487 - As Will Mine Be

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

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Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.

That's George Artsstar.

That's Karen Gilgara.

We're not going to do those voices this whole time.

We promise just half.

Just fit.

This is called a Havzies episode where we annoy the ever-loving shit out of you.

To some people, it's ASMR.

That's true.

To other people, it's please shut the fuck up right now.

I whisper and you scream.

I'm going to be the super, like, smash that like button.

And then you're going to bring it in.

What?

Imagine you're chewing on glitter.

I don't know.

What's ASMR like?

It's perfect.

Chewing on glitter?

That is is it right there.

Do you love the feeling of chewing on glitter?

So do I.

Aaron, my homepage.

What's going on?

I like when people on, I've noticed on TikTok, a lot of people, and maybe it's just because things are so stressful these days, have pretty bad dry mouth.

Where like, you know what I mean?

The extra snow.

I was listening to a podcast over the weekend.

I will not say what it is.

Don't, don't.

Obviously.

And he took the wettest pauses.

Yeah.

That, oh my god.

And I was like, this is the editor's fault.

Like, this should have, someone should have.

This is the development person's fault.

Like, I don't want to be like, editors are the best people in the world.

I'm not trying to.

Yeah.

And they would have spent hours and upon hours of editing out someone going,

yeah, like that.

You can't, you can't.

And also, there's some people who would come back and say, hey, you've taken all the humanity out.

Right.

But I'm sure someone who is not on so many medications as I am and so fucking insane would has no one's notice it, but it is a wet pause.

My sister, Laurel Kilgariff, would notice it if she listened to podcasts, but I think that's one of the reasons she can't because she has misophonia or whatever version of that.

Yeah.

I mean, literally just recently referenced talking to Adrian, my sister's friend Adrian, and she goes, and her chewing doesn't bother you about me.

And I was sitting right in fucking front of them.

And I was like,

wait a second.

Why is no one?

Yeah, someone, like, I'm sure I do really annoying noises.

Tell me, I don't want to.

I am not.

Oh my God.

I can't even imagine.

It's the kind of thing she has been complaining about it since I was young.

So I know there's part of me that I do it on purpose.

That's why I chewed two pieces of gum at one time.

It's like, oh, you're just

the least pleasant for this monster in my life.

Well, no one sounds good chewing gum, but talking like a normal thing on an interview and on a podcast.

I used to always automatically eat it.

when I would be doing stand-up comedy.

And if you would get nervous and your mouth went dry, if that's the way you get nervous, which was the way I was, then you're like lips stick to your teeth.

People just know you're freaking out.

I mean, that happens.

And that's totally, like, I totally understand that I'll down some water while I'm doing any kind of thing like that, like this.

Like right now, I have two mugs.

But we could get more.

We could, but there could always be more.

There could always be more for that nervous, like your mouth is very connected to your gut in that way.

Right.

People know.

Oh, man.

We're back on video.

Oh, yeah.

It's been so long.

Yeah, we took a little video hiatus, which was so lovely.

I just looked like shit the entire time and enjoyed it.

Oh, this whole thing of having to wash my hair is a real pain in the ass now.

Having to wash your hair is hard for me too.

It's a lot.

But we're back on video.

We're on YouTube.

If you want to watch us, here we are.

We are.

And because we're on YouTube, I had just a little fun thing for you

because I realized, as you know, I went up to visit my dad.

I was up in Petaluma for a little bit.

And every time I go up there, I try to steal something from his house that I want at my house.

That if I brought it up directly, he would just fight with me.

I don't think I knew that.

Oh, yeah.

But nothing like a clock or something valuable.

Is it to fuck with him or just because you want it?

No, because it's like something meaningful that I want that's sitting in a corner with dust all over it.

Got it.

Okay.

Like, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

It's the healthiest version of shoplifting from your own parents.

I, I've done that.

I did that to my grandma.

I get it.

Right?

Yeah.

You're kind of like, you don't care about this.

That's my grandfather's old trash can in his office, and you haven't been in that office in fucking decades.

So like, and I still have that trash can and I adore it and love it.

You don't outwardly steal because you kind of point to it as you're walking out the door.

It's like, you don't care about this, right?

See you later.

Right.

So it was one of those.

Okay.

But it is a thing that was hanging in my parents' kitchen for literally 52 years.

Wow.

So it's like a giant fork and spoon because those, that's so fucking 70s.

It's very similar.

It's a very 70s vibe.

Okay.

But it also, my discovery and the reason I stole it is because we were talking, as we do endlessly, about hot dogs and hot dog summer and hot dog sisters and all those things.

And I put my eyes upon this thing and saw it anew for the first time

because it's a, I think they used to call it like a memory box or something from the 70s that features my sister and I.

And it cut out of an article that was on the front page of the local newspaper, Laura and I at the local fair

being the original original hot dog sisters.

Are you ready?

Oh

my God.

Is there a way to move close?

I see it all.

That is glorious.

There she is.

Do you see that?

First of all, those are corn dogs, which makes me love it even fucking more.

But look at Karen, little Karen in a knitted poncho, chomping on a corn dog the size of her head.

Poncho, diaper.

Full focus on that corn dog.

Nice beret that I still wear barrettes in that spot.

Way better.

The thing in general, like the piece in general, I've never seen before anything like that.

And it's like so homey.

I think my mom's friend Priscilla made it for me.

Yeah, it's so homemade.

So you stole it?

I love it.

So I stole it back.

There's corns of kernel for some reason.

There's dried pasta for some reason.

What are those?

Hazelnuts for some fucking reason?

I think they're like old chickpeas.

Old chickpeas.

And a piece of wheat.

Wheat.

And then I think that was a flower.

That's like some lavender.

Wildflower.

But it's so old that like under the wildflower, there's just little piles of dust.

Yeah, so that's skin cells.

Those are skin cells.

It's just kitchen shit that's that's in there.

That's good.

That's amazing.

Let's put it.

We're going to put it on the Instagram for sure so you can see it.

And I think the challenge might be,

you know, this was, I was jokingly bragging, like, I'm the OG hot dog sister.

But do you have hot dog sister pictures?

Whether that means your actual sister, a friend, any kind of.

Someone eating a hot dog you want?

I don't know.

It's like, it's like, can you show your love of hot dogs the way we've been talking about our love of hot dogs?

Like prove your love to hot dogs.

Maybe.

I love it.

Okay, let's do it.

Let's do hashtag.

Hashtag my favorite hot dog.

And then you can send us a picture of any hot dog.

Did you fall asleep next to a hot dog?

Did you, were you harassed by a man in a hot dog suit?

We want any and all stories.

We want hot dog content.

Yes.

And then we can post.

them.

Yes.

We can post our favorites.

That's right.

And it can be as old as 1972 if you want.

If you can beat that, actually.

If you were in the fucking newspaper, if you were in the fucking me and Lorim and your mom was eating a fucking hot dog while you were in the womb.

Pedalum affair of your mother's womb.

It's all the same thing, guys.

Yeah.

And we're at My Favorite Murder.

So tag us then.

I love that.

Yeah.

Our podcast is called My Favorite Murder.

Did you know that?

And that's what we're on on all the places.

My favorite hot dog.

I love it.

Pretty fun, right?

So fun.

Cause National Hot Dog Day is coming up.

That's right.

So yeah, we have been discussing like, what should we do?

We want a piece of this.

We want to get in on this.

Yeah, we want it to be about us and then i'm like standing in front of it where i'm like i've been staring at this thing for literally my whole life and it's right there

corn dogs are allowed as long as there's a hot dog involved so it could also be like do beans and franks count i mean chopped up hot dogs don't be crazy let's not get crazy hot dog bowl can we do hot dog bowl like what a some rice underneath it no it's from detroiters or i think you should leave where it's a hot dog bowl is just chopped up hot dogs in a bowl it says it like that hot dog chopped up hot dogs in a bowl with like a burrito bowl, but a hot dog bowl.

A hot dog bowl.

Yes, whatever.

I mean, I think whatever, however people want to interact with it.

How do you interpret hot dogs?

Show us your content.

Yeah.

Great.

And then also we'll have a separate file for dick pics.

It's something else completely.

That's a different card of the show.

I thought you were going to say like dogs in hot dog costumes.

No.

Sex sells.

And we're trying to get a hashtag going.

We are.

Oh, I have an email.

It's not an email.

It's a fucking letter, a real life letter.

Oh, a hard copy letter.

Hard copy letter.

Because you know how I had that crow was dead in my pool a couple weeks ago and it was like so heartbreaking.

And I was like, I hope the crows don't blame me.

I got like the most beautiful package/slash letter about that.

Okay.

So they sent me two beautiful bags of bird feed.

Is that what it's called?

And then this letter that I want to read.

Bird seed?

Yeah.

But they're not, it's not all seeds.

There's worms there too.

Oh, amazing.

It's pretty exciting.

Okay.

Okay.

Hi, Georgia and Karen.

We just finished episode 484 and felt we needed to formally acknowledge the fallen crow in Georgia's pool.

Since crows hold funerals and mourn their dead, we thought it only proper to send a bereavement meal.

And then it says, I had to send this because bird watching genuinely changed my life.

During a hard season when I was running a nonprofit that provided free birth control for women in the South while managing my own anxiety and stress, I sat on my front porch doing a grounding exercise and noticed the birds.

I downloaded an ID app just to see what was out there and I was hooked.

Welcome to your 40s.

That is the best.

Also, yeah, you're sitting on your porch trying to calm the fuck down as the world melts down around you.

And this person who's like, I'll provide free birth control for women in the South.

Focus on the birds.

God, I know.

A few years later, I left that job and became a entrepreneur.

Now I run a nationally recognized bird seed company I created from birth control to birdseed.

Who knew?

Yeah.

Living that American dream.

At Happy Bird Watcher, we customize blends based on your location.

So they put your fucking zip code in and they're like, here's what birds in your area are interested in, right?

Yeah.

Because like Texas birds don't want to eat what fucking California birds eat.

No, totally different worms.

Yeah.

We use eco-friendly packaging and give a dollar to mental health charities for every 10 pounds we sell.

Nice.

It's still about helping people, but now I get to do it through something that brings joy and peace one backyard at a time.

Just wanted to say thanks for being part of our workday.

And it's an all-woman team as well.

Just wanted to say thank you for being part of our workdays and the rhythm that keeps us going.

We never imagined birdseed and now crow funerals would be part of our story, but here we are.

And listening to you reminds us that meaningful work can take all kinds of unexpected forms.

That's so true crime.

True crime.

Buddha thunk.

That's right.

Stay sexy and don't get murdered and maybe go feed a crow with birdseed and love.

Susan, she, her founder, happy birdwatcher.

Happy bird watcher.

And they sent the most beautiful, two bags of the most beautiful birdseed I've ever seen before.

Incredible.

Isn't that rap?

Yeah, that's touching.

Also, there's so many people with their small businesses out there who, yeah, when you hear the story behind the small business, you're like, I want to support those people.

Totally.

It's passion projects.

It's really nice.

Yeah.

Isn't that?

Yeah.

What else?

So are you going to take pictures of all the crows you feed?

What's going to happen?

So over the weekend, I popped those bags open and the crows were watching me as I put it down and walked away.

Cookie gets really jealous when that happens, but like I called her away.

And I will tell you right now, the squirrels loved it.

The crows still don't trust me.

Yeah.

But I'm going to keep putting it out there and see how it goes.

You're going to have to win them over.

I'm going, and I'm going to, like, they watched me put down two trays of food.

And they're like, careful, she might sprinkle something in it.

Right.

So I'm going to just keep going and keep doing it.

But crows are cynics, but you know what?

But I like squirrels too.

Yeah.

What?

That's like, I put out a bird feeder in my old house and I was so excited.

And it was like this very large bird feeder.

I think I got it as a gift and I was like, I'm going to do it.

And the next day I went out to check what kind of birds were using it.

And there was like 25 pigeons in my backyard.

They were just all standing around like, when's this food coming?

Like, and they had gone it, a squirrel had gone in and spun it.

So the seeds went everywhere and everyone went and got it.

Like the least mindful bird that will help you ground yourself.

Like a pigeon.

Yeah, they're from the Vaughn's parking lot and they're like, we heard there's seed over in this backyard.

Oh, no, that's not.

That's actually worse than I had a mouse on the video of the one I did once.

And I was like, well, great.

That's not.

They were like loitering.

Yeah.

They were like, it felt dangerous.

They're opportunists.

Yeah, get them the fuck out of here.

Let's do exactly right corner.

We have a podcast network.

It's called Exactly Right Media.

Here are some highlights.

This week over on That's Messed Up, Kara and Lisa cover the SVU episode Manhunt, and they dig into two truly horrifying cases, some of the worst, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng,

and then the murdering pastor, Gary Heidnick.

We covered Gary Heidnick in episode 77 live at the Keswick Theater.

So you can go listen to an old live show and hear that story.

If once you listen to That's Messed Up, you're like, I need more of this horrible.

Or you can just wait six months and it'll be on a rewind.

That's true.

And then on this podcast, Will Kill You, I was so excited to see this.

The Aarons are talking about all things food dye, which is like, there's so much to know.

Am I dying of dye?

Should I stop eating it?

I don't know.

From their accidental discovery to their overuse in snacks, and they do address the purple ketchup that Heinz released in 2001.

Must be discussed.

And there's a brand new episode of MFM Animated on YouTube.

It's called Snails and Green Beans.

Truly some of the best work of Nick Terry.

There's times where we get into little patches where I go, this is made for Nick Terry.

And this was one of those ones where as we were doing it, I was like, I think we were both like, and if he has animated it, this would be good.

So go watch.

They're all on our YouTube page at youtube.com/slash exactly right media.

And all of the other episodes of MFM Animated are on there too.

And MFM too.

And then over in the merch store.

Oh, this is exciting.

So we have a new design.

It's our SSDGM moth design.

And it's a death's head moth that we absolutely love.

Designed by our beloved Sammy Rich.

It's available in a ladies' tank top that I have right here that I'm absolutely going to wear to sweat in.

And then also a tote bag.

Look at that nice big tote bag.

Bring that to the farmer's market or to the library and wow, everyone.

And fill it with birdseeds.

And let them follow you around.

Thank you, Sammy Rich, for designing yet another super cool piece of merch for us.

Show them the arms so they know that it's not.

Yeah, yeah.

There we go.

I was holding it up a little bit.

But this is like a double tote bag size.

That's a good tote bag.

That's a good one.

I think it's a nice one.

This is classy.

Go to exactlyrightstore.com, please, to check it out.

There's more to San Francisco with the Chronicle.

There's more food for thought, more thought for food.

There's more data insights to help with those day-to-day choices.

There's more to the weather than whether it's going to rain.

And with our arts and entertainment coverage, you won't just get out more, you'll get more out of it.

At the Chronicle, knowing more about San Francisco is our passion.

Discover more at sfchronicle.com.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years' interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

Hi, my name's Bob and I'm a fire chief.

My job is more than putting out fires.

To make sure I have the skills to serve my community, I earned my degree online with Oregon State University.

Discover how to advance your career at ecampus.orgonstate.edu.

Okay, I'm first.

Okay, so this is a wild one that I knew about because Vince told me about it because it's from Detroit in the 80s.

And it is a wild story.

It's an infamous case where the war on drugs, remember that, came head to head with political corruption.

And an unexpected drug kingpin, a white teenager, wound up caught in the crossfire.

This is the story of Detroit legend, Richard Worshe Jr., aka white boy Rick.

Oh.

Do you know white?

Have you ever heard white boy Rick?

I feel like I've heard the phrase white boy Rick.

Yeah.

I called Devince today because we talked about it a long time ago and I said, hey, hey, if I said white boy Rick, would that mean anything to you?

And he's like, hell yeah.

And like, it's legendary.

Yeah.

And it was kind of when he was growing up, right?

Vince, yeah.

Yeah.

Perfect timing.

So the main sources for the story are a deep dive reporting from The Atavist and The New Yorker, both articles by Evan Hughes, who did like the deep dive on these and really, really interesting.

awesome pieces about it that I am heavily using for this episode.

And then also there's a 2018 movie and a 2017 documentary called White Boy Rick, which I watched.

And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes.

Who played him in the movie?

Okay, we're going to get into that.

I'll tell you right now, his father, who's a main character, was played by Matthew McConaughey.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So it's a good one.

All right.

So.

Let's start in July of 1987.

Detroit was the homicide capital of the United States for the third year running.

And there's so much to be said about Detroit in the 80s.

I mean, this whole time period, Detroit, there's so much to talk about.

And the crack cocaine epidemic had invaded Detroit.

It's at this time that Detroit's local news station airs a stunning dispatch from the front lines of the war on drugs, which is what the Reagan administration called their racist plight to put black people in prison

because they were addicted to drugs, essentially.

This is the beginning of privatized prisons and prison as a money-making venture in this country.

Right.

So the war on drugs.

So in this story about what's going on in Detroit, a young Chris Hansen,

of course, as we know him for hosting To Catch a Predator, he is like a young journalist.

He rides along with Detroit's joint task force of the city's police department and the DEA, who are trying to crack down that group of cops.

Their nickname is the no-crack crew because they always had to have a fucking war on drugs.

No crack crew.

There, you know, like they just.

It was like civic branding, essentially, where it's like, don't think about it.

You just know you're on our side because we have this dog with the trench coat.

Right.

And then we have Nancy Reagan.

So how can you not be on our side?

So just as a note, and I don't know if you know this, that crack and cocaine are essentially the same drug, just done differently.

But much harsher enforcement of crack is one of the legacies of the war on drugs that led to much longer sentences.

because crack itself was used by more poor people and black people.

So you have people on Wall Street using Coke in the clubs.

It's the same fucking drug that people are buying who are poor and people of color.

That's why there's harsher sentences, essentially.

It's a trick and it goes all the way to the top.

The mandatory minimum sentence for five grams of crack is the same as for 500 grams of cocaine powder,

which is one of the reasons why no investment bankers went to prison for possession.

Also, they bought their way back out.

Truly.

In that televised report, Chris Hansen goes with members of the task force while they make one of the biggest drug busts in Detroit history.

The crew enters an abandoned, once-grand apartment building called the Broadmoor, not the asylum that we've talked about so many times.

In England.

Yep.

So clearly, soap you thought.

Not that.

No.

It's been turned into a sort of crack emporium where larger amounts are sold on ascending floors.

So, like, it's been taken over.

The bus leads to the arrests of the area's highest volume dealers of crack, four brothers named Larry, Billy, Joe, Willie Lee, and Otis Chambers, the Chambers brothers.

Being close to the top of a vast drug network, they themselves had hurt a lot of people and done a lot of bad things.

But the work of getting to them had involved the no-crack crew using very discriminatory policing tactics and sweeping up much lower level offenders and users, addicts, who were in turn imprisoned with very punitive sentences.

So they go after everybody to get to the top.

but nobody gets off on the lower levels.

And the no-crack crew would sometimes arrest neighborhoods of houses where crack was supposedly sold, just the neighborhood, just to get information.

And then those people who had absolutely nothing to do with the drug use or the drug trade were still made to talk and they got in trouble as well.

Members and leadership of the no crack crew were almost all white and some of its leaders obviously were deeply and openly racist.

So while the net around the Chambers Brothers is closing in, The question becomes who is supplying them because that's who the no crack crew says they want to go after is the highest but the answer apparently is ronald reagan

you can't say that so sorry yes no the answer is totally true however at the end of this you know series that chris hansen is at the helm of they reveal that the answer to who was at the top is apparently a 17 year old white boy named rick worshe jr

history will know him as white boy rick but it's not a nickname he has on the streets.

It's a nickname that like the media gives him, but it becomes a legend, like a cowboy legend, you know?

Yeah.

So the question ultimately becomes, who is this kid that the no crack crew want to find out about?

And the answer is pretty easy to find.

Rick is not exactly subtle about his involvement in the drug trade.

He doesn't have a driver's license, but he drives around Detroit in a white Jeep with a decal on the back that says the snowman.

This is actually one of eight cars he owns.

17.

He's known for wearing.

He's a junior.

He's a junior.

He's not even a senior.

He's not even a singer.

He's known for wearing fur coats and gold watches, the whole like, I'm rich off drugs scene.

Sure.

He's 17 years old and he looks it.

He's got a baby face, this like pencil thin, you know, 80s little boy mustache.

In the movie, he's played by Richie Merritt, who I wasn't familiar with, but Vince had thought that the actor was Emile Hirsch, which totally fits.

Yes.

So picture Emil Hirsch from the I Will Go to Alaska and slowly die in a bus.

That's the one.

Into the wild.

Into the wild.

Thank you.

Thank you, Molly.

It's not called I Will Go to Alaska and Slowly Die in a Bus.

So close.

So close.

They really had an opportunity there.

So this guy could have totally been played by him.

Super 80s.

So Rick had been in authorities sites by the time the Chris Hansen piece airs, and in fact, had already been arrested for being found near eight kilos of cocaine.

And what I mean by near is that they were found.

Finger touching.

Hey, who's that?

Cocaine was side-eyeing him.

No, the cocaine was found hidden under the steps of his grandmother's house under the porch.

I mean,

that's near enough.

Near enough.

Right.

Rick's case about this goes to trial in 1988, just as he turns 18.

And it's a huge case attracting national attention.

He's found guilty.

And again, because of those steep mandatory minimums for possessing large quantities of cocaine, he who had been arrested at 17 and found guilty at 18 is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

And at the time, murder got like 10 years.

Yes.

Like across the country.

I mean, also just at the time, I just remember that it played out in the media that like we are cracking down.

We are getting tough on crime.

It was the tough on crime thing across the board, whether it's this, that, or the other.

And there was a lot of that, like, this sheriff is going to to make all the prisoners wear pink and they're humiliated.

And it would be like in Time magazine, then you'd be like, that's great, because this is the way.

And it was such a shot into the monoculture of, we like this.

Don't worry about the people because it's the, we're going to handle it in this way, like in the infrastructure.

And we don't understand it.

And so we're celebrating how it's being handled, even though how it's being handled has nothing to do with justice, with any of it, or anybody getting, and all of those kinds of like, there's still people in jail now who got arrested for like having a joint on them exactly in 1979 right yeah it's very fucked i'm not going to be able to cover it all but well and also it's why when we first started and we'd be like yeah put that serial killer away for life there would be this counter of like you guys are into privatized prison you don't know what you're advocating for which was really true in the beginning but we were basically saying yeah if somebody has raped and killed more than three people yeah how about we don't talk about their parole or whatever yeah but what people are saying is like, we have to be analytical about the entire system

because that's the cultural thing of, yeah, throw them away.

Totally.

Throw away the key.

Yeah, exactly.

Rehabilitation and all.

Yeah.

It's a layered topic that we know nothing about except for what we've done wrong.

And except for, yeah, what we're reading from journalists.

So there we go.

We're off the hook.

If you want to listen to a podcast that's about that, listen to Wrongful Conviction.

It's a great podcast.

So life in prison, no parole, again, as a minor.

So during the jury deliberation, Rick's father, Rick Worshey Sr.,

Matthew McConaughey, picture it.

He confronted members of the no crack crew.

He's pissed off about how his son's getting in trouble, and he winds up being separately arrested and charged with threatening a police officer at the hearing.

So after his son's guilty verdict, Rick Sr.

gives an interview from his jail cell, making a claim to all the media that no one has heard before.

And at the the time, pretty much no one believes.

And that is that Rick Sr.

claims that his son, white boy Ricky, had acted as an informant for the federal agents.

The whole time he was like on the streets, he was an informant.

So he's a basically kind of a plant drug dealer that was there to collect information.

Yeah.

And he's like a patsy now because they're sending him away.

You know what I mean?

He says, quote, they used me and they used my son and now they turn around and fuck us over, end quote.

Rick Sr.

names the specific FBI agent who they had been working with, saying his name was James Dixon.

When reporters go to Dixon asking him if what Rick Sr.

is saying is true, he refuses to comment and he resigns from the FBI not long after.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

I mean, this article in The Atavist is incredible.

He interviews like everyone.

But let's go back.

I gave you a lot of information just now.

Yeah, it was a real influx.

Yeah, that was quick.

This is not the end of it.

Okay.

Let's go back to the beginning.

Richard Worshe Jr.

is born in Detroit in 1969 to Darlene and Richard Worshe Sr.

The family lives on the east side of Detroit, which is still at the time a functional working-class neighborhood.

But by Rick's teen years in the early 80s, it goes into sort of a freefall.

Evan Hughes writes: The auto manufacturers, which had lured so many to Detroit with union jobs that promised entry into the middle class, were now in rapid decline.

From 1978 to 1988, the industry shed more than a third of its area workforce.

This period, as you know, is often described as white flight, when nearly every white family abandons the area for the suburbs.

But as Evan Hughes points out, it wasn't actually just all the white people.

He writes, Almost everyone who had the means to leave was taking the opportunity.

It was very swiftly becoming a dangerous place to live.

But Rick's family stays, and there's various reasons.

Their grandparents lived across the street, and Rick's father's businesses and schemes have always been either in a legal gray area or sometimes straight up illegal.

So he was getting away with a lot of stuff in lawless Detroit.

Primarily, he sells guns and very often sells them illegally.

When Rick is 13, so like picture the 80s, what's that movie over the top?

Yeah.

We talk about all the time with Matt Damon.

Like that.

Matt Dylan.

Matt Dillon.

Thank you.

So Rick is 13.

His parents divorce.

His mom joins the Exodus to the suburbs.

And Rick lives with her for a while and says it's paradise.

He's shocked that a high school could have a swimming pool and a perfectly manicured baseball diamond.

He says, quote, it was culture shock, dude, like moving from hell to heaven.

But unfortunately, he and his stepfather don't get along, as is often the case in the 80s, it feels like.

They did a lot of,

it was like no fault divorce.

All of a sudden, everyone got divorced.

Yeah.

And then everybody was like, oh, I can't do this.

I have to get remarried.

And then people remarried the weirdest people that were just like nearby

and tried to do Brady Bunch family blending.

I met him at the church social and I knew him for two months and now he's a monster.

Totally.

I watched so many of my friends kind of go through that.

I would come home and my parents had one negative thing to say to the other.

I'd go, are you getting divorced?

I was like, I just need to know.

I need to get prepared.

Yeah.

No, I met the men my mom dated.

They were.

They were divorced for a reason.

I'll tell you right fucking now.

You know, it wasn't, they weren't just getting kicked out for crackers.

No, they were not.

I said that really weird.

Not crackers, the white people.

Oh, I thought you meant like crackers in bed.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

That's what I meant.

That's what I got.

Just keep it specific.

They don't get along.

So Rick ultimately moves back with his father in the old neighborhood.

And like, there is just a lot of fun trouble to get into as a teen in the fucking 80s.

Your dad sells guns.

Your dad sells guns.

There's no rules at all.

His older sister, Dawn, starts dating like a drug dealer.

And so he becomes friends with him and sees how much fun, you know, essentially everyone's having, how much money people are making and how much like cool stuff they're buying that he would never have been able to afford as just a regular kid.

It seems like he just falls in love with what he sees.

I mean, at this part of the movie, there would be, you know, like a montage with bad to the bone playing on ethics.

Oh my gosh.

That's all exciting, party, sex, everyone's in a good mood.

Yeah.

Lots of just like, you follow what you see and that's all there was in Detroit, including his father, who later admits, like, I fucked up bad, I should have done better for him.

I mean, it's just sad, yeah.

So, Rick falls in with those local petty criminals, and with them, he starts breaking into houses.

That's what he first starts doing.

He also starts learning about Detroit's bigger figures in crime, particularly the major players in the drug business, who are basically celebrities in Detroit, where everyone is broke and the houses are falling down, and no one has money.

People are on crack.

These sellers are kings that kids look up to.

Yeah.

You know, they have all the money.

That's where the money's going.

And they fuck the system too, because they're like black and rich, which was not a thing in the 80s that was like widely shown in the media.

So at the same time, Rick Sr.

is tangentially related to the drug trade because he sells guns out of the house that they live in.

So in the spring of 1984, when Rick is 14 years old, James Dixon, the FBI agent, and a police officer from the Detroit Narcotics Division visit Rick Worshe Sr.

They're trying to get the dad who's selling guns, they're like to get information because he's tangentially involved with the drug scene by selling them guns.

But Rick Sr.

doesn't really know a lot about it.

But Rick Jr.

is in the room, 14-year-old Rick Jr., and he's like looking at the photos being like, oh, that's so-and-so.

I know that guy.

I know that guy.

And suddenly they like hone in on this kid who kind of knows everything about what's going on.

So basically they get the kid to to turn and become an informant.

That's the story the dad and Rick tell.

Okay, but when he's like essentially a freshman.

Yeah.

Like so young.

So young, definitely worldly and like street wise in a way that doesn't happen today, which is not an excuse and it doesn't forgive anything, but, you know, and very smart.

So he gives the men a lot of helpful information and the FBI winds up making Rick Sr., the dad, a registered informant, but Rick Jr.

stays off the books.

That said, law enforcement quickly begins meeting with Rick on his own without his father's presence, which is at least what they claim allegedly.

Dixon says he never met with Rick Jr.

without his father also being there, but it seems hard to believe.

Also, it's like, what's he sitting outside 7-Eleven on his BMX bike?

Exactly.

Just like, hey, what's up?

Yeah, it's not like, I'll meet you at your house every time I need to talk to you.

No, it's like, hey, did you see blah, blah, blah?

Yeah.

See you later.

If he's a narc, he's narcing.

Totally.

They're not, everything's not going to be like typed up and put into the

BMX bike, man.

So Evan Hughes, the writer, first writes, quote, at first, Worshe just gave up isolated scraps of intelligence, the identities of the thieves who robbed a jewelry store, the name of a health clinic that was selling illegal prescriptions, the location of a cache of stolen guns.

In time, he grew bolder, however, and began informing on leading crime figures.

It's so dangerous.

I know, I know.

With that information, in February of 1985, the authorities raid a house that he had told them about with a search warrant based all on Worshe's information.

And they find almost $200,000 in cash, which in today's money...

Oh, it's 80.

It's $85,000.

$200,000?

Are we like a $1.5 million?

Half a million.

I would think it'd be more than that.

Over half a million.

That's just slightly over double.

I know.

I want better better numbers.

I want more.

I want more.

So Rick Jr.

says at the beginning of all this, it was just really exciting.

You know, it was like, he was in his early teens.

He had no grasp of consequences.

It's so crazy.

It's like, if we were going to make the movie now, we could cast the kid from Young Sheldon to play this child at this point.

Right.

That's young.

With a little pencil mustache.

It would be a great like turn of like, no one's seen this from you in your career yet.

That's a good one.

He says, quote, what kid doesn't want to be an undercover cop when he's 14 15 years old end quote i didn't want i know a lot but i feel like it almost feels like playing cowboys in a way yes you know fully it's just not real to you i would never want to be an informant for anyone for anything but especially detroit drugs in the 80s that just sounds dangerous.

So bad.

Well,

I wonder if it is a little bit of a, if it's a compliment to Rick Sr., where it's like, clearly the bad bad side of this business and what can happen was shielded from this child.

Yeah.

Because you wouldn't be doing that knowing that people just get taken out to the woods and totally.

And like, you know, Rick Sr.

is always like, I was just selling guns.

I was not involved with drugs.

Like drugs, I was against them.

When I found out my son was, you know, making all this money off of them, I kicked him out of the house.

So they were anti-drugs.

I know.

I'm morally superior because I'm only selling guns.

I'm only selling guns to the people who have drugs, not drugs to the people who have drugs.

Okay.

I'm not arguing for either.

No, it's not good.

And then Rick is also getting paid for his work as an informant.

He says the FBI probably paid him a total of around $30,000 as a kid, which today, you want to try again?

I do.

Well, a quarter of a million dollars?

30,000?

30,000 to 250,000?

No.

90.

Damn.

It's like so much less than we'd think.

I refuse to learn math.

But you know why?

It's because everyone was thriving in the 80s.

You know, like they didn't need as much money?

I don't know.

I think that inflation took a couple steps back after the 80s.

Oh, okay.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Could be.

Don't listen.

Or just I'm a bad guesser and I refuse to notice the pattern.

I don't know.

I refuse.

Okay.

Okay.

So while this is happening, Rick Jr.

is having many escalating run-ins with the law, but for some reason, which we now understand to be because he was an informant, most likely, allegedly, charges never seem to stick.

Rick Jr., as a teenager, shoots a man who had stolen his grandmother's car.

The arresting officer never appears at trial, so he never gets charged with anything.

Rick is shot in the stomach in a different altercation, and law enforcement officers have him registered in the hospital as John Doe.

Eventually, Rick Sr.

gets a new FBI handler, a man named Herman Grahaman.

But Rick Jr.

is showing up with his father at every official meeting because he knows more than his dad does.

Every time the FBI agent asks the father a question, the son answers.

So that $30,000 that Rick makes as an informant basically sets him up to be a drug dealer.

Like that's what the money's for.

So Rick starts dealing, though it's unclear if the FBI officially knows that he's doing that, but why give a child $30,000 in that situation unless they know he's going to.

We thought he was going to start his own Long John Silver.

Exactly.

We wanted to go into franchise fast food.

That's so true.

Fried fish, fast food.

Think about it.

Get into it.

It's a great idea.

So the FBI agent Groman, the handler, says that he believes Rick was making drug buys with the specific knowledge and at the behest of members of the Detroit Police Department.

So, like, he's acknowledging that that was what the money was for.

While this is happening, Rick quickly becomes part of that drug-selling crew, essentially, or that scene.

The person that the FBI is trying to gather information about, this guy named Johnny Curry, and he's got this big crew.

So, basically, Rick is a mole, but he's also legitimately a drug dealer.

Again, he's only 15.

So he kind of infiltrates this drug dealing Detroit gang.

He's like the only white person and I'm 15 and let's do this.

So one retired FBI agent named Greg Schwartz puts it, quote, we brought him into the drug world and what happened?

He became a drug dealer and we're surprised by that.

Yeah.

You know?

So in the spring of 18, no,

that would be fun.

Now let's go Victorian England.

In the spring of 1985, only a year after the FBI has first approached Rick's father, Rick Jr.

goes to Las Vegas to watch a boxing match with Johnny Curry

and other high-ranking members of this gang.

I cannot understate how powerful these men are that he has somehow been able to become friends with this 15-year-old white boy.

Yeah.

These are kingpins.

He must have a great sense of humor.

I bet he's fun to be around.

Yeah, he must be.

He's chill as as fuck.

He's seen a lot.

He's seen a lot.

For a young teen.

He's not a snitch, they think probably.

Also, he's going to places like Vegas where you can't cover, it's not for children in any way.

Totally.

Or even young adults.

No.

And yet there he is.

Yeah.

And no one's going to question it because of the crew he's with.

They're like, white boy Rick, wait at the buffet for us.

We're going to go play

21.

No.

What do we want to do?

That's not happening.

So basically what happens is while they're there,

Johnny Curry becomes enraged with an associate back in Detroit because he hadn't made the travel arrangements for the Vegas trip.

You know how that is.

Oh, like your travel agent fucks up somehow?

Ah, your friend who you've made the travel agent, who you've probably given a lot of fucking money to.

Oh, yeah.

Like didn't do what he was supposed to do.

Just had to make like four phone calls because this was pre- Yeah, not that big of a deal.

So Curry orders some of his foot soldiers to shoot up this man's house.

Tragically, when they do that, they end up killing this man's 13-year-old son.

So this wasn't supposed to happen.

And Curry tells his crew, including Rick, that if the police offer money in exchange for information, he'll pay them more to stay silent, which scares Rick, who of course has already been feeding information to the cops.

This is like a oh shit moment.

Rick does tell the FBI what he knows about the homicide, though.

And the FBI has already tapped Curry's phones with a warrant from the information that Rick gave them.

When they look at the call logs, they realize that on the morning after the shooting of this poor kid, the first two calls that curry made were two members of the detroit police department called them that morning one is a sergeant named jimmy harris and the other is his supervisor a man named commander gilbert hill and hill will later become a detroit city council member and will run for mayor in 2001 so this goes all the way to the top yeah it always does of course it does you can't get away with that without like cover inside yeah yeah inside hookups so back in 1985 after the shooting Rick basically confirms that Hill was collaborating with Curry, Hill, the sergeant, and says that Hill told Curry he'd take care of it.

So not to worry about it.

So this is like, oh, no, this is not good.

So now we're back to Rick being convicted to life without parole at the age of 18 in 1988.

And again, Rick's father immediately says that he and his son had been informants.

He also says that Rick had been feeding the FBI information about the involvement of members of the Detroit Police Department in the drug trade, the same one that they've been mercilessly cracking down on low-level offenders.

They're part of it, and Rick's been telling the FBI about that.

At the time, the feds only say that they can't comment either way and that they also can't really intervene on state charges or convictions.

So they just leave everyone hanging.

They back out.

For their part, one of the FBI agents who was involved at the time says that they did offer Rick the opportunity to come forward as an informant before his case went to trial, but like so that he could be killed?

Yeah, exactly.

He'd have to testify against major players in the Detroit drug world in open court, and then the federal government could help him.

And it's like, that's not an offer.

That's not going to help him.

And then get his GED.

Exactly.

And really get his life out together.

Open that silver, what's it called?

Long John Silver.

I mean, there's no future if that's what you choose to do.

Absolutely not.

There's nothing else happening for you.

No.

So Rick obviously knows that.

Instead, he tries his luck in court and he winds up with a life sentence.

So in 1990, James Harris, the police sergeant who Rick implicated in being involved with the Curries, is caught in an FBI sting operation in which he agrees to help traffic a large volume of cocaine into Detroit.

The FBI asks Harris to assist them in targeting his boss, that guy Hill, the higher up, but he refuses.

So, he goes to prison until his sentence is commuted by then President George W.

Bush at the end of his term in 2008.

And there's other cops from that era and that squad who come under fire and get prison time as well.

And actually one of them ends up spending time with Worshee in prison.

In prison.

He's like the guy who testified against him.

The cop who testified against him at his trial gets put in prison.

He's in the same woodshop class as him.

Yeah.

I mean, that's intense.

That's like, by that point,

everyone's at risk going to jail.

Everyone is like, it's a free-for-all.

Totally.

I need to read this article and stop talking about it.

So in 1998, Michigan does roll back the mandatory life without parole sentence for people found guilty of possessing more than 650 grams of cocaine.

They're like, oh, no, this isn't great.

In following decades, most of the state's high-level drug offenders from the 80s are freed, including John Curry, who was the drug kingpin over white boy Rick, who was originally caught with the help from Rick, who was a teenager at the time.

But Rick remains in prison.

And this is where Evan Hughes finds him and is like, this is fucked up.

Let's look into this and does this amazing investigative reporting on this.

And he remains in prison in a large part because of the Detroit law enforcement establishment and political establishment fighting tooth and nail against any opportunity for parole.

Why would they do that?

It's as if they don't want him to be able to speak.

That's right.

This is, of course, the very same establishment that included members who were found to be corrupt.

with information given by Rick.

So this finally changes after Rick's case gets more publicity.

Evan Hughes' first article comes out about him in 2014.

Then a documentary called White Boy comes out in 2017.

And the feature called White Boy Rick comes out in 2018 with McConaughey playing Rick Sr.

Big hubbub.

So Rick is finally paroled in 2017.

I think that this publicity that Evan Hughes' articles helped a great deal.

Wow.

He's finally paroled in 2017 after almost 30 years, making him Michigan's longest serving nonviolent drug offender.

Wow.

He then serves a sentence in Florida for involvement in a car theft ring while he was in prison.

He's released in 2020 with time credited for good behavior.

Rick sues the FBI, but the case is dismissed in 2023.

Nowadays, Rick sells white boy Rick-branded cannabis and edibles, which are now fully legal.

Fully legal.

Absolutely.

Like, get that.

Get that money.

He uses proceeds from his business to help people who have been incarcerated or who have been saddled with excessive court fees and fines to get back on their feet.

Nice.

That's how you do it.

Truly.

That's the fucking story.

And there's so much more that everyone needs to read out.

FBI informant.

Richard Worshe Jr., aka white boy Rick.

There's a book called Land of Opportunity by William Adler that discusses the rise and fall of the Chamber Brothers, who I mentioned.

That seems incredible.

And also a book that I read that Vince had told me to read called Devil's Night and Other True Tales of Detroit by Zaive Schaffitz, which talks about that time and that period in Detroit.

And it is,

it's just incredible.

So I highly recommend that.

Devil's Night.

Check it out.

Wow.

Yeah.

Incredible.

Oh my God.

I know.

I'm genuinely fascinated.

I mean, first of all, how is this possible?

Secondly,

we got McConaughey in a 2017 venture that no one saw.

Let's all watch it.

And like, what if we all push it to number?

If you guys can get that on the top 10 of the Netflix, we'll know that you're listening.

and that will just mean so much to us.

You know what I mean?

Like, whatever

Netflix are going to be simultaneously emotionally manipulative, it was desperate, it was so desperate for attention.

There was a kind of element of corruption, just like the story you just told.

Oh my god, no, you're right.

Let's use our influence

to affect Netflix.

Oh, God.

We're all

now.

I get it.

Now I see how easy it is to fall into that lifestyle.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Great job.

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Bye-bye.

Congratulations.

Great work.

Thank you.

Tell me a story.

That was quite involved.

As will mine be.

We're going to fly out of Detroit in the 80s.

Gonna go back in time a little bit.

We're going to go to a place we've been to before that I've actually forced you to come to twice before, but I need to go back and you'll see why.

Okay.

So it's 2 a.m.

on April 15th, 1912.

Okay.

You get a sense of what we're about to do.

Nope.

We're in the middle of the North Atlantic where the Titanic is sinking.

Motherfucker.

Yeah.

Titanic?

We're going back to the Titanic.

I love that guy.

I love the Titanic.

You love that vessel.

A lot of stuff happened on that vessel that I want to tell you about it's funny that you say 2012 and i'm in the middle of the night and i'm like

i don't know 1912 what did i say 2012.

that was a bad year too so 2012 was rough um i fully agree i love your titanic stories it's just so funny yeah here's the thing about me and the titanic i love to talk about the people that made it off of the titanic yeah it's pretty an amazing topic yeah i have no interest to go down and look at the titanic no a lot of people want to.

I think photos are cool, but they never, they never give you what you want, you know?

They don't put you there.

They don't put you there.

Maybe like a dish is so exciting, but like, that's about it.

Yeah.

And it's got all those weird algae on it, that dish.

So much algae.

And a couple snails.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Here we're going to 1912.

Everything is snail-free.

Okay.

The Titanic is sinking.

And when it finally disappears under the water, it will take the lives of more than 1,500 people with it.

There will be around 700 survivors.

The survivors we've talked about on this show, episode 411, which was entitled Eight Years, One Episode, that's when I talked about the unsinkable Molly Brown.

They actually called her Margaret Brown, but everyone knows her as the unsinkable Molly Brown.

She makes it onto lifeboat six, and she spends her time on that lifeboat rallying the terrified passengers and urging them to keep rowing.

When the officer in charge starts to spiral in the midst of all the terror of what's going on around them molly threatens to throw him overboard it's great for morale everybody keeps going they survive get it girl at the same moment that she's doing that over on lifeboat six the titanic's baker charles jockin you might remember he was the drunk one oh yes we learned he was the drunk one he was everyone was shit faced i mean that you know that band was barely able to like heat the bow to the strings oh my god so much good champagne if you want to hear me talk about charles jockin it's episode 348 348.

It's called Old Biscuit.

And we learn on that one that basically the thing that saved Charles Jockin's life, they think, is that he got super shit-faced.

As the ship sank, he jumped up onto the railing and rode it down as the ship was going into the water.

Then he tread water in 28-degree waves for several hours and lived.

And it's like defies science.

And they think it's because the liquor that was in his system just kept his body warm almost like tricked him into being warm that's why i drink is just to stay warm same

don't tell anybody we got to stay warm guys on this titanic that we're on yeah so when charles jockin is finally rescued and we talked about this on that episode but i still love this he has two swollen feet and that's it That's the only thing wrong with that man who tread water in 28 degree ocean for hours until he got rescued.

I mean, I wake up in my bed in worse shape.

Two swollen feet.

I wish that's funny.

Okay, so

what character is that?

So some of our favorites, but today I'm going to tell you about your new favorite Titanic survivor.

She's a third Titanic survivor whose story is more unbelievable than the first two put together.

Throughout this woman's life, she'll be involved in not one, not two, but three historic maritime disasters.

The sinking of the Titanic arguably arguably is not even the worst one for her.

Some people call her the queen of the sinking ships.

This is the story of stewardess Violet Jessup.

Yes.

So main sources that Marin used for the story are Violet's memoir entitled Titanic Survivor, The Memoirs of Violet Jessup, comma stewardess.

She fucking worked on the Titanic.

Incredible.

And also a National Geographic article by journalist David Kindy entitled, She Survived the Titanic, but It wasn't the only time she faced death at sea.

And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.

Okay,

we start the story 25 years before the Titanic sinks with an Irish Catholic couple from Dublin named William and Kelly Jessup.

They have immigrated to South America and now they have a sheep farm in Argentina.

And in 1887, they welcome their first child, Violet.

They will have eight more children in the coming years.

Only six will survive childhood.

So, this was the horrible infant mortality situation of the turn of the 19th, 20th century.

So, Violet herself nearly dies of tuberculosis when she's little.

She is sick for weeks, and later she'll describe this time as, quote, a dim awareness of being plunged into a very hot bath, then wrapped in cold, wet sheets, followed by long periods of nothingness.

Yikes.

So scary and sad for a child.

And speaking of, her coughing fits are so intense at this time that, quote, blood seemed to be on everything.

And her eventual recovery from this is said to be miraculous.

So normally Violet's day-to-day involves helping her family.

She's the oldest sister in a big family, which means she's doing cooking, cleaning, taking care of her younger siblings, the whole nine.

Then in 1903, when Violet is 16 years old, her father, William, dies while undergoing some kind of a surgery.

It's sudden.

It's shocking.

The loss hits Violet especially hard.

She was her father's favorite child.

And she will later write, quote, in my grief, I was tongue-tied and stunned.

Whenever I tried to speak, I discovered I had lost my voice completely.

So sad.

But of course, the family has no time to mourn because now Violet's mother, Kelly, is a widow with six kids who has to find a way to support the family.

So she moves the family back to Europe where they settle in England, and Kelly gets to work on ocean liners sailing between the UK and America.

She's hired as a stewardess, and that means she's doing things like cleaning cabins, serving meals, and even some light nursing duties.

And while she's at sea, Violet is left to raise her siblings by herself.

Wait, her mom left to do that?

Yep.

Okay.

And she's home with the five other kids.

And the youngest is an infant.

Oh, no.

So they were just making do yeah for the next several years violet's basically a stay-at-home mom dreaming about the day her mother will come home for good

and when she does violet plans that she will join the convent but that dream never pans out because instead in 1908 when violet is around 21 years old her mother gets very sick and it's serious enough that she has to stop working so to keep food on the family table violet again steps up for the family and even though she does does not like the ocean, she does not know how to swim, and she's kind of freaked out by the vast openness of the sea, she starts looking for stewardess work.

She knows it's a good job.

She can get paid well.

Her mom can tell her how to do it.

Like, and she not only has years of caregiving experience raising her brothers and sisters, she's fluent in Spanish from having been raised in Argentina.

But at the time, she struggles to get work as a stewardess, partly because she's so young, much younger than most of the stewardesses who are working at the time, but also Violet is very beautiful, which works against her because in a job like that, you're supposed to blend in and just be part of the wallpaper, right?

And whether she wants to or not, Violet does not blend in.

I get it.

I've been through it.

I feel that.

I've never been a stewardess for that very reason on the Titanic.

So after she gets interviewed a couple of times and gets rejected, she starts dressing down for for the interviews.

She stops wearing makeup altogether, and it works.

She ends up landing one job after another.

And by 1911, 24-year-old Violet is hired by the White Star line to work aboard the RMS Olympic.

So at the time, the RMS Olympic is the largest passenger ship in the world.

It's completely state-of-the-art.

It has electric elevators, Turkish baths, a swimming pool.

pool, and ornate features like crystal chandeliers and marble statues and plush velvet furniture.

Amazing.

They really went all out.

It was like the Empire State Building on the Sea.

Yeah.

Not that tall.

But anyhow, Violet isn't all that impressed.

She's just there for the money.

And that's what keeps her going when she has the experience that she really doesn't like, which is the passengers treating her like their servant, which happens often.

And rich male passengers leer at her, they proposition her.

Some even propose like the second they meet her, while the women passengers can be extremely cutting, very condescending.

Later on, Violet will write, quote, I often reflected that there must be some quality in a sea trip that affects character, or maybe its enforced propinquity emphasizes how awful normal folk can become, mean, paltry, and selfish to a degree when they are in the position of indiscriminate power.

It's like what happens on the Titanic stays in the Titanic.

Yeah.

And also, it's like, just because we're stuck on this boat together doesn't mean I got to do everything you say.

Yeah.

Marin made a note to me.

Propinquity means physical closeness or nearness.

Thank you.

And then she was like, I've never heard this word before.

Thank you again.

Propinquity.

Propinquity.

It's your continual propinquity that causes the problem.

See it in ASMR.

If you have a tendency toward propinquity, toward

tapping your nails on stuff,

misused.

Okay, so now it's September 1911.

Violet's been working as a crew member on the Olympic for months.

And then one night, the boat she's on, the Olympic, collides with a British warship called the Hawk off the coast of the Isle of Wight.

So the Hawk is this little, it's like a sixth of the size of the Olympic, and it's actually specifically built to ram and sink enemy vessels.

So it's very strong.

The two boats collide and the hawk nearly capsizes, but it still manages to to leave a 40-foot gash along the side of the Olympic.

Water rushes into the bottom of the ship and it actually downs a propeller.

And of course, from her room, Violet hears and feels this horrible impact, although no one's injured or killed from this crash, and the ships aren't very far from land.

And even with that propeller down, the Olympic is able to just hobble back to port.

So no one has to evacuate on lifeboats.

So comparatively, this is probably the tamest of all the horrible ship accidents that Violet is involved in.

She gets reassigned to another White Star line ship, and it is the company's brand new luxury ocean liner that's gearing up for its maiden voyage.

It is the Titanic.

Hey.

So we're back on the North Atlantic just before midnight on April 14th.

Violet is in her quarters.

She is getting ready for bed after being a stewardess all day on the Titanic.

Oh, the feet.

The feet pain.

Just the feet, the work, the um, over here.

Here, can you get me a roll?

Yeah, snap, snap.

Snap, snap, roll.

So Violet's back in her quarters.

She's holding a piece of paper that has a handwritten prayer on it.

And it's one that's supposed to protect her from fire and water,

which is very Catholic.

We have saints.

They do very specific things for very specific people.

I guess there's a fire and water saint.

I'll look up who it is later.

And as all of that is going on, Violet hears a huge crash, followed by a, quote, low, rending, crunching, ripping sound.

So, of course, it's a scary thing for her to experience, but like everyone else on board, they've been told time and again that the Titanic is unsinkable.

So no one's panicking.

She certainly is not.

But eventually, a shell-shocked Violet is called up to the deck.

This will be her very last assignment on the Titanic.

She's told to translate evacuation instructions for the Spanish-speaking passengers and then to assist women and children getting on the lifeboats.

So that's what she does until she herself is loaded onto lifeboat 16.

Wow.

Moments before her group is lowered into the ocean, an officer rushes over and says to Violet, quote, here, Miss Jessup look after this.

And then basically hands her a baby girl.

The baby had been left alone on deck.

And so the officer just basically made the hasty decision to grab this baby and throw it to Violet for safekeeping.

So as their boat is lowered some 60 feet in the dark to the freezing cold ocean below, with icy wind whipping at their faces like, quote, a knife in its penetrating coldness, Violet is trying to soothe this baby girl.

But the lifeboat hits the water hard.

You don't think about that part of it where it's like, yes, you're being saved in a way.

Yeah.

But off of a sinking ship

into

the North Sea.

Yeah.

That we've all seen TikToks about.

Is it the North Sea?

Yeah, well, the North Atlantic.

Yeah.

So the baby starts crying when the lifeboat hits the water.

Again, just quick reminder, Violet does not know how to swim.

And she's, of course, terrified herself, but she focuses on the baby.

She pulls the baby to her chest, hoping to keep her warm.

And she just watches as the Titanic sinks into blackness.

Holy shit.

And here's how Violet will later describe this moment.

She says, quote, I watched the Titanic give a lurch forward.

One of the huge funnels toppled off like a cardboard model, falling into the sea with a fearful roar.

A few cries came to us across the water, then silence, as the ship seemed to right itself like a hurt animal with a broken back.

She settled for a few minutes, but one more deck of lighted ports disappeared.

Then she went down by the head and a thundering roar of underwater explosions.

Our proud ship, our beautiful Titanic, gone to her doom.

God,

what a sight.

And you're like, however many feet away you could get away.

Totally.

Looking at that.

I don't like it.

It's too big and it's too vast.

I'm on Violet's side.

I don't like it.

That's why I need to keep talking about it.

Okay, I get it.

So for the next several hours, as traumatized Titanic survivors wait to be rescued, Violet clings to this baby as you would.

At one point, she worries that both she and the infant are going to freeze to death in Lifeboat 16.

And then the rescue ship, the SS Carpathia, shows up around 4 a.m.

So it's like about two hours.

Did we ever have the discussion about like the magnets?

How do they work?

How do they work?

How do they maybe affect the Titanic's scouting system?

Yeah.

Do we talk about that in any of these?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Do you want to throw some theories out?

I'll do it another thing.

Have you been listening to RFK's podcast?

What's happening?

It's all magnets.

It's all magnets.

You think something interfered and that's how it wove into the ice cream.

But a natural phenomenon interfered and that, yeah, that's why.

Some like Bermuda Triangles.

Exactly.

So if you know what I'm talking about, send me the article that I read about, please, because I don't remember.

If you know what we're talking about and you're in the North Atlantic right now, tell me.

Tell me what I'm talking about.

Tell me.

Was this just an episode of Below Deck?

And I'm totally fucking wrong.

It could be.

I slept with him because of the magnets.

They drew me toward his cabin.

His dick is the Bermuda Triangle.

It's not my fault that the draw is so strong.

It's like two cartoon magnets pulling Wiley Coyote off a cliff.

His dick was the lifeboat.

Okay, stop it.

Stop it.

Serious podcast.

I was just talking about a baby.

Okay.

You're playing this for your mom, and now she's horrified.

Okay.

We're going to do a quote from Violet about the moment that she and the baby are safe.

Okay, ready?

Quote, I was still clutching the baby against my hard cork life belt when a woman leaped at me and grabbed the baby and rushed off with it.

Hey, it appeared that she put it down on the deck of the Titanic while she went off to fetch something.

And when she came back, the baby had gone.

I was too frozen and numb to think it strange that this woman had not stopped.

to say thank you.

End quote.

Oh, so the mom came.

The mom was like,

you have my baby.

That's my baby.

Okay.

Well, everyone's panicking.

So.

And nobody would blame.

She thought she lost the baby.

Totally.

Entirely.

And there's a lady that has the baby.

But also, like, babies all look the same to me.

Like, how do you not answer baby?

The same.

Like, such babies.

Yeah.

It tuts.

Years later, Violet will receive a very short phone call from a woman claiming to be that baby.

Oh, the baby.

The baby calls her.

Fuck.

I know.

It's a baby.

Call

color ID.

It's the baby.

That baby.

That baby.

Your favorite baby.

The Titanic baby.

From the North Atlantic.

Some people say that that call was either a hoax or it wasn't really.

Violet seemed to believe she really was the caller.

Sure.

Why not?

So the Carpathia spends four hours pulling Titanic survivors from their lifeboats.

Ultimately, they deliver around 700 people to safety in the New York harbor.

I thought they went to Canada.

I think they took the dead bodies to Canada.

Oh, that's where the big morgue was.

Okay.

But sorry, that's just what it said here.

So you could be right.

Okay.

That's probably below deck.

Okay.

That's more below deck Newfoundland.

From there, Violet catches a ship back to England.

And not two weeks later, she signs back up to go out to sea to work as a stewardess once again.

Because, like, what are the chances, right?

I'm sure.

And she's kind of like, this is a real skill.

She probably can make good money comparatively.

And she needs the money.

She has to have it.

Take time off.

No.

she can't go find herself and do a year abroad.

I think there was a Titanic survivor fund or something.

No, they didn't do that then.

I mean, you would think something.

But anyway, she's kind of like all business, which sorry, I do love that.

Yeah.

We're just like, hey, look.

It's Irish man.

It really is.

It's Irish Catholic because it's like, I'll get my reward later.

I'll go back onto the thing that tried to kill me last two times.

Okay.

She will say, quote, I knew that if I meant to continue my sea life, I would have to return at once.

Otherwise, I would lose my nerve, for I had no love for it, but I needed the work.

Yeah, intense.

So Violet will later write about how the sinking of the Titanic changes her entire perspective on life and strengthens her already very deep faith.

What it does not do is change how much she hates being at the beck and call of rich travelers.

There's no faith strong enough to get you over rich people snapping their fingers at you.

Absolutely not.

Violet writes writes on that topic: quote, I wanted the quietness of happy contentment, not the hectic turmoil of riches, which sapped simplicity and spontaneous kindness out of people.

I wanted desperately to shut out the encroachment of sea life on my inner self, to retain something I feared I was losing, a kind of action that's performed for the love of pleasing and not for gain.

I had gained one thing.

I learned how to look very deeply into people and to value them for what I found.

Famous names and possessions no longer moved me.

I was more confident when confronted by some powerful woman whose cold eyes as I served her breakfast might once have shattered me.

She's literally talking about my career, but each day it was more,

but each day it was more difficult to be my simple self, to ignore the pettiness, artificiality, and frothy gaiety that encompassed a stewardess's life on board a ship.

I fucking totally hear that.

Yeah.

As an ex-waitress, I fucking hear it.

Come on.

Like, it's not.

Entitled motherfuckers.

On vacation being like, you make my vacation go.

Totally.

So it's the literal opposite of a vacation.

You are here to serve

me.

And that's your purpose.

Snap, snap, snap.

Fuck you.

So now it's 1914 and World War I begins.

Heard of it.

Violet is 27.

And as we all do at age 27, she decides to pivot.

So what she does is become a war nurse.

Definitely.

That's That's what you did.

Yeah, you got to.

So, she's in hospitals both on land and at sea.

Oh, honey.

She can't stop.

In late 1916, she's assigned work on the Britannic, which is the third of the White Star Line's signature luxury vessels, this sister ship to the Olympic and to the Titanic.

Why don't they know when to quit or like change the name of the company?

With this assignment, Violet will have worked on all three

of the White Star line

luxury ships.

There can't be a lot of them.

No, I bet they gave her a nice pocket watch for it.

So during the war, the Britannic is repurposed into a hospital ship.

And on November 21st, 1916, it's moving through the Aegean Sea on the way to the battlefields in Turkey to treat wounded soldiers there.

So they go pick up all the wounded soldiers and take them back away from all the war.

So at a little after 9 a.m., Violet has just left Mass, church, and she's now quietly eating her breakfast.

You mean mean temple?

Yes.

Oh, did I have to translate it for you?

Thank you.

Okay, she's eating breakfast post-Mass.

Post-Mass, and not Massachusetts.

And her breakfast is interrupted by a loud boom.

We're doing it again.

For years, the cause of the blast will be unclear, but today in 2025, it's believed that the Britannic hit a mine.

No way.

So the ship shakes violently, begins to sink.

Violet yawns, checks her watch, looks around.

Is there a baby?

Does anyone want to give me a baby?

Stop crying.

It's not that big of a deal.

I've seen worse.

Does anybody have a baby?

Yammy, all day.

I'll take the baby.

And the babies over here, please.

She's finishing her English muffin.

Okay.

Officers immediately start moving people onto lifeboats, but Violet runs back to her room to get a prayer book.

and a toothbrush,

which is something she sorely missed after surviving the Titanic sinking.

A friend had jokingly told Violet to, quote, never undertake another disaster without first making sure of your toothbrush.

That's how much she complained about not being able to brush her teeth after surviving the sinking of the bush.

How much were toothbrushes back then?

And then money, what did the toothbrush cost?

I think she was just like, it was no one's priority to get me a toothbrush after we got back to land.

And so she's like, never again.

Okay.

All right.

Girl.

Seems like you can use your finger like we all did when we crashed at a dude's house in our 20s.

So now Violet's loaded onto a crowded lifeboat.

This is, if you are the kind of person that doesn't understand why you listen to true crime podcasts because they are upsetting, this part might upset you.

Oh, okay, got it.

This is a very upsetting part.

Oh, okay.

Especially if you have ocean issues.

Okay.

Or you're on a boat right now.

Or if you're on a boat right now.

So they're slowly being lowered into the water, which is not a smooth journey.

The ship starts tilting.

The lifeboat gets snagged on an open porthole.

It almost flips upside down, but the people on the lifeboat managed to get it uncaught.

Now it's scraping down the side of the Britannic as it's lowered.

At one point, the ship takes another hard tilt and the lifeboat goes out and swings into the ship's green hospital band, which is made of glass.

So it's a hospital ship.

The green band around it is actually made of glass, which I didn't know that.

So there's like a red cross up here, red cross back there.

That's, you know, hey, don't bomb this ship.

Canvas?

Yeah.

Is there a shortage of canvas?

I don't know who planned that, but they smash into it and glass shatters and Violet and the other people on the lifeboat are sprayed with shards of glass.

All the while, Violet is looking down at the water.

She can see two lifeboats are already down there, and the people who are on those lifeboats are doing everything they can to row away from the ship itself.

But the captain is still trying to move the Britannic towards shallower waters, and he has not turned off the ship's propeller.

Oh, no.

Yes.

No.

The propeller is now sucking the evacuees in their lifeboats toward the ship.

Violet watches as the worst case scenario plays out in front of her.

One of the lifeboats gets sucked into the ship's blades, and the boat and all of the people on it are hacked to pieces, and the water then turns red with blood as she, as they are dangling over the same water they're supposed to go down into.

Oh, no.

Violet will later say, quote, I gave that foolish, nervous laugh as people sometimes do when faced with an unpleasant discovery and a doubtful alternative.

That's a beautiful way of putting it.

Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, holy fuck, fuck, holy fuck.

Just sitting there looking down.

Oh, my God.

Violet's lifeboat is finally dropped dropped into the same water, almost on queue.

Everyone except for Violet and one other man jump out of the boat and into the sea.

Violet will later write about this: quote, not a word, not a shout was heard, just hundreds of men fleeing into the sea as if from an enemy in pursuit.

It was extraordinary to find myself in the space of a few minutes, almost the only occupant of the boat.

I turned around to see the reason for this exodus and to my horror, saw the Britannic's huge propellers churning and mincing up everything near them.

Men, boats, and everything were just one ghastly whirl.

Oh man, dude, shut it off.

So she turns around to see why everyone's jumping off the boat.

And then when she turns back, the one guy that was left also jumps off the boat.

Cool.

So horrible.

She can't swim.

Right.

That's right.

It's not an option.

And yet, she knows if she stays on this boat, she's going into that propeller.

So she flings herself into the water, kicking and paddling for her life.

And it is the very first time her whole body and her head are underwater like that.

Okay.

I mean, I'm sure she took baths before, but like never.

She has never.

She's immediately jerked around by the power of these propellers.

Yeah, they just suck you right in.

Yes.

You're going to go where that water takes you.

Her head is hit onto the ship's keel, which is the bottom spine.

twice.

She's pulled down and her head is knocked into the keel twice.

She will later write, quote, my brain shook shook like a solid body in a bottle of liquid.

Oh my God.

At the same time, the keel is also blocking Violet from being able to come back up and surface.

So she is under there about to drown.

She says, quote, suddenly some twist of fancy made me see, even then, underwater, the humor of my situation.

Oh my, honey.

And I chuckled.

That was very nearly my undoing, for I swallowed what seemed like gallons of water and everything that was in it.

I love her.

I love her.

Like, how much fun was she to have a drink with?

Because she's like, you gotta be fast.

Someone hand me a baby down here.

Can you believe it?

Miraculously, this is when the captain finally cuts the ship's engine.

Thanks, guy.

The propellers stop and now Violet's adrenaline kicks in.

Yes, she's injured.

It is a head injury, but somehow she forces her way to the surface and finds a life vest floating nearby.

She holds onto that life vest.

She keeps her head above water and she swims past dismembered corpses and dangerous debris from the chopped-up lifeboats.

Dude.

Horror show.

Yeah, this is the worst one.

While the Britannic continues sinking behind her, Violet is far enough away.

She gets far enough away.

And when she does, she turns around and she watches it go down.

Quote, she says, all the deck machinery fell into the sea like child's toys.

Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with an undreamt of violence.

Wow.

You just don't want to be that close to these gigantic ships when they sink.

Like really, you want to be at home.

Far, far away.

At home with your eight brothers and sisters.

So Violet's out there bobbing in the water, clinging to the life vest until a motorboat approaches and pulls her up to safety.

She then realizes for the first time that her leg has been slashed and her head is, quote, battered almost to a pulp.

Doctors are amazed by how mobile and alert Violet is when she sees a Britannic doctor that she'd sat beside at mass earlier that morning.

He tells her, quote, I know what saved you today, young lady.

English muffin.

Did you hear the way I choked on the finishing that sentence where I'm like, oh, wait, he means God.

Hold on a second.

Hold on a second.

What did she think about?

This, I don't know.

I wasn't really thinking.

I was like, this is a highly Catholic church sponsored episode.

It truly is.

The Britannic will sink in just under 55 minutes.

It took the Titanic two hours and 40 minutes to sink.

This thing went down fast.

28 people are killed when the Britannic sinks.

It could have been much worse if the ship had picked up wounded soldiers, but it was on the way.

Thank God.

Yeah.

Violet is patched up and she's sent home to England where she lives with her mom, Kelly.

She ends up getting a job at a bank.

And for

that sounds way better.

I mean, but she's having problems with her, basically with her cognition because of the head injury.

Years after the sinking, a doctor will be doing a routine exam on her when he tells Violet that she'd actually fractured her skull.

when her head hit the Britannic's keel.

And she somehow not only survived, but was never treated for it and basically got through it.

Good to know.

So, a few years after that, in 1920, when Violet is around 33 years old, she gets an itch to go back to sea.

Violet will go back to the White Star line on the restored Olympic, which is the ocean liner she worked on that collided with the Hawk.

Number one.

Yes.

Okay.

Violet immediately notices how different the Olympics passengers are from the last time she was on it.

Instead of the stuffy, ultra-rich, bossy assholes that she had worked for before the war.

Victorian richie-riches.

Right.

Now she's dealing with Americans, many middle class.

They're just there to have fun.

Great.

Because on land, it's prohibition.

Right.

So that's a new responsibility as a steward and stewardesses on this ship.

It's part of your job to basically help these VIPs to booze it up while they're on this ship.

Sounds great.

And basically, part of the job is you have to hide the booze from customs agents.

Got it.

Violet will write about that quote.

It was all so fantastic.

There were pillars of Wall Street, senators, lawyers, debutantes, all with their minds on the same problem as we approach the shores of the United States.

How do we keep drinking?

So from here, Violet bounces around to other ships.

She even completes two cruises around the world on the Red Star line.

And that experience means a lot to Violet.

She's surrounded by diverse people.

She's exposed to different world cultures.

And this is when she really begins embracing her life as a stewardess, which she then comes to appreciate for its excitement and its unpredictability and the ways it's tested her spirit and resolve.

Fair enough.

I mean, that's quite a line, Maren, having written that, of like testing her spirit and resolve.

It's like you almost died on a three.

The ocean wants to kill you so badly.

Violently, this is fucking final destination, Victorian.

She's like,

guess what?

Yeah.

I was at church this this morning.

It's not happening today.

That's right.

Mass will keep you from dying.

Violet spends the next several years at sea.

She marries and quickly divorces a fellow steward.

In 1950, she retires at the age of 63 and moves into a cottage in Suffolk, England, in a village called Great Ashfield, where she raises chickens, makes an adjacent field available for her neighbor's horses, who she loves like her own, and she even grows flowers that remind her of the ones that she loved as a little girl in Argentina.

Violet Jessup dies of congestive heart failure in 1971 when she is 83 years old.

What a fucking life.

What a life.

And despite her long career at sea, she ends her life very grounded, close with her family, doting on her neighbor's horses, tending to her garden, and every so often delighting in telling one of her unbelievable stories of survival.

And that is the story and the legend of the so-called queen of the sinking ships, Violet Jessup.

Wow.

Yeah, I'd take that.

I'll take that life.

Chick, chick.

Okay.

I'll take it all the way up until hovering over red water while people.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't want that one.

I don't want that one.

That's fucking wild.

It is not cool.

Wow.

Great job.

Thank you.

You did it again.

Great job.

My researcher, Maren McLashen, who took that, basically was like, I think I found one that's crazier than all of the Titanic stories combined.

I'm like, how is that possible?

That's a good one.

Yeah.

We believe you guys.

We believe in you guys.

We believe you.

Good job.

To everyone listening, don't forget, hashtag my favorite hot dog.

Hashtag it up.

Prove to us that you like hot dogs the most.

We'll show you ours if you show us yours.

Right?

That's right.

And also, stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

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 Squolachi.

Our researchers are Maren McGlashen and Allie Elkin.

Email your hometowns to myfavorite murder at gmail.com.

Follow the show on Instagram at myfavorite murder.

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

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I just think the process and the journey is so delicious.

That's where all the good stuff is.

You just can't live and die by the end result.

That's comedian Phoebe Robinson.

And yeah, those are the kinds of gems you'll only hear on my podcast, The Bright Side.

I'm your host, Simone Boyce.

I'm talking to the brightest minds in entertainment, health, wellness, and pop culture.

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Listen to The Bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

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