, easily.

So when I first moved back to London after living abroad, I worked front of house on a show called The Dazzle, which starred Andrew Scott of Sexy Priest in Fleabag fame. And that play is based on the Collier brothers story. And it is bizarre. Like the first time I watched the show, I was like, I have to get these people are real. Like I have to go and read absolutely everything I can possibly find about them. And I've wanted to do an episode on it for a while, but I thought it was a little bit too old and timey for a regular episode. So I'm absolutely thrilled that ADT have given us the opportunity to have a crack at it. Now you can tell it's going to be weird

just because of the names we're starting with. Homer Lusk Collier and Langley Wakeman Collier were brothers. Homer was the eldest. He was born in 1881, and Langley came into the world four years later. Their father, Herman, was the eccentric gynecologist you were promised at the start of the episode, and their mother, Susie, was an opera singer. The Collier parents were also first cousins.

Herman was seen as eccentric by his peers because he would regularly canoe to work down the East River and carry his canoe on his back through the streets of Harlem. I'd love to canoe to work. Sounds... Hilarious. No, sounds fucking awful. I think the novelty would wear off very quickly. Quite possibly.

Herman also collected specimens of diseases and disorders in glass jars, including a double-headed fetus. It's like it's not real. It's so crazy. I know. It's so crazy. Like, is it homunculi? Homunculus. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's got these just like casually around. Daddy Dyer's, homunculus. Brilliant. Oh, perfect. But yeah, it's like if you've watched American Horror Story, Murder House, when they go into the basement. Absolutely. Absolutely.

It's fucking scary as shit. Now, when they were grownups, the Collier brothers would boast loudly to anyone who would listen that their ancestors had arrived in the Americas from England on the speedwell, which arrived in Massachusetts just a week after the Mayflower in 1620, which they claimed made them some of the very first Americans. We obviously mean Europeans came there and settled America. Well, I don't think that's what they mean, but... That's not what they mean, that's what we mean. Before anyone comes for me. Both Langley and Homer went to Columbia University,

but neither one of them ever left their family home. Homer studied admiralty law and Langley read engineering and chemistry. Langley was an exceptional pianist. He played at Carnegie Hall a few times, but stopped playing because he got jealous of one of his contemporaries and decided that he would never be as good as him, so he just gave up. I felt that feeling. I was about to say, what horrible trait. I felt the feeling I didn't do it. That's so fucking petulant isn't it? I am quite a petulant person though. I was talking about him

you keep making it up yourself. What a horrible quality. In 1909 the eccentric OBGYN Dr Herman moved his family into a four-story brownstone in Harlem at 2078 Fifth Avenue, and the house would make his sons famous. Ten years later, Dr. Herman and Susie separated. The doctor moved out, and Susie remained in the brownstone with her sons. Dr Herman died in 1923, leaving all of his curiosities, medical instruments and shelves upon shelves of medical books and journals to Susie. That was his last like,

fuck you Susie. Now you've got to deal with all of my shit. Take my Danny Dyer's chocolate homunculus and you'll like it. So all of his stuff is just put straight back into the Fifth Avenue home. The brothers never married, so they

lived in the Brownstone with their opera singing mum, Susie, until she died in 1929. She left everything she had to her two sons, so at the ages of 48 and 44, Homer and Langley were without their parents in a house full of stuff. For the next four years without their mother, life continued as normal for the Collier brothers. They entertained guests regularly and continued to work. Homer was a lawyer and Langley traded pianos. Having been left a juicy inheritance by their mum, the pair bought the building opposite their own home with the intention of renting it out as apartments. But sadly, they would never get round to it.

In 1932, Homer lost his sight, and some sources call this a stroke, and others will tell you that he suffered from hemorrhaging behind his eyes. But either way, it had an enormous impact on the lives of both Homer and Langley. Langley stopped trading pianos in order to care for his blind brother, and both of them started to withdraw from the neighbourhood. They certainly stopped entertaining guests. Langley told the press that this was because neither of the brothers wanted to be bothered, but I think it might have had a little bit more to do with the Great Depression making Harlem a lot poorer,

and let's face it, a lot blacker than it had been in previous years. But the brothers did not lose faith in each other. Langley was sure that he could cure Homer's blindness with a diet of 100 oranges a week, black bread, and peanut butter. Langley started to collect newspapers so that his brother could catch up on all the news that he'd missed while he couldn't see. Langley was fiercely protective of Homer and wouldn't let anybody in the house to see him, especially not a doctor. He was recorded saying, quote, you must remember that we are the sons of a doctor. We have a medical library of 15,000 books in the house. We decided

we would not call in any doctors. You see, we knew too much about medicine. The bread, oranges and peanut butter diet didn't work. And Homer's health took another turn for the worse when he developed rheumatism that left him entirely paralyzed, meaning that he relied totally on Langley to keep him alive. And Langley did a fantastic job of looking after his brother, but he also did a cracking job of filling their house with junk. He was nicknamed in the neighbourhood as the ghostly man. He would only go out at night dressed in basically rags and skip around New York. He would walk as far as Williamsburg in Brooklyn in the dead of night to buy a loaf of bread.

From Harlem to Williamsburg is fucking far. That is so far. Oh yes, I've done it on your very confusing subway system, New York. He would bring back anything to the house that took his fancy along his way. And we're not just talking about food. Langley would take home buggies, tin cans, bottles, bottle caps, literally everything that might be on a street in New York City in the 30s. Langley wanted it in his house.

And Homer was blind and paralysed. So you have to wonder how much about the state of his house he could have known. But he can still smell stuff, surely. Now Langley was asked by a newspaper why he wore clothes held together with safety pins. He answered that he would be robbed if he didn't. Now it's fairly obvious if you look at the paranoia, the reclusive behavior, and the nighttime excursions, something quite serious was going on with Langley's mental health. Hoarding can be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but given the time and place, Langley was never diagnosed. Not surprising either, as he would never go near a doctor. The Collier brothers

had no source of income, so they stopped paying their bills, so the power was eventually shut off in their house. But that didn't stop Langley. He was an engineer, remember, and he managed to rig an old car to act as a generator for the whole house. He would take water from the pumps in public parks and use a kerosene heater in the house.

New York is freezing in the winter. That must have been absolutely miserable. in public parks and use a kerosene heater in the house. New York is freezing in the winter. That must have been absolutely miserable. Now, these odd behaviours didn't go unnoticed by their neighbours, not least when the brothers bought the house next to them, only to immediately evict the tenants because they wanted to be left alone. So then it's not like they don't have the money, they just don't want to leave the house to pay the bills.

Yeah, I think that's the thing, because they get left the inheritance. They don't have an income, but it sounds like they have wealth. By 1938, the reclusive brothers had caught the attention of not just their neighbours, but of the New York Times, who published an article claiming that despite Langley's shabby appearance, the brothers actually lived in, quote, Orientalist splendour, and that they had turned down an offer of $125,000 for their house. Both of these claims were entirely untrue, but no one except Homer and Langley knew that. The article precipitated a number of break-in attempts upon the Collier abode, which did nothing to ease Langley's paranoia. He couldn't stand to have people in the house,

so having an alarm system fitted was out of the question. So Langley set booby traps in his house to scupper intruders out of the junk he had brought home from the streets of New York. In 1942, the Bowery Savings Bank, having not received a mortgage payment from the Colliers for quite some time, attempted to evict the brothers and sent a cleanup crew to their home. When the cleanup crew attempted to enter the house, Langley shouted through the door for someone to call the police. And despite his attempts to shun his neighbors as far away from his house as he possibly could, someone did hear Langley's cries and they did call the police.

But the police did exactly what the cleanup crew wanted when they arrived and they kicked the door in of the Collier brownstone. And when they went in, they were met with a sheer cliff of junk that stood from floor to ceiling and these houses like if you imagine just like the old New York houses they're fucking huge like really high ceilings go immediately to the Instagram and you've just got to see the pictures to believe what this house was like the The pictures are shocking. When they went in and they saw all this junk and they saw Langley stood in amongst the jungle of rubbish and without saying a word he wrote a cheque for the equivalent of $97,000 in today's money clearing the entirety of the mortgage debt. It's like Hannah said the cheque

cleared and the bank had no choice but to leave Langley Collier and his towers of the mortgage debt. It's like Hannah said, the check cleared and the bank had no choice but to leave Langley Collier and his Towers of Debris to it. They didn't have the money. It was that he didn't want to go outside to pay this debt. He was like, okay, you're here now. Here you go. Here's a check. No online transfers in those days. Exactly. Here's a check for $97,000 in today's money. Just to please leave me alone. Yeah. Now back to the house. It was in such a state that Langley had actually built tunnels through all of the rubbish so that he could make it from room to room. And all of the tunnels were fitted with their very own home security system.

Blind and paralysed Homer stayed in a nest made for him amongst the turmoil. Langley delivered food to him through his rabbit warren of tunnels lined with tripwires. The security system of traps took up most of Langley's time in the days. He was constantly tinkering with them. And he also invented a small vacuum cleaner for hoovering inside pianos, which I thought was quite sweet. The house started to look worse for wear on the outside too. Langley's night-time travels were becoming more and more well-known

and people had started throwing rocks at the house so they'd boarded up the windows. The police were called to the house so often that they agreed a system with Langley. They would not break down the door as long as he answered them from the inside. And this system worked for some time. Any time an alarmed resident would report a ghostly man walking through Harlem at night or or an odd smell coming from the house, or any unusual goings-on at the Collier mansion, the police would go and talk to Langley through the door to make sure that he was okay. But in 1947, the system failed for the first time. A man who called himself Charles Smith called the NYPD to complain about an overwhelming smell

of decomposition coming from 2078 Fifth Avenue, the Collier House. The police sent an officer down but Langley didn't answer through the door, as per their agreement. So the officer attempted to break down the door but failed. The officer couldn't even see an alternate route into the house, all of the windows were boarded up and entry seemed next to impossible. Six other officers were called to the brownstone and one of them managed to get into the house through a first floor window and then they started systematically to deconstruct the walls of stuff that Langley Collier had acquired over the years. Eventually between 120 and 150 tons of junk were removed from the Collier Mansion on Fifth Avenue. For reference, the average blue whale weighs about 120 tonnes,

although they can get as big as 200 tonnes apparently. I just put that in in case people are like, well, actually. Your average blue whale, he's called Paul and he weighs 120 tonnes, just in case you're wondering. But the police had a few terrifying discoveries to make before they could clear the house completely. Five hours after the front door was broken down, while working through the tunnels filled with traps,

the police found the body of Homer Collier. No one had seen him for years. When his body was found, Homer had shoulder-lemp matted grey hair and was wearing a tattered blue dressing gown. He was found with his head resting on his knees. Homer had died of starvation and heart disease, and he had only been dead for about 10 hours, so the decomposing smell of death that had brought the police to the house

couldn't have been coming from Homer. At first the police thought that Langley must have been the one to make the call to the police, but they couldn't find him anywhere. Rumors spread that Langley had been seen getting on a bus to Atlantic City, and the police started a manhunt that would eventually spread to eight states. But when Langley didn't show up to Homer's funeral on the 1st of April, the police suspected that there was only one place that Langley could be. He must still be in the house, and he was probably dead. These fears were confirmed after three weeks of clear out from the Collier mansion when an officer found the body of Langley inside a collapsed tunnel in his home. Langley had accidentally tripped the wire on one of his own

traps and the tunnel had caved in on him crushing him to death. He was just 10 feet from his brother when he had died. The coroner estimated that Langley had died on the 9th of May, two weeks before his brother. Isn't that mad? I feel like that gives you the best idea of just how much of a mess this house is. He was 10 foot away from him and they didn't find him for three more weeks. And enough rubbish fell on him when that tunnel collapsed that it was enough to kill him. The police deduced that Langley must have been moving through the tunnels when he accidentally triggered his own trap leaving Homer paralyzed blind and helpless and with no option but to starve to death. So it was Langley that was the source of the smell not Homer. I think out of obviously we discussed quite a lot of deaths that is a really horrible way to go.

Both of them, Langley and Homer, both really, really awful ways to go. Langley was found surrounded by rusty springs, bread boxes and newspapers. He was covered by a suitcase and he had been partially eaten by rats. And eventually the cause of his death was determined to be suffocation. And it's said that 2,000 people gathered around the Collier Mansion to watch all of the debris be removed from it. This is what was found in the 120 tonnes of refuse. Baby carriages, rusty bicycles, food, potato peelers, guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a saw horse, which I believe may be a seesaw, don't know,

three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, of a horse-drawn carriage, a saw horse, which I believe may be a seesaw. Don't know. Three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, photos of pinup girls from the early 1900s, plaster busts, a kerosene stove, chairs, more than 25,000 books, human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, hundreds of yards of unused silks and other fabrics, clocks, and 14 pianos, both grand and upright. And I'm going to hand over to you for the rest of the list. A clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone, and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines. Some of them were decades old, and thousands of bottles and tin cans cans and a great deal of rubbish. 34 bank account passbooks with a total of over $3,000, which is about $36,000 in today's money. And alongside this,

also a horse jaw, x-ray machines, a human skeleton and the famous two-headed fetus. Dedication. What a collection, eh? I'm most impressed by the two-headed fetus. And obviously hoarding is very serious. We're not making fun of hoarding. It's a disease. But the sheer volume of it just absolutely has to be seen to be believed. Yeah, you have to see the photo. This isn't just one room. This is an entire house. A massive house. A four-story mansion. That's the thing that's so alarming. Now some of the stuff found around the house was auctioned but most of it was thrown away. The house was condemned soon after it was emptied and

knocked down and it was never rebuilt. There is a pocket park. Pocket park? What's a pocket park? Just a little park. Oh really? Okay. There's a pocket park there now named after the brothers. Both Homer and Langley are buried in Cypress Hill Cemetery in unmarked graves. Now, the brothers were fairly prominent in New York law for a while. At one stage, it was common for parents to warn their children to tidy their rooms lest they end up like the Collier brothers. And maybe we have some New Yorkers listening who can attest to whether that's true or not. A Collier's mansion or a Collier mansion or just a Collier is a modern firefighting term for a dwelling of hoarders that is so filled with trash and debris it becomes a serious danger to the occupants and the emergency responders. So the moral of the story is don't build your

own home security systems because they might crush you to death. And thank you for listening to this very spangly bonus episode and thank you to ADT for making this episode possible for your ear holes this Tuesday. And one more time, if you didn't get it the first few million times, please head over to ADT.com forward slash podcast to find out all you need to know about how ADT can make your home super smart and super safe. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday for our normal episode.

Goodbye forever, except not. See you on Thursday. Bye. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me,

and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it.

Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most

haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.