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The Broken Column · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Lawrence stepped outside of his Philadelphia apartment one afternoon to
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  Speaker 1: find a box of seemingly discarded objects. This was not
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  Speaker 1: uncommon in his neighborhood, where people often left old furniture
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  Speaker 1: or boxes of books out for passers by to pick through.
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  Speaker 1: Lawrence took a look inside a couple of knickknacks, including
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  Speaker 1: a bronze statue lay on top of something massive and sparkly.
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  Speaker 1: He dug through the box, unearthing an enormous crystal ball.
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  Speaker 1: To Lawrence, it looked like a prop from a movie
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  Speaker 1: or a Halloween costume, the sort of fortune teller or
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  Speaker 1: witch might use. He made him move the box to
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  Speaker 1: his garage, but he found that it was so heavy
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  Speaker 1: that he had no choice but to drag it. Lawrence
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  Speaker 1: had no use for the knickknacks, but he knew someone
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  Speaker 1: who would love the crystal ball. His friend Kim Beckles,
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  Speaker 1: cleaned Lawrence's house for him occasionally. Kim liked a joke
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  Speaker 1: about being a witch and was all too happy when
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  Speaker 1: he presented her with the crystal ball the next time
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  Speaker 1: he saw her. Six months later, a man nicknamed Al
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  Speaker 1: the trash Picker passed through Lawrence's neighborhood hunting for items
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  Speaker 1: to pawn. Alan Lawrence weren't close friends, but he had
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  Speaker 1: given Al a key to his garage and told him
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  Speaker 1: to take anything that he wanted to sell. That day,
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  Speaker 1: Al picked up the bronze statuette that Lawrence had found
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  Speaker 1: next to the crystal ball. Al didn't have much use
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  Speaker 1: for it either, but he knew that the old adage
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  Speaker 1: was true. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Al
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  Speaker 1: slipped the statue in with his other fines for the day,
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  Speaker 1: and he made his way towards South Street garage and pawnshop.
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  Speaker 1: The shop bought from Al regularly, and that day they
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  Speaker 1: offered him thirty dollars for the statue and a wooden
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  Speaker 1: table he'd picked up elsewhere. Twelve days later, on October
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  Speaker 1: twenty fourth of nineteen ninety one, Penn Museum employee, Jess Canby,
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  Speaker 1: took advantage of a free afternoon to do some shopping.
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  Speaker 1: As a self described thrift store junkie, Jess loved to
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  Speaker 1: pick through piles of discarded treasures. She entered the South
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  Speaker 1: Street Garage and pawnshop that afternoon with no idea what
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  Speaker 1: she was about to find. A bronze statue out behind
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  Speaker 1: the counter caught Jess's eye. She asked the clerk if
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  Speaker 1: she could inspect it more closely. In her hands, the
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  Speaker 1: metal was cold and heavy. It depicted Osiris, the Egyptian
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  Speaker 1: god of the afterlife. Jess examined the statue, first in
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  Speaker 1: fascination and then in disbelief. Without a word of explanation,
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  Speaker 1: she'd dropped the statue onto the counter and raced out
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  Speaker 1: the door. Less than an hour later, she returned, this
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  Speaker 1: time with two En Museum directors and the police. You see.
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  Speaker 1: Three years earlier, on November tenth of nineteen eighty eight,
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  Speaker 1: the Penn Museum staff had conducted their morning checks and
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  Speaker 1: found the unthinkable. In a room called the Harrison Rotunda,
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  Speaker 1: where priceless artifacts from Japan and China were displayed, three
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  Speaker 1: objects were missing. A silver Japanese sculpture resembling a crashing wave,
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  Speaker 1: a bronze statue of the Egyptian god Osiris, and a
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  Speaker 1: fifty five pound crystal ball that had once belonged to
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  Speaker 1: the Dowager Empress of China. Together, they were valued at
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  Speaker 1: over half a million dollars. Museum officials alerted the police
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  Speaker 1: and raced to check their security footage. They were horrified
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  Speaker 1: to discover that security had been undergoing repairs to their
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  Speaker 1: camera system and no footage of that night existed. Word
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  Speaker 1: of the heist traveled quickly, and the Japanese wave sculpture
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  Speaker 1: was recovered the same day. It had been dumped outside
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  Speaker 1: of a building on the UPenn campus without fingerprints or
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  Speaker 1: forensic evidence. Police and FBI searched for the crystal ball
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  Speaker 1: and the statue, but without any leads, the case went cold,
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  Speaker 1: that is until Jess can be spotted and recognized the
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  Speaker 1: stolen artifact. At the pawn shot that day. Investigators questioned
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  Speaker 1: the pawnshop owners, who led officials to al the trash picker,
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  Speaker 1: who led them to Lawrence Stemmtz. When questioned by the
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  Speaker 1: FBI and museum officials, Lawrence told them how he had
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  Speaker 1: found the statue in a box with other objects, including
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  Speaker 1: the crystal ball that he had given to Kim Beckle's
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  Speaker 1: Kim happily returned the crystal ball to the museum, where
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  Speaker 1: it was identified as the stolen artifact. Kim, Al and
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  Speaker 1: Lawrence were all questioned extensively by the police and FBI,
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  Speaker 1: but cleared of any suspicion in the robbery. Today, the
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  Speaker 1: crystal ball is back in pride of place at the
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  Speaker 1: Penn Museum Harrison Rotunda, along with the Osiris statue and
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  Speaker 1: Japanese sculpture. The story of their time away from the
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  Speaker 1: museum is not widely known, and the heist itself remains unsolved,
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  Speaker 1: and as far as the year or so that the
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  Speaker 1: crystal ball spent in Kim Beckle's possession, she told investigators
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  Speaker 1: that she had used the priceless antique as a hat rack. Today,
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  Speaker 1: the Nachez Trace Parkway is a two lane road winding
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  Speaker 1: through the tranquil forests of Tennessee. It's a favorite for hikers, bicyclists,
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  Speaker 1: and tourists looking for a scenic drive. But two hundred
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  Speaker 1: years ago, long before the road was paved, the Natchez
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  Speaker 1: Trace was more than just a place for a quiet getaway.
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  Speaker 1: It was one of the main routes for traders and
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  Speaker 1: explorers crossing the American frontier. On a cool autumn evening
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen oh nine, a lone traveler stopped at one
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  Speaker 1: of the few inns along the remote trail, a log
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  Speaker 1: cabin called Grinder's Stand. The innkeeper's wife noticed right away
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  Speaker 1: that the man was behaving strangely. He kept pacing back
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  Speaker 1: and forth talking to a and she gave him the
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  Speaker 1: key to the main cabin and started preparing his bed,
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  Speaker 1: but he told her not to bother he preferred to
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  Speaker 1: sleep on the floor. Late that night, around three o'clock
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  Speaker 1: in the morning, the innkeeper's wife was startled by the
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  Speaker 1: sound of gunshots from the main cabin. She woke up
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  Speaker 1: the servants and hurried over for them to break open
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  Speaker 1: the door. Inside, she saw her guest crawling on the
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  Speaker 1: buffalo hide rug, bleeding from bullet wounds to his head
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  Speaker 1: and chest. He begged them for a drink of water.
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  Speaker 1: The servants poured him a glass and helped him sip,
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  Speaker 1: but that was all they could do for him. There
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  Speaker 1: were no doctors this far out in the wilderness. By sunrise,
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  Speaker 1: he was dead. The man's servants were traveling a day
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  Speaker 1: or two behind him, and they soon arrived at Grinder's
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  Speaker 1: stand carried him along the trail. The man's friends all
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  Speaker 1: assumed the death was a suicide. He had lifelong struggles
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  Speaker 1: with depression, and he was dealing with money problems too.
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  Speaker 1: He'd recently had to leave behind a job that he
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  Speaker 1: absolutely loved for a desk job, and it was a
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  Speaker 1: difficult adjust, even drinking heavily to get through the days.
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  Speaker 1: He even tried unsuccessfully to take his own life just
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  Speaker 1: a few weeks earlier. But there was something odd about
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  Speaker 1: the situation. The man was a skilled gunman. He was
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  Speaker 1: a former soldier and an expert hunter. How could he
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  Speaker 1: have shot himself twice at point blank range and missed
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  Speaker 1: badly enough that he survived for hours. Many people, though,
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  Speaker 1: thought his death was actually a murder. It may have
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  Speaker 1: been roving bandits searching the trail for someone to rob.
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  Speaker 1: But another scandalous theory was that the innkeeper had caught
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  Speaker 1: the man in bed with his wife, and some believe
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  Speaker 1: that it was an assassination because this man wasn't just
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  Speaker 1: any old lonesome traveler. He was one of the greatest
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  Speaker 1: explorers in American history. Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and
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  Speaker 1: Clark Expedition. There's a conspiracy theory that Lewis was killed
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  Speaker 1: by James Wilkinson, an army general who served as governor
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  Speaker 1: of the Louisiana Territory. Wilkinson was secretly a spy for
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  Speaker 1: the Spanish, and he was also involved in some corrupt
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  Speaker 1: land deals that Lewis had information about. The idea was
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  Speaker 1: that Wilkinson had killed Lewis to protect his secrets, and
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  Speaker 1: while there's no hard evidence to support this theory, it
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  Speaker 1: has stuck around. Almost forty years after Lewis's death. In
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  Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, a Tennessee State commission opened his grave
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  Speaker 1: and examined his body. Their final report found that even
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  Speaker 1: though the death was officially ruled a suicide, it was
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  Speaker 1: and I quote more probable that he died by the
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  Speaker 1: hands of an assassin. The commissioners erected a monument over
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  Speaker 1: Lewis's grave, a broken column symbolizing a life cut short.
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  Speaker 1: It's still standing there along the Natchez Trace, near a
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  Speaker 1: replica of the original Grinder's stand. In recent decades, some
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  Speaker 1: of Lewis's descendants have tried to convince the National Park
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  Speaker 1: Service to exhume his body again for more forensic testing,
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  Speaker 1: but the request has been repeatedly denied. Unless they changed
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  Speaker 1: their minds, the truth about what happened to Meriwether Lewis
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  Speaker 1: might never be known. He might have been a trail
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  Speaker 1: blo who navigated a continent, but in the end he
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  Speaker 1: became lost in the fog of a personal mystery. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.