# 522 - Live at the Paramount Theatre (Denver Night 2)

An episode of [My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1074507850), 5 Mar 2026, 1 h 27 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/bdde8bb3-169d-43b1-91d3-b24c0047969c/adee0b2e-fa18-475b-a3fa-b40400016936/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=f450d41f-16bc-4ecd-8f6c-b24c004796e2

Live at Denver’s Paramount Theatre, Karen covers female reporter Polly Pry and Georgia tells the story of the Stanley Hotel. For our sources, please visit https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode. Instagram: instagram.com/myfavoritemurder Facebook: facebook.com/myfavoritemurder TikTok: tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder Send your hometown stories to myfavoritemurder@gmail.com. Join the Fan Cult to access ad-free episodes of My Favorite Murder. Members also receive merch store discounts, exclusive audio and video content and more! Visit www.fancult.supercast.com to join. Shop for My Favorite Murder and other Exactly Right merchandise here: www.exactlyrightstore.com. Rate, review and follow My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: H wells up, Denver. O, my god, we're going to
[0:57] Speaker 1: need hearing aids after this city. I swear to God.
[1:01] Speaker 2: I I always forget that's gonna happen until I start
[1:06] Speaker 2: walking on stage, and then it's like surprises me.
[1:10] Speaker 1: Wow, wow, Hi.
[1:17] Speaker 2: Thank you guys for being here. Oh my god, Denver,
[1:21] Speaker 2: this is this has been real.
[1:22] Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks for being so patient these six years and
[1:26] Speaker 1: waiting for us to come back, come back.
[1:30] Speaker 2: We really appreciate that, we do. I'm really mad though,
[1:34] Speaker 2: because she has a sign and she's not wrong. What's
[1:38] Speaker 2: it says, Georgia, you promised air guitar. Do you remember? No,
[1:47] Speaker 2: I said, if we ever go back on tour, I'll
[1:49] Speaker 2: do air guitar.
[1:50] Speaker 1: Okay, but I need music, but I need here's music here. Wait,
[1:54] Speaker 1: I'll do it.
[1:54] Speaker 2: Vince not the worst.
[2:05] Speaker 1: She clearly didn't think we were ever going to come
[2:07] Speaker 1: back on the stage. I think that's what we can
[2:09] Speaker 1: interpret from them.
[2:11] Speaker 2: I'm in a barf. That was just adair guitar and
[2:15] Speaker 2: nothing on stage, and.
[2:16] Speaker 1: That's what we do here, and that's what we do.
[2:20] Speaker 2: So last night, was anyone here last night?
[2:23] Speaker 1: Okay?
[2:24] Speaker 2: Thank you front Row. I don't know the rest of
[2:28] Speaker 2: them were at Lincoln Park.
[2:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, you assholes, we know, we know what you're like
[2:33] Speaker 1: back there.
[2:35] Speaker 2: Last night was fun because we forgot how to do this.
[2:39] Speaker 2: It was our first night back in six years.
[2:41] Speaker 1: We just kept calling line line over and over and
[2:44] Speaker 1: no one had those stripped in hand. That's terrible.
[2:48] Speaker 2: We forgot the basics. But tonight is gonna be fucking like, yeah, I.
[2:53] Speaker 1: Get oh, like this is the podcast my favorite murder.
[3:00] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's one of them.
[3:04] Speaker 2: That's Karen Kilgarrett.
[3:05] Speaker 1: That's Charge of Heartstar.
[3:09] Speaker 2: We literally forgot to do that last didn't do it
[3:12] Speaker 2: like we literally forgot to introduce ourselves.
[3:14] Speaker 1: Simply didn't introduce ourselves or the show like true show
[3:19] Speaker 1: business professionals.
[3:20] Speaker 2: It was But you know what did happen is a
[3:23] Speaker 2: moth like flew out of my dress and just hung
[3:26] Speaker 2: out on stage all night. Yeah, it was pretty special.
[3:30] Speaker 1: The moth was the third lead of the show last night.
[3:34] Speaker 1: And then we found out that you guys love moths.
[3:36] Speaker 1: You're apparently crazy.
[3:39] Speaker 2: They're good luck, right. Why doesn't anyone ever like I'm
[3:43] Speaker 2: the only person who knows that I made it up.
[3:46] Speaker 1: She made it up. That's the thing with when you're
[3:49] Speaker 1: the only person that knows something because you're just lying, mothster.
[3:54] Speaker 1: Good luck, like in Silence of the Lambs, you know
[3:59] Speaker 1: that very lines. Someone made a bracelet for us last
[4:04] Speaker 1: night that said, may I use your phone? Please?
[4:09] Speaker 2: But you know you know right? Yeah, and you went
[4:12] Speaker 2: to a baseball game, right, Oh, the first day I
[4:17] Speaker 2: was here, we my sister, who was very bossy, told
[4:24] Speaker 2: me that I had to go to the Rocky Stadium
[4:27] Speaker 2: and see what was going on over there.
[4:30] Speaker 1: Just so happened they were playing the Young San Francis.
[4:33] Speaker 1: I know it's probably called something else where. This isn't
[4:35] Speaker 1: about correct details. I hope you know that. So they
[4:40] Speaker 1: were playing the young San Francisco Giants where I'm from.
[4:43] Speaker 1: So it was just like, you know, all good and
[4:46] Speaker 1: then except.
[4:47] Speaker 2: There was a fight in the even better. I don't
[4:50] Speaker 2: think it was a good come on.
[4:52] Speaker 1: And I went down there. I was like, why don't
[4:55] Speaker 1: you guys act more like hockey players? And they're like
[4:58] Speaker 1: fun and then they did, no, it's gorgeous, it's beautiful
[5:03] Speaker 1: the sunset. I was like, yeah, I get it. I
[5:05] Speaker 1: get donever you get sports?
[5:07] Speaker 2: Oh done, yes, sure sports.
[5:09] Speaker 1: We were like we stood there for half an hour,
[5:11] Speaker 1: kind of looked around. They were like, gorgeous. Okay, here
[5:14] Speaker 1: we go. We'll find out the score later. And what
[5:18] Speaker 1: have you been doing.
[5:20] Speaker 2: I went to a vintage store yesterday because you have to,
[5:23] Speaker 2: and I found this literal fucking dress there. Thank you.
[5:28] Speaker 1: It's called and take a pack, So just go ahead
[5:30] Speaker 1: and show everybody look at her.
[5:34] Speaker 2: Go no pockets because vintage doesn't really do that.
[5:38] Speaker 1: They won't do it.
[5:39] Speaker 2: They're so like women don't need pockets, they need a handbag.
[5:42] Speaker 2: You know, we cock you. It's called it was called
[5:47] Speaker 2: I got. I just said the name of the bombshell.
[5:49] Speaker 2: Thank you, bombshell Vintage, very fucking awesome.
[5:52] Speaker 1: Store promo code murder, Oh I.
[5:56] Speaker 2: Forgot my ring shit, Wow, show's over. Wait gold Mine.
[6:01] Speaker 2: It was called gold Mine. And Shanks.
[6:06] Speaker 1: Is should dance? Come out and just say hi for
[6:08] Speaker 1: one second.
[6:13] Speaker 2: Harry is right there.
[6:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, Harry is my husband.
[6:22] Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
[6:24] Speaker 1: We decided that's our new thing for this tours. We're
[6:26] Speaker 1: going to do a lot of this at each other.
[6:29] Speaker 2: Everybody here.
[6:30] Speaker 1: That phony because we're so humble.
[6:32] Speaker 2: You know, you guys know that about us.
[6:35] Speaker 1: Bless and blessed, be and bless you.
[6:38] Speaker 2: This is a Christian true crime comedy.
[6:40] Speaker 1: But no, it's not. That's the reveal. In these six
[6:44] Speaker 1: years we have married christ and dedicated our lives.
[6:49] Speaker 2: You came to the wrong show. What else?
[6:54] Speaker 1: Also, I'll show my dress?
[6:55] Speaker 2: Oh god, show your dress. I'm sorry. Pockets, Pockey's what
[7:05] Speaker 2: you're having?
[7:05] Speaker 3: There?
[7:06] Speaker 1: A little lip gloss in case my mouth gets so
[7:08] Speaker 1: dry that my lipstick to my teeth.
[7:11] Speaker 2: Showbiz baby me? Uh cool? Well, I forgot to put
[7:16] Speaker 2: the kleanux in my spanks tonight, so my nose is
[7:19] Speaker 2: just gonna free run for the whole show.
[7:22] Speaker 1: Let it go. It's your show.
[7:23] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think. Oh, I found out that nervous
[7:27] Speaker 2: nose running is a thing, so that's what I have.
[7:32] Speaker 2: Everything fucking knows that I have.
[7:33] Speaker 1: You're suffering from NNR.
[7:35] Speaker 2: That's terrible.
[7:36] Speaker 1: So sorry.
[7:37] Speaker 2: You don't have to suffer alone.
[7:39] Speaker 1: If you suffer from NNR or someone in your family does,
[7:44] Speaker 1: I might.
[7:44] Speaker 2: Need a two shoe ban some I'm sorry. Thank you.
[7:49] Speaker 1: We just keep making them come out over and over.
[7:52] Speaker 1: That's the new bit, that's the new.
[7:53] Speaker 2: App Oh my god, never mind, she has Oh we're good.
[7:56] Speaker 1: Thank you so much, classy, very classy, thank you, angel.
[8:02] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[8:03] Speaker 1: See see how it is?
[8:05] Speaker 2: Oh, my god, I almost stuck that sticker the open
[8:09] Speaker 2: here on my chest because that's what I do when
[8:11] Speaker 2: I like eat an apple. I put the sticker on myself.
[8:14] Speaker 1: Oh, thanks Dance. He's clearly not watching the show backstage.
[8:22] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[8:22] Speaker 1: Just kidding, just kidding.
[8:23] Speaker 2: I thought you guys were really upset about my apple eating.
[8:26] Speaker 1: No, oh wait a second, I think we do have
[8:30] Speaker 1: to talk about the hometowns from Lesson. Look, some of
[8:35] Speaker 1: you were there, and you know, we just want to
[8:37] Speaker 1: talk about how it was for us. First of all,
[8:41] Speaker 1: a woman named Katie sat front and center dressed as
[8:44] Speaker 1: a hot dog, and we were like, this is the best.
[8:49] Speaker 1: And then we're like, great, you can be the audience
[8:51] Speaker 1: ambassador and teach us how to pronounce everything that we're
[8:54] Speaker 1: going to mispronounce in this town. And she's like, I'm
[8:56] Speaker 1: not from here. We're like, fuck you, Katie.
[8:59] Speaker 2: And when we met her later, she was like, I
[9:02] Speaker 2: really thought a lot more people would dress like hot Dog.
[9:05] Speaker 1: She thought her more like, we're hot Dog cosplay live
[9:10] Speaker 1: podcast comedy show. Elli.
[9:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, actually cosplay hot Dog.
[9:15] Speaker 1: So many corners to touch negotiate, but this was my favorite.
[9:22] Speaker 1: This truly is It is a misunderstanding we didn't. Truly,
[9:26] Speaker 1: we didn't know our line. So when it came to
[9:27] Speaker 1: the part we we're supposed to tell people like, hey,
[9:30] Speaker 1: here's the rules for hometowns. People want you to do
[9:32] Speaker 1: it local, you know, don't take too long, blah blah blah,
[9:36] Speaker 1: and we didn't say any of that. We're just like,
[9:37] Speaker 1: get up here and til your hometown. And so the
[9:41] Speaker 1: first person, her name was Katie. Also, I think if
[9:43] Speaker 1: I'm I.
[9:44] Speaker 2: Have no fucking clue.
[9:45] Speaker 1: But I could just be like, look, everyone's name Katie.
[9:49] Speaker 1: But she came up and we were like, Hi, what's
[9:52] Speaker 1: your name? She's like Katie, and we're like, where are
[9:54] Speaker 1: you from? And she was like Roward, Florida. And the
[9:56] Speaker 1: entire audience starts booing, don't do it again, don't do
[10:00] Speaker 1: it again.
[10:02] Speaker 2: We didn't say it's totally on us, Like, we didn't say,
[10:05] Speaker 2: what's on them too.
[10:07] Speaker 1: This is not Lincoln Park, for Fox's sake. Be nice.
[10:10] Speaker 1: I don't have to be nice. You have to be nice.
[10:13] Speaker 1: But she basically said Roward, Florida and then stood there smiling,
[10:17] Speaker 1: and we're.
[10:18] Speaker 2: Just like, we go, what's your hometown?
[10:20] Speaker 1: And she was like Roward, Florida, And we're like thanks
[10:22] Speaker 1: so much, and she walked off the stage.
[10:27] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[10:27] Speaker 1: But then later we met her in the VIP and
[10:29] Speaker 1: she was like, oh, no, I had a story. I
[10:31] Speaker 1: just got scared and left the stage. See what I
[10:35] Speaker 1: mean about what you did?
[10:37] Speaker 2: So here's actually, here's a good tip. If you really
[10:40] Speaker 2: want to do a hometown stop drinking now, yes, because
[10:44] Speaker 2: it's scary up here and being ship face is not
[10:47] Speaker 2: help with it, right, But I guess it does a
[10:49] Speaker 2: little bit. I don't know.
[10:50] Speaker 1: And if you really want to do a hometown and
[10:52] Speaker 1: you can't stop drinking now, you're an alcoholic. So there's
[10:57] Speaker 1: a lot to get from this show lot to glean
[11:00] Speaker 1: from the show.
[11:03] Speaker 2: Hey, shall we sit down?
[11:04] Speaker 1: I guess so.
[11:09] Speaker 2: Thanks Georgia.
[11:10] Speaker 1: Did remember that line last night? That was a huge release?
[11:13] Speaker 2: I sure did?
[11:14] Speaker 1: We knew to sit wo?
[11:17] Speaker 2: Wow?
[11:17] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, let's cheer for the logo designed by Georgia Hartstark.
[11:24] Speaker 1: Does everybody know that?
[11:27] Speaker 2: Yeah? But like the notes app or something gonna say
[11:30] Speaker 2: it in twenty sixteen, Yeah, wow, something like this.
[11:34] Speaker 1: Okayi's podcast. Do you want this to be the logo? Yes?
[11:37] Speaker 1: And I'm like, do you want this to be the
[11:39] Speaker 1: theme song? She's like yes, and I'm like, all right,
[11:41] Speaker 1: let's do this thing. We'll quit in three weeks.
[11:44] Speaker 2: And we did, and we do you want to tell
[11:48] Speaker 2: them about this podcast?
[11:49] Speaker 1: Okay, this is a true crime comedy podcast. Thank you,
[11:55] Speaker 1: thank you. Some people don't like that combination, they don't
[11:58] Speaker 1: like the idea. They get very sensitive about it. So
[12:00] Speaker 1: we do want to tell you that the reason that
[12:03] Speaker 1: we do this podcast is because we have loved true
[12:06] Speaker 1: crime since we were young, because we're incredibly traumatized by
[12:10] Speaker 1: our childhoods. And one of the ways that we deal
[12:14] Speaker 1: with our trauma is through humor and comedy, and the
[12:17] Speaker 1: other way is by reading a lot of true crime.
[12:20] Speaker 1: And we found that combination to be very satisfying when
[12:24] Speaker 1: we met each other.
[12:25] Speaker 2: Cathartic even, say, I would say.
[12:28] Speaker 1: And so we know that there are people who would
[12:32] Speaker 1: argue or maybe have other things to say, and what
[12:35] Speaker 1: we would like to say is get the fuck out
[12:37] Speaker 1: right now. It'd be so fun if like the entire
[12:45] Speaker 1: first three rows were like we're gone someday.
[12:48] Speaker 2: Someday, it's like that the bus from the senior center
[12:50] Speaker 2: accidentally stop here, and it's just like a whole fucking
[12:53] Speaker 2: row of Grandma's.
[12:55] Speaker 1: Just like that. But that happened in Florida. I remember
[12:57] Speaker 1: the live show and we had a live sho show
[13:00] Speaker 1: in Florida. Stop booing Broward, Florida. We had this live
[13:05] Speaker 1: show in Florida and there were these two women who
[13:08] Speaker 1: were older, and they were all dressed up and very
[13:10] Speaker 1: fancy looking but total someone's fancy grandma's. And I couldn't
[13:15] Speaker 1: stop looking them the whole time, where I'm like, who's
[13:16] Speaker 1: fancy grandmas? Are these that are here at our live
[13:19] Speaker 1: show in Florida? And we met them afterwards and they
[13:22] Speaker 1: were seasoned ticket holders that were like what's this? And
[13:25] Speaker 1: they fucking came to this swear fest murder fucking show
[13:30] Speaker 1: where we were like, oh my god.
[13:32] Speaker 2: But did we win them over? We sure fucking listeners,
[13:38] Speaker 2: Yeah we did. Yeah, So if you don't like it,
[13:40] Speaker 2: there are grandma's better than you out there in Florida,
[13:44] Speaker 2: for fox sake, Florida, So like.
[13:47] Speaker 1: Can you imagine?
[13:48] Speaker 2: Eving mean, I'm not sure.
[13:51] Speaker 1: We were working through a lot of emotions. It's so
[13:54] Speaker 1: exciting to be here tonight. It is so exciting, it
[13:59] Speaker 1: really is.
[14:00] Speaker 2: Uh it is I think your first tonight, I am.
[14:03] Speaker 2: I double checked yeah yeah, And then I said to Mollie,
[14:06] Speaker 2: we should really have that in the header of our
[14:09] Speaker 2: like when they print the stories and she's it's there,
[14:12] Speaker 2: it's there.
[14:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, just read the paper.
[14:15] Speaker 2: I'm like, you are fucking smart. You should probably tell us. Anyways.
[14:18] Speaker 1: I love working with you, Love working with you. Oh
[14:23] Speaker 1: and Molly also sent us all of our lines.
[14:27] Speaker 2: What I was a little that's a little passive aggressive
[14:29] Speaker 2: of her says, what are.
[14:32] Speaker 1: You wearing tonight? Karen?
[14:34] Speaker 2: It says it says, what's up city, what's up city?
[14:39] Speaker 2: I think you got that one. At least I'm not
[14:43] Speaker 2: having a hot flash tonight. I literally had a hot
[14:45] Speaker 2: flash on stage line.
[14:46] Speaker 1: Yeah you better. You got to represent the Perry and
[14:49] Speaker 1: the menopausals.
[14:50] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[14:52] Speaker 1: Right.
[14:53] Speaker 2: Well, when I was at lunch today, Vince and I
[14:55] Speaker 2: were at this bar and because of course we were
[14:58] Speaker 2: and two seats down, I just out of the corner of.
[15:01] Speaker 1: My ear, corner of your ear.
[15:02] Speaker 2: Absolute uh oh, I think I hear, oh a hot flash.
[15:07] Speaker 2: And I turn and look and she's taking a little
[15:09] Speaker 2: portable fan out of her purse, and I just like rebonded.
[15:13] Speaker 2: I was like, did you just say hot flash like
[15:15] Speaker 2: I did? And just yourself brilliant Anyway, Karen.
[15:19] Speaker 1: Your first night. Anytime you have a story like that,
[15:23] Speaker 1: please jump in. All right, So maybe some of you
[15:34] Speaker 1: were here when we played the Belco Theater in twenty nineteen.
[15:37] Speaker 1: I thank you. That was an awesome show. Those are
[15:42] Speaker 1: all my cousins. So that night when we played the Bellco.
[15:47] Speaker 1: And sorry to keep on mentioning the rival theater of Paramount,
[15:51] Speaker 1: but I told the story of the Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer.
[15:58] Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I agree, so really quick before
[16:04] Speaker 1: I get into my story, which is not that story,
[16:06] Speaker 1: but I'm going to just refresh you about that story
[16:11] Speaker 1: because it is a part of this current news story.
[16:15] Speaker 1: If you understand what I'm saying, do you there, I'm here.
[16:19] Speaker 1: I'm going to focus more on you. I think it
[16:21] Speaker 1: will help more ow me the story. It's your thing more.
[16:24] Speaker 2: Okay, they're all drag along.
[16:28] Speaker 1: We didn't talk about the drag along.
[16:29] Speaker 2: We didn't.
[16:30] Speaker 1: It's supposed to go at the top of the speech
[16:31] Speaker 1: about get the fuck out. But it's fine.
[16:33] Speaker 2: Mollie was right about the notes. Okay.
[16:35] Speaker 1: She's like, if you could just read them quickly before
[16:38] Speaker 1: you walk on stage, and we're like, no, no, we'll
[16:41] Speaker 1: read them on stage after we forget them. It's the
[16:45] Speaker 1: new show business.
[16:47] Speaker 2: Okay.
[16:48] Speaker 1: So back in February of eighteen seventy four, Alfred Packer
[16:53] Speaker 1: was one of six gold miner or prospectors I think
[16:56] Speaker 1: it is more accurate, and they got lost in the
[16:59] Speaker 1: San Juan Mountains during one of the worst winter storms
[17:04] Speaker 1: Colorado had ever seen. When the storm lets up, Alfred
[17:08] Speaker 1: is the only survivor. He walks into the Indian agency,
[17:12] Speaker 1: claiming that the rest of the group left him behind
[17:14] Speaker 1: when his feet became frozen. Mean, so he says he
[17:21] Speaker 1: doesn't know where they are, but authorities start to get
[17:24] Speaker 1: suspicious about him. When Alfred, who was known to be penniless,
[17:29] Speaker 1: buys a horse and a saddle and starts drinking and
[17:32] Speaker 1: playing a lot of cards in this saloon.
[17:34] Speaker 2: He doesn't just eat them, he steals from them, Like
[17:37] Speaker 2: that's not it's.
[17:38] Speaker 1: So who knows? So they start questioning him further, and
[17:44] Speaker 1: that's when he admits that he did eat the other
[17:48] Speaker 1: five people in that party. But he's basically the whole
[17:51] Speaker 1: story was I was lost for a month. It was
[17:54] Speaker 1: pure desperation. He tells the whole story. Unfortunately, a little
[18:00] Speaker 1: while later, an illustrator from Harper's Bizarre magazine is out
[18:04] Speaker 1: here figuring out what the wild West is about, and
[18:08] Speaker 1: he comes upon five dead bodies that are lined up
[18:11] Speaker 1: on a riverbank and they've all been smashed in the
[18:14] Speaker 1: head with a hatchet, and one of them is decapitated,
[18:17] Speaker 1: and that those are the rest of the party Alfred
[18:20] Speaker 1: Packer was traveling with. So wow, his story suddenly comes
[18:25] Speaker 1: into question.
[18:26] Speaker 2: Listen to me gasping, even though I was definitely there
[18:28] Speaker 2: for the story. Yes, I don't remember it.
[18:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all new. Yeah, Yeah, that's the fun of this.
[18:34] Speaker 1: So he's arrested, tried, found guilty on five counts of
[18:37] Speaker 1: voluntary manslaughter, sentenced to forty years in prison, which is
[18:41] Speaker 1: a huge sentence. Back then, he files appeal after appeal
[18:46] Speaker 1: with the help of a friend, but they're all denied.
[18:49] Speaker 1: In nineteen oh one, he gets paroled. It's less than
[18:53] Speaker 1: halfway through his sentence. So today I'm going to tell
[18:56] Speaker 1: you about that friend that held Alfred Packer. Take two
[19:00] Speaker 1: that helped Alfred Packer, the Colorado cannibal, you go free
[19:05] Speaker 1: from jail. This person was not a lawyer, not a politician.
[19:09] Speaker 1: She was a gossip writer turned investigative journalist. Who made
[19:13] Speaker 1: her name writing stories that earned her both respect and infamy.
[19:17] Speaker 1: And she was the first female reporter that the Denver
[19:20] Speaker 1: Post ever hired. You might know her by her you
[19:25] Speaker 1: might know her by her pen named Polly Prye. This
[19:27] Speaker 1: is the life story of Nell Campbell. Hell, yeah, right.
[19:34] Speaker 2: Great great.
[19:36] Speaker 1: The sources for that were used in this story today
[19:40] Speaker 1: are a book by Julia Brooklin called The Woman Who
[19:42] Speaker 1: Wrote the West, And there's around Polly Prie and Nell Campbell.
[19:47] Speaker 1: There's a lot of mythologizing, of course, when it's like
[19:50] Speaker 1: old history like that, and she herself was kind of
[19:52] Speaker 1: a sensationalist, sensational journalist for some part of her career.
[19:57] Speaker 1: And Julia Brooklyn gets in and basically steps separates all
[20:02] Speaker 1: the fact from fiction and is amazing. That's all from Maren.
[20:05] Speaker 1: I have not read this book. I don't stolen valor.
[20:08] Speaker 1: I didn't read the book. There's also an article from
[20:12] Speaker 1: Colorado Life magazine by Matt Massich, and the rest of
[20:16] Speaker 1: the sources are in our show notes. You can check those,
[20:20] Speaker 1: I guess.
[20:20] Speaker 2: And guys show your favorite thing.
[20:24] Speaker 1: Okay, so here we go. Liam Nell Campbell nicknamed Nell,
[20:28] Speaker 1: is born November twenty seventh, eighteen fifty nine in Clinton, Illinois.
[20:32] Speaker 1: She's said to have lied about her birthday to everyone
[20:35] Speaker 1: for her whole life, but Julia Britlan verifies that this
[20:39] Speaker 1: is actually her real birthday. Okay, thank you. Julia. Nell's
[20:42] Speaker 1: parents are relatively wealthy, wealthy enough that she's educated at
[20:46] Speaker 1: a private boarding school. That's rich. Yeah, but it's back
[20:51] Speaker 1: in a time where women are expected to blend in,
[20:54] Speaker 1: and Nell very much stands out. She's very striking. Now, this,
[20:58] Speaker 1: this was a funny experience for me today when I
[21:02] Speaker 1: was going over all this. She's very striking. Her looks
[21:06] Speaker 1: are described as kind of an alienish beauty that supermodels have.
[21:12] Speaker 1: She has a symmetrical face with a mix of classically
[21:15] Speaker 1: feminine and masculine features, with a prominent jaw and oversized,
[21:19] Speaker 1: piercing cat like eyes. Can we take a look at Nell?
[21:22] Speaker 2: I can't imagine, all right, look at her gaze and off.
[21:27] Speaker 1: That literally looks like my grandma in a nightgown, who
[21:32] Speaker 1: was alien supermodel like her whole life.
[21:37] Speaker 2: I love the outphit. I almost wore that.
[21:39] Speaker 1: I mean that is she is Christmas Tree coded right now,
[21:43] Speaker 1: isn't she?
[21:45] Speaker 2: So?
[21:46] Speaker 1: She also has a tendency to literally do whatever she
[21:49] Speaker 1: wants at all times. She does not care about societal conventions.
[21:53] Speaker 1: One of us, one of us, one of us. For example,
[21:57] Speaker 1: she poses for this incredibly contraver maveral photograph. If you
[22:01] Speaker 1: are under eighteen, please cover your eyes and pray to
[22:04] Speaker 1: your chosen God. Let's take a look. Oh my god, f.
[22:12] Speaker 2: That is gorgeous. Slat my god. That's the rug from
[22:19] Speaker 2: tonight too.
[22:23] Speaker 1: So okay, thank you.
[22:26] Speaker 2: So.
[22:26] Speaker 1: In her relationship with her first husband, George Henry Anthony Junior,
[22:31] Speaker 1: you know there's a problem when he has three first names. Absolutely,
[22:34] Speaker 1: it happened every single time. We don't know how the
[22:38] Speaker 1: first two, we don't know how they met. Nell's flair
[22:41] Speaker 1: for drama and exaggeration makes it very hard to pin down.
[22:44] Speaker 1: For example, she claims that she was just a teenager
[22:47] Speaker 1: when she met him and that he was in his fifties,
[22:50] Speaker 1: but actually, in reality, she was in her mid twenties
[22:53] Speaker 1: and he was almost thirty.
[22:56] Speaker 2: What a weird brag, right.
[22:58] Speaker 1: She's like, well, that old man snapped me.
[23:01] Speaker 2: Rather, I was a child, just a child.
[23:06] Speaker 1: The thing about it, though, is he was a married
[23:08] Speaker 1: father of two. No, that's a big no. When when
[23:13] Speaker 1: his wife finds out. Of course, she gives him the boot.
[23:16] Speaker 1: She files for a divorce, which is very scandalous at
[23:18] Speaker 1: the time. It's eighteen eighty three. Georgia Knell then marry
[23:22] Speaker 1: a few months afterwards in Saint Louis. And so this
[23:25] Speaker 1: story is not someone cheered for Saint Louis. This story,
[23:29] Speaker 1: yeah you can. This story is not about George Anthony
[23:33] Speaker 1: Henry Anthony Junior, but it's worth it to digress to
[23:36] Speaker 1: talk about him because he is kind of the worst.
[23:40] Speaker 1: He's also he's a he's a bum husband. He's a
[23:43] Speaker 1: bum father. He's also a nepo baby. He's the son
[23:47] Speaker 1: of the seventh Senator of oh sorry, the seventh governor
[23:51] Speaker 1: of Kansas, and his success in life is fully just
[23:55] Speaker 1: brought to him by his rich father, who helps him
[23:58] Speaker 1: get one pristie just job after another. So when he's
[24:02] Speaker 1: in his late twenties, he's given a job at Levenworth Prison,
[24:05] Speaker 1: replacing an experienced employee already holding the post. It's so
[24:12] Speaker 1: baffling that the local newspaper actually reports quote to take
[24:16] Speaker 1: away a man of experience and judgment and put in
[24:18] Speaker 1: a white headed boy seems like a folly.
[24:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, don't book around in a prison with employees, right, Like,
[24:26] Speaker 2: that's the wrong go to a bank and buck around.
[24:29] Speaker 1: It's not very Nepo baby to go to live Levenworth
[24:32] Speaker 1: and I feel like I'd love to spend a lot
[24:33] Speaker 1: of time here. Then, in the mid eighteen eighties, he's
[24:37] Speaker 1: handed yet another high paying gig which he has no
[24:41] Speaker 1: business doing, which is working on the Mexican Central Railroad.
[24:45] Speaker 1: He leaves that job then to start a lumber company
[24:48] Speaker 1: with his father and go cut down Mexican forests. Just
[24:52] Speaker 1: bad after bad, he and Nell moved from Mexico to
[24:55] Speaker 1: Texas to Kansas City and the whole time, Sure, the
[25:00] Speaker 1: whole time, Nel plays the role of her rich housewife.
[25:03] Speaker 1: She throws parties and entertains guests, and she keeps up appearances.
[25:07] Speaker 1: But after four years she gets bored and she's done,
[25:12] Speaker 1: so the marriage is on the rocks and she files
[25:15] Speaker 1: for divorce. Scandal. George goes crawling back to his ex
[25:21] Speaker 1: wife after this four years four years while Nell ditches
[25:28] Speaker 1: high society and heads to New York City with all
[25:32] Speaker 1: of her cash, jewelry and expensive furs. But as we
[25:35] Speaker 1: all know, New York's a very expensive town, so she
[25:38] Speaker 1: burns through that cash right quick. And this is before
[25:41] Speaker 1: alimony or spousal support, so obviously her role at this
[25:46] Speaker 1: time in America would be to find another rich guy
[25:50] Speaker 1: to marry. But she's done with that life. She wants
[25:53] Speaker 1: to earn a living as a songwriter and actress.
[25:56] Speaker 2: I mean that sounds pretty sweet, honey, honey, honey.
[26:02] Speaker 1: So she finds him, befriends a very creative group of
[26:04] Speaker 1: New York writers and editors and publishers, and they recognize
[26:08] Speaker 1: that Nell actually does have something very special about her.
[26:11] Speaker 1: She's fiery, she's smart, and she is not easily intimidated
[26:15] Speaker 1: by other people. So she's offered assignments with their newspapers
[26:20] Speaker 1: like the New York Herald and the New York Journal,
[26:23] Speaker 1: but she's it's mostly gossip calumnists and society reporting. But
[26:28] Speaker 1: it turns out Nell's made for that job. She has
[26:31] Speaker 1: this amazing ability to get people talking and telling stories,
[26:36] Speaker 1: and that gets her the nickname Polly Prye.
[26:39] Speaker 2: Now what is it, Polly Priye? She just gets them
[26:42] Speaker 2: shit based. I bet yeah, my name right, that's the
[26:45] Speaker 2: way to do it.
[26:46] Speaker 1: Like two compliments, three shots. Now you're telling me everything
[26:49] Speaker 1: about your life, that's right, and you might remember I
[26:53] Speaker 1: covered the story of Nellie Bly, who was the female reporter.
[26:58] Speaker 1: Her real name was Elizabeth Cochrane, and she's the one
[27:00] Speaker 1: that went into the insane asylum and basically exposed how
[27:05] Speaker 1: horrible that New York City Insane Asylum was. So basically
[27:09] Speaker 1: people think that Polly Prye is like a little play
[27:11] Speaker 1: on Nellie Bly. Okay, because that was ten years before.
[27:15] Speaker 1: Got it this time just trying to put it in
[27:18] Speaker 1: a timeline based on all the stories I've done on
[27:21] Speaker 1: this podcast and nothing else. So now it's the eighteen
[27:25] Speaker 1: nineties and Nella's in her mid thirties, so two she
[27:29] Speaker 1: has a big family. Two of her younger brothers have tuberculosis,
[27:33] Speaker 1: and so her family moves to Colorado because the air
[27:37] Speaker 1: is apparently very dry here, good of you guys, and
[27:40] Speaker 1: filled with moths. So after one of these younger brothers
[27:47] Speaker 1: dies from the disease, nell decides she's going to leave
[27:49] Speaker 1: New York City and come to Denver to be with
[27:52] Speaker 1: her family. So after about a year, she is on
[27:56] Speaker 1: a train and she sits across from this man that
[27:59] Speaker 1: she doesn't know who is old fashioned style holding up
[28:02] Speaker 1: a newspaper when he's reading it. Just doesn't happen anymore
[28:07] Speaker 1: unless you're trying to hide from the cops. So she
[28:12] Speaker 1: sees that this newspaper had done their headlines in red,
[28:16] Speaker 1: and she goes, how awful. And the owner of the
[28:19] Speaker 1: newspaper is the guy holding the newspaper. Yes, that's right.
[28:22] Speaker 2: You just insult people by opening your mouth. It's a
[28:24] Speaker 2: fun thing to do. Yeah, I do it all the time,
[28:27] Speaker 2: the story of my life.
[28:28] Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't mean it like that. So this man
[28:32] Speaker 1: is Frederick Gilmer Ballfi and he is the co owner
[28:37] Speaker 1: of the Denver Evening Post, which is now the Denver Post,
[28:41] Speaker 1: and it is Colorado's newspaper of record. So Nell who
[28:48] Speaker 1: of course, Nell's very embarrassed, but she's no stranger to
[28:51] Speaker 1: putting her foot in her mouth, and she's very good
[28:53] Speaker 1: at charming people. And basically she recovers she charms Frederick.
[28:58] Speaker 1: He invites her to dinner. They go eat in the
[29:01] Speaker 1: dining car. They have this wonderful meal, and essentially it
[29:04] Speaker 1: goes so well that by the end he offers her
[29:06] Speaker 1: a job. Yep, and so so bad things happen and
[29:10] Speaker 1: then you can get a job after Just believe believe
[29:14] Speaker 1: that if you insult men enough, they'll give you a job.
[29:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.
[29:22] Speaker 1: So it works. So at this point in Denver history,
[29:25] Speaker 1: the city's population is booming and there's a serious competition
[29:30] Speaker 1: between the local newspapers for readers. So Frederick and his
[29:33] Speaker 1: business partner Harry Tammin, they really want to win the
[29:37] Speaker 1: Colorado newspaper wars. Let me take a look at Harry
[29:41] Speaker 1: and Frederick. Oh, supermodels, alien life in their beauty. Yeah,
[29:50] Speaker 1: leylak Rich doesn't look like he just pulled that mustache
[29:53] Speaker 1: out of his pocket.
[29:55] Speaker 2: It was just a bunch of moths. We can land
[29:58] Speaker 2: it on his face.
[30:00] Speaker 1: The problem is really a problem, and they all fly away.
[30:04] Speaker 1: But what's one big one anyway. Oh so, fortunately for them,
[30:15] Speaker 1: they have a real edge in the newspaper wars because
[30:17] Speaker 1: they've just hired good old Nell Campbell Polly Prye, who
[30:20] Speaker 1: pulls no punches. So the Denver Post is primed for victory.
[30:24] Speaker 1: And right off the bat Nell's first interview makes waves.
[30:28] Speaker 1: It's with a political candidate who's running for senator, and
[30:31] Speaker 1: Nell makes no bones about how she feels about this man.
[30:34] Speaker 1: She writes, quote, if tones could freeze, the marrow in
[30:38] Speaker 1: my bones would have congealed then in there the voice
[30:41] Speaker 1: of the would be senator was so icily unfriendly.
[30:45] Speaker 2: Wow, how would you say that? What a dick?
[30:51] Speaker 1: Fucking dick. She also describes him as quote tall, thin, nervous,
[30:58] Speaker 1: and irritable, with a harsh voice and cold gray eyes.
[31:03] Speaker 1: And she also goes on to warn the public that
[31:05] Speaker 1: if he wins the Senate race, political cartoonists will have
[31:08] Speaker 1: a field day with him.
[31:09] Speaker 2: Wow, damn it.
[31:12] Speaker 1: And you're just like this skinny, nervous guy that's like,
[31:15] Speaker 1: god damn it, just trying to make a living. Why
[31:19] Speaker 1: did I talk to that? God damn woman? Author Julia
[31:24] Speaker 1: Brickling writes, quote no, sorry, it's not a quote yet
[31:28] Speaker 1: that Nell now begins to gravitate toward exposing quote those
[31:32] Speaker 1: she considered particularly out of touch with progressive politics, hypocritical,
[31:37] Speaker 1: right or entitled, or perhaps all of these things. So
[31:42] Speaker 1: she's after it. She's doing it. She is holding their
[31:45] Speaker 1: feet to the fire in a time where women and
[31:48] Speaker 1: don't hold me this because I'm not sure, but I
[31:50] Speaker 1: don't think they could vote yet, pretty fucking sure that
[31:55] Speaker 1: we couldn't. Here come the emails explaining to me how
[31:59] Speaker 1: dumb I am. But Nell is fearless in her reporting,
[32:04] Speaker 1: she publishes hit pieces on Reverends, on city officials, even
[32:09] Speaker 1: Colorado socialites like the famous philanthropist and Titanic survivor, the
[32:14] Speaker 1: unsingable Molly Brown.
[32:17] Speaker 2: She goes after Molly.
[32:19] Speaker 1: She goes fucking after an unkillable socialite.
[32:24] Speaker 2: Wow.
[32:25] Speaker 1: But despite that, she actually calls her in one of
[32:27] Speaker 1: her columns, quote the worst kind of social climber.
[32:31] Speaker 2: Damn.
[32:33] Speaker 1: I get. This was probably before she almost froze to
[32:36] Speaker 1: death in the icy waters of the North Sea. Despite this,
[32:40] Speaker 1: Nell and Molly eventually become friends. Yeah, girl power. Nell's
[32:47] Speaker 1: work is pretty polarizing. Many readers wonder who the hell
[32:50] Speaker 1: this woman thinks she is and why that she's not
[32:54] Speaker 1: making them flaky fresh biscuits instead of writing. But her
[32:59] Speaker 1: bluntness and her brashness make her a standout. She's not
[33:02] Speaker 1: afraid to ask the hard questions, to show up uninvited,
[33:05] Speaker 1: or to name names, and because of that, her readers
[33:09] Speaker 1: devour her articles. So now we're in eighteen ninety nine,
[33:13] Speaker 1: and since Nell's bosses at the Post are always looking
[33:16] Speaker 1: for ways to sell more newspapers, they figure what better
[33:19] Speaker 1: way to do that than to send their firecracker Lady
[33:22] Speaker 1: reporter out to check on the Colorado Cannibal himself, and
[33:26] Speaker 1: Nell says, hell, yes, I'll go talk to that fucking cannibal.
[33:29] Speaker 1: Sounds good to shut up?
[33:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, So like that all happens. Yes, and they're like, hey,
[33:34] Speaker 2: you piss everyone off. Why don't you go talk to
[33:37] Speaker 2: this murdering cannibal.
[33:38] Speaker 1: Here's another guy that pissed a bunch of people off, right.
[33:42] Speaker 2: Yikes.
[33:43] Speaker 1: So Nell travels one hundred miles south of Denver to
[33:46] Speaker 1: a prison in Canyon City.
[33:50] Speaker 2: You know what.
[33:53] Speaker 1: Doesn't seem like it's a great place. I don't know, Oh,
[33:56] Speaker 1: the prison or Okay, So she has to follow the
[33:59] Speaker 1: war and around she like shadows him to get the tour,
[34:02] Speaker 1: and she finds this prison extremely disturbing. She can't stop
[34:06] Speaker 1: thinking about the difficult life circumstances that led each inmate
[34:09] Speaker 1: to this awful place and how dark their futures are.
[34:13] Speaker 1: And she's disgusted to learn that members of the public
[34:17] Speaker 1: can pay twenty five cents to come and gawk at
[34:19] Speaker 1: the prisoners. Did you know that that was a thing
[34:23] Speaker 1: that I used to do?
[34:24] Speaker 2: What do they just stand and stay at?
[34:26] Speaker 1: Yeah? After church? And how much do you think twenty
[34:31] Speaker 1: five cents was back.
[34:32] Speaker 2: Then, okay, and we're in eighteen it's.
[34:35] Speaker 1: Like eighteen ninety. I can't find that fucking piece of paper. Person.
[34:39] Speaker 2: Well, I guess I'm going to go twelve dollars.
[34:42] Speaker 1: Ten dollars.
[34:43] Speaker 2: That was good. Oh if you're a drag along, that
[34:47] Speaker 2: was amazing. Like that was so clse. I know it
[34:49] Speaker 2: doesn't sound close, but it was really close.
[34:51] Speaker 1: I guessed like eight different moneies from a different time
[34:55] Speaker 1: with Georgia last night, and I was never within one
[34:57] Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars.
[34:59] Speaker 2: But he also does, we're not doing that anymore.
[35:01] Speaker 1: Oh that's right, that's right. That was the last one.
[35:04] Speaker 1: Thank god, goodbye, dumb thing. Okay, So ironically kind of,
[35:11] Speaker 1: Nella is introduced to Alfred Packer in the prison kitchen.
[35:16] Speaker 2: Oh I hear okay, yea, yeah, sos orbit for a second,
[35:19] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's weird.
[35:22] Speaker 1: He is now around fifty eight years old, and nell
[35:25] Speaker 1: not surprisingly gets a very bad vibe from him. You
[35:28] Speaker 1: think she will describe him in an article, and this
[35:33] Speaker 1: is Maren what Maren wrote. She goes like he's describing
[35:36] Speaker 1: a cartoon devil. It says, quote dead black hair, glittering eyes,
[35:42] Speaker 1: sodie mustache, and goateea and sarcastic smile end quote.
[35:47] Speaker 2: That does. Yeah, there's a tiny moth right now for real? Yes,
[35:51] Speaker 2: like a teeny tiny one. Have you guys noticed it
[35:52] Speaker 2: or am I having now?
[35:54] Speaker 1: Do you think it's the same one from last night?
[35:56] Speaker 1: Do you think that one's dead?
[35:59] Speaker 2: No? I don't know what that went. Where that one
[36:01] Speaker 2: went maybe like this petticoat, But there's a teeny tiny one.
[36:08] Speaker 1: Come on, Oh you're trying.
[36:10] Speaker 2: To get it to land.
[36:14] Speaker 1: Come on, we've all seen snow white. Damn.
[36:17] Speaker 2: That would be so cute.
[36:21] Speaker 1: We would have a whole different show if moths started
[36:24] Speaker 1: landing on her fingers.
[36:25] Speaker 2: See you see, I'm not going crazy.
[36:29] Speaker 1: What's the rule of the theater? No smoking, no children,
[36:32] Speaker 1: no live animals, And yet here we are contending with
[36:36] Speaker 1: this moth all night long. Try to focus everybody, Okay.
[36:40] Speaker 1: The kitchen meeting is quick, and she is very She
[36:43] Speaker 1: wants to spend more time with him, She wants to
[36:45] Speaker 1: talk to him more, so she sets up a formal
[36:47] Speaker 1: interview for the next day, but it doesn't start out
[36:51] Speaker 1: well because Alfred Packer, of course, is like, you're just
[36:53] Speaker 1: here to sensationalize me and to you know, make his
[36:58] Speaker 1: life worse.
[36:59] Speaker 2: And it's judge of him. I'm the judge of actually.
[37:02] Speaker 1: From his back, you know, it's like, give a little grace,
[37:07] Speaker 1: you eight five people. But when Nell gets Packer talking,
[37:13] Speaker 1: he starts telling her his version of this infamous story,
[37:17] Speaker 1: explaining to his account that they crossed the San Juan Mountains,
[37:22] Speaker 1: they got lost, supplies ran out. He claims, one man
[37:26] Speaker 1: lost his mind and started shooting at the others and
[37:31] Speaker 1: he he and so Alfred was forced to shoot the
[37:35] Speaker 1: shooter and kill him dead. So it's just self defense.
[37:40] Speaker 1: Oh so sorry. He's basically saying the shooter killed the
[37:43] Speaker 1: other four men than Alfred had to kill him. And
[37:46] Speaker 1: then he's like, no, no, I just had to eat everybody
[37:48] Speaker 1: because it's the age old.
[37:50] Speaker 2: Wasn't me.
[37:52] Speaker 1: He claims cannibalizing the dead men was just another act
[37:55] Speaker 1: of survival. So Nell is this is a convincing story.
[37:59] Speaker 1: To Nell, she's there with him face to face, and
[38:01] Speaker 1: she thinks this is compelling, and whether he was a
[38:04] Speaker 1: murder's cannibal or a man caught in an impossible position,
[38:09] Speaker 1: she sees this as a great way to start the
[38:11] Speaker 1: larger discussion of the difficulties that the accused face in
[38:15] Speaker 1: this country in the US justice system, which fuck yeah,
[38:19] Speaker 1: one hundred years ago, not not even clothes. She focuses
[38:29] Speaker 1: on whether or not Packer was actually fairly tried, not
[38:32] Speaker 1: so much about the cannibalism. She's able to brush cannibalism
[38:37] Speaker 1: aside for just a little while, And the more she investigates,
[38:42] Speaker 1: the more she's convinced that he was not. That there
[38:45] Speaker 1: was no hard evidence or eyewitnesses presented at his trial
[38:48] Speaker 1: that definitely proved that his story was false, and there
[38:52] Speaker 1: was a ton of hysteria and of course a ton
[38:54] Speaker 1: of sensational reporting that Nell believes led to his conviction.
[38:59] Speaker 1: So became hell bent on getting Alfred Packer justice. She
[39:03] Speaker 1: convinces her boss, Frederick Baalfi with the Moth Mustache, to
[39:08] Speaker 1: let her write sympathetic coverage of him in the Post,
[39:11] Speaker 1: because she wants her readers to envision a scenario where
[39:14] Speaker 1: they might somehow wind up in an impossible situation, convicted
[39:19] Speaker 1: of a crime based solely on circumstantial evidence, with no
[39:22] Speaker 1: way to advocate for yourself, minus the cannibalism, and minus
[39:27] Speaker 1: the cannibalism. So now it's a big job for Nell.
[39:34] Speaker 1: As Polly Pry everyone in America knows Alfred Packer as
[39:37] Speaker 1: the guy who ate five other guys, so this is
[39:41] Speaker 1: one of the Post's most incendiary reporters, basically vigorously defending
[39:48] Speaker 1: Alfred Packer. There's backlash, but when an opportunist lawyer named
[39:53] Speaker 1: William Anderson gets involved, it like ratchets things up a notch.
[39:58] Speaker 1: So this part of the story is a little fuzzy,
[40:00] Speaker 1: but essentially, this guy, William Anderson, tries to swindle money
[40:04] Speaker 1: from both the owners of the Post and from Alfred Packer,
[40:07] Speaker 1: saying that like he'll represent both of them, and he
[40:11] Speaker 1: takes retainer money from both. And then when the guys
[40:16] Speaker 1: from the Post find out they he did it to reporters,
[40:20] Speaker 1: it's like they'll find out. They're really good at finding
[40:24] Speaker 1: stuff out.
[40:24] Speaker 2: It's kind of their thing.
[40:26] Speaker 1: So they confront Anderson at the newspaper offices. So we
[40:31] Speaker 1: don't know which one, if it was Frederick or Harry,
[40:33] Speaker 1: but one of them directly accuses Anderson of having no ethics.
[40:37] Speaker 1: He threatens to get him disbarred unless he returns that money,
[40:41] Speaker 1: and then Frederick thinks he sees Anderson reaching for a weapon,
[40:45] Speaker 1: so he lunges at him and holds him down. Polly
[40:48] Speaker 1: gets but like goes over it and tries to beg
[40:50] Speaker 1: them to stop fighting. As it turns out, Anderson does
[40:54] Speaker 1: have a gun on him, and so he wrestles himself free.
[40:57] Speaker 1: He grabs that gun. He fires it twice. He hits
[41:00] Speaker 1: both Frederick and Harry, and then when he steps forward
[41:05] Speaker 1: to finish Harry off with a third shot, Nell steps
[41:09] Speaker 1: in front of the gun and shields her boss. So
[41:13] Speaker 1: Harry Tannon will later say about this quote. Just as
[41:16] Speaker 1: Anderson was about to fire the third shot, Polly Prye
[41:19] Speaker 1: rushed between us. Had it not been for her, doubtless
[41:22] Speaker 1: I would have been killed. She placed herself in front
[41:25] Speaker 1: of his pistol and moved with it as he tried
[41:28] Speaker 1: to reach me. Badass.
[41:32] Speaker 2: Would you do that for your boss?
[41:36] Speaker 1: No fucking way. Well, I think there's a thing with
[41:39] Speaker 1: like guns, maybe because it was like Wild westy era
[41:42] Speaker 1: where it's like they were probably super used to guns
[41:44] Speaker 1: where people always like a church or it like falls
[41:47] Speaker 1: out of your pocket. Sorry, yeah, but stepping in front
[41:52] Speaker 1: of a gun.
[41:53] Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, it's some spin.
[41:55] Speaker 1: The good news is both of the owners of the
[41:57] Speaker 1: post survive. Anders Anderson is taken into custody for attempted murder,
[42:02] Speaker 1: and Nell becomes an outright legend. Stories start to circulate
[42:07] Speaker 1: that she's the one that wrestled the gun out of
[42:09] Speaker 1: Anderson's hand, and that her big skirts caught the bullets
[42:13] Speaker 1: that would have killed their bosses.
[42:14] Speaker 2: She wrote herself. Good for her, she deserves it. Yeah,
[42:22] Speaker 2: was more their typewriters back then.
[42:27] Speaker 1: In the end, Nell's reporting on Alfred Packer becomes creates
[42:31] Speaker 1: enough discourse that popular opinion about his crimes and conviction
[42:35] Speaker 1: actually does change. People seem to agree that it is
[42:39] Speaker 1: impossible to tell whether his story of self defense and
[42:42] Speaker 1: survival are true or if he maliciously killed those five men.
[42:46] Speaker 1: And that's what we call reasonable doubt in this country. Right.
[42:52] Speaker 1: So Alfred Packer winds up being paroled, not pardoned, and
[42:57] Speaker 1: in early oh he's paroled in early Jane of nineteen
[43:00] Speaker 1: oh one.
[43:01] Speaker 2: Okay, so she.
[43:03] Speaker 1: Nell delivers his release papers herself to him. Packer spends
[43:08] Speaker 1: the next six years as a freeman. He dies of
[43:10] Speaker 1: a stroke in nineteen oh seven, at the age of
[43:12] Speaker 1: sixty five, A devout vegetarian.
[43:15] Speaker 2: Just kidding, Oh, that was not very tasteful.
[43:21] Speaker 1: Oh, she loves a pun. She loves a pun.
[43:26] Speaker 2: Thank god, I didn't do the five guys joke. I
[43:28] Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, wait do it? No, that
[43:32] Speaker 2: was it. You guys were all thinking it your original
[43:36] Speaker 2: five guys.
[43:39] Speaker 1: Their bodies were laid out on the riverbed and a
[43:41] Speaker 1: shit ton of French fries over here, Like why so
[43:44] Speaker 1: many French fries? That's French fries for four.
[43:50] Speaker 2: Okay.
[43:52] Speaker 1: So her experience in interviewing Alfred Packer gets Nell really
[43:57] Speaker 1: fired up about the injustices of the American prison syst
[44:00] Speaker 1: so she starts reporting on it extensively. She works to
[44:04] Speaker 1: get other incarcerated people released from prison. She also investigates
[44:07] Speaker 1: the abuse and neglect inside the state run asylums here
[44:11] Speaker 1: wow yeah, And just like Nellie Bly, she also investigates
[44:16] Speaker 1: the treatment of patients in military hospitals. And she even
[44:19] Speaker 1: starts writing about the very at the time secretive practice
[44:23] Speaker 1: of polygamy within the Mormon Church. Girls. She doesn't give
[44:28] Speaker 1: a shit. I like her, Yeah, I do to you
[44:31] Speaker 1: like her more when you hear this. In nineteen oh three,
[44:34] Speaker 1: she gets a tip about the horrific conditions at the
[44:37] Speaker 1: Fort Lewis Indian School in Durango. So if you don't
[44:42] Speaker 1: know about Indian schools horrifying. I think people are hearing
[44:45] Speaker 1: about them more and more now. But this was one
[44:47] Speaker 1: of the many US runboarding schools that were built to
[44:50] Speaker 1: assimilate Native children to European American culture. They were horribly abusive,
[44:57] Speaker 1: and at the time, most white Americans did not know
[45:02] Speaker 1: or they did not care about those abuses against Native
[45:05] Speaker 1: American children. But Nell cared very much. So she starts
[45:09] Speaker 1: doing some digging, and she books a ten day trip
[45:11] Speaker 1: to Durango and just starts interviewing anyone that will talk
[45:15] Speaker 1: to her about these schools. She hears one horrible story
[45:19] Speaker 1: after another about children being denied medical care, being forced
[45:23] Speaker 1: to perform brutal labor, and being sexually abused by the
[45:27] Speaker 1: school superintendent, doctor Thomas Breen uh huh, who he was
[45:32] Speaker 1: also sexually assaulting teachers like it was fucking horrifying. Mayhem.
[45:37] Speaker 1: There's some bad stuff back then and now. Nell's reporting
[45:42] Speaker 1: on this school will later be described as some of
[45:44] Speaker 1: her most heartfelt, detailed, and deeply researched reporting of her career,
[45:49] Speaker 1: and like her Alfred Packer reporting, it actually creates change
[45:53] Speaker 1: in a small way, and that is that she gets
[45:57] Speaker 1: doctor Breen fired from his posts right, I like that
[46:03] Speaker 1: the power of journalism. Back in DC. The Bureau of
[46:07] Speaker 1: Indian Affairs is not happy with her. Of course, the
[46:11] Speaker 1: commissioner puts out a statement minimizing her reporting as quote
[46:15] Speaker 1: sensational newspaper attacks. Okay, okay, except for they were so specific,
[46:21] Speaker 1: though so specific. So the thing about Nellie is or
[46:29] Speaker 1: now sorry, is that around the same time she's also
[46:31] Speaker 1: writing scathing attacks on Colorado labor unions. She goes so
[46:36] Speaker 1: far as to accuse the leaders of exploiting the working
[46:38] Speaker 1: class and intentionally creating chaos. So this is not unusual
[46:44] Speaker 1: for a reporter of her time, and there may have
[46:46] Speaker 1: been corruption taken place, we all know it's everywhere, but
[46:49] Speaker 1: her writing on this issue veers into the highly problematic,
[46:53] Speaker 1: as many things were back then and unfortunately not uncommon.
[46:58] Speaker 1: She talks about things like class and immigration, immigration, writing
[47:04] Speaker 1: derogatory columns about the Irish immigrants moving to Colorado to
[47:08] Speaker 1: work in the mines. It's always just the different new
[47:12] Speaker 1: people that they want to attack, goddamn. So on one hand,
[47:20] Speaker 1: she tackles these amazing progressive issues like prison conditions and
[47:25] Speaker 1: the Native American boarding schools, and she also does some
[47:30] Speaker 1: articles about the treatment of black soldiers in the US Army.
[47:33] Speaker 1: She does a ton of stuff about William Women's suffrage,
[47:36] Speaker 1: but then she digs her heels in on this labor
[47:39] Speaker 1: issue and it's not good. She's blinded by her biases.
[47:43] Speaker 1: She doesn't seem to realize how contradictory her stances are,
[47:48] Speaker 1: and she doesn't care how much anger she's basically creating,
[47:52] Speaker 1: because that's kind of what she's like. Then, in the
[47:55] Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, she hears a knock at her door,
[47:58] Speaker 1: and when she opens it, a man standing there. He
[48:01] Speaker 1: fires twice. He's holding a gunny fires twice, but Nell
[48:05] Speaker 1: fucking starts to slam the door nice and early, so
[48:08] Speaker 1: the bullets get stuck in her nice big wooden door.
[48:14] Speaker 1: Wow Yeah, and the man runs away. He's never caught.
[48:18] Speaker 1: Nell assumes this man is somehow from the labor unions
[48:22] Speaker 1: and he's been sent to assassinate her. The labor unions
[48:25] Speaker 1: themselves suggest that maybe Nell staged the attack to drum
[48:28] Speaker 1: up publicity and sympthy, which is something that she had done,
[48:31] Speaker 1: and of course, to sell papers. It's also possible that
[48:35] Speaker 1: this man hated Nell for any of the other incendiary
[48:38] Speaker 1: reporting that she had done. Over the last decade, or
[48:42] Speaker 1: for the fact that she was just a woman. There
[48:44] Speaker 1: are so many reasons to hate her. But either way,
[48:49] Speaker 1: when she gets into this part of her career, her
[48:51] Speaker 1: stance on unions and then the controversial reporting that the
[48:54] Speaker 1: government gets mad about the Indian school atrocities, the Denver
[48:59] Speaker 1: Post fires. So here's the good news. It doesn't stop
[49:04] Speaker 1: her because at heart she really is this investigative reporter.
[49:09] Speaker 1: So at forty four years old, and this is like
[49:11] Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, she basically starts a sub
[49:14] Speaker 1: stack and she names it Polly Pry. It's a publication,
[49:21] Speaker 1: the only female led publication of the time, and it's great.
[49:27] Speaker 1: It's split into four sections. The first one is gossip,
[49:31] Speaker 1: of course, first and foremost. Second is Denver and Colorado Politics.
[49:37] Speaker 1: The third, oh sorry, the gossip section is called tell
[49:40] Speaker 1: the Truth and Shame the Devil, which is hilarious.
[49:43] Speaker 2: A that's a good one.
[49:45] Speaker 1: That's like saying Jesus wants you to gossip, Like shut up, now,
[49:49] Speaker 1: you are crazy girl. Another section on local theater, and
[49:55] Speaker 1: of course the last on automobiles.
[49:57] Speaker 2: Sure, it's like Bridriton.
[50:00] Speaker 1: Essentially, there's something for everyone. By September of nineteen oh three,
[50:06] Speaker 1: Nell has thirty five hundred subscribers to this.
[50:09] Speaker 2: Which, in today's people, that's a fucking lot of people, right.
[50:14] Speaker 1: To so many people for a woman writer. But then
[50:20] Speaker 1: not long after she creates it, she gets bored and
[50:23] Speaker 1: sells it because that's our girl, good right. Yeah, and
[50:27] Speaker 1: then she goes. She moves back to New York City,
[50:30] Speaker 1: and we don't know the kind of chronology of this,
[50:33] Speaker 1: but there she very quietly marries a man named Harry O'Brien,
[50:38] Speaker 1: and she's keeping it quiet because once again married with children, girl,
[50:44] Speaker 1: your favorite TV show. She basically does it all in
[50:49] Speaker 1: secret because she's deathly afraid that some other gossip columnist
[50:53] Speaker 1: is going to come and report on the gossip columnists
[50:56] Speaker 1: and her gossip.
[50:57] Speaker 2: Look column the kettle out.
[51:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's our new T shirt. Get ready, everybody, God,
[51:08] Speaker 1: I'm almost done. I swear togain. This marriage is short lived.
[51:14] Speaker 1: Nell divorces Harry a few years later because she learns
[51:18] Speaker 1: that he had another wife in a different state. Then
[51:23] Speaker 1: you gotta love them now. In her sixties, Nell heads
[51:27] Speaker 1: back out west and in nineteen oh eight. Oh, in
[51:31] Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight, she who wrote this because she really
[51:34] Speaker 1: misses Colorado. A few years later, she takes a job
[51:38] Speaker 1: at the Denver Times and she starts reporting on the
[51:41] Speaker 1: Mexican Revolution. She goes to Mexico and spends six weeks
[51:46] Speaker 1: trying to get an interview with the revolutionary Pancho Villa.
[51:49] Speaker 1: Holy shit, yes, and remember she used to live in
[51:53] Speaker 1: Mexico with her first three named husband, and so she
[51:57] Speaker 1: speaks the language. She works her magic, and she do
[52:00] Speaker 1: get a meeting with Pancho Villa. And in that interview,
[52:04] Speaker 1: she does the same shit she always does, call him okay,
[52:08] Speaker 1: she pulls no punches, and she claims later that at
[52:12] Speaker 1: one point she gets him so mad he turns red.
[52:15] Speaker 1: But then she turns the charm on. She wins him back,
[52:19] Speaker 1: and basically he invites her to interview him again sometime.
[52:23] Speaker 1: All right, so it all works out. That's according to her.
[52:26] Speaker 1: Others say she eight five men, I'm so tired of
[52:32] Speaker 1: reading this. The first of Neil's articles from Mexico is
[52:35] Speaker 1: published in April of nineteen fourteen. They're some of the
[52:38] Speaker 1: most popular pieces of the Denver Time has ever produced.
[52:42] Speaker 1: It reinvigorates her reporting career and she starts covering everything
[52:47] Speaker 1: from Colorado theater to the battles of World War One range.
[52:53] Speaker 1: She's also working hard to develop a local theater scene
[52:56] Speaker 1: in Denver. She produces plays and musicals to varying degrees
[52:59] Speaker 1: of success. Die to watch one of those on this
[53:03] Speaker 1: very stage. She's also an active member, of course, of
[53:08] Speaker 1: the Denver Women's Press Club, And we got some members
[53:13] Speaker 1: in the house tonight. You are fucking lying. The Denver
[53:20] Speaker 1: Women's Lying Club is more like it. Nell continues her
[53:25] Speaker 1: very vocal advocacy for women's suffrage and of course the
[53:28] Speaker 1: fight to get women in more newsrooms laugh page. It's
[53:31] Speaker 1: not until she's in her late seventies that Nell starts
[53:34] Speaker 1: to dial back her workload a bit. Oh can we
[53:37] Speaker 1: take a look at that last picture of Nell in
[53:39] Speaker 1: her later life?
[53:40] Speaker 2: Oh what happened? Why is she so cross? Hatch?
[53:45] Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's at Harper's bizarre illustrator
[53:50] Speaker 1: that's so fucked up from finding those five bodies on
[53:53] Speaker 1: the riverbank, And he was just like, I guess this
[53:56] Speaker 1: is what she looks like out a head at Wow.
[53:58] Speaker 2: Okay, that's kind of insulting. Well, that's what botox.
[54:03] Speaker 1: Is for it, I mean, for real, DOAXI five. It's
[54:07] Speaker 1: not until she's in her late seventies that Nell starts
[54:09] Speaker 1: to dial back her workload. But then on July fifteenth,
[54:13] Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, when she is seventy nine years old,
[54:17] Speaker 1: she suffers a heart attack and dies the next day.
[54:20] Speaker 1: The Denver Post writes about her final moments, saying, quote,
[54:24] Speaker 1: a moment before passing, with characteristic energy, she raises herself
[54:28] Speaker 1: from the bed and said to the attending nurse, I
[54:31] Speaker 1: must be up, and then she dies. Those are her
[54:35] Speaker 1: last words.
[54:36] Speaker 2: It's fucking sentence. Guess that sucks.
[54:38] Speaker 1: I must be up?
[54:40] Speaker 2: What does that mean?
[54:41] Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, Nell was inducted to the Denver Press
[54:46] Speaker 1: Club Hall of Fame and right and biographer Julia Brooklin
[54:51] Speaker 1: says that the honor was something quote she might or
[54:55] Speaker 1: might not have coveted, depending on how she felt about
[54:58] Speaker 1: whomever was president of the organization at the time.
[55:01] Speaker 2: That sounds right.
[55:03] Speaker 1: What would matter to her the most is that she
[55:06] Speaker 1: paved the way for women journalists who came after her
[55:09] Speaker 1: to sit proudly in their newsrooms right or at the
[55:12] Speaker 1: helm or at the home of their own business, knowing
[55:16] Speaker 1: that they had just as much to contribute to the
[55:19] Speaker 1: field as any male colleague, and that's the story of
[55:24] Speaker 1: trailblazing Denver journalist Nell Campbell.
[55:33] Speaker 2: Oh, good job, thank you, good job.
[55:37] Speaker 1: Amazing.
[55:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.
[55:39] Speaker 1: That's really something to be proud of Denver. That's that's
[55:42] Speaker 1: very cool.
[55:46] Speaker 2: You know what else is something to be proud of?
[55:48] Speaker 2: What the Stanley Hotel. Yes, I'm gonna tell you about
[55:57] Speaker 2: the ghosts and the hauntings of the Stanley Hotel.
[56:04] Speaker 1: There are people going loose with their arms, so yeah,
[56:07] Speaker 1: they're at a way Stanley Hotel.
[56:13] Speaker 2: I want to see a picture of it. Let's look
[56:14] Speaker 2: at a picture of hotel. I think I stayed there.
[56:22] Speaker 2: She has glasses on, sunglasses.
[56:25] Speaker 1: We should we should look up. There are yelp reviews
[56:27] Speaker 1: right now and just see it. It's like, it's nice
[56:30] Speaker 1: and the rugs were No, it's nice, but the ghost
[56:33] Speaker 1: touched my toe.
[56:36] Speaker 2: Okay. So tell me if this story makes you believe
[56:38] Speaker 2: in ghosts more, okay or not? So I'm gonna tell you.
[56:43] Speaker 2: So the year's night, we'll here' where're gonna start? The
[56:45] Speaker 2: year is nineteen seventy four and we're in Estes Park.
[56:51] Speaker 2: Why not just one of you Estes Estes Park? Thank you?
[56:57] Speaker 1: Did you do it?
[56:58] Speaker 2: Or not Estes Park. Okay, great, thank you. You guys,
[57:03] Speaker 2: don't sound sure we should have.
[57:05] Speaker 1: Let's not say it again, Let's stop talking about it.
[57:10] Speaker 2: It's about an hour and a half northwest of here
[57:13] Speaker 2: and a popular gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park.
[57:16] Speaker 2: You go, okay, And so here we are in a
[57:20] Speaker 2: married couple. They're both authors based in Boulder. They are
[57:25] Speaker 2: desperate this day to get away from their little kids
[57:27] Speaker 2: for just one freaking night, you guys, I'll know. So
[57:31] Speaker 2: they find a sitter and they check into a hotel.
[57:33] Speaker 2: It's the fall, and the hotel is about to shut
[57:35] Speaker 2: down to the winter. And it turns out this couple
[57:38] Speaker 2: were the only two guests in the whole place. I
[57:41] Speaker 2: know this story, which you do, as some of you
[57:45] Speaker 2: may have already figured out. Thank you Alie for writing that.
[57:48] Speaker 2: Like Karen, the authors are Stephen King and his wife
[57:51] Speaker 2: Tabitha King. Yes, and Tonight's stories about the historic Stanley Hotel,
[57:58] Speaker 2: one of the most haunted places in America and the
[58:01] Speaker 2: inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in the novel The Shining Amy.
[58:07] Speaker 1: Hell yeah, you get to do a story that involves
[58:10] Speaker 1: Stephen King.
[58:11] Speaker 2: I know.
[58:12] Speaker 1: That's the best I know congratulations.
[58:14] Speaker 2: And I have a funny. I have an anecdote about
[58:16] Speaker 2: their marriage that makes me fucking love them. The main
[58:18] Speaker 2: source is used for the stories a book called The
[58:20] Speaker 2: History and Haunting at the Stanley Hotel by Rebecca F. Pittman.
[58:23] Speaker 2: And the rest of our stores is gonna be found
[58:25] Speaker 2: in our show notes. So Stevens have with the King
[58:27] Speaker 2: check into room two seventeen at the Stanley Hotel in
[58:30] Speaker 2: the fall of nineteen seventy four. As I said, they're
[58:32] Speaker 2: the only guests in the whole place. And that night
[58:35] Speaker 2: they eat at the hotel's restaurant, and Stephen King says
[58:39] Speaker 2: later quote, except for our table, all the chairs were
[58:42] Speaker 2: up on the tables. So the music is echoing down
[58:45] Speaker 2: the hall. And I mean it was like God had
[58:47] Speaker 2: put me there to hear that and see those things
[58:51] Speaker 2: men end quote.
[58:54] Speaker 1: It's all for me.
[58:56] Speaker 2: If I walked into a restaurant and all the chairs
[58:58] Speaker 2: were on the table, I'd be like, they don't want
[58:59] Speaker 2: us here, like go away.
[59:01] Speaker 1: Like just give the closing crew their last fifteen minutes that.
[59:05] Speaker 2: I want to make your fucking penny. Oh wait, let's see.
[59:12] Speaker 1: Do you know it's weird. I did not know that
[59:15] Speaker 1: he wrote that based on his own experience, I've never heard.
[59:18] Speaker 2: That before, You're going to hear it now, Okay, And
[59:23] Speaker 2: as the night wears on, he can't shake that unsettling feeling.
[59:27] Speaker 2: He says, quote wandering through these corridors, I thought that
[59:29] Speaker 2: it seemed the perfect, maybe the architect archetypal setting for
[59:34] Speaker 2: a ghost story. That night I dreamed of my three
[59:36] Speaker 2: year old son running down the corridors, looking back over
[59:39] Speaker 2: his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming that's fucking creepy. I woke
[59:46] Speaker 2: up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an
[59:49] Speaker 2: inch of falling out of the of bed. I got up,
[59:51] Speaker 2: lit a cigarette. Yeah yeah, sat in the chair looking
[59:55] Speaker 2: out the window at the Rockies, And by the time
[59:57] Speaker 2: the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: book firmly set in my mind. That guy, that sounds
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: great to write a book. And here's a here's a
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: photo of them. Yeah. I would wear her dress so hard.
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: Oh my god, look at that. She's like, can we
[1:00:17] Speaker 1: please leave this galop?
[1:00:20] Speaker 2: Stephen, you've got Stephen, Steve got He's not here, but
[1:00:27] Speaker 2: he did text me. I'm sure he text you to
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: like good leg tonight.
[1:00:30] Speaker 1: Yes, Stephen, he's here. He's not here in physically, but
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: he's here in spirit.
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, as a moth, as a tiny he's the moth.
[1:00:39] Speaker 1: The moth as a big mustache.
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: The moth as a moth. Here's an anecdote about their relationship.
[1:00:48] Speaker 2: When Stephen King was writing the novel eleven twenty two
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: sixty three, for some fucking reason, a big part of
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: this process was listening to the extended Listen to this
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: and imagine being there at this person the extended dance
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: mix of Lou Bega's nineteen ninety nine hit Mambo number.
[1:01:05] Speaker 1: Five, Yeah Again Man.
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: Extended dance version, over and over again. He listened to
[1:01:15] Speaker 2: the song so much that this fucking badass threatened to
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: divorce him if you played it one more.
[1:01:22] Speaker 1: That's a tough one to have on repeat. I don't know.
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: I mean, it's the absolute that's very.
[1:01:27] Speaker 1: Positive and upbeat, but you just don't want to hear
[1:01:30] Speaker 1: I don't want to hear it that mum.
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: Now you have to read that book listening and hear
[1:01:33] Speaker 2: it the whole time.
[1:01:34] Speaker 1: I know I'm going to be thinking about it for
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: the rest of your story.
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: She said, one more time, and I'm going to fucking
[1:01:38] Speaker 2: leave you, which holy shit, we love her. Okay. So uh,
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: if Stephen King knew about the Stanley Hotel's very long
[1:01:47] Speaker 2: history of strange occurrences, some which happened in the very
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: room he slept in before his stay, he doesn't ever
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: mention it. So we don't know. But you've got to imagine,
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: like Stephen King goes into an old hotel and is like,
[1:01:59] Speaker 2: I bet this is haunted.
[1:02:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, He's like, I'll go ahead and take room three.
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: Se okay, close in today's Today's got it. So let's
[1:02:13] Speaker 2: get into this hotel and the long and spooky history
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: leading up to Stephen King's fitful, fateful night. The Stanley
[1:02:23] Speaker 2: Hotel opens on July fourth, Your favorite I Love America
[1:02:30] Speaker 2: nineteen oh nine. It's this, you know, big grand hotel
[1:02:32] Speaker 2: built in the Colonial Revival style with the white exterior.
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: It's just it's the majestic is the word that they
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: would use.
[1:02:42] Speaker 1: Was it festooned?
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: It's bestom. I'm sure they're bells. I don't know, let's see.
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: And so it had been built by the man named
[1:02:52] Speaker 2: Freelan Oscar Stanley. Oh three first names.
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: What's that first name?
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: Freelan? I guess Frelan.
[1:02:58] Speaker 1: No, it doesn't qualify.
[1:02:59] Speaker 2: Okay. He made his fortune manufacturing steam powered cars, which
[1:03:04] Speaker 2: were known as Stanley Steamers. Oh, but it's not. It's
[1:03:10] Speaker 2: not the same thing.
[1:03:11] Speaker 1: That can't be.
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: I know there's two different fucking Stanley steamers. One of
[1:03:16] Speaker 2: them is a carpet cleaning company and one you know
[1:03:19] Speaker 2: what I mean, Like that's weird.
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's like, do do you think that the
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: carpet cleaning company was like, here's a great reference from
[1:03:26] Speaker 1: the past that we'll.
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: Make and they're also like it kind of works with
[1:03:30] Speaker 2: us better. So fuck you little I don't.
[1:03:32] Speaker 1: Know steam powered cars to fill it with water and
[1:03:36] Speaker 1: then drive cars. Yeah, and then it would burn your
[1:03:40] Speaker 1: face if you got too close to certain parts of it.
[1:03:44] Speaker 2: Freelan's wife, Flora had overseen the design of the interior.
[1:03:48] Speaker 2: It's just beautiful burgundese and golds would panel. You know,
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: you've seen the shining. You know it looks like yeah,
[1:03:55] Speaker 2: you know, the shining wasn't film, and you know it's
[1:03:59] Speaker 2: Alley wrote, picture the interiors of the Titanic, but on land.
[1:04:05] Speaker 1: And right side up, not.
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: At the bottom of the fucking Every.
[1:04:09] Speaker 1: Picture I see is upside fucking down. With moss. Sick
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: of it, clean it up. I'm gonna start an online
[1:04:18] Speaker 1: campaign to clean the Titanic before it's raised. I don't
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: want it raised. I just want someone to go wipe
[1:04:25] Speaker 1: that mass off.
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: Like brought to you by.
[1:04:33] Speaker 1: Yes, We've got a new sponsor for this tour.
[1:04:37] Speaker 2: Finnily enough, Stephen and Tabitha King. The Stanley's had also
[1:04:41] Speaker 2: been from Maine, though they'd lived a long time outside
[1:04:44] Speaker 2: of Boston. They moved to Colorado No. Nineteen oh three
[1:04:46] Speaker 2: after Freeland comes down with tuberculosis. It's the place to be,
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: yes or have tuberculous.
[1:04:52] Speaker 1: It's the place to be if you have TV.
[1:04:55] Speaker 2: Hey, uh, that's a great jingle, makes a recovery. He's
[1:05:01] Speaker 2: so excited about it that he builds his luxury hotel
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: for his equally rich and sick friends to come and
[1:05:07] Speaker 2: heal and hang out, which sounds great. So there is
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: a tunnel carved into the hotel's foundation, which is carved
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: into bedrock, which at some point was intended for hotel employees,
[1:05:18] Speaker 2: because of course it was.
[1:05:20] Speaker 1: And you guys go down there exactly.
[1:05:22] Speaker 2: I went to look at you have a job, and
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: there's nobody working here, and hotel workers now say that
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: when they are in the basement and they pass the tunnel,
[1:05:32] Speaker 2: so they sometimes hear now people saying they're whispering their names. Fuck, no, no,
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: don't whisper my name. It's so creepy. I like it.
[1:05:48] Speaker 2: The hotel has one hundred and forty guest rooms in
[1:05:51] Speaker 2: case you're planning a wedding, and then of course there
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: are lots of other spaces and several other buildings on
[1:05:58] Speaker 2: the grounds. Hotel staff will tell you that every last
[1:06:00] Speaker 2: room in the hotel is haunted, which is like, great, Yeah,
[1:06:03] Speaker 2: they put that on Travelocity.
[1:06:04] Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, but then you could have
[1:06:07] Speaker 1: like a haunted wedding if you wanted. To everybody that's
[1:06:11] Speaker 1: into it.
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: That sounds cool, hotel I don't know. That sounds not
[1:06:15] Speaker 2: sincereal hotel staff uh will tell you about strange occurrences
[1:06:21] Speaker 2: that have been reported on every last square of the place, which,
[1:06:24] Speaker 2: let's fucking go. People have reported rocking chairs rocking with
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: no one in them.
[1:06:30] Speaker 1: Just get rid of the fucking rocky chair right just
[1:06:33] Speaker 1: four on the floor.
[1:06:36] Speaker 2: What if those chairs start rocking though, Like, I'd rather
[1:06:38] Speaker 2: have a rocking chair rock that. People have also reported
[1:06:41] Speaker 2: weird lights where there shouldn't be shadows, sudden chills and chalks,
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: sudden headaches, sounds like a gas leak. They should get
[1:06:50] Speaker 2: that checked out. Unexplained music, right, Stanley Steamer, what was
[1:07:01] Speaker 2: unexplained sense? Which sounds awful?
[1:07:06] Speaker 1: Explain that sense? That's my new game show.
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: And in nineteen seventy, before Stephen King stayed there, one
[1:07:14] Speaker 2: maid reported going into a ballroom that should have been
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: empty to clean it and saw it full of ghostly
[1:07:19] Speaker 2: figures in ball gowns and tuxedos dancing. Yes, sounds like
[1:07:23] Speaker 2: the haunted mansion.
[1:07:24] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: Room four eighteen is said to be the hotel's most
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: haunted room, and guests who have stayed there often report
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: rattling windows and that, which is like, yeah, it's wind.
[1:07:37] Speaker 1: I mean, that's happening in my hotel room right now.
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: I literally was like, is someone behind that curtain? It's
[1:07:43] Speaker 1: just like, no, no, just the wind.
[1:07:46] Speaker 2: However, it also they also report the sound of unexplained
[1:07:50] Speaker 2: children running through the hallway outside. Oh, children are ghost children,
[1:07:55] Speaker 2: so scary any child And the sound and the sound
[1:08:05] Speaker 2: of a bouncing ball you know, you know what a bucket.
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: You mean to sound doing?
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: I just hear like an ball, Yeah, the big red one.
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: Uh exactly. So I'm not going to go into all
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: the stories, obviously, but let's start with Room two seventeen.
[1:08:22] Speaker 2: So here's a photo of it in nineteen eleven.
[1:08:26] Speaker 1: Oh, Britan everywhere.
[1:08:31] Speaker 2: Isn't it cool? Let me think, what do you think
[1:08:34] Speaker 2: it smells like? Explain that smell cigarettes and mothballs like
[1:08:38] Speaker 2: my dress?
[1:08:41] Speaker 1: Now? Is that twin beds or one like queen with
[1:08:46] Speaker 1: two separate headboards?
[1:08:49] Speaker 2: I think it's two twins pushed together and a like
[1:08:52] Speaker 2: don't touch each other though.
[1:08:54] Speaker 1: Way that's the cause of all this haunting.
[1:08:59] Speaker 2: Some prude is like, oh dude, I'll so they haven't
[1:09:03] Speaker 2: figured out yet that the key to a happy marriage
[1:09:05] Speaker 2: is a king sized bed. Yeah the fox sick.
[1:09:09] Speaker 1: I thought the key to a happy marriage was multiple headboards.
[1:09:15] Speaker 2: Okay, So so it's the most famous. It had once
[1:09:19] Speaker 2: been part of a larger presidential suite, and many famous
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: people have stayed there before and after the kings, including
[1:09:25] Speaker 2: Theodore Roosevelt, your best friend, the unsinkable Molly Brown.
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, she's in every Story's truly an every story.
[1:09:32] Speaker 2: That's right. So about sixty years before the King stayed
[1:09:35] Speaker 2: there in June of nineteen eleven, a big storm, remember
[1:09:38] Speaker 2: those rattling windows, knocked out the electricity at the Stanley
[1:09:42] Speaker 2: and the hotel at this point had only been open
[1:09:44] Speaker 2: for two years, but everything ran on electricity, which was
[1:09:47] Speaker 2: like really high falutin back then.
[1:09:49] Speaker 1: However, what's the look of hyutant the jazz age turla
[1:09:56] Speaker 1: light on?
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: See, we'll let us witch. But also, the lamps were
[1:10:03] Speaker 2: designed to work with electricity or gas for when storms came.
[1:10:07] Speaker 2: So during a storm, a chambermaid in her fifties name
[1:10:10] Speaker 2: Elizabeth Wilson enters Room two seventeen to light the gas
[1:10:14] Speaker 2: lamp because the electricity went out. Unfortunately, for some reason,
[1:10:17] Speaker 2: the gas had been on for a while, so she
[1:10:19] Speaker 2: goes to fucking light the match. You guys know what
[1:10:23] Speaker 2: happens next, huge explosion, taking off a chunk of the
[1:10:27] Speaker 2: building's facade and blowing Elizabeth backwards and down through a
[1:10:31] Speaker 2: hole that's been blasted in the floor of that fucking room.
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: She fucking survives, No, Liz badass, which is like, if
[1:10:43] Speaker 2: it's gonna be a ghost story, that's not how it
[1:10:45] Speaker 2: usually goes.
[1:10:46] Speaker 1: But okay, she's haunted by that experience. He's like, I
[1:10:50] Speaker 1: can't fucking believe that happened to me.
[1:10:52] Speaker 2: I know, she breaks both ankles, poor thing, but she survives,
[1:10:57] Speaker 2: and in fact, there are a few other injuries, but
[1:11:00] Speaker 2: nobody dies in the accident, and Freelan Stanley, the hotel's owner,
[1:11:03] Speaker 2: feels so bad for it, and of course there's no workers'
[1:11:07] Speaker 2: comp at the time, so he pays for all her
[1:11:09] Speaker 2: medical bills, which is like shitty at the time required
[1:11:13] Speaker 2: yeah no, and has her recover in one of the
[1:11:16] Speaker 2: guest rooms until she's fully healed. And she ends up
[1:11:19] Speaker 2: having a long career at the Stanley Hotel and lives
[1:11:21] Speaker 2: into her nineties, passing away in nineteen fifty one. So
[1:11:24] Speaker 2: now she can finally haunt that room.
[1:11:27] Speaker 1: And interesting fun fact, she's the old lady in the
[1:11:30] Speaker 1: bathtub from the movie The Shiner. Oh my god, Oh
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: that was my worst part of that movie.
[1:11:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was good. Now she good naturedly haunts the
[1:11:42] Speaker 2: room because she only broke two ankles, so she's not mad.
[1:11:44] Speaker 2: I guess here's what she does. She if guests are
[1:11:49] Speaker 2: messy and I've left their clothes lying around and they
[1:11:53] Speaker 2: come back to the room, they find all their clothes
[1:11:55] Speaker 2: flung around in different places. She's like pissed and makes
[1:11:57] Speaker 2: it worse, which sounds like you got shitfaced last night
[1:12:00] Speaker 2: and don't remember doing that. I do that?
[1:12:02] Speaker 1: Who threw my bra over? There?
[1:12:06] Speaker 2: My undergarments? And then they say sheets move around while
[1:12:10] Speaker 2: they're in bed, as if she's making the bed with
[1:12:12] Speaker 2: them in it. Mom, your mom made your bed.
[1:12:17] Speaker 1: Get up? You know that's how they get you up?
[1:12:19] Speaker 2: Oh right, just rip the cover off. Oh my god. Okay.
[1:12:23] Speaker 2: People also say that when you try to take a
[1:12:24] Speaker 2: picture of the room with a digital camera and unexplained
[1:12:27] Speaker 2: purple bar appears in the viewfinder, which is really creepy,
[1:12:31] Speaker 2: and it happens near the love seat in the room.
[1:12:33] Speaker 1: It's not as creepy as having a digital camera, though,
[1:12:36] Speaker 1: let's be honest, get with it.
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: It's vintage guests who are like me and Tidy report
[1:12:45] Speaker 2: they returned to their room and found their clothes unpacked
[1:12:47] Speaker 2: from their suitcases and put away.
[1:12:49] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[1:12:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, but like that sounds like like a turndown service.
[1:12:54] Speaker 2: But no, they don't have that at this hotel.
[1:12:57] Speaker 1: So now I didn't know that you were supposed to
[1:12:59] Speaker 1: use the drawers and hotel room Oh.
[1:13:01] Speaker 2: My god, I've never opened do they even open?
[1:13:03] Speaker 1: I mean they do, And the only reason I know
[1:13:05] Speaker 1: is because Adrian Colsingham uses them. She unpacks and like
[1:13:09] Speaker 1: moves in. I'm like, we're here for forty eight hours.
[1:13:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, that is like that is a thing to know,
[1:13:15] Speaker 2: Like who are the people who live out of their
[1:13:17] Speaker 2: suitcase and who are the people who like move in
[1:13:20] Speaker 2: and unpacks.
[1:13:21] Speaker 1: It's two different types of people.
[1:13:22] Speaker 2: Wow, and those two people meet and get married and
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: hate each other. I don't know where was I unpacking? Okay, okay,
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: So there's rumors that this actually happened the you know,
[1:13:36] Speaker 2: cleaning up the room to Steve Stephen and Tabitha King,
[1:13:40] Speaker 2: but they've never talked about it anywhere. People say that
[1:13:42] Speaker 2: in the bathroom the faucets turned on and off by themselves,
[1:13:44] Speaker 2: and you'll remember that in the bathroom. The bathroom in
[1:13:47] Speaker 2: the Shining is a big deal and the Cooper but
[1:13:52] Speaker 2: the Cooper move, what happened? I don't know. There's just
[1:13:56] Speaker 2: a lot no I like it keep going. So they
[1:14:00] Speaker 2: think it's all Elizabeth, like turning on and off the
[1:14:02] Speaker 2: fucking shower and the thing, and she's like, ooh, running water.
[1:14:05] Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know.
[1:14:07] Speaker 1: It sounds to me like Elizabeth has OCD and she
[1:14:09] Speaker 1: says like, can we just clean this up? Please? Can
[1:14:11] Speaker 1: we just clean this room?
[1:14:12] Speaker 2: My ankles buck So then the staircase and the landing
[1:14:17] Speaker 2: at the landings are of course haunted, because those things
[1:14:20] Speaker 2: get haunted.
[1:14:22] Speaker 1: A lot.
[1:14:24] Speaker 2: Several people who report the sightings of a ghost of
[1:14:26] Speaker 2: a fourteen year old girl named Sarah, who apparently worked
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: there as a nanny at some point in history. Author
[1:14:33] Speaker 2: of the book The History and Haunting of the Stanley Hotel,
[1:14:35] Speaker 2: Rebecca Pittman, has written books about different haunted places, and
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: she's even had her own hauntings occurred there. She says
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: that when she was looking over the stairs railing, she
[1:14:45] Speaker 2: felt the distinct sensation of something very cold pressing into
[1:14:48] Speaker 2: her forearm, like someone was holding an ice cube there,
[1:14:52] Speaker 2: which is actually a trick when you have anxiety is
[1:14:54] Speaker 2: to hold an ice cube. So maybe the ghost therapist.
[1:14:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, so nice.
[1:15:01] Speaker 2: Sorry, Jennifer love Hewitt coming this fall. I love it.
[1:15:05] Speaker 1: I'd watch that so motion holding a fuse of ice
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: on someone's arm.
[1:15:13] Speaker 2: And also Rebecca says she was taken on two guided
[1:15:16] Speaker 2: ghost tours of the hotel by a woman who goes
[1:15:18] Speaker 2: by the name Scary Mary. I bet she's fucking fun. Yeah,
[1:15:22] Speaker 2: and claims she personally witnessed the appearance of two ghost
[1:15:25] Speaker 2: children while on this tour. On two occasions, the children
[1:15:29] Speaker 2: press their hands into Scary Mary's skirt, leaving little tiny
[1:15:33] Speaker 2: child hand imprints. Now get the.
[1:15:36] Speaker 1: Fucking and you can buy that skirt in the gift shop.
[1:15:41] Speaker 2: Mary like, Mary like did checked it and made sure
[1:15:44] Speaker 2: there was no I don't know. That sounds fun. And
[1:15:47] Speaker 2: other people report seeing a Victorian era clothed woman on
[1:15:51] Speaker 2: the stairs and thin feeling lightheaded while walking up and
[1:15:55] Speaker 2: down the stairs, which again ghastly sounds like, yeah, oh,
[1:15:58] Speaker 2: here's a picture of a ghost at the Stanley Hotel
[1:16:02] Speaker 2: on the stairs.
[1:16:03] Speaker 1: Yes, I see it.
[1:16:04] Speaker 2: That's fucking scary. I mean, I don't love that. And
[1:16:08] Speaker 2: that's our rug from tonight. I mean I see what
[1:16:14] Speaker 2: they see, but I don't, and I want to believe
[1:16:17] Speaker 2: I do. That's scary.
[1:16:20] Speaker 1: It kind of looks like, you know, they have those
[1:16:22] Speaker 1: like those statues you can get at like Home Goods
[1:16:25] Speaker 1: where it's a dog butler. It could be I'm just
[1:16:28] Speaker 1: saying it could be a dog butler.
[1:16:30] Speaker 2: Just anyone know whether or not they decorate it from
[1:16:33] Speaker 2: Home Goods. There it's all we're saying. It's like you
[1:16:35] Speaker 2: have to ask the hard questions. Yes, right, and like
[1:16:40] Speaker 2: they're the pianos will play and then Rose, Flora's favorite perfume,
[1:16:44] Speaker 2: the wife of the guy who built it. They can
[1:16:47] Speaker 2: smell it in the air.
[1:16:49] Speaker 1: That's an explained smell.
[1:16:51] Speaker 2: Unexplained smells, so God, it's Rose at least or not
[1:16:54] Speaker 2: they know the source of that one. Most people believe
[1:16:57] Speaker 2: that Flora Stanley is also so haunting the hotel and
[1:17:02] Speaker 2: plays on the piano a lot of times. And during
[1:17:05] Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, prior to the King's stay, the hotel
[1:17:08] Speaker 2: had actually been looted several times because it had been abandoned.
[1:17:11] Speaker 2: People drove up with moving trucks. I just fucking to
[1:17:15] Speaker 2: put stuff into the fucking yeah Jesus Christ.
[1:17:18] Speaker 1: So they just they abandoned it. One owner just was like, Bye,
[1:17:21] Speaker 1: I can't handle this place anymore.
[1:17:23] Speaker 2: Yeah. But the owner at the time had actually gone
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: through the effort of hiding the grand piano that was
[1:17:27] Speaker 2: Flora's to protect it, and so they think she plays
[1:17:30] Speaker 2: it as an appreciation for It's.
[1:17:33] Speaker 1: A great way to say thank you, having a ghost
[1:17:35] Speaker 1: play the piano for you all night.
[1:17:38] Speaker 2: Nothing says thank you for haunting the fucking shit out of.
[1:17:41] Speaker 1: A Thanks for making me scream again, Flora, don't make
[1:17:45] Speaker 1: the blood come out of the elevator. Please.
[1:17:49] Speaker 2: When the novel of the Shining comes out in nineteen
[1:17:51] Speaker 2: seventy seven and when the film adaptation comes out in
[1:17:53] Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, the Stanley enjoys a renaissance, having been obviously
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: made extremely famous. And it turns out Stephen King wasn't
[1:18:02] Speaker 2: a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of his book,
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: so in nineteen ninety seven he wrote his own script
[1:18:08] Speaker 2: for a mini series that was much more faithful to
[1:18:11] Speaker 2: the novel, and that series was shot in the actual
[1:18:15] Speaker 2: hotel because it was like, hey, you have a set,
[1:18:18] Speaker 2: it's here, let's do it.
[1:18:19] Speaker 1: Did people like that serious?
[1:18:20] Speaker 2: I didn't. Did anyone see it? I don't know?
[1:18:25] Speaker 1: Yay was okay?
[1:18:31] Speaker 2: And while shooting the crew of the the crew of
[1:18:35] Speaker 2: the movie in the Stanley Hotel, they stained the carpet
[1:18:39] Speaker 2: and the lobby, and witnesses claimed that a portrait of
[1:18:41] Speaker 2: Flora Stanley flew off the wall and landed right on
[1:18:45] Speaker 2: the stain, as if she was admonishing the crew like
[1:18:48] Speaker 2: people make up reasons why the things happened. Sure, like
[1:18:52] Speaker 2: maybe she was just like I want to lay on this,
[1:18:54] Speaker 2: like he doesn't mean like, don't you know what I mean?
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: I'm tired of being on the wall. What's going on
[1:19:00] Speaker 1: down here?
[1:19:01] Speaker 2: Oh? Guess what else? Is the shot at the Stanley Hotel?
[1:19:04] Speaker 3: What?
[1:19:04] Speaker 2: Yes?
[1:19:05] Speaker 1: Oh? That two hundred dollars Now that was me guessing money.
[1:19:10] Speaker 2: Oh, I'll tell you. I shouldn't put you on the
[1:19:13] Speaker 2: spot like that was it the world according to Garb No,
[1:19:16] Speaker 2: but a good guess it was dumb and dumber.
[1:19:18] Speaker 1: Oh.
[1:19:20] Speaker 2: Oh. To this day, fans of The Shining in all
[1:19:24] Speaker 2: its forms, as well as amateur and professional ghost hunters
[1:19:26] Speaker 2: like yourself, flock to the hotel to try to witness
[1:19:29] Speaker 2: something paranormal, which let's after party guys at the Stanley
[1:19:34] Speaker 2: time and a lot of people do still, I guess
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: put on Travelocity that they see hauntings. Yes, And also
[1:19:44] Speaker 2: the hotel throws an annual ball where many people dress
[1:19:47] Speaker 2: up as characters from The Shining, which talking at one
[1:19:50] Speaker 2: of our live shows once they dressed up as the Twins.
[1:19:53] Speaker 1: That's right, we have trans of a live show, that's right.
[1:19:55] Speaker 2: And that's the story of the haunting of the Stanley Hotel.
[1:19:58] Speaker 1: Amaz that was great.
[1:20:04] Speaker 2: Does that mean it's hometown time?
[1:20:05] Speaker 1: Hometown time? Okay, our rest time. We're going to tell
[1:20:11] Speaker 1: the rules first. Unlike we did last night, we basically
[1:20:14] Speaker 1: set up Katie and Cassandrat.
[1:20:18] Speaker 4: It's just me for the third time. I come with
[1:20:22] Speaker 4: news that baby Moth was not the only baby in
[1:20:26] Speaker 4: the audience tonight. I saw a baby buying merch what
[1:20:31] Speaker 4: either that or the adult the baby was without was
[1:20:34] Speaker 4: buying a T shirt?
[1:20:35] Speaker 2: Oh my god, brother, baby baby your cry podcast?
[1:20:39] Speaker 1: A little baby with a credit card.
[1:20:42] Speaker 4: All right, I'm gonna be right over there.
[1:20:44] Speaker 2: This is going to be there. Thank you, and they
[1:20:46] Speaker 2: have okay, okay, so we're gonna do the rules really quick.
[1:20:50] Speaker 1: We are now asking if anybody here has a hometown.
[1:20:53] Speaker 1: We recommend that you have a hometown from Denver or Colorado.
[1:20:58] Speaker 1: We do not recommend that you do what Katie did
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: and get slayed by the audience. It's really unpleasant for you. Also,
[1:21:09] Speaker 1: try to make it short. Don't bring notes, do your thing.
[1:21:13] Speaker 1: We believe in you. What's the last one?
[1:21:15] Speaker 2: Don't be drunk.
[1:21:16] Speaker 1: Oh, you can't be so drunk that you can't tell
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: your own story. But you can be drunk.
[1:21:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have a present for you. Vince and
[1:21:24] Speaker 2: I went to a pizza place last night and they
[1:21:26] Speaker 2: had one of those cool vending machines for adults the
[1:21:30] Speaker 2: clothing and yeah, and this one is called Nostalgia Kids
[1:21:33] Speaker 2: Meal toy. Oh so I don't know what's in it.
[1:21:35] Speaker 2: And then there's some cookies from the.
[1:21:37] Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right, who who's got a hometown?
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: Hometown? Okay, you with the light on, you.
[1:21:45] Speaker 1: Get up here. You're smart, that's a good idea. Yeah,
[1:21:47] Speaker 1: if you're yeh, walk over.
[1:21:49] Speaker 2: If your friend is bold enough, yeah, yeah, that way
[1:21:51] Speaker 2: events right over there.
[1:21:53] Speaker 1: Oh, we forgot. One of the other rules was don't
[1:21:55] Speaker 1: point at strangers. When we got that happened a bunch
[1:21:58] Speaker 1: of times where people are like her.
[1:22:01] Speaker 2: So the chick who lit her. If this is bad,
[1:22:03] Speaker 2: this is on you. Not im good at your bike.
[1:22:07] Speaker 1: Anything can happen at the show, Isn't that the magic
[1:22:09] Speaker 1: of it? It's too late, she pick someone already. It's
[1:22:13] Speaker 1: so sad. Maybe people just keep going like but maybe
[1:22:17] Speaker 1: if I wait five more times.
[1:22:18] Speaker 2: I hate doing that. It feels awful. If I could
[1:22:20] Speaker 2: pick all of you, I would. Okay, here she comes.
[1:22:24] Speaker 2: This is I'm not gonna listen to screaming you. I
[1:22:29] Speaker 2: have a person that thinks up well.
[1:22:32] Speaker 1: Oh okay, right right, Hi, wond your name Christina?
[1:22:37] Speaker 2: Here, I'm here. She's a hot shirt on come over.
[1:22:40] Speaker 1: I love it. Everybody. This is Christina. Be nice to her. Please.
[1:22:47] Speaker 3: Where are you from, Christina, I'm from Colorado Springs?
[1:22:50] Speaker 2: Right right, we're off talk at start. What is your hometown?
[1:22:55] Speaker 2: All right?
[1:22:55] Speaker 3: So to start off, I'm a homicide prosecutor at the
[1:22:58] Speaker 3: DA's all.
[1:23:03] Speaker 1: You did that? You did that?
[1:23:04] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing.
[1:23:08] Speaker 1: Wait right, good, let Christina, Can I ask you a question?
[1:23:14] Speaker 3: Yes?
[1:23:15] Speaker 1: Are you a fucking liar? Right now?
[1:23:17] Speaker 2: Okay? Great?
[1:23:18] Speaker 1: Great, I just wanted to ask Oh my god.
[1:23:19] Speaker 2: Okay.
[1:23:20] Speaker 3: So the story I want to tell is my first
[1:23:22] Speaker 3: homicide trial.
[1:23:23] Speaker 1: Fuck, yes, sit down.
[1:23:26] Speaker 3: So the story is a woman named Elizabeth Kramer. Lizzie
[1:23:31] Speaker 3: Kramer was found murdered. She was in a plastic toe
[1:23:35] Speaker 3: box and she had been thrown off the side of
[1:23:39] Speaker 3: Gold Camp Road.
[1:23:40] Speaker 1: If anyone's from Colorada Springs, she was laughing at the
[1:23:44] Speaker 1: local reference.
[1:23:45] Speaker 3: And yes, because there are a lot of bodies that
[1:23:47] Speaker 3: are found off Gold Camp Oh what really?
[1:23:50] Speaker 2: Yes?
[1:23:51] Speaker 1: And so camp Road. I'm covering that on the next show.
[1:23:55] Speaker 3: And so she was actually found by three teenagers who
[1:23:58] Speaker 3: were hiking and it was all on a snapchat video.
[1:24:03] Speaker 3: So she was found and the suspect was obviously.
[1:24:09] Speaker 2: Baby Daddy, but close enough.
[1:24:11] Speaker 3: And so then during the investigation we did computer searches
[1:24:17] Speaker 3: and he had been really smart and googled how to
[1:24:19] Speaker 3: get away with murder?
[1:24:22] Speaker 2: Yes, I mean who will apong us?
[1:24:23] Speaker 3: Yes, And so he was taken to trial in twenty
[1:24:26] Speaker 3: twenty one and convicted a first degree murder.
[1:24:30] Speaker 1: And that's what you did, right, Yes, thank you.
[1:24:39] Speaker 3: One of one of my witnesses was one of the
[1:24:42] Speaker 3: DNA and roology experts and her name was Cherry Holes.
[1:24:48] Speaker 3: We knew her and during a break I was like, oh,
[1:24:52] Speaker 3: she was talking about how she was from California. I
[1:24:54] Speaker 3: was like, do you know Paul Holes, and she goes,
[1:24:55] Speaker 3: that's my husband, and I so that that's what I
[1:25:03] Speaker 3: did in the middle of court. And it was a
[1:25:06] Speaker 3: little embarrassing because then she she told her husband.
[1:25:09] Speaker 2: And then I met Paul later and.
[1:25:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, he was the one.
[1:25:14] Speaker 3: Oh, you're the one that embarrassed yourself in front of
[1:25:16] Speaker 3: my wife. And anyway, he is in prison for the
[1:25:19] Speaker 3: rest of his life, and the Court of Appeals affirmed
[1:25:22] Speaker 3: that conviction.
[1:25:22] Speaker 1: So amazing, amazing. That was a perfect hometown in every way.
[1:25:34] Speaker 1: Oh what there's cookies? Oh yeah, yeah, Christine, everybody amazing,
[1:25:43] Speaker 1: it's his way. Yeah, we're not Vietnam. Amazing.
[1:25:49] Speaker 2: Wow you guys. Yeah, I think night too. You fucking
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: did it, Denver.
[1:25:59] Speaker 1: It was such an honor to start this tour after
[1:26:02] Speaker 1: six years in this city with you guys. Thank you
[1:26:04] Speaker 1: so much, Thank you.
[1:26:08] Speaker 2: We really showed up. We fucking love it here. We
[1:26:10] Speaker 2: appreciate you guys so much for coming being here.
[1:26:15] Speaker 1: Oh are you cuing me? Stay sexy? And thanks Denvern.
[1:26:21] Speaker 2: Thank you, Elvis. Do you want to cookie?
[1:26:32] Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production.
[1:26:34] Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
[1:26:37] Speaker 2: is Tessa Hughes.
[1:26:37] Speaker 1: Our editor is Aristotle Lascevedo.
[1:26:39] Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by Leona Squalocci.
[1:26:42] Speaker 1: Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
[1:26:44] Speaker 2: Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
[1:26:47] Speaker 1: Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
[1:26:50] Speaker 2: Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app Apple
[1:26:53] Speaker 2: podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
[1:26:55] Speaker 1: And now you can watch my favorite murder on Netflix.
[1:26:57] Speaker 2: And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
[1:27:00] Speaker 2: they remind me buttons. That's the best way you can
[1:27:02] Speaker 2: support our show. Goodbye,

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