Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to episode nineteen of Wickedly Weird with
Jerry and Amanda.
Speaker 2: I'm Jerry and I'm Amanda.
Speaker 1: Okay, Amanda, this story is we discussed this a little
bit off the air without telling you any details. But
this story is in your neck of the woods. It's
from twenty seventeen. There's a good shot that you might
know the story, but I'm banking if you do, you
don't know the whole.
Speaker 2: Story, all right, shoot me?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, first of all, how was your weekly?
We'd like to get that out in the beginning.
Speaker 2: I do. I was gonna bring it up, and then
you brought it up and have to worry about it.
So I've had like very like just because it's a holiday.
So I'm just constantly like doing something. Tomorrow we have
our holiday party at work. Well it's just like going
out with a group of friends. And then next week
is like are the whole company party. I'm gonna like
paint a ceramic tree. I can't wait to do that.
But I mean, like really nothing like crazy because I
haven't been able to like be out in the public,
like come around my whole family. So I'm just living
my best life although my mother was not thrilled with me.
Remember did I tell you how I went to a jamboree?
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: First of all, what is the chambourree? Is that like
a sporting thing where you have a lot of teams.
Speaker 2: Together, calling it like it's a cabaret. I lied, not
a jamboree cabaret, but like our like our waitresses and
waiters wore our entertainment. It was like a holiday thing.
But I want the fucking old people cull. And my
mom got sick and had COVID and couldn't come. So
I was like, oh man, I'm like, okay, well all
the cat's away the mice play. So I'm like, I'm
gonna I'm gonna get a little stoned with my cousin
and my best friend. But my mom doesn't know that
I smoke marijuana. I don't know why I just said that,
Why I smoke marijuana? We're weirdo. Anyways, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how she doesn't know this. It's like
your house just seems like it'd be a place where
everything is a bong of some sort, like maybe the
spatula in the kitchen and some type of a bong slash.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no no, it's very PG when you
step out of my computer room. So anyways, I get
this phone call because my cousin like didn't know that
my mom didn't know. And my mom calls me and
she's like, I have a phone to pick with you.
And I was like, I'm like, what are this going on.
She's like, you were smoking pot with the pipe and
I was like, what the who bought you the pipe?
I'm like, oh my god, I'm not a crackhead. Like
I'm gonna be at a fucking jingle jingle jamboree with
like people all under the age of oll I guess
over the age of seventy. They're all old and nuts
and they was guy with a one leg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, average age is deceased.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So anyways, and so she's pissed at
me and she's like, you know that you have asthma.
And I was like, oh my god, I'm like I
grew out of it. No you did. I'm like, okay,
I guess I didn't. She was like, you better throw that,
you better throw that down the toilet and throw that
pipe out. And I was like Jesus marrying Joseph. It
was just and then I'm like, oh, it was a
one time thing, Like I just thought it would be fun.
I'm going to Hell in a handasket. That's where I'm going,
one way ticket. He's found trained later, so.
Speaker 1: Like whatever.
Speaker 2: So she was pissed but hasn't brought it up since.
And this night was a fever dream. It didn't feel real.
Let me set the stage for you. This was kind
of a long one, so bear with me. We get
there and like, I'm next to this guy with one leg.
I call him one Leg Jim. That's not his real name.
I don't know what his real name is, but he's wild.
He's like eighty five. He used to being like an
Olympic trainer some shit. I don't know, but he's horrible.
He's a very like he's just me, Like he's just something.
I got there and he's fucking writing out checks to
pay bills. I'm like whatever. So anyways, they played Sweet
Caroline and he took his crutch and he was like
raising the roof with this crutch and I'm like, what
is going on? And then there was like a dominic
donkey that comes on and a guy and a donkey
mask comes out and it's just wild. Then he screams
at the top of his lungs, get bad ass over here.
I said, one leg, Pete, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one leg, Pete. There's one leg, okay.
Speaker 2: So anyways, so then the donkey comes along and I'll
have to send you a picture. It was just out
of hand. It was out of hand. It was an
out of hand time, and it's fine. Everything was fine.
My mom was pissed. She didn't even she wasn't even there.
Speaker 1: I think that's so funny that she didn't even realize
that you did it at all. Because I don't as
close as you and your mom are, that's kind of
surprising to me that she's hold secret.
Speaker 2: So I don't drink with her and I do not
let her know what my social life is like, just
because I just keep that because she's very judgmental. I mean,
like it's her age. I think too, it's that like generation,
which is fine, So I just kind of keep it
like very you're my parent, I'm your daughter. I'm not
going to cross these bounds with you. And she does
does not know what my like her super deep personal
life is with my friends. She doesn't know that this
is what I do like and I and she's like,
I don't you know, I don't want my I don't
do it in front of my kids. They wouldn't have
a clue. You wouldn't know. I do it, like at
the end of the day, right before I'm going to bed.
I have a anxiety and ADHD and it helps with
a lot of that. So that's for me, that's my choice, right.
But my mom is so against it. She's like, no, no, Now,
I'm like, okay, you probably smoked how much bought you
grew up in the seventies. Come on, man, I mean
it is what it is, and it's fine. It's just
I mean, do your kids partake.
Speaker 1: I know one of them has, I know two of
them has. The third one hasn't. He's just he's straight
and urrow kind of like I am.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think they do now, but they have in
the past.
Speaker 2: So did you find out or did they tell you?
Speaker 1: Oh? I mean my daughter was a handful. I mean
she literally went to school drunk in Lexington and got
kicked out of school when she was like sixteen. And
I mean that's what caused her to come live with me.
And then she was always on something. Yeah, it was
it was an issue, but she grew out of it.
Now she's a very respectful director of several daycares.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And my oldest son, I mean, it was just
he was in trouble all the time too, back when
he was young. So yeah, it didn't take much for
me to find out.
Speaker 2: They Yeah, I just like don't. Yeah, I don't. I
was just very very I don't know, like, I just don't.
It's just the way it is around here, around these parts.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's let's get into the story.
Speaker 2: Okay, Wait, how was your week? How was your week?
Speaker 1: We'll get to mine afterwards, because we've we were late
in getting into the store. You know, some people like
to complain, so we'll talk about mine afterwards. Okay, because
I have a surprise to share with people that nobody,
for the most part, nobody knows. You've known for a
couple of weeks. But all right, Amanda, let's get into
the story. This took place in Brookline, Massachusetts, which, fun fact,
is the birthplace of John F. Kennedy. M We're gonna
talk about Sheryl Waldman and her sister Linda Now. They
grew up in this beautiful, huge house in the nineteen
fifties in Brooklyn. Cheryl went off to attend the University
of Wisconsin, but after college she ended up returning to
live with her sister Linda. Then, over the years, Cheryl
became a recluse, which her sister Linda also did, so
the sisters would live there and nobody would ever see them.
That did for decades. The two shared the home together
and Linda was the oldest by six years, so Cheryl
was a little bit younger than her. This home was
four thousand square feet, so I guess they weren't exactly
on top of each other, so you can kind of
spread out a little. That was just two of you.
They used to have a huge Jewish family that will
spent a lot of time at the home, but that
bitterly fell apart over the years. People would get a
glimpse of Cheryl's outgoing personality sometimes over the years, but
even that went away, and just like her name did,
she eventually started to be known as Hope Wheaton, so
she completely changed her name, which is odd for somebody
who doesn't associate with anybody, so no one's really sure
why she changed her name. This beautiful home soon started
to fall into disrepair. They just couldn't keep up with it.
The shuttered windows, the collapsed porches, and the broken gutters
kind of gave it an abandoned home look. By twenty sixteen,
people began to call the police and the health inspector
and the State Elder Protective Service agency. This is mainly
because by this time Cheryl was in her late sixties
and her sister Linda was in her early seventies. But
Linda would always stand at the doorway and tell them
to basically they were fine and just go away and
get off their property. She sounds fun.
Speaker 2: Oh, she sounds like a decrepit.
Speaker 1: So the enforcement officers number which agency they're with, they
would they would just listen. They would leave no follow up.
They had no idea what secret that this house would contain.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was it dead people?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't give you answers, but I'll let
you speculate. So back in the nineteen fifties, we're gonna
go back a little bit. This house was extravagant with
the Waldman family and the Carver family both living here together.
They owned a company together, and they lived together. There
were six children between the two families. Now, the two
families celebrated Passover and all the high holy holidays together.
They also celebrated at the wedding of the two Carver sons.
For whatever reason, the four women children never married. That
was three of them on one side and one on
the other. Yeah, it's kind of odd.
Speaker 2: Especially, the whole thing is really weird.
Speaker 1: So Linda and Cheryl were relatively tall, slender brunettes. Linda
was the more quiet studios when Cheryl was a little
more you know, a little less studious, I should say,
but she was more fun. She was kind of the
party girl. Now, all this sounds like the Waldmans and
the Carvers had a great relationship, and they did at
one point. But in the mid sixties, that company that
the Waldman's and Carvers owned, well, it was called Waldwarf Company,
by the way, I don't know.
Speaker 2: What oh Waldf oh, okay.
Speaker 1: But it started to kind of struggle a little bit.
Soon they were hounded by credit. Both the fathers of
each family filed for bankruptcy. Then they established joint family trust. Now,
this was designed to protect the properties because they had
a couple other properties besides this mansion. Okay, in the
years to come, the oldest Waldman child, which was Toby,
and Toby's a girl, by the way, Okay, that's time
I've heard of Toby, that was female.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And Thomas Carver, who was the oldest of the Carver family.
They started taking a bigger role in the company and
they became the heads of their family's trust as well. Now,
Jacob Waldman he was a different son. He was an
executive with the company, and Toby and Thomas didn't really
like the job that he was doing or how much
money he made. They felt like that he was severely overpaid.
Jacob and Joseph's relationship had already been fractured, so this
just made it even worse. Now, while all this was
going on, Martha Waldman, who was the mother, she found
out that she was dying of colon cancer.
Speaker 2: Oh geez.
Speaker 1: Linda, who had just graduated from the University of Chicago,
and Cheryl, who was at Wisconsin came back home to
help out, but Martha died in nineteen sixty nine at
sixty years old. Two girls went back to school, but
eventually they ended up back at the house. As we
discussed earlier, now, the members of the Carver family and
their sister Toby were moving into new homes in downtown
Boston or the suburbs, so this house was pretty much
empty except for the two sisters. This is when the
two families started a bitter fight over finances, and long
story short, in nineteen eighty legal battles started between the
Carvers and the Waldmans, and it only got worse from there.
Joseph Carver wanted the assets separated Toby Waldman and the
Thomas Carver terminated Jacob and you can just fire your brother.
Speaker 2: Sam terminating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they terminated his employment that exact same year. Now,
this caused him to sue his oldest daughter in nineteen
eighty two for breach of rural argument because she said
that he could work with the company as long as
he wanted to.
Speaker 2: Obviously that was nothing that sounds made up.
Speaker 1: And then Daddy Walden, he jumped into our Waldman. I
said he jumped in to protect the house because this
is where Cheryl and Linda lived. He said that he
felt like that they had been defrauded. He said the
legal trials had been especially hard on Linda and the
family had destroyed her. So Linda and Ryl began to
worry about being frozen out of their share of the
family's fortune. They hired attorneys, and they began to distrust everybody,
including their own attorneys. So this goes on forever, but
eventually the sisters settled and they were able to keep
the house and some other finances. In the years that followed,
the sisters became basically hermits. They spent all their time
behind shuttered windows.
Speaker 2: Oh why did you just think at me when you
said it like that? You said, shuttered windows? Okay, Bniza's food.
Speaker 1: Well, I hadn't been making much eye contact with you.
I didn't want you to think that I was.
Speaker 2: No, I'm fine. I just I wasn't expecting you to
do it at that part.
Speaker 1: Well, sometimes at night, the two sisters would put on
oversized clothes and then they would walk to a nearby
store Yep, you heard me. Oh. Neighbors said that they
would occasionally see the sisters when you know, they would
inter interact with delivery.
Speaker 2: Drivers or okay, oversized supposed to go out. I got
to do that later. But I'm oversized supposed to go out?
Speaker 1: You always have oversized clothes on.
Speaker 2: I do. I always have like sweatshirts on and sweatpants.
I would ease a temple, All right, go ahead.
Speaker 1: So sometimes they would like rake their lawn, but they
would always keep their backs to the street so passer
bys couldn't see their face.
Speaker 2: Oh no, something's wrong. I don't know the story. Something's wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to tell you the surprising conclusion right
after this, quick sponsor break, All right, Amanda, so I said.
In twenty sixteen, neighbors started calling the authorities for welfare
checks and such. In twenty seventeen, Linda called a cousin
because they had no heat or running water and it
was wintertime. She thought maybe the pipes were probably frozen.
So a different cousin, who happened to be a social
worker by trade, she came over to pick up Linda.
Once she got there, she asked if Cheryl was going
to be coming as well, when Linda said that they
would see when they got inside. When they went inside,
the cousin discovered Cheryl's decomposing bull under the kitchen table.
Speaker 2: Why.
Speaker 1: The cousin took Linda over to a relative and she
called the police. Linda said that Cheryl had gotten ill
about a year ago, and sometimes when she got ill,
she would fall, and when she'd fall, Linda would give
her water and fudge sickles until she was better. That's right.
Who knew medicine and stuff? Who needs that? You got fudgicicles.
Speaker 2: You get some funticles. Yum yum. I'm gonna use that
when I'm really feeling down on the dumbs.
Speaker 1: I know one time I used to I ate some
really spicy chicken chicken from his place called Indies, and
when I pooped, it felt like I was shitting battery acid.
And I was this close. I was this close to
putting a popsicle up my butt, and the only thing
that doing it was the fear that somebody would walk
in and catch me.
Speaker 2: I wish you did it. What a story, but.
Speaker 1: Ever, but that made me think about you know what
if the only thing in the fridge would a freezer
would have been it would have been like a fudgsicle,
and then I would have went to the gym or
something somebody been like, hey, you shit your pants and
it's a fugsicicle. Ate some indies.
Speaker 2: Like a battery ass. I wrote, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So the fudge sickles didn't work this time, and
she didn't get better. Linda said she didn't really know
what to do, so she just left her there for
a year.
Speaker 2: Oh that's nasty.
Speaker 1: It's like I said, it's estimated that she'd been dead
for about a year.
Speaker 2: So oh no, no, oh, under the table.
Speaker 1: So about a month after Linda was moved out of
the home, a Boston Globe reporter went to her hotel
room where she was staying, and when asked about her
sister's death, she calmly asked the reporter to go away
and not ask questions. When asked again, she said, I'm
not a lunatic. It's a tragedy. And the last update
I actually have on this is Linda has asked permission
to have the house demolished, but I think it's on
some type of a historical list, so they're and I
had to have special permission to do it. But she
still owns it. And but that's the story that's from
not too far from you.
Speaker 2: From that, I don't know, I don't feel like i've
heard that one. But like what, but no, no one thought,
no one thought to go into the house that whole time.
Speaker 1: No because they kept calling people out to and when.
Speaker 2: And when they would say no.
Speaker 1: Everything's fine, nobody pushed it. Oh, the neighbors were realizing
they hadn't seen Sheryl in a while. But at the
same time, these women were hermits.
Speaker 2: So like, so was she eating at the kitchen table?
Like what? I don't understand.
Speaker 1: This is a lot I don't I don't know what
where she was when she died, but she died, I
don't know. They did an autopsy, but it was inconclusive.
They did say that it didn't look like any foul
play was at work.
Speaker 2: There, but I under the table, okay, whatever, I guess
it really fucked up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's you know. And obviously and there
was no charges pressed against Linda. I think that they
just figured she's uh not.
Speaker 2: Just imagine if she did really do it and she
just got away with a freaking murder and played dumb
and murder. Oh I'm crazy, Yeah, But I mean, oh man,
how do you just deal with that all the time?
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta think that if you just don't
associate with anybody but the same person for forty years
or something, it was something like that, fifty years, you
would think that that probably would have a psychological effect
on you. That's why they they had so many problems
with lighthouse keepers back in the day. Just I mean,
it was just they went berserk and they'd killed their
families and everything else because they would just be stuck
up there in solitude. That's why solitary confinement back when
they did Eastern State Penitentiary, and the goal was to
keep them quiet and keep them separated. That didn't work.
I mean, it just it just caused them to go crazy.
Speaker 2: Oh man. Yeah, I actually keep reminding myself that this
was like in current times, not the eighteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was literally five years ago, seven years ago.
Speaker 2: Jesus wild.
Speaker 1: All right, So I said I had some news when this.
By the time this comes out, literally we're going to
be in the middle of sept the middle of January,
so by that time it's everybody else will have already known.
But Tracy and I are actually moving from Kentucky to
Daytona Beach, Florida.
Speaker 2: Whoop. I'm so excited for you guys.
Speaker 1: It will be two and a half miles from the
beach in a retirement community, and it's basically just because
health conditions and everything. I just I just have to
take it easy. Yeah, she needs to take it easy.
And we're still going to be doing all the podcasts,
but we're not gonna be doing as much traveling and
stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, take it relaxed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have to do long or any kind
of yard work or anything there. Yeah, it's all going
to be done. But we're buying a house there in
this community and we're looking forward to it. As we're recording.
It's December thirteenth, yep. As we record this episode on
a Wednesday. We're supposed to close on the house on
Friday the fifteenth, but we're not moving until the end
of January, so about the time this comes out, we'll
be partially there. We're taking our time. It's expensive as
hell to move out of state. It's eight hundred miles away.
Just to rent a U haul with me doing all
the work and just a U haul, it's like eleven
hundred dollars. And that's not counting gas.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, we spend.
Speaker 1: One hundred and forty dollars in gas the last time
we went down there, just in my small car. That's great.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's gonna be like thousands of dollars in gas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it'd be it'd be probably three hundred, four
hundred dollars. But and I don't have the ability to
load this stuff and unload it anymore. I used to,
but uh, I just I just don't have it. I
have no energy and I want to. Yeah, and my
heart feels like that it could do it. But if
I do anything at all for ten minutes, I'm completely
out of breath and have to sit down and you can't.
Speaker 2: Can't do it.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. But we're looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: It would be nice.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is beautiful, all right, Amanda. That wraps it
up for us this night.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I will see you next Wednesday, yes, ma'am.
Whye bye