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- [00:01]
Jed Lipinski
You're probably not drinking enough water. I'm probably not either. We all mean to and then we don't. That's where Ello comes in. They make the viral water bottles and tumblers you've seen all over Instagram and TikTok. But they're not just cute, they're designed to make daily routines easier. Their Oasis tumbler has a lid that twists to tuck the straw away so it stays clean and totally leak proof. And the pop and fill bottle has a push button lid so you can refill it without unscrewing the top. If you're into meal prepping or love leftovers, their leak proof glass containers are made for life on the go, not leaks in your bag. Ello's mission is replacing single use plastics with reusable products that look good, work well and last. Plus they're backed by a limited lifetime warranty. Visit eloproducts.com and and use code TRYLO20 for 20% off your first purchase. That's E L L O products.com TRYLO20 for 20 percent off your first Elo purchase just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats. But also yikes. Between crates, beds, toys, treats and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune. Which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in. It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sub sign up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds. Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a'llemonade.com pet your future self will thank you. Your pet won't. They don't know what insurance is. When Skip Henderson saw that a hurricane was building in the Gulf of Mexico in late August 2005, he didn't give it much thought. He'd moved to New Orleans a few years earlier after spending most of his life in New Jersey. Hurricane evacuations weren't part of his vocabulary, but Skip's father in law was Cajun. When he saw the forecasts, he told Skip and his family to get out
- [02:08]
Skip Henderson
of town and he knew it was going to be. That immediately made all kinds of preparations. So when I saw him concerned then, you know, I'm a city guy, I got kind of concerned. So we went to Montgomery, Alabama.
- [02:22]
Jed Lipinski
Skip rode out the storm in Montgomery. He returned a month later to check on his house and was overwhelmed by the devastation.
- [02:30]
Skip Henderson
The ludie had stopped by the time I got there, but it was very Rough. The city was basically like trash day. It was like trash day every day, every street, all the time. You know, the contents of houses, stuff that came from somewhere else. There was a shipping container in the middle of the street and down the lower Ninth Ward, you know, that kind of stuff.
- [02:51]
Jed Lipinski
The storm happened in August. By November, Skip had bought a used minivan and his wife and kids had rejoined him in the city one afternoon to celebrate their return to semi normalcy. They drove to a local playground while his kids played on the swings. Skip checked out a rummage sale across the street. It was overseen by a guy who lived a few houses down from Skip. His name was Dave Dominici and he was, to put it mildly, a real New Orleans character.
- [03:22]
Skip Henderson
He had a huge pot belly. Across his big white pot belly was a green $100 bill. And above that in old English script it says by any means necessary. So you know, this all potbelly and tattoo is out prominent. You know, he's got a black leather jacket on and he's got a mohawk. Looked like had been taken with like grass clippers, like somebody cut his hair.
- [03:48]
Jed Lipinski
Many of the items for sale appeared to have washed up on the street. After the storm, Skip spotted a slightly water damaged set of drums which he thought could be useful. A few years earlier, Skip had co founded a Mardi Gras crew called the Bywater Bone Boys. On the morning of Mardi Gras day, the crew races around the city banging on drums and making a racket to wake people up for the parade. He decided to buy the drums along with a used Allen Iverson jersey. He was settling up when an antique looking table lamp caught his eye.
- [04:22]
Skip Henderson
Yeah, I said, you know, I needed a lamp and how much is that? And we come to a price. It was a couple bucks. And as I'm about to leave, the guy says to me, you know, that's a Nazi lampshade. I said, oh, this is Nazi lampshade. And so that kind of stuck in my mind. He was very insistent that that was a Nazi lampshade. So given under the circumstances, weird, it was normal. So I was like, oh great.
- [04:49]
Jed Lipinski
Skip bought the lamp for $35. As far as he was concerned, it was just another weird New Orleans artifact set adrift by the storm. He had no idea that the lamp would soon take on a life of its own. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is gone south. After a few hours at the playground, Skip Henderson drove his kids back home. He put away the drums and the Iverson jersey. Then he set the lamp on his Desk to take a closer look. Skip was something of an amateur antiquarian. He had a deep interest in old objects and historical artifacts. And he could tell there was something special about this lamp.
- [05:33]
Skip Henderson
It looks like it's crafted rather than manufactured. That was the thing that caught my eye because, you know, I know antiques, I sell guitars, I know the whole used furniture market a little bit, you know, certain elements of it. And this was obviously foreign. It was nice. This isn't something you didn't go get, you know, at Target.
- [05:56]
Jed Lipinski
What really got Skip's attention, though, was the material of the lampshade itself.
- [06:01]
Skip Henderson
It seems greasy, but it's not the material that the lampshade is made of. It's translucent, kind of like an amber color. And you can see there's veining in it, some kind of veining. Like when you look at leather, you know, there's like veining, like marks. So there's veining in this translucent membrane of these panels of this lampshade.
- [06:24]
Jed Lipinski
At some point in the lamp's lifespan, its owners had thought to stitch cotton tassels onto its bottom edge. Skip noticed that they alternated between purple, gold, and yellow, the traditional colors of Mardi Gras. Skip kept the lampshade on his desk for a few weeks. He was consumed with repairing his storm damaged home and didn't think much about it. But over time, he grew increasingly disturbed by Dave Dominici's claim that it was a Nazi lampshade. Skip understood this as a reference to the horrifying legend that Nazis had allegedly made lampshades from the skin of concentration camp victims. Though how Dave Dominici could have known the lampshade's Nazi origins was beyond him. By that winter, Skip wanted the lampshade out of his house. He boxed it up and sent it to a drummaker friend of his in Arizona to see what he thought.
- [07:19]
Skip Henderson
So I sent it to him, put it in the fucking box and mail it off. It's like now it's out of my mind.
- [07:24]
Jed Lipinski
Skip's friend built rawhide drums the old fashioned way by stretching skins over wooden frames and scraping them clean with a hair knife. But to him, the lampshade didn't look like animal skin. He told Skip this never had any
- [07:40]
Skip Henderson
fur on it, and it's nothing like he's seen before. And he has it for a while, and then I talk to him and he says, this thing is really disturbing my wife. Then he said that the woman did not want that in the house anymore. So that comes back to me.
- [08:01]
Jed Lipinski
So Skip sent it to another Friend who collects old Hollywood props. That friend sent it to a guy he knew who worked as a skin pathologist.
- [08:10]
Skip Henderson
They didn't want it. They said, no, this is too weird for us. We're sending it back to you. So now it's back to me again.
- [08:18]
Jed Lipinski
It was around this time that a guy named Mark Jacobson entered the picture. Mark was a veteran magazine journalist and author. He'd met Skip in Clarksdale, Mississippi, years earlier while doing a story about the blues for National Geographic, and they'd become friends. Mark lived full time in Brooklyn, but he bought a small shotgun house next to Skip's. Before the storm, he stopped by whenever he was in town. Skip was considering throwing the lampshade out when he suddenly realized I should give it to Mark.
- [08:49]
Mark Jacobson
And he said, hey, call me on the phone. He said, this weird thing happened to me, man. He said, I bought this thing from this guy. He was like some kind of hustler dude. He had a bunch of stuff. He'd obviously been ransacking the houses that had been ruined during her Katrina.
- [09:06]
Jed Lipinski
Skip went on to tell Mark that the lampshade's owner, a local guy named Dave Dominici, had insisted it was a Nazi lampshade, though it wasn't entirely clear why Dave thought that.
- [09:18]
Mark Jacobson
And he says, as soon as I got it home, I got this really weird vibes off it, you know, because it's very strange looking to begin with, you know. And I said, well, that's a very strange story, Skip. And he said, yeah, well, it's not my problem anymore. And I said, why is that? So he says, I just send it to you, man. I said, oh, yeah, really? He said, well, you're the journalist. You figure out what it is, because I don't want it in my house.
- [09:44]
Jed Lipinski
A few days later, the lampshade arrived at Mark's Brooklyn apartment. Suddenly, it was his problem to solve. The weather's finally warming up, which means grilling season is basically here. If you're like me, you're already thinking about your first backyard barbecue of the year. And fortunately, I already know what's going on. The grill. Good ranchers. I've been a subscriber for a while now, and it's made meal planning a lot easier. Everything's high quality, 100% American meat from local farms delivered straight to my door. And the new custom boxes are a game changer. I can build a box with exactly what my family loves. No guessing, no filler. What I really like is how it turns dinner into an event. The flavors are better, the ingredients are clean. And honestly, it makes every backyard barbecue a little more worth showing up for. And with My Code south, you'll get free meat for life and $25 off your first order. That's free meat with every order and $25 off your first order with my code SOUTH. When you subscribe on goodranchers.com goodranchers.com American meat delivered hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far fetched stories about their families.
- [11:20]
Skip Henderson
I've heard my whole life that she indented the margarita and then we're going
- [11:23]
Jed Lipinski
to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the Wright Brothers. Oh my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows. Lately I've been thinking a lot about my wardrobe, trying to keep fewer things, but ones that are actually worth wearing every day. That's why I keep coming back to Quint's. Their pieces feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful and the prices actually make sense. Take their linen pants and shirts, lightweight, breathable and comfortable, but still polished enough that you look put together without trying too hard. Honestly, they surprised me with how easy they are to wear. And they're flit activewear, soft moisture, wicking and anti odor. Perfect for everything from running errands to lounging at home. What really sets quints apart is the value. By working directly with ethical factories and cutting out middlemen, they give you high quality pieces for 50 to 60% less than and similar brands. Everything is built to last and makes getting dressed simpler. Refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quints.com gonesouth for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Quincom Gonesouth for free shipping and 360 five day returns. Quince.com/gone south. By the time the lampshade landed on Marc Jacobson's doorstep, it had been shipped and returned to skip half a dozen times. The box was covered in stamps and packing tape as if it had traveled around the world. Mark took the lampshade out and examined it. He was creeped out immediately, but fascinated too. Like Skip, Mark was a collector. He was obsessed with objects that had an aura about them. This lampshade certainly had that. Mark was also familiar with the lore of so called Nazi lampshades. Growing up as A Jewish kid in queens during the 1950s, he'd heard the rumors of concentration camp victims being made into things like soap and lampshades. Italian kids in his neighborhood had occasionally used the rumors as a threat.
- [13:47]
Mark Jacobson
I'm aware of its significance and I'm also aware of what it meant in the culture on a kind of really super visceral level. Because when you're nine years old and people are saying stuff like, hey, I'm going to make you into lampshades, you fucking heap, you know, like, these are the things you kind of remember that you know.
- [14:08]
Jed Lipinski
How did kids in post war Queens come to believe Nazis had made Jews into lampshades? The answer requires a little unpacking. After the war, Americans had been bombarded with horrifying reports from the liberated camps. Newsreels showed German civilians entering Buchenwald and being marched past the so called Buchenwald table, a display of tattooed human skin, shrunken heads, and most famously, a lampshade supposedly made from the skin of murdered prisoners. The coverage centered on a woman named Ilse Koch, the so called bitch of Buchenwald and wife of the camp's commandant. Koch was later accused in post war trials of having prisoners with elaborate tattoos killed so their skin could be turned into souvenirs like wallets, book covers, and even lampshades. But despite the allegations, no lampshades were ever produced in court, and the charges involving human skin artifacts were never proven. Still, the image of the human skin lampshade endured. Camp survivors and US Soldiers swore that they had seen or heard about such atrocities. When the camps were liberated, it became a symbol of Nazi cruelty, a shorthand for everything unspeakable about the camps. Even though historians later concluded there was no industrial Nazi program to mass produce human skin lampshades, the story stuck in the popular imagination. Mark let the lampshade sit in his closet for a few months. He wasn't sure what to do with it, but the mystery of its origins weighed on him. He eventually mentioned it to his editor at New York magazine, who suggested he write an article about it.
- [15:57]
Mark Jacobson
You know, I just figured like, I'll go talk to everybody that seems like they might know something.
- [16:03]
Jed Lipinski
Mark first reached out to a friend of a friend who worked as a taxidermist at the American Museum of Natural History, but the guy declined. Relatives of his had died in the camps, he told Mark, adding, this isn't something I need in my life. Mark then contacted an old source named Shia Hrabowski. Xia was a cantor at a local synagogue, but he'd also spent 15 years as a forensic specialist at the Manhattan Medical Examiner's office. When Mark told him about the lampshade, Xie offered to take a look. So Mark boxed it up and brought it to his office in Gramercy Park.
- [16:40]
Mark Jacobson
I said, well, what do you think of this man? He said, wow, it's kind of incredible, you know. So he gave me the name of the DNA guy that they had used during 9 11, because 911 was this kind of watershed moment of DNA testing. Because when 911 happened at the ME's office, they were set up to get all these bodies. You know, hundreds and hundreds of bodies were supposed to come to the ME's office, but they never came because there were no bodies, it was just parts of bodies. So then they got to figure it. Now their job is to figure out which parts of the bodies go with which people, you know, which is a whole different process. So the guy Xia, he gave me the name of one of the testing labs and he says, I'll make you a sample and we'll send it to the lab and see what they say.
- [17:35]
Jed Lipinski
Xiya sent the sample to the Bode Technology Group, a well known genetic analysis lab outside Washington D.C. the Medical Examiner's office had worked closely with the lab after 911 and Xie had been impressed with the results. The head of the lab admitted that due to the age and degradation of the lampshade, it would be hard to recover much genetic information. But he agreed to try. As Mark waited for the results, he figured there were three ways it could go. One, the lampshade was made of animal skin, namely a goat or a pig, both of which have a similar molecular structure to human skin. Two, the lab would be unable to make a definite identification. Or three, the test would come back saying the thing was real, that it was made out of human skin. A few weeks later, Mark got a call from the head of the lab. He got right to the point. Based on the genetic profile, the lab had determined that the sample was of human origin. When you heard that the DNA test showed that it was of human origin, what was your reaction?
- [18:44]
Mark Jacobson
Well, my first reaction was I really didn't believe it. You know, I figured they must have fucked up. That can't be true.
- [18:52]
Jed Lipinski
The head of the lab said the sample was too degraded to say anything about ethnicity or date, but the dominant DNA profile was human. He said he'd be willing to testify in court about the test's accuracy.
- [19:05]
Mark Jacobson
You know, this is sort of a conundrum, right? Because you're thinking it's an urban myth. And now you got this kind of weird scientific testing that's telling you that maybe it isn't right. So for a writer or anybody you know trying to figure out what this story is about, it's a confounding observation and a turn of events, and you can either ignore it or you can try to dig into it. So being an industrious journalist type guy, I chose the latter.
- [19:35]
Skip Henderson
Foreign.
- [19:39]
Jed Lipinski
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- [20:37]
Mark Jacobson
law
- [20:40]
Jed Lipinski
Mark Jacobson got the DNA test results on the lampshade in April 2007, about a year and a half after his friend Skip Henderson bought it at a post Katrina rummage sale in New Orleans, the city was still struggling to recover. Skip was working at a hardware store trying to figure out his next move when he got the call from Mark saying the lampshade was of human origin.
- [21:04]
Skip Henderson
When he told me it was real, I started getting drunk. I must have drank like, I don't know, 12 Coronas, 14 Coronas. I was staggering drunk when my wife pulled up with the kids from school. I don't want to hear that. I really didn't want to hear that news. It leaves me speechless, you know, going through Katrina, losing everything and then, you know, coming back to horror and then this is a sideshow. And I have not only that, but I know that Dave Dominici is going to come back into my life.
- [21:37]
Jed Lipinski
Dave Dominici, of course, was the Local guy who'd sold Skip the lampshade a few months after the storm, along with a set of drums and an Allen Iverson jersey. Dave had also insisted it was a Nazi lampshade, though he'd presented no evidence for this. But now that a reputable DNA lab had confirmed the lampshade was likely made of human skin, Skip thought he should probably tell Dave.
- [22:00]
Skip Henderson
I had to give the news to Dave and I didn't have his number, so I went to his house and he answers the door in a bathrobe. He's got what is obviously a very large caliber Revolver, I figure at 357 Rafted, a newspaper and those little like hospital slippers, and comes to the door and he opens the door. I was like, I don't know who he expected to knock on the door, but it wasn't me. And so I had no other way to react other than like, hey, I'm your neighbor, you know, hey, I'm the neighbor. I bought, you know, the drums and the lamp. And so finally when it dawned on him that I was the guy that gave him money for his stuff, you know, then he became very friendly and invited me into his house, which is a whole another episode.
- [22:55]
Jed Lipinski
As Skip described it, Dave's house had been gutted by Hurricane Katrina, but he hadn't bothered to repair it. He just kind of tidied up the debris in his kitchen. Skip noticed that Dave had covered a few gaping holes in the foundation by nailing a pair of exterior doors to the floor. When Skip revealed the results of the DNA test, Dave was silent for a moment. He put his head in his hands. Then he suddenly jumped up and shouted, I knew it. To Skip's dismay, he seemed almost excited by the idea.
- [23:30]
Skip Henderson
He was jubilant, which to me was even more horrifying, the fact that this guy was celebratory. And that's when he revealed who in fact he really was.
- [23:44]
Jed Lipinski
Dominici then told Skip that he was famous in New Orleans thanks to an incident that had taken place back in the late 90s. As Skip stood there, Dominici disappeared into a back room, then re emerged moments later.
- [23:58]
Skip Henderson
And he opens this beat up old fucking cardboard suitcase, opens it up and it's full of newspapers and newspaper clippings and they're about him.
- [24:09]
Jed Lipinski
As you may recall, we did an episode about the New Orleans graveyard robberies back in season four. In the late 90s, Dave Dominici and a few addict friends stole dozens and possibly hundreds of stone and marble statues and other artifacts from cemeteries across the city. They sold them to local antique dealers, who marked them up substantially to meet the rising demand for items known as cemetery chic. The scheme ultimately collapsed after the family of jazz legend Louis Prima discovered their family tomb had been robbed. Detectives soon traced the string of thefts back to Domenici and his crew. Dominici was arrested and sentenced to a few years in prison. For a time, he was known as the most hated man in New Orleans, but he seemed to relish the attention. Now, seven years later, he was bragging to Skip about it, showing him newspaper clippings he'd saved from that time.
- [25:06]
Skip Henderson
There's a picture of Louis Prima's daughter and her husband crying in front of a grave that Dave had desecrated.
- [25:16]
Jed Lipinski
As it happened, the cemetery thefts had impacted Skip. At the time, Dave was stealing statues. Skip had gotten into welding replicas of the metal crosses found on many of the city's crypts and tombs. He sold some of them at a gallery in the French Quarter.
- [25:32]
Skip Henderson
And the police kept coming to take my stuff, saying that it was stolen from the cemeteries. So, you know, a backhanded compliment, but I had to go get my stuff twice and bring it back and prove that it was mine.
- [25:50]
Jed Lipinski
Skip struggled to wrap his mind around it. The same guy who'd sold him a lampshade made of human skin was also the New Orleans Cemetery Bandit. He called Mark that night to give him the news. Mark was in New York, but he flew back to New Orleans the following week. The two of them met with Dominici again to try to figure out exactly where he'd found the lampshade. But Dominici ran. It wasn't very cooperative.
- [26:16]
Skip Henderson
Oh, Dave had a spider web of imaginative fictive scenarios. First it came from this guy, and then it came from that guy.
- [26:30]
Jed Lipinski
Initially, Dominici said he got the lampshade from his dead father, who'd found it while serving overseas during World War II. The problem with that story, Mark later learned, was that Dominici's dad had served in the Korean War, not World War II. Dominici then explained that he'd gotten it from a Holocaust survivor who'd become the rabbi of a synagogue in nearby Terrebonne Parish. Which sounded promising until Mark discovered there was no synagogue in Terrebonne Parish. There were more stories and more false leads. Mark had about given up. When Dominici called him one morning to apologize, he admitted that he'd found the lampshade in an abandoned house in the weeks after Katrina. Dominici forgot why. He thought it was a Nazi lampshade. He'd been watching a Lot of history documentaries on the History Channel, he said, so that might have had something to do with it. He'd also forgotten which house he'd found it in, but thought it might have been on Lizardi street in the Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood hit hardest by the storm. So Mark walked over and began knocking on doors.
- [27:36]
Skip Henderson
It's like Land of the Lost, you know, kind of a place. Ramshackle houses and cars with those three colored doors. And Mark was going in backyards, asking people, you know, do you know everyone who's had a lampshade missing after Katrina? You know, And a woman tells him, like, look, man, we got people that are missing. I don't know about lampshade.
- [28:00]
Jed Lipinski
By the spring of 2007, fewer than a thousand people were living in the Lower Ninth Ward, less than 1/10 of its pre Katrina population. The chances of finding the lampshade's owner were slim. The question then became, what should Skip and Mark do with it? Skip was the first to suggest they donate it to a Holocaust museum. So Mark reached out to the big one in Washington, D.C. they asked him to send the DNA report and some photographs of the lampshade. Soon, he was on the phone with the museum's former head of collections. To his surprise, she brushed him off. The DNA results may have indicated human DNA, she said, but they didn't specify what kind of human or whether that human was Jewish. She believed lampshades made from Holocaust victims was a myth, one the museum had no desire to propose.
- [28:53]
Mark Jacobson
They had already decided because they've got their own criteria about this kind of stuff. So they don't want any of these stories out there that might be urban myths. So they are against the idea that there was ever any soap. They're against the idea that there was ever any of that kind of stuff. So they're never going to admit that these things might have happened because it somehow, in their mind, it belittles what they consider to be the real story.
- [29:25]
Jed Lipinski
Months later, Mark took a trip to Israel on unrelated business and brought the lampshade with him. He secured a meeting with some high ranking members of Yad Vashem, Israel's central Holocaust Memorial and Research Institute. They were courteous and listened to his story, but they too, declined to accept it. For one, Yad Vashem is not allowed to keep human remains as part of its collection. Anything that is clearly human remains is supposed to be buried, they said, not displayed as an artifact. The curators also told him that even if the shade really was from the skin of camp victims, it would constitute an aberration, meaning it was the work of a few sadistic individuals and not central to understanding how the Holocaust actually functioned. Mark understood the museum's rationale. But even if Nazi lampshades were in fact a myth, Mark felt the myth itself was an important part of Holocaust history, one that deserved to be acknowledged in some way. When Skip learned that the Holocaust museums had declined to take the lampshade, he thought the next best thing would be to set it free in New Orleans.
- [30:35]
Skip Henderson
I would have been happy if this thing had been reported stolen. You could put it on the hood of a car in the French Quarter in a. You know, wrapped with a bow and let it go out into the universe. That would have been fine with me. It needed to end in New Orleans. But Mark pursued and pursued and pursued it. You know, as far as Mark was concerned, he was examining the lore and the whole magnetic force that this thing had taken on, that it's a concept, you know?
- [31:05]
Jed Lipinski
By now, the story of the lampshade had evolved from a magazine article into a book. Mark's research expanded beyond Nazi lampshades to the history of human skin. Artifacts of all kinds. He traveled to Buchenwald to learn more about the camp's history. He spoke with World War II veterans, Holocaust deniers, Nazi memorabilia collectors. At one point, Mark tracked down a former American soldier who'd served with a small psychological war during the liberation of the camps. The man told Mark he'd seen the Buchenwald table with his own eyes. The tattooed skin, the shrunken heads, and the lampshade that started the legend.
- [31:48]
Mark Jacobson
And he had seen it. He had seen the stuff on the table, and he believed that it was made out of human skin.
- [31:55]
Jed Lipinski
At the same time, Mark never stopped trying to find the lampshade's original owner. He talked to anyone he thought could help, particularly people with connections to the city's underground. While waiting to board a flight to New Orleans from LaGuardia one morning, he spotted the musician Dr. John. Mark had seen him play a gig the night before. So he struck up a conversation.
- [32:22]
Mark Jacobson
So I go over to him. I said, hey, I saw you play last night. You were great. I want to ask you a question. And he says, yeah, what, what, what? You know, he's like, barely alive, you know, because I don't know what time he went to bed, you know, And I said, well, I got this thing, and I tell him a little bit of the story, and he's going, yeah, it's really interesting, man. That's far out. And he Said, let me think about that.
- [32:47]
Jed Lipinski
Mark gave Dr. John his number. A few days later, Dr. John began calling Mark in the middle of the night. He was distraught by the idea that a human skin lampshade had been floating around New Orleans for years, possibly decades. He told Mark he'd reached out to people who might know something about its owner.
- [33:06]
Mark Jacobson
And then he started calling me. I'll call you up, see if I can find out anything. He was actually doing research. He said, I called this guy, I called that guy, and this guy, Cheeky Felix. He's the one that you got to talk to, but I don't know where he is, if he's even still alive.
- [33:20]
Jed Lipinski
According to Dr. John, Cheeky Felix was a local Creole guy who used to make masks out of human skin. He hung out at the Saturn Bar, a legendary Bywater dive bar that dated back to the 1950s. Mark spent a few nights asking patrons and bartenders if they'd ever heard of Cheeky Felix, but no one had. Still, Dr. John encouraged him to keep searching.
- [33:45]
Mark Jacobson
Every time he'd come to town, I'd go see him, you know, can he give me a feather or some kind of stuff, you know, he's my boy. He working on the lampshade.
- [33:56]
Jed Lipinski
Mark eventually published his book about the lampshade, titled simply the Lampshade, in 2010. By then, he'd had the lamp in his possession for close to three years. People thought he was insane for keeping it around. Some urged him to bury it. But Mark had grown strangely attached to it, and he felt he still needed to solve the mystery.
- [34:19]
Mark Jacobson
I was desperate to get rid of it, and there was no way I could get rid of it, because I'm not going to bury it. I'm not going to, like, destroy it like the Holocaust Museum is telling me to do. And I'm not going to do any of those things that people are suggesting because I'm not done looking at it. I felt I wasn't done looking at it, you know.
- [34:37]
Jed Lipinski
After the book came out, Mark agreed to participate in a documentary produced by National Geographic. It was called Human A Holocaust Mystery. For the film, Nat Geo had new samples taken and sent to a respected lab in Canada that specializes in ancient and highly degraded DNA. Toward the end of the film, scientists for the lab sat Mark down. They explained that the sample was most likely cowhide, not human skin. Mark was shocked. He felt as if the producers had set him up.
- [35:12]
Mark Jacobson
I felt like, oh, so you want to make this documentary about this thing because you want to prove it doesn't exist? Or it's like I'm crazy or whatever, you know, or these people are trying to put something over on me.
- [35:25]
Jed Lipinski
Mark sent the new test results back to the head of the first lab, the one that had done the DNA tests for nine, 11 victims, and he went insane, man.
- [35:34]
Mark Jacobson
He was saying, they're wrong. You know, this is. We did this perfectly. This is the right thing, you know, so at that point, I had to. Two different DNA tests that didn't agree
- [35:44]
Jed Lipinski
to skip the new DNA results didn't really make a difference. In his mind, the lampshade, whether of human origin or not, served as a reminder of the very real atrocities that had occurred in Nazi Germany and that continue to play out on the world stage.
- [36:01]
Skip Henderson
When stuff like this appears, it just reminds us of, you know, man's ability to be barbaric to his fellow man, you know, and it strains your mind's ability to locate plausible explanations for this kind of cruelty.
- [36:20]
Jed Lipinski
For his part, Mark had come to accept that the mystery of the Lampshade's providence might never be solved. And he was okay with that.
- [36:29]
Mark Jacobson
You know, I did everything I possibly could do, and I looked at it from every single angle you could possibly look at, and sometimes you just feel like, well, that was a wild adventure.
- [36:42]
Jed Lipinski
So where is the lampshade now?
- [36:45]
Mark Jacobson
You know, it's in a safe place and nobody's going to find it. I'm the only one that knows where it is. But should anybody want to take up the investigation of the mysterious lampshade of Buchenwald, New Orleans, I'll be happy to cooperate with them.
- [37:11]
Jed Lipinski
If you have information, story tips, or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us at gone south podcastmail.com that's gone south podcastmail.com for bonus content, you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram at Gone south podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at. Gone south with Jed Lipinski. Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Leah Rees, Dennis, Maddy Sprung Keyser and Lloyd Lockridge. Our story editor is Katie Mingle. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. Thank you for listening to Gone South. It is not hard to destroy a college. Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought
- [38:16]
Mark Jacobson
you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults, and more.
- [38:20]
Jed Lipinski
And now, Campus Files is back for another season. There's a guy screaming into his phone. He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk get assassinated right in front of me. Every week is a new episode and a new story. It was so chaotic. It's almost like a university under siege. Listen to and follow campus files, available now wherever you get your podcasts.