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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
This is an I Heart podcast.
- [00:05]
Ed Helms
Valspar Ultra starts at just $29.98 a gallon, so we've got you covered when your daughter wants to paint her room again after last year's masterpiece of a unicorn mural. Dad, please. Or when you realize that maybe you went too hard on the grayish I miss color. Or when you are sure you wanted a home gym but your elliptical is currently hanging your laundry. What about a home office? Shop everything you need for your next phase with Valspar. Available at Lowe's.
- [00:33]
Holly Fry
Price varies by Sheen Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers, known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:10]
Ed Helms
Hey there, it's your host Ed Helms here. Real quick. Before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called SNAFU the Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw Ups. And you can pre pre order it right now@snafu-book.com Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book. It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular faceplants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right, I'm coming to New York, D.C. boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles. So it's if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q and A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head to snafu-book.com to pre order the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is SNAFU Season 3, Formula 6. Last time on Snafu, the temperance movement swept America. Every abolitionist was a teetotaler. Mabel Walker Willebrandt was hired to lead Prohibition enforcement. There's one way it can be done. Get at the source of supply. And much of Prohibition enforcement falls, strangely to the U.S. treasury Department.
- [02:44]
Daniel Okrent
Which is another way of saying we're going to use it for political payoffs.
- [02:57]
Ed Helms
It's 1918 in France. The Western Front. Yep, we're a long way from the speakeasies of New York, but we're here in the rolling French countryside to meet a new character in our story. He's sitting inside a combat tank, clattering across the bloody battlefield. His name, George Cassidy. And he's under attack. The tank rolls down a slope as shells explode around it. And then it sinks into a crater of mud. Its steel armor shields George and his crew from the bright yellow bursts of artillery flame, but it can't protect them from the mist that's engulfed the field. World War I's most insidious weapon, mustard gas. On the battlefield, poison gas was turning war into a new kind of nightmare. Both Germany and the US were experimenting with lethal gases that were quickly becoming the deadliest instruments in the history of warfare. The Great War had a nickname, the Chemists War. And now mustard gas seeps into George Cassidy's tank and into the eyes, noses and lungs of the tankers. George and his two crewmates choke at the controls as the machine grinds to a halt. The deadly mist causes the tankers to go blind, vomit and start losing consciousness. The other two men pass out. George holds on, but poisoned by the gas, George is too weak to move, blinking and struggling to breathe while the battle rages around him, his crewmates have fallen silent. Finally, footsteps approach the tank. George hears hands banging on the outside. Shouts shadows over the viewport as men peer inside. George's heart stops. Is it the enemy? The door swings open and thank God, it's the Yanks. George is rescued, carried up out of the crater in the pool of gas to George makes it off the battlefield alive. But he's devastated to find out he's the only survivor from his crew. In 1919, when a million American soldiers in France begin the journey home, George is among the troops, packed like sardines into fleets of liners and cargo ships, leaving the blood soaked trenches of the Western Front behind them. As he gazes across the Atlantic, George coughs. His lungs are pocked with chemical burns. For the rest of his life, every cough reminds him of the horrors he'd faced in the war. Horrors that showed how scientific advancements could be co opted to create weapons of mass murder. But now George is heading home. And soon he'll be starting a new life. As the shores of the good old US of A come into view, George is pondering a very important Question, where the hell can he get a drink back home? That question was at the center of another raging war, one in which he would soon find himself smack dab in the middle. I'm Ed Helms and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw ups. This is season three, the story of Formula six, how Prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people. Today we're riding shotgun with the bootleggers because men like George Cassidy didn't come home from the fight in France just to take the new laws laying down. As Mabel Walker Willebrandt became Prohibition's champion, George Cassidy would become one of its greatest defiers. And the two sides they represented were about to clash. In 1922, two years into prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was settling into her gig as head honcho of Prohibition enforcement. To get a sense of how the new U.S. assistant Attorney General approached her job, there are a few things about her you should know. Little Mabel grew up crisscrossing the Great plains in a 9 by 12 foot tent pitched in the fields of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Her family was always on the move, fleeing the latest natural disaster. Tornadoes, ice storms, that kind of stuff. Mabel's earliest memory from childhood was of a flash flood rushing through their tent. Her mom taking the kitchen table and using it as a raft to keep her daughter afloat and alive. A little like that time my Cub Scout trip got rained out. Except I had a home to go back to. That experience had quite an impact on young Mabel.
- [08:20]
Daniel Okrent
She was a very serious woman.
- [08:22]
Ed Helms
You don't say. Daniel Okrent.
- [08:25]
Daniel Okrent
She woke up every day. The first thing she did was take an ice cold bath. Which gives an indication, I think, of how tough she was.
- [08:31]
Ed Helms
Cold plunging is all the rage these days. I guess Mabel was just ahead of the curve. In any case, the ice Queen didn't get to become the highest ranking woman in the United States government by waking up each day to whistling birds opening her bedroom shades and the soft glow of the morning sun. No, she woke up every morning with her goddamn game face on. For starters, it wasn't just Satan's last stronghold, New York City, that was flouting the law. In Mabel's backyard, the supposed dry citadel speakeasies were popping up on every corner. By some estimates, there were 3,000 in the nation's capital. But Mabel's headaches extended well beyond the metropolises of the Northeast. Also thumbing its nose at Prohibition was the fine city of Savannah, Georgia, which had turned into an unofficial headquarters for illegal drinking. Booze was flowing and so were the criminals delivering it. Bootleggers, as they were called. The term goes back to the 1800s when traders slid their flasks of liquor into their boots. During Prohibition, bootlegging became a household term, thanks in no small part to the notorious Georgia syndicate, the Savannah Four. Their leader was a guy named Willie Har. Willie owned and controlled a fleet of ships that transported liquor from Scotland and France to another British territory, the Bahamas. From there it was shipped to a dozen different states in the U.S. often hidden in secret man made caves up and down the US Coast. Willie Har didn't exactly keep a low profile. His nickname was the Admiral of Bootleggers. And his Savannah 4 had a recreational baseball squad. Their team name presumably slapped across their uniforms. The Bootlegger Team. I assume they were part of an all criminal baseball league along with the tax dodgers. Sorry, I had to go there. Mabel was determined to bust them up and even sent a dozen Prohibition bureau agents to to Savannah to do the job. But Willie Harr's ring had judges, politicians, and it turns out, Prohibition agents on its payroll. And those agents convinced to look the other way came back from Savannah empty handed. I hope they at least brought back some bootlegger team swag for Mabel. Willie Har would have a future. Run in with Mabel. Put a pin in that for a second. But as brazen as Haar in the Savannah Four might have been, the most brazen bootlegger of all was operating right under Mabel's nose. Which brings us back to good old George Cassidy.
- [11:13]
Fred Cassidy
On the ship coming back, they had a poll about who was in favor of Prohibition. And out of the 2,500 guys on the troop carrier, only 98 wanted prohibition.
- [11:26]
Ed Helms
After George got off the ship from France, he headed home to Virginia. And he had plenty of stories for his pals.
- [11:32]
Fred Cassidy
He was just so damn gregarious.
- [11:34]
Ed Helms
That's Fred Cassidy, George's son.
- [11:37]
Fred Cassidy
He didn't give a shit who you were, where you were from, what you did, or any of that stuff. Come on up, have a drink with me, you know, and we'll have a good time. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff.
- [11:48]
Ed Helms
George partied in style.
- [11:50]
Fred Cassidy
He was a dapper dude. If you ever saw him in his Irish War Veterans National Commander's uniform, you would have thought he was a general of the most powerful army in the world or something.
- [12:02]
Ed Helms
George also had a signature green felt hat that gave him an unmistakable look. A snappily dressed party animal with a trove of war stories. Georgie was one of a kind. But he struggled to transition back to civilian life. Why? Poison. The mustard gas George had sucked in destroyed his lungs, which made it hard for him to find work. Before the war, George had been a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
- [12:29]
Fred Cassidy
When he came back, he couldn't pass their physical to get rehired.
- [12:33]
Ed Helms
George couldn't find a steady gig anywhere else either. He put his body on the line for his home country and now it was letting him down. When he finally did find work, it wasn't the kind of job that had his parents bursting with pride. You see, George didn't grow up in a household of drinkers. Really, the opposite. George's Irish American father had been sober for decades. His mom, a Brit, made herself at home in the USA by becoming a proud card carrying member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. But none of that rubbed off on George.
- [13:07]
Fred Cassidy
He liked to imbibe. Everybody around my dad liked to imbibe.
- [13:11]
Ed Helms
Which isn't a surprise given George was from the moonshining capital of the world.
- [13:18]
Fred Cassidy
There was a ton of moonshining going on in Virginia. A lot of the Virginia farmers have their stills out in a discreet area in Appalachia.
- [13:28]
Ed Helms
Moonshining had been prevalent since the Civil War when moonshiners distilled illegal liquor at night and then drivers or bootleggers smuggled it across the region. When Prohibition passed, this was all supposed to get shut down, right? Well, turns out it ain't so easy to change an entire culture overnight. But that was essentially the task facing the Prohibition agents under Mabel Walker Willebrandt. A tall order in a place like Franklin County, Virginia, nestled in the beautiful Blue ridge Mountains, where 99 out of every hundred people were connected to the moonshine business. One agent reported back to D.C. on the pointlessness of even bothering with arrests.
- [14:10]
Paul Holz
I'm sorry to report that at this time it is almost impossible to get a conviction. In any case, juries are in sympathy.
- [14:18]
Ed Helms
With the bootlegger and the moonshiner. And you know, when the moonshiners themselves included judges, politicians and the local police, how are you supposed to stop that? People like George came back from the war looking for work and saw an opportunity. Here's one American artillery captain who was in the Reserve corps writing to his.
- [14:40]
Paul Holz
It looks to me like the moonshine business is gonna be pretty good. Some of us want to get in on the ground floor. At least we want to get in there in time to lay in a supply for future consumption.
- [14:52]
Ed Helms
That's 34 year old future president Harry Truman. Fellas like Harry saw bootlegging as a lucrative investment opportunity. George Cassidy saw it as something else. A lifeline. You see, George was running out of options. He was a disabled veteran out of work. Which is why shipping liquor from his neighborhood to moneyed drinkers across D.C. felt like a necessary career choice. He started small, just a couple of bottles for friends and friends of friends. Then a few more and a few more. His Blue Ridge, Virginia product must have been pretty good because pretty soon the orders were flowing one way and George kept the moonshine flowing the other. George's lifeline was becoming a gold mine because George's clients, well, they were the kind of people who liked to meet at the Hotel varnum in Washington D.C. the Varnum's a grand old hotel at the corner of C Street and New Jersey Avenue, a meeting place. Outside, George sees two well dressed white men. He gets out and shakes their hands, then heads around back to make a delivery. He hands off a small paper package for his next delivery. George grabs two bags out of his trunk, one in each hand. George walks along New Jersey Avenue, nodding and smiling to passersby. He was the friendly sort. George then crosses the street at Independence Avenue towards his next stop, a white building with a very large, very conspicuous dome. Yeah, it's probably the one you're thinking of. That would be the U.S. capitol building. George's delivery route doesn't take him into the Capitol itself, but rather into the surrounding buildings where members of Congress have their offices. Stepping into the House Office Building, George gives a nod to the security fellas at the door and with his bags full of booze, walks right in. That's right. Among the buyers for George's top quality Virginia hooch are the nation's lawmakers. His clientele are powerful men of every political party and persuasion. You see, George isn't just any bootlegger. He's become the go to bootlegger for Congress. And Congress, well, they're pretty thirsty now. Mabel's not blind to this. She makes regular visits to the Capitol. Sometimes she even sits in the gallery of the Senate Chamber room to hear the nation's lawmakers present their plans. During the closing days of a recent session, a senator objected to and prevented the passage of important legislation while in such a condition of intoxication that he had to hold his desk to keep himself upright. I have become well acquainted with the fact that many congressmen and senators who vote for the bills designed to aid Prohibition enforcement are persistent violators of the law, as people across the country were now drinking more than ever, and bootleggers across the eastern seaboard were running wild. Congress was too shit faced to even pretend that they were going to do something about it. Mabel's corrupt bureau agents were proving to be just as worthless. It was time for Mabel to take things into her own hands.
- [18:27]
Holly Fry
Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Trimarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers, known as the wicked lady who who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Hear the story of the gentleman robber, the romantic darling of the ladies, and a tale about a wager over a sack of potatoes. But you'll have to tune in to learn who won that one. Some highwaymen were well mannered or faked it. People were concerned about the romanticism of robbers, but most were just thugs. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Call them robbers or bandits. Some are legendary figures. Listen to stories about historical crimes on Criminalia now. Plus the cocktails and mocktails inspired by each. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:29]
Jake Hanrahan
I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life, and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is unique access with straightforward on the ground reporting. We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media, a way that it showcases what the mainstream media cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people. No excuses. For the past decade, I've been going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along too. Listen to the Away Days podcast, reporting from the underbelly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:29]
Paul Holz
A murder happens, the case goes cold. Then over 100 years later, we take a second look. Paul I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator.
- [20:38]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a journalist and historian.
- [20:41]
Paul Holz
On our podcast Buried Bones, we reexamine historical true crime cases using modern forensic techniques.
- [20:47]
Kate Winkler Dawson
We dig into what the original investigators may have missed. Growing up on a farm, when I heard a gunshot, I did not immediately think murder.
- [20:54]
Paul Holz
Unless this person went out to Shoot squirrels. They're not choosing a.22 to go hunting out there.
- [21:01]
Kate Winkler Dawson
These cases may be old, but the questions are still relevant and often chilling.
- [21:06]
Paul Holz
I know this chauffeur is not of concern. You know, it's like, well, he's the last one who saw her alive, so how did they eliminate him?
- [21:15]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Join us as we take you back to the cold cases that haunt us to this day.
- [21:20]
Paul Holz
New episodes every Wednesday on the Exactly Right network. Listen to Buried bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:33]
Podcast Host
The early 20th century is a uniquely poisonous time for a number of reasons.
- [21:39]
Ed Helms
That's historian Deborah Blum. She says that everywhere across the country, from Mabel's D.C. to New York, all the way to San Francisco, industrial chemistry was becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyday Americans.
- [21:54]
Podcast Host
We're seeing the rise of industrial chemistry, and there's a deluge of new chemical compounds created by industries in the United States, which is, you know, one of the countries that really takes the forefront of the industrial manufacturing age. Chemists are figuring out that they can take all of these poisonous substances that occur in nature and recreate them in a laboratory.
- [22:18]
Ed Helms
Arsenic, mercury, chloroform, carbolic acid. I would go on, but the last time I had a close encounter with a beaker, I was watching the Muppets. Beaker, I told you never to talk to me like that because I can't understand it. That's a little shout out to my 80s kids out there. Point is, products of rapidly advancing chemistry were everywhere. In pharmacies, doctor's offices, grocery stores, kitchens, and of course, also in bars where speakeasy backrooms were starting to look a lot more like chemistry labs. The reason classy clubs were hiring actual chemists to make sure that the illegal liquor they were serving to high end customers wasn't toxic and was only going to fuck you up the right way. This is the Prohibition, you know, the razzle dazzle of the flappers under the electric lights, where the big band served up bouncy rhythms and the bartenders served up potent cocktails. At least that's the front room. But the back room, it was all chemistry, baby. Remember, clean and legal alcohol had all been poured into the sewers. At this point, what was left could be dodgy. So to keep their customers safe, top speakeasy managers would turn to chemistry. Hello. I'm here to interview for the chemist position. I require $1 million payment. Aw, wise guy, eh? So you want your patrons dead?
- [23:56]
Paul Holz
I'll take you to the boss.
- [23:59]
Ed Helms
But what if you were running a bar and couldn't afford the high fees of a newly in demand chemical brainiac? Or if you were a drinker who didn't have pockets deep enough to order your cocktails? In the main dining room of the Cotton Club, in plenty of New York neighborhoods, back alley liquor was flowing just as freely. But no lab coded expert with a safety checklist was looking out for you. As Deborah Blum says, America's poorer drinkers would rather overlook the dubious origins of their booze and literally stomach the risk. People were seemingly so eager for a drink that they just didn't care. There was a chance it could land them in the hospital.
- [24:39]
Podcast Host
Unless you're rich, you're drinking whatever you can get your hands on. So one of the cocktails of the Bowery, which is a really poor neighborhood in New York, was called smoke, and that was fuel, alcohol, and water.
- [24:54]
Ed Helms
You could get your smoke in the back of drugstores or paint stores. I know the scene in Lower Manhattan has always been a bit edgy, but even without the spiky hair and the dog collars, this was grisly stuff. There was also the infamous Ginger Jake.
- [25:08]
Podcast Host
You see Ginger Jake, which was another formula ginned up by bootleggers that actually mimics the symptoms of Parkinson's. Or you see the cocktail called Derail, in which they were siphoning off some of the industrial alcohols from the railroads and serving it up in drinks.
- [25:30]
Ed Helms
These drinks could kill. During one stretch over a few months, deaths from smoke averaged one a day. When Prohibition agents managed to track down the suppliers for the deadly cocktail, they discovered the drinks were served straight from cans stenciled with the word poison on them.
- [25:46]
Podcast Host
This acceptance of risk that came with Prohibition at these levels is kind of horrifying, but it was there and it was real.
- [25:55]
Ed Helms
It's that risk big spenders were paying to avoid. Pay the COVID charge to get into a big club. You were betting the owner had paid a nerdy chemist to make damn sure your gin and tonic was not a gin and toxic. These backroom chemists were clearly breaking the law, but a lot of them actually saw themselves as humanitarians every time they caught a dangerous toxin in a gallon of hooch and kept it out of a drinker's mouth. Well, what'd you get there? Under the seat? Can you believe it? It's still half full. They had done some good. And in part because they were so successful at keeping the party going in New York City and state officials started to ask themselves, why don't we just stop pretending here.
- [26:44]
Daniel Okrent
New York repealed its version of the amendment in 1922. So from that point forward, New York officially was not supporting Prohibition.
- [26:56]
Ed Helms
So Yeah, under the 18th Amendment, any state could just stick their middle finger up to Prohibition if they had the votes to repeal it. Which is exactly what New York State lawmakers did. They weren't gonna do any crackin down. New York cops weren't gonna be making any arrests. And even if they did, New York judges weren't gonna throw the book at any club owners, Federal law or no, there was simply too much money in the liquor game. So in effect, New York became a sanctuary city for American drinkers. And if you were a chemist in the city breaking the law on a daily basis, you could rest easy knowing that your community had your back. Not only that, they were downright grateful to you for saving them from Ginger Jake and derail. Even the cops, the Mayor and the Governor were on your side. And the good liquor? It was still there for the drinking. If you had the right chemists in your pocket or the whole bloomin world may go dry. Her dad made his will and he left the old stillness to the bootlegger's daughter. And I down in Washington when news reached the office of the Department of Justice that the Big Apple was flipping off Prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was, you guessed it, pissed.
- [28:24]
Holly Fry
Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Trimarchy, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers, known as the Wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Hear the story of the gentleman robber, the romantic darling of the ladies, and a tale about a wager over a sack of potatoes. But you'll have to tune in to learn who won that one. Some highwaymen were well mannered or faked it. People were concerned about the romanticism of robbers, but most were just thugs. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Call them robbers or bandits. Some are legendary figures. Listen to stories about historical crimes on Criminalia now, plus the cocktails and mocktails inspired by each. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:26]
Jake Hanrahan
I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life, and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is unique access with straightforward on the ground reporting. We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media. A way that showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people. No experience. Excuses. For the past decade, I've been going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along, too. Listen to the Away Days podcast, reporting from the underbelly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:26]
Paul Holz
A murder happens, the case goes cold. Then over a hundred years later, we take a second look. I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator.
- [30:35]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a journalist and historian.
- [30:38]
Paul Holz
On our podcast Buried Bones, we reexamine historical true crime cases.
- [30:43]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Using modern forensic techniques. We dig into what the original investigators may have missed. Growing up on a farm, when I heard a gunshot, I did not immediately think murder.
- [30:52]
Paul Holz
Unless this person went out to shoot squirrels. They're not choosing a.22 to go hunting out there.
- [30:58]
Kate Winkler Dawson
These cases may be old, but the questions are still relevant and often chilling.
- [31:04]
Paul Holz
I know this chauffeur is not of concern. You know, it's like, well, he's the last one who saw her alive, so how did they eliminate him?
- [31:12]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Join us as we take you back to the cold cases that haunt us to this day.
- [31:17]
Paul Holz
New episodes every Wednesday on the exactly right network. Listen to Buried bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:39]
Ed Helms
A Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn. I can picture our pal Alexander Gettler in his favorite living room chair, dressed in a suit and tie. Of course, the number one song from the most famous band in America, the Paul Whiteman Band, is buzzing in the background. Gettler's smoking a stogie as he scans baseball box scores from the morning paper. Knowing Al, he probably had some skin in the games, too. A bit of a gambler, Gettler couldn't resist a juicy over under. And he had a regular card game with his pals. His other second home besides the lab was the horse track. Gettler was also a ruthlessly competitive bowler, a spirit he also brought to his work at Bellevue. When a new mystery arrived at his doorstep, he couldn't stand the idea of a poisoner outwitting him and his sleuthing partner, Charles Norris. On this beautiful spring afternoon, perhaps Alexander is scribbling down his latest betting card when all of a sudden, he Gets a call from Norris. There's a new case, and, oh, is Al gonna love this one. In 1922, our Sherlock and Watson have been a very busy duo, solving all kinds of crimes, and many of them having nothing to do with the hooch on the streets. But each mystery Gettler solves, he learns a little more about the poisons permeating American life. On this day, when Gettler arrives at his lab, two dead bodies are waiting for him. He scans the police report. Here are the facts. Inside an apartment in Brooklyn, police had found a couple in street clothes lying on the floor of their bathroom. Their faces were blue, their lips covered with blood. The couple, according to the following day's New York Times, was, quote, dead from poison. Gettler reviews the report. The police on the scene had suspected suicide, but there was no corroborating evidence of any kind in the apartment. Gettler takes one look at the dead bodies and quickly suspects something else is at play here. A chemical substance that was now seemingly everywhere and was frighteningly lethal. Cyanide. Like mustard gas, cyanide was used in World War I as a chemical warfare agent. It had long been known as a dangerous poison. But little did the public know it was also becoming a killer. In households, fumigators used it to disinfect apartment buildings, emitting gas that could, say, suddenly kill an unsuspecting couple eating breakfast. Gettler's sure cyanide is the cause of death, even though he hadn't found any signs that cyanide had been ingested and the police had found no empty bottles of cyanide anywhere in the apartment. But he checks back with the police, and soon investigators realize that Gettler was right. Pest control folks had just spent an afternoon spraying cyanide gas around the apartment. They realized the dead couple hadn't swallowed cyanide. They had inhaled it. Case closed. But Gettler's work isn't quite done.
- [34:45]
Podcast Host
Gettler goes on to write the fundamental paper on cyanide and its toxicity and how we find it in a body. It's still cited today.
- [34:56]
Ed Helms
I'm telling you, this guy is a true badass. It was impossible for the newly invented science of toxicology to keep up with the deluge of modern poisons. But Gettler was doing his damnedest. And the New York City medical Examiner's office was beginning to earn nationwide respect for their work uncovering the hidden poisons endangering public health. And they were doing so with virtually no support from the government. The office's staff under Norris was, in fact, smaller than what it was under the New York coroner who preceded him. Their office at Bellevue was still a ramshackle, quote unquote country club. All the lab's new equipment was still paid for by Norris himself. Norris and Gettler were working around the clock, but they sure weren't making bootlegger chemist money. Gettler was making 3,000 bucks a year, which today would be equivalent to a $55,000 salary in Brooklyn. No wonder he lived with his in laws. So as poisons in the air were becoming more sophisticated, the caseload of the medical examiner's office was getting bigger. And in 1922, one particular case caught their eye. The case of Robert Doyle. Doyle was a veteran of World War I, like the tanker turned bootlegger, George Cassidy. And like so many of the men who came back from Europe, Doyle found jobs were scarce in his hometown, Boston. So he left his wife and daughter and came down to New York City, the biggest city in the world. The thriving metropolis where it seemed like everyone was making money. And he tried to get a job. But no one hired Doyle. He didn't have George Cassidy's gregarious entrepreneurial spirit, I guess, or his Smoky Mountain liquor hookups. He didn't have Alexander Gettler's brains or his bustling Brooklyn community to rely on. In New York, Doyle found himself turned away from every job, be it bartender, garbage collection, even cleaning the sewers. Away from his loved ones and getting desperate. Doyle had reached for some chemical comfort to drown his sorrows. Buying liquor in an unfamiliar city. He didn't know who to trust. He didn't know whose luck libations might be toxic, but he bought a drink anyway. One night, neighbors in his boarding house heard shouts coming from his locked room. Someone or something was killing Doyle. They forced the door and rushed inside to help him, but found him crawling on the floor, rubbing his eyes and moaning, I'm blind. I can't see. First they sent for a doctor, but he didn't have any answers. So they bundled Doyle into a car and sent him to the hospital, Bellevue. Doyle was wheeled into the er. This would be the part of the Grey's Anatomy episode where you'd hear the heartbeat monitor beeping until it slowly fades and flatlines. But this is the 1920s. There's nothing quite that fancy yet. Just Doyle didn't make it. When he died at Bellevue, they moved him out of the line of patients waiting for treatment and into the line of corpses waiting for analysis. Analysis by Alexander Gettler. Now it was up to Gettler to determine who was behind this for years, he had worried home distillers would accidentally poison themselves with their moonshine. But these deaths were stacking up in a way that didn't add up. Gettler knew about all the brainpower and advanced chemistry that was going into making industrial alcohol drinkable and not kill you. In theory, the supply was becoming safer, and yet the body count was only growing. Robert Doyle's death occurred as poison alcohol deaths rippled across the country from New York to Washington, D.C. to Dilata, Ohio. This was proof people like Robert Doyle weren't dying simply because of their own reckless thirst for alcohol. No, these people were dying from poisons. And their deaths, now in the hundreds and very soon to be in the thousands, were no accident. Next time on snafu.
- [39:14]
Daniel Okrent
Harry Daugherty, the attorney general who was the immediate boss to Mabel Willa Brandt. He was a a drunk and b corrupt.
- [39:21]
Ed Helms
One of the craziest stories you hear about like an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes the biggest bootlegger ever.
- [39:28]
Daniel Okrent
The fact that there were only 2600 prohibition agents covering the entire Canadian border, the Mexican border, and both coasts. It's ridiculous.
- [39:40]
Ed Helms
SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbow, Whitney Donaldson and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Nevin Calipalli, Albert Chen and Carl Nellis, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevan Kalapali and Ekimony Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing, music and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosado. The role of Mabel Walker Willebrandt was played by Carrie Bechet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Rysak.
- [41:03]
Holly Fry
Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers. Known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s, her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:37]
Unknown Host
OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm gonna tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
- [42:07]
Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast.