456 - True & Provable

Summary

Podcast Summary: My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Episode 456 - True & Provable
Release Date: November 28, 2024

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Introduction to Thanksgiving and Community Gratitude

Timestamp: 02:30 - 05:15

In this Thanksgiving-themed episode, hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark open by sharing their gratitude for the Murderino community. They highlight the supportive nature of their listeners, emphasizing how the podcast has fostered meaningful connections among fans.

• Karen Kilgariff (05:15): "We're thankful for the Murderino community every day. God, you guys are fucking awesome."

Listener Story: The Impact of the Murderino Community

Timestamp: 05:36 - 08:46

Karen and Georgia recount a heartfelt story shared by listener Mandy, whose premature baby, Nora, was born at 25 weeks. Mandy found solace and support through the podcast's Facebook subgroup, illustrating the profound community impact beyond true crime discussions.

• Georgia Hardstark (07:05): "How fucking beautiful is that?"
• Karen Kilgariff (07:15): "Inspired by a true story. Hey, let's make it about ourselves and make a donation in the name of Murderinos."

Advocacy and the Clery Act

Timestamp: 20:02 - 38:36

The hosts delve into the tragic murder of Jean Cleary in the 1980s, a case that exposed significant gaps in campus safety and led to the creation of the Clery Act. Jean's brutal death at Lehigh University and the subsequent activism by her family resulted in federal legislation mandating universities to report and improve campus crime statistics.

• Georgia Hardstark (35:11): "The Clery act has been amended multiple times. It's far more extensive than it was in the mid-80s."
• Karen Kilgariff (33:09): "The Clery Act is a federal consumer protection law. You are paying to go to this institution. You are a consumer of this institution."

The conversation highlights high-profile violations, such as Penn State's fine for not reporting incidents involving Jerry Sandusky and Michigan State University's penalties related to Dr. Larry Nassar. They emphasize the ongoing challenges in accurately reporting crimes like sexual assault on campuses.

• Georgia Hardstark (36:12): "Despite numerous studies showing that rape is common on campuses, 89% of colleges and universities reported zero incidence of rape."

The Cottingley Fairies: A Historical Hoax

Timestamp: 43:28 - 65:37

Transitioning to a lighter yet intriguing topic, Karen and Georgia explore the story behind the Cottingley Fairies, a famous early 20th-century hoax involving two young girls who created photographs of fairies. Their tale intertwines with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fascination with spiritualism, leading to widespread belief and debate over the authenticity of the photos.

• Karen Kilgariff (52:04): "She copied pictures from a book of children's stories, added wings, cut out the drawings and stuck them into the picture."
• Georgia Hardstark (55:55): "It's like, what is it, that confirmation bias when it's like, if you already believe in something, you're only going to see the stuff that supports what you believe in."

The hosts discuss how the girls' simple artistic prank evolved into a national sensation, convincing many of the fairies' existence until the truth surfaced decades later. They reflect on the human desire for magic and the lengths to which individuals go to find meaning beyond the tangible world.

• Karen Kilgariff (64:22): "It's a beautiful story. And the story's about them."
• Georgia Hardstark (65:37): "It's so human."

Closing Remarks and Thanksgiving Wishes

Timestamp: 65:23 - 67:35

Karen and Georgia wrap up the episode by expressing their gratitude once more, thanking listeners for their continued support and sharing holiday wishes. They reinforce the sense of community that the podcast has built and encourage listeners to stay connected and engaged.

• Karen Kilgariff (66:41): "Thank you for creating that kind of human magic with your good vibes and your community."
• Georgia Hardstark (67:35): "Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter, yfav. Murder."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Karen Kilgariff (05:15): "We're thankful for the Murderino community every day. God, you guys are fucking awesome."
• Georgia Hardstark (07:05): "How fucking beautiful is that?"
• Karen Kilgariff (33:09): "The Clery Act is a federal consumer protection law. You are paying to go to this institution. You are a consumer of this institution."
• Georgia Hardstark (36:12): "Despite numerous studies showing that rape is common on campuses, 89% of colleges and universities reported zero incidence of rape."
• Karen Kilgariff (52:04): "She copied pictures from a book of children's stories, added wings, cut out the drawings and stuck them into the picture."
• Georgia Hardstark (55:55): "It's like, what is it, that confirmation bias when it's like, if you already believe in something, you're only going to see the stuff that supports what you believe in."
• Karen Kilgariff (64:22): "It's a beautiful story. And the story's about them."
• Georgia Hardstark (65:37): "It's so human."
• Karen Kilgariff (66:41): "Thank you for creating that kind of human magic with your good vibes and your community."
• Georgia Hardstark (67:35): "Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter, yfav. Murder."

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Conclusion

Episode 456 of My Favorite Murder offers a blend of heartfelt community stories and engaging true crime history, wrapped in the hosts' characteristic humor and sincerity. From the inspiring impact of the Murderino community to the significant legislative changes spurred by Jean Cleary's tragic death, and the fascinating Cottingley Fairies hoax, Karen and Georgia provide listeners with both emotional depth and intriguing narratives. This Thanksgiving episode underscores the power of community support and the enduring allure of mysteries, both real and imagined.

Transcript

[Georgia Hardstark]

This is exactly right. You know, Georgia, the holidays are the perfect time to tell the people in your life just how much you love and appreciate them.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's so true, Karen. So when you need a personal gift, Shutterfly can help you create something meaningful.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Shutterfly's custom photo gifs are a great way to capture those big moments from your year. A wedding, a new baby, a new puppy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They make the customization process easy. Just upload photos from your phone or social media to the Shutterfly app, and an unforgettable gift will be ready in minutes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No more gifting junk. These are premium items like canvas prints, engraved ornaments, and photo books.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Shutterfly can help with stocking stuffers like travel mugs, puzzles, and magnets.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And for the ultimate gifting hack, design any of these gifts once and give them to multiple family members.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So I have to say this quietly because he's in the other room, but for Vince, for the holidays, I'm making him a photo book of us from the first 10 years of our relationship. Oh, there are so many photos in our phone, and we always, like, text them back and forth to each other and, like, smile at them, but there's, like, nowhere to look at them.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's right. Put it in his hands.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I use the Shutterfly app to put it together. It's really easy. Anyone can use it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Very sweet.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I also love the idea of, like, you and your friend, like, your worst photo that you've ever taken together. Turning that into a puzzle. Yes. And then giving it to them. I mean, come on.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's such a good idea. Explore gifts like blankets, mugs, photo books, and [e-mail]. all easy to customize in minutes with your favorite photos.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Enjoy 40 off your Shutterfly. Order with code MFM40 and make something meaningful this year.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Get free shipping on qualified orders. See site for more details.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Goodbye. Ah, yes. The magnificent Trolley Sour Bright crawler. Also known as Trollicus Brus the Worms Captain. Captivating neon color makes it an easy, gummy prey trolley. It's a surprisingly sour, invitingly chewy, staggeringly snackable species unlike anything else found on this planet. Eat me. Delicious. Visit trolley.com to shop now. Trolley Eat me. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's George Heartstart.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's Karen Kilgareth.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This is Thanksgiving.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This comes out on Thanksgiving. 2024.

[Georgia Hardstark]

2024. That's right. That's the year that we're dealing with.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, what are you grateful for this year?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm grateful for all the decorations. That Asia put up in the studio. If you're watching this on video, you can see that it's super autumnal.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's gorgeous. It's themed out.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It totally is.

[Georgia Hardstark]

There's baby gourds, but that also kind of feel like I was looking at this. I'm like, what if you could turn them like this? And there's like secret. It's one of those, you could put your pot in it type of container.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I wanted it to be like a kitchen timer.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, wouldn't that be cute? Remember those old Tupperware commercials where it would be like something like this, but then there'd just be a little lock on the front or advertisements?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And when I was. I was little enough that I used to think that's what Tupperware was.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or it's like a lock.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It was like a tomato with the lock on the front of it where I'm like, I want a tomato with the lock on it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

How about these turkey glasses?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, yeah, you've got a cornucopia one.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, never have you looked better.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Why does New Year's get all the fun when Thanksgiving's ready for it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Guys, I can't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm gonna go ahead and put these right here.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Is it what was meant to be on my head?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. It's like, oh, finally Karen's found her calling. Did you see there was like a girl who turned her long, beautiful hair. She must be a hair influencer. Turned it into like a cornucopia.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Really?

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's really cool. All these braids and then all these like accessories and stuff.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Was there stuff coming out of it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, she like put a pumpkin in and put a this in.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's cool.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You know, that reminds me of just that much hair. Did you ever see that video where Bob the drag queen is doing a live show and he's got this gigantic wig on. So there's the thing where they take off the wig and then it reveals like another wig and it's kind of like a thing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, I love it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's. Sometimes in the drag community they do. There's a. I can't remember what the song was, but basically like builds, builds, builds. And it goes to do the wig reveal and there's literally like a five year old little girl sitting on his head. It is so funny. And the crowd go. It is just like the most epic reveal of all time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like a crowd that's primed and ready for something awesome and epic and then it fucking outdoes then it's just.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The cutest little girl that's like, mm, what the fuck?

[Karen Kilgariff]

So hilarious. I'm sure it was an AI. I mean, I can't even picture it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I feel it might have been pre AI. Pre AI. I'm not sure.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Should we say what we're thankful for this year? Because there's a theme of what Karen and I are thankful for. And guess what? It's you, listener.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, I thought it was us.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, it's us. We're thankful for ourselves.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The theme is us. Once again.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, like, okay, so the theme is that we're thankful for. For the Murderino community every day. God, you guys are fucking awesome. And we have a couple cool things going on that we wanted to tell you about regarding you yourself, the Murderino community.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What the Murderinos have done in the world.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's right. So a listener named Mandy sent us an article that I hadn't seen at all.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Just came out, I think, just came.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Out in People magazine by Angela Andaloro. It's called Micro Preemie mom didn't know if she'd be writing an obituary or birth announcement when baby arrived at 25 weeks.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And this actually kind of hits me because my dear friend Carrie Sullen Vedder just had a preemie at 34 weeks and I met that baby and it was still in a nicu and it was so tiny. And the thought of a 25 week baby, I just cannot even imagine.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Must have been so scary and so.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Scary and unexpected and yeah, like Carrie's baby was 3lbs 9oz. I mean, little tiny baby. She's doing great.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And so is Carrie. Great. So basically, the mother, Caitlin, gave birth to her daughter prematurely, unexpectedly at 25 weeks. Due to complications. The baby named Nora was named Nora.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, baby Nora.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Baby Nora was in the NICU for 118 days. And in the article, Caitlin said she sought help. Didn't know who to talk to about this. So she said she got support by posting to a subgroup for fans of the true crime podcast My Favorite Murder on Facebook. And she says, quote, I started posting there every week and it kind of became a thing where I found help that way. Yeah, how fucking beautiful is that?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, truly.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, because when you have this, like many listeners, everyone has the experience that you've had somewhere in this weird little thing that we've created.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I think it's the thing too, of women being given the opportunity to support and help each other around a thing that of course, it's like, why? First of all, why do you like that? Why are you interested in that?

[Karen Kilgariff]

True crime, blah, blah, blah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Then it's like, but it's really not about that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

And here's actually what it is about, where it's like, there's a sisterhood that's actually real in this way.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, that's a good point. When they're always like, why do women like true crime, like, you guys do so much? And it's like, that's not what it's about. It's about so much bigger than that. And this is like, a lovely example of that.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's beautiful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So now. So Nora's now 18 months old, happy and healthy, and in a beautiful family. And we're so, so happy for you, Caitlin. Thank you to Mandy for sending that to us. Should I read her email? Who's Mandy's. Okay, let me read Mandy's email.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, I thought you meant, like, her email address where I was like, sure, yeah. Is it mandymail or just at mandymoremail?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Mandy says hello. Hopefully this reaches you. I wanted to share an article written about a fan, her micro preemie daughter, and the community that we have, all because of your podcast. The community was built over our love of MFM and spread into worldwide friendships. I'm in the Facebook subgroup and witnessed Caitlin and Nora's journey from birth until now. Baby Nora has so many honorary aunties and uncles because of the community. So I just wanted to share this and say thank you. Thank you for giving us something that we love and the community that has been built around it because of you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, that's such a beautiful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Thank you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Beautiful thing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, that's nice.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's so lovely. And, yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's the piece of it that, like, you and I have just been watching and hearing about. But we're like, it kind of doesn't have anything to do with us. In a lot of ways, it's like, it's a true honor to have done something that is. It's essentially, hey, this is what we're interested in. And this thing grew up around it of people being this kind of beautiful to each other.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Inspired by a true story.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Hey, let's make it about ourselves and make a donation in the name of Margarinos.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Nice.

[Karen Kilgariff]

To St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. $10,000 were given them. Its mission is to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. You can go to stjude.orgs-j u d e.org to donate yourself if you'd like to. And yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yay, beautiful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Thankful for y'all.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Thanks you guys, for. I mean, that's just kind of staggering. It's like, it's really lovely. Well, I also have a really beautiful thing to share about a Murderina and TikTok.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know you've been building this up and I'm really fucking excited to see it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, I just. Here's the thing, as I've already said this already, which is I'm on TikTok, but I'm also middle aged, so a lot of time I don't know what's going on and I don't really want to be in there. I just want to look at stuff and not like normal social media interaction. But of course, there's people that are interacting with me and I talk about it all the time. So people are like, hey, did you see this? Hey, you would like this. And they also were saying it to you too, but kind of through me. So I don't really. I don't even know that that inbox is there. Every once in a while I'm like, what's this over here? And then It'll be like 20 things. I'm like, oh, God. So a while ago I did that. And if you don't know, I've been doing a thing. I started reviewing sinkholes. Cause it's a true passion of mine and we called it Sinkholes Saturdays. Ye. And it's just like a little fun dumb thing. So then I open the TikTok inbox one day and there is this TikTok. I think if you look at that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God. Okay, here we go.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Karen. Long time listener, first time caller. I live next door to a very old house. Our house is very old too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Some flippers came in and there's now a big sink pool. This Property sold for $630,000. Now listen, I don't have any kind of reference to how deep this is, but I have a banana for scale. Banana for scale.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Banana for scale. That's huge.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I'm on the very edge of the precipice to bring you this breaking news. Karen, please rate my sinkhole.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That looked like a well. Like an old well, right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

It was like, you got this house and then suddenly it's like, oh. But then now there's a crevasse on the side.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And honestly, it did look bigger once the banana was in it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right? Banana for scale. Banana for scale.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Banana for scale. Much needed.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So I just Want to say I don't know that person's name, but their TikTok handle is Jessie Boofoot.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Assuming it's a person named Boofoot and the bio says they're an amateur human. And I just have a couple questions to Jesse Buffett, which is like, how did you discover something that close to your neighbor's house? Like, you were clearly snooping in between the other person moving out and somebody else moving in. Yeah, a little sneaky, in my opinion. Like, were you literally trespassing? Please give the full crime details of what you were doing. And then also, just how did you get the idea of using a banana for scale? Is that a reference to our show Bananas?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. And I also love that she had a string around it. She wasn't gonna leave it behind. She's not a litterer. No, she wouldn't litter the banana. Not leave it there.

[Georgia Hardstark]

In 2024, who can throw a banana down into a hole and never have it returned?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cause those aren't che. Pull it back out. It's really thoughtful, actually.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's so lovely all the way around. The energy with which that was delivered, where it's like, please write this.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I gotta tell Karen about my sinkhole.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love it, love it so much. So I guess if you have a sinkhole in your life, of course, please send it in because I want to know about it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Do not create a sinkhole just to, like, have something to create. You know what I mean?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Don't be like that lady that was digging the hole in her basement for no reason. And then, like, truly, you just kept digging.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No illegal sinkholes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No. You have to observe them in nature. But, Jesse Bufut, I can't thank you enough. It's truly one of my favorite things that I have seen on TikTok, but because I just don't really interact with it, it seemed like I think I faved it or, like, said, yay, but it meant much more, and I talked about it much more, and I want that person to know how much it meant, because I want people to send us tiktoks like that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, totally. Send us tiktoks like that. Okay, well, speaking of the bananas, podcasts and other podcasts that are on our.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Podcast network and other fruits and vegetables that we enjoy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's get to the exactly right me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This week on Ghosted by Roz Hernandez. Roz is joined by comedian and impressionist James Adomian to talk about spoofy, to talk about spooky things in other people's.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Voices, and then on that's Messed up, an SVU podcast. Cara and Lisa chat about the Ballad of Dwight and Irina from SVU's 22nd season, and comedian Rikki Lindhone joins them to talk about her role in the episode.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Very cool. Yeah. Also over at the MFM store, we now have signed copies of our book Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered. If you wanna give that book to the superfan in your life for the holidays, or yourself if you're that person, sure, you can head over to www.exactlyrightstore.com to get your copy today.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And for all you demon heads, son of Satan, the latest episode of MFM, animated by Nick Terry, is now available on YouTube.com exactlyrightmedia. Please follow that as well, if also.

[Georgia Hardstark]

A little bit of a Sad announcement. After 180 thrilling double features, we are saying goodbye to our beloved movie podcast. I Saw what yout did is closing its cinema doors. We want to thank Danielle Henderson and Millie de Chirico for four years of hilarity and hard work. You guys did such an amazing job on that podcast and we really, we're really going to miss you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Definitely. And if you're a listener, please stay tuned because Millie will have exciting news for you in 2025. And please enjoy their last episode where they cover alien from 1979 and faster pussycat kill kill from 1965. What a great duo to end on.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's a really powerful sign off.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right there it is. This holiday season, ditch the socks and scented candles and upgrade to an Aura Digital Frame.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's like giving someone a window into all your best memories, but not in a creepy way.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Aura Frames allows users to curate and share their photos and memories with loved ones, making it a and meaningful gift.

[Georgia Hardstark]

These frames are ranked as the number one digital picture frame by Wirecutter, and here's why. They're incredibly easy to set up, update and enjoy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Aura Frames feature a high resolution display showcasing photos in vivid detail.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Users can update their frames from anywhere using the Aura app, making it convenient to keep the frame fresh with new memories.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Plus you can preload them with photos and a gift message, making it personal right out of the box.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, this is a gift for like if you've bought your dad a ton of golf things, like you've run out of golf things. And the year I got to bring him an aura frame because we started doing ads for aura frames and we're still talking about it. Everybody still loves this gift. It's like the pictures come up, you know, the first set of pictures when I gave him the gift that Christmas. They're in there and now it's added, added, added. So like, the cycle goes through. As you're watching tv, you kind of look over and see an old picture. It's like the most delightful digital photo album. It's great.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It is. And for a limited time, visit auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura' bestselling carver Matte Frames by using promo code MFM at checkout.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's a U R A frames.com promo code MFM this exclusive black Friday Cyber.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Monday deal is their best of the year, so don't miss out. Terms and conditions apply.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Goodbye Goodbye.

[Karen Kilgariff]

From bustling malls to overbooked calendars, the holidays can be exhausting.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This year. Why not gift yourself a little calm amidst the chaos with Vaya?

[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

I have two bottles of Vaya right here in my office so I'll take the Dreams Sleep gummy and that has thc. And I also take the Zen CBD sleep gummies that are THC free. I love those as well. And you can like mix and match whatever you're in the mood for.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So good. So this holiday season gift yourself some peace of mind. If you're over 21, go to viahemp.com that's v I I a hemp.com and.

[Karen Kilgariff]

For a limited time during the holidays via is offering 25% off site wide plus up to 50% off select items and bundles.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And if you're hearing this ad post sale, you can still save by using COD Murder for 25% off.

[Karen Kilgariff]

After you purchase, they ask where you heard about them.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So please support our show and tell them that we sent you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This holiday season, enhance your everyday with Vaya. Goodbye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thanksgiving Day is such a weird day. It's like everyone's working really hard. At least in our household everyone's like in the kitchen like working really hard. And there's A kind of. Almost like it's a holiday, but it's the least holiday ish of all the holidays because it's, it's a holiday about people just busting ass in the kitchen all day long and trying to make. Trying to time everything out and make it good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'd rather just go to a Mexican restaurant, honestly.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, that's my only option. If my dad and my sister didn't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cook, I'd just be like, well, Vince, he like, has to have the whole thing. And so he. And he has to have it a certain way. And like, I wouldn't do it that way. So he's just like, I'll do it myself. And he does it himself.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And is it like, is it the.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Like classic Michigan way, classic Midwest, the whole casserole thing? Yes, all of it. It's great. I'm happy with it. And it's all like, a lot of it's canned stuff and instant that. So like, I don't. It's not that complicated, but yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, well. Also, does he do ocean spray cranberry sauce with the, with the can shape?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I love that.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You've got to. It's my favorite.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's so good.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And you can just get your slices as big as the ripple of the can.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes, it's perfect.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love Thanksgiving.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, today it is, so.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, then let's celebrate with terrible stories.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Ok, great.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, cool. Because it's what we like. Okay. So today I'm going to tell you the story behind a federal law that you might not be familiar with. So it's not really a household name, but it fundamentally changed how colleges and universities across the US Handle safety and transparency on campus. This is the story of the murder of Jean Clary, whose death exposed gaps in the existing system and sparked a push for real change. The sources of this story today are several articles that ran in the Morning Call newspaper in the 1980s, a 1989 Los Angeles Times article by journalist Beverly Bayette, a 1990 People magazine article by journalists Ken Gross and Andrea Fine. And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So Jeanne Clary is born in 1966 and grows up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Philadelphia. She's raised in a loving home with her parents, Howard and Connie, and her two old Benjamin and Howard iii. Her mom, Connie, would later say that, quote, jean loved her family with a passion, especially her brothers. She wanted to be just like her brothers. So she grows up, she's a great kid. She has a reputation for being kind and loyal. And brave. And she's not afraid to stick up for classmates who are getting bullied or being overlooked. And for a while, Jean proudly rocks a gap in her smile after she lost a front tooth while skating. She's not afraid to be different and she's afraid to be herself.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's scrappy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Her dad, Howard would later tell People magazine, quote, she was one of the first little girls on the local Little League team. Wow, that's hard.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Back then, like the early 80s, you're playing little League and people are like.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What are you doing? No roles allowed. Go to fucking Home EC and shut up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And at that time when you were doing stuff like that, like, I want to play baseball and I'm going to fight for my right to play baseball, Guess who didn't help you do that? Other little girls. Like, that's the time where people are like, oh no, stay away. Oh no. But I bet she was really good at baseball because she had two older brothers, right? Yeah. So later at college, she would reflect on her relationship with her gender and her family in an essay that she called Growing up in an Androgynous Environment. And in it she talks about how her parents treated her the same as her brothers and that she was educated at an all girls school where she was able to, quote, hold positions that a male most likely would have held in a public school, such as school president, president of the athletic association and head of the newspaper.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's so interesting. I would have never thought of that. But yeah, it's all stuff that girls typically didn't do back then.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. And then you get this, you get this sense of like, of course we can do this, of course we should be doing this. And then you graduate from that school and you go out into the world and you're like, oh no, they hate us. Yeah, but I just love the idea. It's like an early 80s fighter, you know. So with that, Jean is also. She seems aware as a young woman that she's vulnerable in ways that aren't always in her control. So, for example, her first choice to go to college was at Tulane University in New Orleans, where her brothers went. She'd actually already applied and been accepted and planned on going there and joining the school's tennis team. But in the fall of 1984, the Clinic Cleary family learned that an 18 year old Tulane student named Karen Minken was raped and murdered in her off campus apartment by a man who also lived in the building.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh my God.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So of course this tragedy rattles the Cleary family. Jean's mom Connie later says, quote, we were so shocked, Howard and me. We told Jean we couldn't allow her to go to Tulane. We were too frightened. It was just so far away. So the family decides to take what they believe is the safer path, which is that Sheen enrolls at Lehigh University, which is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It's about 50 miles from her parents house, about like an hour and a half drive. It's an excellent school with a picturesque university look, complete with gothic style buildings, winding walkways, a beautiful canopy of trees. It's like. And Connie says, quote, Jean just loved the campus. And I love the fact that it was an hour and 20 minutes away. Yeah, yeah. So several months later, in late March of 1986, Howard and Connie go to pick Jean up from school and take her back to Bryn Mawr for the Easter holiday weekend. And Connie remembers, quote, she couldn't wait to get back. She loved Lehi. It was the happiest year of her life. So she gets back to school a couple days later on the night of Friday April 4, Jean goes to a frat party and she stays there until around 3am when she heads back to her residence hall. So, so Jean's roommate lost her keys. This is such a, like we've all done this a million times. Jean's roommate loses her keys and she's still out. So Jean leaves their dorm room door open, unlocked for her so she can get in when she comes back.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Just the wrong night for some fucking reason.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Of all nights, just anything that goes on. Yeah, so Jean leaves the door open and goes to sleep. So this residence hall, you know, it's the mid-80s, so it's a residence hall that has the exterior door that you need a key for. Then there's two interior doors, at least two including the actual dorm room door. But on this night, which is a Friday night, all those doors are jammed open with pizza boxes so that the people in the dorms can have their friends come and go. Yeah, very common just now it is. So sometime between 4 and 6:30 in the morning, an intruder enters Jean's dorm, heads to the laundry room, steals a couple odds and ends and then goes upstairs, eventually stopping on the third floor. And that's where Jean's dorm room is. And then the intruder just starts trying the doors, looking for one that's unlocked and he finds one. When he gets to Jean's door, he enters while she sleeps and he grabs a radio, a camera, some jewelry, some cash. But then Gene wakes up and finds a man in her dark room. He brutally attacks her and rapes her. He mutilates her neck with a broken beer bottle, bites her, he beats her, and then he strangles her to death and then leaves with the valuables he's stolen. So when another student notices that her door has been left open all night, they enter and discover Jean's brutalized body. Hours later, Jean's parents get a knock at their door. And when they open it, they find a policeman standing there. Connie says, quote, most Americans saw the space shuttle Challenger splinter into a billion pieces. That's what happened to our hearts.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, God.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. So it doesn't take long for investigators to identify Jean's killer. It's another lehigh student, a 20 year old sophomore named Joseph Henry. So Joseph had been co hosting a party that same night at his off campus apartment with his roommates and he got very drunk and his crush left with another guy and he got really mad. He kicked down a door in his own apartment. And then later on, when his roommates had gone to sleep, he walked basically onto campus to Jean's residence hall. Joseph and Jean had never met. It wasn't like he was going to look for her. So when he gets back home after this attack, only a couple hours pass and he admits what he did to his room.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And they go to police. He's arrested immediately. So it's important to note, Joseph is black, Jean is white. So you can imagine how this case got treated in 1980s media. It's a total circus and it actually has a real effect on the Lehigh campus. The students of color who go to Lehigh are left to process this horrific crime as well as that instant sensationalism around the interracial element of the crime. And there's only about 60 black students in a student body of 6,000.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

One Lehigh alum will later remember, quote, it was the most horrible crime you can imagine and has also kind of reinforced racial stereotypes. It was very hostile for the students who were there through that period. We didn't necessarily see it directly targeting us, but it sort of lived on through the stories and the dynamic. So you're already definitely experiencing standard racism, being 60 out of 6,000 and suddenly now, you know, it's just like people, if they're going to blame you, whether they do it overtly or it's just like the energy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. And it's part of the conversation no matter what. Totally. Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So Joseph has tried. It's basically an open and shut case for the prosecution. Police find missing items from Jean's dorm room inside of Joseph's bedroom. He admitted, of course, to his roommates. The evidence is all there. His defense tries an insanity plea that hinged on the idea, the theory, that Joseph had a rare reaction to alcohol and experienced a personality change while intoxicated. But the jury doesn't buy it and ultimately convicts him. He's currently now serving a life sentence. He has expressed regret for his actions. So meanwhile, the Cleary family is, of course, just inundated in this tragedy, and then they learn something that shocks them. In the three years preceding Jean's murder, there had been 38 reports of violent offenses on Lehigh's campus, including rapes and robberies.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Jesus.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And considering the fact that many crimes, especially rape, don't get reported at all, it's a pretty high number for a school with only 6,000 students. To compare, Penn State has a student body of around 60,000 at that time, and there were 24 offenses reported.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow. Okay. That's a really high rate.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. So the Clerys base their decision on what college Gene would go to, primarily based on the idea of campus safety. So having access to that information about Lehigh, of course, would have impacted that decision. At the time, only 4% of colleges and universities in the US track this type of data. Connie says, quote, I knew I was going to have to do something to try to prevent other parents, other students from this eternal nightmare that never goes away. It never goes away. But the Clearys take their grief and channel it into activism. Our favorite kind of story. So they sue Lehigh University for $25 million in damages, and that lawsuit settles out of court for an undisclosed amount. But then they take that settlement money and their own money, and the entire family starts a watchdog group called Security on Campus, including the dad, Howard, who quit his job at a mail order business to join the family and work on this.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's amazing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And they basically, as a family and as this business, start collecting data on campus crimes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's so innovative.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Instead of just throwing money at it, they're like, creating this system that's going.

[Georgia Hardstark]

To help a solution.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Totally.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And it's the 80s, so collecting data is just.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I can.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It must have been like, what do you do, you write the government for it or you, like, call people on the phone? I have no idea.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I can hear the dot matrix printer going right in my head.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. I don't think we're even two fax machines at this point. No, no. At the same time, the Clerys launch an aggressive campaign to reform and enhance campus security. They realize that colleges might not choose to publicize this type of data to protect their reputations. So the Clery's first move, which is so smart, is to lobby elected officials to pass legisl mandating it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The Clerys, alongside several survivors who join them in their mission, begin to, quote, pound the halls of Congress. And Connie adds, quote, you couldn't have paid me a million dollars to get up and speak before, but Jean's death has freed me. I'm not afraid of anything or anybody anymore. And those efforts pay off. In 1988, Pennsylvania's then governor, Bob Casey signs a bill into law that requires all state colleges and universities to regulate three years worth of campus crime reports. Shortly after, more than a dozen other states follow suit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Then in 1990, George H.W. bush signs the Gene Clery act into law at the national level. And this is described as a federal consumer protection law. And it requires any university that receives federal funding to track and publicize crime statistics on various offenses, including robbery, sexual assault, hate crime crimes, stalking, homicides, and more.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's amazing. And I love the consumer part of it because that's so true. You are paying to go to this institution. You are, you know, you are a consumer of this institution, especially if they're fucking federally funded.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You wouldn't send your child to a movie theater where you got the information that people punched people randomly in the face.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. All the time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So you're like, yep, I won't go ahead and spend my money. I'll take it somewhere else where they care about safety.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And if you don't care about safety and, you know, don't want to put any effort into it, your numbers will be bad and reflect that. So they'll put more money into it so they don't have to put those numbers out.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's so smart. It's so smart.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You gotta force people to fucking behave a lot.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And I think that idea of like, as a family making those kinds of really calculated, very smart strategic decisions, that it's like not stand over here and try to get people to like, believe or care. It just goes straight to get a law pass.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's not ask them politely. Let's just make it that if they don't do it, their bottom line will be affected because that's really what they give a shit about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Wow. We're all over colleges and universities, those schools.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's why we didn't go to college.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's why they kicked us out. Ring, ring, Sac State. Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What? Listen, City College loved it. I did.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It was a good time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was a great time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This law also requires schools to publish a report explaining their plans for handling emergencies from national disasters to mass shootings, as well as measures taken to secure on campus buildings.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So just like what you got, put it together and turn it in.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You're going to offer this place and you need to also offer, again, you know, some kind of level of safety.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. The Clery act goes beyond physical violence. Students can file Clery complaints for anything that threatens their safety on campus, and that includes threats to their personal health. And universities that don't comply with the Clery act are fined by the Department of Education. And there have been several high profile examples of those violations.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

One infamous One is the $2.4 million fine levied against Penn State for not publicly reporting incidents involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Shit. Ahead of his 2012 conviction for serial sexual abuse. As well as the $4.5 million fine on Michigan State University for its failure to protect students from Dr. Larry Nassar.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right, right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Who sexually abused hundreds of female gymnasts before being convicted in 2017.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's just. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So the stats that universities are required to collect under the Clery act are imperfect, of course. For example, it's well established that sexual assault remains seriously underreported. The website of the American association of University Women notes that, quote, despite numerous studies showing that rape is Common on campuses, 89% of colleges and universities reported zero incidence of rape. 77% of campuses reported zero incidents of sexual assault, including rape and fondling, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Zero percent. Can you imagine that world as fucking it? I would go move there immediately.

[Georgia Hardstark]

As if.

[Karen Kilgariff]

If you get 0%, you need to be fucking worried because that means you're in a culture that is scaring women and scaring survivors into not reporting. That's all that it means.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes, that's right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It doesn't mean it's safe.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's almost scarier.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I have a big cup of coffee before we start.

[Georgia Hardstark]

A shocking statistic that speaks to the inadequacy of reporting structures rather than the frequency of events.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That should let you finish.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No, no, no. I think your wording was much clearer and more understandable. But I mean, it is that kind of thing. I feel like that if that isn't a thing that's threatening to you, then that is. And the thing that's. It's very easy to brush that off if you're some college dean and you're just like it's fine.

[Karen Kilgariff]

See, it's zero.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, it's zero. So now the Clery act has been amended multiple times. It's far more extensive than it was in the mid-80s. Like many significant laws, including Title IX, which deals with sex based discrimination on campus and overlaps with the Clery act, it has faced some criticism for becoming overly complex and bogged down by bureaucracy. Yeah, so have they all.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, I'd rather have that than the alternative.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Than nothing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Can I. Can we just have. Can we have something that's complicated rather than nothing? That's nothing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Something that's this horrible is going to have complicated solutions.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm really on my high horse on this one. It's almost like saying it's like, so it's complicated, so just don't do it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's too complicated. No, it's too complicated.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Sorry.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Then stop fucking sexually assaulting and raping fuckers.

[Georgia Hardstark]

While it's not perfect, the Clarice Crusade is an undeniable huge step towards greater transparency from academic institutions. Meanwhile, their original organization, Security on Campus, is now the Clery center, and it continues to advocate for safer campuses by raising awareness around things like hazing and binged. In 2015, on the 25th anniversary of the Jean Cleary Act's passing, Jean's mother, Connie says, quote, it took an army and it took my life. It was worth every single bit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God, I can't imagine.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know. So November 23rd, which is this week, would have been Jean Clary's 58th birthday. And here's her as a teenager.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, what a bright, beautiful smile.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She truly looks like every girl I knew in the 80s.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Totally aw.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Outside of her old residence hall at Lehigh, there's a plaque honoring her. And it says, quote, lest we forget the meaning of her death, we must protect one another so that her life will not have been in vain. And that is the story of Jean Cleary and the federal law named in her honor.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God. I did not know about that at all.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Me either.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's incredible.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I had no idea.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow. That was amazing. Great job.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thank you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Great Thanksgiving story.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know, right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

So I got Vince a big chunky men's cashmere cardigan and it's so lovely. He looks like he lives in a lighthouse in it, but I stole it because it is so freaking comfy and soft.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So now I'm gonna need to buy him another one because, like, it's mine. That's it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

Goodbye.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Support for today's episode comes from Oneskin.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

I have to say I wasn't a big, like eye cream believer because I think that's the kind of thing where you're just like, that's where when you start to age, you can really see it under your eyes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I guess I was like, I definitely have eye bags and I'm getting these weird little kind of skin taggy things. I started using that eye cream just because I was like, well, why not? And it's been about four or five months. I can completely see a difference.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's amazing. Yeah, I love this stuff. It's definitely in my nightly routine.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

We only have one body, one skin, and only you can choose to make it better.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Goodbye. All right, well, let's take a fucking. What all the. 180, 360 fucking.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Let's go from, you know, eating the salad and having our vegetables straight into dessert. It's dessert time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's dessert time. Okay, I'm going to tell you a very desserty story. It's about a tween and teen cousins getting into mischief together, and in doing so, accidentally creating One of the UK's most endearing debates on fantastical, unexplained creatures in the vein of, like, what you love, fucking Loch Ness or Bigfoot. But this one, this is the story of the Cottingley fairies.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So excited. I love this story and I love how far it went.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, it went really far. And we're gonna have to talk about why. Cause it's so confounding.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cause I'll show you the photos, too. I'm sure you've seen them. The main sources for this story are two articles from BBC News, and the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes. All right, well, let's start in one of your favorite times and places. The late 1800s, early 1900s. Picture it. The Industrial Revolution is starting to take over the world. All these, like, rural communities are coming into Big C. And this is how people are now living and making money. And just this is how society is sadly headed. Yeah, right. And so this means that our once reliance and connection with nature and traditional lifestyles that relied upon nature is starting to fracture. And it's during this time then, of course, that people start to romanticize that connection that we supposedly had, thinking of it as an innocent time and using it kind of as magical escape. So it's in this vein that the fairy aesthetic becomes a huge trend in the uk, even being nicknamed Fairy Fever. Oh, and this is for everyone. I don't know. It's these little. It's like Tinkerbell, essentially. That's the fairy idea. We're Talking about. And actually got huge in Victorian children's literature. So children grew up with fairy art and stories, of course, particularly in the wildly popular Peter Pan, which debuted in 1907. And then it was a massive sensation. And then it was performed as a play consistently for about 25 years. So people were obsessed with this. Every child went and saw the play. I mean, clapping. If you believe in fairies, that kind of thing. I know.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Bring Tinkerbell back.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Remember, she was kind of cunty and I loved it. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Tinkerbell's like, it's my way or the highway. But also in Irish culture, like, my grandpa grew up believing in fairies and telling us about, like, no, they're real.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Really?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, they're on our property. Oh, yeah. Completely part of that. Living with nature.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Totally.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Where you're let, you know, a circle of mushrooms is a fairy ring. That kind of stuff where it's like, oh, it's the way people explain what nature's doing and, you know, make sense of it. Yeah, yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or they're real.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or they're real and they planted those mushrooms perfectly with a Compass.

[Karen Kilgariff]

More than 350 books about fairies are published in the UK between 1920 and 1925.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's a fucking lot. And adults are into fairy stuff, but for them, the fascination, it kind of overlaps with spiritualism, which I know you love. This is the same time period when seances are becoming very popular. And people attribute this to the grief that adults, of course, felt in the aftermath of World War I. They wanted that connection with the afterlife so that all of their sons who died didn't die in vain, and they can still connect with them. And, you know, that's under.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And also, just a little, the idea of, like, this isn't just how life is. There's more. There's magic out there.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Totally. And so people see proof of the existence of fairies as a corroboration for other fantastical ideas that they would like to approach with the seriousness of science. A lot of people who are really into the afterlife are pissed off that fairies are lumped into what they're into. You know, saying, like, they don't believe in that, and you're making this seem less legit. But other people, like, see them all as kind of this, like, fairy tale. That is true.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I like to just put them all on one shirt and then that's what. That's what decides.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What do you mean?

[Georgia Hardstark]

You just, like, if you want a sweatshirt, you can have some spiritual stuff over. Spiritualism stuff over here. And some fairies.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And then you're like, I've been reincarnated.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I thought you were gonna say, like, when it's like spiritualism and reincarnation and fairies and when it's just all the names.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, like the John, Ringo, Paul and Judy. Who's the fourth beetle? I can't remember.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy. Okay, so here we are in this headspace. And now we're gonna travel to the north of England in the summer of 1917. War's just ended and we're near Leeds in the village of Cottingley, which is part of the city of Bradford. Got it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Sure.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We're in the home of the Wright family, which specks up to a little wooded valley. At the Bott valley is a small body of water. I mean, it's a fucking novel.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You just get. You're like, I'm gonna just go walk out into the woods.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. It writes itself. There's like a stream and it's called the Cottingley beck. And a beck is a regional term for a brook.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So the Wright family is made up of the married couple named Polly and Arthur and their 16 year old daughter, Elsie. Elsie loves to draw. She's a skilled artist. Her father is an amateur photographer with his own dark room. And Elsie has learned a lot about photography from him, which is. Oh my God, so cute. Also living with the family is Elsie's aunt and her nine year old cousin Frances, who recently moved back to England from South Africa, where, of course, colonization was rampant. So even though Elsie is a lot older than her cousin, you know, 16 and 9, you wouldn't think they'd be best of friends. But the two girls get along and they love playing together. And in particular, they like to hang out by that beck where they typically get into trouble for getting their clothes and shoes wet and for tracking mud into the house. Sounds like a fucking great childhood.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The dream. Yeah, we got to hang out near a creek growing up.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That sounds amazing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Just like there was a creek in our backyard and you just went down there and it just like hung out.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We hung out by the like, LA river and drank under bridges and like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And raced with the pink Lady.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Honestly, smoke cigarettes and. Yeah, take.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, it does.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So when the moms yell at them for getting wet, Elsie and Frances takes all kinds. It's my new favorite thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I say it a lot lately. It's really true. Okay, sorry.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So when their moms yell at the girls for getting wet, Elsie and Frances like to reply that they were quote off to see the Fairies, like, that's their excuse. We're off to see the fairies. It sounds like this is mostly Frances the nine year old's excuse, and it's looked at by the family as like the equivalent of a dog ate my homework. Kind of a jokey thing. But Elsie always backs her up, agreeing that there are fairies in the beck. Of course, no one takes them seriously. It's just a cute little thing the girls say when they get in trouble. Until one day In July of 1917, the girls tromp into the Wright's kitchen after fucking around in the beck and the mothers are fed up. This time, Elsie says that they really had seen fairies and that she was going to prove it. She borrows one of her father's cameras and she and Francis head back down. And they come back to the house less than an hour later saying that they have irrefutable proof that the fairies are real. Arthur helps Elsie develop the photo. And sure enough, clear as day, there's a photograph of Francis surrounded by several dainty dancing fairies. This beautiful Victorian photograph, which I'll show you in a minute, but let me. Let's keep going for a second. Arthur is suspicious. The dad is, like, super suspicious. He also knows his daughter does have the artistic chops to fake this. Okay, first of all, yeah. In fact, Elsie has a job at a photo studio in Bradford retouching photographic plates. But the image does look incredibly lifelike. And he knows that Elsie didn't tamper with the photo plate, like, which is like, basically the negative, because he helped her develop it. He would have seen it when he was developing it. So he's like, this is so. This is like. I can't explain this.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The only other option is that Elsie drew an extremely lifelike fairy, cut it out and posed it in the picture. And listen, let me tell you, that's what she did.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Spoiler alert.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's exactly what she did. I hate to spoil it, but, like, you gotta know all the time. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

If you know the story, you kind of know the ending of the story.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So that's exactly what they did. She copied pictures from a book of children's stories, added wings, cut out the drawings and stuck them into. To stand them up. That's why they look real and three dimensional. And the girls are adamant that the photo isn't faked and they're committed to their story. And, you know, at least when it's just their immediate family. Yeah, they're just playing along.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They are so committed, in fact, that they take another picture a few Months later, in. In September, this one shows Elsie sitting next to a little winged creature which the girls claim is a gnome. So let me show you the two photos that we have and you tell me what you think. See, photography's pretty early at this time. So you and I look at this and we're like, that's so stupid. You can tell it's fake, but you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Know, But I mean, yeah, right. These days it would be retouched high hell, whatever. But.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And if you really want to believe it, then you'll believe it. Right, let's see the other one. So that's Elsie. I mean, it's ethereal looking and very pretty.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hold on, let me. Oh, yes, yes. There it is.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You see it?

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's so pretty.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh my God.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Also, I just kind of love. It's like you've got a weird older cousin who's super arty.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's the coolest.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And then you're like a little nine year old that probably has a big imagination yourself.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And so you're kind of like, it's the.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And Elsie's like playing along even though adults are so fucking boring and shit.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Or she's like, maybe she's the one that's like, what if fairies were real? Like, who knows?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or like, hey, Frances, let's play a trick on our family. Like this is.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, these are like an arty thing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

These girls are bros, love it. However, I don't think they expected this to go as far as it went because in 1919, Elsie's mother, even though she doesn't seem to believe in it, brings the prints of the girls photos to a lecture on fairies being held at Bradford's Theosophical Society, which a group devoted to a New Age religious movement that's popular at the time. So it's all the kind of spiritualism stuff. And the photos are so impressive that the society's president brings them to a meeting in London and gives a series of lectures about them in 1920, as if they're real. Like he believes it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It seems like it's kind of like finally the thing we've been like, talking about and theorizing about. There's actually like. Cause photographs themselves were relatively so.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Then it's like they're like, well, we have proof finally.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Proof. It's all anyone wants.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And all these fucking. Just little girls fucking around in London. The photos catch the attention of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. So he is already a famous author and he'd been working on an article about fairies because he had been obsessed and fascinated with spiritualism ever since his own son died in World War I. So it seems like he really wanted to believe this with his whole being.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We all really want to believe something. We really do.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And so he viewed the photos as if they were real and as if they were proof of the legitimacy of not just fairies, but spiritualism in general. Wow. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Also, it's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who, like, when you watch Sherlock Holmes stuff, it's like everything is deduction and logic and fact and all that stuff. So it's kind of very powerful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's sad. It makes you think he must have been really heartbroken if he. If he just so easily believed these things.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Or if it's like he lived that life of, like, logic only for so long, and then it's like, but what is that gonna get me?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Or like, if I'm broken hearted, that logic isn't gonna help me.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. That logic is true. Then I'm just. I have nothing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's me here. Yeah. Sad.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. So Conan Doyle writes an article about the fairy photos and says that he has gone through every possible explanation for how they could have been faked and can only come to the conclusion that they' and that fairies exist. He even gets opinions from several experts in photography, including one from the Kodak company. The experts all come back with mixed reviews, but Conan Doyle concludes that the results of these opinions show two out of three experts agree that the photos are real, which is Kim, kind of. You know what? Like, I'm taking this and I'm making it sound like this. Yes, he's not lying, but it's not. You know, it's just like that thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Where dentists recommend toothpaste. It's like, that's not real.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, they don't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's not. They don't even like toothpaste. Also. It's just. I think it's also the piece of. You take something up and you're like, I believe in this. And then it's like, well, then. Well, then fight for it. And it's like, oh, now suddenly there's something. There is a fight, or like a I'm on this side kind of thing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like, what is it, that confirmation bias when it's like, if you already believe in something, you're only going to see the stuff that supports what you believe in.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Absolutely.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And the other stuff seems like bullshit to you?

[Georgia Hardstark]

There's magic in the world.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Bullshit.

[Georgia Hardstark]

There is. There is.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I don't want to fight someone and be like, no, there isn't. You know, it's like, because if you need that fucking. I mean, same with religion. Like, if you need that, have it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And also, who the fuck knows?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think there is a very beautiful thing of, like, you got to keep open to it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

There's no point in being like, there's nothing ever anywhere.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Just, like, that's not good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But you also have to be open to the point where, like, other people's opinions are just as fucking legitimate as yours, because there's no such. When there's no such thing as.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Is this new for you?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Prove a negative.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm sorry?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Prove a negative.

[Georgia Hardstark]

There's debate.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Georgia.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I've never met her before.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's fine. She's ready for Thanksgiving dinner table.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Proven negative.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I fucking dare you. So Conan Doyle asks Elsie's father for permission to print the photos in the article. And Arthur, the father, is so impressed by this famous author who's, like, paying attention to this little family all of a sudden, that he agrees to letting the photos be published, although he refuses payment for the photos that Conan Doyle wants to give him. And it sounds like he says it's because he doesn't want to tarnish their genuineness, but it sounds like he maybe knows they're fake and doesn't want to scam the author out of money. Much as thoughtful.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He's like, I can kind of go along with this a little bit. I can't go that far.

[Karen Kilgariff]

If I take money, then I'm complicit. Yeah. So Conan Doyle's article is published in the Strand magazine in the UK, Australia, and America in the 1920s. The girls are referred to in the article with by pseudonyms. And the article causes a huge sensation. Not because everyone believes the photos are real. In fact, most people probably believe they're fake. But the debate over whether or not they are completely real, it's, like, goes viral, essentially. It's like, what color is this dress? Remember that?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes. And it's fun to land on a side.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, exactly. And to, like, find one person to argue the other side is just like, what you do at a pub. Like, what else are you gonna do at a pub?

[Georgia Hardstark]

But also, that dress was so clearly blue. Blue. I don't understand. Like, what were people seeing? Is it something, like, in your retina or something?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Must be. Anyway, you should cover that story. Gripping drama.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The gripping drama of being on Twitter in, like, 2011 or whenever it was.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So no one can figure out how the photos have been faked. So that's kind of part of the whole thing. And they don't think two young girls would have the skills necessary to create this kind of illusion. So it's like few.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Sexist.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, exactly. So after the article comes out, Arthur Conan Doyle buys Francis and Elsie new cameras so that they can try and capture more photos of the fairies. By this point, it's 1921, and the girls are 13 and 20 years old, and they really don't know what to do because it's fucking fake. And they never believed that anyone would really fall for it. You know, they didn't expect. I guess maybe they didn't know their mom would take them to this lecture and never people would take it seriously. But everyone is so starstruck by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that they're just like, let's just go with it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You know, and he's like, put a lot at. There's a lot at stake at, like, his reputation at this point. So they, like, don't wanna tell him for that reason as well.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's like, sir, we're big liars. I don't know why you believe in us so much.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Lying.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So. Not knowing what to do and feeling kind of sorry for Conan Doyle, the girls accept the cameras. He also pays them around 20 pounds each, which in today's US dollars, $500, $1,150. He just hands him a 20 quid or whatever. They produce two more photos, one of Francis and one of Elsie, and there's a fairy in each photo. These photos are also published, along with a fifth photo which just shows the fairies and neither of the girls. And this last photo is called the Fairies. And their. And the fairies do look a little different in this photo, more transparent and ethereal.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Those are the real ones.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The idea is that they are dematerializing front of the camera. And actually, to this day, no one's quite sure how they achieved that effect.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Because they're the real ones.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right? So they're real. The fairy craze peaks in about 1923, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dies in 1930. But the debate about whether or not the Conningley fairies in those photos are real rages on for decades, with many people believing, rightly, that the fairies are a hoax, others insisting that they are real. Like, how fun and harmless. Except for his heart.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know. I mean, but it didn't affect him. I think he probably really enjoyed it all the way through.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. I mean, it's like a fun thing in the middle of a bunch of fucking horrible shit happening. Horrible. It's like a fun debate.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The sky is filled with ash and smoke. Everybody is like in the workhouse.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The poverty is abundant. When television becomes mainstream, there are programs devoted to the tale and lots of people do investigative deep dives into the subject, but no one officially solves the mystery until the 1980s. I wonder if you watched this. That's when Francis and Elsie, who are now in their late 70s and 8 and 80s, come clean in an interview on a show about the paranormal called Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Ooh.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Do you remember it? No, but I was British.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's like somebody, can you someone order it for me right now?

[Karen Kilgariff]

How do I. You need the Time Life series.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I need cassettes. Turn away from my job and start watching it immediately.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Me too. Oh, it's like the Spock one.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes. In Search of.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. So Elsie, the older one, finally admits that the whole thing got out of hand when Conan Doyle got ahold of the story and the girls just decided to go along with it. She, she says, quote, two village kids and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle. Well, we could only keep quiet. End quote. The girls. Now, women say they want to tell the truth. Old women, they say they want to tell the truth before they die. They don't want their grandkids wondering, which. I love it. It's us always saying, don't leave anything secret.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, Clear it up. Why not?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Deathbed confessions for everyone, Even if you have to make something up. So for her part, Frances, the younger of the two, has always insisted that that last photo, the one of the fairies in their sunbath, is real. It's like, why would she do that if she's. They're coming clean, right? And it is like, really? It's like spider webby looking in the dew, you know, kind of a thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Because they're real.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You think so?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Uh huh. You do?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Why?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I just think there's things going on that we have no idea. But also, it's like, it's almost a thing of, like, whether or not that exact thing is. Here's what's magical. Two girls in a creek in this tiny town get the inventor of Sherlock Holmes to come and hang out with them and give them money.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's a book like, that doesn't happen in real life.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's all like. It's almost like the thing that everyone's focusing on isn't the magic, it's the girls and what they're doing and how they do it is the Magic.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's a beautiful story. And the story's about them.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And the mom maybe knew that, like, look up my brilliant daughter and my brilliant niece.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And in 2019, the daughter of Frances Griffiths put up a series of prints from the original negatives at auction.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Guess how many pounds they sell for.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Is it in the millions?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, I don't want to make you guess because it's not.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fifty hundred million, fifty thousand. It should have got way more than that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know, but still. I know. Maybe I'll get you that for your birthday next year for Thanksgiving. I'll get you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You can make it a lithograph. It doesn't. To be the original.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And that is the story of the Cottingley fairies.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Perfection. I mean. Yeah. I really love that also. It's just like Throuser Conan Doyle, a man who has seen a bunch of shit, gone through a bunch of shit. Like, it's suddenly like later in life or maybe end of life, he's like, wait a second. One last chance to actually experience. Like, he wanted it so bad because fear of his.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Fear of his son's passing. Needing there to be more to life than this. The basics.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Which is like, so human.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So human. And also kind of like, that's a.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You don't think it's bad that they tricked him?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, no, because it wasn't their intent. It wasn't like they were like, if we make these fairies, we can get $1,000 or whatever. It's like they were just having fun and being artistic. And then a little thing they were doing with their family of, like, for either attention or just whatever. Or maybe because they were down there and there's like. They say that in Ireland, bogs would release gases that would do this weird sparkling thing. And that's why people were like, oh, my God, what's that over there? Like, there's all kinds of shit that's been going on for a long time that we have no explanation for.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So he's kind of coming and going, wait a second. Is it, you know, do I finally have something true or do I have something. Something provable for this feeling that won't go away?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I love that. Well, we have something true and provable. And that is the listeners here that we're so thankful for. And thank you for spending your Thanksgiving with us. Or not. If you're not listening to it, it's fine.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or later, if it's Fourth of July and you're like, oh, I never caught this one. Also, thank you for creating that kind of human magic with your good vibes and your community and your building. Because, man, we've seen it. We've seen it in action, and it is truly the definition of magic.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Totally. So thank you, guys. Thanks for listening.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Stay sexy and don't get murdered.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Goodbye, Elvis.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Do you want a cookie?

[Georgia Hardstark]

This has been an exact exactly right production.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This episode was mixed by Liana Squalace.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Our Researchers are Maren McClassian and Allie Elkin.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurdermail.com Follow the.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Show on Instagram and Facebook at. My favorite murder and Twitter, yfav. Murder. Goodbye.