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Short Stuff: The Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there. Everyone be quiet, let's get started.
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  Speaker 1: Ambrose Beers goes missing. This is a good one. This
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  Speaker 1: is so. Ambrose Beers was a writer, and he's described
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  Speaker 1: in this article. And this is from the old friends
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  Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Oh yeah, good, good plug. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: They still have some great, great short content out there
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  Speaker 1: that we can mind for these short stuffs. But he
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  Speaker 1: has described here as equal parts Mark Twain and Edgar
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Allan Poe is pretty good. Yeah. He was born in
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  Speaker 1: Ohio in eighteen forty two, and he was a journalist
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  Speaker 1: and like one of the big sort of early journalists
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  Speaker 1: to kind of supposedly one of the first ones to
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  Speaker 1: really make his byeline a brand in and of itself.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but he also wrote horror stories. He wrote
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  Speaker 1: horror short horror fiction. He wrote a lot of um.
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  Speaker 1: He was kind of his generation's voice about how the
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  Speaker 1: Civil War really was because he was one of the
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  Speaker 1: few writers of his day who had actually fought in
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  Speaker 1: the Civil War. That's right. I remember. The one that
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  Speaker 1: comes to mind for most people, probably that you read
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  Speaker 1: in school was an occurrence at al Creek Bridge. Great story. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: one of the classic American short stories of all time.
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  Speaker 1: He also wrote The Devil's Dictionary, which was his own
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  Speaker 1: take on words like um, ghosts are outward and visible
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  Speaker 1: signs of inward fears, or peace is just a period
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  Speaker 1: of cheating in between two periods of fighting. Just kind
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  Speaker 1: of scathing, sarcastic, bitter takes on humanity. And to kind
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  Speaker 1: of make it more succinct, I saw a Poetry Foundation
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  Speaker 1: description of him said he was a committed opponent of hypocrisy, prejudice, corruption,
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  Speaker 1: and had contempt for politics, religion, society, and conventional human values.
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  Speaker 1: So he's our kind of guy about to say he
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  Speaker 1: would really we should go get some coffee with him,
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  Speaker 1: and he he would have been one of the great
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  Speaker 1: American writers. A lot of people say he is, but
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  Speaker 1: he would have been one of the widely known great
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  Speaker 1: American writers had he ever gotten a novel together. But
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  Speaker 1: he didn't. He was a columnist, he was a short
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  Speaker 1: story writer, he was a correspondent, but he never made
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  Speaker 1: became a novelist. And he was partially bitter. He was
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  Speaker 1: bitter in part because of that. So when this article
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  Speaker 1: says he was a novelist that is a lie. Yes, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: So this dude named Don Swam wrote a book called
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  Speaker 1: The Assassination of Ambrose Beers colon. When is someone going
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  Speaker 1: to write a book without a colon? I think we
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  Speaker 1: need to colin a love story. And he seems to
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  Speaker 1: be sort of the guy who really is I think
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  Speaker 1: he runs a website on Ambrose Beers, is really carrying
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  Speaker 1: this torch forward for this person? And what's interesting beyond
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  Speaker 1: the life of Ambrose Beers is the disappearance and mysterious
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  Speaker 1: death of Ambrose Beers. Yeah. I was reading an l
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  Speaker 1: A Times article about this very thing, and they said
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  Speaker 1: that Ambrose Beers would have become a totally obscure American writer.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's true had he not made
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  Speaker 1: a great career choice at the end where he put
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  Speaker 1: a shroud of mystery over his own demise. That's what happened.
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  Speaker 1: No one knows what happened to Ambrose Beers. He disappeared
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  Speaker 1: and was never heard from. Starting in December of n Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there are there are a bunch of theories, and we're
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  Speaker 1: gonna throw some of them out there. Um over the
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  Speaker 1: next seven or eight minutes. One of them, is that
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  Speaker 1: he loved the Grand Canyon, and he loved it so much.
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  Speaker 1: He loved it like air wolf. He loved it so
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  Speaker 1: much that he wanted to become a part of it
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  Speaker 1: and leaped to his death. Uh, and went there to
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  Speaker 1: to leap to his death and die by suicide. That's
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  Speaker 1: one which is believable, as as we'll see you later on,
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  Speaker 1: it's plausible. Um. But the the main story, the one
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  Speaker 1: that most historians will point to as the story of
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  Speaker 1: what happened to him, is that in December of nine
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  Speaker 1: he left California to go down to Mexico to find
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  Speaker 1: Poncho Villa, who was one of three leaders of the
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  Speaker 1: Mexican Revolution um down there at the time, and that
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  Speaker 1: he either wanted to write a book about Poncho Villa,
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  Speaker 1: write some articles about him, or he wanted to take
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  Speaker 1: up arms alongside Poncho Villa because he was an old
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  Speaker 1: Confederate war vett who had nothing to lose at this point.
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  Speaker 1: He was a bitter, old drunk who had an acerbic
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  Speaker 1: wit and bitter take on everything. Um. And that is
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  Speaker 1: actually not totally out of the realm of possibility for
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  Speaker 1: why he was going down there. But the through The
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  Speaker 1: common general story is that he went down to Mexico
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  Speaker 1: to hang out with Poncho Villa for one reason or another,
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  Speaker 1: and that he was never heard from again at the age.
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  Speaker 1: So should we take a break, Ye, all right, We'll
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  Speaker 1: come right back and talk a little bit about what
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  Speaker 1: people speculate happened south of a border stop. Mm hm alright.
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  Speaker 1: So there are a lot. I mean, it seems like
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  Speaker 1: it's really hard to get a beat, a read, a
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  Speaker 1: beat on this a bead, because everything that seems like
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  Speaker 1: it might have really happened is disputed by somebody. It's
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  Speaker 1: not just that chuck in addition to that, or the
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  Speaker 1: reason the reason why it's disputed by somebody is because
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  Speaker 1: he almost You get the impression that he went to
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  Speaker 1: the trouble of setting it up so that his disappearance
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  Speaker 1: would be a mystery that no one would ever be
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  Speaker 1: able to figure it out. Perhaps, And it's also clear
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  Speaker 1: that in nineteen thirteen it was a lot easier to
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  Speaker 1: disap Pierre and no one ever knows what happens to
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  Speaker 1: you just and then he's gone. So it is generally believed, though,
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  Speaker 1: that he did go to Mexico, and he did uh
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  Speaker 1: ride with Poncho Villas, a seventy one year old Civil
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  Speaker 1: War veteran. It's just not um proven out exactly why
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  Speaker 1: he was there or how he necessarily died there, right right,
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  Speaker 1: Some people say firing squad, yes, which is supported by
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  Speaker 1: this letter. So his last letter was posted from Chihuahua, Mexico,
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  Speaker 1: which is where Poncho Villa was stationed in carrying out
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  Speaker 1: his his arm of the revolution. So we made it
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  Speaker 1: as far as Poncho Villa's home territory. Supposedly. Some people
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  Speaker 1: don't even believe that that's true, but that's where the
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  Speaker 1: last known letter from ambro Beers was postmarked, was Chihuahua, Mexico.
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  Speaker 1: And in this letter he says, goodbye. If you hear
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  Speaker 1: of my being stood up against the Mexican stone wall
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  Speaker 1: and shot to rags, please know that I think it
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  Speaker 1: is a pretty good way to depart this life. It
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  Speaker 1: beats old age disease or falling on the cellar stairs
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  Speaker 1: to be a gringo in Mexico. Ah, that is euthanasia.
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  Speaker 1: So this is the last letter he has, and he's
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  Speaker 1: in Chihuahua, Mexico, and then no one ever hears f
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  Speaker 1: him again. And he was going down to hang out
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  Speaker 1: with Poncho Villa. That would support the idea that he
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  Speaker 1: died at the hands of either Poncho Villa or maybe
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  Speaker 1: the Federals who Poncho Villa was fighting. Right. There are
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  Speaker 1: also people skeptics that say, you know, there really was
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  Speaker 1: no letter um and there was a notebook that belonged
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  Speaker 1: to a secretary that had a summary of a purported letter.
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  Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, but I mean heard that one. I
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  Speaker 1: think the man who wrote the book, Mr Swain, says
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  Speaker 1: there was a literal letter, right, That's what I've heard,
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  Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how that can be up for debate.
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  Speaker 1: Some people say that he had somebody take the letter
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  Speaker 1: down to Chihuahua, because you can give someone a letter,
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  Speaker 1: give him some money to take it down, and then
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  Speaker 1: have them mail it from Chiuauwa. Just because that last
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  Speaker 1: letter was posted from Chihuahua does not indisputably prove that
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  Speaker 1: Ambrose Beers was in Chihuahua at the end of ten
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  Speaker 1: that's right. There are some other people that said there's
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  Speaker 1: a priest named James Lenert who says that he was
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  Speaker 1: executed by firing squad uh and this was in um
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  Speaker 1: Sierra Mohata and that he never made it to Chihuahua. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and that would have been the federal troops in a
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  Speaker 1: mine in a mining camp who found out he was
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  Speaker 1: going to aid ponto Villa and kill him. The idea
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  Speaker 1: that he died at either the hands of or the
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  Speaker 1: order of Poncho Villa came from a guy named Adolf
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  Speaker 1: Danziger de Castro who wrote a very obscure biography in
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  Speaker 1: on Ambrose Beers, and in it he was one of
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  Speaker 1: De Castro was one of Ambrose Beers's drinking buddies. He
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  Speaker 1: said that he went down to Mexico and had dinner
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  Speaker 1: with Poncho Villa to find out what had happened to
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  Speaker 1: Ambrose Beers and eventually coaxed from Poncho Villa that Ambrose
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  Speaker 1: Beers had died because he had gone drinking and criticizing
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  Speaker 1: Poncho Villa in punch of He didn't like that, and
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  Speaker 1: so he was killed because he ran he shot his
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  Speaker 1: mouth off, which was very believable. Yeah, it's entirely possible.
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  Speaker 1: And the fact that this guy knew him. Uh, A
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  Speaker 1: lot of historians say this seems authentic. That's really possible
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  Speaker 1: that that happened. There was also a journalist named Jake
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  Speaker 1: Silverstein and early two thousand's that said, Uh, he got
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  Speaker 1: into this theory that he never made it to Mexico
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  Speaker 1: and he died in Texas. Uh. He dug up a
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  Speaker 1: letter to the editor of a little newspaper in Marfa,
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  Speaker 1: Texas from a man who said, he's buried here in
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  Speaker 1: an unmarked grave because I picked up a hitchhiker once
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  Speaker 1: who fought for the federal forces, the Mexican federal forces
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  Speaker 1: when he's a teenager. And he said that he picked
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  Speaker 1: up an old gringo who called himself Ambrosia, and uh,
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  Speaker 1: he said, hey, can you pay me to get me
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  Speaker 1: back into the US. And during this trip he talked
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  Speaker 1: about books that he had written, and one had the
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  Speaker 1: word devil in the title. And he died of pneumonia
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen and was buried in Marfa, Texas. Mhm, okay,
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  Speaker 1: that's just as legitimate as anything else. What about the
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  Speaker 1: one that he actually he like like somebody was saying
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  Speaker 1: that he gave the letter to somebody else to post
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  Speaker 1: from Chihuahua and he went to the Grand Canyon and
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  Speaker 1: died by suicide. That that was how he died, and
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  Speaker 1: that he was throwing everybody off the trail. This one
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  Speaker 1: is actually supported by a couple of things. His son
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  Speaker 1: um died by suicide. He spoke of suicide as a
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  Speaker 1: noble out that it was somebody's right to make that choice.
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  Speaker 1: And then also, Um he did a tour of Civil
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  Speaker 1: War battlefields in the United States right before he went
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  Speaker 1: to Mexico, So it's possible that he was in the
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  Speaker 1: kind of mindset that he would have been in to
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  Speaker 1: to take his own life. Who knows, but that's a
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  Speaker 1: I mean, that's why we'll probably never know what happened
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  Speaker 1: to him. Because each of these is really plausible, and
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  Speaker 1: each of them can be not constructed but arrivaled by
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  Speaker 1: the next theory too. None of the theories are just
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  Speaker 1: like outlandish, They're all pretty pretty reasonable and supported by
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  Speaker 1: some factor other. Yeah, and there was one final one
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  Speaker 1: that this is from Swain's book, that Beer's actually went
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  Speaker 1: to Mexico and fought and lived and then retired to
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  Speaker 1: Saratoga Springs, New York, where he fell in love and
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  Speaker 1: then died of asthma. And that was of course entirely fiction,
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  Speaker 1: I think so, right, Yeah, because that was his book
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  Speaker 1: was the Ambrose Beer's love story was fiction, and I
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  Speaker 1: think that's what happens to him in the book. You
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  Speaker 1: know that movie, you know, the movie Old Gringo with
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  Speaker 1: Gregory Peck that came out Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda
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  Speaker 1: and Jimmy Smits. It reimagines Ambrose Beers's death at the
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  Speaker 1: hands of one of ponto Villa's generals, shot in the
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  Speaker 1: back and supposedly from dust till Don three, not supposedly.
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  Speaker 1: I never saw it, but that tackles ambro Beers. Ambro Beers,
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  Speaker 1: he's a character in it. Yeah, and I think he
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  Speaker 1: lives in in that in Old gringoy Dies. Well, if
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  Speaker 1: you know what happened Ambrose Beers, we want to know
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  Speaker 1: about it. You can send us a message to Stuff
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  Speaker 1: Podcasts at I heeart radio dot com and uh, I
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  Speaker 1: think that's it right, that's it. Well, then short stuff
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  Speaker 1: is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
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  Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.