True Crime Campfire - Gaslight, Gatekeep, GirlBoss: A Girl Gang Grab-Bag

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Like most American millennials, I was subjected to drug abuse resistance education or dare. It was the typical kind of drugs are bad. K sort of thing. Police officers would come to school and show second graders pictures of smoker lungs and suggest that everyone and their mom would be peer-pressuring you to smoke weed

Starting point is 00:00:39 and or crack, which was not as big of an issue as some of us might have hoped. During one such class, we were being taught about the danger of gang violence, and we were told to draw what we thought a gang member would look like. Yes, it does sound like a potentially extremely racist arts and craft session, but yours truly decided to get creative. I drew a woman wearing a crop top in Jenko jeans. The Dare officer looked at my drawing and told me that women weren't ever members of gangs, but were usually girlfriends, which made my tiny feminist hackles raise. What do you mean there weren't any lady gang members? Whatever men could do, women could do, right? Equality, right? If she had been prepared for nuance beyond her vaguely racist lesson,

Starting point is 00:01:24 she might have talked about the culture of toxic masculinity that pervades most gangs as we think about them today. And often, women have to carve out their own niche when it comes to organized crime. Officer Silva, this one's for you. This is Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl Boss, a girl gang grab bag. Case 1. Light Fingers, the 40 Elephants Gang. So, for the first case, we're in jolly old England in the late 1800s. The Elephant and Castle area of South London was already home to a gang, cleverly called the Elephant and Castle gang. I know, no sense of panache. The problem was that they didn't allow women in their ranks. What was a lady with a pension for less than legal

Starting point is 00:02:15 activities supposed to do? Well, what women have done throughout all of history. They made their own. They called themselves the 40 elephants, sometimes referring to themselves as the 40 thieves. They were prolific shoplifters. The name was partially a reference to their neighborhood, but also a reference to how they'd look coming out of a store with all their stolen stuff, like a group of elephants roaming the savannah. The most famous elephant was a woman named Alice Diamond, who was known under the pseudonym Diamond Annie.

Starting point is 00:02:46 I love it. At 20, she took over as the leader, or queen, of the gang, from 1916 until the mid-1920s. She was the daughter of a career criminal named, Thomas Diamond. His record included the time he smashed the mayor's son's head through a window at some kind of political shindig. Annie, standing at a pretty tall 5-9, could throw a brutal punch, made even more brutal by the diamond rings she wore on her fingers. She was also a brilliant tactician. She came up with

Starting point is 00:03:19 the idea to operate the gang as a business, breaking up the members into cells that could coordinate crimes all over the city simultaneously. Previously, the elephants were sort of just doing whatever. She also established what she called the hoister's code, which was a list of rules that her girls had to follow. One was that they weren't allowed to drink the night before a job, and they had to go to bed at certain times to ensure that they were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when it was time to go. Smart. They also weren't allowed to sleep with other members' men. If one of their members was caught by the police, the others had to give her an alibi. She also had to approve of the members' marriages, but we'll get back into that later. Their male counterparts admired Annie for her

Starting point is 00:04:03 ability to organize a large number of people and often asked her for help when planning for war against other gangs. The group thrived under Annie's reign. A group of elephants could go into a department store and clear the place out in a few minutes by secreting items in secret pockets under their clothes. They'd pose as wealthy socialites and leave with their clothes weighed down with loot. A typical heist would go like this. They'd pick a department store and start arriving by motor carriage in groups of two or three, dressed to the nines. Sometimes Annie herself would arrive in a limousine. Because of expectations of modesty at the time, women were given quite a bit of privacy by shopkeepers. Once, Annie managed to fit two sable coats under her clothes and walked out with them. A

Starting point is 00:04:49 pair of elephants once walked into a furrier wearing expensive fur coats, asking about a 600 sterling pound fur coat. By the way, it wasn't clear in the sources we used whether the 600 pound coat was adjusted for today's inflation, but since if it wasn't, it would be worth 77,000 pounds today, we're guessing it wasn't 600 pounds at the time. Probably not. Between the two of them, they managed to distract the shop owner with questions as they stowed away the fur coat and walked out with it. It was half an hour before the poor guy realized the coat was even missing. One gang member wore a false arm so she could have a hand free for stealing. Another method they used was called the crush, where the women would rush a jeweler

Starting point is 00:05:31 with several members and asked to see jewelry. They'd pass each piece down the line until one of them could pocket it while the clerk was distracted. When the clerk would accuse them of stealing, they'd immediately cause a scene, allowing the actual thief to slip away unnoticed. They also had clever forgers. They could go into a jewelry store, try on a necklace, return it to the clerk, and get a convincing fake. The next member would bring in the decoy, asked to try on the real necklace, and seamlessly replace the real necklace with the fake one. Once their reputation grew, they used it to their advantage. Annie, who had a bright red target on her back, would go into a department store and the employees would all start watching her like hawks. They were so distracted

Starting point is 00:06:13 by her that some of her underlings could slip in and take items undetected. The girls, of course, dressed like women of means, but they weren't wearing stolen items. One of the stricter rules of the gang was that they weren't to wear stolen merchandise. They had to sell their loot and then buy fancy clothes with the money. Like any other good business, they diversified. Some of their girls would apply to work as housemaids for wealthy families using false references. Then, after a few weeks of observing the family's routine, they'd bring in their fellow elephants and clean the place out.

Starting point is 00:06:44 They would also sometimes seduce wealthy men and then blackmail them, but that was a little less lucrative than just outright robbing them. At one point, the London police and business owners started getting wise to their game, so Annie started sending her girls out to more rural areas of England who hadn't been aware of them yet. The gang got so powerful that they policed other criminals in their territory. Criminals that wanted to operate in the elephant's domain had to pay a fee for the privilege. It reminds me so much if anybody reads the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, it reminds me of the Thieves Guild. It really does, yes.

Starting point is 00:07:18 In those books. I mean, that's exactly what it was, essentially. Diamond Annie kept a close watch on her girls and required them to get approval from her before getting engaged. Her logic was pretty solid. Any husband would be privy to the illicit activities his wife was involved in, so Annie had to put her stamp of approval before allowing her girls to get married. Does anyone else want to watch an episode of Peeky Blinders right now, or is it just me? Just me? Okay, just checking.

Starting point is 00:07:47 I think that's literally like a central plot in the show. Anyway, in 1925, one of her girls, Marie Britton, married a dude that Annie did not approve of. Annie had told Marie that under no circumstances was she to marry this dude, but Marie was pregnant, so her options were limited. Marie married him anyway, and Annie was pure. She was in her cups at a 40 elephants party, and she whipped up her underlings into a froth. She convinced them to go after Marie and her new husband. They used bottles and rocks to attack the husband while forcing Marie to watch.

Starting point is 00:08:23 This would become known as the Battle of Lambeth. It turned into an all-out riot, which caused a clash with the London police. Annie was sent to jail for a year and a half for wounding with intent, burglary, riot, damage, and assault. After she'd gotten out of prison, Annie had been replaced by a woman named Lillian Rose Kendall, who was known as the bobbed hair bandit because she wore her hair in a bob. That's a bit on the nose. Yeah, not as creative as Diamond Annie, right? As her name implies, she didn't quite have the finesse that our girl Annie did. She liked to use her car to drive through the front of stores and grab as much stuff as she could after she crashed.

Starting point is 00:09:04 That's one way to do it. Yeah. This would ultimately spell the end of the 40 elephants, who, despite being one of the most respected and successful gangs in England, would disappear by the 1950s. When she got out of jail, Annie ran a brothel until she died in 1952. That brings us to our second case. Anything you can do. The Japanese Sukeban. The 1960s in Japan gave rise to a very rebellious youth.

Starting point is 00:09:31 In fact, juvenile crime skyrocketed in the years after World War II, basically tripling compared to what it was. before the war. Like most places, bad living conditions and poverty played a huge role. One of the most famous juvenile offenses is known as the Oh Mistake incident. In September of 1950, a truck carrying $2 million in Tokyo University payroll was being driven by three university employees when a young man signaled for it to pull over. They pulled over because they knew the guy. He was a co-worker, 19-year-old Yamagiwa Hiroyuki. Once inside the truck, he used a knife to slash at the neck of one of the workers and shoved them all out of the car. He and his girlfriend almost immediately started spending the money, buying new clothes and

Starting point is 00:10:14 cigarettes. It took the Japanese police two days to track them down, and during the arrest, Hiro Yuki tried to pretend to be an American citizen who accidentally did a carjacking, yelling, oh, mistake in heavily accent in English. Needless to say, yeah. You know, don't you hate it when you accidentally carjack somebody? Hate when that happens. That is truly American culture, though.

Starting point is 00:10:38 He did his best. Needless to say, the police didn't buy it and took Hiroyuki in. Hiro yuki's attitude was pretty blazze about the whole thing. He didn't regret his actions and even took the time to pose for the cameras as he was brought into the station. And I hate to admit it, but the photos goes kind of hard. Like, it's a good photo. Crime is bad. He assaulted somebody.

Starting point is 00:11:04 Crime is bad. But it's a cool photo. Like, it'd be cool as a cover of like a Japanese punk album. Yeah. The Japanese public was horrified by this and mostly blamed the Allied occupation for the rebellion that had started to become more and more common post-war Japan. A simpler cause is this. Most teenagers in the 1950s had been children during the end of the war, during which Allied forces were bombing their major cities. So most children were sent to the countryside for safety, as was the case in the UK.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Most Japanese kids had to live pretty sparse lives away from their families. The trauma, along with the neglect, probably caused most of the juvenile behaviors that started taking hold in the 50s in Japan. Crime is often caused by socioeconomic disparity, peer influence, lack of access to education and family dynamics, all of which were at play at the end of World War II in Japan. Yeah, you see similar statistics in the U.S., England, and Germany, too. Basically, after a war, your shit's all fucked, including the kids. As juvenile crime rises, so does the formation of gangs. When you think Japanese organized crime, you probably think of the Yakuza. Formed as early as the 1600s, they're identifiable by their heavy tattoos.

Starting point is 00:12:16 Most bathhouses in Japan won't serve people with tattoos, which is why Americans with tattoos should always check ahead and see if they're welcome before they make a reservation. Yakuza have historically been known for drug trafficking, racketeering, or blackmail. In recent years, they've kind of become more and more toothless, but in the 1950s and 60s, they were as strong as ever. Katie and I are both huge skincare fiends. We're always texting back and forth about our favorites. And my new favorite, by Light Years, is today's sponsor, One Skin.

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Starting point is 00:13:45 without the harsh ingredients or irritation you'll often find in other skin care products. I've been using the eye cream and the moisturizer, and I am absolutely hooked for life. I noticed my under eye area looking significantly better within the first couple of weeks, and it just keeps getting better. My skin feels dewy. It's just absolutely wonderful. You know, the norm has always been to sort of treat the symptoms of skin aging, but not really the root causes. The best you're going to get there is a temporary reduction in the visible signs of aging. But One Skin is the world's first skin longevity company. By focusing on the cellular aspects of aging, One Skin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. Yes, please. Get started today with 15,

Starting point is 00:14:33 percent off using code happy camper at one skin.co. That's 15% off one skin.co with code happy camper. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. So please, support Katie and me and tell them True Crime Campfire sent you. Give your skin the scientifically proven, gentle care it deserves with one skin. Young boys, emulating the yakuza, started to form gangs around strong leaders, who they called Bancho, which is a playoff a word referring to a military position in the 8th century. I love when your gang lore goes back to the 8th freaking century does. It's the most Japanese thing I've ever heard in my life. It's just, yes.

Starting point is 00:15:25 It's amazing. Gang members would challenge or even assault teachers, smoke and drink and charge money for tickets. to parties. Members would carry bike chains, wooden swords, or pieces of metal to use in battles with rival gangs. If they fought other kids who weren't gang-affiliated, they just used their fists. They even paid taxes on the money they made from their parties. It was slightly less than what they actually made, but they still paid. This may seem kind of tame compared to the kind of youth violence or organized crime that we're used to in the U.S., but to Japan, whose culture is based on respect and rule following, this was the youth

Starting point is 00:16:02 Apocalypse. Boncho and their gangs would dress in stereotypical American greaser style with carefully quaffed and slicked back hair while still adhering to their school uniform requirements. It's just adorable. When a boncho graduated, the gang would schedule fights to determine who the next leader would be. Japan is a very male-dominated society, and the hyper-masculine boncho were a microcosm of the world at large. Girls were expected to stay out and do girly things, like shop and gossip and probably have pillow fights and wear little ribbons and bows and stuff. And the girls, not wanting to be left out, formed their own groups called Tsukibon, which translated to delinquent girl.

Starting point is 00:16:45 The Tsukabon rebelled against the objectification of schoolgirls by lengthening their uniform skirts to their ankles and wearing converse. They also embroidered phrases on the backs of their uniforms, sort of emulating the punk style in England at the time. phrases included resistance or Tokyo gang or even the girls' names. Like most subculture style, the longer uniforms fulfilled a secondary purpose by enabling the girls to hide weapons in the folds. They could hide razors or wooden swords or even bike chains and then pull them out on unsuspecting people. Sukibon crimes were standard teenage fair, vandalism, theft, and intimidation. They abided by rules, just like any gang, but their rules were like, don't you. use drugs and don't sleep with your friend's

Starting point is 00:17:31 boyfriends, just like Diamond Danny. That isn't to say that they weren't serious about the rules, though. If you broke a rule, you might get a cigarette put out on you. This sort of emulates the yakuza practice of Ubitzume, or finger shortening, which requires penance

Starting point is 00:17:47 for a mistake by cutting off your own pinky finger. No, thank you. Japanese media saw the rise of these rebellious and frankly cool-looking teenage girls and started going gangbusters on manga and TV shows. Sukibon Deca is one of the most famous ever

Starting point is 00:18:05 mangaes about the girl gang phenomenon in Japan, sparking a video game and a movie series. Sukibon even infiltrated American media. Gogubari from Kill Bill was based on the Sukibon subculture. The Sukuban were most active during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and started to die out afterward. Today, it's mostly a fashion subculture, rather than an actual gang,

Starting point is 00:18:27 but the spirit of feminism still remains. Now, if it sounds like we sort of admire the last two gangs, I guess we can't lie and say we don't. Crime is bad, obviously. Do not hurt people, but it's hard not to sound a little giddy when every photo we've seen of the 40 elephants and the Zuckeban was like the coolest picture we've ever seen in our lives. They had style. Let's just put in that way. Such good style. Bad, bad ladies, but with impeccable style.

Starting point is 00:18:53 It's also kind of cool to see women take on masculine stereotypes and turn them on their head. That's absolutely not intended to brush off the actual damage that these women put innocent people through. The next case, though, is a perfect example of how gang violence can leave a smoking crater where a community used to be. Case 3. Hell is a teenage girl. The murder of Rina Verk. For this one, we're in Sainage British Columbia, Canada in 1997. It was November 23rd, and the body of a 14-year-old girl was being pulled out of the the gorge waterway. The coroner, Dr. Laurel Gray, discovered that the girl had been badly beaten. She observed, multiple blows sustained in the abdominal area, a crush convulsion injury as often

Starting point is 00:19:41 seen in car crash victims, extensive bruising under the skin of her face, a bruise in the shape of a sneaker print is on the back of the brain. Oh my God. The girl was Rina Verk. In addition to all of that, she found 18 pebbles in Rina's lungs. The horrible truth was that Rina was alive when her body hit the water. She'd survived all of the horrific injuries to her body only to drown. There was also a burnmark between Rina's eyebrows, which led the investigators to initially assume that the motivation was racist as Rina was South Asian. Rina Verk was undoubtedly a troubled kid. Her father, Manjit, had immigrated from India and had converted from India and had converted from Hinduism to Jehovah's Witness when he met Rina's mother, Sumon.

Starting point is 00:20:30 The strict religion chafed against Rina's edgier personality, and she and her parents fought a lot. In her book, Under the Bridge, Rebecca Godfrey said that Rina was a rare combination of boldness and innocence. She liked Bollywood movies and listened to Biggie Smalls secretly in her uncle's car. Reno was strongly influenced by her friends. In particular, she got involved with a group of girls led by 15 years. year old Nicole Cook. Every school has a Nicole. She was angry, troubled, obsessed with serial killers and gangster rap. She had a particular interest in John Gotti. Her greatest ambition was to become the quote, first female hitman. Her locker featured her drawings of gangster shooting cops,

Starting point is 00:21:16 line drawings of disembodied heads and severed hands. She claimed to steal cars and date crypts. Nicole was friends with a girl named Kelly Ellard, Award of the state, and Warren Glowatsky, a troubled kid who claimed to be a member of the Crips. It's unclear how they became friends with Rina, but she desperately wanted to fit in. She painted her nails, dark colors, smoked weed, and drank with her new friends. Eventually, the girls convinced Rina that if she could be removed from her home, she'd be free from the constraints of her family's rules. She reported her father to the state for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

Starting point is 00:21:51 Yeah, and as always, we want to stand by the fact that 99.9.9.8. 9999% of cases of reported abuse are true. It's vanishingly rare for there to be a false accusation. It comes up sometimes on our show, but it is actually very rare. We will never, ever invalidate what victims go through and the courage that it takes to come forward. Absolutely. Literally everyone in Rina's life, including Rina, insists that her report was made up in order to obtain freedom from her strict household. Investigators found no evidence that anything approaching abuse had happened. A few months after being placed in a group home, Rina dropped the charges and returned to her parents' house. Somehow, the friendship with Nicole had soured, and Rina stole Nicole's phone

Starting point is 00:22:36 book. She called up some of their male classmates and pranked them, telling them that Nicole had AIDS. Nicole was ugly, and Nicole drew on her eyebrows. And knowing that this case was in the mid-90s, I'm guessing that last one was true. Well, Nicole was not going to take this lying down. She stude about it for days. Her mom even overheard her on the phone with Kelly, saying they were going to dig a grave for Rina and bury her. On the 14th, there was a party held in a field. Nicole, Rina, Kelly, and Warren were all in attendance. As they drank and carried on, Nicole and Kelly stewed some more. They'd confront Rina that night. They'd have their revenge. After the police broke up the party, Nicole, Kelly, Warren, Rina, and several other teenagers

Starting point is 00:23:23 went under a bridge nearby to continue the party. Suddenly, Nicole put out a cigarette on Rina's forehead, and when Rina tried to fight back, Kelly hit her. A fight broke out with Nicole, Kelly, Warren, and six other girls joining in while others ran away. Eventually, one girl yelled at them to stop, and they left Rina, bloody, crying, covered in mud under the bridge. Some of them saw her get up and walk away in the direction of their house.

Starting point is 00:23:52 After more of the teens left, Kelly and Warren followed Rina as she walked home. They beat her again, more severely this time, dragged her to the river where they drowned her. Because teenagers are the dumbest criminals imaginable, it didn't take long for the police to figure out what had happened to Rina. They arrested everyone involved, charging Nicole Cook, Nicole Patterson, Missy Grace, Plike, Courtney Keith, and Gail Oombs as minors in charging Warren Glootsky and Kelly Ellard with second-degree murder as adults. Warren was convicted and given a life sentence, eligible for parole after seven years.

Starting point is 00:24:29 In 2004, he was denied. While in jail, he discovered that he was a member of the Medis tribe and dove into the culture which focuses on restorative justice. Through his journey, he reached out to tribal elders who connected him with Rina's family. The Verks felt he had genuine remorse for his actions and recommended that he be released on parole. In 2006, in part, because of the recommendations of the Verks, he was granted daily from jail, allowing him to get a job and leave the prison during the day. When it was granted, he gave everyone in the room a hug, including Rina's family.

Starting point is 00:25:06 He was released on full parole in 2010, and we hope he stayed out of trouble. Kelly, on the other hand, is a hot mess express. She was tried three separate times for second-degree murder and was eventually given a life sentence with the possibility of parole after seven years. In 2017, she was given day release from prison, but it was revoked when she was charged with domestic violence and tested positive for codeine. Her prison records show a deterioration in behavior, and the parole board considered her a high, moderate risk for future violence over the long term. Her risk would be on the higher end should you abuse substances or associate with negative individuals. During one of her excursions, she became pregnant and had a child. Unlike Warren, she shows very little remorse for what she did.

Starting point is 00:25:53 She's currently in a residential facility taking care of a child of which she has sole custody. Most recently, she declined to apply for parole because she felt like she wasn't ready. The parole board agreed. We hope to God she stays away from us and that she gives her kid a good life. In a dateline interview, they interviewed Nicole and Nicole claims that she had nothing to do with it. She's not guilty of killing Rina. She wasn't the one that drowned her, blah, blah, blah.

Starting point is 00:26:23 And Keith Morrison was like, so if you hadn't put out the cigarette on her head, would she still be alive? And Nicole was like, I don't know, maybe. And so just these people, just have no fucking, like, humanity. You know what I mean? No sense of accountability for sure.

Starting point is 00:26:43 And there is a fictionalized TV show about this case called Under the Bridge. It's well made, but does take like a really sympathetic look at the killers. So if that's not your jam, because it's not mine. I recommend you don't watch it. But if you're interested in it, it's out there. It's an interesting case because it's mob dynamics kicking in. And that's always kind of interesting to me. It's like you have sort of a instigator.

Starting point is 00:27:12 and then maybe one or two other people join in, and then it just becomes mob think. And everyone said that Nicole was the more dominant of the two and that Kelly just really wanted to impress her, which, you know, you see a lot in at least killer pairs where, like, one is the puppet master and the others just trying to impress. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:27:38 But it's a sick case. We might go into it deeper another time. It's just, it's very, very, very sad. It's just a sad, sad case. There's no, like we can make fun of them because they're dipshits, but it just hurts your soul a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. So here we have three different cases from three different cultures around the world

Starting point is 00:27:59 and three different points in history, all pulling us toward an unavoidable truth. The ladies have always been neck deep in the business of crime. No matter how far back you look, you'll find female criminals, lying and stealing and scamming right alongside the men. Makes it hard to see how we ever got their reputation as the gentler sex, but there you go. We believe what feels good, I guess.

Starting point is 00:28:22 So those were wild ones, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a very special congratulations to Carrie and Barry on their wedding this week. I love weddings. I love weddings. So we're wishing...

Starting point is 00:28:40 I know. It just makes me reclimped. Wishing y'all a lifetime of love and laughs. Thanks for listening. We love that you listen together. It's adorable. Have fun, guys. Congrats. Congratulations. We love you. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Alicia, Ralph, Laura, Haley, Abby, Gale, and Julie. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad free at least a day early. sometimes even two, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin, or sometimes a fridge magnet, well supplies last at 10 virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. For great TCC merge, visit the true crime campfire store at spreadshirt.com.

Starting point is 00:29:39 Check out our website at truecrimecampfirepod.com. And if you like what we're doing, leave us a nice review.

True Crime Campfire - Gaslight, Gatekeep, GirlBoss: A Girl Gang Grab-Bag

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