Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / The Rundown

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The Rundown · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On a cold December night,
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  Speaker 1: Mary vanished. She had left to note describing a last
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  Speaker 1: minute trip north, and then seemed to have fallen off
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  Speaker 1: the edge of the world. Mary's friends and family began
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  Speaker 1: asking around, but no one had seen any sign of her.
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  Speaker 1: Her own husband, retired colonel, tried pulling a few strings,
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  Speaker 1: but she still remained undiscovered. It wasn't until a couple
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  Speaker 1: of days later, when her car was found that people
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  Speaker 1: really began to worry. The car had been abandoned, along
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  Speaker 1: with clothing and her i d on a small country road.
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  Speaker 1: Those with overactive imaginations began to suspect something more than
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  Speaker 1: a simple mistake or even a practical joke. They believed
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  Speaker 1: Mary had been kidnapped, possibly even killed, and they knew
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  Speaker 1: just who had committed the crime. Mary's husband, you see,
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  Speaker 1: he was already in a bit of hot water, so
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  Speaker 1: to speak. A few months earlier, he had requested a
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  Speaker 1: divorce from Mary, and in the weeks since they had
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  Speaker 1: been fighting constantly. He had found another woman, and Mary
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  Speaker 1: was standing in the way of that happiness. If you'd asked,
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  Speaker 1: some of them might have even suggested that he was
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  Speaker 1: a bit resentful of that. It was easy to connect
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  Speaker 1: the dots and label him as a suspect, which is
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  Speaker 1: what the police did. They questioned him and his mistress,
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  Speaker 1: but in the end they didn't think that he had
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  Speaker 1: committed the crime, and in the meantime, search parties were
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  Speaker 1: expanding their reach. At one point, at least a thousand
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  Speaker 1: law enforcement officials and fifteen thousand and civilian volunteers painstakingly
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  Speaker 1: examined the region Mary had disappeared from, all while being
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  Speaker 1: shadowed by a number of airplanes. Her disappearance was covered
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  Speaker 1: by The New York Times. Celebrity mystery writers even got involved,
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  Speaker 1: spinning their own theories of what happened, and one man
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  Speaker 1: hired a medium to examine one of Mary's gloves in
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  Speaker 1: hopes that it would lead them in the right direction.
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  Speaker 1: But it didn't work. Don't worry, though, The story does
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  Speaker 1: have a happy ending, and that's because eleven days after
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  Speaker 1: she vanished, Mary was found over two hundred and thirty
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  Speaker 1: miles to the north. She checked into a hotel under
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  Speaker 1: a different name and claimed she had no memory of
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  Speaker 1: the entire ordeal. Some people believed Mary was telling the truth,
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  Speaker 1: that yes, she had somehow lost touch with reality for
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  Speaker 1: a week and a half. Psychologists call it a fugue state,
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  Speaker 1: where a person going through a traumatic experience subconsciously creates
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  Speaker 1: an entirely new reality where the stress no longer exists.
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  Speaker 1: But others thought there was something more going on. They
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  Speaker 1: believe Mary actually knew what she was doing, and that
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  Speaker 1: the purpose behind the whole ordeal was to have her
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  Speaker 1: husband charged with her murder. People who believe this theory
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  Speaker 1: claimed that once he had been executed for her murder,
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  Speaker 1: she would have strolled back out of the darkness and
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  Speaker 1: claimed amnesia. They believe, in a sense that Mary was
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  Speaker 1: a master of deception and planning, something pulled straight out
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  Speaker 1: of the pages of a dime store novel. But like
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  Speaker 1: a lot of things in life, will never know for sure,
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  Speaker 1: because she never talked about it or explain herself ever. Again,
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  Speaker 1: it was all just one big mystery. Whatever the truth was,
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  Speaker 1: she recovered nicely enough. She went on to Mary an archaeologist,
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  Speaker 1: which I find rather ironic because archaeologists at the basic level,
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  Speaker 1: are really just people who dig around for clues that
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  Speaker 1: tell a story, and Mary's life was built around clues.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, without her, popular literature wouldn't be what it
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  Speaker 1: is today. She's still the best selling author in history,
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  Speaker 1: ahead of J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, and even William Shakespeare,
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  Speaker 1: with over two billion books sold. Nearly everything she wrote
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  Speaker 1: has been adapted in some form or another. And you've
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  Speaker 1: heard about her your entire life, just not as Mary.
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  Speaker 1: That's because she has been, still is, and always will
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  Speaker 1: be the Queen of the mystery novel Agatha. Mary Christie
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  Speaker 1: Peter Carpon was a spy. There was no question about it.
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  Speaker 1: He had been captured by the French as he was
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  Speaker 1: trying to slip into their country in nineteen fourteen, just
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  Speaker 1: as the First World War was big inning. Maybe his
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  Speaker 1: papers were clearly forged, or perhaps there was something about
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  Speaker 1: his accent or the way he shifted his eyes when
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  Speaker 1: they asked him questions. We don't know why he was captured,
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  Speaker 1: only that he was, which meant that the French had
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  Speaker 1: a problem on their hands. They could toss him in jail,
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  Speaker 1: which they did right away. But then what alert the
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  Speaker 1: Germans that their spy had been captured. That was only
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  Speaker 1: going to force them to send another spy, or perhaps
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  Speaker 1: more than one. The French would have to be more
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  Speaker 1: diligent with their border patrols after that, and no one
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  Speaker 1: wanted to do that. There were too many other things
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  Speaker 1: that needed their time and resources. There was another option, though,
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  Speaker 1: but it was risky. Someone proposed actually keeping Peter Carpon's
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  Speaker 1: capture a secret from the Germans. They could send fake
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  Speaker 1: intelligence reports back to the man's superiors in Berlin and
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  Speaker 1: try to fool them into believing that Carpon was doing
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  Speaker 1: his job. So that's what they did. For three years,
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  Speaker 1: they sent back reports, and for three years the Germans
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  Speaker 1: replied with more instructions and requests. Of course, the French
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  Speaker 1: were feeding the Germans one false report after another, but
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  Speaker 1: the Germans hadn't noticed. They were even making military decisions
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  Speaker 1: based on those false reports. It was brilliant. It gets better, though,
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  Speaker 1: you see, Peter Carpin needed an income to survive in France,
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  Speaker 1: so the Germans were sending him money on a regular basis.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes it was for his own personal expenses, while other
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  Speaker 1: times it was funding for the projects that they were
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  Speaker 1: tasking him with and every time Germany sent that money,
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  Speaker 1: the French were intercepting it and putting it into a
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  Speaker 1: bank account. In nineteen seventeen, though, Peter Carpin escaped. I
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  Speaker 1: don't know how, but he managed to slip out of
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  Speaker 1: wherever they were holding him and vanish into the depths
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  Speaker 1: of France. More than likely he was going to head
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  Speaker 1: straight back to Germany, but without his money and papers.
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  Speaker 1: That was going to take some time. Oh and speaking
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  Speaker 1: of money, that was when the French decided to spend
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  Speaker 1: the cash they had been covertly stealing from the Germans.
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  Speaker 1: They bought a brand new car with it fancy right.
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  Speaker 1: A few years later in France sent forces to an
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  Speaker 1: area of Germany that the Treaty of Versailles had declared
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  Speaker 1: to be a demilitarized zone. The Germans had failed to
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  Speaker 1: make all of the World War One reparation payments that
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  Speaker 1: they had agreed to, and had instead formed a sort
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  Speaker 1: of passive resistance that was creating tension. The French arrived
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  Speaker 1: as a sort of peace keeping measure. They brought the
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  Speaker 1: car with them, which was a bit poetic. I think
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  Speaker 1: a car purchased by the French with German funds and
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  Speaker 1: now it was in Germany. Now, I don't know the
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  Speaker 1: exact circumstances, but at some point in the French occupation
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  Speaker 1: there in Ninete, that car was involved in an accident.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it was used in crowd control, or perhaps it
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  Speaker 1: was just being driven through the streets like anyone today
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  Speaker 1: would enjoy. Whatever the reason, the car had from moving,
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  Speaker 1: it tragically struck a German citizen down, throwing him to
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  Speaker 1: the ground like a rag doll. The French driver of
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  Speaker 1: the car quickly climbed out, panic and grief painted across
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  Speaker 1: his face, and approached the body of the man he'd hit.
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  Speaker 1: It was too late, though, the man was dead. Checking
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  Speaker 1: his papers for anything that would help them contact the
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  Speaker 1: man's relatives and inform them of the tragic accident, the
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  Speaker 1: French soldiers discovered something amazing. This man they had hit,
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  Speaker 1: the one who now lay dead in the street after
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  Speaker 1: being struck by the German funded automobile, wasn't the random
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  Speaker 1: stranger they expected him to be. In fact, they knew him.
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  Speaker 1: It was the spy himself. Peter Carpon. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.