545 - Don’t You Like Weirdos?

Hello and welcome.

I'm my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hert Start, that's Karen kil Gareth.

Non view are listener, m you need to know that George is wearing a floral mechanics jumpsuit.

I am with pockets. It's major, thank you, all in one, all in one, zip up, get naked to pee, which is so fun.

Fully naked in public bathroom used to be weirdess.

But yeah, I feel like I feel powerful and like capable.

Yes in this.

I've never worn a jumpsuit before.

It's great.

It's a company called Mixed Bite Nazarin who makes these, and it's like their.

Thing, mixed M I x M I x D eighty and Nazarin n A Z n A s R A N and s R A N. Yeah, nice a thing. I mean, it's like Kawaiian florals meets engineers'.

Function safety levels. It's gonna go in my binder of what I wore good, so I do not repeat it.

And at Christmas do we get to review the binder.

Don't pick our favorites.

Well, there's a fake fire playing on them like a like a memories, but it's just your outfits.

Nobody notices or cares.

Meanwhile, I am eighty percent sure that while this is not the exact same shirt, it's the second version of this shirt that I wore to record minisodes. I'm pretty sure it's the same one.

Don't be like me. It's really fucking hard up here. I can't, like constantly heard.

But you know I couldn't if I tried. I really couldn't. The outfit thing when I was in high school mattered a lot to me, and I think I broke my own brain with the body over consciousness. It was tough. There was this spree full suit I wore once that it wakes me up in the middle of the night with it. It was, and I thought it was like the height of style.

I have to see it.

I think I was just too far ahead.

Was it because everyone wears ap leisure now? Is it like a sweatsuit?

It was like a little business suit, but it was white children in business suits, children in but it was the eighties, so that was kind of poochy, pleated in the pants, oh, just like unflattering and insanely long in the jacket blazer, and it was just children. It was white. Well, it was like sixteen white with geometric patterns that were pastel, so like a little turquoise triangle and a little orange square all over it.

I gotta find this fan called or who had this?

Pleaselease find in your picture of being a teen in your is spree business suit.

Yes, shoulder pad.

It was a time and I've served my time.

Yeah, and I'm you don't need to do anything.

Fading into the gen x background.

Congratulations, thank you. It looks not stressful and not pointless and tedious. I mean, actually no, it's fun. I like dressing up and wearing clothes.

That's cute. I would say it's your true passion.

I do love it. It does change my personality and change my like, what's the word aura? What I feel that day?

Completely, sit up a little straighter. You get to test out all the different nights at you're around table. Yeah, now this is girlely engineer Georgia.

I love it.

Gasoline station attendant, gas station at station attundant.

But make it tropical, but.

Make it ninety five degrees with eighty percent humanity.

Right, Well, I have a corrections corner, speaking of that's a great transition. When I did this story about Paul Franzak, the baby who was kidnapped as a as a baby.

Yes, this is how it goes.

I forgot to mention that The Knife actually did an episode on it. Oh, they did a two part episode on it wow, called Kidnapped at Birth, which, of course they did it wonderfully. Highly recommend check that out. And it aired just this past May.

Oh great.

Yeah, Okay, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media, and that's right. Here are some highlights this week.

Over on Banana's Curtain, Scottie cover Katie Perry's performance recently where she got stuck in a giant bottle, also a stolen Sinclair dinosaur and a French try that caused a gas station crash.

Oh my God. Over on Brief Recess, Michael and Melissa discuss the ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial and what kind of lawyer a trans person should hire. Plus Emmy Award winning actor, writer and comedian Bryan Safie joins them in st Studio the Basque to share behind the scenes stories from his off Broadway show Are You Mad at Me?

So Brilliant? I love Brian Safe so much?

Are you following the Lindsay Clancy trial.

I only just heard about it, like just learned about it a couple days ago, so I'm like trying to catch up. It's a kind of thing where people are already being like this is wrong in that like people are already angry and accusing. So I'm like trying to follow and get the story before I get the opinion.

And every day something new, some little detail comes out that is interesting or curious or suspicious.

Right. Also, just on the Brief Recess thing, Michael just announced yesterday he is one of the cast members of the new season of Traders. Unreal it is.

He's gonna be so good.

I hope he's a Trader.

I mean, I'm so excited. God, that man is so delight.

He's everything.

So go listen to Brief Recess and he will tell you all about it. Over on Disgraceland, Jake tells the story of the Smashing Pumpkins, your favorite band Georgia, from a drug related death to competing band narratives. This episode explores the strange legacy of Billy Corgan and Company.

They are messy, notoriously, that's going to be really interesting.

He always it's like he's to fight with Courtney Love and there was just always something going on.

Totally and then finally on I said no gifts, Bridger keeps us cool when Hayden Johnson shows up with a gift. Then the two discussed cruise ships, eagle Scouts, and grave robbing, just like a all right, you go first, right.

I'm very excited to tell you the story today because it is classic true crime and there's to me an infamous Forensic Files episode about it, which is when Maren and Molly pitched it. I was like, oh my god, I know exactly what you're talking about, which it's one of them. Okay, But just a warning to the listeners, this case involves not only sexual assault but child sexual abuse, So please take care when you're listening to this, and please take care of who's listening to this. You, of course, may have seen this already on Forensic Files. In that episode, they only refer to this victim by her first name, which is Candy. So that's what I'm going to do. Took. So, this story takes place in the early nineties in a

rural Canadian town in southeastern Saskatchewan called Kipling. It's a little quiet town there's more livestock than people that kind of place. And it's Halloween of nineteen ninety three. A twenty three year old woman named Candy is working her shift at a local gas station, and if she's going about her day, it's business as usual until her ex boyfriend stops by. The two get into an argument and it escalates to the point where her ex drives out of the parking lot and she runs after his truck and kicks it and puts a dent in it. So it's a bad fight. We don't know what it was about, but Candy's really upset. She wants to go talk to her best friend about it, who works over at Kipling's Hospital,

So she leaves the gas station she drives over there, but when she gets there, she's told her friend isn't working that night. Candy is so visibly upset that the nurse she talks to suggests that she talked to a doctor. So this is a small town, so small there's two practicing doctors in the town, and Candy knows the one that's working that night. It's thirty two year old John Schneeberger, who the locals affectionately refer to as Doctor John. So nine months prior he delivered Candy's baby, so she trusts him completely. So when he says he's going to give her something to calmer nerves, you know, sounds great to her.

He leaves the room. He comes back in with a long needle. Candy is like, she assumed it would be some pills and not a shot, but she's not really concerned about it until he gives her the medication. She's immediately overcome with severe dizziness, to the point that the doctor has to help her walk from the chair she's sitting in over to the exam table. When she gets there, she just falls face first onto it. She is She will later say, quote, I had no control over my muscles.

It's like all my muscles left and I was just this piece of jelly falling over. I tried to scream, but nothing would come out but a croaking voice that a frog would make. End quote. She comes two hours later knowing something is deeply wrong. This is Candy's story of what happened to her that day and her heart fought battle for justice against the doctor she trusted with her life, whoa. The main sources used for this story are archival articles from several Canadian newspapers, and the Forensic Files episode that's mentioned above. I won't say the title right now. The rest of the sources are in the show notes.

I don't know which. When you're talking about wrap with that, I want I don't, but I want to say, is it the one that this but I don't want to spoil it. If it is, do you want to do it just to get it off your chest? Is it the one where he uses his blood?

Yes, oh, my god, as the one is, like I remember it purpose That's why it's one of It's one of the ones where as a teen watching Forensic Files, your mind goes, I didn't understand people could or would do things like.

That totally, Like that is so far beyond like decent normal people.

Well, here we go, here we go. So for everybody that's like, we don't know what Forensic Files is, grow up. So it's Halloween night, nineteen ninety three. Candy wakes up in the same exam room, but now she's alone and she is still slumped over the examination table. She immediately suspects that she has been sexually assaulted from behind. So that's the position she was left. My god, on top of being drugged and disoriented. She never saw her attacker's face.

She explains it on ensick Files this way. Quote when a dentist freezes your gums and he's pulling your tooth out, you can't feel the pain from the tooth, But what you can feel is the pressure of the tooth moving back and forth. That's the only way I can describe it.

Oh God. Yeah.

A few hours later, as she gets ready to leave the hospital, she sees doctor John and she asks him, quote, what the hell was that drug you gave me last night? It turns out it was versaid, which is a fast acting drug that's known to cause short term amnesia, and it's used in clinical settings for severe anxiety or to relax patients before operations. It's very common to get a dose of versaid. And that's that kind of like when you're in the hallway. Yeah, just chill and wait and you don't care. Everything's fine.

Let's start with something a little lower, ken we.

Yeah, So, given how upset Candy had been the night before, it's not strange that the doctor would give her versaid. That in and of itself is not the craziest thing in the world. Allth it's very strong. But it's doctor John's response to this question that she raises that is a red flag, and that is, quote, why did it give you wild dreams? Immediate fury. So he starts talking about the hospital's quote wanderers or the elderly patients with cognitive issues who get out of their beds and wander the hospital at night.

Dude.

As he's explaining this, everything is starting to click into place for Candy. She realizes she is standing face to face with her rapist. She'll later say, quote, I knew that I was going to have a hell of a fight on my hands because he's already covering up. I mean, he's just pulling in. These could have been this, Yeah, it could have been this. Look at all of these variables.

Which is so incredible that Candy was still like, Nope, I note because there's so many You're taught to gaslight yourself to be like that must be what it is. You know, I can't argue with this person. Yes, maybe they're right. Like a lot of women, that's what.

We do, but in doing it sometimes it's like we really take apart logic. Because it's like the last person she saw with a big needle full of medicine, the idea that she's putting two and two together. It's not only not crazy, but then he immediately is like giving her that like what why, what's the problem? Like we know that personality has seen it before. But of course that's meaningless. This is one woman's opinion. So she leaves the hospital and she drives to a different town to go to a clinic somewhere else, not in her town, and gets a rape kit done so that she can quote find out if this really did happen or am I going nuts?

And how old is she?

She's in her mid twenties. Okay, that's so brave, She's really young.

Yeah.

Candy explains to the person taking her report that she has not been sexually active for several weeks, yet the vaginal swab they collect from her tests positive for semen and also her genes and underwear do so, with that evidence in hand, she goes to the authorities to formally accuse doctor Schneeberger of rape. A police investigation is opened, and soon word begins to spread through the town of Kipling.

It will surprise no one that many people do not believe Candy. Just immediately on hearing this just it's totally impossible, there's no way. Some think she's simply mistaken about her attacker's identity, but others think she's targeting doctor John, either because she's obsessed with him and she's getting a revenge because he doesn't feel the same way, or they're secretly involved.

She's trying to extort money from him. It's all the gossip and the usual, but it's all on her right. And doctor John is a trusted physician who despite only being in his late twenties when he moved to town from South Africa in nineteen eighty seven to open his practice, and in the six year sense, he's proved to be very competent doctor that this town has embraced. So he was kind of an outsider and he was young, and then he proved himself and everyone's like, we love him.

He's great. An ambulance driver will tell a local paper that quote, I would estimate that at least twenty five heart patients are alive today because of doctor John.

But you can still be a fucking predator, that's right. Doesn't matter how many good things done.

My grandmother will roll over her grave. But it's like and let me introduce you to the Catholic Church. People doing all the things that are right by the book, right right, sending it up to the Lord. Yeah, I mean, let's not, let's not anymore.

We don't and we won't.

Oh my god, I'm in so much trouble.

My father would are you wrong?

I'm in no way wrong? And also my mother would be like, that's right exactly. Also, doctor John has a picture perfect home life. After you moved to Canada, he fell in love with a woman who is a single mother of two daughters. Her name is Lisa, and John and Lisa got married. Then they welcomed two of their own children to the family. Lisa will later tell the Globe and Mail newspaper that quote, living in a small place like Kipling, not a day went by when people didn't stop me in the street and say, oh, you're so lucky to be married to such a wonderful man.

So it's the world of you know, the whole town loves this person. So even though there's a ton of goodwill towards doctor John after Candy comes forward, he is ego to clear his name, so he cooperates with investigators, and he points out that versaid, can mess with a patient's memory and perception and can even cause what he calls quote erotic hallucinations. Now it turns out sexual hallucinations are a side effect of the drug, but rare. The doctor also volunteers to provide a blood sample so investigators can test his DNA against the DNA extracted from those samples collected and Candy's rape kit, and when analysts compare the two, they determined that the blood sample and the semen sample did not come from the same person. Right,

But Candy knows she's right.

That she still is like, no, I'm right. The blood sample shows it's not a match, and she still insists.

She's like, yeah, it's so brave. Yes, it's the kind of knowing where it's like a lot of things in life are like this. They won't believe you, or they won't be behind you. You just got to do it and go through it. And then at the other side people will be like and I didn't know, and you know, do it anyway, whatever, you gotta do it anyway. This woman is so cool. I mean, yeah, watch the forensic files if you haven't seen it. She's a bad us.

So she wonders maybe if there's an issue with his blood sample, or maybe that something happened during the draw to compromise it. And this is the early nineties, it's so early with all this stuff that like it became this like well, this is the defining you know, this will get the verdict one way or the other. But at this point it was like early it was before you could identify people through DNA. It was simply matching, So you just had to match DNA to DNA the person of interest. They had to have their sample to compare it to the sample they had. That's the only way they could use DNA. So the doctor actually volunteers to give another sample because he's such a great man in the community. For this one, the police officers supervise

a registered nurse is she injects a needle into the doctor's arm as soon as she fills a vial with blood. That vile is sealed and taken directly to a forensics lab for testing, and once again that DNA comes back and it does not match. So it's important to note that throughout all of this doctor John's wife, Lisa, is standing by him, and she believes in her husband's innocence.

Which could not have been easy in that tiny town, because there's nothing people love more than a nice, hard turn of you know, like you were the one I was jealous of, and now look what happened to you. So with the second blood test result, doctor John Schneberger is cleared as a suspect finally, but there's one inconvenient fact that remains, and Prosecutor Dean Sinclair will put this this way. He says, quote versaid can account for all sorts of hallucinations, possibly, but it can't produce semen. And according to Candy, the last time she had intercourse was weeks before the incident. Yeah, okay. So meanwhile, rumors are flying around Kipling about Candy, and they're so bad, there's so many, they're so loud that she actually has to

leave town. But she has no intention of giving up because despite these testers, she absolutely knows who her rapist is. So then in the face of all of this, the police investigation goes cold because it's like, we don't have the evidence. We've tested it, that's now the evidence. But Candy is ready. She hires a private investigator to take over this. PI basically knows that he needs to get a DNA sample. So he breaks into doctor John's car illegal right right off the bat, coming in hot, coming hot, and also now the thing that you're gonna get is inadmissible in course, totally, But he wants to find some of the doctor's DNA. He sees a few strands of hair on the headrest, but there's no root attached, and

that's where the DNA is in hairstrand, so you have to have those root bulbs. But then he sees a tube of chapstick and grabs it. He takes it to a private forensics slab where technicians successfully extract DNA from it, and when they compare the chapstick sample to the semen sample from Candy's rape kit, it's a match.

It's so crazy that they continued on this trajectory of it doesn't matter, it's him, because I feel like so many people would be like, it's he's clearly not, especially even her, who in her mind knows it would gasplight herself into thinking I am imagining things.

But haven't you ever had a moment with a person where it's just like, you know, they're fucking with you. It's the gleam in the eye of like what did you have a weird dream or it's like it's a recognizable like personality type. Yeah, then and it isn't. And I think those types of people get off on the fact that it's like only you and I know what I'm doing right, like I never said like that, or you're remembering it wrong.

Yep.

Yeah, and she's I think maybe isn't the kind of person that does doubt herself. She's like, go fuck yourself, Okay. So her quote is I knew it all along. It wasn't a shock that something was going to match, but it was a relief. So it's a win, but of course bittersweet because it's inadmissible evidence. But the information does raise new suspicions around the doctor and it becomes the basis for the civil suit that Candy files against him.

She takes him to court in nineteen ninety six, three years after her alleged assault, but she's still only in her mid twenties. Around the same time, the investigation into that rape, which went cold, kicks back into gear and doctor John is once again asked to provide a new blood sample. This time, the draw takes place at the police department and it's being filmed as they draw it, And so this footage is in the Forenza five. And do you remember his beautiful butter yellow sweater and his big nineties glasses that he's wearing.

Now that you say so, yeah, yeah.

The woman who's conducting the draw her name's Jeane Roney, and she explains to the doctor that since she only needs a small amount of blood from him today, she's just going to prick his fingertip for the blood. And he says, oh, no, sorry, I have a disease that causes me to bruise very badly on my hands, So I would rather have you draw the blood from right here in this arm.

Yeah.

And there's no rules or you know, elations about where the blood has to be drawn from. So she just takes him at his words.

Oh so I know what's coming. If you don't know what's coming, it's gross. Just FYI, it's like and she.

Inserts the needle into his Yeah, oh sorry, I should have given some sort of people have serious.

Needle needle and blood issues.

Yeah, hopefully since this is an entirely blood based story.

Yeah, I feel like up until now, it's it's what he does that is so fucked up. What's coming?

Okay, get ready to get ready and get out of the room if you can't handle it, So don't turn it off. We need the Yeah, yeah, just turn the volume down and watch something else.

We need this streets, we don't need anyone.

So Gene turns his forum over looking for a suitable vein, and as she does, she notices something she'll later say, quote, the vein was larger, or appeared much larger than I would have expected. I thought it was a little unusual. Okay end quote. Even weirder than that. When she injects the needle into that vein that she finds no blood comes out. She pulls it back out. She tries again, and in a different spot, still no blood into a vein.

On the third try, she finally manages to draw a little bit of blood, but it looks off.

A vein sticking out of his arm.

In the footage shaken of the procedure that day with doctor John out of frame, so presumably out of the room, that's what it looks like, is that it's after the procedure. You can hear Jeene say, quote, it's a little strange. The blood doesn't really look fresh. I don't know. Yeah, the blood doesn't look fresh.

Fresh is like probably bright red, right, and it's.

Dark blue or darker.

It's either darker or lighter or thinner or I mean, they can tell the difference between blood. That's yeah, they can tell that.

They must.

They're ducked well, its making a murderer. They found the blood on the steering wheel that had clearly already been exposed to air instead of coming straight from something something. Right, it wasn't fresh blood and they.

Could tell, right, So they know all these things.

They know things doctors and scientists.

Okay, so this blood sample is immediately sent to a lab for processing, and analysts determine that this blood is too degraded to be analyzed by DNA. So now the police are forced to go back to Candy and tell her they can't use the sample that he has provided because it's too degraded. And of course Candy is furious.

This is a huge that's not.

A problem, go back and get more motherfuckers.

I know, but I think it was like the one shot deal of like oh sor if you can't use whatever. So it's a huge blow to her civil case and to the newly resurrected criminal case for this rape, and both of them then stall out because that was like their chance. But the combination of the odd degraded blood sample and the chapstick for the DNA from doctor John's car has finally made it into the awareness of the police, and they have become very suspicious of him, but they don't have any hard evidence to justify and arrest until April of nineteen ninety seven, more than four years since Candy's alleged assault, and just when it's beginning to seem hopeless for her, there's a break in the case, and it's a terrible one that comes from doctor John's own family.

His fifteen year old stepdaughter finally confides to her mother that doctor John has been sexually assaulting her since nineteen ninety four when she was twelve years old. Oh my gosh. She accounts how he would come into her bedroom at night, give her an injection that would incapacitate her, and then rape her. Holy it's horrific and devastating news, especially considering how Lisa stood by her husband in the wake of another woman's rape accusations. So she immediately goes into her husband's home office and starts looking around, and she finds a box filled with condoms, needles, and drugs, including versaid, and suddenly the murky picture of who her her husband is now comes into sharp focus. The allegations are true,

Lisa will tell a journalist quote, I loved that man. He was my soulmate, my best friend. We were going to grow old together. I felt sick. I still blame myself. Maybe if I had believed Candy, none of this would have happened to my daughter. Oh that's the saddest sentence. It's so horrible, it's so unfair. One destructive man's actions, who's lying and psychopathic, and it's always the woman who pay the price. So Lisa goes to the police and tells them what her incredibly brave daughter told her, and doctor Schneberger is finally arrested, and now he has to take yet another DNA test, but this time the blood is drawn from his finger. They also take a sample of his hair, root, bulb and all, and they swab

the inside of his mouth, and when each sample is tested, they all match the sample from Candy's rape kit. No big reveal here, just finally the justice. When Candy learns about Lisa's daughter's allegations against John. She says, quote, I screamed, I bawled. I was pretty disgusted because all of these years, I'm fighting to get the truth out, but also to make sure it didn't happen to anybody else. So authorities still can't figure out how doctor John managed to full multiple DNA tests over the years, during draws that were monitored by police and overseen by skilled technicians and nurses.

And she even said, it doesn't look right, and they didn't follow.

Through with right because you know, what could that be? Your vein doesn't look right. Yeah, it's such a crazy thing. Yeah, well so no, I know. It takes until November nineteen ninety nine for John to confess, and it happens at his trial where on the stand he admits that he surgically inserted what's called a penrose drain under the skin of his left arm. All you people who don't know us, it's a routine plastic medical drain that's inserted postop to prevent fluid from building up near a healing incision. So he stole blood from one of his unsuspecting patients and then he filled the drain with it. And surgically implanted it near the real veins in the crook of his arm.

God, God, this is the arm. Diabolical, l just insane. I think, like, you know, I'm going to get out of this awful thing that I did. That's all my fault. I'm want to do the most diabolically insanely evil thing.

Well, and my thing is how many other patients did he do it too?

Totally?

How many other women did he do it too that just didn't know? And like that? He clearly this was like, well, this is what I'm doing, so I better make a plan to get out of it totally. So this would be the arm obviously he'd offer to the medical professionals who drew his blood, who would never think twice about why it would be one arm over the other. Also, this is why the sample was so degraded in nineteen ninety six. It was genuinely old, stale blood that had been sitting in his arms.

You just fucking put this thing in there and left it in there.

Oh my god, there's my innocence straw, but depravity. Yeah, he was going to do it again.

Now they're going to come back because I'm fucking guilty.

So insanely enough. Despite this admission, doctor Schneberger maintains his innocence. In fact, he offers that maybe Candy broke into his home, stole a used condom, and used it to frame him.

That's not how salmon works.

Well, also, it's for what what.

Did she get? Totally?

He defends the implanted tube of blood by claiming he was just trying to protect himself against her false allegations. You went too far. But in the end, doctor John and his lawyers are no match for Candy. She will later say on this episode of Forensic Files, quote, I was a bulldog on the stand. I kicked his lawyer's ass.

And he's supposed to be the best lawyer in southern Saskatchewan, best defense lawyer. I showed him whose boss?

Yeah you did?

And I mean, like, these are the quotes you want to be reading in a story like this. She is so legendary. So it's November of nineteen ninety nine, and this trial lasts three weeks, and at the end, doctor John Schneberger is found guilty on multiple charges, including sexual assault, administering a stupefying drug, and obstructing justice. He sentenced to six years in prison, and he stripped of his medical license.

Thank god, this has all taken seven long years, but Candy has finally won.

Coming till Wow that his sentence is shorter than it how long it took to get justice?

Well, I know, I know, I know. And then and then late two thousand and three, after serving four years of his sentence, he is granted parole and released from prison because it's just rape. Not long after that, it is discovered that doctor Schneberger or sorry, just regular old John Schneberger, has failed to disclose being investigated for sexual assault during his lengthy naturalization process, so his Canadian citizenship is deemed unlawfully obtained and it is revoked. He's deported back to South Africa, and from what we know, he's still there to this day. He would be in his late sixties. In Canada, Candy has to contend with the trauma of sexual assault and both the system and her community failing her, but she never backs down. She develops

a film project called I Accuse based on her experiences, and it premieres on Canadian television right around the time that John Schnieberger is released from prison in two thousand and three. Wow, and she says she hopes that movie will quote inspire other survivors to come forward and face their accusers, regardless of their apparent standing in the community. Amazing.

And that's the story of Candy's unmasking of the rapist doctor John Schnieberger.

Wow, Candy, Oh.

Shoot, we have pictures. Wait, there's that yellow sweater. Yes, and there's Jeane Yeah, going into the arm that he suggested at him.

He's like, it's just so evil.

And also just so bizarre. It's that kind of thing where it's like it's so out of the realm of any possibility or ever having happened before, where it's like, I suspect the vein in your arm.

Totally this Ned Flanders looking motherfucker. I don't he seems you know.

Yeah, those are the ones totally keep your eye peeled.

Wow, great job, thank you. I feel like that's just been on the to do list for this podcast for ten years.

I couldn't believe when they pitched it. I was like, wait, we have it. I love that one. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like this podcast is a little bit like literally just true crime TV show Retell. That's how I've always treated it because it's like, this is where I got all of this from. Right. I can remember seeing this the first time and just being like, I'm sorry.

What we wouldn't be where we are without like forensic files and unsolved mysteries and cold case file America's most wanted as a fucking eight year old, oh, just being like, I'm going to catch that guy. I sure, leave it to me, right, give me that phone number again, because I've got this.

Can I get it one more time? By the end of the show. What's the reward?

Maybe you can help solve a mystery.

I mean, it's a strange life, it truly is.

Yeah, all right, well I have one that's not at all anything like what you just did.

Which I'm leaving. I love when my homework is done and then you have to do your homework.

Mine's easier than yours. My homework okay, good, and it's short because it takes us a long time. Ago in eighteen fourteen, my favorite, Your favorite, it's a financial hoax. It scandalized the London stock market and it led to an early instance of government regulation in the world of finance. Your favorite world.

I mean, I live there. It's natural to me.

You vacation there. You have a vacation home.

I have all these friends and family there in the world of finance.

This is the story of the Napoleonic Hoax, sometimes known as the Great Stock Market Frauds of eighteen fourteen. Hell yeah, you know everything about this. You write your dissertation on it.

Okay.

The main source of the story is a book called Napoleon Is Dead with an exclamation mark by Richard Dale, and the rest of the sources are in the show notes. Here we go. What you're taking notes? Are you taking notes?

You can take a little just out of nowhere's untho.

You're taking notes?

What are you rit B minus?

That's really good. Make that into a little plus and take it home.

There you go, mom.

We aren't Dover, England. It's famous for its cliffs. They're white Cliffs of Dover. Yep. They're made of white chalk that plunge into the Strait of Dover. It's the narrowest part of the English Channel between England and France. These days. Around Dover is where you can get on a ferry that will take you to call Ais, France, and it's between these two points that the Eurostar train runs through the Channel Tunnel. The chunnel, we love it, but this takes place long before the chunnel. I just really wanted us to yell chunnel together, and I did it, and we did it. Good night, Thank you for listening to night.

In eighteen fourteen, it's around one am on the morning of Monday, February twenty first, a man is seen wandering the seaside front street in Dover in London, the stock market will open in nine hours, which is just about as much time as it'll take you to get to the Capitol from Dover in a horse drawn carriage if you change horses frequently. I didn't know that was the thing.

Fresh horses. That's what it's all about.

Horse to horse to horse. That's right.

I didn't realize you don't want some oldentire horn, no.

Horses like can I high five to someone? Hi five another horse?

And this is taking forever.

This mysterious man is tall and wearing a long gray coat and what looks like a red military uniform.

Pull dark. That's show about a guy.

Oh got it?

What's called greatcoat? Pull dark?

Okay, I'll watch it. We need to show. He bangs on the door of the ship in, but gets some patient and then starts banging on the door of the pub next door, which is called the packet boat. Probably means something. I didn't look it up. The owners of both establishments come to the door on the same time.

I'm sure they have those like night caps, the sleepy caps on you, sir, you the long like dress sleep and big old chop. Yeah. The owners of both establishments come to the door, and everyone moves inside the ship in to have a conversation with this mysterious man. The man who doesn't introduce himself says quote, I have this last hour been landed on a beach from France after traveling for two nights, and I'm the bearer of dispatches that are the most important to be brought to England these past twenty years. I must have horses, and in the meantime I would be obliged if you would bring me a pen and paper so I can inform the authorities of what has passed. The pub and owner and and keeper are like, Okay, what the fuck's going on?

This never happens.

I'm paraphrasing, and the officer responds with quote, do not pester me with questions you always say in these scams, they make you hurry, no time to think.

It's the fake authority, hurry and like the importance, like you don't know what's going on, but this you have to do because it's so important.

Totally. At this point, the other guests at the inn have heard the ruckus and come downstairs, and the mysterious stranger has introduced himself as Colonel de Burgh, and at some point he gives an initial of personalitiaal of R, but it's unclear if he ever gives a first name. Then he says, quote, I am the bear of sensational and glorious news, the best that could possibly be wished, But I cannot say more secrets. I must ask you to arrange with great urgency and express horse and rider to carry a message to the Admiral at Deal, as well as a carriage to take me to London. For the present, I need pen, paper and ink, and I would be obliged if you could also provide me some refreshment to sustain me end quote well demanding for stranger

in the middle of the night and paper food right d. The Colonel has given pen, paper, and a bottle of sherry so, yes.

Have you ever like drank in a real way?

People do that, right, like just like a little thimbleful of sherry? Yes, I think I always imagine it must be good if people like love it so much.

I don't know, listeners, let us know what the sherry experience is all about.

Is it really sweet? It's like cooking wine.

I mean, I think it's cooking wine. And I've always seen it as like people taking a little, a little nip of it in the kitchen.

Right, it seems really pie falutin and classy.

I mean, I guess we'll find out rich murdering notes, please call in.

Yeah. So he writes a letter to a naval admiral posted nearby in the town of Deal, and he writes that he's been ordered to write to London with quote dispatches of the happiest nature end quote, and then he writes, quote, My anxiety will not allow me to say more for your gratification than that the Allies obtained a final victory, that Buonaparte was overtaken by a party of Sakin's Cossacks, who immediately slayed him and divided his body between them and quote, but I can't say more I can't say much except that here's exactly detail. So what he's saying here is that Napoleon has been killed by the Russians, obviously, which means that the decades long Napoleonic Wars are over.

If you remember one thing about Napoleon, which I know you remember many short in love French and also didn't die and also yeah, exactly he died in exile, so and also if you know the Abbe lyrics, you might remember that he was defeated at what thank You, which has not happened yet. The Napoleonic Wars are a series of messy conflicts across Europe that had begun eleven years earlier.

There's some scholars say that they are really just an extension of the one hundred year Wars between the British and French, and they.

Just fucking hate each other each other, had been warring it up for so long.

Nextdoor neighbors and everything. To keep thinking right, no kind of yeah, to keep things very short. Different coalitions of countries team up with Britain to fight against France and It's aggressive expansion under Napoleon, and no one seems to be quite able to beat Napoleon. So when Colonel de Burgh shows up in Dover, presumably having sailed over from France, saying that the war is over and Napoleon is dead, people are fucking stoked, huge celebrations. The people at the ship inn, we can imagine drink a shit ton of sherry, yeah.

And party Sherry's on me tonight. Boy.

Exactly. It's like if right now, if we were if someone said.

That Napoleon our goores of America would finally end.

Yeah, we'd all fucking celebrate. Ye's in the air.

I'm gonna punch that TV right in, run into the streets. The sherry would below.

The streets. The innkeeper asks one of his staff members to take that letter to the Admiral and Deal, which is about eight miles away, about a two hour ride on horseback. So once the carriage is ready, the colonel begins his ride to London. So they have someone else go tell someone else, and then this guy gets a horse to London. Along the way, he stops at several other inns and pubs, changing horses. At least there's some animal awareness awareness in the story. Yeah, and saying he urgently needs to write a letter about some very good news, and by the time he's gotten to one of the later ends on his route, the innkeeper asks is it true, like it's already spread, and colonel replies, quote, he is

dead end quote. So the innkeeper presses asking who is dead. The colonel says Napoleon. The innkeeper he says, it's definitely true. So the colonel gets to London around nine o'clock, an hour before the stock market opens in the morning. It'd be fun if we had an overnight stock market. I didn't have sleepovers once.

A year and just get like food from seven to eleven and stuff like.

On the floor of the stock market, everyone gets a give me another coffee, killowcase, come on, told scary stories.

They just hold their ticket up kind of like I'm tired.

Whoever falls asleep first, I bros all their money exactly okay. So the colonel then asks to switch coaches, which rides. Tries to do so as inconspicuously as possible, but he is seen by multiple people being dropped off at the house of a member of Parliament, a man named Lord Thomas Cochrane, a decorated formal naval admiral known to be one of the more radical members of Parliament. So then right when the market opens, people start trading on this good news and buying government bonds, and the first thing in the morning, they are trading at the same price they were on Saturday, but very quickly the price begins to climb. People's speculations that the war has ended rises to a new level later that morning, when an elaborate

carriage is seen carrying two men who seem to be wearing the regalia of French Royalists officers meaning officers from the Bourbon dynasty, who the British sympathized with and who would take power if Napoleon were unseated. So they like, it's fucking happening, like everything's getting lined up to.

And people are like the baker's out in the street, like that's the Bourbon.

Do you know that if they take over exactly, like everyone knows.

Also, everything was so slow back then, like somebody's like, oh my god, this thing's happening. And they have a letter and they hand it to a guy, and the guy rides on a horse for eight days and it goes somewhere else. And that's supposed to be like a phone call. Right, there's so much hang time to lie and do stuff totally before things can be confirmed or disproven, truly, like just the Heyday of scams. Absolutely so.

And it's actually an early pump and dump scheme like the one Jordan Belfort went to jail for, as chronicled by Wolf of Wall Street.

Oh yeah.

Basically, his company sold penny stocks, spread false information about the companies that people were investing in to raise the prices, and then sold those penny stocks when they grew before people realized what was going on. It's happened recently with several cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes as well. I know you fell for a lot of those.

Listen, all my money's in crypto, so I know you take all your advice from Reddit, be podcasting till I'm ninety eight. You know who has crypto investments too, Jim Home, Jim, your.

Dad has crypto investments? Now, how I don't think my dad even he's just like that.

He always wants on a cord. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, how they do it? I think? Okay, he argues. I'm always like I don't know, dad, and he's like, what are you're talking about?

The One time I tried to like do it on my own. I just bought a bunch of weed company stock and lost everything immediately. Like I just did know someone that I respected and liked his podcast. I listened to his financial podcast. I listened to is. Like, I'm telling you right now, this is going to be the next Like.

You're a victim of his pumping dumb hers.

And oh sex system.

Me it is.

And I'm not gonna say who it is because I you kind of are. Who is doctor Laura is?

Like who do you know that, doctor Laura Slessinger? Yeah? Does she get financially?

Yeah, that sucked. I don't do it by myself anymore. Just highield savings everyone.

Okay, so that's not for listen. If you're getting into some sort of world of gambling on your phone, yeah no, no, no stock trading on your phone, any of those kinds of things. It's too easy.

I don't even like marijuana. I don't even smoke weed.

It's not your thing.

And I was like, yes, this is it. This is how I'm gonna get podcast. And so it appears that these pump and dump schemes have been around for as long as there have been stock markets, which trace their roots back to the early sixteen hundreds in Amsterdam. Oh some fucking bias. Fuck guy was like, you know what we should do with our money? Play with it, bed on things, and you know it's a great way to keep the rich rich and the poor port. Yeah. The Dutch Stock Exchange was founded to allow investors to participate in joint stock companies like the Dutch East India Company, which allowed individuals to buy stock in massive maritime trade expeditions.

Like many things in the finance world, it seems like there's a fine line between behavior that is expected, like hyping up a product you just bought, being like I love this blow dryer. Yeah, I love the blow dryer, and behavior that is illegal, which is hyping up the product with false information, with the attention to sell it off quickly.

So blow dryers making my hair longer.

Right, and then so you all should buy it.

So you can't do that, Literally me on TikTok every single day, where I'm just like, well, then I guess I have to get the same. There's so many wonderful products that clearly if you were at the state Fair in the exhibition hall, you'd be like, who would buy that?

That shit you would at bingo at a state fair, right for real? Damn?

I love it all.

I know. The key took successful pump and dump is to sell off your own position before everyone gets wise to your tricks. Yeah, so remember that. What if you were the one who told me to buy all the marijuana?

I was like just weirdly whispering in your air, and you're like, I don't know how I got this idea.

But some chick on a podcast. Oh shit, I was alive.

Every time this podcast ends, my finance podcast begins and I give the worst advice. I don't know what I'm talking about.

And neither drive. And here's how quickly that had to turn around it being obvious that it wasn't true. Is that suddenly people are like, gee, later in the day, I wonder why this hasn't been in the news yet, that naholy And is dead. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like, shit's slow, but not that slow. So they get nervous at the British Secretary of State has not made a formal announcement, and by the end of the day it becomes clear that there has been fraud, Like you got to give it a couple of days so you can get the fuck out of town.

That's fat what I mean, just think of all the free meals and sherries and beers that he got along the way of delivering that news, like he basically just for sure on to town for free, and then yeah, I love it.

The price of the government bonds is back where it started by the end of the day. The London stock market what that's just like so like all your fucking money's gone.

I literally am like, never put a dime of my money into the stock market. You can get me some bonds, you can get me this stuff that's guaranteed. And other than that, no, thank you. Yeah, it's too scary.

That's why I don't look at it, and I let someone else do it for me. My cousin smart, Yes, he knows exactly. So the London Stock Market has its own in house investigating team and they immediately go to work. The first thing.

That's that right, now, that's right, it is. Oh, it's got to be what's his face, late Alan Rickman?

Okay, but then also the other one with the cumber.

Bottom, Benedict Cumberbat.

Yeah, yeah, he's got to be in it.

He's got to be in it. How about a nice Matthew McFadden from succession and pride and prejudice.

Always cast him.

Yep, he can be the muscle in the back of it.

The first thing that they figure out is that the carriage that had been seen supposedly carrying French royal officers can be traced back to the rows In, which is an establishment a little outside of London. I looked it up. It looks like it's still there and still serving horses.

I know.

It's amazing. So they're like, hey, that carriage is from you, And then they go there and the innkeeper's like, yeah, I rented it out to a man named mister Sandham, a liquor merchant who was having money problems. So the investigators quickly track that guy down. The whole thing falls apart very fast, as well as four other men who had been involved in this side plot. Those four other men immediately confess to their part in the fraud, but they refuse to name any other names, even though it seems like they're clearly in cahoots with whoever has profited.

That is a group of people, including Lord Cochrane and the man whose house the colonel had gone to the colonel is actually an adventurer. Hey, what a fucking cool career.

Bring back that.

Mean named Charles Random de Burgner Random, Random, that fucking first name.

I know, where did that go?

That's his middle name?

What if that's been a slang word this whole time and just came back recently?

Random Charles Random.

He's just throwing money everywhere.

Yes, I love it. Who also recently had some financial difficulties. So these people who like needed money then.

All got together.

Yeah, the investigators find that Lord Cochrane and two other investors had invested heavily in government bonds. That's the thing is, you can look up who invested heavily. First it's like not it's not anonymous.

But the book is really big and heavy. It's cold, take forever to get to that page.

Totally, you know. So they look that up and one of these investors is Cochrane's uncle, a Scottish adventurer named James Andrew Cochran Johnston Second Adventure. Yeah, the kind of adventures. I guess. They don't have a lot of money, so they just have to go to that adventure adventure of the stock market. Yeah, who's known to be something of a swindler. The group had ultimately made a profit that it's confusing to lay out because so many people s fucked around and found out. But in today's money, it'd be do you want to guess, just out of the blue, how much money in today's money? It would be, even though we don't know, like how much money was lost, yeah, or how much money they took they how much?

What the money it was? Okay, how much they made in one day from I don't love the term pump and dump, but we'll use it.

I don't like the term chunnel, so a tim pump and dump and chunnel.

This whole story is, did they make five hundred thousand dollars.

Fourteen million US dollars in today's money?

In today's money, yeah, so they definitely it was worth it to.

Dump all over the chunneled every everywhere.

All over the They were so stoked in that chunnel, that's fucking crazy.

Yeah, you'd wish one of them got away with it, because like that's just such a fun.

I don't know none of them did.

Let's see, I don't remember, I don't know. This whole thing takes only about a week to unravel. It sounds like this swift and angry reaction by both investors who had been duped and by investigators come as something of a surprise to Cochrane and as co conspirators, they thought they were having a good old fun making some money, but actually fucking pissed everyone off. Yeah, because I imagine how stoked you'd be if you heard and then it turns out for a.

War that has gone on for years, right decades, right falls, hey, hey, hey, come on, throw that confetti in the air.

So I left my husband because I thought, finally, like this is over and I oh shit, No. At the time, there's basically no regulation of the stock market. It has only just put out its own internal rule book, and so people trade on rumors all the time, and so rumors all the time. But I think that this was just beyond It was just too big, too outrageous, and ordinary investors or outrage because they already sense that people in power like Lord Cochrane who was in Parliament, had access to insider information that made them more able to get rich from investing. They already knew, Yeah, the rich get richer.

It's still scammed exactly.

Members of Parliament and members of Congress here in the US are still allowed to have interests in publicly traded companies, and they raise eyebrows all the time when they make prudent investment moves around the time that they might be briefed on developments. The general public does not yet know.

That doesn't seem fucking right at all, but we don't question it.

Well, there's entire accounts on TikTok where people just follow right senators and governors investments and then just basically tell people they just moved all their money from here to here. It's crazy.

It's just so fucked up.

It's very, very bad and corrupt.

But what Lord Cochrane and as co consparers did does seem to have crossed some imaginary rich person line. He goes to trial in June of eighteen fourteen, he's found guilty. He's fine, one thousand pounds.

He's like, that's fine. I have fourteen I write thirteen nine ninety nine.

You want to guess how much that is in today's money?

One thousand pounds in eighteen fourteen, I think.

In dollars, not in pounds.

That's gonna be sorry, A thousand dollars, yeah, to me a.

Thousand pounds in today's money pounds dollars.

A thousand pounds in today's money from then would be roughly four hundred thousand dollars.

Seventy seven hundred thousand. Wait, yeah, seventy seven hundred thousand dollars. I just read seventy seven thousand. What did I say? Seventy seven hundred thousand, thank you.

I was just like it could be me. I don't know, I don't know what's going on.

I'm having a stroke.

Seventy seven hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money, totally, It's crazy.

So that's how much she's mine. He's ordered to stand in the pillary in front of the stock market embarrassing. Do you know what the pillary is?

Yeah?

I didn't know.

We can get your thing there. Yeah, people can come up and spank your butt, can't do anything about it.

Yeah. It's the things you put your head and arms into that you sometimes see as a photo op at like amusement parks or little towns that.

Are really big dungeons.

Yeah.

Lord Cochrane's uncle Andrew flees the country like a fucking smart person after this verdict. He ultimately dies in France because the Napoleonic Wars really do end. About a year after all of this happens, Lord Cochrane protests his innocence for the rest of his life, claiming that he had been set up. How I don't know, Okay. Some historians will agree that, based solely on the evidence presented at his trial, which spent a lot of time on whether the fake colonel had really been wearing red, because that's kind of inferring that it's a costume to say something's been happening, not just to say it's been happening. He should not have been convicted regardless, based on the evidence, which is mostly circumstantial, most people believe that he probably

did participate.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it is a great, like, kind of overarching excuse to be like I was set up totally. We all were, Yeah, we all were.

And yet that is the story of the Napoleonic hoax. Amazing, Yeah, a fun realm to go into totally. You know what it makes me think of, is you like the guy from British Bakeoff the Eyeliner Think I like him?

I don't know. Don't you like weird Hoss isn't that your thing?

Thank you?

It is actually no fielding from the Mighty Boosh.

Oh yeah. Of course.

He has a show called Dick Turpin and they're basically highwaymen from this era, no way. So the second you started talking, I was just watching Dick Turpin's characters as those people were doing stuff, and I was just like, you should.

Try to watch that show, Gunna.

He's very goofy, funny and he likes to do like funny puns and people who are like they're highwaymen and robbing people, but then they're like that hurt my feeling.

Hey, what was that one with the castle?

And it was the plague and oh the Cameron after that we talk about.

All the time.

Well, it was just those couple episodes we didn't get. It wasn't our recurring show.

Come back. It's going to come back, so we should put our money on it.

Let's invest in you and our episodes.

Let's go to kes.

You know, we could go to Vegas and start betting on things that just happen. That's what a bunch of people are doing these days.

You know, you can go and bet on baseball things. But it's like what shorts the fucking person's wearing in the dugout and.

I'm talking about let's get in there, and then they're just start slapping down fifties.

Okay, come on, let's do another batch of honking horays. Brought to you, Byehunday, Thanks Henday Sunday. Hi goverse. This is from Amanda Woods on Instagram. I knocked almost two thousand dollars off my debt this month. Ooh, didn't say how she did.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, none of our business. No shame in a paycheck.

God, that's a lot of money. Good job.

Yeah, we've both been in debt. We know how you feel.

I mean, I was debt. It was my whole life.

Congratulations, Amanda.

Be like Amanda and chip it away, chip it away, chip it away.

Don't pay the minimum because then you're just stuck with it forever.

Okay. This one's from Hello Ashley over on Instagram, and it says I'm driving solo cross country with my dogs to start a job in a town where I know nobody. So scary. That's someone who needs a serious hooray because it's super brave. It's a brand new, cool, fun start, but also you'll still be there, so you get to have your journey and your dogs are going to be there, and your dogs will be there, and then you can meet people at the dog parts. Right, remember how weird dog people are.

Okay. This one is from Ericacva on Instagram. I just survived a week long vacation with my family. That's it is, it sounds like, and that's not a vacation. Yeah, that's not when you have to survive it, it's not a vacation.

Well, I mean it depends on the kind of family you have where It's like, if you love to shout as a pastime and then you get all your family together, well then everybody's having a good times.

Right, everyone's shouting, everyone gets to do their thing. I'll go in your family vacation.

Yeah, it's a lot of yelling.

Okay.

This is from full name Catherine Rudden, and this is actually somebody who responded to our newsletter. God bless them. Walking down the hill to the local convenience store for a soda refill, I randomly found two dollars on the sidewalk and used it for the soda and a lotto ticket. And then it says I didn't win, but it was fun.

Anticipation girl, math is that you didn't spend anything. That's right, You had the afternoon buy you some fun. Two dollars on the ground in this economy, when's the last time that's happened. When's the last time you found cash anywhere, even in your own house? Good job, cat, We're very proud of you. Keep those eyes peeled. Okay, this is from Teeka rhymes with Becka, so Teca. Hi, all.

My horay is that at forty eight I started a new hobby, quilting.

Oh my god, it's so hard.

I have a few good patient friends who are master quilters who gave me lessons, advice, and encouragement. Five years later, I'm proud to say I'm a pretty good quilter. If you ever received a homemade quilt from someone, please know that there is literal blood, sweat, and tears on that thing. Croyos Man, DNA, DNA, Techa, I need beca. Please know it is a labor of love. And there's math, so much math, And I am a school librarian and not a math teacher for a reason.

That's it. Well, why's Techa yelling at us about the fact that they decided to start quilting and has nothing to do with.

Have you ever been gifted a quilt? Yes?

I had aunts. My great aunts aunt man Anne were real crafty, so there's a lot of There was quilts. There was crocheted blankets, crochet slippers, that kind that would drive your feet crazy, crochet everything. I love.

Want to go to a state sale and I find something crocheted because like some person put a lot of effort that's watched hours and hours.

Of the price is right.

They made that thing for you, for you. You don't put in the lampfill, No, put it over your.

Body, no matter how much DNA is on it. From Techa and her friends, Well, thank.

You to Hyundai for presenting these honking arrays, and thank you guys for writing them in. Please write them in more and we'll read them. That's right. And also stay sexy, don't get murdered.

Goodbye, Elvis.

Do you want a cookie?

This has been an exactly right production.

Our managing producer is Molly Smith.

Our consulting producer is Kate Shellenbach.

Our creative lead is Alison Agosti.

Our associate producer is Tessa Hughes, and our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Leona Squillacci.

Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com and follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Or watch new episodes every week on Netflix. Search for My Favorite Murder, add us to your list, and hit the double thumbsup button. Goodbye,

545 - Don’t You Like Weirdos?

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