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The Awful Crimes of Georgia Tann · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:00
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
1:02
Speaker 2: Chuck and Ben's here too, So this is Stuff you
1:04
Speaker 2: should Know.
1:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, a big trigger warning upfront, and we may issue
1:11
Speaker 1: even in a second one after breaks or something. This
1:16
Speaker 1: is about a human monster. It's a story of a
1:18
Speaker 1: human monster who did awful things to children. So don't
1:24
Speaker 1: listen to it if that is a trigger, and don't
1:26
Speaker 1: let your children listen to this.
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Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, So, Chuck, I'm always on the lookout
1:32
Speaker 2: for somebody who's grave i'd like to spit on, and
1:35
Speaker 2: I've never found anybody before before we started researching this.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, boy, no getting around it.
1:42
Speaker 2: If I ever make it out to Hickory, Mississippi, I
1:44
Speaker 2: will definitely go out of my way to spit on
1:46
Speaker 2: Georgia Tan's grave because she deserves it.
1:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get to her sort of upbringing here in
1:53
Speaker 1: a sec but just very quickly. Georgia Tan was a
1:57
Speaker 1: woman who worked in social work, and she made a
2:02
Speaker 1: long and wealthy career. Got rich by kidnapping babies, falsifying
2:09
Speaker 1: birth records, stealing kids from generally poor families, uneducated mothers,
2:17
Speaker 1: and selling them to rich people.
2:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was hands down the wealthiest social worker to
2:23
Speaker 2: ever live.
2:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm having a hard time already.
2:28
Speaker 2: So Chuck, let's set the scene a little bit, because, like,
2:32
Speaker 2: the idea of adoption is not that old in the
2:35
Speaker 2: United States for a very long time. If you were orphaned,
2:43
Speaker 2: if your parents abandoned you, whatever led you to this
2:48
Speaker 2: position where you were no longer under the care of
2:51
Speaker 2: a grown up, you were extraordinarily vulnerable. If you were lucky,
2:56
Speaker 2: relatives might take you in, maybe a kindly neighbor, but
3:01
Speaker 2: you were also very much at risk for basically becoming
3:05
Speaker 2: somebody's indentured servant. It was like, without that whole idea
3:10
Speaker 2: of that's what became of orphans, we wouldn't have Dickens today.
3:14
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, for sure, there were a lot of you know,
3:19
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about sort of the movement after
3:22
Speaker 1: industrialization from more rural farming communities to the city. That
3:27
Speaker 1: increased a lot of the kind of the rate of
3:31
Speaker 1: orphans in cities because in a lot of these poorer neighborhoods,
3:36
Speaker 1: you had outbreaks of cholera, you had yellow fever. A
3:40
Speaker 1: lot of these urban communities were decimated, killing parents, leaving
3:45
Speaker 1: a lot of children behind abandoned. One thing that happened
3:49
Speaker 1: during that period was something called the orphan train. Starting
3:53
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty four, for about sixty five years, about
3:56
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand orphan kids were shipped from
4:00
Speaker 1: the northwest and cities to rural towns. But again, most
4:06
Speaker 1: of the time it looked more like a slave trade
4:09
Speaker 1: than like they weren't being adopted as family members. They
4:12
Speaker 1: were being kind of auctioned off at train stations and lineups.
4:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were basically adopted as hands. I wanted to
4:20
Speaker 2: say hired hands, but I don't think they were hired.
4:23
Speaker 2: In some cases, they didn't even get room and board,
4:26
Speaker 2: Like if you were fostered out, if you made it
4:28
Speaker 2: into a foster home, you very often had to work
4:31
Speaker 2: to repay the family for your care. Yeah, so this
4:37
Speaker 2: was how it was for a very long time. Adoption
4:40
Speaker 2: just it wasn't It didn't click with Americans in particular,
4:46
Speaker 2: at least because kids that were in that situation were
4:51
Speaker 2: viewed as like inferior, morally inferior, potentially genetically inferior. It
4:57
Speaker 2: was a very mean time. So you didn't want those kids,
5:01
Speaker 2: You didn't want to bring them into your family. And
5:04
Speaker 2: it wasn't until I think about the nineteen thirties that
5:07
Speaker 2: the idea of adoption as we understand it today, where
5:10
Speaker 2: a couple or a family want to include a child
5:16
Speaker 2: that's not biologically theirs into their family that's less than
5:20
Speaker 2: a century old. That concept in the United States.
5:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like adoption as we know it, out
5:26
Speaker 1: of if you were out of wedlock. It's horrific to
5:30
Speaker 1: think of how we thought of these kids and the
5:32
Speaker 1: women that were in that situation. Just recently, I went
5:36
Speaker 1: to Memphis, and that's where this story takes place, is
5:39
Speaker 1: where my mom grew up in her family. And so
5:41
Speaker 1: we went there on a trip to kind of show
5:43
Speaker 1: my daughter where grand grand grew up in her high
5:47
Speaker 1: school and all that stuff. And at one point we
5:49
Speaker 1: were driving through a neighborhood and my mom was like, Oh,
5:52
Speaker 1: there's the old house for unwed mothers.
5:55
Speaker 3: And I was like, wait, I've heard that term. What
5:57
Speaker 3: is that?
5:57
Speaker 1: And she was like, if you were out of wedlock,
6:01
Speaker 1: then there's a very good chance that you were sent
6:04
Speaker 1: to live in a house like kind of removed.
6:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you told the neighbors that you that your
6:10
Speaker 2: daughter went off to stay with relatives, ye, to help
6:13
Speaker 2: like a sick aunt or something like that. And then
6:15
Speaker 2: she would come back ten months later and everybody would
6:19
Speaker 2: move along like there was nothing, like nothing had happened.
6:22
Speaker 2: But there would be a child out there in the
6:23
Speaker 2: world that was no longer with her.
6:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the sort of stage that we set
6:30
Speaker 1: for when Georgia Tan came into the world. I was
6:34
Speaker 1: born in eighteen ninety one in Mississippi, raised in Hickory, Mississippi.
6:39
Speaker 1: Was the daughter of Beulah and George Tan. Her father
6:43
Speaker 1: was a very prominent judge. Part of his job as
6:49
Speaker 1: a judge back then, because of the way things were,
6:52
Speaker 1: was placing kids, finding homes for orphan kids and abandoned
6:55
Speaker 1: kids and neglected kids. And because, like we said, adoption
6:59
Speaker 1: wasn't such a big thing at the time. So that
7:01
Speaker 1: was part of his job, was placing these kids, sometimes
7:04
Speaker 1: in foster homes, sometimes with families who you know, sometimes
7:09
Speaker 1: it was a great situation, but not always, and sometimes
7:13
Speaker 1: just like to the state asylum.
7:15
Speaker 2: And also the idea of like what you think of
7:17
Speaker 2: in like that old timey orphanage where there's like nuns
7:20
Speaker 2: walking around like that was a real thing. Like charities
7:24
Speaker 2: often ran homes for children orphanages. Yeah, but it wasn't
7:28
Speaker 2: any place she wanted to be, although it was. I mean,
7:31
Speaker 2: I suppose it was better than the alternative in a
7:33
Speaker 2: lot of cases. But I think that you were just
7:35
Speaker 2: so vulnerable that that's not something you could say across
7:38
Speaker 2: the board, Like, I'm sure there are people kids who
7:41
Speaker 2: were better off fending for themselves on the street than
7:44
Speaker 2: in some of the homes that they were put in
7:46
Speaker 2: or some of the orphanages that they stayed in. It
7:49
Speaker 2: was just nobody's looking out for them.
7:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So in nineteen oh six, when Georgia
7:55
Speaker 1: was fifteen years old, this is kind of how she,
7:58
Speaker 1: I guess, got the idea for all this. She met
8:00
Speaker 1: a couple of orphaned kids, a five year old and
8:03
Speaker 1: a three year old, from her father's court, and she,
8:09
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old, talked a wealthy local couple into
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Speaker 1: adopting them. And I guess that's when the light bulb
8:15
Speaker 1: went off where she equated like placing families with people
8:20
Speaker 1: who had money, and instead of in a kind hearted
8:24
Speaker 1: way giving these kids a home, it was like, I
8:27
Speaker 1: can make some money off of this.
8:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy, that's a crazy thought. But that was
8:33
Speaker 2: basically the germ of this whole thing.
8:35
Speaker 1: It's a crazy instinct, you know, Yeah, but it says
8:39
Speaker 1: a lot about her.
8:40
Speaker 2: I think that was very much your instinct, and I
8:42
Speaker 2: think that's it says everything you need to know about her.
8:45
Speaker 2: Not only did she have that thought, she ran with it. Yeah,
8:49
Speaker 2: Initially she was going to become an attorney, and she
8:52
Speaker 2: passed the Mississippi bar. But either her father forbade her
8:56
Speaker 2: from following that and sent off to be schooled and
9:02
Speaker 2: to become a concert pianist, or it was just socially,
9:06
Speaker 2: you just didn't a woman couldn't be an attorney. I'm
9:08
Speaker 2: not sure which one was the case, but either way,
9:12
Speaker 2: she didn't end up being an attorney. She also didn't
9:14
Speaker 2: end up being a concert pianist. She ended up becoming
9:16
Speaker 2: a social worker and her first her first gig was
9:22
Speaker 2: with Mississippi, I think the state of Mississippi, basically working
9:27
Speaker 2: as a social worker, visiting homes and very quickly stealing
9:33
Speaker 2: babies to sell herself, Like right out of the gate,
9:36
Speaker 2: she basically started the scam that she would later become
9:40
Speaker 2: famous for.
9:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a woman named Rose Harvey, which, you know,
9:45
Speaker 1: some sources say it was like her very first you know,
9:48
Speaker 1: sort of field visit. Other say it was just early on.
9:51
Speaker 1: But at any rate, she visited Rose Harvey.
9:54
Speaker 3: Who was young.
9:57
Speaker 1: I've seen that she was widowed, but I also saw
10:00
Speaker 1: that the father of her kids was forced to sign
10:06
Speaker 1: a false document basically stating that she was an unfit mother.
10:10
Speaker 2: I think it was her father. Oh, it was her father,
10:12
Speaker 2: That's what I got from it. Yeah, but it could
10:15
Speaker 2: also be confused that they were.
10:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was Onyx's father. But either way,
10:20
Speaker 1: I mean, it's no less reprehensible either way. But she
10:23
Speaker 1: found Georgia Tan found Onyx, who was a two year
10:27
Speaker 1: old boy playing at the house, basically walked in and
10:31
Speaker 1: kidnapped this kid, just walked out, put the baby in
10:34
Speaker 1: her car, got her father of the judge after, you know,
10:39
Speaker 1: a member of her family signed that she was an
10:40
Speaker 1: unfit mother and had the boy listed as an unfit
10:45
Speaker 1: child or I'm sorry, an abandoned child.
10:47
Speaker 3: And that was it. Very sadly.
10:49
Speaker 1: Rose Harvey was even able to muster up the money
10:52
Speaker 1: to hire an attorney. But she was ill, she had diabetes,
10:56
Speaker 1: she was not doing well. She's very ill and just
10:59
Speaker 1: stood no chance basically against that system.
11:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in particular, the father of Georgia Tan got
11:05
Speaker 2: involved and was like this is not happening, Like do
11:08
Speaker 2: not let this case go forward, Like he was a
11:11
Speaker 2: judge in the nineteen aughts, Mississippi. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
11:15
Speaker 2: he could make that happen. So, yeah, like you said,
11:18
Speaker 2: she never had a chance. But either because of that
11:22
Speaker 2: particular case or another similar case, or potentially because Georgia
11:27
Speaker 2: tan was actually a she had a lifelong partner, another
11:31
Speaker 2: woman who was a childhood friend, and they actually, I guess,
11:34
Speaker 2: fell in love and spent the rest of their lives together.
11:38
Speaker 2: That is also possibly one of the reasons why they
11:40
Speaker 2: got out of Mississippi. But eventually, I think in the
11:44
Speaker 2: early nineteen twenties they left Mississippi, the landed in Texas
11:49
Speaker 2: and then ultimately ended up in Memphis a short time later.
11:52
Speaker 2: But very bizarrely, in the interim, her partner had gotten
11:57
Speaker 2: pregnant by a man out of wedlock and had a
12:00
Speaker 2: son named George. So now they had a son, and
12:03
Speaker 2: then Georgia adopted a girl named June, so they built
12:08
Speaker 2: a little family. But when you know more about Georgia's
12:11
Speaker 2: view on kids and adoption and how she really viewed it,
12:15
Speaker 2: it's really strange to me that she ever did it herself.
12:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
12:22
Speaker 1: This is another story too that also, like a lot
12:24
Speaker 1: of times, things happen in history just because of when
12:26
Speaker 1: they happened. She was definitely fired from her job for
12:31
Speaker 1: doing what she did. Like she may have left also
12:34
Speaker 1: because of her relationship, but she was fired. And it
12:38
Speaker 1: was a time where like no one knows you can
12:41
Speaker 1: just move a state over right, start over, and it's
12:44
Speaker 1: not like there's really no way, Like if she didn't
12:47
Speaker 1: list them maybe on a resume or whatever, or you know,
12:52
Speaker 1: who knows even how it worked back then, she would
12:55
Speaker 1: not have been able to get work elsewhere, which is
12:57
Speaker 1: still a problem today. Yes, with that terrible story about
13:02
Speaker 1: the fake doctor who just kept practicing in different states.
13:06
Speaker 3: It was a podcast. I can't remember doctor death, I think.
13:09
Speaker 1: But it's amazing even with technology today that that can
13:12
Speaker 1: still happen, you know.
13:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also one of the things that I found
13:16
Speaker 2: from researching this is that the secrecy that developed at
13:20
Speaker 2: this time around adoption, that's still around today. We did
13:23
Speaker 2: a short stuff on it, I think, right that still
13:27
Speaker 2: is keeping kids in the system vulnerable to exploitation and
13:32
Speaker 2: predation and including essentially private sales. Rehoming, I think.
13:37
Speaker 3: Is what they call it. Should we take a break.
13:40
Speaker 1: Let's take a break, all right, We'll take a break.
13:42
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go wash our mouse out with soap. We'll
13:44
Speaker 1: be right back, all right. So Georgia Tan makes her
14:15
Speaker 1: way to Tennessee to the Tennessee Children's Home Society was
14:21
Speaker 1: where her next job was. And from nineteen twenty four
14:24
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty, span of twenty six years, she sold,
14:30
Speaker 1: kidnapped and sold more than five thousand kids.
14:34
Speaker 2: And as you said before, she made millions of dollars.
14:36
Speaker 2: From what I saw, she made around a million dollars
14:40
Speaker 2: in her time, which is equivalent to something like eleven
14:43
Speaker 2: million today. And she sold these kids to some really
14:48
Speaker 2: high profile customers. A lot of them were in New York,
14:51
Speaker 2: a lot of them were in California, and some of
14:53
Speaker 2: them are stars like Joan Crawford adopted twins from.
14:56
Speaker 3: Her, apparently. Yeah, and this is maybe you saw the
14:59
Speaker 3: movie be Mommy, dearist. This was not that girl.
15:03
Speaker 1: I believe that was Christina, who was also adopted, But
15:07
Speaker 1: these were her later adopted daughters, Cynthia and Kathy, but
15:11
Speaker 1: also Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and June Allison pearl Buck
15:17
Speaker 1: the author. And then, in a very weird and sad twist,
15:23
Speaker 1: a guy that we worked with, Rick Flair, the wrestler,
15:27
Speaker 1: was one of these babies, yep, which is just crazy
15:31
Speaker 1: to think about and obviously has deep emotional trauma.
15:35
Speaker 3: But I think he.
15:38
Speaker 1: Elected to not sort of find his biological family, right.
15:41
Speaker 2: Yes, biological brother reached out to him and he's like,
15:44
Speaker 2: I don't I don't really want to strike up a
15:47
Speaker 2: relationship here. Earlier, man, he's like, what are we going
15:50
Speaker 2: to talk about? I think is what he said. But yeah,
15:52
Speaker 2: he said that. In addition to that, it's like just this,
15:56
Speaker 2: the trauma from it is still with him obviously because
15:59
Speaker 2: he stolen from his family, Like these kids were stolen
16:02
Speaker 2: from their families. In some cases, their parents spent the
16:06
Speaker 2: rest of their lives looking for them. But because of
16:09
Speaker 2: the way that these adoptions were carried out, there was
16:13
Speaker 2: no paper trail that these people could access to find
16:16
Speaker 2: whatever happened to their kids.
16:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely not. She made sure that happened. She very
16:22
Speaker 1: much was of the mind, like we mentioned earlier, that
16:26
Speaker 1: like some of society viewed these kids as less than
16:31
Speaker 1: she was one hundred percent down with that line of thinking.
16:35
Speaker 1: She thought that poor single mothers were damaged goods. She
16:39
Speaker 1: called them breeders, she called them cows. She thought they
16:43
Speaker 1: were genetically inferior she used marketing tactics. She was a fraudster,
16:52
Speaker 1: but all of this like worked. You don't you don't
16:58
Speaker 1: adopt out five thousand and children without working really really
17:02
Speaker 1: hard to do that using the most you know, in
17:06
Speaker 1: her case, the most reprehensible tactics you can imagine.
17:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about her tactics real quick, shall we,
17:12
Speaker 2: because I can't wait any longer. It's just I just can't.
17:17
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, Well, before we get to the actual tactics
17:20
Speaker 1: of the adoption, we should say this whole time this
17:23
Speaker 1: is going on, she's running a house of horrors in Memphis,
17:27
Speaker 1: she's running an orphanage there, and hundreds of babies are
17:31
Speaker 1: dying under her care. So that's just sort of the
17:34
Speaker 1: background of what's going on while she's adopting these kids out.
17:38
Speaker 2: Right, And we said that adoption wasn't really kind of
17:43
Speaker 2: a thing in the United States until about the nineteen
17:46
Speaker 2: thirties and it started to kind of spread. Here's the
17:50
Speaker 2: big twist about this whole thing. The reason that we
17:53
Speaker 2: have adoption today, the way that it is, like the
17:56
Speaker 2: fact that childless couples will go, you know, take a
18:00
Speaker 2: kid into their life and like you're like you're my family.
18:02
Speaker 2: Now you're our family. She started that, Like, you can
18:06
Speaker 2: trace that almost single handedly back to Georgia tan which
18:11
Speaker 2: in a way like kind of complicates her legacy, but
18:14
Speaker 2: really doesn't because the stuff she did was so despicable
18:18
Speaker 2: that even that it can be you can't even consider
18:21
Speaker 2: that like a mark in her favor. It just just
18:23
Speaker 2: immediately is overwhelmed by all the horrible stuff she did.
18:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't complicated for me at all. That would
18:31
Speaker 1: have changed anyway, and we did not need a human
18:34
Speaker 1: monster to make it happen. That's like saying, well, we
18:36
Speaker 1: got Volkswagens because of Hitler, so you know, right, you go, boss.
18:42
Speaker 2: Yeah that's a great point. But yeah, no, she's kind
18:44
Speaker 2: of like the opposite of where like you really like
18:47
Speaker 2: somebody's work, but you find out that they're a terrible person,
18:50
Speaker 2: you have to reconcile that this is like hating the person.
18:54
Speaker 2: And just you know, there was one piece of her
18:57
Speaker 2: work that was you know, worthwhile or legitimate, but yet
19:00
Speaker 2: doesn't do anything.
19:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, so her you know, she would adopt kids out
19:05
Speaker 1: of all ages, but what she really concentrated on was babies,
19:11
Speaker 1: because you know, even today, adopting a baby is much
19:14
Speaker 1: more in demand, and especially then when adoption was just
19:20
Speaker 1: sort of a new thing, she was sort of selling
19:22
Speaker 1: the idea like, hey, you get a blank slate here,
19:25
Speaker 1: like these these babies. You know some of them may
19:29
Speaker 1: be from bad homes, but you've got them right out
19:31
Speaker 1: of the gate, and you can you can mold them
19:33
Speaker 1: into whatever you want. And that's when she wasn't lying
19:37
Speaker 1: about who the parents were, because she also did that
19:41
Speaker 1: and would say things like, you know, there was a
19:43
Speaker 1: one night stand basically between a social lighte and a
19:47
Speaker 1: doctor and it was just a big mistake. But you
19:51
Speaker 1: should see their genes, incredible genes.
19:55
Speaker 2: One of the other things she was very well known for,
19:57
Speaker 2: especially in Tennessee, was the at every Christmas she would
20:01
Speaker 2: take out advertising space in the press scimitar of the
20:05
Speaker 2: Memphis newspaper and it was like a Christmas adoption drive,
20:10
Speaker 2: a baby drive. But they it wasn't like open your
20:14
Speaker 2: home to this wonderful child. It was like, so do
20:18
Speaker 2: you want a real live Christmas present? That was like
20:21
Speaker 2: one of the one of the ads, could you use
20:24
Speaker 2: a Christmas baby? And she would like they would vow,
20:28
Speaker 2: like this is a drive, we're gonna We're gonna adopt
20:30
Speaker 2: off twenty five to thirty kids. And I think to
20:33
Speaker 2: the people who were reading this and who saw this
20:35
Speaker 2: every Christmas, they were taking it like it was an
20:39
Speaker 2: adoption drive. They didn't realize. And this is the thing,
20:43
Speaker 2: no one seems to have really realized, at least no
20:46
Speaker 2: one who had any real power to do anything about it,
20:51
Speaker 2: knew what was going on, that she was making this
20:55
Speaker 2: money like this wasn't allowed to go on and open
20:59
Speaker 2: in o in sight. There was a lot of mechanations
21:03
Speaker 2: in groundwork laid to keep this as far out of
21:06
Speaker 2: the public eye as possible, but to let her just
21:09
Speaker 2: do it as flagrantly as possible. The general person who
21:12
Speaker 2: was aware of her didn't know what she was doing,
21:14
Speaker 2: I should.
21:14
Speaker 1: Say no, or like you said, they thought that, you know,
21:18
Speaker 1: they thought she was a hero.
21:19
Speaker 2: Right, They didn't realize she was selling kids openly in
21:23
Speaker 2: the newspaper every Christmas.
21:25
Speaker 1: Yes, after kidnapping them so financially. And this one was
21:31
Speaker 1: a little hard to parse out. I've seen different things,
21:33
Speaker 1: but what I think I found the reality, which was
21:37
Speaker 1: in the state of Tennessee at the time, it was
21:40
Speaker 1: supposed to cost seven dollars for an in state adoption
21:44
Speaker 1: and about seven hundred to seven fifty out of state.
21:48
Speaker 1: And I saw that she was charging more like I
21:52
Speaker 1: think eighty percent of her adoptions were New York and
21:54
Speaker 1: California to wealthy families, about five thousand dollars instead of
21:58
Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars, which is close to ninety grand today.
22:02
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, Yeah that was I think average was
22:07
Speaker 2: about like five grand. Or was that the height of
22:11
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Was that as much as you would pay?
22:14
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I just saw five thousand.
22:15
Speaker 2: Dollars, So the whole thing. Again, it's really tough to
22:22
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hammer on this because it's just
22:24
Speaker 2: so nuts. But through those Christmas drives, through introducing the
22:29
Speaker 2: concept of adoption, it started to spread in Memphis, in Tennessee,
22:34
Speaker 2: in the South, and it actually spread out of the South.
22:36
Speaker 2: This trend of adoption grew out of the South in
22:40
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties and forties again because of Georgia Tan
22:45
Speaker 2: and then it just spread and kept going. But from
22:47
Speaker 2: the outset she was she targeted wealthy customers, clients you
22:52
Speaker 2: can't really call them anything else in New York and California,
22:55
Speaker 2: like I said, but there doesn't seem to be any
22:58
Speaker 2: evidence whatsoever that any of the adopting parents knew that
23:03
Speaker 2: their kids were anything than what she was presenting them as,
23:07
Speaker 2: which was kids from good backgrounds, Like you said, maybe
23:11
Speaker 2: a one night stand and the parents had willingly given
23:15
Speaker 2: them up. That's what they thought they were getting, and
23:17
Speaker 2: that the fact that they had to pay through the
23:18
Speaker 2: nose for them just meant that these kids were like
23:22
Speaker 2: that desirable, their genes were that good. And it's ironic
23:26
Speaker 2: to me because you don't think of the South as
23:28
Speaker 2: being much of a trendsetter, but it set the trend
23:30
Speaker 2: of adoption in the United States. It started in the
23:33
Speaker 2: South and just kind of spread from there. But out
23:36
Speaker 2: of the gate she targeted adoptive parents, wealthy ones in
23:40
Speaker 2: New York and California.
23:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You know, we already talked about the kidnapping.
23:47
Speaker 1: She would sometimes she would drive around a limousine in
23:50
Speaker 1: a neighborhood so kids would could run out to her
23:53
Speaker 1: car that were all excited and take them. She would
23:58
Speaker 1: this is having a hard time even reading this part,
24:02
Speaker 1: but she would go to new mothers who had just
24:06
Speaker 1: given birth in the hospital and tell them that their
24:08
Speaker 1: infant was dead and steal the baby.
24:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a common trick. Another one was she
24:16
Speaker 2: would present mothers who'd just given birth, who might still
24:20
Speaker 2: be under the effects of anesthesia or something like that,
24:22
Speaker 2: with papers and said just sign these. These are like,
24:26
Speaker 2: you know, standard paperwork for having a baby, and they
24:28
Speaker 2: were actually full adoption papers. So even if you could
24:33
Speaker 2: say you stole my baby, there were cases where she
24:36
Speaker 2: could point to paperwork that said, no, you signed your
24:39
Speaker 2: kid away. Sorry, clearly you're you're crazy. Essentially, she also
24:46
Speaker 2: had a network of nurses like it's she was in
24:49
Speaker 2: some cases present in these in the hospital and spoke
24:53
Speaker 2: with some of the mothers, but she also had like
24:55
Speaker 2: nurses working for her that would either trick the mothers
24:59
Speaker 2: themselves or would just outright steal babies from nurseries.
25:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, nurses and fake people dressed as nurses. Yeah, I
25:07
Speaker 1: mean it's literally not her the whole time. This is
25:08
Speaker 1: a very very big operation. So you know earlier when
25:11
Speaker 1: you said no one know, one empowered to stop it, like,
25:16
Speaker 1: no one empowered, that wasn't on the dole.
25:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in particular, there was one woman, a judge
25:21
Speaker 2: named Camille Kelly, one of two women judges in the
25:24
Speaker 2: South at the time, who was a progressive and a
25:28
Speaker 2: juvenile court judge, and she was fully in Georgia Tan's pocket,
25:33
Speaker 2: fully cooperated. There's a writer named Barbara Raymond who wrote
25:38
Speaker 2: probably the most exhaustive account of this whole horrible chapter
25:42
Speaker 2: of American history. And she estimated that Camille Kelly, Judge
25:47
Speaker 2: Kelly supplied Georgia Tan with about twenty percent of the
25:52
Speaker 2: kids that she kidnapped, So that would put it at
25:54
Speaker 2: about a thousand kids that Judge Kelly essentially handed over
25:58
Speaker 2: to Georgia Tan to steal and sell.
26:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's things that Judge Kelly was doing,
26:05
Speaker 1: as far as bending the rules, ceiling adoption records, signing
26:10
Speaker 1: off on false paperwork, stuff like that, and fraud to
26:13
Speaker 1: driving around herself. There was supposedly a Catholic orphanage in
26:18
Speaker 1: Memphis where the nuns would like hide the what they
26:22
Speaker 1: called the prettiest children whenever Judge Kelly pulled up outside.
26:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, just unbelievable.
26:27
Speaker 2: It is super, super, just terrible. I saw an interview
26:30
Speaker 2: with a woman who is now today and has been
26:34
Speaker 2: for a while trying to connect these people to their
26:37
Speaker 2: original biological families. If they want to see her name,
26:39
Speaker 2: is Denny Glad And she was asked what she would
26:44
Speaker 2: say to Georgia Tan. She said the exact same thing
26:47
Speaker 2: I wanted to say, like like how how could you
26:49
Speaker 2: do this? Like what was your mindset that allowed you
26:53
Speaker 2: to do this over and over again? Because as bad
26:56
Speaker 2: as kidnapping got, as bad as the eruption that was
27:01
Speaker 2: associated with it, and in stealing and selling babies, some
27:06
Speaker 2: of them were not adoptable, so she had them on
27:09
Speaker 2: her hands, and as just looking at these kids as products.
27:16
Speaker 2: If you had a bad product, why would you sink
27:18
Speaker 2: any more money into keeping that product around if it
27:20
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna make you any money? And so the kids
27:23
Speaker 2: who stayed at the home with her, they were often malnourished.
27:29
Speaker 2: Sometimes they would starve to death there. If they had
27:31
Speaker 2: any medical issues, they would go untreated, they wouldn't get medicine.
27:36
Speaker 2: They were just left to die, essentially because they weren't
27:41
Speaker 2: worth the investment as far as Georgia Tan was concerned.
27:45
Speaker 2: And her entire job was to help kids like that,
27:50
Speaker 2: But kids like that couldn't be sold, so they didn't
27:53
Speaker 2: deserve any of her time or attention or funding.
27:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a horrific statistic, but the toll
28:00
Speaker 1: at her orphanage's estimated between five and six hundred kids.
28:06
Speaker 1: Obviously most of them infants and babies, and this is staggering,
28:10
Speaker 1: but it was so many children died under her care.
28:13
Speaker 1: She may have actually affected the infant mortality rate in
28:17
Speaker 1: Memphis because in nineteen thirty two, eight years into her
28:21
Speaker 1: stint there, Memphis had the highest infant mortality rate in
28:26
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, that's no accident.
28:29
Speaker 2: So one of the other things too, is she wasn't
28:31
Speaker 2: reporting these deaths. She reported nineteen children's death Yeah, the
28:38
Speaker 2: other five hundred to six hundred. The rest of the
28:40
Speaker 2: five hundred to six hundred were never reported. No one
28:43
Speaker 2: knows where they are, no one knows where they were buried.
28:46
Speaker 2: They're just gone. And so I think in twenty sixteen,
28:49
Speaker 2: Memphis raised a memorial over a mass grave that had
28:55
Speaker 2: been discovered with I think forty kids are maybe that
29:00
Speaker 2: was the nineteen I think they found a grave with
29:03
Speaker 2: those kids in it, and they erected a memorial to
29:05
Speaker 2: those kids and all the others who were just lost
29:08
Speaker 2: to history and time. And it was just it was
29:11
Speaker 2: a terrible place to be. But being adopted out wasn't
29:15
Speaker 2: necessarily much better. You said that the babies were advertised
29:20
Speaker 2: as blank slates. Not all of the kids that were
29:23
Speaker 2: sold were babies, and she didn't screen the adoptive parents,
29:30
Speaker 2: so there were kids that were extremely vulnerable to the
29:34
Speaker 2: idea to sexual abuse, and apparently they also endured sexual
29:38
Speaker 2: abuse in the home as well.
29:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the just the mental damage of being ripped
29:44
Speaker 1: away from your biological family.
29:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, that too.
29:48
Speaker 1: So I say we take a second break, and we
29:51
Speaker 1: must muster the will to finish this thing. Yeah, and
29:54
Speaker 1: we'll be back and talk about some of those pretty
29:57
Speaker 1: high powered people in Tennessee that were on the dole
30:00
Speaker 1: out of this.
30:28
Speaker 2: All right, So I want to say, yeah, I guess
30:32
Speaker 2: we've made it through the worst part, but it's not
30:33
Speaker 2: like anything gets much better. We talked about how she
30:38
Speaker 2: was Georgia Town was able to get away with this.
30:41
Speaker 2: She did this from nineteen twenty four to nineteen fifty,
30:43
Speaker 2: like you said, and you can't do that without the
30:47
Speaker 2: cooperation of essentially the city that you're working in. And
30:51
Speaker 2: lucky for her, the mayor of Memphis at the time
30:56
Speaker 2: was a guy named Ed Crump. And if you want
30:59
Speaker 2: to know anything, all you need to know about Ed Crump.
31:03
Speaker 2: You just need to know his nickname, which was Boss Crump,
31:06
Speaker 2: and he was a progressive mayor who really cared about
31:08
Speaker 2: the city and was extraordinarily corrupt himself.
31:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there was there was Boss Crump, and then
31:16
Speaker 1: there was this other guy, an attorney named abe Waaldour,
31:19
Speaker 1: who she hired as her personal attorney and he also
31:23
Speaker 1: worked as the attorney for the agency. Was also a
31:26
Speaker 1: very influential guy and successful lobbyists. In between Waldour and Crump,
31:34
Speaker 1: she basically got whatever she wanted. She got records falsified,
31:39
Speaker 1: she got records sealed. If there were laws that didn't
31:42
Speaker 1: jibe with what was going on, they had the power
31:45
Speaker 1: to get those laws changed. Crump had a lot of
31:48
Speaker 1: sway at least and we'll talk about this in a minute,
31:51
Speaker 1: to at least to a certain point on the governor's office,
31:54
Speaker 1: and they just you know, they were all getting kickbacks.
31:56
Speaker 3: Everyone was on the dole, so they would do whatever
31:58
Speaker 3: she wanted. Yeah.
32:00
Speaker 2: So the operation from what I saw, essentially when she
32:03
Speaker 2: would go to Camille Kelly, the judge that was in
32:06
Speaker 2: her pocket, and say, hey, these are things that would
32:09
Speaker 2: make my life a lot easier as far as laws
32:12
Speaker 2: are concerned, and then Judge Kelly would go to the
32:15
Speaker 2: legislature and or Boss Crump probably both, and say, hey,
32:22
Speaker 2: here at Family Court, these are some laws that are
32:24
Speaker 2: really kind of making things unnecessarily difficult and hurting families.
32:28
Speaker 2: Let's get these changed. So they would actually change laws
32:31
Speaker 2: to help Georgia Tan steal and sell babies more efficiently.
32:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and this kind of just shows how
32:39
Speaker 1: manipulative she was. There's actual like letterhead from Judge Kelly
32:45
Speaker 1: written in her handwriting to the attorney Abe Waldauur, so
32:50
Speaker 1: like this was the attorney working for Georgia Tan. Instead
32:53
Speaker 1: of Georgia Tann going to him, she would manipulate go
32:57
Speaker 1: around him to the judge to get her to write
32:59
Speaker 1: this congestion to a Walldauer would then lobby and pressure
33:03
Speaker 1: on her behalf, which was really on Tan's behalf.
33:08
Speaker 2: So as like, I guess, kind of alien concept modern
33:14
Speaker 2: adoption was at the time. Tennessee had a pretty good
33:17
Speaker 2: law on its books that dated back to eighteen fifty two,
33:21
Speaker 2: and there were requirements that were sensible and smart. If
33:25
Speaker 2: you wanted to adopt a kid from Tennessee, first of all,
33:29
Speaker 2: you had to be from Tennessee. The adoptive parents had
33:32
Speaker 2: to be from Tennessee.
33:34
Speaker 3: Not about that one, but fine.
33:36
Speaker 2: Right right, But I'm just saying, if you look at
33:38
Speaker 2: what Georgia tan was doing, this was Yeah, that was
33:40
Speaker 2: not in step with that at all. Secondly, if you
33:43
Speaker 2: were a birth mother, a judge needed to certify that
33:47
Speaker 2: you were voluntarily giving your kid up.
33:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, still the case.
33:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, orphanages needed to investigate the adoptive parents. Great idea,
33:57
Speaker 2: and you needed to follow up with the the kid
34:01
Speaker 2: and make sure that the child was being treated well
34:04
Speaker 2: in their new adoptive home. These were the eighteen fifty
34:07
Speaker 2: two laws. And if you look at what Georgia Tann
34:10
Speaker 2: was doing out in the open, just the stuff people
34:13
Speaker 2: knew about, none of it checked any of those boxes.
34:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she, you know, because of that, she got
34:19
Speaker 1: a lot of these laws changed to suit her racket,
34:22
Speaker 1: which is just unbelievable that this was going on.
34:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of them that got me was you didn't
34:28
Speaker 2: need a judge to certify any longer that the mom
34:31
Speaker 2: was voluntary surrendering. A notary public could do it. And
34:34
Speaker 2: so Georgia Tann would have one of her employees certify
34:37
Speaker 2: that basically falsify these records. There was another thing that
34:42
Speaker 2: was a really important outcome of all of this, and
34:45
Speaker 2: that is that she lobbied for secrecy and adoption. Her
34:50
Speaker 2: whole premise was that it saved unwed mothers the shame
34:57
Speaker 2: and social stigma of being non and his unwed mothers
35:01
Speaker 2: publicly having files open available to the public showing that
35:05
Speaker 2: they had had a child out of wedlock, and that
35:08
Speaker 2: that that was in the in the family's best favor
35:11
Speaker 2: for these records to be sealed. That's still what people
35:15
Speaker 2: say today, that there's like it in states where secrecy
35:21
Speaker 2: is still a thing in adoption. It's to protect the
35:24
Speaker 2: biological parents rights in case they don't want to be found, right,
35:29
Speaker 2: that aside all of the the Yeah, in some states,
35:34
Speaker 2: I think California still has really strict secrecy laws or
35:37
Speaker 2: owned adoption.
35:38
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that I thought that was just for
35:40
Speaker 1: old adoption records. No, so that's like the current thing.
35:43
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Starting in about
35:46
Speaker 2: the eighties that it opened up, adoption became much more open,
35:49
Speaker 2: but it didn't retroactively affect anybody who adoption took place
35:54
Speaker 2: before the eighties.
35:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, so okay.
35:57
Speaker 2: So but those those laws are still in the books,
35:59
Speaker 2: so those people are still have their records sealed, and
36:02
Speaker 2: that includes Georgia tans kids. But all that aside, that
36:05
Speaker 2: whole quandary and argument about whether that's a legitimate way
36:09
Speaker 2: to do adoption or not, that had nothing to do
36:12
Speaker 2: with why she wanted to do it. She wanted to
36:14
Speaker 2: do it because once she got those records sealed, and
36:17
Speaker 2: she soon was able to do that. As a matter
36:19
Speaker 2: of course, after that law was passed, there was no
36:23
Speaker 2: finding the kid any longer. And like you legally could
36:28
Speaker 2: not get your hands on any records that would lead
36:31
Speaker 2: you to your biological kid. They were just.
36:33
Speaker 1: Gone, yeah, well and not more importantly but more commonly,
36:38
Speaker 1: probably that kid can't find their parents, Yes, their biological parents,
36:43
Speaker 1: that is.
36:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then even if you did, I think, get
36:46
Speaker 2: your hands on the records, she's so frequently monkeyed with
36:50
Speaker 2: the records and falsified them that they might not even
36:53
Speaker 2: lead you to your birth parent to begin with.
36:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we would love to tell you that there
37:01
Speaker 1: was an ending to this where Georgia Tan was made
37:07
Speaker 1: responsible for her crimes. Sadly that is not the case.
37:12
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that Crump eventually had less sway over
37:17
Speaker 1: the governor's office. That was in nineteen fifty when Governor
37:23
Speaker 1: Gordon Browning became governor, started getting these letters from people
37:28
Speaker 1: talking about Georgia tan being blackmailed, keep silent, things like that,
37:32
Speaker 1: so he launched Browning launched an investigation into the orphanage,
37:37
Speaker 1: headed by Robert Taylor's special counsel. But here's the thing is,
37:45
Speaker 1: Georgia Tann had a very aggressive uterine cancer was dying fast,
37:50
Speaker 1: and Browning held off on making all this public until
37:55
Speaker 1: she died on September fifteenth, nineteen fifty, at the age
37:59
Speaker 1: of fifty eight.
38:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is like, it really ticks you off about Browning,
38:02
Speaker 2: like why would you extend any modicum of courtesy to
38:07
Speaker 2: Georgia Tann at all? But Browning's general motivation for this
38:11
Speaker 2: wasn't to prosecute her. It was to embarrass Boss Crump
38:15
Speaker 2: and to erode some of his political clout because he
38:18
Speaker 2: was so powerful he could get governors elected, like he
38:22
Speaker 2: was a really powerful mayor, and so this really helped
38:26
Speaker 2: embarrass him and he just became illegitimate in a lot
38:31
Speaker 2: of people's eyes when this came out that this was
38:33
Speaker 2: happening under his watch, and how could he possibly have
38:37
Speaker 2: not known about it? So that was one reason why
38:39
Speaker 2: he held it back, because Boss Crump was still going
38:42
Speaker 2: to be round. After Georgia Tnn died. Luckily, in my eyes,
38:46
Speaker 2: a couple of reporters from different newspapers in Memphis got
38:50
Speaker 2: a hold of the story and they broke it before
38:52
Speaker 2: she died.
38:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I mean just a couple of days
38:56
Speaker 1: before she died. So I like to think that there
38:59
Speaker 1: was some great shame visited upon her.
39:03
Speaker 3: Who knows.
39:04
Speaker 1: I doubt it, because I think she felt justified the
39:07
Speaker 1: whole time, because her whole deal was I'm taking these
39:09
Speaker 1: babies out of these out of these houses where these
39:12
Speaker 1: undesirables shouldn't be having kids to begin with.
39:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and so what if I make some money,
39:17
Speaker 2: I'm going to a lot of trouble.
39:19
Speaker 1: I just looked at Boss Crump for the first time
39:21
Speaker 1: for some reason, I didn't look it up earlier.
39:23
Speaker 3: Did you see him?
39:24
Speaker 2: He looks more like Boss R.
39:26
Speaker 1: Crump you would He looks like you would think he
39:29
Speaker 1: would look basically.
39:30
Speaker 2: So that investigation that Robert Taylor headed up led to
39:34
Speaker 2: a lawsuit from the State of Tennessee against Georgia's estate
39:38
Speaker 2: Georgia Tansas State. And apparently so we said that she
39:42
Speaker 2: was in a lifelong relationship with her partner, Anne Atwood,
39:46
Speaker 2: who supposedly was a good person. She just happened to
39:51
Speaker 2: love a monster. I guess, I don't know.
39:53
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I don't know how to square
39:54
Speaker 3: that one her.
39:57
Speaker 2: I can't remember who who went to I think her
39:59
Speaker 2: knee or something, or surviving niece went to bat firm.
40:02
Speaker 2: It's like, no, she was actually a really good person
40:04
Speaker 2: at any rate, An Atwood. This is a rather ironic
40:08
Speaker 2: twist if you asked me. Georgia Tan adopted Anne at Wood,
40:13
Speaker 2: which was a fairly common technique among gay couples back
40:16
Speaker 2: in the day to ensure that your partner would receive
40:20
Speaker 2: your estate. So Georgia Tan, the woman who would steal
40:25
Speaker 2: babies and sell them out for adoption popularist adoption in America,
40:31
Speaker 2: adopted her partner in her old age a couple of
40:36
Speaker 2: years before she died.
40:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was a lawsuit that you mentioned. It
40:41
Speaker 1: wasn't about the abuse or the kidnapping, though, it was
40:44
Speaker 1: about basically the excess funds. Like the victims in that
40:48
Speaker 1: case were parents who overpaid in their mind for kids
40:54
Speaker 1: because like I said, she was I think the adoption
40:56
Speaker 1: fee was like seven hundred dollars. She was charging up
40:58
Speaker 1: to five grand. So that was what the Cibil case
41:01
Speaker 1: was about. She they sued the estate for five hundred
41:06
Speaker 1: thousand dollars only got a little more than fifty grand
41:09
Speaker 1: in the end. So you know, there was never any
41:12
Speaker 1: justice for these families, basically no.
41:15
Speaker 2: And some people have actually found one another. There was
41:19
Speaker 2: a very famous episode of Unsolved Mysteries or a famous
41:23
Speaker 2: case that came out of Unsolved Mysteries in nineteen ninety
41:26
Speaker 2: where a woman named Almas Sipple was watching Unsolved Mysteries
41:29
Speaker 2: as you did in nineteen ninety, I can attest, and
41:32
Speaker 2: on TV they flashed a picture of Georgia Tan They're
41:35
Speaker 2: talking about this case, and Almas Sipple said later that
41:38
Speaker 2: she just came out of her chair and recognized her
41:41
Speaker 2: immediately as the woman who had swindled her out of
41:43
Speaker 2: her baby. And from that, from watching that, they ended
41:49
Speaker 2: up reuniting. She reunited with her birth daughter named Sandra.
41:53
Speaker 2: And then there's a few other people who've worked to
41:56
Speaker 2: find their successfully find their biological family. And again Denny
42:00
Speaker 2: Glad has been really instrumental in trying to sue Tennessee
42:03
Speaker 2: into opening up these records, in particular for Georgia Tan's
42:07
Speaker 2: victims so that they can find their biological families, and
42:11
Speaker 2: her organization is called Tennessee's Right to Know.
42:16
Speaker 1: Joan Crawford's daughters found their biological family. Oh yeah, yep,
42:20
Speaker 1: those two girls did. And hey, you made me laugh
42:24
Speaker 1: in that last bit.
42:25
Speaker 3: I got. You got one laugh out of me?
42:26
Speaker 1: What in this episode when you said watching unsolved mysteries
42:30
Speaker 1: as you do in nineteen ninety I can attest.
42:32
Speaker 2: You like that?
42:33
Speaker 3: Huh you got a chuckle. I didn't think I was
42:35
Speaker 3: gonna laugh at all.
42:36
Speaker 2: Okay, well then this would works. This episode's finally complete.
42:40
Speaker 1: If you want to watch a movie, there's a TV
42:42
Speaker 1: movie from ninety three called Stolen Babies, A Little on
42:45
Speaker 1: the Nose starring Mary Tyler Moore.
42:48
Speaker 3: She wanted emmy.
42:48
Speaker 1: I'm told it was the reviews I read, and you
42:51
Speaker 1: know said she was pretty remarkable in that role.
42:53
Speaker 2: I saw an ad for it. She looked pretty, she
42:55
Speaker 2: did despicable really well.
42:58
Speaker 3: Sure, Mary Tyler wor can do. That's it.
43:00
Speaker 2: She got range and Leah Thompson was the woman who
43:03
Speaker 2: opposed her. I'm not sure if she was based on
43:05
Speaker 2: anybody or not.
43:07
Speaker 1: Oh ninety three. Oh yeah, I guess that was. That's
43:10
Speaker 1: right in her wheelhouse.
43:10
Speaker 2: And if you're like Stolen Babies, that's a great band name,
43:13
Speaker 2: well you're a little late to the party, because there
43:15
Speaker 2: actually is a band called Stolen Babies.
43:17
Speaker 1: Of course there is so actor and a movie developer,
43:23
Speaker 1: Octavia Spencer, who was wonderful option that book that we
43:27
Speaker 1: were talking about.
43:27
Speaker 3: Who was the author.
43:28
Speaker 2: Again, Barbara bezantce Raymond, and the book she wrote was
43:32
Speaker 2: Baby Thief Colon The Untold Story of Georgia tan Comma,
43:37
Speaker 2: the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption.
43:40
Speaker 1: It's a long title, but I was kind of curious
43:43
Speaker 1: because Octavia Spencer, I wasn't surprised. It was just like,
43:47
Speaker 1: I wonder, you know, if she was adopted or has adopted,
43:51
Speaker 1: like if there was just some some pull for this
43:54
Speaker 1: story for her personally, and that is not the case.
43:58
Speaker 1: But she did play an adoption caseworker in a movie
44:03
Speaker 1: a few years ago. That movie which I didn't see,
44:05
Speaker 1: Instant Family with Rose Byrne and Macky Mock, So maybe
44:10
Speaker 1: just being in that role kind of I know that
44:13
Speaker 1: she studied and interviewed a lot of adoption caseworkers, so
44:17
Speaker 1: that may have just sort of piqued your interest. Yeah.
44:20
Speaker 2: Maybe so. Well, if you want to know more about
44:22
Speaker 2: Georgia Tan and you can stomach it, there's some stuff
44:25
Speaker 2: out there to read on the internet, but you will
44:28
Speaker 2: probably keep running into Barbara Raymond's book, so you might
44:31
Speaker 2: as well just read that and get it over with.
44:33
Speaker 2: And since I said that, it's time for listener.
44:35
Speaker 1: Mail another Peanuts email. There's gonna be three total because
44:41
Speaker 1: we got a lot of great emails about the Peanuts seconds,
44:45
Speaker 1: but the best one is coming soon. This one's pretty
44:49
Speaker 1: good because it's an actual correction on something I said. Josh, Hey, guys,
44:54
Speaker 1: Peanuts episode is awesome. Grew up with a series of
44:56
Speaker 1: Peanuts and they were pretty much the only thing I
44:58
Speaker 1: read as a child. I'm so glad you were to
45:00
Speaker 1: me of so many little details. The only thing you
45:04
Speaker 1: guys said that was wrong, and lish here didn't call
45:07
Speaker 1: me out, but I remember saying this was it. Sally
45:10
Speaker 1: was the one talking about her naturally curly hair. I
45:12
Speaker 1: totally got that wrong. That was Freda. Oh really, yeah,
45:17
Speaker 1: Freda had the red curly hair. And she's always going
45:20
Speaker 1: my naturally curly hair because I think I think she
45:22
Speaker 1: was kind of crushing on Charlie Brown, which obviously wouldn't
45:24
Speaker 1: have been Sally. So I just got that all wrong.
45:26
Speaker 2: I see, I gotcha.
45:28
Speaker 3: Anyway, you guys are great.
45:28
Speaker 1: I hope you do occasionally do podcasts into your nineties
45:33
Speaker 1: at least. Thank you for your research, dedication and great
45:38
Speaker 1: sense of humor. Plus, I was born in nineteen seventy one,
45:41
Speaker 1: so Chuck and I often sync up to your memories.
45:44
Speaker 3: And that is from Lish.
45:47
Speaker 2: Lish with the brain meld on. Chuck, how does that feel?
45:50
Speaker 3: Feels great?
45:51
Speaker 2: Well, thanks a lot, Lish, that was a great Peanuts email.
45:55
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what the third in the trifect is
45:58
Speaker 2: going to be. If it's even better than.
45:59
Speaker 3: That, I can't imagine. I think you know, but unless
46:03
Speaker 3: you didn't see.
46:04
Speaker 2: It, I don't know if I did or not. I'm
46:05
Speaker 2: gonna have to go sort through them.
46:07
Speaker 3: I'll just say the wall.
46:09
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I do know the one.
46:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta good one.
46:12
Speaker 2: If you want to be like listen get in touch
46:14
Speaker 2: with us. You can send us an email too. Send
46:17
Speaker 2: it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
46:19
Speaker 1: Com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
46:26
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
46:29
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.