My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
466 - Parrots Of The Future
Thu, 06 Feb 2025
This week, Georgia covers the Adelaide Oval abductions and Karen tells the story of the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is exactly right.
Hello, and welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's a Georgia Hartster. And that's a Karen Kilgariff. And this is how you make them. Have you seen, I don't know how we even talked about this yet, the fucking Husky who has an Italian accent. Oh my God, nothing has brought me more joy in my life than that guy.
The best, right? The best. I feel like if there's any animal that's about to break over into human speaking, huskies will be first. They're so close.
They're borderline. They're like, it's parrots, which I watch so many videos of them talking to. They literally are talking. And huskies. If you haven't seen it, just Google Italian husky.
Huskies are the parrots of the future. That's clear to all of us who care about TikTok. Yeah. Don't you believe in evolution, everyone? Sorry, breaking news. Do you know that I am off of TikTok? Why? What happened? Because I accidentally, the day that they said they were quote unquote banning it, I went and deleted the app because I was like, I don't want to stare at that anymore.
I don't want to just look at it and not be able to access it. Did you cancel your account or you just can't sign back in? I deleted it off my phone. Oh, okay. Twelve hours later, I'm eating dinner with Bridger and he goes, I'm on the reinstated TikTok. And I was like, wait, what? And so then I go to put it back on my phone. Cannot. You can't? Can't.
Because they're like, fuck you and fuck you, fuck you. If you like ditch them. It's basically the general practice of fuck you if you're American at this point.
Well, yeah. I mean, that's great. Come to Instagram. We're a happy family here.
It's less chaotic. Here's the thing. It's just like I have to transfer high school's senior year last quarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. So it's like, hey, guys, are we going to be friends? No, no, no, no, no.
No, but everyone wants someone new and exciting. We're all bored of each other over there. Okay. So I immediately have to post bikini pics because I don't know. Okay, can I tell you the last thing I posted? What? A slow motion reel of Vince taking a chicken pot pie that he made me on Friday night and upending it on a plate and handing it to me. Oh. With some dirty song playing in the background.
Like that's all it is there. We're having fun. With a kind of let's get it on feel to it. Kind of like pop that, you know, everybody pop that. You know, that one like this, which I want to sing so bad. And as I was walking to the office, I was like wanting to sing that song. And I was like, that's actionable. Don't sing that to your co-worker. Even in the parking lot, it's questionable. Totally.
Definitely not pass the door. Look that song up, too, if you need a fucking jam to jog to. Can you give me the musician that performs it?
Oh, it's fucking it's two live crew. Yeah.
Nothing is better.
The song is called Pop That Pussy. That's the fucking name of it. So I'm not.
No, no, you didn't write it. You're just rapping it. I wish I had.
Yeah. Hey, speaking of rap, have you watched the Martha Stewart documentary? Not yet. I kind of was meh about it, and then I watched it. And then you were not. And then it was, like, very interesting.
Yes, that's what all I've heard is very interesting, amazing, like, almost like the story behind, talk about Instagram, it's kind of like, she's all about pictures and presentation.
The first influencer, they're saying, and it's so true.
She is. I remember being in high school and there used to be an American Express commercial where it was Martha Stewart lining a pool, the bottom of a pool with American Express cards like it was a craft project. And I was like, who's that? My mother was like, oh, yeah, she's some woman from the East Coast. Like eye roll, eye roll.
Yeah.
And it was like she was. But it was almost like how to be perfect, how to have a perfect life, how to be perfect.
That's what the whole thing is about. And it's also like a little disturbing because she's clearly like a little bit of an automaton. What is the word? Robot? Yeah. A little robotic. Sure. A little like... Sociopathy kind of like because you have to be in that business or to get where she is in this world. Yes.
But it's also super impressive because she's a badass and has like taken some hits and just got back up, you know. She's still growing those tulips seasonally. It's interesting. You should watch it. As a CEO yourself, an entrepreneur, I think there's some parts... And someone heading to jail, for sure. Right, for insider trading.
Yeah.
I do think you'll identify with some parts of it.
Yeah.
I already told you I've been kicked off TikTok. So like, I feel like I'm forced into like now I'm spiritual or something because I literally sit on them at the patio table on my back patio in the morning and kind of like stare off like, well, I guess this is a better way to spend time. Yeah. My sister and I were talking about it.
You can tell it's not good for your brain to watch things for 10 to 60 seconds to maybe three minutes. That are this, yeah, over and over and over again. And just flipping, flipping, flipping. It does something to your dopamine, kind of like your set rate of satisfaction. Absolutely. So I think that's good.
But I am so scared about the just absolute loss of information, shared information between Twitter being gone and which it is completely gone and the Twitter we all knew. And the thing that was important about Twitter was it was started by journalists. Right. Shorthanding news. And like so everyone else that was there, you know, later stages were all just kind of like hangers on.
But it was news based and sourced. Yeah.
We need that access to information on all platforms and from all places so that we can then make a decision for ourselves. Yes. And you're worried about that not being available to everyone.
And the fact that it is not, it absolutely cuts into people being able to organize, people being able to have real time reactions to things like it just is holistically as I kind of skip around on my phone going, well, blue sky. I mean, let's all make the best of blue sky for sure. But. God.
Yeah. Dark. Well, we're here waiting for you on Instagram with open arms and a chicken pot pie.
Slow motion chicken pot pie. I mean, that alone is a huge that was one of the most perfect invitations you could offer me. What else is there? I just I guess I was always picturing of people like, here's us at the bikini party. Oh, here's here's me in my bikini again. Bikini from the back. Like that's what it always felt like that to me.
I don't get a lot of bikini content. That's not what I follow. And that's not what's offered to me.
And you don't feel pressed to post bikini clothes. Are you fucking kidding me? It's what it's been in my head the whole time.
No, everything I post is like chicken pot pie adjacent. It's not. It's not. Or like dog and cat stuff. Okay. It's not like that. Okay. It's like, you know, when you're in fifth grade and you think the sixth graders are super cool. And then like you become an adult and meet one of those sixth graders. You're like, that person was, I don't know where this is going. Oh. But we're the fifth.
Do you want to just talk about fifth grade? Yeah. I'm in. Yeah. I don't know.
Entirely.
Do you know what I mean? You're like, wow, that person is so much cooler than me. And then like with TikTok and then you meet them later in life. You're like, why did I put that person on a pedestal? Everything was great here in fifth grade. Yeah. I don't.
It's all normal. Well, because that's all. It's basically the social media trap, which is want to be a part of things. Think we'd be doing a good job being part of things. Maybe stick your toe in and test that out. Yeah. I did that with TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. And not for you. But you're more of a, I have to be doing it. I was such a lurker on TikTok. I didn't do it. I barely interacted at all.
Yeah, it made me feel inadequate. Whereas with Instagram, I was like, I can talk to the phone in front of my mirror and it's fine. I don't need filters. Right. I mean, I need filters, but I don't use filters.
Oh, I thought you were going to do a big take to camera just now. The way you spun around. I was like, yes, she's doing a bit. Yeah. What if just suddenly you're not and I start doing fucking... I don't need filters and then turn around and blow your nose into camera. Jesus Christ. What is this? Who knows? You know what it is? It's a true crime podcast. We have news.
We have highlights from around the world. Is this where you should come? Hey. Nope. The answer's no. Maybe. Maybe.
uh should we do some ceramics oh my god yes your face is lit up yes so last week because we asked you guys for ceramics for our ninth anniversary anniversary gift yeah we we showcased some on the podcast it was a huge hit we have so many more we're gonna do a video hopefully soon but in the meantime we wanted to just like do a couple more really quickly because apparently you guys freaking loved it yeah everyone's just thrilled so
Everyone loves it. And it's fun to be like, hey, would anyone do this? And then with this listenership, the responses we get are like, hell yeah, and then some. Right. Watch this. Watch this.
And we bought a fucking electric Lazy Susan. That can't go to waste.
This is show business investment, ladies and gentlemen. And also, if you want to see what we mean by an electric Lazy Susan, you better get over to that YouTube page.
Yeah. Go to the exactly right YouTube page. And check it out. Okay, I'll read it to you while you do it. Yeah, this is from an artist named Cassandra. Her IG handle, her Instagram handle is Westerwald Pottery, W-E-S-T-E-R-W-A-L-D. She and her husband.
That's the handle I was going to use.
Forget it. She and her husband run Westworld Pottery, which her dad started in 1975. Whoa. Second generation pottery. I know. Her dad was a ceramics professor and pottery expert. This is going to be fucking good. And he passed away in 2022 after a battle with COVID. And she says, quote, I hope you enjoy the anniversary crock and the mugs.
I know my dad would be getting an absolute kick out of my favorite murder being stamped onto one of his pots.
They have our names. This is real.
That is fucking ridiculous. This is the real deal. This stoneware is hand-thrown, decorated, and glazed at 2,250 degrees Fahrenheit. Glaze is lead-free, microwave, and dishwasher safe. Oh, so it's these it's a beautiful like crock, like a jug kind of a thing with this gorgeous like what would you call that? It's very vintage. This floral design. Yes. Beautiful blue floral design.
It's very vintage looking. If you've ever seen pottery sell on Antiques Roadshow, it's one of these, but a big one usually where they're like, this has been in the corner of my kitchen forever. Right. And then the mugs have our names stamped into them with SSDGM. I'm sorry, because you're supposed to put this on the shelf behind you. I'm taking this for sure.
This is the most, this is my new mug.
This is absolutely beautiful. Okay, let's put it up. Kind of like breathtakingly beautiful. It is. Cassandra, thank you so much. Great job, Westerwald Pottery. Westerwald Pottery. It's like so touching. It's like a family thing. I know. That's amazing.
Gorgeous.
Yay. Okay. This one's small. Okay. I'll start reading this one and you get ready to do the poll.
Okay. It's covered up with a cloth, with a silk cloth, and we're going to rip it off. It's a little phallic shaped under that claw.
Guess what part of the body this has been shaped after. It's a little phallic. Thrown after. The artist's name is Tina Cain, a.k.a. Teapots Pottery. Instagram handle at Teapots Pottery. And she teaches pottery classes at MCS Clay Studios in Clearwater, Florida. Why don't you rip it as she says. Hope you enjoy your ninth anniversary prize. It's a microphone.
Oh, no. It's beautiful. Wait, is it a? Oh, my God. It's a microphone pot bong pipe. Look. Oh, my God.
Hold on. Oh, my God. It says, hope you enjoy your ninth anniversary prize. It's one of my favorite pieces, typed smiley face. Yes, I make all the standard mugs, bowls, et cetera, too. It's a pipe shaped like a microphone pipe.
That's so clever. That is brilliant. It's a microphone and you can smoke pot out of it after you record the podcast.
Or legal tobacco in your state or family. That's amazing. That's hilarious. Amazing. Tina Cain. Thank you so much. Wow. Okay.
Do you want to read this one? Okay, I'll read this one. Okay. This is from an artist named Chris Shima. Instagram handle Shima, S-H-I-M-A, Shima Ceramics. Chris says, my company consists of myself and my assistant, Jareden, and we almost exclusively listen to MFM in the studio. Ooh. And then it's, then let's do it.
It says, I make sculptural mugs by hand, meaning I sculpt an original by hand, make a plaster mold of it, and then cast slip mugs from it. Wow. I hadn't looked up yet. As an homage to MFM, I made these stay out of the forest skull mugs. Happy ninth anniversary. These gorgeous skulls.
And they're glazed on the inside. And they have stay out of the forest etched on the back. It's like outside is skull bone feeling. Inside, beautiful glazed mug.
Karen, I think... All the big meetings you take from now on, you need to be casually sipping.
Oh, and then I do a lot of, is that so? Is that so? Drinking out of a skull.
Like all the people that we fucking dealt with that you need to talk to out of a skull mug.
I'll hold it in the eyes. Is that so?
That's beautiful. Have you seen Martha Stewart's series? You could. Chris Shima, Shima Ceramics. Incredible work.
Just incredible. Gorgeous. And signed. Oh, wow.
Stay out of the forest.
These are beautiful. I mean, I can't get over the talent. I can't either. It's real. Professional. They're professionals. They are. And they're giving things to us because we demand it that they do.
Because we said please.
Beautiful. Amazing. I love those.
I can't wait to do an actual... like a live stream that we were going to do, and show the rest of them. Oh, yeah. There's still time to send yours in, you guys, if you're like, shit, I didn't finish in time.
Or if you got really mad because you're like, oh, sure, the ceramics people get to do something, but what about me over here with my hook rug abilities? You want a hook rug? I mean, I like lots of things. Okay. I like when people put their creativity and brains towards something.
It's like a hometown. It can be fucking anything you want at this point. It can. You decide. You choose. Yeah. Okay. No rules. Beautiful. Thank you, Alejandra. Alejandra. Amazing job. All right.
Well, before we get to the stories, should we do some highlights? Let's talk about our vaunted network with all of our wonderful podcasts on it, especially the newest podcast that we have, our brand new film podcast, Your Movies, I Love You. They just debuted here on the Exactly Right Network on the second episode is now out.
And on this one, Millie and Casey take on the trope of the manic pixie dream girl and discuss the 2004 hit film Garden State. Wow.
Yeah. I want to know about that because, like, when I was younger, I was like, I have a manic pixie dream girl. And now that I'm older, I'm like... Take your medication.
I mean, what choice did anyone have in the 2000s though?
It's a terrible, it's a terrible trope.
It was a hilarious at the time trope because I remember being like in my 20s at that time that you were watching a lot of stuff. You had justified that you as a person who had at least been around the block like one and a half times were just like, this is full bullshit. What are you talking about?
Or like these character, these female characters that are made to service the males. Yeah.
storyline yeah you know in a darling adorable way that has no thought of its own whatsoever and like you were saying before like oftentimes those girls were not this wonderful force of nature right they were people who needed medication and or that were just trying to live their life and some dude is like right i'm going to project everything i need onto you and now i'm mad at you for not being that person 500 days of summer in a nutshell
Anyways, this is not a movie podcast. This is not that movie podcast or any movie podcast. And then this week on That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, Cara and Lisa cover an episode from season five entitled Manic. Hey.
Dun dun. Over on I Said No Gifts, comedian Rekha Shankar disobeys Bridger with yet another unwanted present. Will it ever end? Poor guy.
And Nick Terry has done it again with a brand new episode of MFM Animated. It's called Sleep German, which is inspired by Minisoad 320. Head over to YouTube.com slash Exactly Right Media. Please subscribe while you're there to check it out. And remember, the dream man won't get you if we stick together.
The dream man won't get you if we stick together. head turned to the side so creepy also just a quick update so you guys know if you're a listener short time long time we like to take our MFM logo pin which is just the classic MFM logo pin obviously that we sell in the merch store in black and white and we dedicate like a period of time to certain charities and
the money from the sales of that pin will go to. So the last one was the National Abortion Fund. We sold 192 pins with that one. So you guys raised almost $2,000 to donate to the National Abortion Fund, which is amazing.
So this year, we are dedicating the money from the black and white MFM logo pin to World Central Kitchen, Of course, founded in 2010 by Chef Jose Andres, World Central Kitchen is the first to the front lines providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.
Their relief team has been here in Southern California supporting the first responders and the firemen and the families affected by the fires providing nourishing meals.
To donate or learn about other ways you can help World Central Kitchen, go to their website, wck.org. We're really excited to support them. It's like, you know, such an incredible cause.
Yeah. And then if you were just thinking of shopping around, you wanted to get a little pin for your lapel, then the money that you spend goes to a really good and at this point, very, very worthy cause. Right.
When you're buying your here's the thing, fuck everyone mug, throw in a black and white pin. Get a pin going. Hey, put it on your leather jacket. Okay, this is one I'm excited to do. It's a big one. And it's really interesting. You know how when we go on tour, we go to a city and on stage, before we tell a story, we would be like, Clearwater, Florida, what are you doing?
Admonish them because they have so many fucking murders to choose from. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, if we ever go to this place, we're going to admonish them. Because this takes place in Adelaide, Australia. Oh, oh. Is it in Adelaide, Texas? I think so. Yeah. Because Australia can go head to head with the U.S. when it comes to terrifying murdered and disappeared children, unfortunately.
There's the Mr. Cruel abductions and murder that I covered in episode 124. Of course, the Beaumont children, which I'll mention later. And then there's this one. This is a haunting 50-year-old unsolved case about two children in Australia who were abducted from a sports stadium.
This is the story of the Adelaide Oval Abductions, which I hadn't heard of, but I think everyone in Australia knows about. I haven't heard of it either.
Can I ask, is this a cold case?
Yeah. But there's a lot of suspects. Okay. Okay? And, like, a lot of other cold cases that, like... Link them.
Okay.
Okay. I originally found this on the Crime Stoppers South Australia website. The main source I use for the story is episode 163 of the Australian true crime podcast that we all know and love, Casefile. Casefile. First of all, did the Casefile host ever come forward and be like, it's me? Nope. Still anonymous as far as I know. That's so Australian and cool. So cool.
Like, I don't want all the accolades. And meanwhile, we're like, Put us in the magazine. I've never said those words.
I've never said them either. But there we are.
Times Square has seen us a few times. And that's like not on us, you know.
That's true. Well, it's a different thing because Casefile is essentially as close to basically newspaper reporting as you can possibly get.
It's very serious. Yeah, definitely. And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So Adelaide is South Australia's capital. It's known by some to be a beautiful coastal cosmopolitan town with a small town feel.
And it's also known by other people, including a lot of murderinos who emailed us about this case as the murder capital of Australia or the serial killer capital of Australia. Like lots of dark shit has happened here. Yeah. So here we are. It's August 25th, 1973.
And we're at a sports stadium called the Adelaide Oval for an Australian football match between the North Adelaide Roosters and the Norwood... You want to guess what they're called? Huckleberries. Huckleberries. No, that's not right, but the Norwood Redlegs would also have been hilarious, but true. Oh. The Redlegs. Yeah.
So, we're not going to get into it, but Australian football is also known as footy. It looks similar to rugby slash American football. There's just... Who cares?
I care about rugby.
Okay, fine. Then the rules are different. It's played on an oval-shaped field similar to a cricket field, which means nothing to me. It's a smallish stadium. It looks like a college football stadium. So, like... Yeah, exactly. And it's the 1970s. So most of the space is standing room only. So spectators arrive early and they don't give up their spots like you would at a parade.
Like even if you go to the bathroom, you're going to lose your spot. So they get there early and they stick where they're at.
Yeah.
There's also grandstands on the west side of the stadium where people can sit. And that's where Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe are sitting with their two children, David, who's 13, and Joanne, who is 11, on that August day in 1973. Here we are. The family are huge Red Legs fans, and they come to nearly every game.
There are a lot of regulars in the crowd, and the Ratclips soon connect with a woman named Rita Huckle, one of their friends who they see often at the games. And that day, Rita has brought her granddaughter along to this game. She's a four-year-old named Kirstie Gordon, and it's the first time she's ever brought her granddaughter to a game.
So the game begins at 2.10 and even though there's an age gap between Joanne, who's 11, and Kirstie, who's four, they immediately take a liking to each other. Remember when you were like a preteen and a little kid thought you were the coolest?
Yeah.
And it just made you feel so good and like, you know, like babysitting. Yeah.
Yeah, then you got to be like the camp counselor and you're like, come over here and we'll have fun.
Yeah. I mean, to this day, if a little kid likes me, I feel like special. Yeah. You know?
Yeah.
So I think it was kind of that sort of thing. So they spend like most of the game playing together. Australian football games are played in four quarters and between the two halves, there's a longer break. And so Joanne, her parents totally trust her. She's a very mature 11 year old.
And she's been to tons of games at the stadium before, so they let her go back and forth to the bathroom on her own, but only during the beginning of the quarters, not during the halftime when there's the big rush. Like, they have a sense of, you know, their 11-year-old in a crowd, and they're careful.
So during the first quarter, Kirstie needs to go to the bathroom, and the Ratcliffs and Kirstie's grandma, Rita, agree to let Joanne take her. The bathroom's about 300 feet away from their seats in a concourse area under the grandstand. They go to the bathroom. They come back. It all goes well. No big deal. And they continue to play while their families watch the game.
So then about 3.45 in the third quarter of the game, Kirstie needs to go to the bathroom again. And there's still plenty of time before the break to go between quarters, so the families, you know, let the two girls go. This time, though, after 20 minutes, they're still not back yet.
Joanne's father, Les, goes down to the concourse to look for the girls, thinking they're probably playing somewhere between the seats in the bathroom, but he doesn't see them. He asks a woman to go in the ladies' room to call for the girls. They're not in there. And about 12,000 people have come to the game that day.
But also, the stadium always opens the gates during the last quarter, so people from the general public who don't have tickets can enter for free and just watch the end of the game. And because it's a close match, a lot of people show up that day. And the beginning of the fourth quarter sees a huge, like, chaotic influx of people in and around the stadium.
Like, we went to that football game, soccer game in England. It's chaotic.
It was insane.
Yeah. Like, being a little kid there, just, yeah. So even though the girls haven't been missing for very long, they're both very responsible and trustworthy. So the adults are already alarmed and springing into action. And this is actually kind of rare for the 1970s, right? Completely. They'd be like in trouble and angry at them or just not even know that they were gone for that long.
20 minutes and they're worried.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. For 70s numbers. Yeah. Usually it's like, oh, they must have gone to a neighbor's house. Like, it just was not in the consciousness at all. Right.
So that's great. Yeah. So frantic Kathleen, who is 11 year old Joanne's mom, she goes to an office in the stadium and immediately is like, can you make an announcement for the girls to come back to their seat? And the administrator overseeing the match refuses, saying the stadium has a policy against making mid game announcements because it could disrupt the game.
Mm hmm.
He recommends she talk to the police and sends her off. Although right back in his office, hanging out with him is a police officer. He doesn't even bother.
So he sends her out to some other police instead of coming here.
Yeah. Like that's how flippant he was. Go back to your seat. I'm sure I'm sure they'll show up. Yeah. Right there. The Radcliffs and Grandma Rita spend the rest of the game looking for the girls. When the game ends at about 4.45, they return to the office and ask again that an announcement be made. This time, the administrator makes the announcement.
He says over the PA system, quote, Joanne Radcliffe in Adelaide Oval, come back to your mother and father. End quote. Like no details. Not only is this wording of the announcement super unhelpful, at this point, everyone is leaving the stadium in mass. And so all the noise from that completely drowns out the announcement. There's no emergency to it either. Right.
Right.
Did you ever get an announcement called at the grocery store on you by your mom?
Oh, no, because my mom never let go of my neck at the grocery store. It could have been your hand. As we entered, she would go, what are we going to get today? And her hand would just very lightly go to my neck. Now, was that because I was such a wonderful, responsive, and listening child? No. She had to hold my neck everywhere I went. Like, where are we going to go?
And then she would kind of very lightly direct me if we were going to turn and go down this way or that way.
Yeah.
You weren't her first rodeo. She was like, I know how this goes.
I was. Well, I was, you know, I was a real reflection of the times. Sure. Seventy five.
Yeah, that's right. The family searches the whole stadium and then they call the police. They the police are about 10 minutes after the game ends. But at that point, almost all the spectators leave. and potential witnesses have left.
So frustrating. And so kind of like, it's just how all of these are. We're knowing what we know today. It's just like gigantic mistakes at the earliest time.
Just all the missed opportunities to actually get ahead of this. Yeah. But the police do, thankfully, take it seriously. Immediately, they set up roadblocks in the areas surrounding the stadium. You know, everyone's pretty much left. And they begin an extensive search for the girls. Yeah.
Meanwhile, Rita, the grandmother of Kirstie, now has to call Kirstie's parents, who are out of town, along with their two-year-old daughter, Catherine, and say, like, your daughter, your four-year-old daughter's missing from me taking her to the game. Like, how... Horrible. Horrible.
So Kirstie's parents, Greg and Christine Gordon, immediately head back to Adelaide, which is about a three-hour drive. All night, searchers comb Adelaide and boats pass on the nearby river torrents with searchlights, and they turn up absolutely nothing. The next morning, the search continues. Police search the riverbank, divers search the river, and the river is even partially drained.
Meanwhile, as he aids in the search for his daughter, Joanne's father, Les, breaks down and passes out from grief. And no trace of the girls is found. The story becomes national news unless Joanne's father, he's really big and the whole family's like really big about getting the word out, public statements. They're just like devastated, obviously, and like don't ever give up.
And the story becomes national news. Descriptions of the girls are widely circulated throughout Australia. Police put out a call for information. And that's when a horrible narrative begins to emerge. So... A 13-year-old boy named Anthony Kilmartin had been working at the stadium on the day the girls were there. He was selling concessions in the crowd.
At the beginning of the third quarter, he saw what he sure was the girls come down the grandstand steps toward the ground level. Anthony then went into the concourse under the grandstands and saw the girls again on their way to the bathroom. This time, he thinks he saw them being followed by a man. Now, why would he remember this, you know, ordinary moment? It's because of what happens next.
He sees the man bend down and pick up four-year-old Kirstie. And then Joanne, 11-year-old Joanne, immediately reacts badly to this. He says Joanne starts chasing the man, grabbing at his coat and kicking him in the shins, just fighting him. The man calls Joanne a bitch and tells her to go away. And they scuffle. And while he's still holding Kirstie, the man's glasses get knocked off.
And when he bends down to pick them up, he also grabs Joanne by the arm and pulls her along as well. They all exit through the stadium's southern gate with Joanne still trying to fight this man off. And Anthony, it's 1973. Anthony's 13 years old. He thinks he just saw a father trying to get his daughters to leave when they don't want to.
And this is one of the things we talk about all the time is like, don't mind your own business. Now we know. Don't mind your business. Go figure out what's going on. If you're wrong, then you apologize and walk away. If you're not, great.
But as we just talked about in the in like the last episode, talking about domestic violence and how that is this kind of for so long, especially back then, it's really hard to understand now. But it was so dark ages back then growing up. That was back when other people's parents could hit you. Yeah.
Other people's parents could slap you in the face if you were at their house and you did something they didn't like. It was so different. And so to see a dad, you know, do kind of whatever as meanly or violently or crazily as they want, it wasn't this kind of like, it wasn't as shocking as it should have been for kids at that time. You saw a lot more.
Well, the problem is adults saw them, too, later. I mean, that's what immediately invariated me. It's like a 13-year-old boy wouldn't know what to do. What the fuck were those people around thinking for one second?
I know you feel so awkward, like, butting into people's business, especially when there's an angry person in the mix, you know? Not you, people in general. But, like, you'll never regret.
doing something you'll only regret not doing something right it's it's yes totally i just as a person who was raised by the ultimate butt in lady i don't i have empathy for people who were raised by people who are like no no no no no because it's a very very scary thing Some people are scared to just be like, hey, I'd like another Diet Coke. Totally.
Or this isn't what I ordered.
Sir, do you know this girl? It takes so much, especially for women to do it. Yes. Where you're just like, oh, you're going to take on a violent man or even question one. It's just like the things it's almost like get a buddy, get a confrontation buddy. Yeah. Go or an employee that's there and go ask a question.
Yeah. That's so funny. I'm a butt-in person as well. You're not going to be surprised, but Janet, my mom, is a butt-in person.
Yes, she is.
But I definitely have made Vince uncomfortable before by being a butt-in person. Sure. That's not how you act. That's not what you do. Right. But you never know.
You never fucking know. Well, and also I think it's The people who do it, they do it for a reason. They've seen stuff. Right. That's true. There are people who maybe aren't as inclined because it's easier for them to imagine everything's fine. And I think I was raised by two people who know for a fact nothing is fine a lot of the time. Yeah.
When you get told don't get involved, it's like you're already involved. Yeah. So see it out to the end. I mean. Carry pepper spray everywhere you go.
Just grab a confrontation friend. I really feel like I just made that up, but it actually could work.
Can we have best friends necklaces that say confrontation friend on it? You're my best confrontation friend.
You don't have to say anything. Just stand behind me. Yeah. I just need your back up. We need bodies here.
You need to be my wingman for the confrontation. Right. So this kid for the rest of his life, you know, has to live with knowing this. He witnessed. Yeah. He was traumatized by what he witnessed. But he didn't know. Yeah. So he yeah.
So he believes he had just seen a father whom he describes as a lanky man wearing glasses and a wide brimmed hat arguing with his two daughters who like maybe just didn't want to leave the game early. And he just goes about his day. He forgets about the whole thing until he hears about the girl's disappearance.
And once this kid Anthony reports this to the police, Joanne's family confirms that this is exactly how their 11-year-old daughter would react. She is known to be protective of other kids. She once hit another kid with a wooden plank because he was bullying her brother.
Mm-hmm.
And they're adamant that she wouldn't have left Kirstie behind if something bad was happening to her. You know, it's just your heart goes out. It's horrible and heartbreaking.
Yeah.
In addition, Kirstie's parents say that their little girl is exceptionally shy and would never willingly go off with some stranger. You know, so it all adds up that this is an abduction. Yeah. So there's also this story, another witness, a man named Ken Wooling, is at the stadium, is the stadium's assistant curator.
He says at the end of the third quarter at about 4 p.m., he saw two girls he believed to have been Joanne and Kirstie outside the stadium. There's this whole thing about like there were these stray kittens and some kids were trying to coax out the kittens and there's this weird guy around them. The timelines don't totally add up. We think Anthony's story is 100% true.
This one, if you piece it in time-wise, it makes sense, but only if it happened before what Anthony saw. So it's possible as well. Police put out a composite sketch of this man and, of course, asked that he come forward so he can be eliminated, but nobody does. Police put out a call for tips, and more than 400 people come forward.
And there's a lot more details in the case file episode about witnesses and possible sightings, but I'm not going to go into all of them. There are some credible tips, including a few people who saw a man with a similar description with two little girls. There's also a ransom call to the family that's believed to be a hoax and is never traced.
A $5,000 reward is announced for information leading to the recovery of the girls. In today's dollars, that would be worth about... $5,000 Australian dollars in the 70s? Uh-huh.
Would it be like 50 grand?
28 grand for two missing little girls who have been abducted from a stadium, potentially. The public is a little like, what the fuck? That's really low over this. Right. So that's partly because of what I'm going to tell you next. So there's this brazen daytime kidnapping in a very public place. It's obviously terrifying for the public. Right. Which is why it's partly such a big deal.
It's like it's not it's just so brazen. Right. You know, but it's also alarming in the fact that it's not unfamiliar because there's a recent case in the area that still looms large in everyone's mind. And people wonder if there's a connection.
Right.
About 10 years earlier, on January 26, 1966, three siblings had disappeared from a town celebration in a public park beach area in Glenelg, Australia, which is just outside of Adelaide, very close. This is the Beaumont children. We never put out an episode about this case, but I'm sure one of us covered it when we were Australia touring.
And we definitely probably both read about it in our choices of, like, should we do this one as we, like, did research. But I remember, not details, obviously, but, like, just remember the idea.
Yeah. And it comes up a lot. It's come up recently because there's always new leads. Again, it's a cold case. So this happened about 10 years before the girls were kidnapped from the stadium. So the Beaumont children, it was Jane, who was nine, Arna, who was seven, and Grant Beaumont, who was four. Mm-hmm.
The children were playing with him and appear to be relaxed and enjoying themselves like maybe they knew him and were seen walking away together from the beach. No big deal. But they were never seen again and their disappearance has never been solved. And people have always believed that these two cases are linked. And Case File covers the Beaumont children in episode 100 of Case File.
Over the years, multiple men, a disturbing amount of whom have been convicted of other crimes against children in the area and Australia in general, have emerged as possible suspects in this case. And a lot are tied to the Beaumont abductions as well.
There's a group of men known by the media as the family who are thought to be involved in a pedophile ring during the 70s and 80s who are responsible for the kidnapping and sexual abuse of a number of teenage boys and young men. This is a fucking disturbing case. Case file covers it in episode 166. There's so many gruesome details. I'm clearly not going to get into it.
Only one of those men from the pedophile ring has ever been tried and convicted for these crimes or even their name brought up in the media. This man named Bevan Spencer Von Einem was sentenced in 1984 for the murder of a 15-year-old boy named Richard Kelvin who had been abducted near his home in Adelaide.
This man is now considered a suspected serial killer and his name comes up in connection with the Adelaide Oval abductions, mostly because of the testimony against him by an anonymous informant. And this anonymous informant was like part of this ring and still gave this information. So it's not just like, I don't know, it seems more credible because of that. Well, right. Yeah. Yeah.
And this anonymous informant says that Bevan Spencer von Einem once boasted to him that he had taken the children and dumped the bodies in bushland south of Adelaide. These allegations have never been sustained, but this dude is pure fucking evil and it's a very disturbing case. Yeah. In 1999, a man named Arthur Stanley Brown is charged in another awful cold case.
On the 26th of August, 1970, which is just three years before the abductions in the stadium, sisters Judith, who was seven, and Susan McKay, who was five, disappeared from a suburb of Townsville, Queensland, less than 10 minutes after leaving their home, and were later found murdered two days later.
This man was not convicted because of a hung jury and was not given a new trial because he was in his 90s by the time he was charged. Remember, it happened in 1970 and he wasn't arrested until 1999. So they considered him too senile to stand trial, although some people think he was faking it. Now, this occurred in 1970, three years before the abductions of Joanne and Kirstie.
These locations aren't close. However, he bears a resemblance to the descriptions of the man in the wide brim hat. And he's also considered a prime suspect for the Beaumont children disappearance. A witness from that day near the stadium identified him much later as the man, which is, you know, not very reliable. But he's a potential suspect.
And then Joanne's little sister, Susie Wilkinson, she believes that it was a different third suspect. This is a man named Stanley Arthur Hart, and he's known as a pedophile. He lives in the area. He's a devoted supporter of the North Adelaide Football Club, which is one of the two teams playing Adelaide Oval on the day of the abduction. So it's very likely he was there.
Seven years before they were taken, he had been charged with six sex offenses against an 11-year-old girl. In 2009, his own grandson gave a written confession saying that he and his grandfather were at Adelaide Oval on the days the girls disappeared. But he was three or four years old on the day of the game at the stadium.
And when he wrote this confession in 2009, he was in prison for charges for crimes against children. Oh. And so authorities initially dismissed these claims, but private investigators for the Gordon and Ratcliffe families take them very seriously. This man, the grandfather, died in 1999.
And in the late 2000s, private investigators searched a property in a rural area about two hours north of Adelaide that belonged to the grandfather. following a hand-drawn map that this grandson had provided to them. Like, he was adamant that this was his grandfather. This map leads the investigators to an underground tunnel which contains two steel barrels. They call the police in.
The police return to the site. They determine that the barrels had traces of blood in them. Some reports also claim that the investigators found a scrapbook with newspaper clippings about the abduction. as well as children's clothing. It's just all this shit that you're like, test it, test it, test it. It hasn't been tested fully. It doesn't make any sense.
Well, it's always those things where it goes into investigation and then you don't hear about it unless they solve it.
That's exactly what it is. And then the other thing is that Anthony Kilmartin, the 13-year-old concession worker, he sees a photo of this man, the grandfather, and and the hat he used to wear, which they also find at his house. And he believes it's an exact match of the man he saw at the game that day, which seems a little more credible to me since it seems like it'll be burned into his memory.
Absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah. Back in 1974, after the disappearance of the girls, both the Ratcliffs and the Gordons welcome baby girls into their families. So Joanne, her little sister Susie, who they never got to meet, She goes on to be one of the biggest champions for solving this case, and she still is. She continues to push for answers today.
She's about 50 now, and she is the last living member of Joanne's immediate family. She is determined to see the case solved. The family moved out of Adelaide in the 80s, and Susie says, quote, to the very day we left, Mom would leave the front light on in the hope one day Jo would come home. My niece now leaves her front light on.
It's just something that's carried on through generations, end quote. And Susie actually runs an organization called Leave a Light On, and they advocate for missing persons and their loved ones. I know. In a recent Women's Weekly article, Susie said that she thinks about her sister's bravery often. And she says, quote, people forget that she was only 11.
She was given the responsibility of looking after Kirstie and she stuck by that even if it meant sacrificing herself. Oh, God. I know. Little Kirstie, four-year-old Kirstie's parents, they've been generally less public over the years, but they do speak to the press occasionally. Kirstie's mom, Christine, said in 2017, quote, What is closure? Do you need to have a body?
Do you need to have a funeral? Do you need to bring her home? To us, she is home because she is here with us. End quote. And that is the heartbreaking story of the Adelaide Oval Abductions. I think it could be solved.
It sounds like there's a lot of material there to be processed and tested and looked into.
Definitely. There's actually a GoFundMe being run by an investigative journalist to have those barrels tested more thoroughly that you can go check out. And yeah, police haven't thoroughly tested those barrels. It's just wild. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. Sorry for another cold case.
Well, hopefully they're just getting put on a pile of things to be taken care of. Yeah. I don't know. And also, I think you're right in the way that it is really important to talk about them because there is action that could possibly be taken that needs to still be taken. Definitely.
Definitely. I mean, they're just cold cases are just the stories we tell that haven't gotten their answer yet. It's not that that's it. The end of the story. It's an unsolved mystery. Like it's just still waiting for the last puzzle piece. And so maybe when we tell these stories, people will pay more attention and it can happen.
Yeah. I'm purely speaking from my own frustration and difficulty of, but you're right.
That's the important piece. I mean, I wonder why we have such differing opinions about them. Like, I won't even start a puzzle because I don't care about finishing it. You have to finish a puzzle.
What is wrong?
I'd rather think about the puzzle, puzzle over the puzzle, and then watch TV. I don't care.
But I think I've explained the piece of the puzzling that is what I'm in it for, which is you stare at something long enough. And after a while, it's like your brain goes, put your hand here and take this and put it here. And suddenly you don't know why you knew that this was the piece that went there.
And if you do that, I find that if I do that long enough, it's this weird, like, suddenly the momentum of it just building suddenly starts to go and then it's putting itself together.
That's why I want to tell the cold case stories. It's because I'm like, Karen, my friend, you're interested in this too. Like, let's... Put these pieces together. Let's like, you know, make our eyes all soft and see where the last piece goes. We could do this.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Just to me, that's what you're saying to all the people listening right now. Put the pieces together. Yeah. I'll accept that. Thank you. And I will take that. And with that acceptance, I will turn this car around. Please, God. But it's not any less sad or difficult, but there's a little shiny light in it.
Okay.
And it begins on the morning of January 12th, 1888. What? Here in America. Okay. In a sparsely populated part of central Nebraska, near the small town of Ord. Do you know what else happened in 1888?
Something I should know.
Lincoln? Civil War. Was it Civil War? What is it? First of all, I will never test you on history. We'll never test you on history. Should I know this? Well, I mean, not particularly, but it's the year the Jack the Ripper killings happened. That's what I, yeah, there we go. All eights. When did Lincoln get shot? That's none of our business.
We were failed by the American school system, and therefore we don't have to look back. You're right. It's not my fucking problem. Okay. So on this winter morn, a 19-year-old teacher named Minnie Freeman is walking to her tiny schoolhouse where she teaches 13 of the local homesteader's children, ranging in ages from 6 to 15. The schoolhouse is a one-room sod house.
And a sod house was a thing they used to do out on the prairie because, you know, they didn't have any supplies and they just kind of had to do their best. So that means that a sod house usually definitely the roof and sometimes even the walls are constructed from packed dirt and prairie grass.
Are you watching that show, that new show with Betty Gilpin? I did watch it. But so the show is American Primeval.
And it's based on, I think, based on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. That you covered. Which I believe I covered. You definitely covered.
No, no, you covered that on an episode. Right. I remember it.
On a not live episode?
Not live, yeah.
Okay. Okay, so here we are. So here we are, but it basically is that, where it's people living on the open prairie, settlers, homesteaders, making what they can. So like there was some of the, I saw a picture, Alejandra and Maren found a picture of one of these sod houses. And the one I saw, it was like the walls were made of like piled up rocks.
And then the windows were kind of built into the holes where they left. And then the roof was sod and flat.
Wow.
But then there's also the ones where they build them. This is very Laura Ingalls Wilder, where they build them kind of into the ground so that they're like protected. There's all kinds of ways they were trying to do that stuff. But what we're saying is there was no like Western worn horse town or anything like that. It was like there are no supplies here situation. Yeah.
So the Sod House is a common structure found on the frontier that settlers can quickly build to live or work in without basically the luxury of their usual building supplies like, oh, I don't know, wood and nails. So Minnie's Sod Schoolhouse has a stove in it. We're not sure if it's wood burning or coal burning, but it was like a central stove.
It has a couple windows and it has one door and that's it. Okay. So it's not fancy, but of course it completely serves its purpose as a classroom. And while it's probably drafty, it's of course better than any alternative, which is learning outside. And of course the warmth is especially important in the winter of 1888. Because this one is actually a brutal one.
We are at the tail end of what's called, quote, the Little Ice Age. Where one of several years-long periods where the entire Earth is colder than average. And then that leads to more intense winters across much of the U.S. Interesting. Yeah. So even though it did snow a few inches the night before... The weather on this day, January 12, 1888, is very mild.
So by the time Minnie's walking to school that day, it's gone from snowing the night before to climbed all the way up into the 40s. So that's much, much warmer than a typical mid-January day in the 1880s. Okay.
For our friends everywhere besides the U.S., this is all Fahrenheit, and I do apologize because the impact of the weather I'm going to be announcing right now, there's going to be a math delay for you.
So it's this kind of unseasonably warm weather that's probably why no one realizes a cold front is about to hit and leave an unsuspecting population in the wake of one of the deadliest winter storms in recorded history. This is the story of the devastating schoolhouse blizzard of 1888, also known as the Children's Blizzard. Oh, shit. Yeah.
It's never good when they name it after children.
No, no. So the main sources that Marin used in the research today are the Children's Blizzard, which is a book by author David Laskin, and that book is heavily cited. Also, an episode of the Radiotopia podcast, This Day in Esoteric Political History, which And the episode is called The Children's Blizzard. And then, of course, multiple articles from the Omaha Evening Bee newspaper from 1888.
Maren goes all the way back. And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So here's a little scene setting to start this off, talking about weather back then. Of course, as human beings, we've been tracking weather since basically we understood what was going on around us. We love it. It's our hobby. We love it. It's fun to talk about.
By the end of the 19th century, when this story takes place, scientists are doing what's, of course, compared to today, pretty basic meteorology. The United States has an organized weather service that's been around since 1870. It falls under the purview of the U.S. Army because of the Army's reputation for being meticulous and disciplined.
So basically, weather forecasting works this way back then. Mondays through Saturdays at military bases and outposts across the country, U.S. Army Signal Corps officials collect weather data, temperatures, air pressure, wind speed, etc. And then they send it via telegraph to forecasters at a central office in Washington, D.C. Those forecasters in D.C. analyze that data. They make predictions.
They send the information back to the signal core. And then those forecasts are printed in newspapers. You lost me. Here's how it works. Here's how it works. The weather goes out. So obviously the telegraph makes all of that fast and possible at the time. But compared to today, this is like one of the slowest ways to get any kind of news or information. I don't know, though. Dallas rains.
It's going to rain tomorrow. And it fucking never does. Or it doesn't, doesn't. A lot of this. It's fun to gesture. Dallas, I'm calling you out. We all love a green screen. And yeah, full props to Dallas rains. Always and forever. Still working, I believe. Still doing it. I think so. Legendary.
If you're from somewhere else and you have never heard of the legendary Los Angeles weatherman, Dallas rains. Yeah. With it. Get on board. He's one of the greats. I used to, in my studio apartment when things were very dark, I would get nice and high and watch the 11 o'clock news. And I was always positive Dallas Rains was high along with me.
Because the stuff he would say, I'd be like, this is hilarious. I'd be like, why is this weatherman saying this weird shit and making me laugh so hard? Probably. Okay. So all this in mind, January 12th, 1888, in this same mild morning where Minnie Freeman is heading off to work, Army forecasters in D.C.
are sending out reports via telegraph warning of impending severe weather across several states, including Nebraska, of course, which is where Minnie is, Minnesota, Iowa, and what's then known as the Dakota Territory. Okay.
Because this is still before radio in America, the way important news is communicated when it can't wait for the next day's newspaper is frontier settlements hoist a flag to alert residents of emergency weather situations. Problem is that homesteaders out in a place like central Nebraska live nowhere near each other or a central community. Sure.
So if people aren't nearby when those emergency flags are hoisted, they just don't know. And it's all kind of word of mouth. So Minnie and her students experienced this abrupt and shocking weather change around 3 o'clock, right basically when the school day is ending. So the temperature on what was a warm morning and into the afternoon dropped. Suddenly plummets almost 70 degrees. Holy shit.
And goes from the 40s to minus 20 below zero. No. Yeah.
That's not fair.
And then, of course, the sky opens up. Ice and hail begin to pelt the sod schoolhouse and hurricane level winds kick up. Dude. So now... Basically, it's a strong wind that just keeps on building and then ice and hail and last night's snowfall all start getting blown around. They're all in the pit, moshing. That's right. All together. Nasty trio.
So suddenly across a huge swath of the Midwest, countless people are caught in extreme weather. A schoolboy named H.G. Purcell, who lives in the Dakota Territory, now South Dakota, describes the situation like this. We were all out playing in our shirt sleeves without hats or mittens.
Suddenly we looked up and saw something come rolling toward us with great fury from the northwest and making a loud noise." I never thought about that part of it. The storm rolls in. It's like it rolls in loud. It looked like a long string of big bales of cotton that looked to be about 25 feet high.
The phenomenon was so unusual that it scared us children, and several of us ran into the schoolhouse and screamed to the teacher to come out quickly and see what was happening."
So it's hard to overstate the shock people experience on this beautiful morning that basically it lured people outside, many to go run errands on foot or tend to their land or, in the case of children, walk to school without their warmest winter coats. Some without shoes. Oh, dear. Or at least some in just in basically off-season shirts and sleeves, whatever.
So then now they're out of nowhere caught in weather they're completely unprepared for. Author David Laskin reports, quote, even in a region known for abrupt and radical meteorological change, the blizzard of 1888 was unprecedented in its violence and suddenness. One moment it was mild. The sun was shining. The next moment frozen hell had broken loose.
So it's the end of the school day, as I said, when the weather suddenly turns. So young Minnie, who's the sole adult in charge, 19 years old, she does not think going outside is a sensible option. At this point, hurricane force wind gusts are now pummeling the tiny schoolhouse and they blast the door right off its hinges. Shit. Okay. Okay. So for the time being, that's held in place.
But now Minnie has to plan her next steps. She and the students all live at least a quarter of a mile from the schoolhouse. So she's trying to figure out, is it less risky to dismiss the children and hope that they make it back home or keep them inside to wait out the storm in a schoolhouse that isn't exactly structurally sound, has a dwindling amount of fuel for the fire? Yeah.
and basically doesn't have any food.
No, it feels like the place is just going to melt around them. Yeah, yeah.
So teachers across the Midwest go through the same horrible dilemma because, like many, they teach in shoddy buildings or soddy buildings that are, of course, not equipped to handle weather this extreme. And many teachers believed that the better option that day was to dismiss their students and send them home in the storm.
Minnie decides, no, she's going to hunker down and ride this storm out with her kids in the schoolhouse. But she's just praying the schoolhouse can make it. And as she's doing that, a gust of wind picks up the roof of the schoolhouse and blows it away. Shit. So now as the snow and hail and ice are pouring into the schoolhouse, Minnie has to make a new plan fast.
With the front door, the only door nailed shut, she starts wrangling her students and throwing them out the window to get out.
What?
So there was a legend that Minnie tied all the kids together with twine. But that detail has actually been disputed by at least one of her actual students who went through it that day. Great visual for like the legend of the story.
And actually very needed once, and I'm sure it probably came up later, once people heard the stories of what happened to the kids that did go home by themselves or even in groups. Right. So Minnie's plan now is to walk her students to her house, which is about a half a mile away. It doesn't sound that far, but in the middle of a blizzard, it would have been painfully long.
And they're whiteout conditions, so it's hard for them to see any more than like a foot or so in front of them. If any child takes even just a few steps away from the group, they could be blinded by the snow, turned around, and then just lost.
Yeah.
On top of that, the snowflakes in this storm are extremely fine and icy. So as they land on the children's faces, they're just freezing their eyelids shut. Oh, man. And Minnie's. Minnie's as well. Also, the sheer amount of these flakes in the air causes the snow to get stuck in their throats. It makes it hard to breathe. Survivors liken it to breathing in large amounts of flour or sand. Hmm.
And David Laskin notes that experts have compared it to, quote, the smoke and ash rolling through the canyons of lower Manhattan after the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11th.
I never thought about that. Like the snow, you can inhale it. Yeah. I never thought about that.
Right. Like completely blinds you, but then also like seals your eyes shut with ice. Like you're just going against. But you can't take a deep breath without the snow coming into your mouth.
Right. And that was Jesus.
They also make their way through shirt collars, pants, waistbands, even shoes. So the children are drenched, freezing, constantly slipping and falling as they walk. The wind is battering them. It's actually painful. And Minnie will later say, quote, I've never felt such a wind. It blew the snow so hard that the flakes stung your face like arrows.
All you could see ahead of you was a blinding, blowing sheet of snow. Okay. So there are several well-known and very tragic stories that came out of this storm. For example, across the state in Seward, Nebraska, an 11-year-old girl named Lena Vebecky is dismissed from school. And as she walks home in this storm, she becomes disoriented.
She will wake up hours later still outside, frozen to the ground. But Lena heroically musters the strength. She breaks herself free and she manages to crawl back to her own house even though she can't feel her legs. What the fuck? And in the end, Lena survives. She just loses one of her feet to frostbite. Wow. But she saves herself. Yeah. She's frozen to the ground. That's insane.
And she, like, wakes up still alive.
Wakes up and it's like, we're doing this. We're getting home.
Girl.
Up in Holt County, Nebraska, there's a 19-year-old teacher named Etta Shattuck. She gets caught in the storm while heading home after picking up her paycheck and As the temperature nosedives, she becomes snowblind. She seeks refuge in a haystack, and she is forced to shelter there for 78 hours before finally being found. Oh, my God.
No food, no water, just hoping, like, hoping to live in a haystack. That's too long. So she lives then, but then once she's discovered, she has to go into surgery because she develops frostbite on her feet. And she actually dies due to complications from the surgery, but survives like that time.
Up in the northeast corner of the state in Plainview, Nebraska, another young school teacher named Lois Royce gets stranded on the open prairie. She's just run out of fuel at her schoolhouse, so she attempts to make it to the nearest home, which is only 200 yards away, with three students, all under the age of 10.
But because of the whiteout conditions, Lois and the children can't see where they're going, so they end up walking past the house. And then they just keep walking. And the children, of course, are freezing. None of them can go any further. So they just stop in the open prairie mid-blizzard. And they're just kind of stranded just in not knowing where they are.
Speaking generally about the children who get stuck outside that day, David Laskin notes, quote, Yeah. Yeah. Lois does everything she can to keep her students warm using just her body and her cloak. But the children die as they're pressed against her. And somehow she survives. But she has to have her feet amputated because of frostbite.
Oh, my God.
So all of these tragic stories are from Nebraska, which is especially affected by this blizzard. But the storm touches much of the United States. According to the Minnesota Post newspaper, quote, the upper Midwesterners lost the most. The blizzard was truly a nationwide phenomenon. Ice skating was reported in San Francisco on January 14th. Which is, ladies and gentlemen, unheard of.
Yeah.
Along with frozen water mains in Los Angeles, Fort Elliott, Texas registered a seven below zero temperature on the 14th. And for the first time in anyone's memory, parts of the Colorado River in Texas froze over. Damn. So it was extreme and insane.
So back in central Nebraska, Minnie and her students are still out trying to find their way through this blizzard, trying to make it to any kind of shelter. And Minnie's doing everything she can to keep her students moving forward. Elements of her story are spotty. Some are disputed.
For example, we don't know exactly how long her trek lasted or how long she and the students hunkered down before the children were reunited with their parents. Even their destination is a bit unclear. Some sources say the group successfully made it to Minnie's house. which was the initial plan.
But according to an article that ran in the Omaha Evening Bee just days later, they say that they instead ended up at one of Minnie's students' homes, which is a bit closer to the schoolhouse than Minnie's was. Either way, they made it. It's the important thing. It's like the idea that Minnie makes this plan where she's like, fine, we'll just go to my house.
And then like somewhere along the way, I bet you some kids like, Hey, there's my answer.
Jesus.
That's how I like to, that's how I'll write it. Totally. But after several hours, once the blizzard finally subsides, Minnie and the children see the full extent of what has happened around them. Not only has the storm destroyed buildings and created massive barn-sized snow banks. Oh, my God. But it's also claimed many lives.
For the parents of Minnie's 13 children, learning that their kids made it would feel like nothing short of a miracle, one that Minnie herself is solely responsible for. The Omaha Evening Bee describes the scene as one of the students is reunited with their parents, reporting, quote, Wow. So the extent of chaos, death, and disruption associated with this blizzard is huge.
Across the Midwest, trains are stopped in their tracks, farmers lose the entirety of their crops, and their livestock freezes to death. But then, of course, there's the loss of human life. Experts say we'll never know the true death count because the population wasn't known as well.
David Laskin estimates that there were between 250 and 500 victims of this snowstorm, many of them being children who were either at school hunkering down or trying to head home after being dismissed. Because of this, the snowstorm is eventually nicknamed the schoolhouse blizzard or the children's blizzard.
More people will die in the days and weeks following the storm from things like pneumonia or frostbite or gangrene from frostbite. As the word of this terrible event spreads beyond the region, an overwhelming sense of grief is felt by the entire country. And that's when this feel-good story of the 19-year-old teacher in Nebraska who saved her entire class starts getting attention.
The Omaha Evening Bee first reports on Minnie Freeman saying, quote, those who have braved the terrors of a Nebraska blizzard need not be told that it required courage to enable a young girl to breast those furies having in her keeping the lives of 13 little ones and the happiness of 13 homes. Shit.
Those who felt and suffered from the effects of Thursday's storm need not be told that the act of that young girl was one from which strong men themselves might quail. Yeah. Love you, Minnie. Soon more papers start to circulate Minnie's story. Virtually overnight, 19-year-old Minnie Freeman becomes a much-needed hero. She's lionized. She's celebrated. She's nicknamed Nebraska's fearless maid.
And then over in Chicago, a music publishing company debuts a song about Minnie called, quote, 13 Were Saved. And it goes a little something like this. A one and a two. Hell no. 13, we're safe. 13, we're safe. 13, you always just do it. Hello, baby. The New York Times reports that Minnie receives letters and gifts and more. The Omaha Evening Bee actually describes her this way.
They say, quote, Minnie Freeman is above medium height, dark hair, gray eyes, and a remarkably pretty girl. She is said to be an excellent musician and a possessor of a charming voice. It's believed that Minnie receives nearly 200 marriage proposals from strangers after this story goes wide. Get it, girl. Right? They're like, she's brave. She's pretty. Yeah. Come work on my farm. Totally.
Come have lots of children. Yep. Bear my children and do all that for me. Yeah. Meanwhile, over in D.C., government officials are trying to figure out how to make sure that no American is ever caught off guard by such a huge storm again. This only gets more urgent when just months later, in March of 1888, another historic blizzard hits the northeastern United States and Canada.
It had strengthened after working hours on a Saturday, which at the time, Army forecasters didn't work on Sundays, so no one knew this storm was coming. Right. It became the Great Blizzard of 1888, with parts of the Northeast seeing nearly 60 inches of snowfall and 50-foot-tall snowdrifts. Five-story building snowdrifts.
This storm claims around 400 lives, including 200 deaths in New York City alone. On the heels of these two blizzards, the federal government decides to restructure the Weather Bureau. In 1891, it's moved from the Army's purview over to the Department of Agriculture, which has the reputation of being much more science-minded. and they begin tracking weather across the country 24-7.
Today, the agency overseeing weather is the National Weather Service, which lives under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They still track the weather around the clock and fortunately have the means to spread alerts and advisories to warn us about extreme weather events. What's that look on your face, Georgia?
Are they going to shut that one down, too?
Are they going to shut that one?
Or who are they going to put in charge of that one, you suppose?
Oh.
Fucking Cruella de Vil. Can we please have a government? Could competency be the name of the game?
Why are we politicizing? Weather. These departments are important for this country. Necessary even. And the idea that people running them should have experience. Knowledge. A clear criminal record. A background. Basic stuff. Have run, have been chosen by the people.
You're asking too many.
You're asking for too much, Karen. You're right. Let me just conclude here. As for Minnie Freeman, she stays active in her community for the rest of her life. First in Nebraska, later when she moves with her husband to Illinois, she becomes active there.
The New York Times notes, quote, she was a political and social activist in Nebraska and Chicago at a time when female public figures were few and far between.
Got it, girl.
Minnie Freeman becomes the first female member of the Republican National Committee to represent Nebraska. She's part of a group that creates its state seal. She's even appointed as a delegate to different political conferences by two Nebraska governors. Wow.
When asked about her heroic adventure during the schoolhouse blizzard in 1888, which earned her so much fame at the time, she matter-of-factly tells the Omaha Evening Bee that, quote, I feel that too much has already been said of an act of simple duty. Notoriety, I do not desire. End quote. Humble, too. It's like Case File style. Minnie Friedman passes away in 1943 when she's in her early 70s.
And that is the story of Minnie Friedman and the schoolhouse blizzard of 1888 and the survival of her 13 students that day. Wow. They made it. Wow. Good job. Thank you. Thanks to Minnie Freeman and all of the teachers of America.
Yes. Thank you for your service.
Of what you believe to be a simple act of duty.
Right.
But oftentimes, and especially in 2025 America, is much, much more. Yeah. We all know that. And so overlooked, but we appreciate you. We do. We do. Over here. Hi.
Tell your sister-in-law and your fucking mom that we appreciate you here.
Call my sister and tell her because she doesn't listen. Oh, yeah. That I appreciate her. Carol Craft, do you mind calling Laura and telling her she's getting a shout out? Thank you for being a teacher, Laura. Thank you. All right. We did it. I guess we did. What do you think? I love what we did. Yeah. We really did it. And I love what all of our listeners did today.
Yeah. Thank you for the ceramics. We love it. Forever. Thank you for listening and being a part of this craziness. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
This episode was mixed by Liana Squillace.
Our researchers are Maren McClashan and Allie Elkin.
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