RedHanded - Episode 340 - The Sea Orphan

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Found drifting on the open ocean on the brink of death, Terry Jo Duperrault’s survival was nothing short of a miracle.She’d been at sea for over 3 days, enduring harsh heat, bitter cold, and the tormenting bites of the parrot fish. Terry Jo was the survivor of an apparent yacht accident – yet when the boat’s captain was told the incredible news, he went to a motel, and took his own life.This is the gut-wrenching story of the sinking of The Bluebell, and the deaths of 4 members of the Duperrault familyExclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus ContentFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comYouTubeRedHandedSee 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 Sruti. And welcome to Monday Morning. Sponsored by the flu. Yes. Sp yes sponsored by muconex which is all over my throat I feel much better today than I did yesterday I was in bed yesterday and I was just like what is happening because I was laying there and I think I had such a fever that I could feel my heart just pounding out of my chest. And I googled it. And apparently it's entirely normal that that happens when you have a fever because it's your body fighting the illness.

And to do so, it increases your heart rate significantly. And I hadn't done anything except get dressed. And I was like, hmm, why is my heart beating like this? And why am I sweating? Just got some sort of horrible flu. And it's not the covid this time no it's not the covid for once for once fucking hell I'm like a covid sponge I just need to see the word corona and I've got it but I do suspect and I said this to Hannah this morning when I came in am I some sort of viral dead end because I've never given covid to anybody as far as I know. I was at

home at my parents' house the first time I had it. Neither of them got it. No. And you've had it and we've been locked in a glass box all day together and I didn't get it. And you didn't get it. And I would, in the new house, which is where I had my second bout of COVID, don't have a spare room. Well, we do have a spare room, but it's just full of boxes and various items that I am yet to unpack because I don't know where to put it all. Definitely doesn't have a bed. So I'm just like, you can go sleep on the sofa, Sam, but I'm ill. And he refuses to go.

And he's never got COVID off me. And he hasn't got this off me. And I'm gross. Like, I'm just rolling around in my sweat. Absolutely filthy. And I haven't given it to him so I don't know I'm a medical mystery but a good one a good one it would be a really good segue if this episode was a mystery but it's not it's not a mystery I was trying to think of how to segue and I know I'm giving away

that I'm some sort of organic segue queen which honestly 90% of the time it does just come to me but sometimes I have to think about it and I couldn't think of organic segue queen, which honestly, 90% of the time it does just come to me. But sometimes I have to think about it. And I couldn't think of one apart from, it's not very nice to be wet when you're cold. So with that being said, let's get into today's episode. I thought you were going to be like... My brain immediately went to ocean of snot. That's why we work so well together. Anyway, I'm excited for this because as everybody knows my two passions in life other than true crime and all of you beautiful people are of course i shouldn't be alive the youtube sensation if you've never watched it

what are you doing go watch it visuals are better than oppenheimer I would argue on there on a regular basis and the ocean especially if there's a shark there is an entire side of TikTok called North Sea TikTok which you would love oh it sounds so good it's just like the North Sea is the most dangerous place on earth and then there's like sea shanties, massive waves. And then sometimes they'll like put in a clip of like, you know, when ships like, this is obviously not the North Sea, but when ships go through like Somali pirate territory, they have, I've seen so many videos of them setting up the boat

and they put barbed wire on all of the steps and then they put mannequins on the deck. So good. It's so good. Do you know what, actually? My old company that I used to work at, Hanson Wade, shout out to Hanson Wade, my boss, before I joined, he used to make piracy conferences. Anti-piracy.

Sick. And when I joined, I was like, Gareth, why don't we get to do that anymore? Why am I doing this other bullshit? And he was like, because my events were so good. There is no more piracy he's like we've solved it we have solved the problem and i was like wow that is amazing now they just have like these kind of like panic rooms that you just like inflate very quickly and everybody hides inside and the pirates just take what they want and you're safe

so yeah i don't know i wasn't there for any of those events but there you go there were such a thing as anti-piracy conferences there you you go. So there you go. But no, I'm pumped for this and I secretly now suspect that Hannah Maguire might be a CCP spy slash double agent trying to lure me onto TikTok, but I will not do it. As tempted as I am by the North Sea side of things, I'm just going to have to make do with today's episode, as will you, the rest of you curmudgeons. On the 16th of November 1961, a Greek sailor took one of the most famous photographs of the decade. An 11-year-old girl with sun-bleached hair, chapped lips and sunburned skin was drifting on a tiny little life raft. The raft was floating in the open ocean between the Bahamas and the east coast of Florida. Do you know how long it took me to realize that the artist Flo Rida was from Florida?

Maybe as long as it did for me. It was quite a few years after Applebottom Jeans came out that I realized that connection. Good, I'm glad it's not just me. So don't worry, I'm in the same boat. Sorry, just a boat joke because it's about boats today. Thanks for clearing that up. Just for the people who don't know. So this image of this little girl waving up at the confused sailors

would become a two-page spread in Life magazine. And it is one hell of a picture. Oh, yeah. I do have to say for just like random sailors in the 60s just taking a picture hanging off the side of their boat. It's a fantastic picture. The little girl's name was Terry Jo Dupereau and she had been drifting for over three days with no food or water. The Greek crew of the industrial freighter Captain Theo pulled the girl aboard and wrapped her in a blanket. Terry Jo immediately passed out from

exhaustion, dehydration and sunstroke. She was on the brink of death. The US Coast Guard was called and a helicopter was sent out to take Terry Jo to Mercy Hospital in Miami, back on the US mainland, in Flowrider. However, if the Coast Guard thought that finding an 11-year-old girl all alone, stranded on the open ocean was strange, things would only get more confusing. Soon afterwards, a man would learn the news and immediately take his own life. Just before this shock suicide, Lieutenant Ernest Murdoch of the USA Coast Guard had just been talking to this man in Miami. This man's name was Julian Harvey. He was a 44-year-old

veteran of the Army Air Corps and captain of the 60-foot sailing boat, the Bluebell. And just in case you want somehow to visualize the Bluebell in your mind, you just have to imagine the kind of white painted wood paneled sailing yacht that somebody like JFK might be pictured sitting on in chinos, boat shoes and drinking some sort of old-fashioned type cocktail. And if you're thinking of that kind of yacht, you're on the money. Now, Harvey had been employed as the captain of the Bluebell just a week previously by Arthur Dupereau, Terry Joe's father. The veteran had spent four days sailing around the Bahamas with Terry Joe and the rest of the Dupereau family. But on their return journey, this dreamy trip ended in tragedy. In fact, Harvey had also been found drifting on the open ocean just a few days before Terry Joe, by the crew of an oil tanker. He had been waving frantically at the tanker, screaming,

Help! I have a dead baby on board. Not what you want to hear. No. When Julian Harvey was rescued, he was indeed floating on a lifeboat, with the dead body of Terry Joe's seven-year-old sister, Renee. What on earth was Captain Harvey doing out on the open sea in a lifeboat with the body of a seven-year-old girl? And no sign of the rest of her family.

Well, this was the question that Lieutenant Murdoch of the US Coast Guard was trying to get to the bottom of with Harvey on the day that Terry Joe turned up. By Captain Harvey's account, he'd been through quite the ordeal. According to Harvey, he, his wife Mary Dean, the boat's cook, and the Dupereau family,

made up of Arthur, his wife Jean, and their three children, 14-year-old Brian, 11-year-old Terry Joe, and 7-year-old Renee, had set off on the evening of the 12th of November. Arthur Dupereau had been a keen sailor himself and had planned a two-day

voyage back to the US mainland. While it was a tough task, which meant sailing all day and all night with only a few short breaks, it was certainly achievable. However, Harvey told Murdoch that during their first night of their trip home, disaster struck. The bluebell had been hit by a squall or a sudden ocean wind, which caused the boat to keel over, and upon righting itself, the main mast snapped clean in half. Then, in a freak accident, the mast fell straight down, like a nail through wood, and pierced the deck of the boat through the hull and caused an engine fire in the process. On top of all of that, the rigging engulfed the deck, and Harvey said that he and the Dupereau family had become trapped on board. According to the captain, he and Arthur were separated,

but Arthur had taken the wheel whilst he tried to cut through the rigging with wire cutters. Then suddenly, all the lights went out, and the boat was plunged into total darkness. Harvey told Murdoch that he heard the screaming of the Dupereaux family get quieter and further away. So he assumed that the Dupereaux had made their way outside onto the deck and launched a lifeboat. When he managed to get free, he threw himself overboard and swam over to the only lifeboat that he could see in the water, which was floating a short distance away from the sinking bluebell. But Harvey said that he was shocked when he got to the lifeboat, that he found it empty. Harvey claimed that he spent

the next few hours screaming himself hoarse, trying to find the family and his own wife, Mary Dean. But when he spotted the body of seven-year-old Renee, the captain said he pulled her on board, gave up hope and began trying to find his way back to land. 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, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy

and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus 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 favourite podcasts.

Coast Guard Lieutenant Murdoch listened to Harvey's story, but some things just didn't add up for him. For starters, it didn't sound like Harvey had acted as the capable captain and brave World War II veteran that he made himself out to be. For example, he'd failed to use the carbide sailing lamp that had been on board. Those lamps are designed specifically to light up in emergencies. Harvey actually chucked the Bluebells lamp overboard, which is a strange move for an experienced seaman. Harvey also threw himself overboard,

rather than checking to see if any of the family were left on the boat. Even more confusingly, Harvey had failed to use or even mention the two flares that had been in the survival kit aboard the lifeboat. The whole thing looked like the actions of a man who was rather out of his depth. So when Captain Robert Barber got the call to say that Terry Joe had been found alive, he ran in to interrupt the interview and tell Harvey and Murdoch the good news. Surely the hapless captain would be slightly relieved to learn that at least one of the Duperos had survived the nightmare ordeal. When told the good news, Harvey replied, oh my god, isn't that wonderful? He then said that he really ought to go and call the family

of his wife Mary Dean. After all, she'd also been on board and hadn't been seen since. But three hours later, local police were called to the Sandman Motel, just up the road. A maid had walked in to one of the rooms to find the body of Julian Harvey laying in a pool of his own blood. He'd slit his own thighs, wrists and neck with a razor plate. Naturally, this rather muddied the waters for Murdoch and Barber. Why on earth had the captain done this?

And why had he done it now? Terry Jo was most likely the only one with the answer. But unfortunately, things weren't quite that simple. Despite the fact that she'd been found alive, the 11-year-old girl was a long way from being ready to talk. Her severe sunburn and dehydration had left Terry Jo with damage to her kidneys and at serious risk of organ failure. She was hooked up to a drip and pumped with a mixture of saline and glucose.

No one was sure whether she'd survive. And this left Murdoch and Barber with some unravelling to do. Who were the Dupereaux family? And who was Julian Harvey? And what had actually happened aboard the Bluebell? 40-year-old Arthur Dupereaux was, like Julian Harvey, a World War II veteran. He'd served as a Navy medic before being transferred to the Pentagon in 1944. Just by only being in the Navy a few years and spending most of that time patching up injured comrades, his time at sea had had a lasting effect on his mind. Arthur had seen tropical islands swam with amazing fish and sampled other cultures.

It was his lifelong ambition to do it all again, this time under happier circumstances. So when he met the woman who had gone on to become his wife, Jean, who was also working at the Pentagon, the pair hit it off quickly. Jean was funny, outgoing and adventurous. She'd grown up working outdoors and had a taste for doing things a bit out of the ordinary. By the end of 1944, the pair were married and by 1945, Arthur had left the army. With the war over, the couple moved back to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to live with Arthur's parents. The couple entered what most would consider at the time to be the post-war American dream.

Jean got pregnant with their first child, who they called Brian. Arthur enrolled in university to become an optometrist, and they settled down for a little slice of American suburbia. Over the next few years Arthur graduated and started pulling in decent money fixing up the eyes of Green Bay. I forgot to put my glasses on this morning so my eyes are tired. I was driving here and I was like why do my eyes feel weird? Oh oh yeah as we learned from one of our fantastic team here at red handed all the names that people got bullied with when they wore glasses as a child so thankfully other than having absolutely raging acne as a teenager i didn't wear braces and i didn't have glasses so pizza face all that i got it we got it tick tick tick i'd never heard the glasses insults i just thought you know four eyes no no no furniture face

what the fuck what the actual fuck oh my god oh it's so good oh my god don't don't don't call people furniture face but it is quite funny speaking of specky four eyes um that was i couldn't sleep last night so i was scrolling on tiktok and i think it must have been an advert for a horror film or something because it was this little kid talking to someone who's not there the classic the classic and then being possessed and speaking in a possessed voice. And Mabel, because she sleeps on my bed because I'm a bad parent, woke up and was so afraid of the noise that she lay on my chest and started whimpering. Oh no.

I know. Oh no. And then I looked at the comments. The little boy in the video has got glasses. Someone had commented. Oh no, after two seconds of that, I'd be sending the specky twat to Portugal with the McCanns. Oh my God.

Oh my God. You should have just commented asterisk furniture face. Furniture face. It's just such a better insult. Yeah, yeah. It's just such a better insult. So good. So good. So good.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the American dream. Oh, yeah. After transforming the whole of Green Bay into furniture faces, the Duperos had a couple more kids, Terry Jo and Renee, and the family quickly established themselves as a part of the local community. Arthur, or Doc to his friends, was a keen sportsman

and competed in handball at a high level. Don't know what handball is? Don't care. I don't know. Little ball? Little ball. Little ball in your hand? Let's have a little look. Sounds like an American thing.

Handball. Oh. It looks like a football. Oh. Like one of our footballs. It is one of our footballs, but you hold it in your hand and throw it. This is very confusing. It looks like the goals look like, you know, when kids play football in this country and have little goals. Yeah. The goals look like that. And the football looks like a football, one of our footballs. And they just seem to throw it. So there you go.

I'm confused. Nonsense. Anyway, Jean was the coolest mum in the community. She was outdoorsy and modern. She served foreign food at dinner parties. And if the kids got hurt, she would stitch them up herself. And then Jean really cemented her position as mum boss when she drove a local child to the hospital in the middle of a raging storm, much to the excitement of the stuffy 50s locals.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that Arthur and Jean are like cool parents. They're like worldly, they're travelled, they're like very open minded. They're everything that probably like 50s Americana wasn't. And they're just like excited to see more of it. Because all the while that they're living the suburban dream arthur's dream of taking to the high seas stayed very much alive and in 1960 arthur decided that he just wasn't spending enough time with his family which again is like a very not 50 60s thing for a man to think so So Arthur, again, very ahead of the game.

So he and Jean started planning a year-long sailing trip for all five of them. But before they went full Phileas Fogg, they felt it was important to make sure the kids would actually enjoy a life at sea. Yeah, you want to figure out which of them is me and is going to spend their entire time throwing up over the side of the boat. So they planned a smaller trip, just a couple of weeks, leaving from Florida, circling around

the Bahamas and then heading home, just to wet their collective whistles. So come the summer of 61, the Dubereauxs had saved up the money to go for it, and the trip was planned for November the same year. So Arthur took some time off work, The kids were pulled out of school. And the whole family headed down to Fort Lauderdale in Florida to begin their adventure. First things first, they needed a boat. So Arthur chartered the 60-foot sailing boat, Bluebell, for $516, which is about five grand of today's money,

which is a lot less expensive than I thought it would be. Why aren't I in a boat in the Bahamas? I don't know if that's how much it would cost you now, but you could find out. The boat had a main cabin and a few smaller rooms, as well as a galley and a bathroom. It was hardly a cruise ship, but it was enough for the whole family to be comfortable.

However, Arthur wasn't done. He really wanted to make sure that the whole trip went as smoothly as possible. So he decided that although he was a competent sailor himself, he wanted someone else on board who knew exactly what they were doing. And that's where Julian Harvey came in. We don't actually know how close Julian and Arthur were. Some places describe them as good friends, others as just acquaintances. Clearly, though, Arthur knew Julian well enough to trust him to join their trip. So it was decided that Arthur would pay Julian about $100 a day, around a grand in today's money, for him to come along as the captain of the Bluebell.

On top of that, Arthur's wife, Mary Dean, would come along too as the boat's cook. In essence, the Harveys were there to make sure that the Dupereaux family had the best time possible. And by all accounts, the Dupereaux family really did have a good time. They set off towards the Bahamas on the 8th of November 1961, and Julian Harvey was the perfect captain. He was fun, charming, and a great sailor. The Dupereaux kids loved spending time with him and his wife Mary and within a few days it felt as though they were all one big happy family. After around two days at sea they reached the Bahamas. Harvey took the family through the islands snorkeling, spearfishing and visiting gift shops along the way. On the 12th of November they made one last visit to Sandy

Point, a small town at the southernmost point of the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas. There they got ready for the journey back to Florida. While at Sandy Point, Arthur Dupereau, Julian Harvey and Mary Dean all visited the British District Commissioner, Roderick Pinder. And that same evening, Arthur got chatting to a local fisherman called Jimmy Wells about a shark that had tailed the Bluebell for a few miles during their trip. Arthur told Jimmy that he and his son Brian had thought about shooting the shark with a.22 calibre rifle that they had on the boat, but he had decided against it.

And remember that because it will be important later on. After the meet-up, Jimmy was invited onto the Bluebell for dinner before they set off for their return leg back to Fort Lauderdale. Jimmy would be the last person to see the entire Dupereaux family alive, because the very next day, Julian Harvey would be spotted on the open ocean in a small lifeboat with the body of seven-year-old Renee, and Terry Jo would be found two days later. This was about all anyone could find out about the family's holiday. Investigators needed to speak with Terry Jo.

And luckily for them, and more importantly for Terry Jo, things were looking up. After two days of being unconscious in intensive care, being pumped with fluids, Terry Jo started to stir. And eventually she woke up. The day she woke up she was able to eat a small portion of fried eggs for breakfast and then some turkey for lunch. So soon after, on the 19th of November, three days after being found, Terry Jo was up in bed and eating normally.

So it was decided that the time had come for her to have a chat with Barbara Murdoch. Terry Jo spoke with the investigators twice across two days. Both times she talked about what had happened on the Bluebell. Terry Jo was significantly distressed. And when she was finished, she wouldn't speak about the incident again for several decades. This is what she had to say. After leaving Sandy Point on the evening of the 12th of November, the Bluebell had set off as planned.

The five Duperos, Julian Harvey and Mary Dean, were all hanging out in the main cabin. At around 9pm, Terry Jo decided that she wanted to go to bed, so she headed down to the cabin she had been sharing with her younger sister, Renee. Renee was already asleep in the main cabin, so Terry Jo went down alone. And she fell asleep pretty quickly. But a few hours later, she was woken up by the sound of chaos. She could hear a loud thumping noise coming from upstairs, along with the sound of her 14-year-old brother Brian screaming, help, daddy, help. Terry Jo climbed out of bed and rushed upstairs.

Bursting into the main cabin, 11-year-old Terry Jo found her brother Brian and mother Jean lying face down in a pool of blood. Terrified, Terry Jo walked past them and out onto the main deck, where she saw Julian Harvey walking along with a can of petrol. Harvey spotted Terry Jo, lunged for her and smacked her hard across the face. Terry Jo couldn't process what was happening. Why was this nice man attacking her? What was going on? Harvey shouted at Terry Jo to get back downstairs, so she ran back to her cabin and closed the door. Terry Jo then sat frightened and alone below deck as oil and water began to seep up through the floor. After about 15 minutes,

Julian Harvey burst into her room holding a.22 caliber rifle. Terry Jo was too scared to scream, let alone move. But after staring at her for a few seconds, Harvey turned on his heels and walked back out. According to Terry Jo, she stayed put down in that cabin hoping that her father or someone would come and find her. But when she heard a strange thumping noise, Terry Jo, confused and terrified, once again went back upstairs to investigate. When she reached the main deck, Terry Jo saw that Harvey had launched the main lifeboat into the water and was holding onto a rope to keep it next to the boat. Terry Joe cried out to Harvey, asking if they were sinking, to which he replied that they were. Strangely, Harvey then asked Terry Joe to hold the rope attached to the lifeboat

while he went back inside. But while he was inside, the lifeboat was struck by a sudden swell, which pulled the rope out of the 11-year-old's little hands. When Harvey returned and saw the lifeboat drifting away, without hesitation he threw himself overboard and began swimming out to it. Staring out in disbelief, Terry Jo screamed at Harvey to come back. By this point she was stood waist high in water and it was clear that the captain wouldn't be returning for her. And in a moment of clarity that seems unfathomable, Terry Jo remembered the tiny cork life raft on the other side of the boat, not much bigger than a rubber ring. She waded over and somehow managed to untie the little life raft and throw it overboard. But then she watched in horror as she realised that her last chance of survival was still attached to the sinking boat by another rope.

In front of her eyes, the little cork raft began being dragged underwater by the sinking bluebell. But Terry Jo wasn't done yet. In a last effort to save herself, the 11-year-old girl plunged herself underwater and found the rope holding the life raft down. And unbelievably, she managed to untie it. It's like when you hear about angry mums lifting up cars. I know, it's unbelievable, the fact that she is 11, she's 11 years old, and she jumps in and unties this raft.

Like, I just can't even imagine. She's not seen any of her... She hasn't seen her dad. She hasn't seen Renee. She's just seen her mum and Brian lying on the floor, covered in their own blood. And this captain has already attacked her. Like, for her to have the clarity

to be able to get that cork raft is unbelievable. And I've already told on this show, definitely the time where i thought i was absolutely gonna drown out at sea but um i don't know if i told on the same trip the story of my friend who shall remain unnamed but obviously honey you know him who can't swim wearing a life jacket out at sea get separated from me who's like his spotter because i can't swim don't know where he ends up and I'm like but there are so many boats in this bay that I'm like he'll be somewhere there's no way he can have drowned he's wearing

a life jacket we're in Mexico and after a while of not seeing him I do start to worry because he's not a quiet person I'm like if he's around here somewhere I would have heard him I would have seen something and I get back to the boat that we were on ask them they're like we haven't seen him i'm like okay this is now starting to worry me because everybody's back except him even the the chinese tourists who are clearly terrified of the water and then once we're heading back and i'm trying to convince everybody we need to stay and find him this speedboat comes along and he's on board and i'm like what the actual fuck where have you been i have been like crying

on this boat he looks shaken up he gets on to our boat still got his life jacket on so i'm still confused as to what actually happened and i'm like what happened what happened insert name and he's like it's fine it's fine it's fine i'll tell you later calm down i should stop stop like overreacting i'm not overreacting and then all the while i'm trying to get information from him the guy who's driving the speedboat is speaking in german to the guy who's driving our boat so my friend is pretty good at languages he can speak fluent spanish but we couldn't understand what this guy was saying because he was speaking in german and then the guy who'd taken us out of the boat turns around to him and goes, he says you were drowning.

And my friend is like, oh, nah, nah. I wasn't drowning. I wasn't drowning. But it was just that one, like, flip of the head, turn back and look at him. He said you were drowning. It was so good and he didn't drown so we can laugh about it now it was so good but i did meet his new girlfriend a few months ago who was absolutely lovely but i was telling her all these stories and she was just

like what the fuck and he was like please stop please stop talking so good so now you guys get to know too also like i think all of the stories about this person yes make him seem like like a doofus no he's not no he's like very charismatic he just can't swim he just can't swim So good. OK, serious voice again. So this incredible 11-year-old girl managed to untie this little raft and it bobbed back to the surface. And Terry Jo pulled herself on top of the cork ring and watched as the bluebell disappeared into the ocean. Terry Jo then spent the next three days at sea.

And of course, each day was progressively worse than the next. On day one, she was exposed to the blistering heat of the sun, which burned her skin and lips. Then, as darkness fell, the temperature plummeted and visibility vanished. She was left drifting in the pitch black freezing cold ocean. When the sun finally came up she felt to her horror and this is a school of parrotfish biting and nibbling her legs which were dangling in the water. No thank you, no thank you at all. When I was in India and I posted pictures of like that lake that's near my grandparents house a couple of my friends were like oh my god it's so beautiful you go swimming

in there I was like are you fucking kidding me do you know what's in there because I sure as fuck don't but something that will bite me we used to go swimming in there when we were like really little kids but it used to have a fresher flow of like water coming into it so it felt a bit safer then but you still get bitten you used you get bitten by like little fish that would just come bite like especially if you had little scars or if you had like a mosquito bite it would like come and bite that and then obviously when we were in crete standing in crystal clear water and you could actually see the fish there i was like hannah i think those fish are gonna bite us and you were like no what did it do as soon as i finished my sentence one of them ripped a scab off the top of my foot delightful delicious so they will bite you yeah and so yeah so ruti won that day

yeah i mean it's it's rough i want to google what a parrotfish is because i feel like they're going to have sharp beaks yep they do oh my god horrible. Okay, so she's got a school of these biting at her legs. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher

Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. 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 Cone.

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'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. Then the night came again. This time when Terry Jo woke up, she found that a school of pilot whales had begun to circle her raft. Initially, she was terrified that they might be sharks, thinking back presumably to the one that had been tailing the bluebell. But when she realised that they were whales,

she felt strangely comforted by their presence. That night Terry Jo drifted off to sleep again and began having hallucinations that she was on a plane with her family which is weird because Terry Jo had never actually been on a plane before but it all seemed so vivid especially the image of her dad looking at her holding a glass of wine and saying,

Come on, Terry Jo, we're leaving now. Don't like that. Nope. Don't go into the light, Terry Jo. No, don't do it. Don't you do it. That night, the sea was very rough. At the same time, Terry Jo's kidneys started to shut down.

Having spent hour after hour in the blazing heat with no water she began to convulse wildly and with the rough sea it was a miracle that she stayed on the raft at all. And the next morning Terry Jo remembered opening her eyes as a shadow passed over her and she looked up to see several sailors staring down at her from the deck of a huge Greek freighter, the Captain Theo.

The next thing she knew, Terry Jo was being hauled aboard by men speaking a language she didn't understand. She was wrapped in a blanket, and then she passed out. And that was all that Terry Jo could remember about her final hours with Captain Julian Harvey and the prolonged horror that followed. From what she said, it was clear to Barbara and Murdoch that the sinking of the Bluebell had been no accident. But why Harvey had done it was still a mystery. That was until they started to do a little more digging into Julian Harvey's past. Julian Harvey was born in New York in 1917. Although his parents divorced when he was just a year old,

he didn't have the hardest of childhoods. His mother remarried when he was six into a wealthy family. And when the Great Depression hit, when Harvey was 13, he was sent away to live with a rich aunt and uncle. He never wanted for much, materially speaking, but throughout his life, Harvey suffered from anxiety and an intermittent stammer, for which he was mercilessly bullied at school.

In a move that looks pretty not okay now, but was potentially a bit more normal in the mid-50s, Harvey met and married his first wife while he was still in high school. What? I know, I know. And so, of course, unsurprisingly, the pair of them got divorced within a year. After leaving school, he briefly worked as a door-to-door salesman, a career that didn't exactly suit the anxious, stammering Julian Harvey very well.

According to several accounts we read, he actually ran away after ringing his first few doorbells, terrified that someone would actually answer the door. But when World War II rolled around, Harvey was first in line to sign up. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1941, before the first US draft had even come into play. Before the US were even in the war, I think. Harvey spent the Second World War flying bombers, and then he stayed in the military all the way through the Korean War, which ended in 53. Technically, it didn't end at all. Anyway, throughout his time in the Air Corps,

Julian Harvey gained a strange reputation. On the one hand, he was known as a brave and competent pilot, one who was recognised more than once for great acts of gallantry in the air, receiving several medals. And then on the other hand, he also crashed an unusually large number of planes and developed a strange habit of running into mysterious engine problems which forced him to turn his plane around before reaching combat. Outside of the military, Julian Harvey had a checkered reputation as well. He had a succession of wives, none of whom stayed with him for more than a few years. On top of this, he had a strange habit of getting into an inordinate amount of accidents on the road. In 1949, he aroused the suspicion of the police when he was the sole survivor of a car accident in which he drove his car off a cliff.

His wife and mother-in-law at the time both died in the incident. And Harvey claimed to only have survived because he jumped out of the door moments before the car hit the water. When a dive team went down to look at the car, they found that all the doors had been closed when the car had hit the water, so his story didn't really fit what they found. By the time he was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1958 for injuries and anxiety sustained during his service, Harvey was on to his fourth wife,

a woman with whom he would go on to buy a yacht, which he accidentally sailed into a well-marked wreck and received a large insurance payout. Months later, his fourth wife filed for divorce, citing mental cruelty. Before the divorce finalised, Harvey purchased a second yacht, which mysteriously caught fire off the coast of Cuba, again resulting in a huge payout. In the days before the divorce went through, Harvey got a third yacht, which he sold days after the divorce was finalised, presumably in an effort to conceal his assets. For Murdoch and Barber, this was all starting to add up.

Clearly, Julie and Harvey had a penchant for crashing boats and claiming the insurance money. For Murdoch and Barber, this was all starting to add up. Clearly, Julian Harvey had a penchant for crashing boats and claiming the insurance money. But the Bluebell wasn't his boat. What did he stand to gain from her sinking? The smoking gun came when a $20,000 life insurance policy was found, taken out by Harvey for his wife of less than a year, Mary Dean, who of course, if you remember, was the cook on board the Bluebell. And then, investigators spotted the real clincher. There was a double indemnity clause in the life insurance policy taken out against Mary Dean. This meant that if Mary Dean died of an unforeseen accident, rather than of an illness

or of natural causes, Julian Harvey got double the payout. Why does that exist? That's pretty shocking. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why an unforeseen accident would get you more money than an illness or natural causes. Pass. I guess, like, are they saying that if there's an illness, you've got time to prepare yourself? If it's an unforeseen accident and it happens suddenly and out of the blue, it's like a little cushion that you get double the money. But you could also have a heart attack, which would be natural causes,

and you wouldn't see that coming. Yeah, that's true. So I don't know. But that's what he had. With all of that in mind, Murdoch and Barber put together the following chain of events. They believed that Julian Harvey had not intended to kill the Duperos, but he had wanted them on board the Bluebell to act as witnesses to Mary Dean's mysterious disappearance. The idea being that the family would go to bed on the first night of their trip back to the US with everyone on board. The family would then be woken by a frantic Julian Harvey

the next morning saying that he couldn't find his wife. Everyone would assume that she'd fallen overboard in the night and nobody would be any the wiser. It is a very good plan. It's pretty good. Like as far as treacherous plans to murder your wife and claim insurance money goes, that's a very good plan. However, the investigators from the US Coast Guard believed that someone from the Dupereaux family saw Harvey attack his wife. And with his cover blown, Harvey likely attacked and killed them and then turned on the rest of the family who were woken up by the chaos. And presumably he did his murdering with a.22 caliber rifle that Arthur had mentioned to Harvey a few days before he died. Yeah, so he found out about it when they're talking to Jimmy Wells,

that fisherman, and talking about the shark that they were going to shoot and then change their mind about. So he knows that there's a gun on board now. So continuing on with their theory, it's that 11-year-old Terry Jo would then have walked upstairs to see her mother and brother dead on the floor, just like she said she did. But for some reason, Harvey chose not to shoot

Terry Joe. Some people have said that this was because he wanted to get caught, but I'm like, where exactly are you getting that particular piece of evidence from? Like, I don't think he wanted to get caught at all. It seems a lot more likely that he didn't think

that she would survive the sinking ship so there was no point in him killing yet another child I think that's the thing with Harvey is that he's done this before presumably as a story with the car going off the cliff and his mother-in-law and wife being in that one he has no problem with killing people no but I don't think he does it for any sort of pleasure. He does it for the money. He does it for the outcomes. And I think he's thinking here, well, if I don't have to kill another child, but she's going to die anyway, who gives a fuck?

And I think that's why he didn't do it. He was certain that Terry Jo wouldn't make it. But make it she did. And when she finally left the hospital, Terry Jo was taken back to Green Bay to live with her aunt and uncle. One of the first things she did after getting to her new home was to start responding to the hundreds of letters that had flooded into her from across the world. One of the next things she did was change her name to Tara.

She said that she didn't want to be associated with brave little Terry Jo anymore. A question, and if we don't know the answer we can cut this out what was renee's cause of death we don't actually know the cause of death for basically any of them renee obviously we have the body and i think she drowned i think she drowned so he drowned her i think what happened is that harvey is not a stupid man he's been around this particular block before, like with his lies with like, oh, the car door, I jumped out, blah, blah, blah. I think he spotted Renee's body in the water. Because remember, by the time he jumps out, Terry Jo is already in

waste deep water. And she's 11, Renee's seven. The dad is nowhere to be seen. Mum and Brian are both dead. We know that. So I think Renee falls in the water and drowns. And I think he finds her body afterwards. And I think he grabs Renee to just be like, if anybody finds me, I've tried to save this little girl. It's like my get out of jail free card. If I turn up with none of them, maybe it looks more suspicious. So I think Renee drowned. But Arthur, Jean and Brian were all killed at the hands of Harvey. Because it was the 60s and the idea of unpacking grief and trauma hadn't really caught on yet, nobody ever spoke to Tara about what had happened that night, which is astonishing to me.

Yeah. She was never offered any kind of counselling or therapy and she referred to the whole ordeal as the accident for many years. However, in the late noughties, Tara decided it was finally time to talk about what had happened. She contacted psychologist Richard D. Logan, who I recognise that name for some reason. He's probably done something else. True crime-y. It's likely. But what Richard D. Logan did was offer Tara amobarbitol or sodium amytil, which is a barbiturate-based drug that some people say is a kind of truth serum. And after a dose of this, Tara said that she became totally relaxed

and returned to being the scared little 11-year-old girl who had never spoken about what had happened and together she and logan worked through what had happened to little terry joe on that boat and they wrote a book alone orphaned on the ocean i don't think that psychologists should be allowed to do that i don't think they should be allowed to get your story out of you and then publish a fucking book. It's like Michelle Remembers. Yeah.

I was going to say, when I was like, he's probably done something true crime-y, this is like, I don't know, is it something Michelle Remembers-y? Yeah. I think it might be. Anyway, Tara has since said in interviews that she doesn't want people to look back at what happened to her and say, that poor little girl. Instead, she wants them to say, she's got on with her life.

Which she has. And that is what motivated her to write the book. Because, quote, if one person heals from a life of tragedy, my journey will have been worth it. And I just think that's the most refreshing thing anyone could ever say. So don't feel sorry for her, even though she had an absolutely, unbelievably atrocious time, because she's gone on to live a very full life.

So good for Tara. She's killing it. But yeah, really, really scary, scary stuff. Just like there's so many steps of fear in this particular story. Yeah. But she does it. Good for her.

Good for her. That's it, guys. We'll see you next week with another case. Yeah. Until then, goodbye. Learn to swim. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. 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. When TV producer Roy Radin 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.