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Peter Bronson - BOOK - Magical History Tour · Brian Thomas

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  Speaker 1: Seven six on a Friday, and a very happy one
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  Speaker 1: to you. Something you want to do next Thursday seven
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: o'clock is either log on or show up at the
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  Speaker 1: Scarlett Oaks Tampus on three hundred Scarlett Oaks Drive to
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  Speaker 1: hear the man who is Peter Bronson. Love Peter Bronson.
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  Speaker 1: I know you know who he is. He's author of
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  Speaker 1: all these wonderful, wonderful books, including Forbidden Fruit. I think
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  Speaker 1: one of the favorite ones he's written, for Bidden Fruit
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  Speaker 1: since it he's Underworld and The supper Club Inferno about
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  Speaker 1: the Beverly Hill Supper Club. Of course. He was editorial
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  Speaker 1: page editor for the Colmnists for the en Choir for
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  Speaker 1: about twenty years and under Peter Bronson, the Enquirers judged
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  Speaker 1: the best editorial page for four years in a road
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  Speaker 1: outstanding work he did. Also, he was a contributing editor
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  Speaker 1: and columnist for CINCINNTI magazine and currently the owner and
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  Speaker 1: publisher of Chili Dog Press. You can find him online
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  Speaker 1: chilidog press dot com offering publishing, writing, edition and consulting
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  Speaker 1: and among the other books that he's written. He's going
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  Speaker 1: to be doing this empower you seminar on Magical History Tour,
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  Speaker 1: Murder Mystery and Buried History. Peter Bronson, Welcome back, my friend.
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  Speaker 1: I always love having on the program and I love
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  Speaker 1: reading your books.
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  Speaker 2: Well, Brian, I always loved being with you, and it's
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  Speaker 2: always a good day when we start this way it is.
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  Speaker 1: And you know what I mentioned specifically, not only because
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  Speaker 1: I really loved Forbidden Fruit, but that had to do
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  Speaker 1: with the Beverly Hill Supper Club, which also had to
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  Speaker 1: deal with Stan Chesley, whose name comes up, and you
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  Speaker 1: wrote a chapter on stan Chesley in You're in this
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  Speaker 1: book Magical History Tour that you're gonna be talking about
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  Speaker 1: next week. Can we start there, because I think, not
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  Speaker 1: only is it a great story, and not only do
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  Speaker 1: I think it's great that you did it because of
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  Speaker 1: what Stan Chensley and others did to their clients in
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  Speaker 1: the fen Fen litigation, but also in the Beverly Hill
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  Speaker 1: supper Club litigation where he blamed aluminum wiring on something
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  Speaker 1: that was clearly a mob job, burned a supper club down,
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  Speaker 1: and killed all these people. But I bring it up
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  Speaker 1: because the way you wrote the chapter on the Fenfin litigation,
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  Speaker 1: you were you had a person in a I believe
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  Speaker 1: it was a coffee shop or a restaurant, listening to
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  Speaker 1: the conversation of two people at a different table who
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  Speaker 1: are talking about the facts in the litigation. And that's
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  Speaker 1: how you told the tale, using real information that came
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  Speaker 1: out about how this thing unfolded, but in a narrative
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  Speaker 1: that I think was created whole cloth from you. So
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  Speaker 1: have I got that right?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is correct. I really enjoyed doing that. It
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  Speaker 2: was kind of a It just came up to me
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  Speaker 2: as a creative way to introduce that without going through
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  Speaker 2: the usual steps of saying, you know this anonymous source
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  Speaker 2: or whatever. I mean, all of that is part of
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  Speaker 2: the public record. I actually covered the fen Fend trial
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  Speaker 2: for as much as I could get to, maybe about
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  Speaker 2: sixty percent of it, and it was just fascinating. I
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  Speaker 2: think people have long forgotten this now, but this was
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  Speaker 2: a huge event in our local history. As you remember,
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  Speaker 2: stan Chesley was the master of disaster. He was one
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  Speaker 2: of the foremost, if not the foremost, class action litigator,
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  Speaker 2: not only in the US but internationally, and this was
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  Speaker 2: his downfall. It was the end of stan Cheslie's career
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  Speaker 2: because of.
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  Speaker 1: What they found, and what they found is all money
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  Speaker 1: from his clients didn't that really boiled down what it was.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you betman, class action settlements usually the attorneys shares
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  Speaker 2: maybe thirty percent, which is pretty outrageous when you think
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  Speaker 2: of it. Yeah, and these guys with the Kentucky attorneys
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  Speaker 2: that he buddied up with, they took more than two thirds,
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  Speaker 2: closer to seventy percent of what was intended for the victims.
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  Speaker 2: And then they kept dipping into it also to create
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  Speaker 2: these phony trusts so that they could keep paying themselves
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  Speaker 2: and also paid the judge who was guilty of taking bribes. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: to get the right outcome. I mean, the whole thing
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  Speaker 2: was just it reeked. And that caused the disbarment of
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  Speaker 2: stan Chesley in Kentucky, which was a huge deal. And
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  Speaker 2: then the Ohio had reciprocity, so they disbarred him too,
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  Speaker 2: and that was pretty much the end of his career.
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  Speaker 1: It was the end of his career, but I don't
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  Speaker 1: think he suffered enough considering what he had done. Others
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  Speaker 1: went to prison, did they, Huh?
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  Speaker 2: Yes they did. In fact, one of the leaders was
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  Speaker 2: a guy named Bill Gallian, and he was a big
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  Speaker 2: deal at the University of Kentucky Medical School, where he
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  Speaker 2: was a super lawyer there, blue blood Kentucky, you know,
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  Speaker 2: big Kentucky basketball fan and et cetera, well known around Lexington.
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  Speaker 2: And he went to prison and he was pardoned by
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  Speaker 2: Joe Biden in those midnight pardons just before he left office.
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  Speaker 1: That it is. That's all I wanted. That's the last
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  Speaker 1: chapter in the book, but that's where I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: start it because when I read that, I was Peter Bronson, man,
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  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you used Chesley in this book. About
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  Speaker 1: the magical history to her murder mystery and buried history
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  Speaker 1: of the city. Another really fascinating and I know you're
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  Speaker 1: gonna talk about this next Thursday in greater detail. The
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  Speaker 1: first woman know how to be executed executing the electric chair,
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  Speaker 1: aka the Black Widow. That was a wild story, isn't
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  Speaker 1: that crazy?
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  Speaker 2: She was our first serial killer in Cincinnati. The probably
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  Speaker 2: killed at least a dozen, maybe fifteen sixteen people, and
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  Speaker 2: she cosied up mostly to elderly German immigrants, because in
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  Speaker 2: those days we had a German community that was really
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  Speaker 2: big and a lot of them were very weak on
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  Speaker 2: the English side. So she cosied up to these old
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  Speaker 2: men who were single or widowed, and pretty soon they
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  Speaker 2: had a new girlfriend, and they'd tell all their friends
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  Speaker 2: about it, and they were giving her their mortgage, they
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  Speaker 2: were signing over all their property and their bank accounts.
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  Speaker 2: And then she would come over and cook dinner for them.
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  Speaker 2: And that was, as you might say, their last supper.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, it was, And you described the conditions that I
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  Speaker 1: remember one of the guys lived. It was pretty horrific
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  Speaker 1: conditions folks lived in back then.
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  Speaker 2: It was and dying. She killed them with arsenic and
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  Speaker 2: she would salt their food with it, sometimes two or
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  Speaker 2: three meals, but usually as she refined her process, it
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  Speaker 2: just took one. She would cook a dinner for them
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  Speaker 2: and that was it. They died a horrible, excruciating death.
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  Speaker 2: Just it's really appalling when you when you look at
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  Speaker 2: what happens to people who die from arsenic poisoning in.
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  Speaker 1: A well told tale in your book, man, you do
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  Speaker 1: a great job telling a tale.
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  Speaker 2: Man, Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: How about the Shaker village, the commune that was the
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  Speaker 1: Whitewater Shaker Village.
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, if you drive out to Whitewater and look
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  Speaker 2: for the Shaker village there, it's They have tours of
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  Speaker 2: the Shaker halls and dorms and the whole property there
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  Speaker 2: is still preserved thanks to the friends of Whitewater Shaker Village.
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  Speaker 2: But if one of the places you need to stop
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  Speaker 2: is the cemetery, and there's a monument in the middle
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  Speaker 2: of this cemetery and it says this is dedicated to
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  Speaker 2: a celibate Christian Communists. I mean, those are three words.
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  Speaker 2: You just don't see art very often in these And
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  Speaker 2: who's gonna be Peter?
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  Speaker 1: I just figuring myself, who's gonna sign up for something
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  Speaker 1: like that? You voluntarily enters into celibacy in a commune,
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  Speaker 1: basically communist, and you got to work and nobody has
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  Speaker 1: any sex and man, that sounds like the worst possible
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  Speaker 1: plays on the planet, which maybe is why it disappeared.
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  Speaker 1: It's not there anymore.
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  Speaker 2: Well, exactly, you look at their cemetery and it's a
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  Speaker 2: big piece of property, maybe three or four acres, and
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  Speaker 2: there's only about ten graves, so maybe twenty graves back there.
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  Speaker 2: It's because celibacy. You know, if you don't have anybody born,
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  Speaker 2: you don't have anybody die. Yeah, so they've withered away.
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  Speaker 2: But a lot of people in those days went to
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  Speaker 2: the Shakers because there was no safety net. We didn't
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  Speaker 2: have welfare. We didn't have social security, We didn't have
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  Speaker 2: any benefits for people who lost their husbands in the
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  Speaker 2: Civil War or to accidents. So a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: that was their last place of refuge.
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  Speaker 1: So well, and again, all right, going back to the
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  Speaker 1: horrific conditions. If I recall correctly the disappearance of the
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  Speaker 1: former President William Henry Harrison's son, someone stole his remains
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  Speaker 1: after you passed away. You know where it ended up.
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  Speaker 1: You read about it in Magical History tour. This was
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  Speaker 1: the medical school, wasn't it, Peter?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, it was Ohio Medical School, right downtown Cincinnati. Clean
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  Speaker 2: supposed to wear the Cincinnati and.
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  Speaker 1: Clean, wonderful smelling place, wasn't it, Peter?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Lord, When I researched that, I just I was
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  Speaker 2: so glad that I never had to be near that place.
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  Speaker 2: And I can't imagine what people thought when they walked
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  Speaker 2: by it. Oh, they had bats of body parts that vas, yes,
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  Speaker 2: and they would steal corpses in various stages of decomposition,
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  Speaker 2: and that's what the medical students worked on.
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  Speaker 1: But they just left them laying around. That was what
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  Speaker 1: was so gross about it. It's like they had no
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  Speaker 1: regard whatsoever, not only for the dignity of the cadaver,
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  Speaker 1: but just the the intense, nasty, decaying flesh smell that
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  Speaker 1: they had to be surrounded by twenty four to seven
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  Speaker 1: trying to become a doctor.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, it's a Paul and John Scott Harrison is unique
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  Speaker 2: in our American history. He was not only the son
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  Speaker 2: of our ninth president, he was the father of Benjamin Harrison,
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  Speaker 2: who's also a president. Nobody else can tick that box.
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  Speaker 2: And also when his family found him, he was hanging
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  Speaker 2: on a rope in a pit at the end of
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  Speaker 2: a crank that hauled cadavers and bodies up, the bodies
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  Speaker 2: that they'd snatched, that hauled him up four floors to
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  Speaker 2: the top of that room where they can dissect him.
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  Speaker 1: Just horrible it is, you know, when you read it,
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  Speaker 1: it comes for us so vividly in Peter's awesome writing.
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  Speaker 1: It'll bring bile up in the back of your throat
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  Speaker 1: as you're contemplating. But it is a fascinating story. And
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  Speaker 1: of course you're going to talk about the guy from
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  Speaker 1: Wilmington who played a role in naming both the city
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  Speaker 1: of Denver and the state of Montana. You talked to Whitewater,
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  Speaker 1: Shaker Village, the Black Widow, which we talked about already,
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  Speaker 1: the Chansley Story. There's a whole bunch of beautiful, wonderful
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  Speaker 1: and very interesting Cincinnati of course related stories. And Peter
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  Speaker 1: regularly writes about events that happened here in greater Cincinnati area,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: like the Promised Land, how the Midwest was one. Get
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  Speaker 1: his I'll get all of his books. They're just fascinating
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  Speaker 1: reads there. I don't want to say easy reads, but
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  Speaker 1: they're just so interesting and compelling. I don't think I
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  Speaker 1: put your book down that you're doing the seminar on
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  Speaker 1: magical history ory. I don't think I put it down.
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  Speaker 1: I read a cover to cover. I just it just
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  Speaker 1: got right through it and it was great so my listeners.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Joe Strecker is going to add the book to the
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: blog page fifty five cares dot com along with the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: information about the Empower Youth seminar. You're doing it live
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  Speaker 1: at the Empower You Studios. Correct.
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  Speaker 2: Correct. I always enjoy being with that group. They're great people.
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  Speaker 2: They've done so many great things about sharing information that's
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  Speaker 2: important to all of us, and I'm really looking forward
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  Speaker 2: to it.
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  Speaker 1: Peter, what are you writing right now, you got another
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  Speaker 1: one in the works. I got to ask, well, I.
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  Speaker 2: Haven't started anything yet, Brian. I'm a little behind schedule
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  Speaker 2: for that, but I've been very busy with book signings,
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  Speaker 2: going out to visit people and telling him these stories
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  Speaker 2: just as I'm doing and empower you. And that's keeping
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  Speaker 2: me pretty busy.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm happy I know you are. I just was
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  Speaker 1: hoping you you already had. Well, you have a concept
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  Speaker 1: in the back of your mind. I'm going to take
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  Speaker 1: away from your statement there that at least have a
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  Speaker 1: concept and we can anxiously await yet another book.