476 - Sprinkles and Googly Eyes

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today while supplies last terms and conditions apply My favorite murder podcast. That's all.
You let us live. It's all we want to.
Maybe this would help. If I just do a little.
If you started doing a new thing where you put a paperclip as a hair piece, a little hair clip. Just it.
It's actually cute. Does it? Wait, hold on.
I'll just hide it. Oh my God.
It's actually cute. Okay.
It looks like you could sell that for 30 bucks at like a cute store. I think so.
That's cute. Hey designers.
Get on this. I'm the curator.
Paperclips are the new hair clip. Oh, that makes me think of like when I used to just put a random safety pin on my shirt.
Punk rock. Just put like Catholic school punk rock of like, this isn't allowed, but I swear to God.
I put one through my eyebrow in junior high. How did it feel? It was so superficial.
You know, it wasn't. It was like skin.
It wasn't like a deep piercing, but I thought it was fucking cool. Did you have to ace it before and after? Yeah.
And then smoke to Capri? What was the day like? Walk us through that day. I got sent home from school.
Immediately. Oh, you did it at school? I did it before school, got there, got sent home immediately.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was the 90s. Oh, it sure was.
Where eyebrow piercings were not common. No.
I see the girls these days with their septum piercings. Like, it's every other girl doing a TikTok where I'm like, this would never have been the trend I would have guessed, would have caught on the way it does.
Do you think it's weird that, I don't think it's weird, but it's funny that tongue piercings haven't come back. Like, everything else and, like, the kids these days are like, uh, no, dude.
Like, that's's even JNCOs are okay, but fucking tongue piercings? Tongue piercings are like, it's so incredibly dangerous. It's so dumb.
It's just for you. And like, is it a kind of like I'm having sex presentation? I think there's probably a connotation there of that, but it's also just like, I'm punk rock.
I definitely, I had done it at 15. at 15 it was you pierced your tongue i got it pierced at 15 yeah you're like i did not do it myself no and i still have the scar you know the whole bump from it it's really i have to fucking use my tongue scraper real hard on it every morning and just think about it just think about being 15 to get back for unknown reasons.
You really showed her. I know some of the reasons.
I'll stand by as you recount them and I will witness. I will witness.
There are reasons. There's real good reasons to pierce your whole goddamn head.
All right. What do you got? Anything going on in your neck of the woods? Not really.
I mean, just this hair. I feel like when I see my hair, there's pictures of us when we were in Chicago and my hair looked furious and like it was dying at the same time.
I think it's all you and you're in and on your head. In and around my head.
Well, I had said about the hotel we stayed at that they gave me a hairdryer from like 1985. So my hair was a fucking rat's nest.

But you were like, you had like a high-end hair dryer. Yeah, mine had multiple settings for cool.
You know when it can go cool. You're like, this is an incredible product.
But I think my hair doesn't like being blown dry. I think I just am in that realm.
Of like, it's like, can you just leave me alone for five seconds? That's easy. That's easier than blow drying.
For sure. Well, and just sitting across the room, I'm like, your hair is the done version of what my hair is supposed to be, but it can't get there.
It just won't go. Yeah, it takes a lot of product and straightening and things and prayers.
What's your favorite product these days that you've been using to get ready? Do you have any recommendations? With my hair? Anything. Oh, my God.
There's so fucking many. Something you love.
Wait, let me think. What do you love? Well, I have a, you know, Korean toner pad that I'm using that I can tell the difference is getting rid of like spots on my face.
Oh, wow. And it's just the Giu toner pad.
It's orange and green and with big writing, this is J-I-Y-U. Okay.
Very expensive, but you can wait for them to go on to flash sale. Okay.
But like usually a thing at toner pads is $19 and these ones are like $52. Okay.
But they actually work. I know.
Okay. Then I have one that's also expensive, but it works.
The color science. SPF.
SPF. It's white and then it turns.
I just bought that. Oh, that's like there's very few times Vince goes, your skin looks good because he just doesn't think about it.
But when he does do it, I'm like, what's on it? Because whatever it is, it's fucking working. He's your ultimate, he would know.
Yeah. Like if he, you know, because he's a dude, he doesn't pay attention a lot.
But when he compliments me, I'm like, what is it right now that he's complimenting? And it's usually this color science SPF that turns tan when you put it on or whatever. Yeah.
It literally adjusts to, I mean, this skin tone is impossible to find base for. And I got that and put it on and rubbed it and was like, it's actually doing it.
It's just the color it's supposed to be. Yeah.
It's great. Boom.
And then you're wearing your SPF, but you have makeup on. Right.
One layer. Good SPF.
Out the door. God.

Okay.

We have a podcast network.

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There's all kinds of things going on in it.

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I never do this part.

Hey, first up on Wicked Words, journalist Joseph Cox tells a story of how the FBI tricked high-level criminals into using an encrypted messaging app that the FBI secretly created. Turns out they didn't even need to make one up because some people will just fucking...
They'll get right on there. They'll just text anything to anyone.
It doesn't need to be private. No.
It's all from Joseph's book, Dark Wire, and you're going to want to hear every detail on Wicked Words. Joseph Cox, Dark Wire.
I want to read that. Over on Bananas, Kurt and Scotty cover the most important news of the week, the weird news, including the first ever snake found in Ireland.
Oh, my God. Oh, they've got snakes in Ireland now.
No. That's how we know it's all over.
Oh, Jesus. It feels like a real problem for my people.
On Ghosted, Roz talks to comedy icon and drag race legend Bob the Drag Queen. They get into sleep paralysis, Ouija boards, and the time Bob had a psychic encounter with a ghost.
Yes. Bob the Drag Queen, one of the funniest performers in stand-up comics around right now.
So, so talented. Also, over on I Said No Gifts, Bridger keeps the show rolling even after Edie Patterson, the great Edie Patterson, hilarious comedic actress.
She's from the Righteous Gemstones. That's how you probably know her.
And she comes and forces Bridger to accept a gift. He only asked for one thing and no one will give it to him.
And finally, a quick reminder for our people out there who'd like to shop, but you hear our ads and they're quick and you're driving and you don't have the promo codes. We give you all the promo codes on our website at myfavoritemurder.com slash promos.
So you'll have Murder 30, you'll have the links to the websites. We'll tell you everything.
Whatever it is. At myfavoritemurder.com slash promos.
So it just helps the show out a little bit. If you are going to buy something from these ads, just to like, let them know we sent you.
You're like, hey, I'm going to get an article couch, but can't I get 20% off? Maybe my good friends Karen and Georgia might enable. Oh, this was the thing I was going to show you.
Somebody sent this in. Natasha, I believe this is on Instagram.
And it's na.ta.sha.86. She wore the Pearl Heart shirt, I Shall Never Submit shirt to the day of action protest and tagged us.
And I just, that's kind of what that shirt was invented for, I feel like. Yeah.
Love it. Got a protest.
Looks amazing. Maybe we'll post it.
But thank you. Make sure you tag us when you're wearing your merch.
Just like, what are you even doing right now while you're wearing our merch? We'd love to see it. Also, I like that you said the people united cannot be divided.
Love it. Getting it done.
Thank you, Natasha, for showing up to that. Yeah.
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So I got my sister an Aura frame who's a mom. She loves it.
It's on her mantle. And I go over there and there's new photos.
There's photos of me with my nephews in it. And it's so touching because that means they see me every day, even though I don't see them as much as I want to.
I know I'm part of the family, but I'm like part of their daily life in that way, just by my photo coming up every now and then, which is like really sweet. It's beautiful.
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I'm going to keep this paper clip in my hair while I listen. I'm going to cold open this for you.
And I'm going to start in the fall of 1839. Oh, fuck yeah.
You know you love it. I do.
We're in the New York Harbor, which means it's bustling. There's hundreds of ships from all around the world unloading cargo and travelers.
I mean, what a time and place. Imagine the sails.
The sails and all the languages being spoke and all the different people and the hustle and bustle and the actual bustles. Bustles.
That must be what hustle and bustle is from. Oh, yeah.
Right? Must be. Also, there's like six-year-old boys smoking pipes working those ships.
Longshoremen children. Longshoremen children.
Yes, that's so true. Among these thousands of people is a teenage sailor in the British Navy named James Covey.
James is black and was originally born in the West African country of Sierra Leone. But as a child, he had been kidnapped by Spanish traffickers intended to be sold and enslaved.
So James then endured the horrific experience of being loaded onto a ship with hundreds of other captives. But because by this point, the transatlantic slave trade was already illegal, British forces captured that ship and freed the captives.
So James spent the rest of his childhood being raised by a British missionary in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. And in his teens, he joined the British Royal Navy.
So he is there at that time and place. Okay, got it.
That's a huge adventure unto itself. Yeah.
What a story. Yeah.
That morning in New York Harbor, James and another sailor with a similar backstory, Charles Pratt, they hear something they haven't heard in years. Remember all those languages being spoken? They hear someone counting from one to ten in Mendy, which is the language of their childhoods in Sierra Leone.
Something they very rarely, if ever, hear nowadays in the British Army and here in the U.S. Can I tell you about a TikTok that makes me cry every time? Sure.
Have you seen it? It's the guy, and I'll look it up. He can speak so many languages, so he stands in popular tourist areas, and as people walk by, he says, excuse me, where are you from? And sometimes people don't want to talk to him, and essentially they'll say, and then he immediately starts speaking their language.
And the way way their faces change he was the one I saw this morning is two women from the Republic of Congo I believe and he immediately starts speaking their language and they're like what how do you and it's like this thing where he's so good at it it's like he can speak more than just a couple phrases and switch so someone will be like well but well, but I was raised in Turkey. And then he starts speaking.
And it's like. They just feel like connected all of a sudden.
Yes. And they're like travelers and they're tourists up to that point that are kind of isolated.
It's beautiful. Wow.
That's amazing. So they hear this one to 10 being counted in their childhood language.
They make their way through the crowd to try to find the source of the counting. The person who's counting in this language is a white American man, and they excitedly and curiously approach him to find out who he is and how he knows their language.
And what TikTok is. Right.
It turns out that the man is a linguistics professor, so that checks out, from Yale named Josiah Gibbs. And James and Charles, it turns out because of this moment, are going to be key players in saving about 40 lives and will help set America on the course to eventually abolish slavery.
This is the story of the Amistad trial. You know it? Oh, well, I've seen the movie.
Yes. Okay, you've seen the movie.
You were there that one day they talked about it in elementary school, and that's like it. You just don't hear about it much.
No, not at all. So yeah, there's a 1997 Steven Spielberg movie called Amistad that portrays the story.
Historians say that what it gets right is the horror of the transatlantic slave trade. They show that with haunting accuracy.
However, the movie does kind of travel into some white savior territory. So we're going to try not to do that.
So it's not a perfect movie. Just so you know, I also watched a 1995 documentary called the Amistad Revolt.
It seems like it was made for like high school children or something like that. And the other sources, the Supreme Court decision from this case and the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes.
All right, so let's back up from the harbor a month or two. We're at the end of August in 1839.
There are reports off the coast of New York of a sighting of a strange looking schooner or ship. It appears to have been at sea for months.
The sails are in tatters. There's seagrass growing out of the hull.
It's just a weird sight.

And mariners who have gotten close enough to the ship report that the crew appears to be comprised of about 30 black men who speak no English, French or Spanish. It only what's presumed to be a language from somewhere on the continent of Africa that white Americans in the mid 1800s can't identify.
So that's just out of place for sure already. Eventually, the ship winds up off the coast of Montauk on the tip of Long Island, and that's where it's intercepted by the U.S.
Brig Washington, a ship that's tasked with surveying the coast. So they basically pull over the ship.
When that ship's lieutenant boards the schooner, which is called the Amistad, he finds that in addition to the group that other people have already seen, there are also two Spanish men on board, two Spanish white men on board. They're named Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montez.
So Ruiz and Montez claim that they own everyone on board and that they were overthrown in an uprising by these people. A modern audience, of course, will instantly recognize that these two men are human traffickers.
Yeah. The lieutenant brings the Amistad and its captives across the Long Island Sound to New Haven, Connecticut.
And at this point, the use of enslaved laborers has been outlawed in almost all of the northern states, but is still legal in Connecticut. So what a coincidence that they ended up there.
A federal district judge named Andrew Judson charges the men with mutiny and murder. And there's four children there as well.
And they're held as witnesses, which just basically means they're prisoners as well. They're all put in jail in Hartford, Connecticut.
So Ruiz and Montez give their version of what happened to Spaniards. They say that they bought all of the people, 39 adults and four children, in Cuba.
They were transporting them on the Amistad to a sugar plantation on another part of the island. And one night during this trip, the men broke free and used tools for cutting sugar cane to kill the captain and the cook.
They let Ruiz and Montez live under the condition that they sail them back to Africa, which was towards the direction of the rising sun. So they agreed and did that.
But at night, the Spaniards would reposition the ship so that it actually made its way north to United States, where it was eventually pulled over. This journey takes two months and 10 of the enslaved people die from dwindling supplies of food and water.
So it was like in the daytime, they would make them go this way, and then at night they would redirect that way so that... They were sneaking.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And like, you know, if you don't have a map in front of you or like know how to read the sky for signs, you don't know where you are.
Yeah. Right? So Ruiz and Montez's story, it seems fishy for a big reason.
They're being very vague about where this group of people originally came from. At this point in time, the use of enslaved people for labor is still legal in parts of the U.S.
and in Spanish colonies like Cuba, but the kidnapping and trafficking of new people from Africa has been illegal in both the United Kingdom and America for 30 years. It's been illegal in Spain for the past 10 years, though the Queen of Spain kind of turns a blind eye to it.
But as you know from watching the movie, the Queen of Spain is 11 years old, as played by Anna Paquin. Really? I don't remember that part.
And in fact, Spain has a well-known and extensive illegal human trafficking market. And at the very center of it is a man named Pedro Blanco.
In 1822, Pedro had set up what becomes known as the Lomboco Slave Fortress on the coast of Sierra Leone. And there he works out deals with some local leaders to hire kidnappers to bring people to him from the interior of the region.
So this isn't people who lost a war. This isn't people who were born into slavery.
These are people being kidnapped from their normal everyday lives, their regular lives being kidnapped because they are worth money to these people. He also has Spanish employees who do this as well.
And once kidnapped, his victims are held in chains at this sprawling facility, which is at the mouth of a river before being put on ships to be brought to the Spanish colonies where they are to be sold. So they're still doing the slave trade, even though this is illegal.
Everyone knows this is happening, especially Spanish authorities, but Sierra Leone is a British colony and British authorities actually do try to enforce abolition. But the problem is that no one's been able to figure out the precise location of this fortress.

So while Britain is trying to attempt to like root out this illegal trafficking or this kidnapping,

the American government and many white Americans don't really pay attention or care.

Seen that before.

Yeah. So there's this contingent of American abolitionists, many of whom are motivated by their Christianity, who want to make people confront the evils of slavery.
One of these abolitionists attend one of the first court proceedings for the Amistad party and find out that none of the group appears to understand English or Spanish. So this leads him to suspect that they have been illegally trafficked from Africa.
That's, you know, if they had been born into slavery, they would speak some English or Spanish.

That means that Ruiz and Montez actually have no legal claim over them because they're asking to get their ship back and their property back, which are these people who were aboard the ship who rebelled. So this guy sees it as an opportunity to make more Americans confront the barbarism and horrors of enslaved labor.
This abolitionist coordinates with others from other northern cities, and they put together a fund for the Amistad Party's legal representation. They hire a lawyer named Roger Sherman Baldwin.
He'll later go on to be the governor of Connecticut. The initial charges of murder and mutiny are actually dismissed because of a jurisdiction issue.
But Ruiz and Montez argue that the Amistad group are their property and should be returned to them. And they have their own lawyers arguing this case.
And at the same time, Spain argues that both the ship and the people are stolen property belonging to the queen. Wow.
Yeah. Because it's so late in the timeline, right? 1840.
Yeah. Well, it's a little before the Civil War.
Yes, truly. But just like it's not the 1600s.
Right. Absolutely.
The U.S. attorney appointed by President Martin Van Buren is arguing this case on behalf of the U.S.
and Spain. Of course, the Amistad Party's lawyers argue that they are free people who were kidnapped and escaped from their captors, so they should be released.
The federal district judge orders that the Amistad Party remain in custody until this issue is settled, and five members of the group ultimately die while being held in jail. In Ruiz and Montez's story, they claim that the mutiny on the Amistad was led by a man named Sengbe Pia, and he's often referred to as Joseph Sinque, but that's the name of Spanish captors gave him.
So we're going to continue to call him by his real name, which is Sengbe. So it's true that Sengbe does seem to be in more of a leadership role within the group.
But of course, his lawyer can't communicate with him because he doesn't speak any English. Nobody does.
He's not even sure what language they speak. So Baldwin hires Josiah Gibbs, the Yale linguistics professor we started our story with.
He goes into the jail and basically is able to communicate through signs to have the captives teach him to count from one to ten in their language. And they figure out what's going on and they do that.
So with the knowledge of one to ten, this guy is like, great, goes to a very busy place, a busy port where lots of languages are spoken, and starts loudly counting one to ten in that language until someone actually does it, approaches them. Brilliant.
James Covey and Charles Pratt and are able to come back with him to the jail. To become the translators.
To be the translators. God, that's good.
I know. So as soon as the group meet these new translators, they are overjoyed because they can finally tell their side of the story.
Very quickly, the captive stories emerge, and three of their testimonies are used in the court proceedings, including that of Sengbae, the leader. And their story gives us a crystal clear historical record of the 400-year stain on humanity that was the transatlantic slave trade.
So Singbe had been a rice farmer. He was living in a community a bit inland in Sierra Leone.

He had a wife.

He had three children.

And one day he was walking on the road near his village and he was attacked by four men who had been hired through that network overseen by Spanish traffickers. They just stopped this family man and kidnapped him.
He's eventually brought to a vast facility on the coast, that one we talked about early, the Lomboko Slave Fortress, and he and hundreds of other prisoners are held chained in pairs so that they can't run away. Sengbei and all of the others from the Amistad were then forced with a group of 500 other people onto a Portuguese ship.
Sengbei says that the ceilings below the deck were only four feet high and all the people were chained together. There was no room to move at all.
He says the majority, and you see these old drawings from back then and it's legit like sardines. You just take as many spots as can be filled with people laying down as possible chained together in horrid conditions.
The scene from Amistad is the thing that I thought when you first started talking about people being on those ships because it is so accurate. It's like when we use words like horrible, it's not the right word.
It's like it doesn't feel expansive enough or like deep enough, but it's like it's just a human nightmare. Yeah.
Sungbae says that the majority of the people on board had been women and children, and he says they were given small amounts of rice to eat and they were beaten, of course, and that many of the prisoners died while on board this ship. This horrific journey known as the Middle Passage would have taken weeks or months.
And the movie Amistad does portray this part with chilling accuracy. So it is a good one to watch for that.
Sengbei's story then aligns with what Ruiz and Montez have been saying. Those who survived the journey disembark in Cuba, where about 50 of them are trafficked to Ruiz and Montez, basically sold to them.
They bring them aboard the Amistad to sail to a sugar plantation on another part of the island, as I said. And again, they're chained below deck.
And again, they're given very small amounts of food and water. Another man tells the translator, James, that in desperation, he had attempted to steal an extra sip of water and was severely beaten.
They had alcohol and salt applied to his wounds to make them hurt even more. He also says that the cook on board the ship told the group that they were eventually going to be murdered and eaten.
So they are terrified, obviously. Yeah.
He also says that the cook on board the ship told the group that they were eventually going to be murdered and eaten. So they are terrified, obviously.

Many of them believed that they were going to be eaten. And it seems like maybe the cook was just fucking with them or it was true.
I don't know. But given everything that already happened, why wouldn't they believe that? You know what I mean? It aligns.
So there's an even more pressing sense of desperation within the group to escape. So one night, Singbae pries a loose nail out of the ship, out of the boards, and uses it to pick the lock on his shackles.
He frees the rest of the men in the group, and they find the sharp tools that are used for cutting sugar cane. And they just use these tools.
They take over the ship. They kill the captain and the cook in the struggle.
But they keep Ruiz and Montez alive because they know how to sail the ship and tell them to take them back home. Which, of course, as I said, they followed instructions during the day, but not at night.
So at this point now, it's 1840, a little over 20 years before the start of the Civil War.

And there are about 2.5 million enslaved laborers living in the United States, almost entirely in the South. They are almost all ancestors of people who were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America between the mid-1400s and 1808, when the Atlantic slave trade is supposed to have been abolished.
But of course, there's also been a trickle of newly trafficked people brought illegally from Africa, as I said. So when these harrowing accounts from the Amistad party are made public, more and more people speak out on behalf of the group, arguing that they should be allowed to go home.
This causes President Martin Van Buren to freak out, essentially, because it had been his call to keep the Amistad party jailed. And it was his U.S.
attorney who was arguing against the Amistad party in court, saying the group should be returned to Cuba as property of Spain. So it was against what the president was pushing for.
Van Buren is from upstate New York and doesn't even have strong feelings about slavery, but he needs Southern votes to be reelected. And so he can't be seen as the president who recognized the humanity of enslaved people

because it will turn the public opinion

more in favor of abolition.

So he has to have a hard stance on it.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, because it's big business.

Because I need to be elected or I'm not a real man.

It's like, but it's money.

It's money and power all the time and then pretending that these aren't people. Right.
At this point in time, there's also a gag order in Congress preventing petitions against slavery. And that's preventing a lot of debates about it on the national stage.
And so this is a somewhat rare moment when the actual like pure evil is shown in government proceedings. It's almost like they're able to use this, the abolitionists, as their speech of why this is wrong, something they couldn't just do of their own accord.
So even though the situation for the Amistad party is different than for enslaved people born in America, the case is seen as a referendum on the use of human captives as unpaid laborers. So a verdict in favor of the captives would force people to reckon with the humanity of Black people, which would potentially push the country closer to civil war.
But the case, with the testimony from the Amistad party translated by James and Charles, is basically a slam dunk. Baldwin demonstrates to the court that the Amistad party was born in Sierra Leone and that Ruiz and Montez actually showed false paperwork saying they had been born in Cuba.
The judge rules that they are free people who have been illegally kidnapped under the laws of the U.S. and Spain and orders that they be returned home.
But let's not celebrate yet. President Van Buren appeals the decision, first to the circuit court, which upholds the district court's decision and then to the Supreme Court.
And it's almost like good that he does this because it gets a bigger platform than it would have if that had been the end of the trial and they had been sent home. Seven out of the nine Supreme Court justices are from the South and in their own households.
They themselves enslaved the descendants of people who were trafficked from Africa. So what the fuck do they care? Right.
The abolitionist asked former president and current Massachusetts Congressman John Quincy Adams, you know him, to represent the group in court. By this point, the Amistad group have been in Connecticut for about a year, and many of them have learned some English.
An 11-year-old boy in the group named Khali writes to the former president personally, asking how he would feel if someone carried his children and friends away to another country. He writes, all we want is make us free.
It's just like this really heart-wrenching letter. John Quincy Adams takes the case, which appears before the Supreme Court in February of 1841.
Adams, who has always been known for his oratory, is that right? Sure. Like speech-making? Yeah.
Well, he speaks for fucking hours. Yeah.
Yeah, he does. Demonstrating the absolute lawlessness of the Amistad's party's captivity.
Like just in general, how fucking illegal the whole thing is to begin with. The Supreme Court finds in favor of the captives saying in their decision that as free people, they were entitled to do whatever it took to defend themselves and escape their captors.
Hell yes. It's almost like, you know, if you are being held captive in a basement by some serial killer and you have to kill him to get out, then they're like blaming you for killing someone? Right.
No. It's like the stand your ground law.
Right. But it's reversed because then it's not a big white guy standing in his doorway.
You have to you have to reckon with the fact that it's like can't anybody defend their own life. And it is their life.
Yeah. They stole.
They kidnapped them from their families. I mean, yeah, it's shocking that they actually, that they were found in favor of them.
It's really amazing. Yeah.
Especially in 1841. Yeah.
So the Amistad Party, they go to live in Farmington, Connecticut, a town that's been referred to as the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad. So they build housing for them there so they can raise money to secure their passage back to Sierra Leone.

There's not a ship that they can just put them on and return them.

As part of their fundraising efforts, members from the group from Sierra Leone go to speak at abolitionist fundraisers, telling their stories and reading from the Bible and singing hymns. So in 1842, the group, which is now 35 people, they are able to secure enough money to get their passage back to Sierra Leone, along with several American missionaries, because now they have to convert them to Christianity there.
That's always got to be in the mix. Yeah, it's like, that's got to be very important, unfortunately.
So once they get there, some stay in Freetown and Sierra Leone, the big city, establishing the missionary and a new school. One of the children from the group, Sarah Margrou Kinson, actually returns to America and winds up attending Oberlin College as one of the first Black female students, and she had been on the Amistad.
Incredible. Others from the group return to their families and villages, which has to be amazing, and the British Navy finds and destroys the Lomboko Slave Fortress finally in 1849.
Good. Then the Civil War begins in 1861, as you know, so 20 years after the Amistad group returns home.
But the abolitionist groups that consolidated around the Amistad case will continue to pressure Americans to confront the evils of enslavement and will go on to form organizations that still exist today. This includes some of the first black colleges and institutions that trained some of the leaders of the civil rights movements.
So it's all connected. And that is the story of the Amistad trial when a group of brave survivors helped America gain a toehold on its still faltering path to justice.
Wow. Yeah.
Nice final line. That It was all Allie.
Allie Elkin, my researcher. Amazing job, Allie.
Thank you. It was so good.
And Georgia. Thank you.
I love that story. It's such a good, it is actually kind of like a true adventure story.
Yeah. It's just that the stakes are so horribly high.
It's this true crime, like, what's the word? Swath of history? Yeah, it's a true crime thing where you're like, I'm not into true crime. And you're like, but so many things are true crime that you don't think are and that have to do with history and that have to do with humanity and, you know, people finding a way.
And I think that's just, this is a perfect story for that. Yeah, nice one.
Thank you. That fit real good.
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Please show support for the show and tell them we sent you elevate your comfort elevate your style with honey love goodbye when you started this story i was just like what's this story going to be that i'm going to be taking a left turn from so there's never been a further left turn than the topically we both know this story okay it starts around around 1030 a.m. on February 12th of 2006 outside of the Lansing Correctional Facility, a state prison in Lansing, Kansas.
It's a snowy, blustery day, and 48-year-old Toby Young is pulling up to the prison in a van. She's a married mother of two sons.
She's got a sweet and familiar disposition. Writer Michael J.
Mooney, who will write up a big old article for The Atlantic that we use as one of the primary sources in telling the story, Michael J. Mooney will report that she has, quote, a wry smile and auburn curls.
She could be your neighbor, your librarian, your aunt. What if she saw three of

those things? So Toby's at the prison today because she runs a dog adoption program that partners, right? I don't know for sure. Yeah, go ahead.
She partners rescue dogs with inmates at the facility who then foster and train the dogs until they're ready to be placed in their forever homes. But before she passes through the final gate into the prison yard, Toby stops.
She cuts her van's engine and waits. The inmates lined up with their dogs are out in the wind and the snow, so they're impatiently stomping their feet and waving for her to hurry.
Actually, the weather is bad enough that if it was any other day, Toby would have rescheduled this just due to bad weather. But she has to be here today.
And the reason why she has to be here has her heart racing. Toby takes a moment to search the prison yard.
She sees the things she's looking for as a guard rolls out a covered metal farm wagon into the prison yard. Toby arranged to have this wagon brought out on her visit today.
She told them that it was loaded with odds and ends that she'd left behind on previous visits like leashes and bowls and maybe a dog crate or two. But panic washes over her as she sees the wagon's tires buckling under the weight of its cargo.
It's obviously carrying more than just a few pet supplies. Toby takes a deep breath.
She starts the van again, and she proceeds through the final gate and into the prison yard. She greets the small crowd of inmates waiting for her, and as she loads the dogs into her van, she hopes that the sound of them barking, being placed in their crates, and the inmates' goodbyes will draw attention away from this approaching wagon with her stomach still in knots toby watches as the clueless guard loads that heavy wagon onto her van knowing full well that in this moment if one tiny thing goes wrong her entire life a life where she's always done everything according to plan will be destroyed this is the story of Toby Young and the infamous dog crate prison break.
I don't think I know the details of this at all. The main sources of the story is Toby's memoir, Living with Conviction, an article that ran in The Atlantic in 2020 by writer Michael J.
Mooney, and a 2019 episode of Criminal that Toby actually gets interviewed by Phoebe Judge on that's really great and powerful. Living with Conviction.
That's a good fucking name for your book. Yeah, right? Living with Conviction.
I love that. Okay, so we'll start at the beginning.
Toby Dore is born in the late 50s in Kansas City, Kansas. She grows up in a big Catholic family.
This is so sad. When she's just five years old, her father is involved in a terrible accident doing yard work outside their home.
He's clearing and burning a bunch of branches and his clothes catch on fire. And of course, he's badly burned.
He spends eight months recovering in the hospital. And it's of course, a, stressful time for the family.
Five-year-old

Toby, who's the eldest daughter of seven children, rises to the occasion. As we know that eldest daughters always are forced to do, even if they're five years old.
With her father spending so much time fighting for his life in the hospital, and of course her mother often needing to be there with him, Toby becomes a rock for her family. Michael J.
Mooney reports, quote, Toby felt it was her responsibility to take care of her younger siblings. She wanted to solve whatever problem was in front of her.
She changed diapers, packed lunches. She's five.
I can't. Thinking about Nora when she was five years old and all the things, she couldn't close a goddamn cabinet.
And still can't to this day, Nora. It's just little kids adapting to the situation that life puts them in.
Right. You're so grown up.
That's mean. That's like, well, thanks.
I had trauma as a child. I was forced to be grown up.
I was forced. I wanted to live in a dipshit world that all those other kids were living in.
Didn't get to. No.
Sorry, who am I yelling at? She changed diapers, packed lunch.

We're still mid, quote, packed lunches and tried to provide stability in a stressful time.

She was less like a sister than like a third parent one of her siblings would later tell the Wall Street Journal.

Nice.

So fortunately, Toby's dad is eventually able to leave the hospital.

He's still struggling with serious injuries.

He has limited movement in his arms, but he does have to go back to work to support his family. So he winds up finding a job with the railroad as a machinist.
And he often tells his kids to, quote, deal with what life gives you. So that's kind of the family motto.
I don't think you need to be telling that to your five-year-old daughter who ran the fucking house while you were gone.

She's already doing that.

She has six children right now.

Michael J. Mooney writes, quote, Toby internalized the lesson.

She was a perfectionist, the type who spoiled the curve for her younger siblings.

She never got drunk, never tried drugs.

In high school, she was the president of the pep club and dated the star of the baseball team.

So she was going to make it work.

Yeah, she was everything for everybody.

Yeah.

Okay, so... She was the president of the pep club and dated the star of the baseball team.
So she was going to make it work. Yeah.
She was everything for everybody. Yeah.
Okay. So then when she's 20 years old, she marries her high school sweetheart, who is also from a religious family.
And the way she describes it, this marriage is more about meeting expectations and less about romance. She'll later say, quote, I never really dated anyone else.
We got along. We didn't fight.
So we might as well get married. So many.
That's how it was. How so many families began.
Yeah.

And then they're like, why did everyone get divorced in the 80s? And it's like,

because that's how people were. Because I was supposed to be their ex-boyfriend.
Yes. But

they married. I keep spitting at you.
But they get married instead. It's not hitting me.

In your early 20s. That's what happens.
Yes. And also this idea of like, you have to or your aunt

Thank you. spitting at you but they get it's not hitting me in your early 20s that's what happens yes and also this idea of like you have to or your aunt will be upset he's nice and we never fight we never fight hey nothing wrong no passion nothing wrong with fighting because there's no passion get it out toby and her husband mostly follow the path that's expected of them they buy a a house close to Toby's parents.
They start a family.

They have two sons. And meanwhile, the cracks are starting to emerge in Toby's marriage.
Her husband seems to be a decent man who provides for the family, but the two are emotionally disconnected and are more coexisting than operating as a healthy, loving couple. Toby will later say, quote, There were several times in our marriage that I realized this has not been a good choice, but I didn't know how to get out.

I didn't know how to get out. I didn't know how to make a change.
Instead, Toby relies on the old mantra from her father, deal with what life gives you. So she does this by keeping herself incredibly busy.
She's very attentive and an involved mother who's always there for her sons, but she also works a day job at a utility company, and she takes college classes at night. Can you imagine doing any of those things? Even one of those things.
Not one is too many. There's a reason that we podcast professionally.
Yeah, truly. So before long, Toby has graduated with top honors from college with a double major in business administration and accounting.
So not the fun classes. She didn't go as a theater major.
No. She went and really got it done.
Wow, she had two children and a fucking day job. Yeah.
Good for her. She and her husband, meanwhile, seem to spend less and less time together, especially as their boys grow up.
Then in the late 80s, when Toby's just 30 years old, she gets a job as a project manager with Sprint. Remember good old Sprint? They used to really be a big part of our lives.
They really were. She ends up working there for nearly 15 years before being laid off during the dot-com bust of the early 2000s.
So Toby is forced to pivot. She's always loved animals, especially dogs.
So she takes a job as a technician in a veterinary clinic. Then one day in 2004, she's 47 years old and she notices a lump on her neck.
She asks one of the vets to take a look because she's at work. And he says, you have to have that looked at immediately.
When she does, a doctor informs her that she has thyroid cancer. Looking back on the diagnosis, Toby will eventually tell Phoebe Judge of the great podcast Criminal that, quote, you know, even though thyroid cancer is very treatable, hearing your name after the word cancer is devastating.
Yeah, I can't imagine. It causes you to stop and take stock of your life.
I realized that I could go at any minute, and I didn't want to leave this earth and not have done anything to have made it a better place. First of all, mother of two young boys.
Yeah. Why are you acting like you did? You have.
Yeah. Just like, it's a huge fear of mine, the cancer thing, where it's just the suddenly you have to be this brave fucking person when really it's the most terrifying thing that can happen to a person.
One could say that they have to confront their mortality at 47. And feel like it's almost over.
Right. If it's over, are you happy with what you brought? Yeah.
Answer that. Answer that.
Most people would say no. Right now, 23-year-old that's listening to this.
It's a good, I mean, I have to say, there was a lot of death in our family when I was 12 years old. Three different people died when I was 12.
And it was really crazy mind-blowing. And there were people that were close to us.
And literally that day forward, I was like, I'm not doing fucking anything I don't want to do. And it was that kind of like, what's the point? If this whole thing is just to find out one day or drop dead one day or get cancer one day or lose your mind one day, then what's this part for? Yeah.
Like, that's a big lesson to learn at 12, let alone at our age. I was looking for an excuse, though, because I was like, I'm really tired of doing what other people tell me.
Here's why. Here's why now.
Not that I have defiance disorder. Or anything like that.
Nothing. No.
No. It's just real.
Except for that I was right. I'm a Buddhist.
Look where I got to. So in this life-changing moment for Toby, she actually successfully treats her thyroid cancer, thank God.
But her energy is gone. The treatments leave her confined to a recliner.
And in that downtime, she ends up finding a TV show that inspires her in a way that she doesn't expect. And it's a TV show called Cell Dogs.
So this is a quote from her later. She says, Cell Dogs was a program that ran on Animal Planet for a few years.
It was set inside of a prison. They had dogs in there.
The inmates were training them, and they were taken out for adoptions. I love dogs.
That's kind of an understatement. I thought that would be my dream.
I could make a difference if I could do something like that. If I could start a prison dog program, I know I could change the world.
Wow. So she's so excited by this idea that she tells her husband and this part broke my heart like i was cried in my office a little bit he suggests sell dogs is made up for television that's his fucking answer to his wife who's beating cancer yeah and is saying hey with that in the rear view here's what i'm inspired by like a thing i we learned in couples therapy, Vince and I, is that it takes nothing for you just to sound supportive.
It takes nothing. Not one fucking thing.
They're not saying I'm doing this tomorrow and putting our life savings into it. They're dreaming.
And to support that dream, because I'm a dreamer and Vince is a realist. I'm not going to move to fucking Spain or whatever.
Let's just talk about how fun it would be. I'm not going to go do it.
Can we just have an imagination session of how fun something can be? It takes nothing out of you to do that. I could have sworn this was going to be about Vince's hardcore band, but I guess it's about...
No, I support all of it. I'm a dreamer.
I'm like, yes, hardcore band, do this. Do this.
Well, and also I think that's a really good lesson to learn kind of for the relationship overall. Yeah.
But I think there is this thing when you're in a relationship with a person who isn't interested in the connection. Yeah.
Right. In that way where it's like, I'm telling you about a thing

that lights me up.

Totally.

Why doesn't it light you up

that I'm lit up?

Totally.

You fucking asshole.

Yes.

It takes nothing from you

to do that.

To even just appreciate

your partner's happiness

or excitement.

Right.

Exactly.

But Toby isn't discouraged.

You know why?

She's been married to this man

for quite some time.

She's not surprised.

Also, this is just her side.

I don't want to get to,

I love to be like

shitty or whatever.

Sure.

This may be a good one. isn't discouraged.
You know why? She's been married to this man for quite some time. She's not surprised.
Also, this is just her side. I don't want to get to, I love to be like shitty or whatever.
Sure. This man at the end of the day is also a victim of the story.
So whatever their relationship was, after the fact, one person talking about what it used to be like sucks as well. Yeah.
Okay. So Toby's plan basically from all of this is to convert their barn into dog kennels so they can take in and foster stray dogs.
And she's so into it, she starts redoing it, and her husband joins her eventually. Okay.
So full credit to that. Thanks, sir, that was already there, and it's the least anyone could ask of you.
Anyway, Toby begins to take in strays and get them adopted. So by the summer of 2004, this business and enterprise is going so well, she puts up a website to advertise it.
And a few days later, someone from the Lansing Correctional Facility reaches out to her. They ask Toby if she'd like to collaborate on a program within the prison.
And Toby is elated. Her dream to create her own version of cell dogs is actually coming true.
So she got the idea. She pitched it.
No one was going to help her. She's like, I don't care.
I'm going to do it myself. She does it herself.
The people join after the fact when it's real and material and there's something there. And then she gets herself there.
So at this point in her life, her sons are in their 20s. They're out of their house.
So she throws everything she has into this program. She's gotten her college degrees.
She's done it all. So she's now doing this fully, and it turns out to be a huge success.
It's called Safe Harbor. It becomes the largest prison dog program in the United States at the time.
So she doesn't just do it. She takes her accounting and her business and all her things and she makes it happen.
They ultimately place more than a thousand foster dogs in permanent homes. Oh my God, that is so amazing.
It's big. Toby ends up leaving her job at the vet clinic because she's spending upwards of 15 hours a day on this new project.
Visiting animal shelters, looking for dogs to foster, taking them to vet appointments, placing them, working with their new foster inmates who live with and train the dogs from their cells. So she's doing every part of it.
She loves the work. She finds it deeply fulfilling, but it makes the disconnect that she has with her husband of 28 years even more obvious.
She tells Phoebe Judge, quote, I probably spent as much time inside the prison as an officer that was on duty. It became my entire life.
My husband resented it, but we didn't have a good marriage. It was just one more way that I did my own thing, and he did his own thing.
I never did come home and talk to him about anything that was going on because he just wasn't interested in it. That's the worst part of the relationship,

which I've definitely been in in past relationships of like,

you go have this great time with friends or whatever. And then you're like, oh, I guess I got to go home now.

You're like not looking forward to it.

Yeah.

That's how you fucking know.

Yeah.

Like you got to have somebody,

even if they're waiting under a blanket watching a show,

they don't want to turn off.

Yeah.

When you come in and they're like, how was it? Yeah. They're They're actually asking you.
If you can't even have that bare minimum. Right.
No, I'm excited every time I get to go home and tell Vince, talk shit to Vince. Yeah.
Yeah. That's the idea.
Yeah. Okay.
As we're leading to, Toby starts to feel very lonely and she yearns for a more loving and passionate relationship. But she's also experiencing what she describes as a self-made prison of perfectionism.
Basically, she's become resentful of her careful, cautious approach to her life. And as fate would have it, this is when she meets a 27-year-old inmate named John Menard, who is enrolled in the foster dog program.
She's just like ripe to meet a hot fucking convict, right?

Hell yes.

Who is like, maybe I will manipulate you into doing a bunch of things.

Oh my God.

John's six foot four redhead.

Tatted.

Oh, yep.

Tattoos.

Who Toby describes as, quote, swaggering everywhere he went in the prison.

Like he owned the place or he was in charge.

Damn.

You'd just be like, who's that? Who's that? You know my song, Who's That? Yeah. That's what you'd be singing.
Who's that? Toby soon learns that John is incarcerated for his involvement in a carjacking when he was a teenager where a man was shot to death. So even though he didn't fire the shot that killed the victim, he was convicted nonetheless.
So she's able to like empathize a little bit. Yeah.
Enough to like, well, to like talk herself out of it being a problem. He's not really, he's not technically a murderer.
Right. And also a six foot four redhead with tattoos swaggering around.
I mean, quit it. And fucking teaching a pit bull how to behave.
Get out of here. Into your dream project that you are now the kind of boss of.
And also that is having an effect. I don't know if you've ever watched any of those shows or documentaries.
But the effect those animals have on inmates and the actual rehab that starts taking place is amazing that's like half the point yeah so she's a part of that too which is probably really a beautiful thing to get to see right so toby's not afraid of john obviously probably even maybe just a little bit adds to it uh she is immediately captivated by his confidence and their bond deepens after a scary encounter at the prison where one of the men in toby's program gets angry and actually like comes at her like he might hit her and john menard steps in and basically stops it come on from here on out toby trusts john their bond deepens he starts watching out for Toby. So like when she arrives at Lansing Correctional, he meets her at the prison gate.
He sticks with her when she's on the prison grounds. He works alongside her during the various training sessions with the other inmates.
Fucking bodyguard. Yes.
Hot prison bodyguard. Bodyguard.
I'm like eyes on. Who doesn't want that? No, for sure.
So now they're spending a lot of time together. And while they aren't allowed to have any physical contact, they come to understand each other on a deeper level.
And then in all caps, I just wrote UGG. Because it's like, sure.
No, it's, yeah. Extenuating circumstances.
Right. Circumstances.
So many circumstances. So many circumstances.
And then Toby's father is diagnosed with stage four cancer. And John offers her emotional support.
He tells her things like, quote, you deserve someone who wants to make you the center of their world. Which Toby describes as, quote, like pouring water on a dying plant.
Yeah. Which is kind.
Which is kind of how it is. I think that's like, that's why I love bombing is such an effective tool that people use.
It's like the quickest, fastest manipulation of, oh, you seem to be in need of this thing. Well, you're kind of giving something away.
So he wasn't falling in love with her, too. He was manipulating her.
Well, that's my judgment. Yeah.
I'm being judgmental. Okay.
So there is no, like like this whole time. Well, don't tell me at the end, but.
Let's find out together. Okay, because I'm like, maybe they didn't fall in love.
I'm being optimistic about it. I'm so negative, but.
To me, it's like. We're at a prison.
I know. Where people usually get locked up for being dishonest somehow.
Well, yeah, but he, since he was a teenager, he's in his late 20s. He hasn't had any contact or connection with a woman.
You want there to be a bad boy good guy in this? Oh, he's like, oh, his gentleman is coming out because he's like, oh, I'm thinking it's real for now. But let's keep going.
That's fun for the movie. So he says that.
She says it's like pouring water. He then tells her that he loves her.
Toby, who again is a self-professed rule follower, knows that she shouldn't even be entertaining a future with John. She shouldn't even be having this conversation with him.
But as they talk more and more, it starts to feel real. And beyond that, it feels very nice nice like she's finally getting something she really needs seriously so what happens now is the obvious next step in the story arc of falling in love with a convicted criminal almost half your age yeah you start planning his escape yeah you just have to now here's i think the test yeah if all of that happened and then's like, I'll see you in 17 years when I'm out of here, baby girl.

They get married in prison and she comes to every visitor's thing and conjugal.

They raise dogs.

But that ain't it.

So we downshift into third gear.

Yeah.

And I say that's the thing.

Or is that upshift?

Either way.

Well, we're in fourth and you go into third.

No, I'm saying we're in second and now we're going up into third so that we can go down into fourth.

Okay, well, and then also like I bet it was his suggestion that maybe you should help me get out, not hers. I think so too.
Okay. Because she's a rule follower.
Yeah. And kind of a normal lady that's just like a very tall redhead is giving her very nice attention.
Prison break isn't the first thing that she thinks of when she thinks of her life. No, which she's bringing to the table.
She's like, but did you see this wonderful pit bull that I let you pet? Okay, so all of this brings us back to February 12, 2006, which is where we started that blustery, wintry day. Toby's nervously watching the oversized wagon being loaded onto her van.
Her heart is racing because, you guessed it, John's hiding in it. They've sorted it all out.
Toby has withdrawn $40,000 out of her 401k. No.
Uh-huh. Which is worth around how much? 2004, $40,000? $120,000.
$63,000. Shit.
Inflation. I don't understand it.
I know. These days, John lost 25 pounds so that he could somehow contort his six-foot-four frame into a cardboard box that could then fit inside a dog crate.
I feel like in prison, people need to pay attention. If a prisoner loses a huge amount of weight, they're trying to fit through a pipe.
They're trying to fit through somewhere. Yeah.
Maybe stand in that crack next to the refrigerator in the wall for a little while until people stop noticing them. Amid all the chaos of that morning, the barking and the dogs being loaded onto the van, no one asks any questions about the wagon or why it's so heavy.
So Toby starts her engine and simply drives away like she always does. And as she does, she immediately regrets it.
Yeah. But she's so far into this plan and everything about it that she has no idea how to get out of this situation.
So she does what she'd normally do, which is drive home and unload the dogs into that barn that's been retrofitted into kennels. And as she starts to do this, she obviously gets John out of his kennel and he start rummaging around the property and he ends up finding two pistols.
This worries Toby. John convinces her they're just for protection because they have so much money on them.
Where are these pistols coming from? It's a farm. But I mean, I mean, he's looking.
Yeah. So that's the other thing.

They then ditch the van.

Toby recently purchased a pickup truck for a few thousand dollars. So they get into that and they drive all night on the back roads to a remote lake house in Alpine, Tennessee that they've reserved using a fake name.

So they basically get out of town immediately.

On the way, John kissesby for the first time and he's the only other person that's ever kissed her oh my god besides her husband who was her high school boyfriend all the excitement too and the adrenaline and this kiss that'd be like the best fucking kiss the best absolutely on the way to the lake house oh Oh, kiss me now. I can't even wait.
I did all caps UGG. You did.
It's a similar UGG, but it's that same kind of thing where it's like, you're scared. It's happening.
Was this worth it? I don't know. Oh, no.
Is it real? I mean, all of it. Kiss.
So she's still not feeling great and with good reason. John has taken all the cash.
He won't give her the keys to the truck.

And then he throws her cell phone into the lake so she can't call anyone.

So the worm turns relatively quickly.

He's also now having angry outbursts when anything goes wrong, like when they get turned around and have to stop at a restaurant to ask for directions.

Oh, no.

You're all in and you've never even driven with him.

Like, that's a mistake. Yeah.
You don't know how he talks to wait staff. Oh, totally.
And you're all fucking in to the point where you've withdrawn money at the 401k. You've just blown up your entire life.
But he was so nice in the mess hall. Yeah, but I'd never seen him get angry before.
Oh, no. Before when he was planning on trying to get me to get him out.
Right, okay. Okay, so Toby's trying to focus on the good things.
Deal with what life has given her in the moment, even as John becomes more reckless. She says, quote, John was really interested in eating fried chicken and a lot of foods that he wasn't able to get inside prison.
Totally understandable. He played the guitar, and I brought my mandolin with me, and he'd play music, and we just talked a lot.
That lasted for a day or two. And then John said, I don't want to just stay in this cabin.
I want to go out and see things. Let's do some stuff.
End quote. So this was like the big romance didn't even last two days.
So they go out, they take a day trip to Nashville where John shops for guitars. They go watch, walk the line, the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line at a movie theater.
Another time they go on a trip to Chattanooga, they see a movie about lions at an IMAX theater wearing disguises because by this point, the headlines have been out. Everyone knows there's been a prison escape.
The authorities are trying to track them down. Toby and John know this because they've seen the papers while they've gone out on these adventures.
And they know she's in on it. She's not a captive.
I think so. Okay.
Yeah. Even still, they keep going out into public.
Twelve days after the prison break, the pair visit a mall in Tennessee, now about 100 miles south of Chattanooga, where John buys a copy of Where The Red Fern grows from a bookstore with Toby's money, of course. I love that movie.
I mean that book when I was a kid. It's a sad one.
Dog book.

Mm-hmm. expecting to see them, but they are actively looking for them in Tennessee because Toby had used the cabin's address when filling out paperwork for their getaway truck.
I would recommend to not do that next time. Toby will later comment that she, quote, wasn't a great criminal.
Yeah. This woman.
That's okay. This woman.
This poor misguided woman. She got took.
Yeah. So now the police have located Toby and John.
They call for backup. They quietly tail the couple for around 60 miles as they head back to the cabin in Alpine.
As John and Toby approach their rental, they're met with a huge traffic stop. And obviously the jig is up.
John asks Toby what he should do.

Being the rule follower that she is, she tells him to pull over so they can surrender to police.

But instead of that, John hits the gas, swerves off, weaving through traffic at 100 miles an hour before eventually taking the truck off-road and slamming it into a tree.

Toby is still overcome with regret. She wishes for death.
Understandable. She survives the crash with just a few minor injuries.
So does John. What was this fucking plan? Kill them both? I don't know.
Or just, like, try to get away and do your best and whatever. I mean, it's...
Yeah, there's no plan. All of this planning is three-quarters planning.
Sure. My least favorite kind.
Yeah. I like it when we run through scenarios A, B, C, D, E, and F.
But whatever. Escape from jail however you want.
Do your thing. Do your thing.
Oh, my paper clip's coming. Well, it's on reset.
It looks good. I'm telling you.
I like that. It's like a little punk.
A little riot girly. Just a little.
But it's like, we're like library punk. Yeah.
As Toby comes to, she can hear John calling out to her, quote, are you okay, baby? Are you okay? Aw. I mean, that says something.
Yeah. There's a realness to it.
He did just crash the car himself. But then he wants to know if she's okay.
So it's not a great relationship. It's not.
Look, we can have these kinds of relationships. Listen, they're there for a reason.
Pickable. Yeah.
Don't stay in them. Yeah.
Truly. Learn from them.
Promise that the second he darts away when he says, what should I do? And you say, pull over. And he fucking goes 100 miles an hour in the opposite direction.
Yeah. Thank you.
Next. Thank you.
Next. And even if he calls your baby.
Yeah. Keep on going.
We're going to learn. We're going to learn this time.
Someday. They're both removed from the vehicle, handcuffed and placed under arrest.
Toby, who among other charges is found guilty of supplying firearms to a convicted felon, gets 27 months in prison for her involvement in this jailbreak. Yes.
I'm sorry. I thought it'd be way more than that.
Oh, it's two years and three months.

Yeah, but supply, I mean, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

For a regular mom.

Yeah.

Two years in jail.

That doesn't sound like a lot to me.

What if you had to do it right now?

I wouldn't.

No, no, I'm saying.

I mean, yeah, no.

It would be a long time if I had to do it.

No, for sure.

For sure.

But based on her charges, it doesn't seem like an even amount of time for, what's it called? You know, they don't balance. Yeah.
I don't think. The thing doesn't fit the thing.
Exactly. But when love comes into play.
Right. And I'm not trying to say I want her to be in fucking prison more.
No. I'm just not on the jury and I'm not the judge but like well it almost is like how do we keep things from happening our longer prison sentence is the way to

do that right but i think when love is in the mix does the punishment fit the crime yeah she's

already been punished by fucking ruining her entire life okay truly ruining it and she's out

63 grand yeah oh wow okay okay okay this out of character stunt stuns her colleagues her friends

and her family members it's also the straw that breaks the camel's back in her marriage of course

Thank you. Yeah.
Oh, wow. Okay.
Okay. This out-of-character stunt stuns her colleagues, her friends, and her family members.
It's also the straw that breaks the camel's back in her marriage, of course. Which, actually, good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.
You could have done it a lot quieter. Yes.
How about just a nice mid-sized fight at the TGI Fridays? And then go home and say, I'm just done. I'm done.
Yeah. I'm sorry I broke that beer mug.
You don't have to blow up your entire life to change your life. And if you feel that you're following that little opium trail of the roasted chicken smell like you're floating through the air on a cartoon.

Tall guy pretending to love you.

Stop it.

Just, I don't know, grab a relative, get someone to look you in the eyes and slap you across the face.

Therapy.

Go to our promo page because there's therapy promos in there.

Thank you. I don't know.
Grab a relative, get someone to look you in the eyes and slap you across the face. Therapy.
Go to our promo page because there's therapy promos in there. That's right.
For sure. You can start by texting and then go from there.
Do it. Okay.
Her now ex-husband tells reporters that her crime has, quote, affected me physically, mentally, and monetarily. Don't like the third one.
And that it was very difficult for her sons who, quote, had to say, yeah, that's my mom. End quote.
Well, guess what, though? She's not just a mom. She is a human fucking being.
And what your sons say about you as a mother is not the whole story about who you are as a person. Who am I talking to? I don't know.
Toby's father dies of cancer just months into her incarceration, which, of course, is devastating for her. She's also said to this day she has strained relationships with multiple members of her family.
Of course. Most tragically, she never gets to mend her relationship with one of her sons, who passes away in his 20s because he gets Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Oh. Horrible.

John Menard, meanwhile, gets another 10 years tacked onto his sentence in response to accusations that he manipulated Toby by feigning a romantic interest in her.

Let's let him speak.

Okay.

He said, quote,

I love Toby and was 100% committed to her.

Why did I stay with her once I was out if I was just manipulating?

I love Toby with all that I was. I i was just manipulating i love toby with all that i was i believe i'm gonna believe it but i want to okay i could just answer the second question which is you stayed with her because she was the one that had the 63 000 and it only been like a week and the keys to the truck and then you got rid of her phone okay anyway well he got rid of the phone so they couldn't track them it's not so she couldn't call anyone where's his fucking phone he didn't have one did he not this is where sprint comes back into the no just kidding toby meanwhile says this oh this will solve it okay because it's not me projecting quote i think it's probably a bit of both i do think he cared for me but i've since come to appreciate that if you love someone you don't ask them to do something that puts their life in danger for sure toby the cooler head prevailing in this situation yeah but i actually do like that i didn't realize that he said that about her where it's like hey i actually was committed to her i did love her because at least then she has that yeah it's like it wasn't full scam you're not a complete fool it's not like that it sucks what was that love scammer documentary and the guy kept opening fish restaurants with women's money remember that one vaguely it's so confusing and you're just like what are you doing how how how and what yeah having had a divorced mom in the 80s i I can tell you exactly how I watched it happen.
Right. They're just kind of like, I don't know, I'll take it.
Mustaches and fucking Mulvos. And Chablis.
Chablis. A lot of iced Chablis.
Warm iced Chablis in hotel, motel room. Oh, my God.
You got to get it somehow. Yeah.
Okay. Over time, Toby moves on on from john though they maintain a friendship oh good because he's in jail meanwhile she completes her sentence she moves back in with her mother so she starts over yeah she gets a job in web design and tries to deal with people's stares and whispers when she's out in public horrible around the same time she meets a man named chris who she says her feel safe and supported, and the two get married in 2009.
Oh, good. So she comes back from all of it.
Okay. Love that.
Happy. You did it to yourself, but I'm still happy you get a happy ending.
And like you're fixing it for yourself. Yeah.
That's what life is. Yeah.
Just know for a fact that other people have also broken a six-foot-four redhead out of jail in their own way. We've all done that.
Different nouns. Same diff.
Different nouns. Everyone does it.
You know I'm writing that down. The two marry in 2009 when Toby's in her early 50s, and they continue to visit John in prison every so often.
I kind of love that. Okay, then I am wrong, and I will change my stance.
because that's kind of beautiful. Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm really now really.

It's like, thank you for everything you gave me.

Even if it was fucking to Lulu.

And I don't know.

They still talk.

I love that.

It's lovely.

Okay.

They do that every so often until 2024 when John Menard passes away at the age of 45 from an undisclosed disease. Oof, prison.
He died inside. Horrible.
When that happens, Toby writes on her Facebook, quote, John is finally free, but I am crushed. Oh, my God.
Over the years, Toby has tried to atone for her role in this jailbreak. She's developed programs geared at helping people break the cycle of incarceration.
That's great. And has positioned herself as an advocate for women.
She sees her story as a way to burst open taboo conversations about feeling stuck in life. She said, quote, I'm proof that a single choice can change everything.
That we're not defined by our worst moments, but by how we rise from them. My story is one of transformation, of breaking free, rebuilding, and stepping into a fierce, unshakable purpose.
Beautiful. And that's the story of Toby Doerr, which is her current name, Toby Doerr, and the infamous dog crate prison break.
Wow. Yeah, I did not know that story.
And if you haven't, oh, there she is. Let me see her.
Let me see her. Look at her.
Oh, yes. Yes, with her dogs.
If you haven't, truly, one of my very favorite episodes of Criminal Podcast is Toby's episode when she tells the story to Phoebe Judge firsthand. It's really good.
You go through it with her. You go, what are you doing? And she's just completely honest and upfront.
Lays it all out. Good for her.
Yeah. It's great.
Wow. Okay.
Great job. Thank you.
Let's do some fucking hoorays to end this. Okay.
Shall we? What's exciting about fucking hoorays right now is that you can send us your fucking hooray in almost any way modern day possible. Email.
You can do a comment on a YouTube. You can do it on Instagram stories.
You do it anywhere you want. And we'll read it.
Email. All the things.
All the things. Do you want me to go first? Sure.
This is a YouTube comment from episode 474. And this says, fucking hooray.
I started my dream job teaching English language night classes to adult refugees. Most of them are working parents who want to give their kids better lives.
Their bravery and determination are so admirable and their desire to learn English is so inspiring. I feel incredibly lucky that I get the honor of being their instructor.
So fucking hooray for me and fucking hooray for immigrants. And that's from MJWood728.
That's so fitting for this episode. I know, right? I have a fitting one for this episode, too.
Okay, good. This is from YouTube as well.
I'm so excited you guys have brought this back. Fucking hooray.
We need more positivity given the current administration. Emoji.
Anyway, I wanted to shout out my younger sister who just celebrated 15 years of being in remission. We had a cancerversary party in her honor, and it was a great way to remind everyone to celebrate their wins and throw a party, even if it's not a bachelorette or baby shower.
I'm so proud to be her big sister, Molly Sheher. Did you say a remersiversary? What was it? Cancerversary.
Oh, oh. That's so brilliant.
I know. Any party, anytime.
Yes. Celebrate things.
Literally. It'd be like, this is the last block of cheese in my cheese drawer.
It's cheese party night. It's cheese party.
Put a candle in it. Put sprinkles on.
People need to be putting sprinkles on way more things than they do. Yeah.
Sprinkles. Sprinkles and googly eyes.
Yeah. And candles.
Okay. Okay.
Here's my second one. This is hilarious.
It says Karen in Georgia. Oh, this is from email.
Karen in Georgia. Today I spied a bumper sticker that said honk if you'd rather be watching the 1999 cinematic masterpiece The Mummy starring Academy Award winners Brendan Fraser and Rachel Wise.
It made my day. I've been mentally honking all week.
Fucking hooray. It's from Michelle.
And then it says P.S. Multiple email here.
Snacks from beyond the grave. Sister befriended a murderer.
Mom babysat a murder victim. Oh, we got to look those up.
I mean, for sure. But I almost feel like, could she have been driving behind Brandy Posey? Oh, my God.
Did you see the totes someone made? It went viral. That's, you know, those totes you get from like L.L.
Bean and you can put your initials? Yeah, that's the big trend. Someone write, Piper, no! Instead of a monogram.
Yes! That's amazing. That's so good.
Okay, this one's from an email. Hi, MFM team.
It took 15 years of blood, burns, sweat, and tears to pay off my culinary school loans, but this week I did it. Shit.
No help, just pure hustle. After years of navigating depression, anxiety, and therapy, I feel an immense sense of pride in this accomplishment.
Fuck government loans and the stranglehold they have on so many hardworking people. Yep.
Thank you for everything you do. XO, Chef K.
Ooh, Chef K, where do you work? Chef K. Invite us to the place you make food.
We'll come to get the tasting course. We'll get whatever you want.

Just put it in front of us and we'll eat it.

And if it's a Denny's, we'll fucking eat those mozzarella sticks.

Hell yeah.

We don't care.

No, we're not discerning people.

Thank you guys so much for listening.

Yes, thanks for being here with us again.

And stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi.
Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Allie Elkin. Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
Follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder. Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.
Goodbye. Goodbye.
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Cal Hope is here for you with free, safe and confidential mental health resources for youth, young adults, families and you. Find support now at calhope.org.
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