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Can You Dig It? · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's cabinet of curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: heart radio and grim and mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of curiosities. It's always the quiet ones, the folks who
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  Speaker 1: don't say much, who don't act up or lash out.
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  Speaker 1: They're the people usually with something to hide. Sure they
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  Speaker 1: go to their jobs every day, they don't do anything
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  Speaker 1: out of the ordinary. They might even seem perfectly fine
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  Speaker 1: on the surface. They're the kind of folks you wave
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  Speaker 1: too on your way to work in the morning, or
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  Speaker 1: their kids might play with yours, and then suddenly they're
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  Speaker 1: on the news for doing something strange and horrifying. But
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  Speaker 1: Not Harrison G dire. He was different. Oh, he had
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  Speaker 1: plenty to hide. He just wasn't quiet about it. Harrison
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  Speaker 1: was born in Rhinebeck, New York, in eighteen sixty six.
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  Speaker 1: His father was a chemist who had done well for
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  Speaker 1: himself and had left his fortune behind to support his family.
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  Speaker 1: After his death in eighteen seventy five, Harrison's upbringing was
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  Speaker 1: what could best be described as eccentric. His mother was
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  Speaker 1: a devout spiritualist, while his sister had a fascination with
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  Speaker 1: ghostly tales. Also living with them was a homeopath named
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  Speaker 1: Lucy Hudson and her relative, George Hudson. The Hudson family
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  Speaker 1: treated young Harrison as one of their own, teaching him
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  Speaker 1: how to play piano and instilling in him a passion
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  Speaker 1: for natural history. As Harrison got older, he took an
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  Speaker 1: interest in butterflies and, although he graduated from M I
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  Speaker 1: t with the bachelor's degree in chemistry in eighteen eighty nine,
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  Speaker 1: he sought a career in the natural sciences. Instead, he
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  Speaker 1: wrote papers about moths and butterflies and composed his master's
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  Speaker 1: thesis at Columbia on the subject of Lepidoptera. He was
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  Speaker 1: extremely influential in his field, naming roughly three thousand species
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  Speaker 1: of insects and six thousand types of Lepidopterans by the
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  Speaker 1: end of his career. He also raised all kinds of
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  Speaker 1: caterpillars and insects on his own, which aided in his
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  Speaker 1: thorough and crucial research. One might have thought that Harrison's
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  Speaker 1: obsession with insects would have made him a kind of
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  Speaker 1: boring guy, a hum drum fellow who was more comfortable
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  Speaker 1: with his nose in a textbook instead about with friends. Well,
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  Speaker 1: he was anything but boring, but he definitely didn't spend
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  Speaker 1: a lot of time with friends, perhaps because he had
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  Speaker 1: so few of them. For one, Harrison had some serious compulsions.
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  Speaker 1: He would take notes endlessly, as though there wasn't enough
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  Speaker 1: paper in the world to collect them all. He often
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  Speaker 1: jotted things down on the backs of receipts and letters,
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  Speaker 1: anything within reach. He also had his own system of
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  Speaker 1: symbols and shorthand that only he was able to read.
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  Speaker 1: His colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution had troubled deciphering his notes.
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  Speaker 1: As if that wasn't bad enough, Harrison's fellow entomologists didn't
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  Speaker 1: care to be around him either. He would criticize them
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  Speaker 1: to the point where they refused to work with him.
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  Speaker 1: One man resigned his position at a museum until Harrison
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  Speaker 1: was no longer conducting research there. But Harrison didn't alienate everyone.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, he was quite the ladies man, entertaining the
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  Speaker 1: affections of not just one but two women simultaneously. There
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  Speaker 1: was his wife, Zella, and another woman named Wileska pollock,
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  Speaker 1: but his wandering affections took their toll on his mental stability.
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  Speaker 1: Even after he divorced Zella to be with will Eska,
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  Speaker 1: he challenged his compulsions into a new project. He started digging.
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  Speaker 1: Little by little, the eccentric entomologist dug a series of
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  Speaker 1: underground tunnels beneath two of the homes that he owned
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  Speaker 1: in Washington D C. He dug downward, creating multiple levels
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  Speaker 1: with stairs and electrical lighting throughout. He even lined the
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  Speaker 1: walls with bricks. The tunnels were dug between nineteen o
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  Speaker 1: six and nineteen sixteen, after which Harrison moved West to California.
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  Speaker 1: But later in nineteen twenty four, a truck happened to
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  Speaker 1: be driving by one of his homes in Washington D
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  Speaker 1: C when the driver felt one of his tires sinking.
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  Speaker 1: A hole had opened up in the street revealing the
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  Speaker 1: tunnel system below. Harrison confessed a few days after the
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  Speaker 1: accident to having dug the tunnels in his spare time.
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  Speaker 1: But that wasn't the strangest part of the whole ordeal.
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  Speaker 1: Police and others found German newspapers dated nineteen seventeen and
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen inside the tunnels the years we were fighting
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  Speaker 1: in World War One, and that begs the more curious
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  Speaker 1: question if Harrison Dyer had been away in California during
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  Speaker 1: that period, who had been using his tunnels? Everyone deserves
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  Speaker 1: a fair shot. Innocent until proven guilty is how the
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  Speaker 1: American justice system is supposed to work, although things don't
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  Speaker 1: always go that way. But in eighteen forty nine, justice
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  Speaker 1: truly was blind in what was declared one of the
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  Speaker 1: fairest and most impartial murder trials in American history. And
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  Speaker 1: the WHO done it wasn't even the most fascinating part.
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  Speaker 1: It was the WHO solved it. Sixty year old George
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  Speaker 1: Parkman was a member of the Boston elite. He had
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  Speaker 1: come from a rich family and owned several tenement buildings
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  Speaker 1: in the city. He would walk from one slum to
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  Speaker 1: the next collecting his rents at the same time every month,
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  Speaker 1: and heaven help the person who couldn't pay up is he.
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  Speaker 1: Aside from his job as a landlord, Parkman was also
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  Speaker 1: a loan shark, and anyone who couldn't pay back what
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  Speaker 1: they owed found themselves in a whole mess of trouble,
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  Speaker 1: such as doctor John White, webster, Webster was a graduate
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  Speaker 1: from Harvard Medical School and also a professor there. However,
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  Speaker 1: he had stopped practicing as a doctor and turned to
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  Speaker 1: teaching chemistry and geology instead. He wasn't making as much
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  Speaker 1: money as before and he was in severe debt, so
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  Speaker 1: webster had gone to Parkman for help in maintaining his lifestyle.
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  Speaker 1: There was just one problem. He couldn't pay Parkman back.
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  Speaker 1: He was terrible at managing his finances and wound up
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  Speaker 1: mortgaging his gem collection to Parkman to cover some of
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  Speaker 1: what he owed. As things got worse, the former after
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  Speaker 1: went ahead and mortgaged the gems to two other creditors,
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  Speaker 1: right under Parkman's nose. What he didn't realize that the time, though,
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  Speaker 1: was that one of those creditors happened to be Parkman's
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  Speaker 1: brother in law, who told him about what webster was
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  Speaker 1: trying to pull. Parkman went to the medical school and
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  Speaker 1: gave him the ultimatum pay up or face the consequences.
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  Speaker 1: Webster promised that he would have his money by the
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  Speaker 1: Friday before Thanksgiving. So Loan Shark Parkman showed up at
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  Speaker 1: around one that afternoon to collect what he was owed,
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  Speaker 1: and he was never heard from again. His family believed
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  Speaker 1: that he had been mugged for the wads of money
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  Speaker 1: that he often carried. It had happened before, so they
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  Speaker 1: reached out to the police, who started asking around town
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  Speaker 1: for information. Local hooligans hadn't seen him and there was
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  Speaker 1: no sign of him in the Charles River either. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: they headed over to the medical school to search for
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  Speaker 1: any signs of him. Their first stop was the basement
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  Speaker 1: apartment of one of Webster's coworkers, a man named Ephraim
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  Speaker 1: little field. Little field watched as the officers poured over
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  Speaker 1: his belongings and looked through his closets to no avail.
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  Speaker 1: Little field became their prime suspect. Since he lived in
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  Speaker 1: the school's basement, he was able to procure dead bodies
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  Speaker 1: from local grave robbers at any time, day or night.
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  Speaker 1: He also made money on the side by disposing of
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  Speaker 1: cadavers from accidental deaths as a result of poor medical care.
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  Speaker 1: Little field was known to the police already, but they
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  Speaker 1: couldn't find any evidence in his apartment, so they moved
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  Speaker 1: on to webster himself. The professor was hold up in
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  Speaker 1: his lab next door when he let the police into
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  Speaker 1: conduct their search and, as with little field's apartment. They
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  Speaker 1: came up empty there as well. There was, however, a
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  Speaker 1: latrine and a locked closet in the lab that the
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  Speaker 1: officers asked about. Webster assured them that it was locked
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  Speaker 1: for good reason. It was full of explosive materials. The
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  Speaker 1: cops left it at that and went on with their
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  Speaker 1: investigation elsewhere. But little field knew something was wrong. You See,
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  Speaker 1: he spent time in the man's lab as well, usually
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  Speaker 1: when webster was out teaching or gone for the night.
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  Speaker 1: But now whenever webster left his lab he locked the
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  Speaker 1: door behind him. Webster had also bought little field an
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  Speaker 1: eight pound Turkey for him for Thanksgiving, an unexpected gesture
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  Speaker 1: from a man who was often in debt and didn't
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  Speaker 1: really interact much with his neighbor. So on Thanksgiving, when
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  Speaker 1: the medical building was empty, little field took a hatchet
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  Speaker 1: and a chisel and started to dig his way through
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  Speaker 1: the wall into the pit under Webster's private latrine, and
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  Speaker 1: after a few hours of hacking away, he found exactly
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  Speaker 1: what he was looking for. The police recalled once again,
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  Speaker 1: this time to go through the entirety of Webster's lab.
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  Speaker 1: Little field, you see, had discovered a human pelvis inside
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  Speaker 1: the latrine, while officers found dentures and bones in the
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  Speaker 1: professor's furnace, and perhaps the most unsettling discovery of all
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  Speaker 1: was made in Webster's tea chest. Inside was the gem
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  Speaker 1: collection that he had mortgaged three times under, which was
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  Speaker 1: a rib cage with the leg inside of it. It seems,
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  Speaker 1: George Parkman, well what was left of him, had finally
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  Speaker 1: been found. Word about the murder spread throughout Boston. It
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  Speaker 1: was the talk of the town. But who had been
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  Speaker 1: behind it? Had it been the esteemed professor or Ephraim Littlefield,
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  Speaker 1: the man who seemed to know just where to find
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  Speaker 1: the body? Maybe he had killed Parkman so that the
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  Speaker 1: school had another corpse to dissect, or perhaps someone had
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  Speaker 1: come to him to get rid of it for a
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  Speaker 1: small fee. Everyone was going to find out. Webster was
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  Speaker 1: charged with Parkman's murder and put on trial. It was
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  Speaker 1: presided over by Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, who happened to
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  Speaker 1: be the father in law of Moby Dick Novelist Herman Melville.
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  Speaker 1: It was a case of he said, he said, but
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  Speaker 1: after all the evidence had been presented and the witnesses
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  Speaker 1: had testified, the jury came to an easy verdict. Dr
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  Speaker 1: Webster was guilty. It was a shock to everyone, especially webster,
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  Speaker 1: who believed that he would be acquitted due to his
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  Speaker 1: prominent status within the medical school and the Wider Boston community.
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  Speaker 1: Unlike little field, he had graduated from Harvard. He was
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  Speaker 1: a professor. He must have been framed by a jealous colleague,
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  Speaker 1: but that wasn't the case. After the verdict was announced,
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  Speaker 1: webster confessed to having killed Parkman by bashing him in
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  Speaker 1: the temple with a piece of wood. He was ultimately
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  Speaker 1: hanged for his crimes on August of eighteen fifty and
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  Speaker 1: as for Ephraim little field, it was true that he
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  Speaker 1: worked alongside webster, but he wasn't a doctor, nor was
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  Speaker 1: he a professor. Little field wasn't rich or powerful. He
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  Speaker 1: was just a resourceful and curious man with a hunch
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  Speaker 1: that had blown a murder investigation wide open. Oh and
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  Speaker 1: he also happened to be the school's janitor. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the cabinet of curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple podcasts or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting curiosities PODCAST DOT COM. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me, Aaron Manky. In partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: stuff works, I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series and Television Show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the world
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  Speaker 1: of Lore Dot come. And until next time, stay curious, yeah,