Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good evening. At the height of the Great Depression, Los
Speaker 2: Angeles oil mogul George Allen Hancock and his crew of
Speaker 2: Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene two bodies mummified
Speaker 2: by the searing heat on the shore of a remote
Speaker 2: Galapacho's island. For the past four years, Hancock and other
Speaker 2: American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens
Speaker 2: for scientific research. On one trip to the Glapicos, Hancock
Speaker 2: was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans,
Speaker 2: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping
Speaker 2: to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to
Speaker 2: a life of isolation that he'd had his teeth extracted
Speaker 2: and replaced with a set of steel dentures. As Hancock
Speaker 2: and his fellow American explorers would witness paradise had turned
Speaker 2: into chaos. The three sets of exiles, a Berlin doctor
Speaker 2: and his lover, a traumatized World War One veteran and
Speaker 2: his young family, and an Australian baroness with two adoring paramours,
Speaker 2: were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations.
Speaker 2: The barrenness, wielding a writing crop and pearl handled revolver,
Speaker 2: staged physical fights between the two lovers and unabashedly seduced
Speaker 2: American tourists. The conclusion was deadly, with two exiles missing
Speaker 2: and two others dead. The survivors purled accusations of murder.
Speaker 2: Using never before published archives, Abbot Kaylor weaves a chilling,
Speaker 2: stranger than fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie, set against
Speaker 2: the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to
Speaker 2: World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious
Speaker 2: as the Galapicos itself. Eden Undone explores the universal and
Speaker 2: timeless desire to seek utopia and lays bare the human
Speaker 2: fallibility that inevitably renders such a quest doomed. The book
Speaker 2: you were featuring this evening is Eden Undone, a true
Speaker 2: story of sex Murder and Utopia at the Dawn of
Speaker 2: World War Two with my special guest, formerly writing as
Speaker 2: Karen Abbot New York Times bestselling author Abbot Kaylor. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: Abbit Kaylor, thanks so much for having me. Dan, thank
Speaker 2: you so much. And congratulations on this incredible book. Eden Undone, thank.
Speaker 3: You so much. I had a lot of fun writing it,
Speaker 3: and I'm really glad that you enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 2: Tell us how you came to be the author of
Speaker 2: this book.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a good question. About twelve years ago, so
Speaker 3: it's been quite some time. I was looking for another story,
Speaker 3: just sort of waiting through and looking through old newspaper files,
Speaker 3: and I came acrossm this came upon this tabloid passage
Speaker 3: that was so fantastic and absurd that I had to
Speaker 3: read it about three times just to make sure I
Speaker 3: really read what I had just read. And it was
Speaker 3: a passage. It was, you know, a headline, and it
Speaker 3: had said quote was doctor Ritter with his steel teeth
Speaker 3: Poisoned in Paradise was Baroness Eloise, known as Crazy Panties,
Speaker 3: who ruled the island with a gun in love murdered
Speaker 3: by one of her love slaves after she had driven
Speaker 3: the other to his death. And why is Frau Ritter
Speaker 3: going back to what she once called Hell's Volcano the
Speaker 3: mystery of the Galapachos Island, which Germany covets to be
Speaker 3: solved at last. So I don't know any narrative nonfiction
Speaker 3: writer who wouldn't start doing a deep dive after that.
Speaker 3: And I did a deep dive, and after confirming that
Speaker 3: Crazy Panties more than satisfactorily embodied her nickname, I pivoted
Speaker 3: from the project I had been thinking about, and I
Speaker 3: was desperate to write this one instead. But the problem
Speaker 3: was that my publishers weren't interested. They said, we, you know,
Speaker 3: you write American history, and we want American history from
Speaker 3: you with American characters years past. I went on, you know,
Speaker 3: I wrote other books, but I never forgot this story,
Speaker 3: and it sort of remained foremost in my mind and
Speaker 3: I was obsessed with it. And I finally took the
Speaker 3: publisher of Crown, which is my division of Penguin Random House.
Speaker 3: I took him out for drinks and begged him, and
Speaker 3: I made the argument that you know, this isn't a
Speaker 3: European story. This isn't an American story. This is a
Speaker 3: human story. Now, who among us hasn't dreamt of abandoning
Speaker 3: our lives and fleeing off to some remote island just
Speaker 3: to start over where nobody knows who we are? You know,
Speaker 3: who hasn't wanted to flee the madding crowds and the
Speaker 3: social media and all the pressures of our daily lives
Speaker 3: and just find something else that's really simple and seemingly easy.
Speaker 3: And he got that, and I think as a timeless
Speaker 3: and universal question and desire. And that's another reason I
Speaker 3: really wanted to explore this book.
Speaker 2: You right, that you spent five unforgettable days on this
Speaker 2: island of Florinia. Tell us just about this incredible journey.
Speaker 3: Briefly, It was really incredible. It took two full days
Speaker 3: to get there from New York City. You know, plans, trains, autobiles, ferries,
Speaker 3: a lot of walking, and Floriana For people who aren't
Speaker 3: familiar with the Galapagos, the Glapacos in general, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not this sort of shimmering golden beach with lust
Speaker 3: tropical fruits and this like sort of paradise of lush
Speaker 3: gardens and it's this lava encrusted islands that are sprung
Speaker 3: from volcanoes. A lot of the islands are barren and
Speaker 3: they don't have fresh water sources. It's really really difficult terrain.
Speaker 3: So I went there, you know, in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: with all the modern conveniences and still found that how
Speaker 3: do these people live there? There's about one hundred people
Speaker 3: who live there now. And I couldn't imagine what these
Speaker 3: characters in the nineteen thirties, you know, had to go
Speaker 3: through with absolutely no modern conveniences and nothing clear, no
Speaker 3: pathways cleared. They really were starting from scratch on this
Speaker 3: difficult island.
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk about two of the main characters in here,
Speaker 2: Frederick Ritter, doctor Frederick Ritter and Dora Straus Kirwin. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they are two fascinating people, you know, and they
Speaker 3: are main character. They were in Germany. So the year
Speaker 3: is nineteen twenty nine, the Wymar Republic is starting to falter,
Speaker 3: Hitler is starting to ascend a power, and Friederich is
Speaker 3: this is this kind of strange man, eccentric doctor who
Speaker 3: has all of these these ideas, some of them quite
Speaker 3: progressive and modern about medicine and holistic healing, some of
Speaker 3: them quite wacky as well. You know, Dorry came to
Speaker 3: him in his hospital suffering from multiple sclerosis, and while
Speaker 3: every other doctor told Dory that her condition was incurable,
Speaker 3: Frederick tells her that she can cure her condition just
Speaker 3: through the power of her mind. She can just think
Speaker 3: her multiple sclerosis away. And he, you know, announced that
Speaker 3: he wanted to lived to be one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: years old. He you know, had ideas that people didn't
Speaker 3: really need teeth. They could take all their teeth out
Speaker 3: and their gums would start substituting for teeth and become
Speaker 3: harded off his teeth. He you know, wanted to explore
Speaker 3: all these philosophies, and Dorry was quite frightened with him
Speaker 3: at first. Wasn't an easy relationship in the start.
Speaker 2: You say that they were both married at this time
Speaker 2: when she was at this hydrotherapeutic institute in Berlin. Tell
Speaker 2: us about her marriage that she was in at that time.
Speaker 3: So Dorry was sort of you know this, this very
Speaker 3: sensitive child, grew up very close to animals, had all
Speaker 3: of these lofty ideas, was a bit of a dreamer,
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, just as women are pressure
Speaker 3: to do. She felt like she was getting older, she
Speaker 3: had to get married. She married an older family friend.
Speaker 3: He was a teacher, he was several years her senior,
Speaker 3: and she actually, you know, wrote a memoir in which
Speaker 3: she talked about how much she detested this marriage. She
Speaker 3: even talked about how bad he was in bed, and
Speaker 3: she just took him on as this project. She was
Speaker 3: going to try to fix him, you know, she wanted
Speaker 3: to coax him out of his fusty old habits, she wrote,
Speaker 3: and try to make him this sort of fun, younger person.
Speaker 3: And he was resistant to this. So, you know, when
Speaker 3: she went to the hospital, it was a little bit
Speaker 3: of a respite for her. She was going to be
Speaker 3: there for a while, and she got away from her husband.
Speaker 3: And here comes this strange doctor with all of his
Speaker 3: ideas and philosophies. And even though he was kind of
Speaker 3: frightening and scary and intimidating, she was really intrigued by Frederick.
Speaker 2: You also say that she was realized that she was
Speaker 2: a different person and she had more affinity for animals
Speaker 2: than humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think she had a hard time
Speaker 3: relating to people. I think what her issue was that
Speaker 3: she didn't relate to people on a one on one
Speaker 3: personal level. She was sort of just had this large
Speaker 3: view of humanity and humankind, and it was very abstract
Speaker 3: to her in a way. You know, she had volunteered
Speaker 3: during the Revolution and tried to help the you know,
Speaker 3: the poor classes, and did all this volunteering, but you
Speaker 3: never hear her talk about any really close personal relationships
Speaker 3: with anybody she forged along the way. And I just
Speaker 3: had the feeling that, you know, she was a person
Speaker 3: more interested in ideas than in people. And you know,
Speaker 3: of course that might explain her attraction to Frederick a
Speaker 3: little bit. Here was this man of man of grand ideas,
Speaker 3: you this man who read Nietzsche and was obsessed with
Speaker 3: Nietzsche and the great philosophers, and probably not surprisingly obsessed
Speaker 3: with Fietzcha because some of his harsh philosophy's transferred to Frederick,
Speaker 3: especially with regard to women. But Dory was interested in
Speaker 3: this man's ideas, and I think in a way Frederick
Speaker 3: was also an abstraction to her.
Speaker 2: He had ideas about raw food and vegetarianism that were
Speaker 2: well ahead of other people's ideas at that time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. He thought about he thought that eating
Speaker 3: meat was going to hasten the end of European culture,
Speaker 3: as he wrote. He wrote about eating raw food. He
Speaker 3: thought that people could live on nothing but figs. You know,
Speaker 3: he had all these ideas about what people should and
Speaker 3: should not do with her bodies. Of course, later on,
Speaker 3: when he's stuck on Floriana with new great food source,
Speaker 3: things get a little bit more complicated for him, and
Speaker 3: in terms of what he's willing to eat.
Speaker 2: They once she gets released from this institute, she's still
Speaker 2: wants to be with Friedrich and enjoyed his company. So
Speaker 2: they go on these long walks, and what do they
Speaker 2: talk about specifically, Well, Frederick.
Speaker 3: Shares his vision about creating utopia. He had long you know,
Speaker 3: Frederick was I should mention that he had served in
Speaker 3: World War One. He suffered from post traumatic stress disorder.
Speaker 3: He had had liver problems from the gases from from
Speaker 3: you know, being up in combat battle. He was very
Speaker 3: I think the war changed him and after that he
Speaker 3: that's when he really started to get into his more
Speaker 3: eccentric philosophies. He started fantasizing about leaving civilization behind. He
Speaker 3: called civilization quote an impersonal monster, and he believed he
Speaker 3: had nothing to offer civilization, and civilization had nothing to
Speaker 3: offer him, and he started thinking about where he would
Speaker 3: go to create his own utopia. You know, that's when
Speaker 3: he and Dorry started talking about the possibilities, and Frederick,
Speaker 3: being the sort of Nietzschean you know, devotee, wanted to
Speaker 3: you know, maybe try an island that wasn't idyllic, something
Speaker 3: that was a Nietschean challenge or something dark, and that
Speaker 3: would you know, prove that he was an ubermant. You know,
Speaker 3: everything to Frederick was a challenge and proving that he
Speaker 3: was the best that there could possibly be. And so
Speaker 3: they talked about their plans for running away from Germany
Speaker 3: and going to this remote island where nobody else lived
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 2: You're right that when they were looking at photos of
Speaker 2: the of islands maybe to choose from, they saw all
Speaker 2: kinds of photos of sumptuous islands, but the one that
Speaker 2: Brewianna didn't look so sumptuous at all.
Speaker 3: No, you know, it's it is entirely covered in lava
Speaker 3: rock except for the highlands. There is an area you know,
Speaker 3: up towards you know, it's kind of a volcanic island.
Speaker 3: So if you travel upward a bit inland and upwards
Speaker 3: a couple hours from the from the bay, you'll find
Speaker 3: a more lush area. There's one fresh water spring on
Speaker 3: the island, and today they actually still have that one
Speaker 3: for USh water spring that they used to pipe water
Speaker 3: all over the island for people. But they figured they
Speaker 3: would settle somewhere near that spring. It would be adequate
Speaker 3: enough for them to start planning seeds and maybe a
Speaker 3: garden would grow. And the one thing about Friedrich, you know,
Speaker 3: he did have some crazy philosophical ideas, but he was
Speaker 3: very handy in terms of building things, and he was
Speaker 3: able to build sort of an irrigation system that would
Speaker 3: pipe water into their makeshift home that would you know,
Speaker 3: provide shower water and a way for them to water
Speaker 3: their garden. But it was a very very difficult climate
Speaker 3: and he had to do a lot of work clearing brush,
Speaker 3: moving things around, and just making space for where they
Speaker 3: might build their home.
Speaker 2: Let's go back just a little bit. You write that
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty four, American scientist William Biebe visited the
Speaker 2: Galapagos and wrote a best selling book called The Galapagos.
Speaker 2: So this led to this interest in the islands itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so William Bieb was following the footsteps of Charles Darwin,
Speaker 3: who of course made his famous journey in eighteen thirty
Speaker 3: five to the Glapcos Islands, which really informed his theory
Speaker 3: of evolution. So when Biebe went about one hundred years later,
Speaker 3: he sort of was retracing Darwin's steps and reignited this
Speaker 3: fascination with the Glapacos Islands. And after Biebe's book was published,
Speaker 3: I believe in nineteen twenty six, all sorts of wealthy Americans,
Speaker 3: whether they had scientific background or not, were something interested
Speaker 3: in visiting these islands and seeing these rare you know,
Speaker 3: flora and fauna that were found nowhere else in the world.
Speaker 3: And they just started, you know, making these trips there
Speaker 3: and bringing these animals back to America. Not a good idea,
Speaker 3: but it was sort of you know, their trophies that
Speaker 3: they would bring back, but ignited this entire you know,
Speaker 3: big fascination with oceanic exploration and especially with the Glapaco Silence.
Speaker 2: You're right then, in July third, nineteen twenty nine, Frederick
Speaker 2: and Dory left from Amsterdam and they pulled in to
Speaker 2: the islands July thirty. First tell us about their arrival
Speaker 2: on the islands, their impression and just what happens initially
Speaker 2: on that island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the journey over was very difficult, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a long journey coming over from Europe
Speaker 3: all the way to you know, the Pacific, off the
Speaker 3: coast of Ecuador. As soon as they arrive, almost Dorry
Speaker 3: starts feeling a sense of foreboding. You know, she had
Speaker 3: done her research on the Glapagos and she had heard
Speaker 3: all of these dark stories and lore about the island,
Speaker 3: specifically Floriana. Floriana has a really fascinating history. It was
Speaker 3: the Galapago's first penal colony that was once run by
Speaker 3: a murderous dictator. And there was a pirate named Patrick
Speaker 3: Watkins who was actually the first resident of Floriana. And
Speaker 3: you know there were reports of him. You know, people
Speaker 3: would ship whalers and people would stop by, and captains
Speaker 3: would would encounter Patrick Watkins and he was always just
Speaker 3: scribe is this terrifying man who was covered in vermin,
Speaker 3: who just was drunk all the time and would threaten people.
Speaker 3: And eventually he killed a bunch of captives and escaped Floriana.
Speaker 3: But Dorry had read all this. She was terrified of
Speaker 3: the ghost of Patrick Watkins, and she believed that in
Speaker 3: one way or another, you know, Floriana might not accept
Speaker 3: her and Frederick as residence and harm might come to them.
Speaker 3: So she actually arrives on the island with the idea
Speaker 3: that maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all.
Speaker 2: Now Dorry loves animals, what do they experience, what do
Speaker 2: they find regarding the animals, the exotic animals that are
Speaker 2: on this island.
Speaker 3: You know, they were much more concerned with sort of
Speaker 3: practical things. They didn't do the really fanciful, you know,
Speaker 3: complicated exploration that the wealthy Americans did. They were pretty
Speaker 3: much trying to figure out how they were going to eat,
Speaker 3: where they were going to sleep, how they were going
Speaker 3: to prevent the animals from eating their garden. And that
Speaker 3: was their biggest problem, because as soon as they started
Speaker 3: planting seeds and crops started growing, they would just have
Speaker 3: an invasive you know, a bunch of hordes of animals
Speaker 3: coming in every night, wild boar, goats, all of these
Speaker 3: animals that had weren't native to Floriana but had been
Speaker 3: introduced by people in centuries prior and just sort of
Speaker 3: taken over the island and were invasive. So they were
Speaker 3: basically just worried they were going to starve to death
Speaker 3: because every time they started getting a crop, going these
Speaker 3: animals and insects and would just completely destroy everything they
Speaker 3: had grown. So it was it was quite a concern.
Speaker 3: And there's a couple funny stories of Frederick trying to
Speaker 3: sort of battle these wild wild boars one on one,
Speaker 3: these wild pigs. He called them the devil pigs.
Speaker 2: Wow. Now they searched for they know that there was
Speaker 2: legend has it that there's a spring, so they searching
Speaker 2: for a spring. And you also note that Frederick had
Speaker 2: decided not to bring a gun the island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, when they were discussing what to bring,
Speaker 3: and it was quite an interesting exchange. Dory was like,
Speaker 3: we should bring medicine. What if we get sick, what
Speaker 3: if we have an infection, what if we are written pain?
Speaker 3: And Frederick says, no, no, you're forgetting the lessons I've
Speaker 3: taught you. You can heal anything with the power of
Speaker 3: your mind. And you know then, you know, Frederick wants
Speaker 3: to bring a gun and Dorry says, no, no, you
Speaker 3: know that that's against our mission of peace and so
Speaker 3: they don't bring either of those things, much to their
Speaker 3: regret later, but they had quite a conversation about how
Speaker 3: they were going to transfer from their gottle, relatively coddled
Speaker 3: European life to this very strict life in Floriana where
Speaker 3: they're going to be at bare minimums and just bare
Speaker 3: minimum and just rely on their own instinct and rely
Speaker 3: on their own willpower.
Speaker 2: Really this Ecuadorian boy named Hugo, which was their guide.
Speaker 2: You talk about that. Just a few days later there
Speaker 2: was an incident or an accident with Hugo and one
Speaker 2: of the animals on the island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So as soon as they disembark and they're on Floriana,
Speaker 3: the ship, the captain who had ferried them over to
Speaker 3: the island says that you can, you know, basically employ
Speaker 3: this this native Ecuadorian boy, Hugo, to help you for
Speaker 3: a little bit while, you know, while you're trying to
Speaker 3: get your bearings and trying to figure out where you're
Speaker 3: going to live. And Dorry notices that Frederick is jealous
Speaker 3: of Hugo. He's very jealous that this boy, this young
Speaker 3: boy who really knows nothing about you know, philosophy or
Speaker 3: any of the lofty concerns that Frederick concerns himself with.
Speaker 3: He was just this boy who instinctively knew how to
Speaker 3: shoot and hunt and live on the land, and Frederick
Speaker 3: was envious of this boy's skill. They start getting into
Speaker 3: battles because Hugo immediately immediately starts killing some of the
Speaker 3: wild pigs on the island, and Frederick protests, you know,
Speaker 3: he's a vegetarian. He doesn't want to kill animal for
Speaker 3: his own use. This is against all of his philosophy,
Speaker 3: and so they get into battle about that because Hugo
Speaker 3: is basically like, you want to eat, don't you. This
Speaker 3: is what you have to do. And there's sort of
Speaker 3: a you know, it gets off to a rocky start
Speaker 3: right away, and Dory observes, you know, interesting things about
Speaker 3: Frederick and really what his pride was wounded, and it's
Speaker 3: something that she sort of notices and holds onto and
Speaker 3: for future reference with him.
Speaker 2: You're right about post Office Bay, which is an important
Speaker 2: locale on this island. Tell us about post Office Bay
Speaker 2: and its role.
Speaker 3: So in the early nineteenth century and all throughout the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century, what whalers would pass by in Floriana Florianda
Speaker 3: became known for this barrel. It was erected on a
Speaker 3: pole and it was stuck down on the shore on
Speaker 3: post Office Bay, where people could leave letters in the
Speaker 3: little barrel and whalers who were passing through and heading,
Speaker 3: you know, home or to wherever they were going, pick
Speaker 3: up the letters see if there was anything heading to
Speaker 3: the area where they were heading, and then they would
Speaker 3: deliver them. And this became the way that mail was
Speaker 3: sent to and from Floriana. And you can imagine it
Speaker 3: took quite a bit of time for any of these
Speaker 3: letters to reach their destinations, but it was quite an
Speaker 3: ingenious way for male system work on a remote island
Speaker 3: like that. And post Office Bay there's still a barrel there.
Speaker 3: Of course it's not the original barrel, but it's still there.
Speaker 3: And when I had visited Floriana, I left a couple
Speaker 3: letters in there, and I took a couple and delivered them.
Speaker 3: So the tradition continues, but Post Office would they would
Speaker 3: become instrumental to the story, and even undone because Frederick
Speaker 3: and Dory and all of the other exiles you show
Speaker 3: up would start sending letters to the Americans that they
Speaker 3: befriended and keep them abreast of the really interesting developments
Speaker 3: that were going on in Floriana.
Speaker 2: You talk about the sailors that would come to the island,
Speaker 2: and we talk about the ship of the Manuel j Cobos.
Speaker 2: Do you talk about that. Fridrick and Dorry really want
Speaker 2: to be alone, and so they every time that someone
Speaker 2: comes there, they talk about and have a discussion about
Speaker 2: not wanting people to come there to visit them. They
Speaker 2: want to be alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I mean they were alone for quite a
Speaker 3: few months. They arrived in the fall of nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 3: But in January, the first American shows up on Floriana.
Speaker 3: This is Eugene MacDonald. He was the founder of Zenith Radio.
Speaker 3: And he arrives in Floriana in his yacht with his
Speaker 3: scientific crew, you know, intending to just gather some exotic animals,
Speaker 3: and he encounters Dory and Frederick and he's shocked, you know,
Speaker 3: he thought nobody lived there. And so he speaks with them,
Speaker 3: here's about their mission, here's about their utopia, and reports
Speaker 3: all of this back on the wire. Reports as soon
Speaker 3: as he leaves, so words spreads quickly that there's this
Speaker 3: quote modern day Adam and Eve living on this island
Speaker 3: in the Galapagos, and this makes worldwide news, and of course,
Speaker 3: you know, other people want to come and see Frederick
Speaker 3: and Dorri for themselves.
Speaker 2: He also is enthralled with these exotic birds, and so
Speaker 2: they take some specimens back from this island, don't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. You know. It became a metaphor to
Speaker 3: me when these you know, Americans would come here on
Speaker 3: these islands and gather all these exotic animals and bring
Speaker 3: them back to America and put them in zoos and
Speaker 3: aquarium and take them out of their natural habitat, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't go well for the animals. As you can imagine,
Speaker 3: they had no idea how to care for these exotic
Speaker 3: animals back in America. And to me, it was the
Speaker 3: same situation with the humans in the story. You're taking
Speaker 3: out out of their natural habitat of Germany or you know,
Speaker 3: just in civilization in general, and putting them on this
Speaker 3: island where they really have no business being, and of
Speaker 3: course it doesn't go well for them either. So it
Speaker 3: just became sort of it was important to me to
Speaker 3: include the animal stories because I think it really mirrored
Speaker 3: the human story.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages,
Speaker 2: So you talk about that soon as Commander McDonald departed,
Speaker 2: and he had sent the message that the world found
Speaker 2: out about Frederick and Dora and their idea of this
Speaker 2: utopia in this isolation on this island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so as soon as the word gets out, you know,
Speaker 3: it also spreads to Germany, of course, and there was
Speaker 3: a family there called the Whitmers. It's actually they're not married.
Speaker 3: It's Margaret Wilborough Heinz Whitmer hein and Heines has a
Speaker 3: young son from his first marriage. Both Margaret and Hines
Speaker 3: are still married to their spouses, much like Dory and
Speaker 3: Frederick were also married. They decide to leave their spouses
Speaker 3: and be together, and they're intrigued by the idea of
Speaker 3: going to Floriana, where, following in Dori and Frederick's footsteps,
Speaker 3: Heines's young son was sickly and nearly blindson's birth, and
Speaker 3: they thought the tropical climate might do him some good.
Speaker 3: And Hines was also a World War One veteran and
Speaker 3: had some trouble from that, and he had also been
Speaker 3: a high ranking official in the Weimar Republic. And at
Speaker 3: this point Adolf Hitler is clearly ascending the power, and
Speaker 3: he really wants to escape that chaotic situation in Germany.
Speaker 3: So they decide to take a leap of faith and
Speaker 3: also move to Floriana and figure, well, at least we're
Speaker 3: going to have two fellow Germans there and we're not
Speaker 3: going to be entirely alone. Of course, you know, Frederick
Speaker 3: and Dory are not at all happy when Margaret and
Speaker 3: Hines and Harry shows up. And compounding that fact is
Speaker 3: that Margaret, by the time she arrives, is five months pregnant,
Speaker 3: which really bothers Frederick because here comes this pregnant woman expecting,
Speaker 3: you know, to have help with her delivery, you know.
Speaker 3: And Frederick had left his practice, he had no desire
Speaker 3: intention to return to medicine, and he really feels put
Speaker 3: upon by this woman.
Speaker 2: And they are not encouraging for these people to house themselves,
Speaker 2: to build the home anywhere near where they are. But
Speaker 2: what do they recommend and where do they point them
Speaker 2: to in terms of on the island.
Speaker 3: Well, they point them to Patrick Watkins Cave, you know,
Speaker 3: the murderous, scary, vermin covered pirate. He had lived in
Speaker 3: caves up in the highlands in Floriana, and caves were
Speaker 3: you know, Dorry was terrified to these caves. They're a
Speaker 3: big part of the Florana lore, where dark spirits and
Speaker 3: ghosts might lurk. Hugo, the Ecuadorian boy told them not
Speaker 3: to live near the caves. When Dorriy and Frederick point
Speaker 3: the Whitmers to these caves, and the Whitmers, to their
Speaker 3: great credit, are able to make a comfortable temporary home
Speaker 3: in these caves much too, you know, Margaret or Dorry
Speaker 3: and Frederick's surprise, you know, the Whitmers start flourishing and
Speaker 3: settling in, probably much easier than Doriy and Frederick did themselves.
Speaker 2: What did Dori, Dora and Frederick think of the Whittmers.
Speaker 2: Obviously you mentioned that they weren't welcome, But what did
Speaker 2: Dorry think of Margaret and Heinz and this family and
Speaker 2: the idea of them moving to this island at all?
Speaker 3: You know, I think Dorry at this point was having
Speaker 3: some problems with Frederick. The relationship had many many ups
Speaker 3: and downs. Frederick could be dismissive, even cruel. He you know,
Speaker 3: sort of belittled Dorry a lot. So she was looking
Speaker 3: forward to having a female friend. Thought it would be
Speaker 3: nice to have another woman on the island. Maybe it
Speaker 3: would be, you know, give her an escape from Frederick
Speaker 3: once in a while. But she was not at all
Speaker 3: impressed with Margaret. She thought Margaret was an idiot for
Speaker 3: showing up pregnant. You know, she didn't know that Margaret
Speaker 3: was pregnant when she heard the family is coming, She
Speaker 3: didn't know. And she she was like, what is this
Speaker 3: woman thinking, you know, trying to give birth on a
Speaker 3: remote island. And she just thought she was a dull
Speaker 3: house frow who didn't understand anything beyond her own experience.
Speaker 3: You know, this isn't somebody she could discuss philosophy with
Speaker 3: and all that. And Margaret, for her part, thought scoffed
Speaker 3: at Dorriy's philosophical pretensions and her quoting of need and
Speaker 3: Margaret's basically like, you know, we're on a remote island.
Speaker 3: Who needs Nietzsche here? You know. So they really just
Speaker 3: weren't on the same wavelength. And Margaret hit a great
Speaker 3: first impression of Frederick. She looked at him and she
Speaker 3: was just like, these steel ventures that he's wearing make
Speaker 3: his whole head sag. And she did not. She did
Speaker 3: not like Frederick either. I think we forgot to mention
Speaker 3: the steel ventures. I should go back and say that, let's.
Speaker 2: Talk about mister Hancock of Los Angeles. January third, nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty two.
Speaker 3: Hancock, George Allen Hancock is probably the most important American
Speaker 3: explorer who comes to visit these people and comes and
Speaker 3: meshed in their lives. Really, Hancock was from his family
Speaker 3: had owned the oil rich Lebrea tarpits in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: If anybody's familiar, Hancock Park is named after his family.
Speaker 3: So he's this very very wealthy man. He had always
Speaker 3: been interested in science and exploration. He had many interests,
Speaker 3: and he was he was quite a centric himself. He
Speaker 3: was had a terrible fear of being kidnapped, and made
Speaker 3: his mansion look, you know, unkempt and uninhabited, so nobody
Speaker 3: would think he was ever in there. And he comes
Speaker 3: and you know, for hears about the explorers. He had
Speaker 3: heard the reports from Vincent Astor, who was another American
Speaker 3: who went there, and Eugene McDonald of course, and shows
Speaker 3: up there and immediately be friends Frederick and Margaret and
Speaker 3: Dory and and Hines and all of them, and he
Speaker 3: becomes their closest confidant, especially Frederick. Frederick writes to him
Speaker 3: and says, you know, my soul like nobody else does.
Speaker 3: And you know, once things start getting very complicated between
Speaker 3: all of the explorers, they turned to Hancock often and
Speaker 3: so he really, you know, loses interest in the in
Speaker 3: the animals, or I should say that his interests becomes secondary, secondary,
Speaker 3: and he's much more interested in these exotic humans and
Speaker 3: what's going on with their habitat.
Speaker 2: You say that this bruiser, it was worth a million
Speaker 2: dollars at that time, would be worth thirteen million dollars today.
Speaker 2: He wanted to enhance scientific exploration and so he had
Speaker 2: all kinds of latest technology, including cameras they could take
Speaker 2: photos underneath the sea. He had all kinds of people
Speaker 2: that he brought with him. Also.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was state of the art. It was really
Speaker 3: quite modern for its time. As you said, it had
Speaker 3: the special cameras, it could take pictures underwater. They had
Speaker 3: heated and irrigated fish tanks to transport exotic fish back
Speaker 3: to America. He had a full operating room that you
Speaker 3: could perform surgery in. He had you know, different compartments
Speaker 3: of the boat for skinning animals, preparing them for transport.
Speaker 3: It was you know, there was no detail that wasn't considered.
Speaker 3: He made quite a bit of progress in terms of
Speaker 3: discovering animals. There were actually a species named after him,
Speaker 3: the hancocky lizard, because I think he's the one that
Speaker 3: discovered it. So it was quite a serious for him,
Speaker 3: probably more serious than any of the other scientists that
Speaker 3: had come before him.
Speaker 2: You also talk about that Frederick, Frederick and Dora would
Speaker 2: be invited up onto his yacht and they would have
Speaker 2: this incredible visit with the crew, and Frederick would talk
Speaker 2: about his philosophy to Hancock and the others, and that
Speaker 2: they were even treated to these excellent musicians playing concerts
Speaker 2: that they knew from their past in Germany.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hancock was a cellist, and several other people the
Speaker 3: scientists that he brought with him were also accomplished musicians,
Speaker 3: and they would give concerts and they definitely, you know,
Speaker 3: played some music that Dory and Frederick could recognize back
Speaker 3: from home. And one of my favorite anecdotes about one
Speaker 3: of those scenes is Frederick starts singing along to one
Speaker 3: of the songs and Dorry at this point is so
Speaker 3: fed up with him that she just mocks his singing
Speaker 3: in front of everybody, and it kind of marked a
Speaker 3: turning point in the relationship. You know, they had been
Speaker 3: very concerned about presenting this idyllic relationship. They were so
Speaker 3: in love, they were uniquely devoted to each other and
Speaker 3: to their experiment. But the cracks start to form, and
Speaker 3: Hancock sees that, and it's something that sort of deepens
Speaker 3: as the time goes on.
Speaker 2: In the story, you talk about early on that Dora
Speaker 2: suffered from multiple sclerosis and had a damaged leg as
Speaker 2: a result, and that she tolerated Frederick's dismissal of her
Speaker 2: pain as part of her the process to recreate herself.
Speaker 3: You know, it was kind of this mind trickery that
Speaker 3: Frederick performs on her. It's kind of you know, you know, Dorry,
Speaker 3: you could be a good woman if only you just
Speaker 3: put your mind to it. You could heal yourself, if
Speaker 3: only you put your mind to it. And every time
Speaker 3: I'm challenging you, and every time I'm belittling you, it's
Speaker 3: because you're not living up to the ideal that I'm
Speaker 3: setting for you. So you know, it's it's he just
Speaker 3: keeps raising the bar and changing the narrative and making
Speaker 3: her gaslighting her basically and making her think that it's
Speaker 3: her fault that she's miserable. It's not It couldn't be
Speaker 3: that she's suffering from multiple scrosses on this island, being
Speaker 3: forced to drag around, you know, a cargo that's probably
Speaker 3: weighs more than she does. No, it's because you know,
Speaker 3: she's she's taking Frederick's words personally instead of internalizing them
Speaker 3: as his aspirations for her, you know, and if only
Speaker 3: she could just live up to what he's once he
Speaker 3: knows she can be, then she would be happy. And
Speaker 3: so this is the kind of mind games he plays
Speaker 3: on her, and you know something that she starts realizing
Speaker 3: what he's doing as time goes on and their relationship
Speaker 3: gets much more complicated.
Speaker 2: Let's talk up a little bit about Hinz and Margaret
Speaker 2: and their sickly once sickly son Harry, and then the
Speaker 2: birth of their other child.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they were, you know, Hines and Margaret were
Speaker 3: kind of all of the earth people. They were wholesome,
Speaker 3: they were I think they were, you know, very pure
Speaker 3: in their intentions to live on this island. You know,
Speaker 3: they made they meet Frederick and Dory and they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: we get it. You don't want anything to do with us,
Speaker 3: but of course, is Margaret's birth starts drawing closer, she
Speaker 3: starts panicking, you know, understandably, like hopes that Frederick might
Speaker 3: change his mind, and they try to make friends with him,
Speaker 3: and Hinz brings Frederick, you know, meat, He's bringing the
Speaker 3: vegetarian meat on a weekly basis, and Frederick is always
Speaker 3: saying that, oh, this is for my chickens. My chickens
Speaker 3: like to eat meat, and Margaret and Hines privately are like, oh, sure, sure,
Speaker 3: the vegetarian just want's meat for his chicken. Sure. But
Speaker 3: you know, they really try to cultivate a friendship with
Speaker 3: Frederick out of necessity, because Margaret does start getting very
Speaker 3: scared about giving birth by herself on this island, and
Speaker 3: it's quite a harrowing birth. It's it was quite a
Speaker 3: complicated and interesting scene to write in the book because
Speaker 3: she's so strong and tough, and you just can't even
Speaker 3: imagine the start ccumstances that she had to give birth
Speaker 3: basically all alone in the wild brush while you know,
Speaker 3: wild pigs are circulating and all of the dangers that
Speaker 3: are in nature like sort of closing in on her
Speaker 3: and the pitch black midnight. It was really a harrowing scene.
Speaker 3: And Margaret was a fascinating character. She was very strong,
Speaker 3: and I think she, you know, she had a little
Speaker 3: bit of a streak in her a curious streak. She
Speaker 3: always knew more than what she let on. And I
Speaker 3: think she was a gossip, you know, I think that,
Speaker 3: you know, beneath this sort of house sprow facade, Margaret
Speaker 3: was a very clever person and you know, always knew,
Speaker 3: you know, made sure she inserted herself in situations where
Speaker 3: she knew information that she wanted to know.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about now the arrival of Baroness Antonia Wagner
Speaker 2: vond Verbon Basquette, how she came to, how she came
Speaker 2: to want to come to the island. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: her vision, and let's talk about her background.
Speaker 3: So this was a fascinating character. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: I like to write about subversive, complicated bearing women in history,
Speaker 3: and I feel like she was born just for me
Speaker 3: to write about her. I love this character so much.
Speaker 3: The Baroness was in Paris when all of this was
Speaker 3: going on, And just a little bit about our background,
Speaker 3: you know, people who might have heard of this story,
Speaker 3: who might have heard of the Galapkos affair. She's always
Speaker 3: described as a quote unquote so called baroness or self
Speaker 3: professed baroness. She actually was a real baroness. I did
Speaker 3: the research on her lineage. She her grandfather had received
Speaker 3: the title of baron after his bravery in the Ostra
Speaker 3: Prussian War, and so she was an authentic baroness. She
Speaker 3: also her family came from the same dynasty as that
Speaker 3: also includes Princess William and Harry, so she had a
Speaker 3: bit of an aristocratic background. She knew seven or eight languages,
Speaker 3: and she grew up in a wealthy household that was
Speaker 3: very well respected. You know. So she also liked to
Speaker 3: make up stories about herself. You know, she went to
Speaker 3: a girls school, and she likes to tell people that
Speaker 3: she escaped from a convent. She always has to embellish.
Speaker 3: She tells people that most of our family died during
Speaker 3: the war, and she herself only escaped because she hid
Speaker 3: herself in a rug and the soldiers missed her. You know,
Speaker 3: not likely. I think she was working as a cocktail
Speaker 3: waitress in a bar at that time. So she's in
Speaker 3: Paris when this opens. She's married to a French war hero,
Speaker 3: but she has a habit of seducing everybody, men and women.
Speaker 3: She takes lovers all the time. Her husband traveled a lot.
Speaker 3: She was throwing wild parties and orgies Missus Paris in
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenty so you can imagine quite a bit
Speaker 3: of interesting the body is going on. And she hears
Speaker 3: about Frederick and Dorry and Margaret and Hines, and she
Speaker 3: thinks that, you know, I want to do that. That
Speaker 3: is where I need to go. I am going to
Speaker 3: turn Floriana into the next Miami, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: cater to American millionaires, and I'm going to build a hotel.
Speaker 3: Everybody is going to want to visit, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to own the islands. She claims that God himself told
Speaker 3: her to go to Floriana and claim the island as
Speaker 3: her own. And so she departs bringing two of her lovers.
Speaker 3: One is Rudolph Lawrence and the other is Robert Phillipson,
Speaker 3: and she arrives in Floriana and fall of nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: two announces her plans to turn Floriana into Miami, and
Speaker 3: basically nobody else is leased it all by this announcement
Speaker 3: and by the Baroness presidence, and she immediately just begins
Speaker 3: to antagonize everybody.
Speaker 2: You right, that she talks to Heinz and Margaret and
Speaker 2: tells them of the plans about the hotel. But hein
Speaker 2: Z and Margaret aren't too anxious for her to live
Speaker 2: anywhere nearby. But she has her own ideas, doesn't she.
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, she has plenty of for her own ideas.
Speaker 3: I mean, the first thing she does when she meets
Speaker 3: Margaret and Hines is she washes her feet in their
Speaker 3: drinking water, So that was really got things off to
Speaker 3: a great start. And then she announced that she was
Speaker 3: going to live near Margaret and Heines because they were
Speaker 3: close to the fresh water source and why not. Margaret
Speaker 3: and Hines try to talk her out of this, and
Speaker 3: she actually threatens them, but there's really nothing they can
Speaker 3: do there. You know, they are terrified of her pretty
Speaker 3: much right away. She actually threatens Hines with her gun,
Speaker 3: and of course he's concerned with Margaret and the baby
Speaker 3: and his family and just basically wants to keep the
Speaker 3: peace and stay away from her as much as he can.
Speaker 2: You're right that she comes complete with three dogs, a
Speaker 2: swarm of bees, twenty one packages and trunks, and a
Speaker 2: copy of her favorite novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean she brought that book, The Picture of
Speaker 3: Dorian Gray with her everywhere. It was kind of her talisman.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't just the book itself, it was that
Speaker 3: particular dog Yard copy. And she, you know, arrives with
Speaker 3: all of these trunks containing various silks and decorations. And
Speaker 3: because she's serious about building this hotel, she wants to
Speaker 3: call it the Hacienda Paridiso, and does start constructing this
Speaker 3: hotel and drapes it in silk and makes this very
Speaker 3: secluded and cozy boudoir for herself where she starts entertaining
Speaker 3: American tourists, one of whom calls her hotel quote a
Speaker 3: festering sex complex, which sort of gives you the idea
Speaker 3: of how she was conducting herself of the island where
Speaker 3: Margaret and Hines were right nearby with her family.
Speaker 2: Now everyone meets these two men that accompany her, Robert
Speaker 2: Phillips and Rudolph Lorenz, and she says Robert or claims
Speaker 2: that Robert is her husband. Tell us what the appearance
Speaker 2: of these two men are and their ages and the
Speaker 2: impression that Dora and Frederick and Heinz and Margaret had
Speaker 2: of these two men.
Speaker 3: So, Rudolph Lawrence is a blonde, slight man, kind of frail, skinny,
Speaker 3: and the baroness had been in business with Rudolph in Paris.
Speaker 3: They owned a lingerie shop together. I believe that's how
Speaker 3: they met. I also think that they part of the
Speaker 3: reason they left. Floria left Paris, aside from God's order,
Speaker 3: is that the lingerie shop had gone out of business.
Speaker 3: She had been cooking the books. Lawrence lost a lot
Speaker 3: of his investment, if not all of his investment, and
Speaker 3: really had no choice but to go with her. He
Speaker 3: kind of was ruined there as a businessman and was like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess I'm going with her. And he
Speaker 3: loved her, you know, he actually loved her. So that
Speaker 3: was Rudolph Lawrence. And Robert Phillipson was this larger, sort
Speaker 3: of hunky, dark, dark haired man. Both of them were
Speaker 3: several years her junior. She was in her late thirties
Speaker 3: at this point, and they were, you know, ten eight
Speaker 3: years younger, and she sort of preferred Robert. He was
Speaker 3: the more attractive lover to her. And she eventually starts
Speaker 3: pitting these two men against each other. And you know,
Speaker 3: Dori and Margaret and Hines and Friedrich would observe the
Speaker 3: dynamic of the Baroness with these two men and grow
Speaker 3: increasingly concerned for Rudolph Lawrence, the smaller one, because it
Speaker 3: seemed that he was being terribly abused by the Baroness
Speaker 3: and would show up on their doorsteps. And of course
Speaker 3: they risked, you know, the Baroness's wrath if they did
Speaker 3: anything to help him or assist him, or took them in,
Speaker 3: took him in under the roof, the Baroness might might
Speaker 3: seek revenge. And so it just was the sort of
Speaker 3: you know, cauldron of something terrible waiting to happen. As
Speaker 3: these tensions grew among all of them.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about some of the gifts that the ships
Speaker 2: when they arrived would be given to these people, and
Speaker 2: they would gratefully accept these gifts, but not all the
Speaker 2: gifts went to where they were supposed to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this is this is something that you
Speaker 3: know here the Americans believe they're helping these these exiles.
Speaker 3: They're giving them seed, they're giving them food, they're giving
Speaker 3: them ammunition, they're giving them guns, they're giving them clothing.
Speaker 3: You know, they gave Frederick got steel polish floor polish
Speaker 3: from from who was it was, you Gee McDonald, and
Speaker 3: he made the joke, what is he going to do
Speaker 3: with floor polish except the polish's steel dentures. But so
Speaker 3: the Americans thought that they were hoping the exiles, but
Speaker 3: really they were just creating this this really stiff competition.
Speaker 3: The baroness would steal items that were intended for Hines
Speaker 3: and Margaret, even stealing milk that was supposed to go
Speaker 3: to their brand new baby. You know, there were you know,
Speaker 3: items would go missing. Everybody would have started accusing one
Speaker 3: another of stealing. And with Frederick, I think it really
Speaker 3: highlighted his hypocrisy. You know, here he was I want
Speaker 3: to live alone, I can be self sufficient. I am
Speaker 3: the ubermench And suddenly he's so dependent on the largest
Speaker 3: of these American explorers that he really can't live without
Speaker 3: their gifts. And it's really just exposing what a hypocrite
Speaker 3: he is and what a weak man he was in
Speaker 3: some ways. And the competition just you know, fuels their
Speaker 3: hatred for each other as it goes on.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this confrontation with about rice and the
Speaker 2: Baroness and what happens as a result of this action
Speaker 2: by the baroness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is early on when the Baroness meets
Speaker 3: Heines and Margaret. Heines had bought some rice from a
Speaker 3: passing ship. The Baroness says, oh, I'm heading down to
Speaker 3: the bay. I will get the rice for you and
Speaker 3: i'll bring it back up to you when we start
Speaker 3: bringing my cargo up and Hines says, great, that's really
Speaker 3: nice of you, Thank you. So the Baroness of course
Speaker 3: goes down she's transporting her belonging. She gets Hines's bag
Speaker 3: of rice and she brings it up to him. She says, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, that'll be you know, ten dollars or whatever
Speaker 3: sukers or whatever the amount was in money in the
Speaker 3: could wear in money. And Heine is like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: I already paid for this. I paid the captain for
Speaker 3: my rice. Well, she's like, well, if you want the rice,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to pay me for it. Now
Speaker 3: it's in my possession. And Heines is like, get out
Speaker 3: of here. And by the way, you don't leave, but
Speaker 3: I don't want you living anywhere near me, and That's
Speaker 3: when the Baroness threatens him with a gun and says,
Speaker 3: I'm surrounded by these strong men. You know, she had
Speaker 3: Robert Phillipson and Rudolph Lawrence, and I can count as
Speaker 3: a third man if need be. And she puts her
Speaker 3: hand on a revolver and basically threatens to murder Hines
Speaker 3: if he causes any trouble with her, and Heines is
Speaker 3: just like, I'm just going to stay away from this lady.
Speaker 3: She's crazy and there was no telling what she was
Speaker 3: going to do. And you know, it gets so bad
Speaker 3: that Heines and Frederick actually start putting their differences aside
Speaker 3: and band work together to try to quell the Baroness's
Speaker 3: impulses in her dangerous ways.
Speaker 2: You had said that Frederick had considered Commander Hancock as
Speaker 2: one of his closest confidants. He begins writing Hancock talking
Speaker 2: about his grievances and his complaints, doesn't.
Speaker 3: He Yeah, So as soon as Heines and Margaret show up,
Speaker 3: he writes to Hancock and says, well, our you know,
Speaker 3: solitude is no more. We have family from Germany came
Speaker 3: and this woman is having a baby, and this is
Speaker 3: the last thing we wanted and then of course when
Speaker 3: the baroness comes, he's like, oh, and there's this woman
Speaker 3: calling herself a baroness. She's tyranni, tyrannizing doll, young man,
Speaker 3: he said, and she's acting the part of a princess
Speaker 3: even though she's a lady of low moral character. You know,
Speaker 3: he starts getting increasingly worried about this and sending Hancock
Speaker 3: notes about I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know what I'm going to do
Speaker 3: with this woman. And you can you know, Frederick tried
Speaker 3: to remain sort of formal and always, you know, a
Speaker 3: stude and intelligent in his writing, but you can really
Speaker 3: just feel the panic in his words. And I remember,
Speaker 3: you know, in some places in the archives when I
Speaker 3: was looking at his letters, you know you could see
Speaker 3: where the pencil had broken, where he was writing so hard.
Speaker 3: I think, just you could see the emotion behind the
Speaker 3: words he was writing a Hancock because he really started
Speaker 3: getting terrified of what this woman might do.
Speaker 2: You read about November ninth, nineteen thirty two, a person
Speaker 2: named Arthur Estamba, a Norwegian man, a thirty two year
Speaker 2: old and a good friend of Vincent Astor, brought two Ecuadorians,
Speaker 2: a German scientist and a writer Paul Frankie to the island.
Speaker 2: Tell us what happens.
Speaker 3: Soon after, So a stampa shows up on the island
Speaker 3: on Floriana and he's intending the hunt people often did.
Speaker 3: They would come and hunt for the day and bring
Speaker 3: their you know, cargoes back down to the ship and leave.
Speaker 3: He arrives at post Office Bay, he docks his boat
Speaker 3: and what does he see but this woman carrying a
Speaker 3: gun on her hip, surrounded by men, her two men,
Speaker 3: and also she had an Ecuadorian contractor with her to
Speaker 3: help build a hotel. So he's surrounded by three men
Speaker 3: and she basically says who are you and what are
Speaker 3: you doing here? And he was like, hi, lady, I'm
Speaker 3: you know, a stampa and I'm here to hunt, as
Speaker 3: is my right. And she says, you don't have the right.
Speaker 3: You know, I own Floriana and everything on it, and
Speaker 3: if you're going to hunt, you have to get my permission.
Speaker 3: And he's like, basically tell her to you know, you know,
Speaker 3: go away, and he ignores her. Get away from me,
Speaker 3: and he you know, proceeds to start going to hunt,
Speaker 3: and the baroness sits her men after him, especially the
Speaker 3: Ecuadorian contractor you know, is Stampa is taken. He is
Speaker 3: held captive against his will for quite some time, and
Speaker 3: he escapes in the middle of the night and arrives
Speaker 3: at Dorian Frederick's home bloodied, you know, his clothes and
Speaker 3: tatters from running in the brush all night, terrified that
Speaker 3: this woman is going to kill him. And I think
Speaker 3: that's when Frederick really realized that, you know, it's not
Speaker 3: just this woman fancying herself a baroness and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of a great making these bold declarations that she's
Speaker 3: going to take over the island. She's actually doing what
Speaker 3: she's threatening to do. She's actually causing physical harm. She's
Speaker 3: actually getting close to really hurting people. And Frederick panics,
Speaker 3: and that's when he not only starts to write to
Speaker 3: Hancock about her, or continues to write to Hancock about her,
Speaker 3: but starts writing to the Ecuadorian authorities and basically saying,
Speaker 3: this woman needs to be medically examined. She belongs in
Speaker 3: a sanitarium. Please come and investigate. There's an untenable situation
Speaker 3: here in Floriana.
Speaker 2: You're right that Dora had had suspected that the barrenness
Speaker 2: was nothing but pure evil, or at least no good,
Speaker 2: and had expressed that to Frederick, and he was hesitant
Speaker 2: to consider what she had said for quite a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think Dorry saw the writing on
Speaker 3: the wall much earlier, and she was like, Frederick, this
Speaker 3: woman is going to bring harm to us. This woman
Speaker 3: is one way or another going to force us off
Speaker 3: the island. This is not a good situation. And I
Speaker 3: think part of it with Frederick, his resistance of that was,
Speaker 3: you know, he's listening to a woman tell him this
Speaker 3: number one Dory, and it's a woman who's the threatening figure.
Speaker 3: So Frederick being Frederick, was like, oh, it's just some
Speaker 3: silly ladies chattering and one woman's running around threatening things.
Speaker 3: But she's not going to be harmed, you know, she's
Speaker 3: not really all bark, no bite. And here Dorry is
Speaker 3: overreacting and being over and emotional just like a woman would.
Speaker 3: And I'm not going to listen or pay attention to
Speaker 3: either of this. And he didn't dismiss story over and
Speaker 3: over until finally he couldn't dismiss it anymore.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the nineteen thirty four January trip by
Speaker 2: Commander Hancock to the island again and speaking to Frederick
Speaker 2: and Dora again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at this point, things are really coming to a head.
Speaker 3: You know, dur and Frederick are dire straits, and so
Speaker 3: Margaret and Hines, they really don't know what they're going
Speaker 3: to do. Rudolph, Lawrence and Robert Phillipson had been fighting
Speaker 3: each other violently at the behest of the Baroness. She
Speaker 3: would stage fights, and she basically demoted Lawrence because he
Speaker 3: kept losing the fights. Lawrence was terrified for his life
Speaker 3: and he started begging Margaret and begging Dory to live
Speaker 3: with them. Margaret took him in for a while, but
Speaker 3: you know, she had a young family, and she was
Speaker 3: really terrified that the Baroness was going to show up
Speaker 3: at our doorstep and kill her for helping Rudolph. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, Hank Hawka arrives in the midst of this
Speaker 3: situation that's just looks like it's going to explode at
Speaker 3: any minute.
Speaker 2: You talk about March nineteen thirty four and Dora hears
Speaker 2: a scream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an interesting part of the story because
Speaker 3: I should say Dory claims to have heard a scream.
Speaker 3: You know, it's to me, there's always a question about
Speaker 3: whether or not she really did. But shortly after this
Speaker 3: scream was or was not or uttered, two people on
Speaker 3: the island go missing, the Baroness and Robert Phillipson, her
Speaker 3: preferred lover. And you know, things start getting very complicated
Speaker 3: from that point, because where did they go, Who knows
Speaker 3: where they went, what happened to them, who's lying, who's
Speaker 3: telling the truth, who's hiding something, and so everybody just
Speaker 3: starts looking at each other with suspicion, and everybody's really
Speaker 3: terrified of their own lives at this point.
Speaker 2: What is the story from someone close to these people,
Speaker 2: Rudolph Lorenz? They have this relatetionationship where he has been
Speaker 2: telling them things about the Baroness, and they know that
Speaker 2: the Baroness is forbading him, forbidding him to speak to
Speaker 2: them about anything regarding her. What's the story Rudolph Lorenz
Speaker 2: tells them?
Speaker 3: Well, he says that, oh, don't worry about it. A
Speaker 3: passing ship came and the Baroness and Robert decided to
Speaker 3: get on the ship and move on. She won that
Speaker 3: abandoned a hotel. It wasn't working out for they just
Speaker 3: decided to go to Tahiti or somewhere else exotic with
Speaker 3: some friends on this boat. That's the story he tells.
Speaker 3: You know, people are a little suspicious. I didn't see
Speaker 3: a boat go by. I didn't hear of any boat coming,
Speaker 3: because usually, you know, the island as people would small
Speaker 3: enough that word would get out if a ship was coming,
Speaker 3: and you know, somebody would have heard something or seen something.
Speaker 3: But nobody heard or saw anything about this boat.
Speaker 2: Now what does Dora think about this story and what
Speaker 2: are her suspicions at that time?
Speaker 3: Well, Dorry immediately thinks that Rudolf is lying, you know,
Speaker 3: she says, of course there was no boat. This is
Speaker 3: an obvious lie. What did Rudolph do to the Baroness
Speaker 3: and Phillipson. She can only imagine that Rudolf hiblled the
Speaker 3: Baroness and Phillipson and possibly had the Whitmers helping him,
Speaker 3: you know, they were either covering it up, or maybe
Speaker 3: Hines shot them and helped Rudolf dispose of the bodies,
Speaker 3: or Rudolf shot them and Hines helped dispose the bodies.
Speaker 3: But she starts creating a scenario where the Baroness and
Speaker 3: Phillipson are dead and of course the other family, the Whitmers,
Speaker 3: are the ones who know what happened.
Speaker 2: What is the What do they do in terms of
Speaker 2: reaching out to people you said that they had Frederick
Speaker 2: had originally or previously contacted the Ecuadorian authorities about his complaints.
Speaker 2: What do they do in light of this panicked feeling
Speaker 2: that they have about their life on this island.
Speaker 3: Well, I think they were, you know, Dory and Friederich,
Speaker 3: according to Dora said they tried to lay low and
Speaker 3: keep it themselves. Frederick meanwhile was writing fevers letters to Hancock, saying,
Speaker 3: I heard something happened. I have no proof and I
Speaker 3: can't put it in writing, But the next time you
Speaker 3: come to the island, I will tell you what I know.
Speaker 3: And so he writes this sort of you know, tantalizing
Speaker 3: cliffhanger of a letter to Hancock about what he suspects
Speaker 3: and what he knows, and sends it off to Hancock. Basically,
Speaker 3: everybody's just waiting for the next shoot to drop.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about that, Rudolph is still with Frederick
Speaker 2: and Dora, and he's helping them but they are very
Speaker 2: suspicious of Rudolph, aren't they?
Speaker 3: They are they? You know, Dori had been good friends
Speaker 3: with Rudolph. She had grown very fond of him over
Speaker 3: his time on the island. She had become very sympathetic
Speaker 3: to what he was enduring with the baroness. She tried
Speaker 3: to encourage him, She tried to give him food and
Speaker 3: shelter when she could. But she started looking at and saying,
Speaker 3: this is a man with blood on his hands. This
Speaker 3: is somebody who murdered and I cannot as much as
Speaker 3: I despise a baroness, I can't condone what he's done.
Speaker 3: And she starts thinking, you know, what if what if
Speaker 3: he kills me and Frederick because he needs to hide
Speaker 3: any witnesses to his crime or kill people who are
Speaker 3: suspicious of his crime. So, you know, she starts becoming
Speaker 3: paranoid about what might happen her because she believes Rudolph
Speaker 3: Lawrence is a murderer.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Thomas Howell and his arrival on the island.
Speaker 3: So Thomas Howe is an American, just a basic American tourist,
Speaker 3: not an explorer. But he shows up on a chartered yacht.
Speaker 3: I should stop and say that. You know, at this point,
Speaker 3: these European exiles are so famous on Floriana that they
Speaker 3: become a name stop on cruises. You know, people would
Speaker 3: charter these these cruises to stop at the Glapachos, and
Speaker 3: one of the featured attractions was going to Floriana to
Speaker 3: see these these settlers on the island. And so Americans
Speaker 3: would come just specifically to see the European settlers. So
Speaker 3: Thomas House shows up on Floriana with his cruise ship
Speaker 3: and decides to go pay a visit to Frederick and Dorry,
Speaker 3: and he wants to know what happened to the Baroness.
Speaker 3: He sees that she's not there, and he wants to
Speaker 3: know what happened, and he keeps questioning Frederick about it,
Speaker 3: and Frederick keeps changing his story. Frederick would once say, oh,
Speaker 3: he heard the Baroness and Phillips had decided to drown
Speaker 3: themselves in the ocean. We heard that they went on
Speaker 3: a boat to Tahiti, just like Rudolf Florence had said.
Speaker 3: He heard this and that and this and that, and
Speaker 3: so he kept changing his story, which of course only
Speaker 3: aroused Thomas's suspicions.
Speaker 2: You're right about that Dory writes to Commander Hancock, but
Speaker 2: also Heinz also writes to Commander Hancock.
Speaker 3: Hines also was reaching out to Hancock. He had made
Speaker 3: a list of complaints about about the Baroness. He talked
Speaker 3: about the incident where she stole his rice. He talked
Speaker 3: about an incident where the Baroness stole milk that it
Speaker 3: was intended for his newborn baby. And he basically echoes
Speaker 3: Frederick's concerns that the Baroness is unstable, that she's going
Speaker 3: to she's a destructive force in Floriana and she's going
Speaker 3: to bring harm to all of them. And so you know,
Speaker 3: Hancock is getting these letters. You know he's over in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, how many miles away, and you know he's
Speaker 3: he decides to come and investigate. That's what he was
Speaker 3: doing in January of nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Ralph Blomberg as well, and him coming
Speaker 2: to the island and what some of the questions he has.
Speaker 3: Well, he had come from another Equadorian island. He was
Speaker 3: a writer. He actually became a very well known writer.
Speaker 3: Off Blomberg wanted to meet the Baroness. He wanted to
Speaker 3: interview her for a magazine. He shows up on Floriana,
Speaker 3: realizes that the baroness is missing, and starts conducting his
Speaker 3: own investigation. And again, you know, he gets just like
Speaker 3: the American tourist tom As how starts getting the run
Speaker 3: around from Frieder about different stories that are being told.
Speaker 3: But meanwhile, rumors are circulating on the mainland, on the
Speaker 3: other islands that you know, maybe Frederick had something to
Speaker 3: do with it.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the departure of Rudolph Lorenz and the
Speaker 2: circumstances in which he was able to leave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Rudolph had been desperate for quite some time
Speaker 3: to get off the island. He had written to his
Speaker 3: family in Germany basically begging them to help him and
Speaker 3: get off. I don't know if they you know, they
Speaker 3: did get His family wrote back and you know, was
Speaker 3: trying to help him. But he had been you know,
Speaker 3: past notice posted notices down a post office bay saying
Speaker 3: you know, hi, I'm a German Man living in the inland.
Speaker 3: Please passing ship, please come take me off. And he
Speaker 3: was going to get a ride with one one ship,
Speaker 3: but they discovered that he was suffering from tuberculosis and
Speaker 3: so they did not want Rudolf Lawrence with his tuberculosis
Speaker 3: on their ship. So he was stuck again on Floriana
Speaker 3: and had a really hard time getting off.
Speaker 2: There are reports that he leaves with some bunks, some baggage,
Speaker 2: and it was reported that they were a heavy trunk
Speaker 2: he left with.
Speaker 3: Yes, Margaret notices when he leaves that he seems to
Speaker 3: be having, you know, taking some very heavy cargo along
Speaker 3: with him, and she can only imagine that possibly it
Speaker 3: contained the bodies of the Baroness Robert Phillipson. You know,
Speaker 3: I think at this point everybody's imaginations were running away
Speaker 3: with them and they were seeing, you know, sinister things
Speaker 3: and every even mundane incidence in mundane encounters. Everything had
Speaker 3: turned very sinister and dark.
Speaker 2: And Frederick continues his writing, doesn't he.
Speaker 3: He does, you know, Frederick never lost his verve for
Speaker 3: his philosophy. He also kept a diary that I think
Speaker 3: really contained more of his true feeling than his philosophical posturings.
Speaker 3: But he still had the goal of of becoming a
Speaker 3: world renowned philosopher and spreading his ideas around the world.
Speaker 3: And I think that as things got dark in the island,
Speaker 3: he started retreating into himself and focusing on his writing,
Speaker 3: and maybe it was away for him to escape the
Speaker 3: owned demons in his mind, and he.
Speaker 2: Was had his theories about what had happened to the
Speaker 2: Baroness and Robert Phillipson as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as he was telling the American tourists,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe she killed herself, died by suicide. I
Speaker 3: should say, there was a whole story that somebody overheard
Speaker 3: the Baroness at Robert Phillipson saying, you know, one night,
Speaker 3: we're going to have one last drink of whiskey and
Speaker 3: we're just going to walk into the ocean and we're
Speaker 3: going to go out in that blaze of glory and
Speaker 3: die that way together. So this was one of the
Speaker 3: stories that he was sticking to. And aside from the
Speaker 3: passing yacht story that nobody seemed to believe. Everybody had
Speaker 3: suspicions about that story because there also had been no
Speaker 3: log of any passing ship at that time period, which
Speaker 3: certainly it would have been recorded had there been.
Speaker 2: You write about. In Los Angeles, Captain Hancock prepares for
Speaker 2: his next expedition, but he has the letters from Frederick
Speaker 2: and the other inhabitants of Ruviana, so what happens, what
Speaker 2: does he do? What are his concerns? And tell us
Speaker 2: about this last visit planned.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is at the time period when
Speaker 3: he gets Frederick had written his note saying, I have
Speaker 3: suspect something has happened. I have no proof of it.
Speaker 3: Please come, I will tell you more in person. And
Speaker 3: so Hancock, you know, heed's the call. He heads over
Speaker 3: to Floriana, but on the way he hears a report
Speaker 3: of two dead bodies, not on Floriana, but on Marchena,
Speaker 3: which is another Glapagos island in the northern part. This
Speaker 3: island is even more barren and sterile than Floriana. There's
Speaker 3: absolutely no source of fresh water. It is all lava rock.
Speaker 3: There's no way any life that can be sustained on there,
Speaker 3: and two bodies were found there.
Speaker 2: What happens in terms of any questioning of these people, Frederick, Dora, Hines,
Speaker 2: Margaret tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Well, Hancock shows up on Floriana and of course naturally
Speaker 3: wants to question everybody. You know, he wants to try
Speaker 3: to figure out what happened to the baroness and Phillipson.
Speaker 3: And interestingly, you know, when Margaret, Frederick and Dorry give
Speaker 3: a statement. It doesn't contain any any mention of this
Speaker 3: scream that Dorry said she heard, so she sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, seems to have forgotten the scream that she
Speaker 3: allegedly heard. He just starts interrogating and trying to get
Speaker 3: to the bottom of it. And I remember reading in
Speaker 3: the archive much later one of Hancock's scientist friends said
Speaker 3: that we believe he's the only one who knew exactly
Speaker 3: what happened on that island, and he took it to
Speaker 3: his grave. I happen to believe that a couple other
Speaker 3: people know, but they also took it to their graves too.
Speaker 2: What did they say regarding Lorenzo's guilt in all of this?
Speaker 3: You know, they basically said, Lawrence rud of Lawrence. If
Speaker 3: he's you know, guilty, he will get his comeuppance. He
Speaker 3: will get what he deserved. You know, they were just
Speaker 3: really trying to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 2: The idea that Frederick and Dora had gone to this
Speaker 2: island to issue modern technology and the I guess, the
Speaker 2: confines of society, and despite his public showing of his philosophy,
Speaker 2: that hadn't changed. Dora was very familiar with how he
Speaker 2: had gone off the rails, and what he said publicly
Speaker 2: was not what actually how they had conducted themselves on
Speaker 2: that island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, in the beginning, it was very important
Speaker 3: for them both to present the sort of enified front.
Speaker 3: They were in love, they were peaceful, you know. The
Speaker 3: American explorers, especially Eugie MacDonald, courted back. He had never
Speaker 3: seen two people so in love. It was such a
Speaker 3: pure and gentle connection between the two of them, and
Speaker 3: it had been very important for Frederick in the wordy
Speaker 3: to maintain this facade of this you know, completely listful relationship.
Speaker 3: There was always always an underlying tension, as I mentioned,
Speaker 3: and crack started to show. And at the end, you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of that they didn't care at all anymore.
Speaker 3: They just sort of allowed their true selves to be exposed,
Speaker 3: because I think that at that point they had much
Speaker 3: greater concerns, possibly you know, losing their lives. They really
Speaker 3: couldn't be concerned with how they were presenting their lives
Speaker 3: any longer.
Speaker 2: In concluding, in this investigation, there was no fingers pointed
Speaker 2: at Dora or Frederick, or Hines or Margaret or son
Speaker 2: Harry in all of this whatsoever.
Speaker 3: That's correct, Ecuadoran authorities did eventually investigate, and of course
Speaker 3: Hancocked investigated, and nobody ever concluded what happened exactly to
Speaker 3: the baroness and Phillipson, and nobody was implicated. It sort
Speaker 3: of was left a murder mystery and burner mystery that's
Speaker 3: still indoors today.
Speaker 2: What was the story, unlike the story of this couple
Speaker 2: had gone to this utopia and been successful, what was
Speaker 2: the story now overall about this experiment on this island.
Speaker 3: You know, people were basically, you know, drawing the coming
Speaker 3: to the conclusion that you know, utopia is impossible as
Speaker 3: long as human beings are fallible, utopia is impossible. And
Speaker 3: utopia is also subjective. Everybody came to this island with
Speaker 3: a different idea of what utopia was, and you really
Speaker 3: can't create a cohesive utopia with a group of people
Speaker 3: with disparate ideas about what utopia is. And to me,
Speaker 3: it just really brought to mind the William Golden quote,
Speaker 3: Lord of the flies. You know, maybe there is a beast,
Speaker 3: maybe it's only us. There's never going to be utopia
Speaker 3: as long as human beings are human beings. Hell is
Speaker 3: other people basically, and I think that's the overall conclusion
Speaker 3: that people came to, and I think it's a correct one.
Speaker 2: What about Dora, what was her conclusions after this? She
Speaker 2: had sacrificed her life for these principles of doctor Ritter overall,
Speaker 2: what was her conclusions over this experiment that she had
Speaker 2: endeavored her and Frederick?
Speaker 3: You know, I think she was a part of her
Speaker 3: still being an idealist and somebody who was attracted to ideas,
Speaker 3: was desperate to continue the idea that Frederick was going
Speaker 3: to be the important person and is the world would
Speaker 3: Noah's name, and it was still she still felt duty
Speaker 3: bound in him in some way to help him spread
Speaker 3: his philosophies around the world. And I think I think
Speaker 3: that really tortured Harper for at the you know, when
Speaker 3: all was said and done, I think she was still
Speaker 3: tortured by her failure, her perceived failure on the island.
Speaker 2: What about this seeming craze for people visiting the island?
Speaker 2: Did that debate?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as soon as word got out that,
Speaker 3: you know, people were abandoning their lives to go to Floriana,
Speaker 3: it became kind of a fad. Groups sprung up. Frederick
Speaker 3: even commented about the Galapagos craze in Germany. It seemed
Speaker 3: to everybody, you know, decided it would be a very
Speaker 3: good idea, especially during the Great Depression. You know, you
Speaker 3: have to remember the collapse of global economy. People were
Speaker 3: suffering greatly unemployment, starving, sort of dire circumstances, and the
Speaker 3: fantasy of being able to abandon all that and go
Speaker 3: somewhere and start over was a very very attractive one.
Speaker 3: Of course, that unttainable, but a very attractive fantasy.
Speaker 2: Frederick Heinz and Dora all did extensive writing. You got
Speaker 2: to experience that writing some of that writing. So tell
Speaker 2: us about the writings of these three individuals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was really lucky with the amount of archival
Speaker 3: material I had. Dory and Margaret both wrote memoirs, and interestingly,
Speaker 3: and probably not surprisingly, they had very conflicting accounts of
Speaker 3: many incidents that occurred on the island, and so it
Speaker 3: was a lot of fun to sort of sip through.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think that what people choose to
Speaker 3: lie about and what they choose to a bit is
Speaker 3: just as telling as they you know, what they the
Speaker 3: truth that they tell. There was also archive at University
Speaker 3: of Seven, California, that contained all of the letters to
Speaker 3: Hancock that these people wrote, and there was a brand
Speaker 3: new archive only donated back in twenty twenty by this
Speaker 3: man named Lorenzo di Stefano who had been a screenwriter
Speaker 3: and was trying to write a screenplay in the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies about the story and interviewed a lot of the
Speaker 3: scientists that had gone. Some of them were very, very
Speaker 3: old at that point, but he was able to get
Speaker 3: these last interviews with them, and to have access to
Speaker 3: those conversations and those and those theories and those musings
Speaker 3: was really invaluable.
Speaker 2: You're right at the very end that even though that
Speaker 2: originally Frederick and Dora were the people that wanted to
Speaker 2: live alone on this island, that heinz and Margaret and
Speaker 2: Harry and their daughter were the ones that ended up
Speaker 2: staying at this island and Dora left Laurin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Margaret was really the you know, the gangster
Speaker 3: and all of this. You know, she was the one
Speaker 3: who really figured out how to conquer Floriana. You know,
Speaker 3: there is a hotel down there now called the Whitmer Hotel.
Speaker 3: She had. Margaret's daughter is still there, Flora Anita Whitmer
Speaker 3: she's now an older lady in her eighties or nineties.
Speaker 3: I met her when I went down there, and Margaret's granddaughters, Floriinita,
Speaker 3: his daughters also are involved in the hospitality business down there.
Speaker 3: You know, people would go to Margaret for years and
Speaker 3: years and say, tell me what happened, Tell me what happened,
Speaker 3: and she, of course would just serve them a bit
Speaker 3: of wine and smile at them and say, a closed
Speaker 3: mouth admits no flies, which was such a fascinating thing
Speaker 3: I think for her to say, you know, basically, she
Speaker 3: knows exactly what happened, and she wasn't going to tell anybody.
Speaker 3: And I think she really enjoyed that. She enjoyed being
Speaker 3: the keeper of Florana secrets.
Speaker 2: You write that in the seventies, author and playwright Lorenzo
Speaker 2: di Stefano researched the Galapago's affair in hope of writing
Speaker 2: a script. He contacted surviving participants on Earth invaluable primary
Speaker 2: source material and donated all to the University of Southern California.
Speaker 2: You also talk about that thanks to Lorenzo's passion and
Speaker 2: generous gift, Eden Undone contains a It benefits from a
Speaker 2: rich seam of never published before material.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Lorenzo is the archive I mentioned where he
Speaker 3: he was able to interview a lot of the explorers
Speaker 3: when they were very old, and some of them had
Speaker 3: had conversations with these players and that they recounted to Lorenzo,
Speaker 3: and so it was sort of recollections that hadn't made
Speaker 3: any newspapers or letters or anybody's memoir bits and pieces
Speaker 3: that Lorenzo been able to gather over the years. And
Speaker 3: I was so grateful that he donated that in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: because nobody else has even gone through these archives. I
Speaker 3: believe I was the first one. And afterward he was
Speaker 3: also very helpful to me, you know, resumed a couple times,
Speaker 3: and he talked about his research and his passion and
Speaker 3: his own theories about what happened on the island, and
Speaker 3: really just helped inform my thinking on the book in
Speaker 3: some ways.
Speaker 2: You also write that George Allen Hancock's great granddaughter shared
Speaker 2: his private papers and correspondence with you as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she was wonderful. I found her and reached out,
Speaker 3: and she was very recept and very excited by the
Speaker 3: idea that people would still remember her. Happy as she
Speaker 3: called him as she called Hancock. There were as there
Speaker 3: was a diary, a brief diary that one of Hancock's
Speaker 3: scientists had kept that she had the only copy to,
Speaker 3: and several pictures I hadn't seen before, and just her
Speaker 3: recollections of him in general. You know, even though she
Speaker 3: was a very young girl, she was able to just
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, have me give me a little
Speaker 3: more appreciation, appreciation for his character and why he was
Speaker 3: so driven to Floriana and to you know, enmeshing himselfs
Speaker 3: in these exiles lives.
Speaker 2: You write about so many people's conclusions of what this
Speaker 2: story represents. What did this story say to you? More
Speaker 2: than anything else?
Speaker 3: To me, it just was it goes back to that
Speaker 3: timeless and universal idea that we just want to wait,
Speaker 3: even if it's not possible, even if we're going to fail,
Speaker 3: the idea that we were going to be able to
Speaker 3: go somewhere and flee our lives, that there's always a
Speaker 3: way to set start over. You know, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of my books in the past have dealt with
Speaker 3: reinvention in one way or another, and I've always been
Speaker 3: fascinated by the concept, you know, reinvention and varying degrees.
Speaker 3: What is more extreme sort of reinvention than actually upping
Speaker 3: your roots, abandoning your life entirely and starting over with
Speaker 3: literally nothing. These people had nothing. I just think it
Speaker 3: was the most extreme version of self reinvention you could
Speaker 3: possibly do. And I was so interested in looking into
Speaker 3: the repercussions of that. I think it's it's just, you know,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite writers, Pete Dexter and novelist Pete
Speaker 3: Dexter says that writers never start playing a different record.
Speaker 3: You know, the record is always the same, but where
Speaker 3: the needle hits on the record is always different. And
Speaker 3: you know, I'm always playing this record of sort of
Speaker 3: wild historical stories and true crime from history, but the
Speaker 3: needle is reset a little bit each time. And this one,
Speaker 3: the reinvention just happened to be a little bit more
Speaker 3: dream than others.
Speaker 2: Absolutely before I let you go, tell us about the
Speaker 2: film adaptation of this Eden.
Speaker 3: Undone, So you know, I have to back up and
Speaker 3: say that I had barely finished a draft of this story.
Speaker 3: This is you know, spring of this year in March,
Speaker 3: and I discovered that Ron Howard, the famous director and actor,
Speaker 3: is doing a movie on this exact same story, and
Speaker 3: it was filming, and it was starring the star Sutt
Speaker 3: had cast. Jude Law plays Frederick Ritter, Vanessa Kirby plays
Speaker 3: story Strausch, the Baroness is played by Anna de Armis,
Speaker 3: and Sidney Sweeney plays a margaret. And of course all
Speaker 3: of the real life characters got quite a Hollywood glow
Speaker 3: up with these actors. But it was a panic. I
Speaker 3: was panicked. Here he is telling the story. It's his
Speaker 3: exact same story. I didn't know when the film was
Speaker 3: going to come out. I figured, you know, he's going
Speaker 3: to be an Oscar push for him. He would want
Speaker 3: to have it out in theaters by the end of
Speaker 3: the year. And I had to crash this book. You know,
Speaker 3: I barely finished the draft. I had to edit, rewrite, edit,
Speaker 3: copy edit, gather seventy pages worth of citations, which I
Speaker 3: have in the back of the book. Everything is cited,
Speaker 3: and gather pictures and do all of that. And the
Speaker 3: book was just published last week. And I don't recommend
Speaker 3: doing this, you know. I think one of the things
Speaker 3: is hardly anybody has had time to read it, because
Speaker 3: it's usually the process is so prolonged and even slow,
Speaker 3: and this has been a crash course. But Ron Howard's
Speaker 3: movie just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival recently, and
Speaker 3: I'm really looking forward to trying to, you know, sink
Speaker 3: some book events and things with when the movie gets
Speaker 3: a wider theatrical release, and I'm not quite sure when
Speaker 3: that's happening yet. But his movie is titled Eden. The
Speaker 3: book is even undone, and I really hope that people
Speaker 3: read this incredible, stranger than fiction true story before they
Speaker 3: seeing before they see Ron Howard's fictionalized version in Eden.
Speaker 2: Absolutely for those that might want to find out more
Speaker 2: about this book, but also the other book that you
Speaker 2: have written. Do you have a website that they might
Speaker 2: refer to? And do you do any social media?
Speaker 3: I do. My website is Abbot Taylor dot com ab
Speaker 3: b O T T K A H L e er
Speaker 3: dot com. That's also my Instagram handle, my Twitter handle,
Speaker 3: my Facebook handle. And I don't know if anybody out
Speaker 3: there knows I used to write books under the name
Speaker 3: Karen Abbot and I changed my name. It's actually ten
Speaker 3: years ago. It was quite a strange story. A reader
Speaker 3: wrote to me in twenty thirteen and said, do you
Speaker 3: know if you google yourself it says you died in
Speaker 3: twenty ten, and it was quite creepy. She sent me
Speaker 3: a picture. Sure enough, there was a picture of me.
Speaker 3: It said die twenty ten. There's why I'm a mater,
Speaker 3: and I was like, what, you know? Have I been
Speaker 3: weekend at Burning for a few years? It was really creepy.
Speaker 3: So at that time, I was working on a fiction
Speaker 3: and I was thinking of changing my name anyway for
Speaker 3: the fiction. And I was also about to turn forty,
Speaker 3: so I was right for a midlife crisis, and I
Speaker 3: decided to change my name legally and I changed it
Speaker 3: to Abbot Kaylor. All of my friends had called me
Speaker 3: Abbot anyway, so it was kind of a natural transition
Speaker 3: for me. But you know, I had written under Abbot
Speaker 3: Karen Abbott for quite some time. My books under that
Speaker 3: name are still out under that name, but from now
Speaker 3: on I'll be writing as Abbot Taylor.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Abbot Taylor for coming on and
Speaker 2: talking about the extraordinary Eden Undone, a true story of sex,
Speaker 2: murder and utopia at the dawn of World War Two.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me, Dan, that was a
Speaker 3: great conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 2: a great evening and good night.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you,