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Shark Attacked · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  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 are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When the stress of
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  Speaker 1: life is getting you down, it's normal to want to
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  Speaker 1: find a quiet place to decompress, somewhere far from the
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  Speaker 1: hustle and bustle, where your troubles just sort of fade
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  Speaker 1: off into the distance. Charles Blondine had a place like that,
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  Speaker 1: and nothing could get to him while he was there.
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  Speaker 1: Charles was born in northern France in eighteen twenty four
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  Speaker 1: and took up gymnastics when he was five. Unlike other
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  Speaker 1: boys at the time who studied to become doctors or
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  Speaker 1: bankers or go on to do manual labor, Charles dreamt
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  Speaker 1: of becoming a performer. He trained as an acrobat and
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  Speaker 1: eventually debuted to the world as the Little Wonder, a
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  Speaker 1: graceful performer who enthralled crowds with feats of agility. As
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  Speaker 1: he got older, though his dreams of stardom grew bigger
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  Speaker 1: and France was honestly just too small to contain them.
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  Speaker 1: He got married, had three children and took his show
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  Speaker 1: on the road well overseas. In eighteen fifty five, Charles
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  Speaker 1: traveled to New York City to join a family of
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  Speaker 1: French circus performers. They've been entertaining audiences for four generations
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  Speaker 1: and often took on outsiders to flesh out their act.
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  Speaker 1: Now that he was part of a large group, though,
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  Speaker 1: Charles needed a way to stand out more importantly, he
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  Speaker 1: had to earn his keep, and then it came to
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  Speaker 1: him away to put his skills to the ultimate test.
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  Speaker 1: To draw the largest crowds he'd ever seen, Charles would
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  Speaker 1: cross Niagara Gorge on a tight rope. The woven hemp
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  Speaker 1: tight rope he'd walk across would measure feet long and
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  Speaker 1: about three inches in diaetter, which is smaller than one
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  Speaker 1: of the credit cards in your wallet. It would be
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  Speaker 1: suspended on sixty feet over the gorge, with the Niagara
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  Speaker 1: River churning beneath him, and he refused to use a net,
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  Speaker 1: claiming that preparing for disaster often invited it. Thankfully that
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  Speaker 1: stubbornness worked to his advantage by furthering the attendance of
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  Speaker 1: his audience. One thing was true about performances such as his,
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  Speaker 1: as much as people wanted to see him cross the
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  Speaker 1: gorge safely, they also wanted to see him fail. It
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  Speaker 1: was something he got a kick on of two. He
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  Speaker 1: loved it when people bet on the odds of him
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  Speaker 1: falling to his death. On the morning of June fifty nine,
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  Speaker 1: twenty five thousand cheering spectators gathered to watch Charles attempt
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  Speaker 1: across the gorge. Among them were congressmen, judges, generals, and reporters.
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  Speaker 1: Anyone who was anyone was at Niagara Falls watching Charles
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  Speaker 1: put his life on the line, literally ultimate. For all
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  Speaker 1: his preparation, Charles couldn't predict the deep sag in the
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  Speaker 1: middle of the rope. It hung low in the middle,
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  Speaker 1: and everyone said the dip would throw off his balance
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  Speaker 1: and that the rope itself couldn't support him. One person
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  Speaker 1: said he deserved to be dashed to atoms for his desperate, foolhardiness. Charles, though,
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  Speaker 1: ignored them all. At five pm that afternoon, he took
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  Speaker 1: his first step off the American side. He carried a
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  Speaker 1: twenty seven foot long balancing pole in his hands to
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  Speaker 1: steady himself. The crowd grew silent, Some averted their eyes,
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  Speaker 1: unable to watch in case he didn't make it. After
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  Speaker 1: several minutes, though roughly one third of the way across,
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  Speaker 1: something unbelievable happened. Charles took a seat. Yeah, He sat
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  Speaker 1: down on the rope and invited the tourist boat that
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  Speaker 1: made of the mist to stop just below him. Using
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  Speaker 1: a separate line, he pulled up a bottle of wine
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  Speaker 1: from the boat and drake it as everyone's stare and awe.
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  Speaker 1: When he was finished, he tossed the bottle and began
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  Speaker 1: to walk again, at one point even running. He'd done it.
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  Speaker 1: Charles Blondine had successfully crossed the Niagara Gorge on a
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  Speaker 1: tight rope and enjoyed the tasty beverage along the way,
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  Speaker 1: but his show wasn't over. After a brief rest, he
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  Speaker 1: set out again, this time with something strapped onto his back.
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  Speaker 1: About two feet out from the Canadian side, he stopped
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  Speaker 1: and fastened his balancing pole to the rope, Then untying
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  Speaker 1: the load on his back, he set up a Daguero
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  Speaker 1: type camera on a stand and took a photograph of
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  Speaker 1: the crowd before packing it back up and finishing the
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  Speaker 1: journey back to the American side. He repeated his feet
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  Speaker 1: again a few days later on July four of that year,
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  Speaker 1: and several more times after that, varying the different tricks
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  Speaker 1: he performed along the way. He once walked half the
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  Speaker 1: rope facing forward and the other half backward. On another attempt,
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  Speaker 1: he pushed a wheelbarrow all the way across, and during
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  Speaker 1: was perhaps his most daring performance, he stopped in the
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  Speaker 1: middle of the rope, unpacked a camp stove he'd been
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  Speaker 1: carrying on his back, and cooked himself an omelet right
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  Speaker 1: there on the rope. Now that's what i'd call a
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  Speaker 1: well balanced breakfast. A good card shark can build up
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  Speaker 1: a kind of reputation. They can be shifty, They know
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  Speaker 1: how to read people, and they know exactly how much
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  Speaker 1: trouble they can get themselves into before they're in too deep.
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  Speaker 1: Joseph Lwell was quite the shark himself, and he was
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  Speaker 1: known for it all around New York City in the
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  Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. But it wasn't just his prowess with
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  Speaker 1: a deck of cards that earned him a reputation. It
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  Speaker 1: was his other passion, one even more dangerous than any
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  Speaker 1: ticked off gangster waiting for his loan payment. You see,
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  Speaker 1: Joseph loved the ladies, particularly the newly married ones. Aside
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  Speaker 1: from the obvious problems with his vice of choicewies, New
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  Speaker 1: York was nothing like current day New York. Women were
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  Speaker 1: still seen more as virtuous property of their husbands and
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  Speaker 1: fathers as opposed to people in their own right, and
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  Speaker 1: if word ever got out about their misdeeds with Mr Elwell,
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  Speaker 1: their reputations would be dragged down right along with his.
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  Speaker 1: But Joseph couldn't help himself. He'd flashes bright white smile,
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  Speaker 1: say a few charming words, and they'd fall head over
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  Speaker 1: heels for the bridge King of Manhattan. Yeah that's right.
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  Speaker 1: Joseph Elwell's game of choice wasn't Texas Hold Him or
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  Speaker 1: five cards stud the kind of games you might associate
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  Speaker 1: with a card shark. Now, his game of choice was bridge,
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  Speaker 1: and if it was a sport, Joseph would be It's
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  Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's. His skills, both at and away from the
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  Speaker 1: table were legendary, as was the list of men who
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  Speaker 1: wanted him dead. Jilted lovers and overprotective fathers threatened him
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  Speaker 1: with all manner of violence. Even his own wife hated him, and,
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  Speaker 1: as you might imagine, his infidelity eventually caused their separation. However,
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  Speaker 1: none of the angry husbands ever seemed to seriously threaten him.
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  Speaker 1: They'd all been angry, or jealous or hateful, but it
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  Speaker 1: was all for posturing. Joseph just laughed them all off
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  Speaker 1: and moved on to the next woman he saw, which
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  Speaker 1: is what made what happened on jule N so strange.
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  Speaker 1: The night before, Joseph had spent the evening with Viola Cross,
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  Speaker 1: who had recently divorced from her husband and was looking
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  Speaker 1: for some fun. The two head dinner and drinks at
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  Speaker 1: the Ritz Carlton Hotel, followed by some revelry at Zigfield's
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  Speaker 1: Midnight Frolic, a late night performance put on by the
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  Speaker 1: women of Zigfield's Follies, just a less family friendly version.
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  Speaker 1: Around three in the morning, Joseph arrived back home, where
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  Speaker 1: he spent a few hours making phone calls. He placed
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  Speaker 1: the last call just after six am, and then stepped
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  Speaker 1: outside to fetch his morning paper from his stoop. Later
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  Speaker 1: that morning, Joseph's housekeeper arrived to begin her daily cleaning.
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  Speaker 1: As she started tidy and she noticed the door to
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  Speaker 1: his living room was locked from the inside. She let
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  Speaker 1: herself in and saw a man sitting in a chair
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  Speaker 1: with the day's newspaper folded in his lap. He was
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  Speaker 1: nearly bald, had no teeth, and looked deathly ill. For
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  Speaker 1: a moment, she was taken aback by the presence of
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  Speaker 1: a stranger in her employer's house. But then she took
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  Speaker 1: a second look and realized she recognized the man. After all,
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  Speaker 1: it was Joseph Elwell. The housekeeper said hello to him,
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  Speaker 1: but he didn't respond, so she went over to check
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  Speaker 1: on him, and that's when she saw it, the red
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  Speaker 1: hole between his eyes. She screamed and fled the room
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  Speaker 1: to call the police, and surprisingly, Joseph shot to the
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  Speaker 1: head hadn't killed him. He was still breathing when the
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  Speaker 1: authorities arrived to inspect the scene. He was too far
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  Speaker 1: gone to speak, though, and shortly after paramedics carded him off,
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  Speaker 1: he passed away. The NYPD noted that Joseph had been
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  Speaker 1: shot at point blank range with the forty five, and
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  Speaker 1: yet they ruled out suicide. That's because the police found
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  Speaker 1: a single bullet on the table in front of him
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  Speaker 1: and the cartridge on the floor beside him. The gun
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  Speaker 1: that fired it, though, was gone. Nothing in the room
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  Speaker 1: had been disturbed. Joseph hadn't been robbed, and there were
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  Speaker 1: no signs of any kind of struggle. And the most
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  Speaker 1: interesting detail of all was that the blood spatter on
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  Speaker 1: the walls indicated the shooter had been crouched in front
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  Speaker 1: of the late bridge player, suggesting that they probably knew
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  Speaker 1: each other. But despite the evidence left behind, there was
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  Speaker 1: one question still buzzing inside everyone's heads. How had the
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  Speaker 1: shooter gotten away? All the windows in the room were
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  Speaker 1: sealed and the door had been locked from the inside.
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  Speaker 1: No way in, no way out. Joseph Lwell's murder remains
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  Speaker 1: unsolved to this day, and after all these years, it's
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  Speaker 1: unlikely anyone will end up cracking it. Mysterious end to
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  Speaker 1: a complicated character, if there ever was one. Now that's
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  Speaker 1: what I'd call curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
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  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
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  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
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  Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
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  Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com,
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  Speaker 1: and until next time, stay curious.