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The Phantom Barber of Pascagoula · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super
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Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram and a very special shout out to
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Speaker 1: our super producer Max Williams. I've ben Noel. Max is
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Speaker 1: with us today. He's with us corporeally, or at least
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Speaker 1: in in in zoom form, which is basically it's good.
0:51
Speaker 1: That's about the best we can hope for these days.
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Speaker 1: Digital poorly will work. We'll work on that whatever whatever
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Speaker 1: it takes. Max, would you like to say a few
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Speaker 1: words to mark the occasion? Hey, everyone, I guess these
1:01
Speaker 1: are first few words. Yeah, super excited to be here. Um,
1:05
Speaker 1: super fun, I mean first time here, so I don't
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Speaker 1: know that's fun all I got to set. First time lurker,
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Speaker 1: no long time lurker, first time talker. Yes, welcome Max.
1:16
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us today. No, Max has been
1:19
Speaker 1: doing a time of work with us behind the scenes.
1:22
Speaker 1: And you know how we are. We're big fans of
1:25
Speaker 1: of grabbing our friends and colleagues for the show, and
1:29
Speaker 1: sometimes against their will, but they usually warm up too
1:32
Speaker 1: the idea eventually. Yes, yeah, yeah, concentus key. So today
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Speaker 1: Max Noel and I are exploring uh strange tale from Pascagoula, Mississippi.
1:45
Speaker 1: No Nol have you spent much time in Mississippi? I
1:48
Speaker 1: spent basically effectively zero time in Mississippi. I imagine that
1:52
Speaker 1: I have passed through it. Nothing really specifically comes to
1:56
Speaker 1: minds as far as like a notable occurrence in my
2:00
Speaker 1: life taking place in Mississippi. But I do love the
2:03
Speaker 1: name Pascagoula. It sounds like kind of spooky. I think
2:06
Speaker 1: it's because of the ghoul part. Maybe it makes me
2:08
Speaker 1: think that it's like some sort of creepy town where
2:11
Speaker 1: you know, ghoules live. But I don't think that's the
2:13
Speaker 1: case at all. But there were some creepy occurrences that
2:16
Speaker 1: took place in Pascagoula three years into World War Two,
2:19
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen forty two. It was something
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Speaker 1: of a ghoul of a bit of a creeper, a
2:25
Speaker 1: lurker of the night um. But thankfully there were no
2:28
Speaker 1: throats cut, there were no people smothered with pillows where
2:32
Speaker 1: they slept, but they there were some non consensual haircuts afoot. Yeah, Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: that's that's where this already starts out in a pretty
2:41
Speaker 1: unique way. So imagine you're in law and order Pascagoula.
2:47
Speaker 1: Do you get to the get to the scene of
2:53
Speaker 1: the crime where someone has been I shouldn't laugh, Where
2:57
Speaker 1: someone has been in a way assaulted but not sexually,
3:01
Speaker 1: and they haven't been physically harmed in terms of their limbs,
3:05
Speaker 1: but their egos may have taken a tremendous blow because
3:11
Speaker 1: their hair was gone, and I don't think they were
3:14
Speaker 1: shaped there. Their entire heads weren't shaved, but they were
3:18
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, they were slapdash locks cut off, right. Yeah,
3:22
Speaker 1: I mean we'll get we'll get more into the aesthetics
3:24
Speaker 1: of it as we go along. But like I said,
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Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna go with the phrase, like you
3:29
Speaker 1: do for ambulance has been non consensual ubers, these are
3:32
Speaker 1: non consensual haircuts. In nineteen forty two, this is all
3:36
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, surrounding this war effort. The US
3:40
Speaker 1: was absolutely in a nasty, nasty state socially society. Pearl Harbor,
3:46
Speaker 1: you know, obviously freed everybody out and was a real
3:49
Speaker 1: kind of like come to Jesus moment in terms of like, okay,
3:52
Speaker 1: maybe we're not as invincible as we thought against outside enemies. Um.
3:56
Speaker 1: And so all of these young, strapping men went off
3:59
Speaker 1: to fight that Jarman's in the Japanese overseas. Uh. And
4:03
Speaker 1: of course, you know, as we know, like with um
4:05
Speaker 1: Rosie the Riveter, in that whole campaign, women were taking
4:09
Speaker 1: over all these factory jobs that were once held down
4:11
Speaker 1: by men, and these small towns suddenly became responsible for
4:16
Speaker 1: generating tons of stuff needed for the war effort. Yeah, exactly.
4:21
Speaker 1: Pascagoulu is one of the many historically smaller towns that
4:25
Speaker 1: have been transformed by the war. So they originally had
4:30
Speaker 1: a population of about five thousand if you want a
4:32
Speaker 1: ballpark it and in a very short amount of time
4:36
Speaker 1: that ballooned it trebled to fifteen thousand. And a larger
4:42
Speaker 1: population means a couple of things. Right first, it can
4:44
Speaker 1: be a huge boost for the local businesses, but it
4:48
Speaker 1: also means, you know it, to put it loosely, more people,
4:53
Speaker 1: more problems. The police force is overwhelmed trying to keep
4:58
Speaker 1: all these newcomer is in line. There's an uptick in
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Speaker 1: drunken brawls, break ins, all the petty street crime, but
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Speaker 1: by far the phantom barber was the menace that took
5:13
Speaker 1: people most by surprise and that most people came to
5:16
Speaker 1: worry about on a nightly basis. I do want to
5:19
Speaker 1: point out that sometimes just a quick amendment here, sometimes
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Speaker 1: he was able to get a full head of hair
5:24
Speaker 1: off people. I think. I mean, obviously, this is more
5:27
Speaker 1: innocuous than a serial killer who was building some kind
5:29
Speaker 1: of maccab shrine out of the severed limbs of his victim.
5:33
Speaker 1: Which gotta wonder what the phantom barber was doing with
5:36
Speaker 1: this Pilford hair. It's interesting though, he had kind of
5:40
Speaker 1: a leg up because of the kind of army occupation
5:44
Speaker 1: of this town, because the Army had something called blackout
5:47
Speaker 1: regulations that made it easier for him to to get
5:49
Speaker 1: his dirty deed done. He absolutely at this time resources
5:54
Speaker 1: were out of premium, and it wasn't uncommon for either
5:59
Speaker 1: do tech aconomic concerns or due to security concerns. It
6:03
Speaker 1: wasn't uncommon for the army to institute restrictions on things.
6:08
Speaker 1: You know, food could be rationed at times, rubber steel,
6:12
Speaker 1: those industries were affected, and then blackout regulations were considered.
6:18
Speaker 1: In this case, they were considered a security matter or
6:22
Speaker 1: a patriotic duty, because the idea was that if you've
6:26
Speaker 1: turned off lights electric lights at night, then it would
6:31
Speaker 1: be more difficult for enemy forces to figure out where
6:35
Speaker 1: they should bomb. Which makes sense. People could have lights
6:38
Speaker 1: on at their houses, right, they just had to have
6:40
Speaker 1: blackout curtains exactly. Um, but I think maybe, yeah, I
6:44
Speaker 1: don't know. Blackout cooms to me seemed like a little
6:46
Speaker 1: bit more of a maybe a modern innovation, But that's
6:49
Speaker 1: not necessarily true. They would have had to use maybe
6:52
Speaker 1: cardboard or even paint the windows, you know, to have
6:55
Speaker 1: them be opaque so the light wouldn't come in. But
6:57
Speaker 1: I think rather than do that, some people maybe just
6:59
Speaker 1: turn the light out a little earlier than normal. Yeah,
7:02
Speaker 1: it seems less hassle, right, it doesn't. Remember that episode
7:05
Speaker 1: we did about the very innovative Frenchman who built the
7:09
Speaker 1: tiny scale model of of Paris to try to throw
7:13
Speaker 1: off the bombers. Similarly, right, because if they killed the
7:16
Speaker 1: lights in the actual city and they built this kind
7:19
Speaker 1: of you know, model where from the sky would look
7:22
Speaker 1: much like you were seeing the Paris skyline, you would
7:26
Speaker 1: only be able to achieve that if actual Paris was
7:28
Speaker 1: totally blacked out. So it's all tracks, and let's let's
7:32
Speaker 1: look at how these crimes began. As you said, no,
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Speaker 1: this begins in nineteen forty two, on Friday June five,
7:41
Speaker 1: two women living at a convent called Our Lady of Victories,
7:47
Speaker 1: one Mary Evelyn Briggs and one Edna Marie Hidel. They
7:51
Speaker 1: were shocked when they saw a guy climbing out of
7:55
Speaker 1: their bedroom window, and they saw him as he was
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Speaker 1: leaving h They were unharmed, but each of them was
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Speaker 1: missing a lock of hair, and max if we could
8:12
Speaker 1: get a little like um, something kind of unsolved mystery vibe,
8:17
Speaker 1: but not close enough to that to get us sued
8:19
Speaker 1: while we give you a dramatic reading from the Greenville
8:23
Speaker 1: News and only want to do the honors on this one. Oh,
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Speaker 1: by all means been The only victim of the hair
8:30
Speaker 1: shere who woke in time to see the barber was
8:33
Speaker 1: Mary Evelyn Bridges at Our Lady of Victories convent. I
8:37
Speaker 1: saw a figure of a kind of short, fat man,
8:40
Speaker 1: she said, bending over me with something shiny in his hand.
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Speaker 1: And he was fooling with my hand. When he saw
8:47
Speaker 1: me open my eyes, he said, I yelled. He jumped
8:51
Speaker 1: out the window, so he had to be an at
8:53
Speaker 1: least kind of decent shape. He's jumping through windows and whatnot.
8:58
Speaker 1: Look at this time, so w aller to the situation
9:01
Speaker 1: with the mad gas or everybody in town, everybody in
9:05
Speaker 1: the nation is pretty paranoid. Things are tense. Uh, there's
9:10
Speaker 1: a lot of propaganda asking you to consider whether or
9:13
Speaker 1: not your neighbor is indeed a spy. So this very
9:17
Speaker 1: weird attack didn't do much to make people feel safer
9:20
Speaker 1: in their homes. And by the time the next Monday
9:24
Speaker 1: rolls around, the town is rife with stories and rumors.
9:29
Speaker 1: In the game of telephone is already beginning. People are embellishing,
9:33
Speaker 1: adding details, and this we can only imagine may have
9:38
Speaker 1: been an incentive of sort to the Frowler. And this
9:43
Speaker 1: is where we go. You know what, We're not gonna
9:45
Speaker 1: maybe we call this Law and Order Pascagoula, but maybe
9:48
Speaker 1: it's the episode that leads us to the spinoff Law
9:50
Speaker 1: and order hair crime. Exactly. There's a special unit what
9:55
Speaker 1: what what is it? Uh? In the criminal justice system,
9:58
Speaker 1: some crimes are of uh what is it? Hairsuit nature?
10:02
Speaker 1: Maybe a hairy person? Yeah, exactly, Um, what's that word here? Hairsuit?
10:07
Speaker 1: Doesn't that refer to someone that's Harry. Yeah, I gotta
10:10
Speaker 1: got it. These are their stories. But anyway, Yeah, it's like,
10:14
Speaker 1: to me, though, this is scary because I look at
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Speaker 1: cutting a lock of hair as sort of a pervy, creepy,
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Speaker 1: fetishy thing. Um that that is how I see it,
10:24
Speaker 1: unless he again, he has some like, you know, grand
10:26
Speaker 1: scheme of building the ultimate wig Frankenstein together. That's still
10:30
Speaker 1: creepy in pervy in and of itself. But like, we
10:32
Speaker 1: know that people have like hair fetishes. But it's interesting
10:35
Speaker 1: because hair, you know, is ultimately a waste product. Um.
10:40
Speaker 1: There's a really great article in the New statesman um
10:43
Speaker 1: that kind of breaks the very unusual and fraught human
10:48
Speaker 1: hair trade down. Apparently it has quite a rich political backstory,
10:54
Speaker 1: but it's true. I mean, you know, like wigs made
10:57
Speaker 1: of human hair are the more sought after ones and
10:59
Speaker 1: more expend so my kid is really into wigs. For example,
11:02
Speaker 1: the synthetic ones are apparently a lot more difficult to style.
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Speaker 1: But there are other historical uses for human hair. For example,
11:09
Speaker 1: it can be used to strengthen kind of mud and
11:13
Speaker 1: dung wall, you know, situations in like adobe huts or
11:18
Speaker 1: in Indian villages where they're using. This is like kind
11:21
Speaker 1: of like a conduit to bind things together. It can
11:24
Speaker 1: be used in in Irish vegetable gardens. Um hair is
11:28
Speaker 1: sometimes mixed with other substances to repel snails um and
11:32
Speaker 1: it can be woven into mats. And I always forget
11:35
Speaker 1: about this Oneman, but it can be used to soak
11:37
Speaker 1: up oil spills. Yeah, yeah, it can. It can also
11:41
Speaker 1: be wound into ropes that can be well generally they're
11:46
Speaker 1: put around rickshaws to word off bad luck. But you're right.
11:50
Speaker 1: The hair trade, the human hair trade and specific is
11:54
Speaker 1: pretty old. It was also not always super happy fun
11:58
Speaker 1: time for the people of volved in the trade. In
12:01
Speaker 1: eighteen forty, Thomas Trollope with an E watched hair dealers
12:07
Speaker 1: rounding up peasant girls and sharing them like sheep. And
12:10
Speaker 1: if you were in prisons, workhouses or hospitals in England
12:15
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, you might find your head shaved
12:19
Speaker 1: and those institutions might sell your hair for an extra
12:23
Speaker 1: bit of income. And it's weird because this was such
12:28
Speaker 1: a problem, as The New Statesman reports that during some
12:32
Speaker 1: waves of US immigration, immigrants who consider themselves hair dealers
12:38
Speaker 1: were actually barred from Ellis Islands. Still they were able
12:41
Speaker 1: to get in and soon there was a booming hair
12:46
Speaker 1: industry in the Big Apple in New York City itself.
12:49
Speaker 1: That's right, I just want to go back to like
12:51
Speaker 1: the you know, the shaving of someone's head, especially a
12:54
Speaker 1: woman when they're incarcerated, for example. It's like a dehumanizing
12:59
Speaker 1: thing to do, right, It's like saying like you are
13:01
Speaker 1: no longer you no longer have an identity because so
13:04
Speaker 1: many people tie their sense of self to the way
13:07
Speaker 1: they look, and so much of the way some people
13:09
Speaker 1: look is tied to the way they wear their hair.
13:11
Speaker 1: So it really it's kind of a twofold thing, right, yeah, yeah,
13:14
Speaker 1: And you know, there's ancient precedence to this. We can
13:19
Speaker 1: rightly assume that many people from earlier cultures felt roughly
13:24
Speaker 1: the same, like there's the One of the most infamous
13:27
Speaker 1: stories of non consensual haircuts comes from the story of
13:31
Speaker 1: Sampson right where he has where he has his hair
13:35
Speaker 1: and then and there by his strength removed because he
13:39
Speaker 1: gets he gets suckered in by a con artist. But
13:42
Speaker 1: there are newer versions of these crimes. Because the industry
13:47
Speaker 1: is so lucrative, the underground element gets involved and before,
13:52
Speaker 1: way before the phantom Barber of Pascagoula, there were already
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Speaker 1: hair criminals and they were robbing, particularly women, of their hair.
14:03
Speaker 1: This was like a well known crime. It was in
14:06
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three The Hairdressers Journal wrote a piece about
14:11
Speaker 1: this trend, both the warn people and to sell more
14:15
Speaker 1: editions of the Hairdresser's Journal, Max kicking that music again perfect.
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Speaker 1: Even in the present day, it has happened over and
14:25
Speaker 1: over again that a good crop of hair has been
14:27
Speaker 1: laid and wait for and shorn from the trembling victim
14:30
Speaker 1: who has only been too glad to get free with
14:34
Speaker 1: but the loss of her hair. So they're saying, hey,
14:37
Speaker 1: at least they didn't die. Waca waca waka, no doubt.
14:41
Speaker 1: The Times of London actually reported on this uh in
14:44
Speaker 1: April of eighteen nine, with the headline hair thieves not
14:48
Speaker 1: alarmist at all. An American paper states that, in consequence
14:52
Speaker 1: of the demand for hair of peculiar colors and shades,
14:55
Speaker 1: a new brand of cleptic industry because I love that
14:58
Speaker 1: cleptic industry has sprung up in New Walk. The trusses
15:01
Speaker 1: dangling behind the head are easy prey, so that's correct.
15:05
Speaker 1: People are literally running up behind these women and then
15:10
Speaker 1: trying to get as much hair as they can as
15:12
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. This is, to say the least, and
15:15
Speaker 1: a troubling, if not traumatic experience. And you'll see other
15:19
Speaker 1: reports from different magazines and papers of the day in
15:24
Speaker 1: Europe and in the US. But there's something else at
15:29
Speaker 1: play here, you see, there's not there. There are people
15:33
Speaker 1: stealing hair for a financial motive, but then there are
15:36
Speaker 1: also people who have frankly a fetish as their primary motivator.
15:41
Speaker 1: And when they cut off someone's hair, overwhelmingly a woman's hair,
15:46
Speaker 1: they're not planning to sell it. They covet it, they
15:48
Speaker 1: take it home, they take they hide it, they touch
15:52
Speaker 1: and cress and smell at it. It's it's weird. It's
15:54
Speaker 1: like a control over someone. I mentioned that at the
15:58
Speaker 1: top of the show. That definitely feels a little bit
16:01
Speaker 1: more like what this phantom barber was up to, especially
16:04
Speaker 1: with the whole home invasion aspect of it. Uh. And
16:07
Speaker 1: the thing that I was getting out that I didn't
16:08
Speaker 1: quite get to um is it feels like there's potential
16:11
Speaker 1: for escalation here. A lot of times, you know, maybe
16:14
Speaker 1: someone who has the potential to be rapist or a
16:17
Speaker 1: murderer will start off kind of like edging at the
16:21
Speaker 1: ultimate crime, right, Like you start off by breaking in
16:24
Speaker 1: and cutting a lock of hair, but then that stops
16:26
Speaker 1: doing it for you, and then you have to, like,
16:27
Speaker 1: you know, take it to the next level. And that's
16:29
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you see in those Law and
16:30
Speaker 1: Order episodes all the time, and it would certainly be
16:32
Speaker 1: addressed in Law and Order hair crimes. But these uh,
16:36
Speaker 1: hair fetishists. There's a couple of names for them that
16:39
Speaker 1: seem maybe a little dated or like they were coined
16:41
Speaker 1: back in these days, but I've never heard of these before,
16:45
Speaker 1: and they're fascinating. One of them is called plate cutter.
16:48
Speaker 1: Oh that's p L a I T. Correct or hair despoilers,
16:54
Speaker 1: which kind of makes me think that they're doing something
16:57
Speaker 1: to the hair afterwards when they get at home. Yeah, yeah,
17:01
Speaker 1: hopefully they're just watching it. But this is this is
17:05
Speaker 1: a family show. There's there's also I do want to
17:08
Speaker 1: step back and point out another huge piece of mythology
17:14
Speaker 1: and folklore here, which is that hair, along with things
17:18
Speaker 1: like teeth or nail clippings. Toe and fingernail clippings are
17:23
Speaker 1: are often considered to have religious or even magical significance.
17:28
Speaker 1: It's a true story. Like if you get your hair
17:30
Speaker 1: cut in some parts of the world today and the
17:32
Speaker 1: common practices to burn it so that a miscreant magician
17:37
Speaker 1: will not gather it for some nefarious use. Well, and
17:40
Speaker 1: let's not forget I mean the modern you know, version
17:43
Speaker 1: of magic in so many ways as science and what
17:46
Speaker 1: are you looking for if you're trying to, like, you know,
17:48
Speaker 1: pin a crime on somebody and you want to match
17:51
Speaker 1: their DNA or something that seems the crime. There's that
17:53
Speaker 1: old trick where you know, you you pluck a piece
17:55
Speaker 1: of their hair while they're sleeping or something like that,
17:57
Speaker 1: or you go in you know, their bathroom them and
18:00
Speaker 1: like look for you know, lip marks on a glass
18:03
Speaker 1: or something like that, or you steal a toothbrush. But
18:05
Speaker 1: hair absolutely contains all of that. And they also say
18:08
Speaker 1: that hair samples is one of the only ways you
18:11
Speaker 1: can tell if someone has done certain classes of drug before,
18:14
Speaker 1: Like there is a you know, like a urine samples
18:17
Speaker 1: is one level, but it won't reveal everything. Hair apparently,
18:20
Speaker 1: sort of like the rungs of a tree or the
18:22
Speaker 1: rings in the inside of a tree, has much more
18:25
Speaker 1: of a history to it as to like what someone
18:27
Speaker 1: has consumed, and you can see if someone has done
18:30
Speaker 1: classes of psychedelic drugs that won't show up in other tests. Yeah, yeah,
18:34
Speaker 1: you know, I'm glad you brought that up, because for
18:37
Speaker 1: anyone wondering, I believe the ballpark is about seven years.
18:42
Speaker 1: Your hair is about a seven year record of your
18:45
Speaker 1: encounters with certain substances. There are I remember hearing their
18:50
Speaker 1: shampoos that can do something, but I would be very
18:54
Speaker 1: if you're in a situation where that matters, I would
18:57
Speaker 1: read very carefully about their efficacy. And it's a much
19:00
Speaker 1: more expensive test. So you know, if your employer is
19:04
Speaker 1: going for that one, they mean business, you know, in
19:06
Speaker 1: terms of like they're not gonna let anything slide. Um.
19:10
Speaker 1: Thankfully we work in podcasting and so we didn't have
19:13
Speaker 1: to worry about that kind of stuff. No comments, but
19:17
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about this next attack. So
19:19
Speaker 1: he said, the barber clearly is pretty excited. This is
19:24
Speaker 1: their first reported attack. It is quite possible that they're
19:27
Speaker 1: just one of the many people who moved to Pascagoula recently,
19:31
Speaker 1: and that they have been doing other stuff escalating up
19:33
Speaker 1: to this. Uh in some other town somewhere else. But
19:37
Speaker 1: they appeared to love the press, or they couldn't control themselves,
19:41
Speaker 1: because just a few days later, Monday June, at the
19:45
Speaker 1: home of the p D family, the barber cuts a
19:49
Speaker 1: slit in the windows screen. He crawls inside his victim,
19:53
Speaker 1: a six year old child, Carold p D, sleeping next
19:57
Speaker 1: to her twin brother. He only one of the young
20:01
Speaker 1: lady's hair though. Yeah, super creepy, remember you know how, Gabe,
20:07
Speaker 1: sometimes when we do these kind of like stories of
20:10
Speaker 1: these weird lone wolf creepers, oftentimes there's like a series
20:14
Speaker 1: of toys from the I think early nineties called Monster
20:17
Speaker 1: in My Pocket, And there definitely was one of the
20:20
Speaker 1: Jersey Devil, and there was definitely one of the Mad Gasser.
20:24
Speaker 1: Don't know if the Phantom barber is quite ghoulish enough
20:27
Speaker 1: to make that collection, but I would be interested to
20:30
Speaker 1: see if that. He usually includes that as a little
20:32
Speaker 1: addendum at the end. And by the way, there was
20:34
Speaker 1: a Monster in My Pocket edition of of this figure. No,
20:37
Speaker 1: it's true, and he seems to be getting more bold,
20:40
Speaker 1: doesn't he. This time he was a little sloppy and
20:43
Speaker 1: he left a clue behind for the hair squad. Um
20:48
Speaker 1: the hair crime unit to take a look at. It
20:50
Speaker 1: was a footprint near the window. And back then, like
20:53
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have DNA test, but a footprint
20:56
Speaker 1: you could match it. You you literally have to like
20:58
Speaker 1: do your detective work and go around to various shoe
21:01
Speaker 1: stores and like you know, take the print and like
21:04
Speaker 1: like have you seen this shoe? You know, I love that.
21:07
Speaker 1: I love the analog nature of this early kind of
21:10
Speaker 1: detective work. You know. Yeah, it's it's a noir Cinderella,
21:15
Speaker 1: but we're looking for a creep rather than apprentice. The
21:19
Speaker 1: point about escalation is key often times, unfortunately, as you
21:24
Speaker 1: know if you're a fan of true crime, these sorts
21:26
Speaker 1: of individuals can escalate both their sexual and their physical
21:31
Speaker 1: violence to the point where murder can come into play.
21:36
Speaker 1: And it looks like our barber is getting more and
21:40
Speaker 1: more violent very quickly. It's only the next Friday night,
21:51
Speaker 1: June when he invades the home of the Heidelberg family
21:57
Speaker 1: and just like his emo with previous attacks, he cuts
22:00
Speaker 1: the windows screen. He enters through the window, but instead
22:04
Speaker 1: of just cutting hair and then sneaking away, he attacked
22:09
Speaker 1: the couple with an iron bar and he actually knocked
22:12
Speaker 1: out some of Mrs Heidelberg's front teeth knocked her husband unconscious.
22:16
Speaker 1: So that's a concussion at the very least. And it
22:19
Speaker 1: happened so quickly that neither of the Heidelberg's could really
22:23
Speaker 1: describe their attack or even you know, even to the
22:26
Speaker 1: degree that Mary did earlier. They couldn't say, this is
22:29
Speaker 1: a short, rotund man. They said, I don't know what happened,
22:32
Speaker 1: you know, but this guy knocked my teeth out. And
22:35
Speaker 1: so the police, they're already, remember, overwhelmed by a huge
22:40
Speaker 1: population growth of like ten thousand strangers. But they find
22:44
Speaker 1: six men, they deputize them. They bring him bloodhounds and
22:47
Speaker 1: they say, they say, let's get on the case. Done indeed,
22:51
Speaker 1: Um do do do dode do do do do do
22:55
Speaker 1: do do do do do? Sorry, I actually watched it
22:58
Speaker 1: SVU last night, so that theme is impetded deep, deep,
23:00
Speaker 1: deep within my psyche right now. But yeah, you bring
23:02
Speaker 1: in the bloodhounds. You know, the pitchforks are next, you know, torches.
23:06
Speaker 1: I mean they are after this guy literally, you know,
23:09
Speaker 1: out for blood, which is what the bloodhounds are are
23:11
Speaker 1: searching for. Um, everybody knows that. But the dogs were
23:14
Speaker 1: able to pick up a scent, presumably from a pair
23:17
Speaker 1: of blood stained gloves. Um. This totally supports my thesis
23:21
Speaker 1: on like the outskirts of town, the edge of the
23:24
Speaker 1: woods kinda. But that's where they lost the trail, and
23:27
Speaker 1: the police believed that the criminal behind these attacks had
23:32
Speaker 1: stored a bicycle somewhere in the woods to make his
23:35
Speaker 1: daring escape on a bike. That doesn't sound very exciting
23:38
Speaker 1: to me, but I mean, you know, it's it's functional.
23:40
Speaker 1: So fortunately the Heidelberg's have survived. But everyone is panicking now,
23:46
Speaker 1: even the people who had perhaps more of a level
23:48
Speaker 1: head during the previous two attacks. Men decreed that they
23:52
Speaker 1: wouldn't work night shifts at the ship factories anymore because
23:56
Speaker 1: they needed to stay home and protect their family, or
23:59
Speaker 1: at least their families hair. And this had a direct
24:02
Speaker 1: impact on production for the war efforts. Now there's gonna
24:06
Speaker 1: be some federal pressure coming in. The police are at
24:10
Speaker 1: a loss what the heck is going on. They offer
24:13
Speaker 1: a three hundred dollar reward for information. Oh, Ben, I'm
24:18
Speaker 1: already there. Can I do it this time? Yeah? Nol?
24:20
Speaker 1: How about you do the honors with a little bit
24:22
Speaker 1: of inflation calculation there. That would be the equivalent of
24:31
Speaker 1: about one thousand, five hundred six dollars and seventy six
24:35
Speaker 1: cents and today money, which to me seems that seems
24:38
Speaker 1: a little light, doesn't it for for a home and
24:41
Speaker 1: a home invader who's knocking out teeth and slicing locks. Well,
24:45
Speaker 1: they may have had the threat of federal pressure, but
24:48
Speaker 1: they weren't getting federal funding for this, and we're already
24:53
Speaker 1: in a very vulnerable position. Women outright refused to go
24:56
Speaker 1: out at night. People started applying for firearm permits. They
25:01
Speaker 1: were getting ready. They sensed the pattern, and they predicted
25:04
Speaker 1: there would be another attack. As mental Floss points out,
25:08
Speaker 1: in this case, their predictions were correct. The final attack
25:12
Speaker 1: that we know of occurs on a Sunday night. Mrs R. E.
25:16
Speaker 1: Taylor has her hair non consensually cut. She said she
25:22
Speaker 1: had been woken by something with a sickening smell passing
25:27
Speaker 1: over her nose. So that he's a smelly boy too.
25:31
Speaker 1: It makes sense, you know, he's he's obviously a some
25:34
Speaker 1: sort of societal outcast, you know, who has no way
25:39
Speaker 1: of interacting with human beings. I mean, you gotta wonder, though,
25:42
Speaker 1: was he known. He seems like he would not do well,
25:45
Speaker 1: just socially, and he would he would be seen as
25:47
Speaker 1: kind of a miscreant or like someone who couldn't really
25:50
Speaker 1: just get it get on day to day with with
25:52
Speaker 1: normal people. That's just my theory though. So I'm wondering
25:56
Speaker 1: if he lived out in the woods or something and
25:58
Speaker 1: was sleeping rough, like say Ben, like if that's why,
26:01
Speaker 1: maybe that's why he smelled bad and everybody noticed. Like I. So,
26:06
Speaker 1: the way that a lot of Law and Order episodes
26:10
Speaker 1: get written is there what a clearly telegraph who the
26:13
Speaker 1: criminal is. Right, first rule is it's almost always going
26:16
Speaker 1: to be the famous guest star, and that's always a
26:20
Speaker 1: lot of fun. But in this I picture, like I
26:23
Speaker 1: I picture maybe police just not putting together the puzzle.
26:27
Speaker 1: Like there's a guy who comes into town once a
26:30
Speaker 1: week or so for every few days to pick up
26:33
Speaker 1: some really specific groceries, and the only person he talks
26:37
Speaker 1: to is the cashier, and all he wants to talk
26:39
Speaker 1: to about is people's hair. So he's like, hey, did
26:42
Speaker 1: you see, uh, look at that lady going through that
26:45
Speaker 1: the blonde hair. What do you think about that? They're like, yes, sir,
26:49
Speaker 1: it's Sunday. People get dressed up and He's like, Yeah,
26:52
Speaker 1: what do you how long you think it takes them
26:55
Speaker 1: to do their hair like that? What do you think
26:56
Speaker 1: about that? So so, I like it seems the theory
27:02
Speaker 1: that someone might be sleeping rough seems to have some sand.
27:06
Speaker 1: I would argue it sounds like they weren't showering, or
27:08
Speaker 1: maybe they were trying to apply some sort of chemical.
27:12
Speaker 1: This is maybe maybe that's the smell of something like
27:15
Speaker 1: a chloroform rag or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, but
27:19
Speaker 1: a lot of people have this misunderstanding of chloroform from
27:22
Speaker 1: the world of fiction. You can't really just pop it
27:25
Speaker 1: over someone's mouth and then take it away and have
27:28
Speaker 1: them in sensate for a long time. You have to
27:32
Speaker 1: keep it on understanding. Yeah. Yeah, it always seems like
27:36
Speaker 1: a magic bullet whenever you see it done in these
27:38
Speaker 1: these films, are people sneak up behind them, They're just
27:40
Speaker 1: out like a light, you know, indefinitely, and then they
27:42
Speaker 1: wake up in some sort of you know, hair covered layer.
27:46
Speaker 1: That's what I'm picturing, just locks of hair all over
27:48
Speaker 1: the wall, woven into like weird garlands or something. I
27:51
Speaker 1: really do think this feels like an episode of Law
27:53
Speaker 1: and Order. Ben, Are you familiar with the term. Obviously
27:56
Speaker 1: there's who done it, but then there's how catch them?
27:58
Speaker 1: Where they show you who it is at the big inning,
28:00
Speaker 1: and then you like just kind of have to see
28:02
Speaker 1: how the detectives are the you know, crack team of
28:05
Speaker 1: investigators catch to the individual. I've never heard that that's interesting.
28:09
Speaker 1: There's a sample. There's a show called luther Um starring
28:13
Speaker 1: in dress elba Um, where at the very beginning of
28:15
Speaker 1: every episode you see it's like a cold open where
28:17
Speaker 1: you see a crime taking place and you very clearly
28:20
Speaker 1: see who the who the killer is, and then you
28:22
Speaker 1: see them in you know, their daily lives and oftentimes
28:26
Speaker 1: they cross paths with the investigators or there's someone who
28:28
Speaker 1: they're actively looking into. Colombo is a how catch them?
28:32
Speaker 1: You always see who the killer is or who the
28:34
Speaker 1: criminal is at the very beginning, and you know who
28:36
Speaker 1: it is throughout the whole show. The twist isn't in
28:40
Speaker 1: who they are. The twist is and how they're caught.
28:43
Speaker 1: I see. Okay, Yeah, it's interesting, and there's a little
28:48
Speaker 1: human detail we have to add. For miss r E. Taylor.
28:51
Speaker 1: For anyone who's ever had a perm you understand that
28:55
Speaker 1: this is something this can be kind of a big deal.
28:58
Speaker 1: It makes you feel nice when you have your hair dined.
29:01
Speaker 1: She is further upset by this attack because she has
29:05
Speaker 1: just gotten a perm and now she's lost two inches
29:08
Speaker 1: of it. She woke up feeling ill. One way that
29:12
Speaker 1: newspapers of the time reported the cases, they referred to
29:16
Speaker 1: this criminal as a tonsorial artist. Tonsorial is a fancy
29:21
Speaker 1: dressed up word for barber or the work of a barber.
29:24
Speaker 1: I did not know that. I had no idea. That's great. Um,
29:29
Speaker 1: So you know, pressure is mounting, uh to low for
29:34
Speaker 1: local law enforcement to find somebody to pin this on,
29:37
Speaker 1: because you know, you can't have somebody just willy nilly
29:41
Speaker 1: running around this town when everyone's under so much pressure
29:44
Speaker 1: and stress because the boys being off at war and
29:46
Speaker 1: all of these ships they gotta build, they gotta build it.
29:49
Speaker 1: I don't know if we've mentioned specifically, but they're Stock
29:51
Speaker 1: and Trade here in Pascagoula was building warships, So I
29:55
Speaker 1: mean that's kind of a big deal, and that's a
29:56
Speaker 1: lot of work. So this isn't cool. This is not
30:00
Speaker 1: doing much good for anybody's mental health. So the cops
30:03
Speaker 1: are very much looking to pin this on somebody, and
30:07
Speaker 1: they get their wish in the form of a William Dolan,
30:11
Speaker 1: a fifty seven year old chemists, sounds exactly like, uh,
30:15
Speaker 1: everything we've been saying in terms of, like, you know,
30:17
Speaker 1: the the profile, right, he's a fifty seven year old chemist,
30:20
Speaker 1: and he had had beef with Mr Heidelberg's father, who
30:24
Speaker 1: was a local magistrate, and that was over a legal issue.
30:27
Speaker 1: So they believed that he maybe had attacked the couple
30:31
Speaker 1: out of revenge. But see that detail here doesn't track
30:34
Speaker 1: to me ben these previous attacks. Clearly Again, we're we're
30:38
Speaker 1: not looking for someone who's out for revenge. We're looking
30:41
Speaker 1: for someone who's out to kind of get some sort
30:43
Speaker 1: of sick thrill or pleasure out of this crime, not
30:46
Speaker 1: someone who's trying to you know, make a statement. Yeah,
30:50
Speaker 1: this is so they're good. Everybody's strapping. They're gonna be
30:53
Speaker 1: some twist and turns here. So from the Daily Times,
30:58
Speaker 1: we can get a breaking news max perfect from the
31:01
Speaker 1: Daily Times. Police GEF A. W as Well played today
31:04
Speaker 1: that the fat of Barbara woke into at least ten
31:07
Speaker 1: homes that cut the hair of the sleepy documents. Is
31:09
Speaker 1: William ay Dolan, fifty seven German educated chemists Dolan, as
31:13
Speaker 1: an announced, has been in jail for three weeks and
31:15
Speaker 1: his charge with the attempted murder of the Heidelberg's. His
31:18
Speaker 1: motivation as l charge was to impair the morale of
31:21
Speaker 1: wall workers, which sounds like politicizing, Yeah, but here's the thing.
31:27
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, because it does like we're making a
31:30
Speaker 1: very easy understandable case for why the police would want
31:33
Speaker 1: to escapegoat which happens, which does happen. But they knew
31:38
Speaker 1: that his problems with the local magistrate due to his
31:41
Speaker 1: earlier arrest a few months back for trespassing didn't directly
31:45
Speaker 1: tie him to the invasions. But when they went to
31:49
Speaker 1: his house to search his house, dude, they found a
31:54
Speaker 1: huge bundle of human hair behind his whole world. Do
31:58
Speaker 1: you think they like planted it on him, dude? I
32:01
Speaker 1: mean that really that's a little on the nose there.
32:03
Speaker 1: I don't know, that is fascinating. Chap Man just have
32:07
Speaker 1: his hairball. I mean, come on, you know, this is America.
32:11
Speaker 1: But that whole idea of this is America really played
32:13
Speaker 1: into it, and the whole wartime kind of mindset, because
32:16
Speaker 1: like we said, this gentleman was of German descent, so
32:20
Speaker 1: of course, the press jumped right on that and started
32:24
Speaker 1: calling him a Nazi saboteur who was known to have
32:28
Speaker 1: German sympathies, you know, and and this was just absolutely
32:32
Speaker 1: perfect excuse to railroad this gentleman, exactly. Yes, so he
32:37
Speaker 1: insisted he was innocent, but yeah, he's immediately found guilty
32:42
Speaker 1: of attempted murder, ten years in prison. He never gets
32:46
Speaker 1: charged with any crimes related to the hair snatching, but
32:50
Speaker 1: he has been found guilty in the court of public opinion.
32:54
Speaker 1: As some of the paranoia dies down. Six years later,
32:58
Speaker 1: then Mississippi Governor Fielding Right looked over the case and
33:02
Speaker 1: he said, hey, let's have Dolan take a lie detector
33:04
Speaker 1: test because those are super helpful. Right, people still stooke
33:08
Speaker 1: lie detectors for science at this time, and Dolan past
33:12
Speaker 1: is polygraph test. He was given a limited suspended sentence.
33:17
Speaker 1: He was eventually set free, But now he became a freeman,
33:23
Speaker 1: despite you know, probably not being welcome in Pascagoula for
33:26
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. But now the thing is,
33:30
Speaker 1: as we closed today's episode, you might not be surprised
33:34
Speaker 1: to learn that modern historians wonder whether Dolan was guilty
33:38
Speaker 1: of any crime at all, because there's some of the
33:40
Speaker 1: stuff you just mentioned in the zeitgeist at the time. Yeah, Ben,
33:43
Speaker 1: what was the actually convicted of? It was just for
33:46
Speaker 1: like this, this this home invasion, like the when when
33:49
Speaker 1: we say attempted murder, the punching, like then the knocking
33:52
Speaker 1: out of the teeth or what? What? Which? Which crime
33:54
Speaker 1: exactly was he connected to? Yeah, he was penning with
33:59
Speaker 1: the assault on the Heidelberg's the one with the iron
34:02
Speaker 1: bar got it. So the teeth knocking out incident. Just
34:05
Speaker 1: making sure I'm keeping these straight. But again in any
34:07
Speaker 1: of the court documents, and maybe they tried to make
34:10
Speaker 1: the case but it didn't fly. I mean, obviously, you
34:12
Speaker 1: know with these kinds of things, they want to have
34:14
Speaker 1: an ironclad case. They don't want to um confuse the
34:18
Speaker 1: jury of in any way. But they would have been
34:20
Speaker 1: so aware of this string of attacks, and the hair
34:23
Speaker 1: part of it was so front and center, right, I'm
34:25
Speaker 1: wondering how they were able to quiet the public's you know,
34:30
Speaker 1: concerns if hair was not part of the equation. Yeah,
34:34
Speaker 1: it's a good question at this point. You know, maybe
34:36
Speaker 1: the mob just wanted to see someone go down and
34:39
Speaker 1: they all knew that Dolan had ties to Germany. A
34:44
Speaker 1: lot of townsfolk considered him a trader. It also would
34:49
Speaker 1: have been really easy to plant that hair plant that
34:52
Speaker 1: hairball during Dolan's arrest. You could also tamper with the
34:55
Speaker 1: evidence that got sent to the FBI. But now with
34:59
Speaker 1: this point we have to say, it will probably never
35:02
Speaker 1: be clear whether Dolan was the genuine phantom barber of
35:06
Speaker 1: Pascagoula or whether he was a scapegoat who was sort
35:11
Speaker 1: of sacrificed on the altar of public safety, right or
35:15
Speaker 1: the altar of public um comfort. You go, there we go,
35:20
Speaker 1: And now this this draws to a closed man. Uh,
35:23
Speaker 1: I think we both love these stories, but no, we
35:26
Speaker 1: gotta gotta check with Max. Max, you joined up with
35:29
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History because you're pretty familiar with hair crime, correct, Sure,
35:34
Speaker 1: I know a lot about a hair crime that just
35:38
Speaker 1: in tim you know, there's there's. It comes in many
35:40
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes. I mean, you could consider a bad
35:43
Speaker 1: haircut to be a hair crime, you know, against humanity,
35:46
Speaker 1: or at the very least, like a friend of mine
35:48
Speaker 1: recently got a haircut that ended up being something of
35:51
Speaker 1: a mullet, and even the barber or the stylist themselves
35:54
Speaker 1: were were deeply apologetic and had to make it right.
35:57
Speaker 1: You can't make amends for hair crime, but there are
35:59
Speaker 1: some hair crimes that are unforgivable. Yeah, it's true. I
36:03
Speaker 1: think everybody's had a disappointing haircut at some point or another.
36:08
Speaker 1: I was actually growing up. I got threatened with hair
36:12
Speaker 1: crime by the lady who cuts young Ben Bullen's hair.
36:16
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I think she was trying to
36:18
Speaker 1: help me. In retrospect, I want to see what you
36:20
Speaker 1: guys think. So I was a child of very particular
36:24
Speaker 1: and peculiar taste. I had a haircut that I liked.
36:28
Speaker 1: It was a bowl cut, and I wanted that. I thought,
36:30
Speaker 1: that's fine, I will wear jogging suits and have a
36:33
Speaker 1: bowl cut for the rest of my life. Nothing weird.
36:36
Speaker 1: And then she would regularly threaten me with that. She
36:41
Speaker 1: was saying that if I did not behave she was
36:44
Speaker 1: going to give me a mohawk. Wow, messing with me
36:47
Speaker 1: or helping me. I would have been so accidentally cool,
36:50
Speaker 1: accidentally cool. No, it's true. I once have supported a
36:52
Speaker 1: flat top for a period I did, which is a
36:56
Speaker 1: very nineteen thirties kind of look. You know what, I
36:58
Speaker 1: mean where at shaved on the side and literally get
37:00
Speaker 1: the style it with palm aide and it's it's perfectly
37:03
Speaker 1: flat on the top. I remember I had this barber
37:05
Speaker 1: named Dennis who drove a motorcycle and I thought he
37:08
Speaker 1: was so cool. He kind of looked like Willie Nelson,
37:10
Speaker 1: but he was all about giving me this flaptop and
37:12
Speaker 1: my parents seemed cool with it. Um. I also had
37:14
Speaker 1: a rat tail for a little while. God, the choices
37:17
Speaker 1: we make. Sometimes we we we can commit hair crimes
37:19
Speaker 1: against ourselves. That's true, self inflicted hair crime. It's it's
37:24
Speaker 1: a big concern. We should probably make a charity or
37:28
Speaker 1: non uh in GEO specifically for hair crime, but we'll
37:32
Speaker 1: have to do that off the air. Thanks so much
37:35
Speaker 1: for tuning in everyone. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
37:38
Speaker 1: We want to hear your stories of obscure local crimes,
37:43
Speaker 1: especially the weirder the better, honestly, and we have an
37:46
Speaker 1: announcement you can hopefully by the time you hear this,
37:50
Speaker 1: you can send those suggestions to our email address. Brought
37:55
Speaker 1: it back, finally did it? We gave ridiculous romance and
37:57
Speaker 1: email address. We had to also have one. You know it.
38:00
Speaker 1: It did seem like it was time people have been
38:02
Speaker 1: sending stuff. Well, actually there was a time where we
38:04
Speaker 1: were calling out the email address as though it existed. Uh,
38:07
Speaker 1: and then people were clearly firing letters off into the abyss.
38:09
Speaker 1: I wonder if those go someplace where now maybe they'll
38:12
Speaker 1: be redirected to us. Probably not. So you've ever emailed
38:15
Speaker 1: us in the past at Ridiculous at I heeart radio
38:17
Speaker 1: dot com, maybe give another go. But um, we would
38:20
Speaker 1: really love to hear from you, and uh, maybe we'll
38:23
Speaker 1: start doing an occasional mail bag episode. I think we should.
38:26
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38:29
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38:37
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38:46
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38:49
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Speaker 1: bow l I and on Instagram. Hey Max. Thanks thanks
38:58
Speaker 1: to our super producer Max, who's at actually here. We
39:01
Speaker 1: don't get out much. This is very big. This is
39:03
Speaker 1: a big deal for us. Max. Yes, So thanks to Max,
39:05
Speaker 1: Thanks for actually being here and hanging with us. We've
39:07
Speaker 1: been so lonely. Thanks to Max's brother Alex, who composed
39:13
Speaker 1: this theme True Story Thinks, as well to our own
39:17
Speaker 1: non hair criminal research associate, Gabe Bluesier, and of course
39:22
Speaker 1: thanks to the my number one pick for a hair
39:25
Speaker 1: criminal here at iHeart Jonathan STRICKLANDK the Quister. I know
39:29
Speaker 1: what you're up to. Oh yeah, let's see you next time, folks.
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