BONUS: And That’s Why We Drink! in conversation with The Opportunist 50:12

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Membership fees apply after free trial. Cancel anytime. Can I be real with you for a second? That goal you have to exercise and eat better? You really can do it, but nobody is going to do it for you. Nobody is going to push you out of bed to work out. Nobody is going to make you eat better.

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That's why I'm inviting you to try our amazing Beachbody fitness and nutrition programs. Let us help you succeed. Here's how. Go to Beachbody.com to claim your free membership and start feeling great. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a bonus episode of The Opportunist. I am here with Em and Christine, and they're the hosts of the wildly successful true crime comedy podcast, And That's Why We Drink. And That's Why We Drink is an award-winning comedy podcast where the paranormal and murder finally meet.

New episodes are out every Sunday. It's a top 20 podcast on the comedy charts, and it won the 2019 and 2021 Best Comedy Podcast at the Webby Awards. So welcome, Em and Christine.

Well, thank you for that introduction. I appreciate having my accolades just spread across the nation. No, we're so excited to be here. I'm a huge fan of the show, and it's an honor. It's an honor. Yay. I'm so happy to have you. So today's episode is a crossover event.

I will also be guesting on a bonus episode of And That's Why We Drink, which is also out today. So you can head over to And That's Why We Drink and listen to that as well. In that episode, I tell Em and Christine the story about Robert Courtney, which they're going to hear about for the first time. So go, you know, right after this, go and listen to that because it's kind of like the part two of this crossover. Head over to the And That's Why We Drink feed to listen to the episode and subscribe, rate, and review if you like it.

Out every Sunday, you will have plenty of new true crime and paranormal stories each week if you subscribe. The way we're going to do this today is M, Christine, and I are all going to tell a story of one of our favorite opportunists. And so let's get it going. M is going to go first. I am? Okay, that checks out. It's in the paper, M, so... I didn't read the paper, obviously. Okay.

No, I go first on our podcast anyway. That's true. It fits. So I was kind of anticipating that. It fits. And I did time this. So in theory, it's going to go at a solid seven to eight minutes. So let's see. Awesome. Well, I certainly didn't time mine, so I can't make the same promise. But we'll see.

I'm a rambler, and so I was like, if there are three people telling a story, I should try my best to keep this concise. So I did a little speech prep before just to see how things would go. It's looking tip-top. So my opportunist for the show is Mina Crandon, a.k.a. the Witch of Lime Street.

This is in Boston, Massachusetts. And before I get into her, I do want to preface this with the fact that, number one, it's like my favorite domino effect in history. And you'll see why by the end. But also, I feel the need to mention Harry Houdini, the magician, before I get into this. Because...

I know. Where are we going here? So Houdini, although he is most famous and notable for his talents as a magician, he actually spent – a lot of people don't know this, but he actually spent the early 1900s also debunking fraudulent mediums. It was like his little passion project.

And, uh, his, it was because his mom, who he was super close with when she died, he went out looking for someone to help him make contact with her. And every medium he came across, he ended up finding out wasn't legitimate and, uh, he kept getting ripped off. And so, um,

he took it upon himself as this like acclaimed illusion artist to investigate every medium and see what, how they were pulling off their illusions. And then his, his big thing was debunking medium so that nobody else would be taken advantage of like he was, um, which is like my favorite fun fact about Harry Houdini. So I love it. Uh, so back to, uh, Mina Crandon, uh, basically, uh,

Houdini would debunk these medium skills and then try to expose them. And the medium that he went after the most was this like notorious rival of his Mina Crandon, AKA the witch of lime street. In 1918, Mina married Dr. Crandon who a few years into their marriage got really into the spiritualism movement. And he wasn't alone in this. This was prime time for the spiritualism movement. They were having this big resurgence and,

In the 1800s, there was the first real rise of spiritualism. But now with in 1918, World War One had just ended. And at the same time, like I think 20 million people died in World War One. And now we're also at the beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic where another like 50 million people are going to die. So.

this is a real sweet spot for people who are grieving doing anything they can to make contact and communicate with their lost loved ones. It's like the ultimate opera, like kind of fucked up opportunist to take advantage of people who've lost somebody. And, uh, yikes. Yeah. And I am, I am focusing on Mina Crandon, but let's just say that whenever there there's a rise in spiritualism, there is a rise in, uh, fraudulent mediums, taking advantage of all the people that are grieving. So, um,

Uh, Dr. Crandon, since he was really into spiritualists, uh, spiritualism right now, he had his friends over for a seance and his wife Mina joined them. But when Mina wasn't taking it seriously, her husband and her friends scolded her. And I don't know if this was out of humiliation or wanting to not be judged or maybe magic. Who's to say, uh, moments later, Mina was quote overcome by a spirit that quote made her move the table, uh,

Uh, so her husband was amazed and also an idiot apparently. And I, and I guess when he realized how lucrative this could be at a time when this movement was really on the up and up, he encouraged her to practice her abilities every day and eerily quickly, Mina, the medium, the medium was able to levitate tables. She can make items appear out of nowhere. And she did this all in front of audiences, uh,

And I think at one point she started making money off of it too. And originally she wasn't doing it for money because she wanted to come across as just doing this for the people. And then I'm sure she got, she got big enough where she was like, okay, I'll take your money. Um,

So Mina, who is now super famous and going by the name Marjorie, she became, she becomes this massive success. She has several fans, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, by the way, who is another random person from history who ends up in this story. Uh, but he's a devout believer. He's a huge spiritualist. And he's also the, uh,

well-known frenemy of Harry Houdini. Frenemy. I was going to say, are they, I forget if they're friends. I know they like knew each other, but they're frenemies. They started as friends and like their, their history is very Ross and Rachel because it's like, sometimes they're really good friends. Other times they hate each other's guts. Sometimes they just disagree. So they're very hot and cold. Um,

But with this rebirth in spiritualism and people and like this rise in mediums, Scientific American launched this investigation where they were offering people cash rewards if they could prove their talents under scientific conditions. And Marjorie's, Mina slash Marjorie's husband heard this and.

And he convinced her to go out and, I guess, audition for the panel. I don't know what you say in the scientific world. Become a volunteer yourself for research. And so one of the people reviewing her was skeptic Harry Houdini, who was pretty much out for blood, ready to prove her wrong because, remember, he did not like mediums.

There's also a huge drama that I'm not getting into because we don't have the time, but there's a huge drama between Harry Houdini and Scientific America American. Like he wasn't actually supposed to be on the panel, but he inserted himself in the narrative. Oh my gosh. He's Harry Houdini. I can't be like, no. He really was there for the theatrics of it all, I guess. But so there's a whole other gossip we could talk about, but we won't. But so because he,

he's so he's ready to prove all of her illusions are just a really good performance and not actually mediumship. And as expected, Houdini does catch Marjorie in several tricks during the seance, but he decided that he wasn't going to expose her until he had more evidence. Cause he really wanted to like drive the point home. So to get more evidence, he's almost actually, I think I'm covering two opportunists by accident. Um, I didn't mean to, but Harry Houdini is like, has a real agenda here. Um,

So to get more evidence, he starts intentionally ruining her sessions with the lab panels so he can expose her faster. Ooh, how does he do that? So in one of her tricks during her performance, she's lifting a table, and then when he catches her moving it a certain way, he tries to, like...

He would throw like a wrench under a table or in a box that he was trying to move or he would do look he would set up tools. So it looked like she had set them up in advance and then he would she would like plant them. He would plant things that made her look like she had planted that like defeats the purpose. Like if you're planting plants.

Yeah. So like there was like if she was trying to lock herself in something to prove that she like lock her hands away to prove that she couldn't move things on her own. He would throw a key in there on purpose to then be like, you had the key in there so you could unlock yourself and then do this illusion. And she was like, yo, no, I didn't. Like, I actually like, OK, maybe I'm a fraud, but like I didn't do it that way. And so shady on his part.

Yeah. Honestly, had he just been patient, he would have been able to collect enough evidence anyway. But he was just sick of waiting that he ended up sabotaging her illusions to look like different illusions. So anyway, he ended up getting caught ruining her own performance. And so it was devastating.

she still couldn't be considered a fraud because however they were catching her as a fraud, wasn't something she had done. So it was damning to his credibility as a skeptic or as someone who was an observer during this research, it was also damning to scientific Americans panel because he was associated with them. And so he ended up shooting himself in the foot and it backfired because the panel had to keep writing that they couldn't confirm nor deny that Marjorie's powers were real. Oh,

And so she wasn't considered a fraud. Wow. So Marjorie was still being written up as this legitimate medium and Harry Houdini was pissed off, which like that was your fault, my friend. Um, but he decided to take matters into his own hands again because he just cannot, I told you he's here for the theatrics. He loves, he loves the drama. Um,

So he publishes this pamphlet that goes out to everybody and it explains exactly how mediums were performing their tricks with pictures. So he draws out the behind the scenes part of the illusion and

And then not only was he offering those pamphlets out to everybody, including at his own shows, but then he would perform the tricks on stage at his own shows. He like took time aside from his magic to just do medium tricks so that way he could expose them publicly. And then all the mediums in the world were getting mad that he was exposing their tricks. And he basically came out and said, listen, if you, especially to Marjorie, he was like, if you,

Uh, if you want me to not do this and expose you publicly on stage, then you need to show me something you can do as a medium that I can't replicate. And I will even pay you to do it. He was offering in the early 1900s, he was offering like $10,000 for a medium to do something he would not be able to replicate. Oh, wow. Um,

And so I think Marjorie heard about this and her career was being threatened. She obviously didn't want to be shamed like this. And so very conveniently, Marjorie's abilities suddenly got more powerful. And before you know it, she was able to conjure ectoplasm at every single one of her seances. So zero to 100 on the ectoplasm scale. And how was she doing this, you might ask? Well,

Other skeptics that were on Team Houdini were like team mediums or frauds. They were now hearing about this rivalry between the two of them because it was public. Houdini was super famous. Spiritualism was on the rise. So when you heard about like this.

Like the famed Harry Houdini getting like having this weird rivalry with mediums. Everyone knew about it and it almost made mediums more popular because people went to go to their seances and like observe for themselves what was real. So this would have been in like the tabloids of the time. Yes. This was like TMZ, Worldstar, medium versus magician. It's great. Great. Great.

So skeptics started going to Marjorie's seances to see this ectoplasm. And anyone who was a skeptic like Houdini started reporting that the ectoplasm looked an awful lot like animal intestines. Oh, okay. And that it was coming out of orifices of hers where they might have been placed before the show. Oh.

And, uh, no, one of these skeptics, one of these skeptics happened to be JB Ryan. Who's like a huge name in the parapsychology world. And so he was on team Houdini. He was like, I saw that ectoplasm. It was, that was an animal intestine. I'm pretty sure of it. And remember one of Marjorie's, uh,

big advocates is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who also has this weird back and forth with Houdini. So him feeling protective of Marjorie after this comes out about the ectoplasm, he publicly shames J.B. Rhine, who talked about this in all the tabloids. He shamed him by buying spots in newspapers just to say, quote, J.B. Rhine is an ass. That was just the only ad in every newspaper. Yeah.

And so now instead of it being Houdini versus Marjorie, it was almost like their representatives came and it was like J.B. Ryan versus Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And they were both huge in this community. So this was actually the very first, this was the first real rift between Houdini

like the spiritualist community versus the scientific community, because people like officially had to take sides of where you stood and they were forming new groups to run their own research on this kind of stuff. And basically to this day, we still have a bunch of spiritualist organizations, a bunch of scientific organizations that,

who all kind of stand firm in their camps, all because of this weird domino effect that came out of Marjorie Crandon, a medium getting publicly shamed by famed magician Harry Houdini. And then when skeptics sided with him, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started clapping back in defense of her. And basically to sum it up in 1928, 1928,

Um, Marjorie was officially proven guilty of fraud because one of the spirits fingerprints during a seance matched perfectly with hers. Um, she was so close. Um,

But she is still known as the 20th century's most controversial medium. And even though she's a fraud, one eerie thing is that she did predict during a seance at one point that, quote, Houdini will be gone by November and he died on October 31st. Whoa.

He was like, I made it. And then it's like, nope, a few hours left. Just under the wire, she was right. Oh, no. So apparently the way that he died was somebody actually went backstage at one of his shows and ruptured his appendix. Like stabbed him? Yeah.

So he had this specific, like, a famed move where, like, he could tighten up his abdomen in a way where you could punch him and, like, he wouldn't get hurt by your hand would. It was like, I don't know, he had abs of steel and showed it off or something. And he, basically, someone caught him off guard before he could tense up the way he needed to and just sucker punched him right.

right where it hurt and killed him from a ruptured appendix. But some people actually think that that was a planned murder by spiritualists that were like trying to defend Marjorie because she had predicted he wouldn't be there by November. And October 31st, they were like, he's still alive. Oh, no.

They think maybe a bunch of spiritualists came to his show and tried to kill him so that she would be taken seriously since her prediction came true. I don't know. Wow. But anyway, there is also a much longer two-episode version of this on, and that's why I drank it here. If you like what you heard and you'd like to hear it in more detail, pop on over and listen to the rest of it.

Oh, my God. Absolutely. I like how I'm over here going, what? And, like, clearly I've heard this before, but I have no memory. Yeah, that's really fascinating. I love – I mean, there's multiple opportunists, like you said, in that story. Fascinating. And I just love that Harry Houdini just was so obsessed with taking her down and, you know, sometimes obsession can – Took it too far. Yeah. It's kind of like in Mean Girls when they're like, why are you so obsessed with me? And that is –

And Harry Houdini is just, like, staring like a deer in the headlights because he doesn't know how to react. So, anyway, that's my take on Houdini and mediums. So, there you have it. I do remember those episodes being, like, wildly full of drama. Like, everybody was feuding and, like, staring each other in the back. Oh, my God. Oh, like, and Houdini's got a... He has...

In the first episode I cover, it was just about him with mediums in general. And he actually created a set of secret agents that all went into different seances around the nation. And they would, like, all debunk mediums together. It was very odd. Oh, yeah. He had, like, a little troupe.

Oh my goodness. Like superheroes or something. Exactly. They were the Avengers, I guess. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for that story, Em. Christine, do you want to go next? I would love to. And actually, weirdly enough, my story is kind of, I don't know, it sort of touches on both of your stories because...

It takes place in Kansas, first of all. That's about the only connection to Robert Courtney. But it also takes place during the spiritualist movement. But this is a much more like true crime-esque case. And this is the story of the Bender family.

And they are considered America's first serial killers, or at least family of serial killers. And I also covered this way back in the day in like episode 13. Like it was a long time ago. So I had to like re-dive into the story. But it was the first thing I thought of when I thought of opportunists because it's a pretty chaotic tale. Yeah.

It took place in 1870 in southeast Kansas, and a new family had just moved into the area named the Benders, and they were actually spiritualists. So I'm glad, Em, that you kind of covered that so I don't have to explain it. You're welcome. Basically people who believed you could commune with those who have passed. And they settled near the Osage Trail, which would later become the Santa Fe Trail, where folks who were migrating west would travel. And they had an inn, basically, that they would house travelers in.

And so they kind of took advantage of making, you know, a business where people would, on their way through, would stop for food and a bed. And that is about where the good deeds end on their behalf. Okay, great. The family consisted of 60-year-old John Bender, who was called Pa, 42-year-old Ma Bender, who was called a she-devil by her neighbors. Perfect. I relate to her a little bit. Wow, that should tell you something right there. Yeah.

John Bender, who's the son, who's 25, and then Kate Bender, who is 23. And she actually called herself Professor Miss Katie Bender. She was not a professor, but that's just what she called herself. And she was a self-proclaimed healer and psychic and would distribute flyers that would advertise her powers to cure people of like any possible ailment, her powers to speak to those on the other side and so on.

And at first, you know, all was hunky-dory until people in other towns started realizing that their family members and friends who were migrating west happened to be going missing right when they were passing through this part of the Osage Trail. And this wasn't really notable at first because when people were traveling, there were a lot of dangers, you know, Oregon Trail style, like I'm sure there were, I don't know.

snakes. I don't know much about that part of history, but there was... Crossing a river. Crossing rivers. There was a lot in nature, and that's where we can leave it. That's where... Yeah, it's dangerous to me. They had also been, you know, not surprisingly, clearing out a lot of indigenous tribes. And so that was becoming, you know, fraught areas of violence. And

It just became – it got to the point where people were noticing that people were missing on this certain part of the trail. And then in May of 1871, a body of a man was found in town, and his jaw had been crushed and his throat had been slit. And so clearly this man had been murdered. And then a couple months later, they found two bodies with the same injuries right in the same town. And this was, like, not a big town. Hmm.

So they didn't really know what to do at first and they just kind of let it be. But that winter, a man named James Launcher, whose wife had just died, decided to move from Kansas to Iowa with his infant daughter to start a new life. And he started his trip down the Osage Trail and vanished forever.

And the problem was that his neighbor, Dr. William York, was a very big name in the community, had a lot of money and power, and he decided he was going to figure out what the hell happened to his neighbor and his neighbor's infant daughter. And so he decided he was going to go looking for them.

Very good neighbor. I don't think mine would do that for me, but, you know. Not even a little bit. My neighbors don't even know my name. Are you kidding? Yeah, exactly. But he was very dedicated to figuring out what had happened to his poor neighbor. So he went down the trail, started asking everybody questions to see what had happened. And unfortunately, on his return trip, he vanished as well.

Oh, and this was also bad news because his brothers were extremely powerful. One was named Colonel Ed York and the other one was a Kansas senator named Alexander York. And they knew that their brother was going on this kind of expedition to find out what happened. And when he vanished, they were like, all right, we're going to figure this out once and for all.

Uh-oh. It's like two rounds of people we're missing. Yeah. Yeah. So they arrived at the Bender Inn asking whether their brother had stayed with them. And the Benders said yes, they had. And then suggested, oh, maybe they'd gotten in trouble with an indigenous tribe around town and that's why they died. And he agreed that this was possible and stayed for dinner. So... Wow. That apparently was very convincing to him. I like to think that he just kind of went...

You're right. Anyway, I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat? Anyway, that smells real good, whatever you're cooking back there. And so somehow they must have been real charming. I don't know. But they convinced him to stay for dinner. And they gave him a nice farewell and he went on his way. But a few days later, he heard that a woman had – somebody kind of – it was like Taan Gossip or something. And somebody –

told him that they had been once threatened by Ma at knife point and that she was a really dangerous woman. So he was like, I'm just going to circle back one more time and talk to this Bender family and see what's going on with them. He was so close. He almost escaped unscathed. Also, what was her name? Devil, the mom of Devil? She-Devil?

She double. Wow. Okay. Checks out considering she apparently will stab people. Yeah. I also don't know why Ma and Pa Bender is like so creepy too. It is. Ma and Pa has like that weird like rural like creep factor. It's like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah. I don't know why it's so creepy but I also want to add too they were a German family or at least that's what they were known in town and

Pa, apparently his German accent was so thick nobody can understand him. And Ma apparently didn't speak any English whatsoever. And so when they went over there, when the brother went over there to ask like, hey, somebody said they were threatened at knife point. Ma became enraged and suddenly started speaking English. Why would you...

Sorry, why would you go up to somebody who's held someone at knife point allegedly and then be like, hey, real quick, have you ever held someone at knife point? And also, where's my brother? And also, do you have more of that stew? Because I'm still pretty hungry. And also, why do they call you the she-devil? I have a lot of questions. Yeah, he was pretty brave, I guess, or stupid or both. I don't know. But he went back there, asked, and all of a sudden she started speaking in perfectly fluent English. She, I guess, had been faking her deafness.

Wow. Okay.

But before he left, Kate, the youngest daughter, asked him to return alone the following Friday night so she could use her clairvoyant abilities to help him find his brother because she was just so touched by his story of his missing brother and she really wanted to help him.

And so Kate, who was really young and beautiful and charming, convinced him to come back the following Friday. And he came back and he was sitting alone in the front room and he noticed something glittering under a piece of furniture. And he grabbed it when no one was looking and it was a locket on a gold chain. And he opened it and saw the faces of his brother's wife and daughter inside the locket. And it was his brother's locket. Goodbye.

Wow. And that's when he knew, uh-oh, I'm in the danger zone, and I've been in the danger zone for many days. I've been here three times now. Seriously. And I keep coming back. So he finds his locket, and he's like, oh, shit, this is actually clearly the family that did it, or they have something to do with it. And so he leaves, obviously, and then he tells the town, like,

I don't know if it's the sheriff or somebody in charge. And they take the family to the schoolhouse, of course, and decide to question them there. So they questioned the family and they decided to who denied everything. And they decided to search every home in the area to see if they could find any evidence of the murders.

And Colonel York and the two male benders were all at the meeting. So when they arrived at the bender's home, the family had ostensibly heard about this incoming investigation and had packed up and left town. So they left no trace. They just left a few animals and a few belongings, but took everything else and left.

So the... I hesitate to say investigators. I think it was just like a group of angry townsfolk, but... People with a hunch. People with a hunch, maybe a pitchfork, stopped by to check out the house and they found it intact, but they noticed a foul odor. Uh-oh. And that's when they found a trap door near the dining room table. And when they tried to open it, they realized it had been nailed shut. So, of course...

Not having seen any horror movies, I guess, they decided to pry open this trap door. And that is where, unsurprisingly, the foul stench was coming from. And the entire cellar where the trap door led was just covered in congealed blood. And really gross. Whoa.

Also, like, I like how they didn't even try to clean up the tracks. They very much accepted, like, we're going to get caught. It's time to leave. Yeah, they heard that meeting and were like, well, I guess this is our time. Our time to leave. Yeah.

So they inspected the room that it led to, the cellar. It was seven feet at the top, and then it narrowed down to three square feet at the bottom. So it was kind of like a funnel shape. There was blood everywhere. There were no bodies down there. But they searched the rest of the property, and out back they found fresh mounds of dirt, which happened to be shallow graves. And they found nine piles of dirt. The first body they dug up was Dr. York, face down, and his infant daughter was buried with him, unfortunately. Oh.

And they uncovered nine total bodies in eight graves, plus a large number of random body parts that didn't seem to belong to anybody scattered throughout the graves. Yes.

And pretty much all the bodies had their skulls bashed in with a hammer and their throats slit. Wow. Clearly, these were the perpetrators. And basically what they found out is that the Bender family, as they were having guests come in from the trail, would, for whatever reason, started taking advantage of having these out-of-towners in their home. And they would have guests sit at the seat of honor at the head of the table. Wow.

And there was a curtain right behind where the head of the table was. And the person at the seat of the head of the table, the back of their head would just barely touch this curtain. And so one of the male benders would stand behind with a hammer and would be able to see where their head was. And at some point throughout the dinner would smash them in the back of the head with the hammer. And then one of the bender women would slit the throat and then they would put them down the trap door.

Very complicated. Wow. That seems to be their M.O. Oh, I'm also shocked that that one guy had been there three times and not once where they're like, I kind of just want to kill this guy. So let's just get it over with. Right. How are they? How are they not in the killing mood thrice? I know. Just like doing it everywhere.

I think his theory was that when the daughter had asked him, like, oh, come over for the seance. Because when she did that, she would have people sit in that special seat. So I think maybe that was when they were going to take their moment. And he thankfully found this locket before that ever happened. Gotcha. Which I think might be a ghostly occurrence of his brother being like, get out. No. Yeah. Take the hint, man. So they also found a dozen bullet holes in the little cellar.

Which indicated that some of the victims were still alive when they fell down the cellar and had to be killed. So that's pretty dark. And then as kind of like a final note on this, there was this guy named Mr. Wetzel who had read of Kate's spiritual skills and he had traveled to their home for a cure of his sickness. And she was like, okay, come to dinner. I can heal you. I know I can.

And he wanted to eat at like the counter. And she kept saying, no, I want you to eat here at the table with us. And he was like, no, I'm just going to sit over here. And apparently she got enraged and was just furious that he wouldn't sit in this very specific chair. And then he saw the bendermen behind the curtain and was like, something is fishy here. So when he told that to the townsfolk, they were like, aha, okay, this is all kind of piecing together.

And basically, this was all for money. They were just murdering travelers for their money. And kind of the screwed up part is that they would get anywhere from like 40 cents from somebody to like two grand. And after killing 21 people total, by the way, they managed to steal only $4,600, which today is $81,000. But still, they would split it between the five of them and then – or four of them. I can't count. Yeah.

And then, you know, they had murdered 21 people for that amount. So it just seemed like not even not that worth it. Not that it would be worth it for, you know, any amount. But still, it's just like just makes it extra sad. But, yep, they disappeared. They were never heard from again. And then final fun fact is that turns out no one in the Bender family was actually related except for the mom and her daughter. Wow.

Weird. Even a dissider. They got together to kill people? Yeah, they don't actually know how they found each other, how they... They do believe, most people believe that the daughter, whose name was actually Eliza, and John were married. They weren't brother and sister. They were like a couple. But beyond that, they have no idea how this group of people got together. Yeah.

And turns out, like, Ma wasn't even German, as I mentioned earlier. It was all kind of a fake backstory, but they became the nation's first recorded serial killers. So that's the story of the Bender family. Wow.

Wow. An island of misfits. Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. Wow. Another danger when you went west. They didn't have that story in the Oregon Trail. That's right. I know. That's the only one I know of. Like snakes and rivers. I was only warned of dysentery. I was not warned of getting my head hammered in. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What a story. That's so wild.

But they were never caught, huh? Never caught. Never knew where they ended up. And their house became basically torn apart by people who wanted to come and see the property and, you know, kind of gawk. And so people started taking stones and stuff. And basically the entire house was just taken apart by curious visitors. And it no longer stands today. Wow. What about you? What do you have? All right. Well, interestingly enough...

I also picked a story. I hope that you haven't heard this one before, but I don't know if you have. Of a psychic. So it's another like spiritual story. Yes. So this is the story of Rosemarks. Have you heard this one before? I don't think so. I don't think so, no. Okay.

So, Rose Marks was a psychic. She was born in the 50s. She came from a long line of psychics, and so it was sort of, like, predetermined that she was also going to be a psychic, you know, someday. It's rumored that when she was nine years old, she predicted her grandmother's death, and she was right. Ooh.

But she dropped out of school in the third grade. So she didn't have really any formal education. She could barely read or write. But she was very intelligent. And everyone that encountered her said that she was like very good at reading people, which is a good skill to have if you're a psychic, right? Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So as she got older, she basically opened up multiple psychic storefronts in Florida, in southern Florida. Like she had like a chain of psychic, like a psychic empire going. All these different storefronts. And she had, she employed all of her like family members to work there and be the psychic. So it was a lot of like daughter-in-laws and stuff like that.

A little conglomerate getting cooked up. And most of their clients would come in and they would just like pay $50, get their psychic greeting and leave. Right.

But every once in a while there was someone that would come in and they would be like particularly distressed about their life and really in like dire straits. And what Rose would do is then she would say, OK, I think I can help you. But what I need to do first is I need you to give me like an object, a personal object, like your grandmother's necklace that she gave you or like something like that. And I'll hold on to it for 24 hours. I'm going to meditate and pray over it and like figure out if I can help you.

And so these people would give her, you know, an object. They would come back the next day and she would return it and say, OK, well, I've got bad news. You've been cursed. Oh. And this is why your life is like is terrible right now. That'll be a hundred dollars. Yeah. What she said was, I think I can help you. I'm not going to charge you for it. But, you know, you will have to make some sacrifices. And that's.

And then she would say, I think that this curse is tied into your money and I need you to give me your money so that I can cleanse it. Oh, come on. Yeah. And she said she would be like, I need you to, you know, give me whatever, $20,000 so I can cleanse it. Okay. Sure. I'm on board. Once the curse is lifted, I'll give you all your money back.

Don't worry about it. The curse is never going to be lifted, girl. I'm telling you now. Yeah, exactly. And she also said, if you ask me for the money back before the curse is lifted, then like it'll cancel out all the work I've already done. Oh, come on. Goodbye. Catch 22.

It really sounds so ridiculous, but, like, people really believed her and fell for this. And people that met her just said that she was just incredibly convincing. Yeah, I feel like people who have that, like, kind of charm and personality and know who to take advantage of and know who's vulnerable at a certain time, like, it's dangerous. Yeah. And so...

Her main client, she was doing this to many people, but the person that she did this the most to was an author, a novelist, Jude Devereaux, who's written tons of novels. In 1991, Rose Marks called herself Joyce Michael, and she also had an astrology shop in Manhattan called Joyce Michael Astrology.

So Jude walked into Joyce Michael astrology. She was super distressed about like her current marriage. She was very wealthy because she sold like tons of books, but her marriage was going downhill. She was stressed out about getting a divorce and just feeling like really depressed. She was suicidal at times, just like in a really bad, vulnerable place.

And she met Rose and immediately Rose like told her her whole spiel about how she could like change her life and lift this curse. And so she started to depend on Rose more and more. And like, you know, Rose would do things like she started to convince her to get a divorce, but she would say things like your husband's going to file for divorce on this day. And then he would send her papers on that day. Oh, she would say things like her husband had moved out of Jude Devereaux's apartment and Rose

Rose would be like, call her in a panic and say, you need to leave your apartment because your husband's coming tonight. He's going to try to kill you. Oh, my God. And so she would leave. And then later on, the doorman said your husband did stop by and he tried to get into the apartment. But what you didn't know is that Rose had hired a private investigator to look into all of this stuff and was tailing Jude and her husband. So smart. Like, I know it's fucked up, but it's so smart. So smart.

It is an evil genius is what it is. Absolutely. So, but this, this really made you trust her. And eventually she just started giving her so much money. Like she said, at some point she would just hand her a blank check and would just, yeah. Like she was handing, she was giving her millions of dollars and, um, and you just like let her just gave her like control of her life. Like, uh, Rose told her, uh,

Just sign whatever divorce papers your husband gives you because he's going to die in, like, three months. Oh, my God. So she just signed, and her husband took half of her wealth from her books. He didn't die. He was, like, lived for a very long time. Okay. Jeez. Woo! Oh, my God. What else? Rose told her, like, you know, Rose convinced her that, like, Rose was so powerful that she had—the FBI would come to her and ask for advice. She said that she had—she was an advisor to Prince Charles and the Pope, and, like—

And Jude believed all of this. And, like, later she'd be like, I know it's embarrassing, but she's like, but I just, like, I just trusted her and I believed, like, everything that she told me. Right. Jude wanted to have a child, so Rose, like, kind of guided her through, like, multiple rounds of IVF and, like, miscarriages. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Yeah. And, like...

And Rose would always tell her really specific details about what to do and how to make her decisions. And then when things wouldn't work out and she would have a miscarriage,

you know, she would be upset. And so she would go to Rose and Rose would like comfort her. She was very like warm and cold. Like she would comfort her and like use the support system, but then she would turn around and manipulate her and say, you need to sell your Manhattan apartment and give me all the money. Cause like we need to cleanse more of your money. And this curse is, you know, very abuse cycle. So toxic. Yeah. Eventually. Oh, at one point she told her she was going to fall in love and get married to Colin Powell. And,

Okay. Well, now we're getting real confident here, Rose. You are really making some statements. But then Rose had one of her family members create like a just general email, like colon pal at gmail.com or whatever. It wasn't that, but it was something like that. Oh my God. And start emailing at yahoo.com. Yeah. Yeah.

Colin Powell at Hotmail. And start emailing with Jude. And so she believed that they were having this like romance. I know. But eventually Jude had a son and she moved out of New York. She got like into like a, you know, a more humble house. And she started to try to like distance herself from Rose and just like live her life with her son. This woman's life is so tragic.

When her son was nine, he died in this terrible accident. Whoa. Yeah. And so she was completely destroyed, and she turned back to Rose again for help. And Rose advised—she was like, I'll take care of everything, the funeral arrangements, everything. She's like, you need to sell your house. That is bad energy. So Jude let Rose handle that. She sold the house, kept all the money. Oh, my God. Got Jude a little apartment in Florida. Yeah.

And basically how this came to a head was like Rose convinced Jude to put all of her money and her will to this name Cynthia Miller because she had convinced her that she would be reincarnated into this woman named Cynthia Miller. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? And that her son who had passed away would be reincarnated into Cynthia Miller's son and that she would be reunited with her son. And they could just live out the life they should have always had. Yeah. And...

So one day an investigator came to Jude's house and knocked on the door and turns out he'd been investigating Rose Marks and her family for like four years. And so he was investigating her. That's ironic. Yeah. Yeah.

So he told Jude, like, I think this is all a big scam. You know, Rose is living in this multimillion dollar house with like seven bedrooms and driving fancy cars. At one point it said that she was spending $100,000 a month, Rose was. She was living this like lavish lifestyle, sort of almost like mafia. Like they all had nicknames. Rose's nickname was Pinky.

Oh, my God. She already had a fake name. Like what? Yeah. She already had a fake name. Names do you need? So essentially what convinced you that this that Rose Marks was a scammer is that this investigator said, you know, does the name Cynthia Miller mean anything to you? You know, this was the name that she had put all of her money, you know, and Cynthia Miller was so much sense now was Rose Marks daughter in law.

Wow. And overall, Jude had given Rosemarck $17 million. What?

$17 million over a course of years. I just started hyperventilating a little bit. That was like so... I did not expect that number to... How did she also just have that much money and not know and just casually get... Oh, my God. Well, she was like wealthy. She was super wealthy because she's like a famous author and she was, you know, but she was going into like... I still feel like...

I still feel like $17 million at some... Oh, my God. Oh, my... It's just so overwhelming. Wow. I mean, by the time, like, by the time, like, she found out it was a scam, like, she had given away most of her money. She was living in this little apartment. You know, she just... She had given a lot of it away. Like, she wasn't... Her house, her girl. Everything. Mm-hmm. And so... Wow. That poor girl. So, actually, you know, because this investigator...

was on it, he like was able to build a case and, um, they charged Rose Marks and her family members and like everyone else in the family, like signed a plea deal, except for Rose Marks who insisted like, I'm not guilty. And at one point she even said like, I'm the victim here. Oh, and, um, Oh my God. As you sit on a pile of $17 million. Oh yeah. I'm so sorry. Um,

So she went to trial. Her case went to trial and she was convicted. I mean, like it's not illegal to be, you know, a psychic, but they got her for like fraud and money laundering. And the fact that she promised to give the money back was like the big kicker because there were clients who would catch on and they asked for their money back. Like I've given you $500,000. I want that money back. You said I could have it back. And she would be like,

I had to sacrifice it for the case or like only the archangel Michael, whatever, knows where it is. Or like she never gave any money back. I'm pretty sure also like your receipts would tell us where it is, like to be clear. She pulls up in her Cadillac like, I'm sorry. I had to spend it. I had to spend it for you. She also had a gambling problem. So she like, yeah, she gambled a lot of it away. Wow.

Wow. But she went to prison and she ended up getting her GED in prison. Rose Marks did like learning how to read and write. She got her GED and she self-published a book, Pinky's Dictionary, and apparently you can buy it on Amazon. So I'm about to, by the way, but like,

Wow. So she went from like learning, she learned how to read and write and then immediately wrote a book. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right. That sounds about right. Zero to 60. Holy crap. I mean, again, just taking advantage of like the most vulnerable people. It's just sick. You've got to be so twisted. Yeah.

I have to give a shout out to Tori Telfer, who wrote this book, Confident Women, Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion. I found that. It's really good. I found that book. Oh, cool. And I had...

that's how I originally heard of Rosemarks and then I did more research but this is a really it's a really good book if anyone's interested in stories of like um you know historical women criminals how cool is that yeah well Em you can read Pinky's dictionary I'm gonna read Confident we'll we'll get back together and combine our sources we'll do another crossover and have to tell you how Pinky's dictionary goes I love that she wrote a dictionary I'm like what did she put in there of all things

Of all things. Yeah, like what? Money laundering. Victim. Like, Jesus. So if you want to hear part two of this conversation, head over to the And That's Why We Drink feed for a summary of the crimes of Robert Courtney.

Plus, you can hear Em and Christine learn about him for the first time. And again, they have new episodes that drop every Sunday. And it's a delightful and educational show and hilarious. So I recommend it. Em and Christine, thank you so much for coming and joining me on this show. It's been so fun. Oh, thank you so much. This was amazing. Thank you for having us.

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