Join Kayla and Karina for this week’s episode where they discuss small towns with interesting, and terrifying, histories. Which, if any, of these towns would you dare to visit?
Join Kayla and Karina for this week’s episode where they discuss small towns with interesting, and terrifying, histories. Which, if any, of these towns would you dare to visit?
00:00.00
Kayla
Hello. How's it going.
00:03.72
Karina
Fantastic. How are you.
00:09.30
Kayla
I'm good. Well hey guys hey to you too Hope things are going Well um, we're just going to dive right into this episode. To put it simply today, we'll be discussing weird places with weird histories.
00:22.86
Karina
We sure will.
00:23.96
Kayla
but I think that we originally started with a more specific topic and then you know we branched out a little bit so you got to broaden the name of it a little. Ah so for my part I'll be telling the tale of 2 places.
00:34.95
Karina
Either way, you're in for a treat.
00:42.75
Kayla
A country that never was and a town that should have never been do do do yeah I made it sound way more mysterious than it actually is. But I think you'll enjoy it anyway. So for the first one.
00:47.70
Karina
Oh, sounds fascinating already.
00:56.14
Kayla
So for the First one. Off the Southern Coast of Nova Scotia lies 21 little islands known as the Tusket islands. Not much can be said about these tiny islands except one has a lot of human remains.
01:15.67
Karina
Um, what.
01:18.00
Kayla
Yeah, that is pretty intriguing isn't it. But you know what might be more intriguing? The Island that's known for tuna fishing.
01:21.93
Karina
What. Um, what.
01:31.31
Kayla
Do you know what I'm going to focus on today?
01:33.71
Karina
I Sure hope it's the tuna fishing ha.
01:44.89
Kayla
It’s the Tuna Fishing. We'll get to those human remains sometime in a future episode maybe because it really was interesting.
01:59.24
Karina
Ah.
02:05.63
Kayla
The island has been an active fishing hub for centuries before this. The tuna fishing one of course.
02:12.18
Karina
Um, not the human body one? Thank goodness.
02:19.20
Kayla
Not the dead bodies, ha! But it gained notoriety in the 1930s when Wedgeport, the southernmost city on the mainland of Nova Scotia, began holding a sports tuna fishing tournament and it was a big deal. I'm saying the likes of FDR, Amelia Earhart, Tony Acarrado the infamous mobster of Chicago… they all went to this tournament. Yeah and a side note that mob guy his cool mob nickname was actually big tuna because of a massive 400 pound tuna he caught there in 1939.
02:59.59
Karina
Oh my gosh.
03:00.70
Kayla
but I digress, that's not really the topic of this episode. So in 1948, a DC businessman by the name of Russell Arundel would attend the tournament and would be so taken by the islands surrounding Wedgeport that he went on to buy one of those islands. Outright for a mere seven hundred and fifty dollars that's ninety one hundred in today's money. That's less than a car.
03:28.32
Karina
I think I'm at a loss. You mean we can buy one of these islands?
03:36.46
Kayla
It could be possible. We should check into it. But maybe not massacre Island.
03:42.29
Karina
I Hope that's its name.
03:51.21
Kayla
There is one. Ah, that's so crazy. You can just buy an island. Granted, it's not a huge island. It's forty acres but forty acres I don't need more than that. That's fine.
04:01.86
Karina
Um, it's about thirty eight and a half more acres than I have now.
04:05.46
Kayla
Ah, yeah, and can you imagine it having to take care of that much land.
04:08.47
Karina
Oh God we're gonna have to know…
04:13.66
Kayla
Mull this one over before we invest. Well he bought it and over a few celebratory drinks following his purchase, inspiration struck him. He now owned an island. Why not elevate it to an independent nation?
04:30.43
Karina
Oh, he wasn't satisfied with just an island.
04:38.24
Kayla
He wasn’t and so the principality of outer Baldonia came into fruition.
04:47.33
Karina
What a name.
04:48.67
Kayla
Isn't that charming? So he bought this island. He's got this idea. He's running with it and the next summer he would go on to draft a declaration of independence for the island and this declaration reads as follows.
05:05.92
Kayla
We hold these truths to be self-evident that fishermen are a race alone. The fishermen are endowed with the following inalienable rights: the right to lie and be believed. The freedom from questioning, nagging, shaving, interruption, women, taxes, Politics, War, Monologues, can't and inhibitions the right?
05:40.81
Karina
Um, this is… I… okay.
05:41.34
Kayla
Is this real life, I don't know but there's more. The right to applause, vanity, flattery, praise, and self-inflation. The right to swear, lie, drink, gamble, and silence. The right to be noisy, boisterous, quiet, pensive, expensive, and hilarious. The right to choose company and the right to be alone. The right to sleep all day and stay up all night. Know ye that these rights belong inalienable and self-evident and contrary to the social custom of the world making fishermen a race separate and apart from other races.
06:23.79
Kayla
Do you feel inspired?
06:25.78
Karina
Ah I feel something all right.
06:30.46
Kayla
If he dropped a couple of those things he might have me.
06:33.65
Karina
I mean yeah, maybe. Also I feel like…was this a married man or was he a single man.
06:41.60
Kayla
I Believe he was a married man.
06:45.53
Karina
Baffled then. I was like this is the writings of a single guy, like someone trying to live that bachelor life forever. Um, also I don't think he knows what a race is. Like fishermen aren't a race but ah well I guess when when you own your own country I guess you can do what you want.
07:14.37
Kayla
Okay now I have to make it a confession. this might start off as a bit of a spoof, or what I like to call a dream, but it expanded from there. He designed a flag for his micronation. A currency called the tunar which is just tuna with an r at the end, convinced a friend to plot the tiny island on the map for the first time, created a coat of arms consisting of 2 tuna fish, a lobster and a sheep's head. And issued formalized crested letters to acquaintances of caliber to become princes of outer baldonia. He himself was crowned prince of princes and he formally registered the nation's legation number in the US phone books. But it really was just his office phone number in D.C.
08:24.82
Karina
Um, oh he was committed for sure. Only because he's got plenty of money to do so.
08:34.10
Kayla
Right? But you know what? The only thing he ever built on that island was one one like a studio house made of beach stones. And he said he stayed there one night but he couldn't take the mosquitoes so he went back to D.C.
08:54.25
Karina
Um, oh my goodness. So no one lives there.
08.57.42
Kayla
Just some fishermen, you know, that have rights of their own.
08:59.98
Karina
And that are a race of their own.
09:03.43
Kayla
It all sounds really goofy and it didn't really mean much until 1952 when the island gained international attention. Russia caught wind of it and Arundel was publicly criticized in Moscow newspapers stating his antics would have been of no consequence if it were not for the fact that he established dominion over the island and implemented a sinful decree that mirrored America's capitalist mindset of ownership and means of production. So in response, Arundel penned a letter to Russian leaders. Stating that he’s the owner of this tiny little island of Baldonia and he demanded an apology else his country would formally sever all ties with Russia. They had no ties. Ah he further divulged that russian fishing trawlers were not welcome in the water surrounding outer Baldonia as he was a fish and net kind of guy. He also stated that the tuna were the official outer Baldonia Coast Guard and were under his protection from their unethical fishing practices.
10:38.74
Kayla
So at this point, Russia must have caught wind that Baldonia is a country that doesn't actually exist. It never was formally registered except for in a phonebook and so they didn't respond.
10:52.14
Karina
Oh my goodness that's wild.
10:58.15
Kayla
But of course Arundel took that lack of response as an indication that his country won the war against Russia.
11:04.58
Karina
Um, course he did um.
11:17.19
Kayla
I forgot to mention when he first established his island of Outer Baldonia, he published about it in newspapers all over the country. Just to be like look at me I have an island country now. Even though it's never really a country. and I think it was a joke, like just to be goofy, and took it too far. But it's like, man. Commitment. And he also bragged about winning the war against Russia and that was published in newspapers as well.
11:34.49
Karina
Um I guess technically he's not wrong. Talk about commitment for sure I don't think I've ever committed that hard to anything in my life.
11:35.77
Kayla
Yeah, he had even had like Golden crested pins sent to his princes.
11:52.78
Karina
What is it like to have so much money that you have to think about all of these little things and then you act on them.
12:00.81
Kayla
I'm going to be honest I would love it. I would love making a fake country. That would be so much fun.
12:07.53
Karina
Can I just ask that your declaration of Independence is a little bit better?
12:13.31
Kayla
Um, absolutely yeah I'll make it better and way more inclusive. It's not a boys only club.
12:18.61
Karina
Okay, perfect then I'll live there.
12:25.16
Kayla
And I don't think I would call my hobby a race. So I’d probably leave that part out too.
12:34.41
Kayla
So that's my story about a country that never was. Just a guy up to some antics.
12:42.41
Karina
Um, it's weird but also hilarious and kind of impressive. So.
12:48.00
Kayla
Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, the first time that I was reading about it, I can't remember what the article was, but I was mad. I was like is this guy for real? Like is this a real country? He just banned all women from living here and the more I read into him like oh that article was just unreliable.
13:08.79
Karina
That's amazing, I Love that. We went completely different, I guess sides of the spectrum. I don't know english.
13:22.79
Kayla
Well I do have one town That's more destruction if that's something you're interested in instead.
13:27.87
Karina
Um, yeah, bring it on.
13:30.65
Kayla
Okay, so Burke Idaho have you heard of it?
13:33.36
Karina
No but I don't know why I'm shaking my head at Idaho already.
13.36.47
Kayla
Yeah, that's about sums it up. Apparently it's only 50 miles east of Coeur D’alene, so it's actually pretty close to us. So if we ever want to go to a ghost town, I know of one, alright?
13:51.68
Karina
Um, do yes, let's go.
14:07.50
Kayla
Okay Burke Idaho a real town that was probably better off literally anywhere else. But here we are on the coattails of the mining craze of the early to mid 1800s. So we're talking after the California Gold Rush here. Rich deposits of silver and lead were discovered in Burke Canyon idaho which I mentioned is fifty miles east of Coeur D’alene.iSo in 1889, the town of Burke was established at the base of the canyon. And that sounds all fine and good. But we're not talking like Grand Canyon size canyon but it's like a very long and narrow chunk of land that measures three hundred feet wide at its narrowest point. That's nothing.
15:33.18
Karina
Um, what.
15:38.48
Kayla
And to put that into more context. The main Street of the town was shared by carriages, people, and trains.
15:45.70
Karina
Um, that sounds very dangerous.
15:47.30
Yes, anytime a train came into town, literally everything had a pull off the road to make room for it.
15:54.40
Karina
Okay, that sounds problematic but oh no, thank you.
15:56.98
Kayla
And stressful I will never live there, thank you.
16:00.08
Karina
What was the purpose of this town?
16:07.82
Kayla
Mining. They're out for that silver. So they just were just miners settling. And there was on main hotel in town that was basically where all the miners would stay when they came in to work the mines.
16:10.65
Karina
Okay.
16:26.91
Kayla
When the Railroads Road expanded, they had no choice but to run the railroad straight through the hotel. They literally excavated a hole in the hotel right through it.
16:42.85
Karina
Um, what.
16:44.97
Kayla
There's like a little footpath so you can get to the different hotel rooms and stuff. But.
16:48.46
Karina
Okay, what if you're trying to sleep. But there's a train coming through.
16:59.50
Kayla
That's how you get scary dreams about Ghost Trains. I was legitimately afraid of ghost trains as a child. It’s the thing that scared me the most.
17:02.39
Karina
Were you?
17:12.93
Kayla
We lived by the railroad tracks and I would hear it the middle of the night and I'd always be afraid.
17:17.10
Karina
It does sound terrifying. Also I don't know, I'm picturing this like very small hotel in this very big train and like the walls are shaking and all that I don't know how.
17:31.20
Kayla
That's probably exactly what happened. It was a tiny little town so it's probably a tiny little shack of a hotel but it was their most impressive and I know that's a lot of logistical issues. But the town also had never ending destruction and violence just all the time. It was just an all out brawl all the time probably like get out of my bubble Frank and.
18:23.52
Karina
Um, it's probably because there was no room to do anything.
18.27.43
Kayla
Yeah, they were probably like get out of my bubble, Frank.
18:34.15
Karina
Good ol’ Frank had dog and Tommy at it again.
18.37.23
Kayla
actually this first story is about Frank and Tommy. It's actually about an avalanche.
18:41.80
Karina
Close.
18:50.71
Kayla
But it could have been caused by their fight. In 1890 the first of many avalanches would sweep through Burke, leaving buildings in ruin and killing three people. And in 1891 wage cuts led the miners to strike. In response, replacement workers were brought in which ultimately led to an all out gun fight in 1892 when it was discovered a company spy had infiltrated the union men and was feeding information to the mine owners. The gunfight, it got out of control.
19:17.76
Karina
Um, oh no scandalous.
19:29.63
Kayla
It was scandy. It was so scandy because the gunfight resulted in union men kidnapping and taking prisoner 150 of those replacement workers in a nearby Frisco Mill and during that kidnapping gunfire accidentally hit and ignited a box of dynamite in the mill.
19:45.30
Karina
Um, that's not funny but just picturing it in my head this sounds like Wile E Coyote is up to no good.
19:50.24
Kayla
It's chaos. Exactly it's exactly what you would expect of like a cartoonish wild west. Six people died in those explosions. And that is not including the body count in the gunfight. So it doesn't sound too bad considering but the Idaho Governor declared martial law on the tiny little town and sent the us army and the national guard there to keep the peace.
20:20.95
Karina
Um, what?
20:32.27
Kayla
Yeah, it got serious. Then in 1896, a grease fire broke out in the the town's famous train hotel. Actually it wasn't a train hotel yet. This is pre-train hotel but it was just a regular old hotel for those miners and 3 people died because of the grease fire. In 1899, they have more wage disagreements which led to a thousand miners taking siege of the Northern Pacific Railroad train in Burke and ended up blowing up bunker hill mine with 3,000 pounds of dynamite. So they're kidnapping a train. And then blowing up mines. It is wild and crazy. And then there was another avalanche that killed 20 people and then six months after that avalanche, a wildfire broke out, ravaging three million acres of land and that also included Burke
21:09.96
Karina
Um, what a lawless place.
21:26.50
Kayla
Three years later, the whole town flooded. In 1923, 10 yeares later, another fire broke out and at that point they were like, we can’t fix this. They’re just kinda giving up. But they hung on. Well, not that much longer. 20 years.
22:02.42
Karina
Twenty more years than they should have probably.
22:03.80
Kayla
They probably should have given up when the getting was good. You should have just gotten out of there. That gold or that silver did not want you to take it. I think I like this story because it reminds me of Buffy. Only in the sense that when I read it, the first thing I thought was are they on a hellmouth or something?
22:30.35
Karina
It's a just a haunted place. It did not want to be inhabited. Didn't want anything but people wouldn't listen and then what happened to it.
22:39.43
Kayla
Wrath to angry people living in that crevice of a mountain.
22:48.93
Karina
What happened to it? No one lives there anymore?
22:50.93
Kayla
Basically. So in 1950, all the mines closed down and in the last census done there in 1991, the town had only 15 residents remaining. But you can still go see the shell of the town today.
23:08.61
Karina
Is the train hotel still there?
23.12.03
Kayla
I think it is probably beaten and bruised but it's there.
23:15.98
Karina
Ah, excellent.
23:16.47
Kayla
And it actually looks really pretty because it's in the Canyon in the Pacific Northwest. So you got all the pine trees just surrounding in it. It looks really lovely but don't trust it. It's gonna try you draw you in.
23:28.74
Karina
Don't stay there long and don't try to build anything.
23:34.24
Kayla
We know what it's up to. Murder.
23:36.29
Karina
Um, no good oh murder in the lawless town of Burke, Idaho that's vastly different from your tuna man. Um, oh I like both of those.
23:48.15
Kayla
Yeah a little Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde for you.
23:54.17
Karina
Though, see, you got a good little balance going there. Mine is just…it goes from bad to worse.
24:09.42
Kayla
Ah, ah, ah, just the way I like to spiral.
24:13.17
Karina
ah ah yes well. Before I jump into my interpretation of this week's topic I'd like to give a little shout out to June and the gang because my brother is one that suggested this. So okay, we're gonna travel to a place called Colorado City Arizona. Also, I don't know why places are named like this. But. It just threw me off I expected it to be in Colorado but no.
24:52.46
Kayla
I was just complaining about this the other day to Alex because I was like we have North Dakota street?
25:04.13
Karina
Um, why? You live in Oregon.
25:05.39
Kayla
Yeah, it's silly. Stick to your trees.
25:12.59
Karina
So this is a town in Mojave County and it's located in a region known as the Arizona strip. As of the 2020 census the population of the town was 2,478 people
25:24.30
Kayla
Tiny.
25:28.43
Karina
Now this is down from 4,821 people in 2010 so that's basically cut in half in 10 years.
25:35.35
Kayla
It went to tiny to tiny tiny.
25:46.55
Karina
I know and those numbers are very difficult for this big city girl to understand. I had 2000 people living on my block I'm pretty sure growing up so there's that.
25:48.80
Kayla
I was just trying to conceptualize like how many people were in my high school because that feels like my high school almost. Yeah, crazy.
25:57.76
Karina
I had 2000 people in my high school so my graduating class was 500. That's not a lot of people living here. So. This town. It was formerly known as short creek and it was founded in 1913 by members of the council of friends. I don't know if you're familiar with this but this is a breakaway group from the Salt Lake city base church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints.
26:27.23
Kayla
Ah, Cults. I should have known you're gonna do cults.
26:34.24
Karina
Ah, ah, that's my next sentence. It says which sounds like a cult if you ask me. Oh man, the council of friends members. The council of friends desired a remote location where they could practice plural marriage. l liked that they called a plural marriage instead of like you know, polygamy or whatever. So this had been publicly abandoned by the LDS Church in 1890. So naturally as one does when one wants to do things that are frowned upon and not be judged…they moved. So moving forward in history, on July 26, 1953 the Arizona governor John Howard Pyle sent troops into the settlement to stop polygamy in what became known as the short creek raid. The 2 year legal battle that followed became a public relations disaster that damaged Pyle's political career and set a hands-off tone toward the town in Arizona for the next fifty years after the death of Joseph Musner who was the Mormon fundamentalist leader the community split into two groups. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints stayed in short creek while the apostolic united brethren relocated to Bluffdale Utah. Both of them just sound like cults. But the FLDS, which is the Fundamentalist Church, changed the name of the community to Colorado City to eliminate any ties to the Short Creek raids. They wanted to kind of distance themselves from that because if we learned anything from history. It's that renaming something is the cure all to remove any bad press.
28:06.20
Karina
In January, 2004, local FLDS fundamentalist leader Warren Jeffs who you may or may not be familiar with - There is a great documentary on him on Netflix if you guys want to give that a shot. Warren Jeffs expelled a group of 20 men including the mayor and gave their wives and children to other men. I don't understand how someone can have that much say in things. They're like sorry Kayla you're no longer married to Billy Bob you got to go over here. And listen, I understand that that's part of the cult process. There's that brainwashing and all of that. But.
28:59.94
Kayla
I Can't conceptualize it either. Sometimes I feel like…I know you prey on people that are vulnerable to it. But I also think at some point you have to give in a little bit.
Like there's some. I'm not saying everybody's at fault. But I'm saying that there's some point where you're making a conscious decision to be a part of a cult. There's no way that you don't see signs of it being a cult before you can escape. Like if you grow up in that culture I think it's different. But if they're like hey. If you just forget that you married this person and now you’re with me…like what?
29:40.12
Karina
Absolutely and I think you're right. Like we've talked about it before. They prey on people that are on hard times, right? Maybe it's people who don't have enough love in their lives or don't feel good enough for something and then all of a sudden these people, these leaders are making them feel wanted loved or whatever. So it's easier for them to be susceptible to that. But I just still have such a hard time with how someone can have so much control over a huge group of people. But anyway, let's talk some more about Warren Jeffs. He is now a convicted sexual predator. He stated that he was acting on the orders of god because of course that's what you do while the men expelled claimed they were penalized for disagreeing with Jeffs, observers stated that this was the most severe split to date within the community other than the split between Colorado City and Centennial Park which is another Mormon not Mormon LDS thing.
30:47.20
Karina
Anyway, according to the Utah attorney general's office. This was not the first time Jeffs was accused of expelling men from the community as over four hundred young men are estimated to have been expelled by Jeffs from 2001 to 2006 and they're the ones that were disagreeing with him.
30:57.57
Kayla
400 men?
31:06.97
Karina
Yeah. You will see in the documentary if you haven't watched. It goes from being kind of like equally split between men and women to the least amount of men because I think he is able to gain more control that way if that makes sense.
31:20.98
Kayla
That makes sense, whoa.
31:26.60
Karina
Most were removed for failing to follow Jeff's rules or for dating women without his permission. Many of these expelled men and boys were naive and sheltered and often wound up homeless in nearby towns such as Hurricane and St. George, Utah. Jeffs was placed on the FBI 10 most wanted list and eventually was arrested on August 28th, 2006. Most of the property in the town was owned by the united effort plan which is a real estate trust of the FLDS. In 2007, the State authorities began dismantling church ownership of Colorado City. The FLDS church retaliated and indoctrinated their followers against the State, believing they were being targeted because of their beliefs. FLDS followers became further secluded as a result. remaining FLDS members refused to believe the charges against Jeff Jets on April Six Twenty ten law enforcement officials in Mojave County Arizona and Washington County, Utah -
32:21.82
Kayla
Like God can can it be stopped.
32:27.73
Karina
- Ah ha, they served 5 search warrants seeking records from town officers. The warrants were served on government officials and departments including town manager David Darger as well as Colorado City's fire chief Jacob Barlow. As a result of the initial warrants, the Hilldale department of public safety was shut down and emergency responders were prohibited from returning to responding to calls without the approval of County officials. Like it's just they're embedded in everything, the FLDS members, and it's really hard for anyone to penetrate that. Which kind of plays a part a little bit further here…So firefighter Glen Jeffs indicated that the warrants referenced misuse of funds in response to a civil rights lawsuit by the US department of Justice alleging that this Colorado City government, including law enforcement, were taking orders from FLDS Church. The Arizona Attorney General, Tom Horn, announced in July of 2012 that he was allocating funding to allow the Mojave County sheriff's department to provide daily patrols in the town. So all of this led to March 20th, 2014, a jury hearing. The case of Cook et all versus the Colorado City town of I don't know because I lost that. So anyway, um, it was a case it ruled that the towns of Colorado City and Hilldale had discriminated against people because they were not members of The FLDS Church. The cooks were awarded $5.2 million dollars for religious discrimination and the cook family moved to the short creek area in 2008 but were refused access to utilities by the town of Colorado City again because -
34:14.33
Kayla
Whoa.
34:14.87
Karina
They weren't part of the FLDS church. So as a result of the ruling, the Arizona Attorney General issued a press release stating that he wants to eradicate discrimination in the two polygamous towns and he believes that the court ruling will give him the tools to do so. But has that discrimination been eradicated? Well let's see what some non-FLDS visitors have to say about that. So, I took to my favorite website, Reddit, and there were a couple of Redditors that said that they had traveled there and a couple of them are like well. If you're not from there. You're going to be followed by white SUVs. They said there's a weird vibe going through this. You see half-built compounds throughout the town and people stare at you as you drive by. There was this group of people that were driving through and they felt very unwelcomed by it. They stopped to get gas and a police officer followed them and the police officer wanted to know where this family was going, what they were doing, how long they were going to be in the town. Police officer didn't leave them and he followed them until they got to the town border. So it's just…it's a weird town, has a weird reason for being founded and I think like it's so closely guarded because they don't want any outsiders going in there to try and influence anything. That's my take on it. I don't know but it just gives me the heebie jeebies, like I wouldn't want to drive through there. It would make me uncomfortable.
36:01.73
Kayla
Can I tell you something? Colorado City sounded really familiar to me and then I realized when Alex and I were on our road trip over to Utah, we stayed right by there in Hilldale but we didn't know what it was though, it said something differen,
36:14.17
Karina
Did you?
36:21.10
Kayla
I did a Hip Camp where you can do glamping and there was a yurt for rent down there and it was like a 40 minute drive away from the the canyon that we went to.
36:23.47
Karina
Um, ah.
36:39.73
Kayla
So I booked it and when we were checking in later in the night - we were only there for one night - but the lady came and greeted us and was going oh blah blah talking about I can't remember how it got on the topic, but suddenly she was like oh you don't know where you are do you? And she's like oh this is where the cults are from. So, we stayed there for the night, but I had no idea.
37:08.23
Karina
Um, no, um, even after that you still stayed there?
37:15.78
Kayla
Yep, but it was like out in the middle of nowhere. It was beautiful skies, like really good star gazing. But after that, it was creepy. and then I started researching him in the tent because the tent had a wi-fi. It was glamping, come on. And I was reading about Warren Jeffs. I had always heard stories about it but I never really read into it. But then I was just sleeping in that yurt after reading a bunch about that and I'm like god damn it Kayla why are you like this.
37:48.53
Karina
Ah, well look at that.
37:51.16
Kayla
Yeah I didn't see anything there but we again we were only there for a night. But she was saying that you you see them in the grocery stores. The men are always wearing solid colored buttoned shirts tucked into the pants with a knife or a gun on their hip and the girls are always wearing their hair, the taller the hair the closer they are to God or something like that. So the taller the hair you know the closer they are to the cult leader essentially and they all wear. Ah the garb that you would expect but that's all she really said about it. I think yeah she only said li
38:19.19
Karina
That's wild. It's very fascinating.
38:26.94
Kayla
Because she's making money from people coming to her property and you know she's like I'm gonna be honest with you but I'm not gonna be too honest with you.
38:36.42
Karina
Gonna give you just enough and clearly it didn't scare you away. So.
38:44.78
Kayla
I don't think I'd stay there long term though. You definitely feel like you're an outsider and they make it you feel that way driving through the streets for sure. and I was nervous with my Bernie Stickers
38:52.83
Karina
Um I do not like that. They're definitely like you don't belong here.
39:03.20
Kayla
Um, yeah, yeah.
39:06.73
Karina
Okay I have 1 more and this one's a little bit longer so bear with me. Have you heard of a place called Skidmore Missouri? No? well let me tell you a little bit about Skidmore
39:25.60
Karina
The skidmore area was first settled in 1840 by William Bunton shortly after the plat purchase. Skidmore itself was platted on twenty acres and, listen, it just goes from bad to worse. Okay, so let me just tell you a little bit about it. The crime rates are technically low. But when violence does visit this area, it's exceptionally mysterious and disturbing. It all began the near legendary tale of Ken Rex Mcelroy, Skidmore's most notorious resident. If you're unfamiliar with the tiny town's morbid crime to fame, let me give you a synopsis. In the sixties and seventies Ken Mcelroy was Skidmore's Booggieman. He was beyond a bully, more of a self-imposed dictator. He ran the town of Skidmore like his personal kingdom literally raping and pillaging for two decades. He stole constantly from the local farmers and businesses and assaulted people at will. And in all kinds of ways. He took women and girls he found attractive as young as twelve years old to add to his family that included multiple wives at once and over a dozen children. He held a legal stronghold over anyone who dared to press charges with the aid of his mob connected lawyer and intense harassment campaigns that included stalkings, shootings, killings of pets and Arson. Even the police feared him, right? Also I can't believe I've never heard of this guy before
41:06.42
Kayla
What the hell? What use are you, then?
41:19.81
Karina
Right? After years of abuse a mob of local citizens surrounded Mcelroy in the center of town and fired a few fatal shots into the white trash terrorist. Those are the words of local people, not me. Not one of the more than 50 witnesses would say who pulled the trigger, so they all had each other's back.
41:45.10
Kayla
Oh.
41:47.99
Karina
To this day every last Citizen has refused to speak and no one was ever arrested in the vigilante slaying.
41:54.27
Kayla
Ah, this is like a real life Murder on the Orient zexpress. Oh, have you read or seen the movie? I should say spoiler.
42:02.84
Karina
Um, yes I love it. Agatha Christie.So, spoiler alert guys if you haven't seen it. You should see it though or read the book both honestly.
42:14.55
Kayla
It’s lovely. Yeah well I don't like the ending but that's fine.
42:18.20
Karina
But this incident gave Skidmore a grizzly 15 minutes of fame as several books, many news reports, and a TV movie was produced around the incident. Things remained quiet for the next twenty years after the press died down. Citizens slowly drifted away from the Eerie murder and what few business and attractions were left shut down eventually. Ah, but don't worry it started again in 2000 with the brutal killing of Wendy Gillenwater.
42:52.88
Kayla
Oh, Skidmore.
42:55.62
Karina
Reportedly, she was stomped to death by her boyfriend. Some internet sluths have found evidence suggesting she was actually dragged around skidmore hanging from his car until she died. I should have warned you.
43:04.88
Kayla
What? Ah, that gives me chills. It's horrible.
43:15.10
Karina
The killer, Greg Dragoo, is serving life in jail. But then things get really weird. On December 16th, 2004 23 year old Bobbie Jo Stinnett was discovered by her mother who told 911 operators that she looked like Quote, “her stomach exploded”. Sadly, Stinnett was soon pronounced dead and was missing the most valuable of items - the infant in her womb. Miraculously, the baby named Victoria Stinnett was found alive.
43:36.34
Kayla
Whoa.
43:51.88
Karina
The woman who she was in the custody of was named Lisa Montgomery. Police recovered the newborn within a day. To the shock of Montgomery's friends and family who were celebrating what they thought was the birth of Lisa's fifth child. As it turns out, Lisa Montgomery had been lying about being pregnant and she had done many times. She came in contact with the pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett online under the guise of purchasing a terrier from her as Stinnett was a dog breeder. When she was welcomed into her home, Lisa began strangling the mother-to-be until she went limp. Clumps of Stinnett’s hair and spots of her blood were found at the scene, indicating Bobbie Joe didn't go down without a fight. Once unconscious, Montgomery cut the infant from her womb and took her as her own. With some very quickly and expertly executed police work, tiny Victoria was treated and eventually placed in the custody of her father. As of now, Lisa Montgomery is scheduled to be the third woman in American history to be executed by the federal government for her brutal deed. One can't help but feel for the troubled Lisa Montgomery. She was repeatedly raped by her stepfather as a child. When she told her mother about the abuse, she pulled a gun on her. She suffered so many beatings as a youth. It speculated she had brain damage. The young woman sought escape through alcoholism and later by getting married as a teenager. That marriage quickly became an abusive situation as well and clearly her horrific upbringing contributed to her mental state. But there's more. All of it is sad but here is.
45:31.25
Kayla
That's horrendous enough. Yeah, that's really bad.
45:39.37
Karina
The strangest incident of all. Branson Perry, who was a cousin of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, disappeared on April 11th, 2001 and by disappeared I mean just vanished almost into thin air. One normal afternoon Twenty-year-old Branson was cleaning up the house. His father's house, who was set to return from a brief stay in the hospital. He went out the door to put some jumper cables in the garage just a few yards away and he hasn't been heard or seen since. No one saw him go anywhere or be abducted by anyone. Not even his friend Gina, who was in the house helping him clean, or the two other men who were working on his father's car on the property. He was simply there one minute and nowhere the next. He left behind 0 clues. There have been no leads in the case.
46:22.71
Kayla
What the heck.
46:29.66
Karina
The jumper cables he was transporting weren't found until two weeks later when they suddenly appeared in plain sight on the property. Virtually all of Skidmore got together and combed the area and found nothing extensive. Excavations led nowhere. It's like he never existed. There are a few very loose theories of what happened but none make much of an argument. His friend Gina, who was there that day, admitted that the two were beginning to dabble in drugs. She believed that Branson had gotten in debt and maybe some angry dealers were to blame. Also his dad explained how a few weeks before he had been violated by a neighbor. Apparently he was drugged and assaulted by a man named Jason and that left Branson understandably humiliated and angry. He speculated his son was eager to hightail it out of the area. And then there was another theory.
47:25.59
Karina
It iInvolved a former minister named Jack Wayne Roberts who was arrested in April 2003 after he botched an amateur sex reassignment surgery on another individual in a hotel room.
47:34.36
Kayla
Oh my gosh.
47:43.61
Karina
Along with child pornography police found Rob on Robert's computer they found graphic message board posts involving sadistic stories of extreme sexual assaults. One involved a young male hitchhiker whose description matched Branson's. Robert denied any and all involvement in the disappearance of Branson Perry and swore his internet posts were merely fantasy. Though some believe a necklace found in Jack Robert’s home resembled one Branson owned. Jack Roberts has never been proven to be connected to the disappearance but is serving a 30 year sentence currently for his other .I'm almost done. It's going to get a little weirder here. So.
48:12.56
Kayla
Okay.
48:20.74
Karina
While doing some research for this…the researcher of this I don't have his name written down but the person that wrote this article discovered some bizarre violence of Skidmore.
48:40.36
Karina
There’s an encompassing County known as Notaway. The crime rate is low, but the instances that do occur, again, are grisly and strange. So there were the Talbot Brothers who were hanged for the murder of their father despite the fact that the victim swore with his dying breath that his political enemies were to blame. There was also Hez Rasco who murdered an entire family of 4 and then burned the house and the bodies inside of it. Benny Kemer did something eerily similar in 74 when he slaughtered 4 out of his 5 family members.
49:17.79
Karina
And then there was William Taylor. His wife Deborah was initially thought killed in a farming accident involving a faulty combine. It was later discovered that William had lured Deborah to her death by killing the family cat and propping it under the combine, urging his wife to try and get the pet out from under. And then he rolled a heavy machine over her. Lloyd Jeffs, 71, who may be the most elderly spree killer ever. He fired at members of the Conception Abbey Monastery, killing a monk and a priest and injured others.
49:40.22
Kayla
Wow.
49:56.68
Karina
The victims were in their sixties and seventies. Why he chose that organization is a mystery. And lastly in 2013 business owner Steve Parsons was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14 year old. Minutes later, he was convulsing on the floor of the courtroom and he died shortly thereafter. It turns out that Steve had snuck a cyanide capsule into the courtroom and discreetly got it into his mouth before the verdict was read so all of that is just weird. There are some stories from people that have visited Skidmore. So. This is a quote by House of Mouse. For a town with a population of less than 300, there have been several murders including pregnant woman Bobby Jostinnet which we talked about and then there is this one.
50:47.50
Karina
It says, “when I was a kid about 1962, my parents bought a fishing cabin on a small river about an hour from our home. The first weekend we spent there, we went to a small town near there and I have never had a more creepy vibe from an actual town in my life. Every one stared at us and most glared as they did. We went to the little grocery store and the owners there were just short of being outright rude. After making our purchases, the owners actually told us we weren't welcome in his town because they didn't like outsiders. They booked it out of there and they never went back”. So I ask you. How many other small towns are hiding scandalous secrets?
51:23.78
Kayla
Yeah, seriously is that why we all get the Heebie Jeebies going through them?
51:28.61
Karina
I feel like it, yes. But I also I wager that it's not just small towns. A lot of our towns are like that and now our big cities too and I think it's that way because of the way that our country was founded, right? We took and we pillaged and in all of that. Um, so I do think that’s a lot of it. There are stories that we cover up because bad press isn't good for tourism or whatever, right? So I do think that a lot of our towns have a lot that they're hiding. Maybe not all of them are as bad as Skidmore.
51:48.80
Kayla
Yeah.
52:08.14
Karina
But I just couldn't - I don't know if that was like there’s just a lot of bad stuff happening there or are we only focusing on that? Does that make sense?
52:18.50
Kayla
Right? Absolutely and I think you have a really good point because it does happen in our cities. It's just more saturated here and there's a lot more petty crimes happening that they can write about instead because, like you said, it's bad for press to have these horrible things happening. So it's just easier to cover up in cities versus small towns where what's really going on there besides this crazy stuff, I guess.
52:43.52
Karina
And that is crazy. I had heard of the um, the Bobbie Joe Stinnett one because I had seen something on Investigation Discovery before where it was like yeah this person had come to their house and they thought everything was normal and she had pretended to be pregnant for quite some time and people were catching on and so she typically what had happened was that she would say that it was like a stillbirth or she had um she had a miscarriage or something and that's why even though she was pregnant multiple times she didn't have as many kids. But this time someone was getting too close to finding out the truth so she had to do something and get a baby. But she didn't have to do anything, right? You didn't have to lie about it in the first place. But.
53:30.37
Kayla
That one really freaks me out, I can't fathom. Wow! Thanks Karina. Okay I do have to ask though, I am interested about your thoughts about this Branson guy with the Jumper cables.
53:49.55
Karina
Um, ah.
53:49.91
Kayla
Do you think he was murdered by that guy or do you think something else happened.
53:57.52
Karina
I Always want to believe that there's something unexplained that could have happened so I want to say like he just vanished, kidnapped by aliens or something. I think it's plausible that maybe he wanted a fresh start and he just left.
54:04.99
Kayla
Yeah.
54:14.53
Karina
Um, or yeah he did have that altercation with the neighbor. Maybe the neighbor did something there. But what do you think.
54:20.56
Kayla
I Just - I'm having a hard time. I wish I had more details about the location because it would help me make a decision because he's walking outside the door with Jumper cables to put them away and where he's putting them as a couple yards away, right? But how close is the street.
54:37.81
Karina
Ah, yeah.
54:39.33
Kayla
How close are things he could get on? You know, like how isolated is it? Because if it's not isolated, I don't think you could get away from that house without someone noticing. So then aliens.
54:54.86
Karina
Um, well what I'm picturing is maybe a little bit secluded. But if like his friend Gina, if what she said is true that they were starting to dabble with drugs, maybe she was, you know, high or whatever - out of it, didn't pay attention to that stuff. So that could have been. There was this other case not related to this. But this little girl went missing from her front door pretty much and the dad was at home and it happened so fast. There was a vehicle outside, grabbing her when she ran out. So something like that could have happened. And it's just Gina was under the influence and doesn't recall or what have you.
55:36.84
Kayla
Yeah, like if it was close to the road I think that makes sense. But if it's like we're talking country I don't know.
55:47.92
Karina
Who knows, maybe it’s because there were those ties and while it could be loose ties but maybe it was that priest who I mean like why else would he have - I mean was it an identical necklace. I don't know.
55:52.61
Kayla
Yeah.
56:03.90
Karina
Or just similar enough but quite coincidental so weird little towns.
56:05.60
Kayla
Yeah, definitely.
56:14.49
Kayla
Don't want to go there! Actually, of the 4 places we talked about, I feel like this is the easy answer but, which one would you be most inclined to go stay in?
56:28.85
Karina
Can I set some parameters like can it be in the daylight and can I be followed or like with people. Because if that's the case and I kind of want to go visit that FLDS place.
56:33.49
Kayla
Yes. I would go back there with you just because it was so beautiful out there. It was so pretty I haven't seen that many stars ever.
56:53.89
Karina
I can only liken it to my time in Montana and we all know how I feel about that I will go with a select group of people but it really was beautiful. Minus the racism so you know.
57:02.80
Kayla
Yeah, it's probably about the same then if you're prepared for that then and also that's just a cult.
57:13.88
Karina
Um, it is. It's a cult a hundred percent as long as we don't join the cult, Kayla, we’ll be fine.
57:15.63
Kayla
But it's wild. I would much rather join cooler cults. There's so many better options out there. No thank you.
57:26.65
Karina
Yes, but that is all that we have for this episode and join us next time. When we'll next time be? It's a mystery. Stay tuned to find out.
57:47.98
Kayla
Bye.