The Baroness

Hey, true weirdos, at the end of this episode, stick around if you want for a little bonus content and conversation. It was supposed to be a new Garden of Eden, a utopian wonderland where the abundance of nature more than met every need, a peaceful haven for the laws of man and clothing both were irrelevant. It's such a human thing. You know, our belief that paradise is something that can be found or created. And it's so very human, the way we're shocked by the serpent who always finds its way in. We don't see until it's far too late, that we are the serpent, that there can be no such thing as a new Garden of Eden, not with us in it. But why not give it a try? Am I right?

And they got a small beam of light again. Friedrich Ritter was a successful dentist and physician in Berlin, Germany. His medical practice was thriving. His marriage to a talented opera singer was solid, if unfulfilling, and his future as a respectable member of German society was firmly on track. Dr. Ritter was miserably unhappy with all of it. The professional acclaim, the gracious home, the plump bank account meant little to him. Ritter had a different dream for himself, a dream he'd clung to for more than 20 years.

He said that all he wanted was to live wholly and completely in contemplation and communion with nature. Ritter yearned for the freedom of a more natural and pure life, and even had a spot in mind, a lonesome little island in the Pacific. Ritter was a huge admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He was obsessed with Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch, or Superman. Ritter worried that his own comfortable life in Berlin was nothing but a distraction, a feast of simple pleasures that only blinded him to his own mediocrity. He wanted more. He wanted to be more. He wanted to be a Superman, a man who transcended the expectations and limitations of society.

A fully self-realized man, as his idol Nietzsche described, a man with complete moral autonomy, a man who represented the ideal future of humanity. That was the potential Ritter saw in himself, and his mistress saw it too. Mistress? What? Mr. Ideal Moral Autonomy, etc, etc, had a mistress? He did. Her name was Dory Strouk. She was Ritter's patient and at age 28, 15 years younger than her would-be Superman. Dory was a teacher, married and unhappy with both work and home. She felt oppressed by her husband and disregarded by the headmaster at the school where she taught. She believed heart and soul. It was her destiny to live a different kind of life, a life of freedom. You can see how Strouk and Ritter might be drawn together. Even if the thought of hooking up with your dentist seems like the hardest of hard no's. Anyway, Strouk was at a party thrown by Ritter's opera singer wife. She and her married lover commiserated over the emptiness of it all. The jewels, the crystal goblets, the tiresome, prattling gossip. The wife, his dental practice and all his money behind. Strouk left her husband and her teaching career. And in July 1929, the couple set sail from Amsterdam for the sixth largest island in the Galapagos chain, Floreana, also known as Charles Island. To those who could not know or understand our motives, the journey upon which we had embarked must have seemed the strangest ever undertaken. Leaving behind me a lucrative practice of medicine in Berlin, I and my comrade were in fact turning our backs forever upon civilization and the society of our fellow men. Of our own free will and choice, we were going into exile to seek in the solitude of an almost desert island in the far Pacific, the independence, the peace of mind, the opportunity to cultivate our reflective powers to the fullest, which are denied to man by the complexities of modern life.

The Galapagos chain violin, 600 miles or so off the coast of Ecuador is famous for its wildlife and for inspiring Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The Galapagos has been volcanically active for 20 million years or more. Floreana, where Ritter and Strouk were headed, has a long history. Thanks to the small islands, fresh water and plant and animal life, it became a favorite spot for whaling ships to stop. When Ecuador annexed the Galapagos, the island became a prison colony. Who needed cells and bars when you could just dump prisoners on an island surrounded by shark infested waters and currents far too strong to risk escape. Despite multiple uprisings and rebellions, disease and death, the last prison colony on Floreana wasn't closed until 1959. Not that prisoners were the only inhabitants of the island. There was a small handful of settlers on Floreana. Even today, only about 100 people live there. With the wild beauty of the place, sea lions, Galapagos penguins, lava gulls, sea turtles, flamingos, and at night, a sky so vast and exploding with stars that it feels like the last patch of Earth at the very rim of the world. When Ritter and Strouk landed on Floreana, the doctor was prepared. Prior to leaving Berlin, he pulled all his teeth.

I mean, who knows better the risk of having a dental emergency in the middle of nowhere than a dentist. Also, he was curious to see if his gums would naturally toughen up. This next detail is fantastic. He also constructed a set of steel dentures for himself, popping them in at any time. His love Dory opted to keep her own teeth, a decision she no doubt regretted later, because her teeth took a bad turn in the tropics, rotting and becoming abscessed. Ritter ended up having to pull all Dory's teeth as well with gardening tools. No anesthesia, novocaine. It's too terrible to imagine. But here's a true love twist. Ritter shared his steel dentures with his lady. So let's please celebrate that bit of chivalry. The couple built a small shelter for themselves out of corrugated tin. They planted a garden, raised a flock of chickens and acquired a small herd of cattle. The heat and heavy rains took getting used to and the pair had never in their lives encountered such stubborn, thorny, aggressive vegetation. They soon decided that the only strategy that made sense in the climate was complete nudity, except for knee high boots, which were handy for navigating a land littered with sharp edge volcanic rocks and spiky vines forever snaring their ankles.

Word got out about the modern day Adam and Eve of the prolific letter writer and some of his letters were leaked to the press. But ships also docked off Floreana and tales of encounters with Ritter and Strauch and their little palm sheltered oasis made their way back to the mainland. People were fascinated by these bronze nudists who'd managed to escape civilization. A man named J.F. Schimpff, who had a lifelong Robinson Crusoe fantasy of his own, was inspired by Ritter and Strauch to spend a year on Floreana himself. He described his first meeting with the couple. Naturally, I felt somewhat embarrassed in drooting on these people and thought it best to announce myself. I did this by singing the German National Anthem.

Before I had finished the second line, two absolutely naked figures, beautifully tanned, ran out of the house, stared at me a moment with open mouths, then darted back again. The doctor soon reappeared, dressed in canvas pants and a white shirt. Eve soon followed in a light blue cotton dress under which I think there was nothing but Eve. Afterward, I learned that this Adam had also paused to insert his false teeth.

Okay, so if you thought that maybe not enough attention was paid earlier to Ritter's steel chompers, here it comes. The teeth were the first thing I noticed about this remarkable man and the last thing I am likely to forget. They were his own invention and I believe the only ones of their kind in Eden, Earth or Heaven above. This medium sized and heavily bearded Adam opened his lips in a disarming smile. Not only disarming, but overwhelming. I have read of savages losing their wits at the sight of a white man taking out his glass eye. Well, these teeth had almost that effect on me. They were made of glittering stainless steel.

We have slip to think for asking how Ritter kept them clean. The steel wool, not toothpaste, if you're curious. Ritter bragged that he could open up an oyster shell with his metal teeth. Not that he ever did, mind you, since he and Strauch were mostly vegetarians. They did make an exception for eggs, which their chickens produce in abundance. By the time Schlimpf paid his visit, the Adam and Eve of Floreana had learned that life in their island paradise would be a daily struggle for survival.

Floreana was home to wild hogs, wild donkeys, wild dogs and feral tabby cats. Insects were everywhere and the mosquitoes were relentless. The wild donkeys ate the plants in their garden. The wild hogs rooted up whatever was left. Feral cats stalked the chickens. Wild dogs stalked the feral cats. Every day Ritter and Strauch repaired their makeshift fence. Every night the donkeys gleefully crashed through it. We had fled from the society of overcivilized man. But now we had for neighbors a vagrant colony of wild cattle, wild hogs, wild asses, wild dogs and wild tabby cats. They ranged over the whole island and seemed to resent our intrusion upon their preserve.

It was a near relentless cycle. But in time and through trial and error, the newly minted Adam and Eve finally succeeded in reinforcing the fence well enough to keep their wild neighbors out. Ritter was philosophical, if exhausted. Paradise, he explained, isn't something a person can find. Paradise must be created. It may seem to others that we who have come so far in search of this heaven have only succeeded in discovering a very special kind of hell. True, we toil and moil against greater odds and bear daily a far heavier burden of labor than is required of most men and women in civilized society. Still, we regard our lot as the preferable one for us. We too are the absolute masters of our destiny, as you who remain in Europe and America can never hope to be. Here in the desolate solitude of the Galapagos, our lives are entirely submissive to a purely personal and inward sense of duty.

And far away, back home in Germany, another couple was daydreaming about paradise. They'd read of Ritter and Strauch, but maybe they skipped over the parts about how hard life was in this new Eden. Because Heinz and Margret Wittmer were making their own plans to leave civilization behind. Pregnant and with their 13-year-old son in tow, the Wittmers arrived on Floreana in 1932. Margaret wasn't a bit worried. Ritter was a famous doctor, and surely he would deliver her baby when the time came. Which he did, although without any real enthusiasm for the task, or for the company of his fellow Germans. The Wittmers set up house in an old pirate cave on the opposite side of the island from Ritter and Strauch. That's where Margaret gave birth to another son, whom they named Rolf. His was the first birth ever recorded on Floreana. And while the Wittmers seemed plenty able to adapt to their new and very rugged circumstances, the couples were not friends. Ritter scorned Heinz and Margaret for their ignorance and disinterest in Nietzsche. Probably also scorned their reasons for coming to Floreana in the first place.

Unlike Ritter and Strauch, with their high-minded notions of moral autonomy, the Wittmers were just exhausted by life in post-World War One Germany. No need to worry, though, over the social dynamics on Floreana. A boat was about to arrive on the island. A boat carrying four new settlers. No one could possibly have known or even guessed what would happen next. She was the self-proclaimed Baroness Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet.

Austrian-born and divorced from a French merchant named Boskett, Eloise landed on Floreana accompanied by a manservant and not one, but two lovers. Girl, what? The men were named in Manuel Valdeviso, Robert Philippson, and Rudolph Lawrence. The Baroness had heard the stories of idyllic beauty and endless sunshine on Floreana, and she had an entrepreneurial vision. A spectacular hotel on the island. She'd call it Hacienda Paradiso. It was to be this luxurious tropical retreat for the wealthy. Though, she did declare that tourists and immigrants of the better races would also be welcome. Eloise radiated such a commanding confidence that no one dared question her imperious declarations. They were dazzled by her toothy smile, her flashing eyes, and her casual disregard of the rules. Polite society. As for marketing her vision, Eloise had that figured out too. First, she sent press releases to the newspapers announcing the construction of Hacienda Paradiso. Next, she seduced the governor of Galapagos to win him over to her side. She also seduced the captains of yachts and certain select men from the passengers of those yachts. It didn't take long for word to spread that there was a stunning brunette on Floreana, one who dressed only in pink silk bloomers with a pearl handle revolver dangling from a silver cord tied round her waist and she was ready to talk business. The way yachts were suddenly steaming across the Pacific in the direction of the Galapagos, everyone was eager to have an encounter of their own with the Baratas.

Pretty impressive stuff for a woman who, not so long ago, was the owner of a small dress shop in Paris. That's where her stash of silk French lingerie came from, by the way. All the better to be worn without other clothing to hide it, especially in that sweltering heat. And hey, if Ritter and Strout could reinvent themselves as the Adam and Eve of Floreana, then Eloise could certainly declare herself a baroness. Come on, what's the point of creating a new world if you can't bend the rules to benefit yourself? Now, if Ritter and Strout didn't care for the Wittmers, you can imagine what they made of the baroness and her boy toys. Ritter found the baroness shockingly arrogant and her male companions dull and stupid.

As for the Wittmers, they wanted nothing to do with any of it. Ritter seethed at the disruption it all meant for him and Dory's hard-won life. A life that was only made harder by a period of drought that strained the island's already limited supply of fresh water. The three groups were in constant conflict over water, over territory, over anything and everything. The baroness put herself in charge of the island and proved to be a most erratic and unpredictable leader. She alone determined who was welcome on Floreana. For example, a Norwegian man arrived with a plan to go hunting and was marched at gunpoint right back to his ship. If it all sounds kind of nutty, it was. But remember, people weren't exactly used to being bossed around by a gun-toting topless beauty back then. The shock value worked in her favor, clearly. Meanwhile, all was not champagne and giggles at home for the baroness. Oh sure, she'd set up house with a pair of devoted boyfriends and had somehow persuaded pretty much everyone that she ought to be addressed as the Empress of Floreana. But you know how it goes. A threesome can be a very unstable thing. The possibility always exists that feelings can change, that two might team up against one. Over time, the baroness and Philippson grew closer and closer. Loren's battling illness found himself stuck with the bulk of the cooking and cleaning. It all broke wide open after an argument between the trio. Rudolf Lorenz apparently decided that he was no longer on board with the whole free love freedom vibe.

He was tired of the baroness's endless affairs, knowing that there was no end to the number of men he'd share her with. After yet another ugly fistfight with Philippson, Lorenz was banished from Hacienda Paradiso. He ended up staying with the Wittmers for a time with whom he'd become friendly. This arrangement lasted for several months before the baroness succeeded in persuading Lorenz to return home. And then on March 27th, 1934, the Wittmers heard shouting coming from the home of the baroness. When they arrived to investigate, they found Lorenz alone and distraught. He told them the baroness and Philippson were gone. The home was in wild disarray, a scene that suggested either a struggle or a tantrum. It was weird though that they left all their possessions behind, puzzling.

But then the baroness was the most volatile of creatures, no telling what she might do in a fit of temper. It was a little surprising when a few days later, Lorenz completely dismantled the house built of corrugated zinc and wood like every other structure on the island and sold every bit of it from the contents of the house to the scraps. Surprising. But then it was no secret that Lorenz had been treated poorly by the baroness and Philippson. Maybe he deserved to profit from their abrupt departure. I mean, hadn't he earned that much? For his next move, Lorenz posted a notice on the old barrel that serves the island's post office, asking for a spot on the first passing ship. The manservant Manuel Valdivieso was long gone, having hitched a ride out on the first boat he saw. Lorenz, under the watchful gaze of the Wittmers, who probably suspected him of murdering the baroness and Philippson, had a longer wait. Then finally, a yacht called Dinamita, captained by a Norwegian named Nuggerud, agreed to take Lorenz aboard. Nuggerud's boat was headed to the island of San Cristobal, which suited Lorenz just fine. Any island was better than this one, he thought. The Dinamita left Floreana, taking Lorenz and whatever knowledge he had regarding the fate of the baroness with it. Eight months later, the captain of a tuna clipper spotted something troubling on another small island in the Galapagos chain, Marchena Island. Marchena Island is small, remote, forbidding, uninhabited, and even now welcomes few tourists outside of divers and snorkeling expeditions. It's only 50 square miles with a volcano that's still active. It last erupted in 1991. With most of the island covered by what they call young lava, that's lava that's no older than 500,000 years, very little grows on Marchena. It's barren and hostile to all but a very few land animals. Captain Manuel Rodriguez of the tuna clipper Santo Amaro found two naturally mummified bodies on Marchena. One of the bodies was mostly under a boat. The other was sprawled further down the beach. It was impossible for Rodriguez or his crew to determine if the dead had wrecked on Marchena or been blown there by a storm or for reasons unknown had intended to land there. Isolated and inhospitable as the place was.

Letters found in the pockets of one of the bodies were signed by a Mrs. Whitmer, leading the crew to believe that the withered remains were those of a man and a woman, most likely the Whitmers of Floreana Island. There was also a pile of baby clothes scattered in the sand, though no sign of a child. It was most worrisome until a more thorough examination revealed that both bodies were male. Could this be Mr. Whitmer and Marchena absent warrants? But no. A telegram from an American radio star named Phillips Lord, who was sailing on his own yacht reported that Lord had only just enjoyed dinner with the Whitmers on Floreana. They were both alive and well. There was no fresh water on Marchena, no vegetation. The butchered and decomposing body of a seal found near the partially mummified remains indicated that the pair had at least tried to survive being marooned. The cause of death was thirst. Their identities were finally discovered because Captain Nygert was a man with a distinctive bald head and the body further down the beach had a much slighter build. It belonged to Nygert's passenger, Rudolph Lawrence, which answered one question. What had become of Lawrence, but only deepened the mystery. There was still no sign of the Baroness or Philippson, not anywhere in the world. If they had sailed to Tahiti, as Lawrence and the Whitmers claimed, there was no record of them ever setting foot on land.

Now Lawrence was dead and Nygert's boat had been heading for San Cristobal and Marchena is north of the Galapagos Archipelago, far from San Cristobal to the east. How would the men gotten so far off course? In the pile of letters found with the bodies, there was one address to millionaire explorer Captain G. Allan Hancock of Los Angeles. The letter was from Friedrich Ritter, who allegedly wrote that he was contemplating leaving his island Eden to return to Germany. He wrote that the Baroness and Philippson had vanished to the South Seas, which echoed Mrs. Whitmer's claim that the two had boarded a yacht bound for Tahiti. It was an interesting anecdote for Ritter to share, given that Mrs. Whitmer had also told the authorities that there had been no yachts anywhere in sight on the day the Baroness disappeared. Was Ritter repeating gossip in his letter to Hancock, or did he know some darker truth? And you have to wonder, because Ritter's letter included two dramatic and ominous sentences. We will hope you come once more to the island. Then I will tell you what I cannot write, because I have no proof for it. Hancock planned to do just that in late November 1934, accompanied by a group of scientists with the Smithsonian Institute. Hancock admitted he had no idea what Ritter might mean and wanted only to do his part to clear up the mystery of the missing Baroness and the marooned Lawrence and Nuggerud. The intrigue and possible violence that was taking place at Hacienda Paradiso wasn't the only discord on the island.

Things were not going so well for the first Adam and Eve of Floreana. Doris Strauch was struggling to manage the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Never easy, and made all the worst by her primitive living conditions. Back in Berlin, Ritter had assured his young patient that she could control her MS symptoms with the power of her mind. You know, grid it out with willpower alone. Maybe that worked a little, or at least seemed to. When Strauch had access to medication, warm baths, proper nutrition, and a decent bed to sleep in. She wasn't doing so well on Floreana and eventually needed a cane to help with balance. Ritter found this disgusting proof of her mental weakness, her inferiority. She was no ubermensch, no superman. He could barely tolerate her presence and would refuse to even speak to her for days at a time. The relationship between Strauch and Ritter deteriorated and became abusive, physically abusive, and at times Ritter even struck her in front of witnesses. So much for the early days of island life when Ritter proclaimed, we are truly at the entrance gates to heaven and shall remain to the death, our naked bodies toiling in the sun. Ritter's letters and his essays for the Atlantic Magazine had also made a glowing note of his Eve's happiness. He said that Dory was ecstatic with their adventure and never regretted it. He failed to mention his disappointment with his Eve's diminished stamina, her increasing disability, but Margret Wittmer was observant, attentive, and watchful. She had no affection at all for Ritter and had a very different story to tell about the couple. In November 1934, as Captain Hancock was racing toward Floreana and his ship, the Valero, Ritter died unexpectedly. Wittmer and Strauch were both at the dying man's bedside. Strauch said it was food poisoning that took Ritter's life. She said that the drought had taken such a toll on their garden that they had no choice but to kill and spoil a few of their own chickens. This struck Margret Wittmer as unlikely. Ritter was a fierce vegetarian, eggs aside, and had weathered other such droughts without falling ill. Margaret also thought it was nearly impossible that Ritter, after years of rough island life, would not know if meat had spoiled. Plus, how to explain Dory eating the same food and not suffering the same effects? Margaret suspected foul play. In her 1936 book, Satan Came to Eden, a survivor's account of the Galapagos affair, Dore Strauch acknowledged Ritter's frustration with her illness, but wrote that nothing he did or said changed her feelings for him. Strauch described a loving deathbed conversation, a tender exchange between partners who would share not just a life, but a vision. Partners who had sacrificed every worldly comfort to create their own authentic paradise, a home in complete harmony with the natural world. Margret Wittmer was like, was für eine Menge scheiße. That's German for, what a load of s***. Margret Wittmer told a very different story about what happened as Ritter lay dying.

She wrote that Ritter's eyes burned with fury and hatred, that in his last moments of life, he glared at Strauch and spat out the words, I curse you with my dying breath. This was the melodrama that greeted Captain Hancock when he dropped anchor at Floreana. The press had a heyday describing how the Adam-less Eve, Dore Strauch, announced that she was returning home to Germany, wearing a dress they all breathlessly noted. As for the secret that Ritter felt he could not commit to paper, Strauch either knew nothing or was a skillful liar. The Wittmers shook their heads. Their relationship with Ritter was distant at best, hostile at worst. The man had not shared any of his secrets with them, and so this was a secret that Ritter took to the grave.

Strauch sailed away from her Floreana paradise on Hancock's boat and eventually made her way back to Germany. Three people dead, two disappeared, and her time in that so-called new Eden receding in the distance. She stood at the rail watching Floreana grow smaller and smaller until finally it could not be seen at all against the unbroken blue of the vast sky. Did it all seem to her like a crazy fever dream?

A spell that had finally been broken? Shortly before Christmas 1934, the story broke that Dore Strauch had revealed to Captain Hancock that it was a fight over buried pirate treasure that brought death to the Baroness and her two It was rumored that Strauch told Hancock where the treasure could be found. And how did she know? Well, the story went that Strauch poisoned Ritter, her island Adam, after he divulged to her the location of the treasure, something only he and the Baroness knew. This was a story that sold newspapers. But do you really buy it? Ritter despised the Baroness. Why would he tell her of all people where to find buried treasure? As for Strauch, she had plenty of better reasons to murder Ritter. What woman battling a chronic illness wants to be followed around all day by a naked old kook whining that she needs to cure herself with the power of positive thought? Like who wouldn't have murder in their heart after days and months and years of that? Not that, you know, you should kill people just for being annoying.

That, of course, is wrong and illegal. Strauch herself died in 1943. So if she did hasten Ritter along to the next world with the help of some poison chicken, she got away with it. To this day, the mystery of what happened on the island of Floreana in 1934 is just that, a mystery, one that's unlikely to ever be solved. How frustrating that the truth may never be known. Of that motley community of escapees from civilization, only the Wittmer family survived and remained on the island. They were not spared tragedy, though. Their older son died by drowning. But baby Rolf, the first birth ever recorded on Floreana, grew up big and strong and eventually ran a yachting business on the island. His mother, Margret Wittmer, was the only person who may have known the full truth of what happened to the Baroness and her lover, Robert Philippson, on that fateful day in March 1934. Whatever secrets Margaret knew, she never told. Hinted at, teased maybe, because Margaret enjoyed the questions from tourists and the attention from the press, right up until her own death at age 96 in the year 2000. Right there on Floreana, where she, with no pearl-handled pistol or lofty philosophy to guide her, had succeeded in living out Friedrich Ritter's uber-mensch dream.

In 2013, a documentary about the baffling events on Floreana was released. It was called The Galapagos Affair, Satan Comes to Eden. It is a thorough telling of the tale, with none other than Cate Blanchett voicing Doris Strauch, Diane Kruger taking on Margret Wittmer, and Connie Nielsen doing real justice to the Baroness. The story itself is so bizarre that the documentary can't help feeling a little bit delightfully unhinged. The Baroness told us of her plan to Floreana into a kind of Miami for American millionaires. We are appalled at this profit-making scheme. The very idea of it casts a sordid blight upon our island.

I, for one, am disgusted by her theatricals. If she had a single proper man with her instead of a pair of servile gigolos, she could be kept in order without trouble. It's sobering to see how it all played out. It's heartbreaking even. The despair of just how impossible it is for humans to recreate Eden. No matter how many trappings of civilization we shed, the one thing we can never truly leave behind is ourselves. There's no paradise to be found or made that the serpent can't enter.

Because the serpent is inside all of us. The serpent is us. As for the Baroness, she left only one trace of her wild, colorful life on the island. One scrap of proof that she had lived big and dreamed bigger. It was a sign tacked off at Post Office Bay on Floreana, and it read, whoever you are, friends, two hours from here is Hacienda Paradise, a little spot where the weary traveler is happy to find some rest, refreshment, and peace on his way through life. Life, this little bit of eternity, chained to a clock, is so short after all. So let us be happy. Let us be good. At Paradise, you have no name but one friend. We will share with you the salt of the sea, the vegetables of our little garden, the fruits of our trees, the fresh water running down from the rocks. We will share with you what other friends who have passed by gave us. We will spend with you some moments of life and give you the happiness and peace that God put into our heart and mind. Since we have left the restless turmoil of the metropolis to the quiet centuries, which has laid its mantle upon the Galapagos.

Next time on True Weird Stuff, you probably haven't had an enema in a while, if ever, and you definitely haven't already had three today. But once upon a time, having an enema was considered the height of fashion. People were having enema after enema after enema all day long and out on the dance floor. And the influencer who kicked it off was none other than the King of France. We'll see on the next True Weird Stuff. Special thanks to our voice actors on this episode, making her debut on True Weird Stuff, Ashley Palmer Fischer, also Don Morgan, and our own Kary "Doc" Bowser. So, Max, what do you think about the Adam and Eve of the Galapagos and the Baroness and her boy toys and the mysterious Wittmers who lived in a pirate cave? Like, doesn't it blow your mind that these are real, that these things actually happen?

It's, you know, why do we keep having stories? It's just human beings at their absolute worst. It was kind of a, there was a little Lord of the Flies vibe to this. I mean, you know, I mean, there was a little bit of that that went on with this. There's a lesson here, though. Here's kind of what I took away from it. So you have, and by the way, Friedrich Ritter, like he was, he was doing real well as a dentist with his opera singer wife. He had a very comfy life, very comfy life in the bourgeoisie, and he left all of it, including his last nickel, to take off for Floreana with his younger mistress. So he, I mean, he really, I will give him this, I thought he was insufferable in so many ways, but he did put his money where his mouth is. Now, that he was beastly. He put his money where his steel mouth was.

Steel mouth. I knew you would love his teeth. Oh my gosh, there's so many excellent details here. So, but here was the life lesson that I took from it. So we have Friedrich Ritter, who has this idea of himself as like this superman, this, you know, this mortally autonomous, philosophical genius, living in naked natural splendor in the tropics. And then you had the Baroness, who, you know, decided that no rules were going to apply to her, and she and her boy toys and man servant were going to do as they damn well pleased, and she would make herself the empress of the island. Both parties failed. The high-minded, like, super intellectual failed. The wildly impulsive slave to her own appetites failed. You know who succeeded on Floreana? The hard-working, unimaginative vipers. Yeah. They're like, yeah, yeah, we live in a pirate cave. I am pregnant. We will make this work. May I say the Baroness was a babe. I mean, seriously. I must tell you, she spent her days on Floreana in a pair of pink silk panties with that revolver dangling around her waist and nothing else. It was, people were rerouting ships to get a look. It was a gigantic deal back in the day. I mean, it probably would be today even, you know, if there was a little island, because there are only a hundred people who live on Floreana even today year-round. It would kind of, I guess, be a big tourist attraction, you know, the gun-toting, beautiful Baroness who's wearing nothing but, you know, her pink breeches. But the vipers made it. And did it not? Because so much of this story sounds like, oh, the people of the olden days, am I right? Margaret Vipmer died in the year 2000. This isn't all that long ago. No, it wasn't. I mean, that's the one thing when you look at pictures of the Baroness, you know that this was, you know, 1930s, 1940s that these pictures were taken. So it's, Sherry, this is so not me. You know, I can't relate to wanting to find some sort of paradise where you have to take out all your teeth so you don't have to do it later with gardening tools. Hey, you knew that the woman that was coming with you had her teeth. Did you not think, let me bring some of these dental tools in case we need it, and we're not going to do it with gardening tools. Oh, my God.

Like, I know you were trying to travel light, but you didn't bring like a medical bag. I mean, okay, so let's start let's start in Germany with him pulling out all of his teeth. Now you have to. He's insufferable, but you have to give him that he's he he has the courage of his own convictions, right? The man pulled every one of his teeth. And by the way, here's a detail that didn't make it in the episode. That experiment to see if his gums would toughen up. They didn't really. They didn't. And maybe even if you don't have any teeth, there's still some oral hygiene stuff going on because his gums were a hot mess for most of the time he was on the island. And when when we say that he pulled through his teeth with gardening tools, the historical record doesn't get more specific than that. I mean, are we talking like a Oh, I don't. I am thinking about all the gardening tools we had when I was a kid, and none of them look like they'd have anything to do with pulling teeth. Well, remember in the Castaway movie with Tom Hanks? Oh, that part took an ice skate blade and a rock and knocked his tooth out. Maybe maybe like Ritter would wedge a gardening trowel at the gum line and smash at it with a rock until the tooth popped out.

Please, I don't there's nothing in the world I want enough to suffer through that. How about you? Let me just tell you what I woke up this morning. I didn't know this was going to be a dilemma that I would have to be thinking about. How would I take out gardening tools? You need to think about it. These are dark days we're living through. You don't know what kind of skills are going to be called on for. And then and then he made so you know, he made his own dentures. He was a apparently quite a good one in Berlin. But he made them out of stainless steel because he knew and to your point about Doris teeth, he knew that life in the tropics was going to be hard and that he didn't dare risk porcelain or something that could be damaged. He also knew that his his lover had MS and still felt that she could use the power of will of mind control and willpower to cure herself of that while living you know under a bush. Yeah, it's a lot to take in. I mean come on. you know what's going on with that and you know that long term you really need a lot of care in order to to find some kind of level of comfort when you have that and you're not going to find that living out in the wild on this island and they they struggled like you know, it's kind of funny.

Oh, the wild donkeys and the feral cats, right? It's kind of dog. Yeah. lol but it was exhausting because they would spend all day like and it took them a long time to figure out how to build a damn fence. But again school teacher dentist big city Germany 1930s like they didn't have practical skills any more than you or I would know how to knock out someone's tooth with a garden tool. So all day max they would toil in the blistering tropical sun to reinforce the fence and to rake the garden back into order because they had they had to grow some vegetables so they didn't get scurvy and then all night long the donkeys are and the and the hogs and the cats are yowling. There's a whole section in Ritter's Journal about the how the cats every night would have these mating rituals and they were like screaming and yowling and hissing and fighting, which of course made the dogs go into a frenzy and then the sun will come up and they would do it again.

Is it any wonder that that Dory could not keep up? I mean, do you know anyone with MS? It's devastating like she just could not and he was oh he was a brute to her. He was just unbearable. Meanwhile, on the other side of the island in an abandoned pirate cave, the pregnant Margaret is you know going into labor and they're figuring out how to make a go of it and that family. I think the I think Rolf may still be on the island today. I think Rolf Wittmer is still there with I guess I assume he's married and had a family of his own.

They're the only ones that were able to make a go of it and I'm so happy for them because if you look at the timing, they left Germany at the end of World War One and missed the entire nightmare that was World War Two and the Third Reich. Yes, they did. They were spared that and probably had very little concept of what was going on since the news of the world came to the when a ship would bring letters, you know, or like really right out of date newspapers. So the Baroness, let's talk about the Baroness. Here's a little nugget that didn't make it into the episode. So she was born in Austria and she married this French merchant, solid member of the bourgeoisie, you know, the solid upper middle class merchant dude and she opened a shop where she sold lingerie and some other things and her mother-in-law, her French mother-in-law was like, my son, you have married a reckless whore. This will not do.

The marriage was, you know, the marriage was not good from the jump but the mother-in-law, she read the Baroness and she knew what she was seeing and she slowly and carefully engineered a divorce to get this woman away from her son and I think part of the deal of that divorce was the financial package. Just let her have this, let her have the shop, let her take everything in it, just go, go, go. And so she succeeded, the mother-in-law succeeded in getting Eloise out of the family and out of France and there's this big gap where it's like, we're not quite clear how she acquired the two boyfriends but even now when people are in throuples and all sorts of things, even now it still raises eyebrows. I want you to imagine what it was like in 1930, 1931. Yeah, because that had to have been really unusual at that time. And they set up house, so the three of them arrive on the island and those were the days where you could just pull up on an island and decide, oh, is this this island? This is my island now and I am its empress. That's what happened. And when the governor of the Galapagos was like, slow your roll, lady. She was like, I know how to deal with this and seduced him and apparently really had some kind of game in the bedroom because he fooled it and she had her way. She got whatever she wanted. I mean, apparently and you said she's gorgeous. Apparently this woman was the most seductive magnetic creature. So she sets up house on the island with the two boy toys and of course, Ritter is beside himself. He doesn't want the Wittmers there. He's like, the hell off my island. My Eve and I, this is our perfect moral paradise and now we've got these Germans living in the pirate cave that he doesn't like at all and now we have the Baroness and her two boys. So they set up house and Lawrence, it happened almost immediately. Lawrence became like, he became the fetch boy. He would cook and he would clean and he would go get things and find things and run errands and meanwhile, the Baroness and the other one are really going hot and heavy and he was so resentful. So resentful and I think you probably have the same idea that most people do when they learn this story about what happened to the Baroness and Philippson, don't you? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. This whole business about the treasure seems a little iffy to me. It sounds totally made up, doesn't it? It sounds very convenient. So, yeah. The treasure thing sounds like bullshit. Bullshit. You're here but you want to be paradise and you end up finding human beings at their worst. I mean, it's super disappointing and I would love like people have tried to figure. Well, people have tried to figure this story out and you know, it's like, oh, you don't know what to look at first. Is it the Baroness and her scandalous scampering around the island and nothing but her panties and a gun? Is that what we should be looking at? Oh, and she's living in a throuple. Like, is that what we should be looking at? But the reality is is if no one had come to Floreana and had just been Ritter and Strouk, the story still would have ended in the same wretched disappointing way because it wasn't the Baroness and her boy toys or Margaret Vittmer and her family that made Friedrich Ritter treat Dory like a piece of crap. He did that all by himself. I mean, he was that

way before. When somebody's in a situation like that, you figure at some point along the line, he must have been nice enough to her to get her to get her to agree to go along and do this or do you think he got hardened by the situation and became more bitter over the things he couldn't control? I think that you nailed it. Yeah. I mean, they were she was his mistress in Berlin, but you know, it's kind of like anybody can get along with anything if they're fed and sheltered and warm and dry, you know. Yeah. It's when you're living by your insects. Oh my gosh. We like we touched on the mosquitoes, but the insect life life on Floreana was very, very difficult for anyone, much less somebody with such a serious chronic illness as Dory Strouk had. I think so there are no answers by the way.

None of there's no answer. I don't think there ever can be an answer. I think Lawrence killed the Baroness and Philippson and I think that Dory killed Ritter. Oh yeah. I think Dory killed Ritter. Yeah. Because I guess and that's that's kind of a situation you look around and you go, you know, I may have some moral feelings about killing somebody, but this is the only this is the only thing that I can do. I mean, it's not it's not like you know, I'm going to get another apartment and get you know get on plenty of fish. I mean, it's yeah. Well, one of the things that Ritter was hoping to accomplish in his island paradise is what happens if we leave civilization and all of the trappings of civilization behind does all of that burn off like impurities and what you're left with is a diamond. I think maybe that's what he was hoping for, but the truth is is that after you burn the impurities away by stripping the trappings of civilization, etcetera, etcetera. There's just more impurities. There's more selfishness because we're human right like we're not superman like Nietzsche. We're not no angels. We are flawed human beings and Ritter's experiment in a way succeeded because he wanted to know if it was possible to live in complete perfect harmony with nature. If you left civilization behind that was the experiment and the answer was no and so you have to say that the experiment succeeded.

He got an answer. Yeah, he did. Yeah. But but right to his last breath and you know to have Margaret Vipmer sitting at his deathbed while he's dying from the poison chicken. He loathed the Wittmers. Yeah, he thought they were just like farm animals just dull and and no spark of intellectual curiosity and to have Margaret staring at him and him knowing that he failed at paradise, but that she would go on. I think Dory engineered Margaret at the bedside just for that extra little final twist of the knife. Wow. Thoughts. Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean if you're really vindictive, I guess I guess if you're living in a supposed paradise and somebody keeps on beating you down, you take a certain amount of joy in being able to really twist the knife as it goes in.

I mean don't you try to put yourself like I try to put myself in these people's shoes like alright. You know I have to hand it to Ritter. A lot of people talk the game, but he actually he did it like all the things he endlessly. Oh my God his poor wife. The opera singer was bored to death by him. All of the stuff that he was always yammering on about he did it and I give him full credit for that, but then I put myself in Dory's shoes. Alright. We're in paradise. This is a lot of work. This is not what I thought it was going to be, but where is the frolicking around wearing nothing but a fig leaf and trying not to eat the apple right that was not life and every day he's riding her like a mule about her. It's your attitude Dory. That's why you're that's why you're weak and that's why you're sick. Then when she needed she needed a cane. She was the ground was all volcanic rock sharp as razors miserable thorny vegetation just awful like not a fit place for people to live and they lived in very primitive like they scratch themselves out a little place and she the ground was uneven and she would fall and cut herself on the rocks. Finally, she was like I need a cane. He sees her using the cane and he goes for the throat. I'm here to tell you I'd kill the bastard too. That would have I mean enough is enough. Yeah enough is enough. If I can't get off this freaking island mister, you're about to eat some funny tasting chicken, which of course I do not recommend that you kill each other just for being annoying as we said in the episode. Please don't but can't you see how it can happen can't you see just in the same way that I can spot guilty people just like that. I can look at his picture and tell you that he looks like an asshole. He's kind of an asshole. Yeah, he's kind of an asshole. Now the Baroness was a hot mess of selfish like yeah, I mean. Megalomaniacal just the most ridiculous outsized belief in her own specialness, but in a lot of ways, you can see why the Baroness and Ritter didn't get along. They were the same. It's manifested differently.

Yeah, they were. Yeah. I can I can see where you would say that and the two boy toys. It's it. Do you know what if you got a picture in your mind that the hot woman with two boy toys and what you got in your mind, but if you look at the pictures, that's exactly what you got. You know, I mean those are two strapping guys. Yeah. And the oh my God the man servant he knew he knew he was from Ecuador. He knew like I'm just here for the money and then as soon as it started looking sketchy. He was like I'm out. He had it down. He had it down to the shore and flagged down a boat and got the hell out of there and disappears from the narrative at that point right.

So let's talk about what happened after the Baroness and the boy toys disappeared. So Philippson and the Baroness are gone and this is the classic thing you see it all the time on dateline the husband or boyfriend and sometimes it's the wife or girlfriend will go. I don't know. I came home and he's or she was just gone and the cops are looking around and there's the handbag and the cell phone and the car keys.

Well, where'd she go without her handbag cell phone and car keys? I don't know right like it's this. It's so sloppy same thing happened on Floreana Margaret Vittmer who I don't care how much Frederick Ritter thought she was a farm animal. She was smart as a whip and she knew what was what Margaret gets up there and she's looking around the house and there's clearly been some sort of brawl. Furniture is overturned cups and and plates are broken pictures are skew on the wall.

Like it's just a **** show and and she says to Lawrence. Where are they and he's like they're just gone and she's looking and there's the Baroness's handbag her jewels her like you you don't just get up and go to Tahiti without your stuff right, especially when there's been no boat to take you to Tahiti. So I think that Lawrence killed them and it's not just that the Vittmers knew about it. I think they helped dispose of the remains. That's my working theory. And here's why this is my working theory. Yeah, I want to know that so Lawrence had in all of this drama going on with the Baroness and Philippson Philippson would beat the daylights out of Lawrence and Lawrence was not in good health. The tropics did not agree with him. I think he they never came out and said malaria, but he had fevers and headaches and so you kind of wonder with all the mosquitos. How could you know?

And he had ended up living with the Vittmer family on and off and the last bout for a long time before the Baroness sent for him to come home. So they were fond of him and they knew that he was being really badly treated and beaten. I think they were sympathetic and I think that he may have gone to them and said that Philippson came at me. Whatever story he told was one they felt sympathy for and you know, we're out here on the island and there are no there's no government.

There's no police. We live entirely by our wits and our own conscience. I think the Vittmers had a little talk and agreed that nobody would miss the Baroness or Philippson and that they had it coming and there was no reason for Lawrence to suffer any further. I think they helped dispose of the bodies because it was Margaret Vittmer who told the authorities when they finally came to the island. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They went to Tahiti and so the next wave of investigation was what day did you see the boat that took them to Tahiti and they caught her. She was like there have been there were no boats, no boats, but you said that she went to Tahiti and then she was like that's what Lawrence told us. So see there was like a weird kind of slipperiness. So do you think that perhaps good and justice did prevail here in this situation? Well, you might not want to agree with how it came about, but can you not look at it that way or is there's the only narrative that we have because they're telling us their version of events. Yes, but I do. I mean Ritter was poisoned to death and are there better ways to break up with someone? I think there are, but but if if two words stuff is not as much as anything, it's women love to poison men. Yeah, don't listen. Listen fellas be on your be on your behavior.

Because dinner is ready and you need to be on your guard. I think a rough kind of justice was made it out here. I think that like of all of the people, you know, we often say like are there any good guys in this story? Are there any heroes? The Wittmers in a lot of ways didn't have a dog in any of these fights. They just wanted to get out of post-war Germany and raise their family someplace safe where they weren't standing in line for bread rations. And they made a go of island life and they were successful at it. They adapt it in a way that the other four or five didn't. And they they saw what was happening to Lawrence right and I think they felt that Lawrence killing them was fair and just and they decided to help a friend and and I think their conscience was clear. I think they slept at night. No problem. Yeah, I think you're right. Dory did not live too much longer after she left the island and she died in 1945 and at home in Germany, but you know, she had a very serious illness and had had years of hard living and deprivation and it took its toll whether or not her conscience was clear. Can't say you know she maintains that it was poisoning and that her hands are clean. Now the universe weighs in here. Here's where the universe comes in.

Yeah. So I think Lawrence kills the Baroness and Philippson and I think he probably killed them with the Baroness's gun honestly. Yeah. And then the Wittmers help him dispose of the bodies and then Lawrence gets off the island with the Norwegian ship right. They're heading for San Cristobal and the the waters in the Galapagos. The currents are very strong and the weather is volatile. So one theory is is that they got blown off course and wrecked on March on the island and that's where they died of thirst. I think the universe took care of Lawrence the murderer and poor Captain Nuggerud was collateral damage.

Thoughts. Yeah, that yeah, you know that that that does sound like the universe engineered that so the universe was like justice does prevail. I think it does it does the universe was like I know he kept punching you in the face and she made you feel emasculated and you had to wash a lot of dishes, but you can't just kill people and get away with it. And now I now I've got to shipwreck you on this freaking active. Basically, I'm going to shipwreck you at the cone of an active volcano with no fresh water. Good luck. And I think that's yeah. I think Lawrence got his karmic justice. It's just so sad. Isn't it when somebody gets their karmic justice and the person driving them in this case Captain Nuggerud gets it too because that didn't do a damn thing except extend some kindness.

Yeah. Now there's a there there is one detail in this story that I could barely get through other than the steel teeth other than the steel teeth. In some ways, this is even harder for me to believe than steel teeth. Here we go. So when the bodies were first found on March on an island and people thought it was the Wittmers because the baby clothes Margaret had had baby Rolf. Yeah, right. And the letters in the pocket, you know, signed Margret Wittmer. Well, it turned out that Margaret was writing to a family member back in Germany who was pregnant and sending Rolf's baby clothes back to Germany with Lawrence.

Lawrence pockets were filled with letters that he was he was I just completely lost my train of thought because the squirrel is sitting outside the window wave literally waving its tiny hand. She came there pregnant, right? Did they bring the baby clothes with them? Or did they mean she did? I okay. You can buy them there. Yeah. I was gonna say, because I can't imagine what they make there for baby clothes will be anything worth sending back. Because apparently there. There wasn't a lot of clothing wearing going on there.

No, they were they were pretty much nudists. But you have to remember that at the time that Margaret was sending those letters and baby clothes back Germany was in the grip of World War Two, right? rations, deprivation, like, and the Wittmers didn't come from some prominent prosperous family, they were poor, and their relatives back home were poor.

And so and people weren't casual about clothing back then the way like you wore something and amended it and handed it down and repurposed it until it wore out. Because I had the same reaction you did like who in the heck is sending baby clothes from a tropical island back to Germany? Yeah, but you have to remember all that I cannot remember what I was going to tell you about that. The mind is a terrible thing to waste. Um, he, I mean, he had no role to play in any of this, except in agreeing to pick up. Lawrence, when he was standing on the edge of the land waving at boats and trying to hitch a ride. And you know, you can't like weather and all that blah, blah, blah. But yeah, he lost his life got getting blown ashore on this island, which you can visit today, by the way, they're diving. It's there's no hotel, like you can't stay there. But there are diving expeditions, for example, that will dock off of March in the island. And of course, ecotourism. You know, people want to go see the wildlife and the Galapagos turtles and all of that. Yeah, I was gonna say there's the turtles there. Yeah.

That, um, the early history of the Galapagos also doesn't speak well of humanity, because the turtles, they were so easy to catch. They were so easy to catch and people ate them. It wasn't like they were catching them and keeping them as pets. They were like a food source. And ships would pack their holds full of these turtles until they were nearly extinct. And the poor turtles, it was like a Looney Tunes cartoon, the turtle would literally climb into the frying pan and saute itself, they were ridiculously easy to catch. So a lot of interesting stuff about the Galapagos themselves. I just, I don't know, I just don't think that human beings if you want to take this go back to the story of Adam and Eve and get kind of biblical about it. So we've got this garden, and everything's perfect. There's no corruption. There's no sin. There's no concept of betrayal. Once all of that enters the world, once it's here, it can't be escaped. And you've really saw this play out with this small cluster of people. You saw the best and worst of humanity. And you saw what happens when people are left to their own to figure it out. How quickly things went dark.

Yeah. But he did lend his mistress his stainless steel teeth, which I think that's love. Do you know what I mean? To take your lover's stainless steel teeth and put them in your mouth and his giving nature with that. So I guess he's not all bad. They did share teeth. Oh, now I remember I was going to tell you Okay, now I remember. Thank you, Mr. Squirrel. All right. This shocked me more than the stainless steel teeth. So they find the bodies and then they they, I guess, pull the pants down, have a look and go up camping. This is where they're both men. And so this is going this is all this, by the way, is traveling all around the world. This news it's showing up in newspapers and the Atlantic magazine. And it's the talk of the town. And an American radio star named Philip Lord cruising on his yacht, stopped off at Floreana and had dinner with the Wittmers in their pirate cave. And when he heard that they had been found dead on Marchana, he radioed to shore and said, No, no, no, they're fine. I had dinner with him a couple of nights ago. Can I? Can I just ask you in what world of gun tote and topless beauties and stainless steel dentures to some American radio star have a yacht?

Not these days, anyhow. When I when I when I came upon that I was like, wait. Who the hell is Philip Lord? You've never heard of him, right? No. Hell is Philip Lord. I mean, if you'd have told me it was a what's his head? The famous guide with? No, there's more to the story. No, no, no. Oh, Edward R. Murrow. No, we lost a Marconi to him. Help me out. I didn't sleep well last night. So I'm kind of blank on Oh, not. You know who I mean?

And that's the end of the story. Paul Harvey. Yeah. I could almost believe that Paul Harvey was old enough to have a yacht in 1930 off of the Galapagos. But Philip Lord, who we've never heard of, and our day job is in radio, had a yacht and was cruising on his yacht. Like he that meant you know what that meant, Max, not just that they were paying him. That meant he had time.

I was gonna say when's the last time we had enough time off that we could take a ride on a yacht, sort of willy nilly down through the Pacific Ocean to just happen upon an island. That was the most unbelievable like I was like, Oh, this is not believable. Oh my god, that's hard to believe. Then I hit Philip Lord on his yacht as a radio guy. Now I've heard everything. It's complete fiction. And then the other detail in it that was so delicious was this was a world and in America, when you could have wealthy explorers, who their credentials were their money. So Hancock, the Los Angeles Smithsonian team to go find out what the hell Ritter what secret it was Ritter couldn't commit to paper. I mean, he was just like a bomb of all, you know, he's like a rich guy. You know, I'm a rich guy. And I've got my rich guy yacht.

And we're gonna get some scientists and go check the world out. Now our fine billionaires. Yeah, they go to space or whatever. But that kind of dashing Batman villain sort of energy. I don't think any of today's billionaires have it. No. Despite all of Bezos efforts to become a roided out Jim freak with a, you know, a centerfold model on his arm.

They don't have that sort of, um, you know, Gotham, wink, Batman villain energy. Millionaire explorers had back in the day. But apparently this guy, this guy, Philip Lord, Lord, he felt his name was Phillips, Lord. Can it get any more pretentious than that? He wasn't just a personality. I mean, he was the producer of shows and the inventor of some programming and stuff. So you can see where he maybe made money. But at the same time, working in radio and get more than a week off. Wow.

And even then, like, let's be real and not to complain. Oh, would never complain. You know, would not complain. But even when we get a week in big air quotes off, it's not really. Oh, now we don't get any time off other people we work with do. And I remember it was last summer, when Bob Lacey, who of our radio show fame, came back and said, Well, I How are you guys? I hope you enjoyed your vacation. And Max and I were like, dogs that with rabies that needed to be put down. We're like, don't you use that word with us?

Here is Sherry, tell me if you've ever heard this while you're on vacation. I know you're on vacation, but, but I really hate to bother you. But if I like if you listen to the Bob and Sherry show, and and I'm not there or like it's a best of show. I can promise you I'm not on Philip Lord's yacht in the Galapagos. I'm speaking at a convention. Tell me if I'm wrong. No, no. I'm in I'm in New York at meetings or I'm speaking at a convention. I am never on vacation. If I take some time off, it's usually well, I'm going to be I have to be in wherever for this convention or conference or meeting. So I'm going to take a couple of days on the other side of it and go see my brother. Like that's it.

Like the idea of having radio star has a yacht. He was probably in his late 30s early 40s when he was doing this based on the scene. He died in Ellsworth, Maine at the age of 7073 in 1975. That you know, one of the cool things about this particular story is the last person who knew the truth. And maybe maybe she before she died, she told her son Rolf. So there's one more, right? But we don't know. Right? We don't know. Because a secret like that is a burden on someone. Like I really prefer say something. Yeah. Like if my mom on her deathbed wanted to tell me something I'd prefer she didn't confess to aiding and murder. That's a lot to lay on somebody. And Margaret was strong, strong, strong. So I would not be surprised if she took what she knew to the grave. My gut feeling is that that's exactly what she did. So the last person who knew the truth of what happened on Floreana Island died in 2000. That's not so long, not so long ago. This is a current this isn't an ancient story. This is a pretty, pretty fascinating story. I mean, truly is a fascinating story. So I think we can learn a lot of things here. If your life partner has an illness, and you keep telling them to cure it with their mind, I maybe would do all the cooking.

I would maybe do the cooking. I feel sick. You know, it's just you just need to use your mind. Yeah. Oh, hang on. I'm making dinner. So that's one lesson we can learn. And then another lesson we can learn is, is that threesomes are not stable, whether it's three friends, or three lovers, or whatever, that is an unstable arrangement. And you need to be really careful about that two against one.

Because I think in this case, the one that was on the outside ended up killing the two. Yeah. And then the third thing I think we can learn here is that I'll be damned if you can't live in an old pirate cave for a while. If that doesn't sound like something that appeals to middle school, you should of course, I think you can exist. I don't know that I'd call it living. I don't know Margaret did. I mean, she had a baby in that pirate cave, but they did pretty well on that pirate cave. And of course, the final lesson is, wherever the Garden of Eden is, you're never going to find it, you're sure as hell never going to be able to create it. Because we are humans. And humans are not meant to build paradise. That is not a job for us. And we will never, ever, ever be successful doing that. No matter how much we plan, how many sets of steel dentures we create.

I'm sorry to be so fixated on the steel dentures, but that guy describing them was my my favorite part of it. Like, oh my God, that's all I can think about. Wasn't there a James Bond movie where the villain had steel? Yeah, Richard Keel was the I think his name was Richard Keel. Yeah, he was the one he was he played Jaws. And he showed up, I That's all I could picture in my head was every time Ritter opened his mouth, I'm seeing that Bond villain. But you know, and again, insufferable, selfish bastard that he was. Bring the dental kit. I guess that's the that's the final thing. Yeah, if y'all are escaping civilization, and you have some skills in like medicine, go ahead and throw a few things in a bag and take it with you. Yeah, because the last thing you want to do is dentistry with garden tools. How in the hell I'm never gonna understand that. And that is this episode of true weird stuff. Now you'll want to join us for the next one, where we're going to take a look at like the spectacular story of one of the world's first influencers, who just happened to be the king of France. And the craze that he sparked is one that will have you going What did I just hear? People were doing it on the dance floor. Get the hell out of here. Cannot wait to tell you that story on the next true weird stuff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. And if you listen to us on Apple podcasts, hit the plus button in the top right corner.

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