[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for the most part, the housing estates were built and managed by local government agencies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because many of the poorer residents were, like I just said, completely dislocated, which added to the desperation and then led to an increase of crime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The new low-income homes were usually located on the outskirts of a city, which meant that there wasn't easy access to resources and even just like essential items like grocery stores and social services, stuff like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Couldn't really get together a sustainable solution, I know that's like so crazy to think about. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, so people took it upon themselves because they really had no other option. And this is when informal businesses and services like the ice cream vans in Glasgow, Rukeysi's estate, came into play.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the ice cream vans were said to have sold everything, quote, from fish to cigarettes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now at first, the ice cream vans were pretty much how they are here in America like today. They were just vans filled with all kinds of treats, rolling around the little areas in town, playing music, selling said treats. But the summer season in the UK is one, pretty short, and two, pretty unpredictable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when it wasn't chilly and rainy, people weren't necessarily looking for ice cream, but they were looking for snacks and daily use items.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And from time to time some drugs. Yeaah, just time to- You know, think Uber Eats or DoorDash before it's time, but uh, with less big business ties. There you go. The people driving these vans weren't going through background checks, they weren't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After you got your van, you'd have to set up some kind of, uhm, like buying some kind of stock from a local distributor or a dealer, if that was part of your business model. And you were ready to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But for those that couldn't afford to buy a van outright, they could actually lease a van either weekly or monthly. Oh, okay. There was like organizations where you could go to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was far less co- or excuse me, far more common because as I've made it clear, these areas were not like flushed with cash. Sorry, John Ralphio. Don't wanna take your flow. Sorry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, the trade-off with this way of doing it was that the driver was paid about 50 or 60 pounds a week and the rest of the profits went to the leasing company. So that's how they made their money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The root was one thing that was lucky in and of itself, but then keeping the root was even more intense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, because unemployment rates were really, really high right after the end of World War II, and there wasn't as much opportunity for formal employment, the competition for van routes began instantly. According to Douglas Skelton, who co-authored the book Frighteners, with uh, fellow journalist Lisa Brownlie, I believe is how you say it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now double stopping was when one driver followed a rival driver to their route and like cut ahead of them to steal their business. Wow. Yeah. So it was pretty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So by the late 1970s when unemployment in Glasgow's north-east estates like Rucasey was between 40 and 50%. Damn. A legit ice cream van operator could make upwards of 200 euros, I think it's euros, yea, per week selling ice cream. Wow. And as much as 800 a week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, and the people that were making closer to like 800 a week, that was quote, if the operator was willing to sell stolen cigarettes, sweets, and soft drinks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is unquote, but drugs. And uh, drugs. And uh, droogs. And the droogs. And like I said, people were willing to go to bat for these roots because they desperately needed that kind of money. Yeaah. But now the quote unquote schoolboyish pranks and silly tactics had escalated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's like a clown, you know, like with the little flower. But you know what, desperation. Now drivers in this new period of time, like I said, would vandalize other vans, sabotage them, threaten the other drivers, pretty much every time it became physical. And this was all so that a driver could keep the best route.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no. They had to make like literal alliances and like hire people to watch out for them and hire people and we'll get into all that. That's so much work. But the increase in violence was particularly alarming in the poor and working class neighborhoods. But it also wasn't just confined to those neighborhoods. It was alarming there because it was scary, but it wasn't just those neighborhoods.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the early 1980s London, drivers were also engaging in a myriad of tactics to protect those more lucrative routes and also resorting to violence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In December of 1981, three men from the Piccadilly Whip Ice Cream Company


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These men had attempted to scare this driver. His name was Anthony Shearburn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From his site outside of a Harrods department store, but their tactics weren't working, like they were kind of just threatening him verbally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when they realized that wasn't working, they drove a truck into his van and then beat him to the point that he quote, lost his two front teeth and had two broken ribs. Oh my god. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were the Viking Ice Cream Company, uh, Capaldi, and the Mar- Mar- I'm gonna look this up, hold on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, until the early 1980s, all three of these companies were regularly profiting from leasing out their vans and selling products to the self-employed drivers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But by 1982, all three companies were reporting annual losses, and they attributed these losses to, quote, loss of sales, repairs to vans. But yea, I was gonna say. And all the difficulties of starting new drivers, because who the fuck wants to join this business now that it's become this? Yea, exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any kind of vandalism you could think about, these vans were suffering it. Yeaah. And it was all meant to encourage drivers to give up their roots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you had the chance to be brought back to life hundreds of years in the future, would you take it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lawrence Pilgrim, a lifelong scientist, planned for death his entire life. Because for him, death wasn't the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just the beginning. Wondery's new podcast, Frozen Head, tells the story of a man obsessed with immortality and the lengths he'll go to bring his wife with him against her wishes, tearing their family apart in the process.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Follow Frozenhead wherever you get your podcasts. Hey Prime members, you can binge the entire series ad free on Amazon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now we really get into the beginning of the ice cream wars. Because this was bringing in so much money and because there really wasn't a lot of law enforcement around the estates where the van schemes were.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These dudes who wanted an easy way to quickly and easily offload stolen cigarettes and other goods that could be sold on the ice cream vans, they had their perfect ticket. Oh yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, while there had been clearly a lot of conflict among drivers from the very beginning, the treble reached new heights actually, now we're gonna go back a second, to 1978, between drivers from the Marchetti brothers and 50 Ises. This is kind of like where the main tensions lie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's uhm, like the, the leasing companies who own the vans. So like, the Marchetti brothers have their own vans that run around. 50 Isis has theirs, exactly. It's like how there's uhm, different taxi services, you know? Yeah, that makes sense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And 50 Ices was a little bit of a smaller leasing firm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's where a lot of the tensions were between these two. This was primarily taking place in Glasgow's Barlinark neighborhood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the most part, flare-ups between the groups were minimal, quote, as long as they stuck to their respective sides of the scheme. So it was like, Marchetti brothers could have this route.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 50 ISIS drivers had this route. You do not cross routes. Never the two shall meet. Exactly. But every now and then, a member of one group would infringe upon the territory of another, causing yet another outbreak of violence and vandalism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what also complicated things was that there were a lot of the working class people in this area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were a Protestant paramilitary group that terrorized Northern Ireland and also parts of Scotland.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this meant that sometimes the religious affiliations between drivers led to even more violence. Oh my god, the layers. It's crazy. Doesn't it, from what I know of Peaky Blinders, it sounds like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now this was the case in October of 1978. Tensions were already super high between drivers working for Marchetti Brothers and 50 Ices.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the police were starting to hear word that there was gonna be some kind of retaliation for this fight between them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're getting ready and starting to arm themselves for some kind of big retaliation. My god, this is so Peaky Blinders. It's crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the police knew some of the more notorious, uh, key players, if you will, and they were able to get involved before anything escalated to the point of like what they thought was going to be a very bloody battle in the East End.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it only kind of put like a temporary bandaid on the overall problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Throughout the rest of the year there were regular small fights between the rivals. But those were kinda just hints at what was to come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When two van drivers from Glasgow's suburbs, uh, Dentistown and Easter House started encroaching on routes in the Barlin Ark in early October.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Four Marchetti drivers began a campaign of intimidation, threats, and vandalism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by the end of that month it resulted in a serious assault on one of the suburban drivers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which like, along with the lack of consequences showed that the violence was the answer when it came to protecting your route. I'd say that was a pretty bad move. If you get dismissed on all these charges and only one person gets in trouble, you're like, okay, so what are my odds of getting in trouble? I was just gonna say, I'll play those odds, why not? Exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now because the criminal activity among the East End drivers had gotten so fucking crazy,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were another group of people who saw this as an opportunity. Those people formed a protection racket.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ridiculous, you know? Yea, of course. They're extorting her. And at this point she was finding it difficult to pay her bills, so she stops paying it. She's in a no-win situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now almost immediately her van is vandalized. The windows were smashed in and somebody also slashed her tires.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now when her brother Tommy found out what was going on, Tommy, he went into, he's like the main kinda guy in this, he went into full blown protective brother mode. He tracked down the driver responsible and quote, kicked his arse up and down the street. This does sound like Tommy, uh, Thomas Shelby, sorry. Thomas Shelby.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And like kicking arse all while two police officers who decided not to intervene just watched from their car nearby. That is funny shit. The fight was incredibly intense. If you read about it, just know that there is like some animal cruelty involved. Whoever he was fighting like stuck dogs on him, like sent them to hurt him and one of them ended up being killed. Awww. Really sad. That's sad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, so he thinks he's taking care of this. He's like, you know what? I took care of this. I fought the guy responsible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even though he had just seen how fucking insane life could be in the ice cream trade, Tommy T.C. Campbell was like, you know what, I think I got the street smarts for this, let me join. And he started in the fall of 1983.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nooo. Isn't that fucking crazy? Why would you do that? So instead of leasing a van from one of the firms, he actually bought his own. He described it as a clapped out banger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A clapped out banger. That's how I describe all my cars. Clapped out banger. Don't make me laugh, I'll start snorting. Sorry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now when uh, TC there got his clapped out bang up. Hell yeaah. All set. His wife Liz also got a licensed operator on that same time, and she was gonna be operating as a street vendor. So she started her route in a neighborhood known as Haggle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, that's great, I'm gonna have so much success here, and she did, and she made a lot of money for the time being. I'm worried for her. And that's the thing, you wanted to get a successful route that nobody else had, but it was also dangerous to get a successful route that nobody else did, because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, someone would come along and start fucking with you and your van and try to take that over. Yeah, that's not good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was exactly the case with Liz. Aww, Liz. Once people heard that she had a successful route, she became a target and she started getting threatened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now apparently Tommy was also able to track down the guys who were messing with Liz. He just- Of course he was. He's a bloodhound. Yeah. I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's funny that you said that. I was thinking that, uh, yesterday, cause I was watching Girls Next Door, obviously. Obviously. And, um, it was the shoot where Kendra dresses as Mae West, so she has, like, a cigarette holder, and she's smoking, like, what looks like a real cigarette. I was like, shit, like, what is that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Smoking ciggies. Is them lighting and smoking cigarettes. The smell of cigarettes. I like used to smoke cigarettes which is a really embarrassing fact about me. The smell of them now. Yeah, I really don't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but it all worked out. I'm not a smoker anymore. It was for the best.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, 100%. Okay, okay. I wasn't bullying her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he just had to look at them this time, he was like, fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Except like Scottish, I can't do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's difficult. Now he didn't only have street cred with the van drivers, and as the leader of the gaucho razor gang, of course, but he also was very well known to police. I'm sure you're shocked to hear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To them, he had a reputation of being a quote-unquote vicious, cruel man who was usually and frequently involved in mindless violence, this is a quote, fighting for territory. Mindless violence. Just violence for violence sake. Literally TC's life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the early 80s, he was running multiple small time petty schemes. He was selling


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, stolen goods. He was extorting money from various groups of people. He was essentially born to be an ice cream van driver. Yeah, 100%. This is the life made for him. Yeah, exactly. Like, he didn't choose the ice cream van life. It chose him. It chose him. 100%. It like, sought him out. Truly. Truly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now by the end of 1983, there were rumors circulating in Glasgow's East End about Marchetti drivers being run out of neighborhoods or followed on their runs by suspicious cars. In Haghill, Reid Robertson, who was actually the man that sold Tommy Campbell his first van,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Started getting threats that if he didn't abandon his lucrative haggle route, then his van would be blown up. Oh. Just that. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to Skeleton, the worst that happened, quote, was a brick being thrown through his rear window. Oh it did. That's the worst. Just that. And isn't that crazy when you're like, well the worst thing that happened. Oh it was nothing. All they did was throw a brick through his window.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Skeleton, yeaah. Because it just makes me think of Skeletal. Skeletal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, if you don't know that, we've definitely told that story. That's what your youngest, her like a little imaginary friend. Perhaps real.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's really funny, I just got a notification from Uber Eats and that just feels like fitting for this case. Wow. What do they want from me?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never. A clapped out banger van. I mean, twist my arm. Alright. Okay. Now, so Reed, he has this whole thing thrown through his windshield. Yea, he does. Skeleton's like, nah, no big deal. Reed's like, big deal! Uh, I'm not gonna sit around and wait for things to get worse. Uh, everybody take my route. Here you go. Reed!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he gave up his route. And it also wasn't just the Marchetti drivers being targeted. At the end of September, a 50's, uh, ICE driver was just wrapping up the end of his run in Ruchese, and he was gonna be calling it a night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As he was finishing up, he saw a dark colored Ford Escort pull up behind his van, and then two men wearing masks came out from the car, both holding shotguns. The driver, John Brady, immediately threw his van into gear, put the pedal to the fucking metal, and sped away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also the fact that this happened and I have never, ever, ever heard of it. Me neither. Fucking bonkas. This is really wild. It is. Now when he made it to safety, Brady told the van's owner, who was Samuel McBride, about his ordeal, and McBride took the information to the police and Easter house to make a formal complaint.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's unclear if the police actually followed up on this complaint. Uh, it doesn't seem like they followed up on a lot of these complaints. Doesn't seem like it. They're like, yeah, that's, that's like your business. They're like, this is annoying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But either way, McBride made the decision pretty quickly after all of this to sell that van.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now, it wasn't just the- I see no difference. I don't really see any difference at all. This is what I said, right? Quit making yourself laugh. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't only the van drivers who were receiving threats of violence and actual harassment, it was anyone even associated with the business at all. This was the case in late October for Marchetti Brothers supervisor James Mitchell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He just finished his shift and he left the Marchetti garage a little bit after midnight. Now as he's driving home


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A dark colored sedan drives up behind him real fast with the high beams on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, he slows down, he assumes the car behind him wants to pass, but the other driver came up next to him and ends up keeping pace with him. Oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very uhm, what's that fucking movie with Jared Leto that we just, we watched it recently again?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The little things. The little things when he does that. Oh, so creepy. Yeah. So he keeps pace. He's just driving along right next to him for a few hundred feet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Mitchell notices somebody in the backseat roll down the window and point what he believed was a gun in his direction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he banged a hard turn down the next street available, and the other car ended up speeding away. But had he not had a street available, he very well could have been shot. Uh, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're like, you know what, this doesn't seem to be going away on its own, so like I guess we'll attempt something. It's like an infection. They're like, you know, it's weird. It seems like it's getting worse when we're not remedying it. It's insane. So the police added increased patrols and they actually even put plain clothes officers in decoy vans in an effort to catch the main perpetrators of this whole thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the increased police presence, it definitely helped keep the violence and the intimidation to a minimum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it also just chased the crime out of that specific neighborhood and into others that were less patrolled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On October 27th, 1983, three vans and car tyne were attacked in a span of just two hours. Geez.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One driver. What'd you say? Efficient. I know. And that's the thing, like, it really was kind of organized crime. Yes, very much. You know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the next morning, Marchetti's company secretary, who at the time was Archibald McDougal. Yeah, it was. Fucking rad. At the time and forever in our hearts. He received an anonymous call from a quote unquote gruff individual. Yup. I would like to be described henceforth as a gruff individual. A gruff individual. Who told him quote,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we can't attack your vans in the North Gotham Lock area because of the heavy police activity, then we will attack your vans everywhere else. And that's what we done last night. If you don't get your vans out of the Gotham Lock area, then we'll do it again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the Van Runs runs, as we, I'm like in a group, as we know at this point, definitely provided a profitable income for those willing to drive the routes, but the increasingly criminal nature of the business


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like you can, you can have your own run. You can be one of the people who sells the illegal goods. You can be one of the people who extorts the drivers for protection. Just for their lives. Or you can be a teenager who's gonna vandalize some


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It really is like a, like a case study on society. Yeah, it's really sad. It is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, the teenagers. The teens. In April 1984, 17-year-old William Hamilton and a group of his friends in the Cowdenbeath Estates were paid 70 pounds by a man named Thomas Lafferty, which I just like Lafferty. Lafferty. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, Thomas Lafferty told this William and his friends to smash up the van of a female driver whose route ran through the neighborhood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now Lafferty worked for Tommy Campbell at the time, and they were also brother-in-laws.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wearing those, and uh, attacking a van with pickaxe sandals, and a sledgehammer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now at this point, the ice cream van trade had evolved into a small time gang war for dominance in Glasgow's East End. But thanks to the occasional police intervention, incidents of violence had been relatively minor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of just insanity. Like you think that this is insanity and it very much is. When we reach what actually happens, you're like, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andrew Fatboy Doyle. Our guy. Our guy. The efforts to run Markettivans out of the Gartham Lock area had been largely successful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by November, there were only two Marketti vans operating in the neighborhood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said women were obviously driving too, but young people were driving, like 16 year olds. If you had a license, you had an opportunity. Holy shit. Now the obviously limited competition appealed to Tommy Campbell's sister, Agnes Lafferty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who was driving a van for 50 Isis at the time. According to her, the two Marchetti vans quote, had a monopoly in the scheme and were charging the earth for their stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, Agnes, I'm, I'm here with you, I guess. Yeaah. I'm worried for you. Yeaah. When the Marquette's company secretary, our boy Archibald MacDougall. Our boy forever. Forever and always. Forever and always. When he heard about Lafferty's decision to begin operating in Garthamlock, he knew


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that is where Andrew Doyle comes in. Andrew Fatboy is the one that's not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In order to quote, freeze out any competition from rival firms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at the time, Andrew Doyle likely thought this was a great opportunity. His family lived in like the newer housing estates. There was a lot of them living in one little apartment. Like this was a huge opportunity. He had grown up in a large, well-known family and they were a really liked, uh, family. They grew up in Rukezi.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was over six feet tall with a quote bulky, uh, excuse me, big bulky build. And that's why his friends and family had taken to calling him fat boy. It was a term of endearment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When McDougal approached him with an offer to drive for Marchetti,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andrew at the time was actually working as a part-time bouncer at a local bar and sharing an apartment with his family in that Rucasia state.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He obviously being a bouncer was no stranger to violence, and he also wasn't really somebody to shy away from a fight if one came his way. But at the same time, most accounts say that he was very nice, very reliable,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just a good dude. Yeah, you just didn't fuck with him. Yeah, exactly. Even Tommy Campbell, Doyle's competition for van runs, described him as a quote, nice big boy. He wasn't a troublemaker and he wasn't any sort of threat to anyone. Wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, McDougal instructed Doyle to run the same route as Tommy's sister Agnes, staying either in front of or behind her the entire time. Wow. So they're trying to intimidate her off this route. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andrew starts driving in November, and it didn't take long for the intimidation and threats to begin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By himself, or not by himself, but at home, like you think you're safe there. Yeah. What you would think, you would think, watching television with his brother Steven, and they hear a car outside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Andrew looks out the window and he recognizes the driver, so he leaves the apartment and he goes out to talk to the man, but he doesn't get any further than the stairs and he's attacked from behind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whoa. Yeah, the man knocked Andrew to the ground and then he and four other men proceeded to kick and punch him for several minutes. Oh my god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now a neighbor testified in court later that she had seen the fight outside the apartment and actually identified Tommy Campbell, Thomas Gray, Gary Moore, and Joe Steele as the attackers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andrew actually didn't report the attack to the police, but when he informed his supervisor about it, McDougal, he called the Easter house police and did report the attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Easter, uh, house police like went to look for Andrew to kind of like take a statement from him. Yeah. And they ended up having a hard time finding him along his route.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when they did eventually track him down, he was like, no, I'm not talking about that. Now I'm good. He's like, nope. And he basically just told them it had nothing to do with them to mind their own business. Wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the attacks continued through the rest of the year, with Marchetti and 50 ISIS vans taking heavy damage from rocks, bricks, hammers, you name it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just before Christmas, Tony Coppano, a driver for Agnes Lafferty, was on his way home after finishing his shift when four men in a quote, we red fiesta, a we red fiesta, pulled at it and you would think that's not that scary, but they pull out in front of him and they throw a mallet through his windshield.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who was sitting in the passenger seat, so you don't want to fuck with Tommy Campbell's family. No, you do not. So Capuano tried to get away, but the men in the Fiesta pursued them quote unquote aggressively until they reached Agnes Lafferty's house. And when they reached that house, obviously nobody's going to fuck with Tommy's family. So the car disappeared down the side street.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now a month later, near the end of January, Irene Mitchell's van was parked in the Gartham Lock when she spotted William Hamilton, that guy from earlier, and a small group of boys headed her way.


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[Assistant] And like potentially death. Exactly. You get hit in the back of the head with a fucking mallet. You can crack a skull, easy. Easy, and with like the force that it takes to continue like crazy.


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[Assistant] It is. So as the attacks increased in both frequency and intensity, so did the violence and threats from both sides. Rumors started circulating about one driver threatening to kill the other, but up until this point everybody just kinda thought that was drunk shit talking. Like everybody's like, oh I'm gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill her.


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[Assistant] But that all changed one night in February when somebody fired a shotgun at Andrew Doyle's van while he was parked on a street in Gartham Walk. Holy shit.


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[Assistant] Anne Wilson, a teenager who had actually been helping Andrew on his run, told the police that she saw men wearing, uh, balaclavas and she didn't see their faces.


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[Assistant] Now despite the escalation of the attacks and the stress that these attacks were probably causing Andrew, he refused to give up his route. And he rarely reported the attacks to anybody, he just kinda wanted to handle things his own way.


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[Assistant] He obviously did not want to talk about it. My mother asked him what it was about as well, but he wouldn't say, and he was just like that.


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[Assistant] He told them all of the trouble that started only recently when quote, the fifties ice, ice's van came into the area. The one with wait for Agnes on the side.


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[Assistant] Now it seemed to the police that Andrew interpreted the escalating gang war as kinda just little fights between businesses. And even though he had already been physically assaulted himself, he never thought that he was personally in any real danger. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Whether this was really how he felt or just an act, tensions were running particularly high by February of 1984, and it seemed that the violence was only going to escalate from here.


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[Assistant] So the, uh, petrol in a bottle approach wasn't effective.


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[Assistant] This time they dumped gasoline through a hole in the ceiling but the flames were immediately spotted by patrol officers in the area and it was able to be extinguished by the police department. Wow.


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[Assistant] But now we're trying to literally blow up businesses. Not just, I mean, trying to blow up a van in and of itself is pretty fucking terrifying, but now you're trying to destroy a whole building.


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[Assistant] Does anyone want to step in and be like, this is going to get so much worse? That's the thing. Like the writing was very much on the wall with this. First of all, the fact that when the fire wasn't successful, they came back. Yeah, it's like, come on. Like these people are intent on destroying what they want to destroy. And it's only going to get worse. And it only did.


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[Assistant] The night of April 16th, 1984, there was a full house at the Doyle's apartment in Rukezi. Andrew Doyle's parents, James and Lillian Doyle, were home, as well as himself and his siblings, Daniel, Stephen, and Anthony.


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[Assistant] They also had three guests staying with them. Their other son, James Jr., their daughter, Christine Halleron, and Christine's 18 month old son, Mark.


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[Assistant] Now a little before midnight, Lillian Doyle said goodnight to her husband and her sons, James Jr. and Anthony, and then she went to bed for the evening.


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[Assistant] At some point in the hour that followed, the rest of the Doyle family members also went to bed and the house was dark.


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[Assistant] Now at some point between 1 and 2 am, somebody climbed the stairs to the Doyle apartment.


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[Assistant] And these are like housing, like little apartments, like they are going to catch fire quickly. There's an 18 month old in there.


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[Assistant] So Lillian Doyle, Andrew's mom, woke up to the sound of her daughter screaming in the night and she woke up to see what she was screaming about. Now Christine's baby actually had been sick with a cold in the last couple of days, so she kind of thought, oh, she just needs help with the baby.


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[Assistant] By then, the neighbors had already begun to gather outside forty feet below.


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[Assistant] Now a short distance away, another crowd had gathered, and this one had gathered around 22 year old Stephen Doyle.


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[Assistant] Like his mom, he had been woken up by the commotion and he got up to investigate, and when he opened his bedroom door he was also pushed back inside by the smoke and the searing heat of the fire.


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[Assistant] So in a panic, he ran to the window, didn't think too much, just punched through the glass, cut his hand and arm in the process. He breathed a deep lungful of fresh air, went back to the door and tried to make his way into the hallway to help any family members that he could.


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[Assistant] So local firefighters received the call about the fire at the Doyle residence a little before 2.30 in the morning.


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[Assistant] And they responded immediately. Their first priority was to get anybody inside to safety, but the flames were still burning like way too hot for them to even get to the door. They couldn't even get to the door. So they had to work to extinguish the fire from outside.


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[Assistant] Now once they were able to access the apartment, firefighter Gerald Lafferty, so many Lafferties,


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[Assistant] He entered the apartment wearing a breathing apparatus and he was carrying a small extinguisher to kind of clear his way. The first member of the family found was Lilian.


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[Assistant] So in the next bedroom, he found Andrew and Daniel kneeling in front of the windows and James Jr. lying on the bed beside them.


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[Assistant] Whether out of confusion or just a desire not to abandon their brother, they both refused to leave and they actually had to be dragged from the apartment by firefighters.


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[Assistant] If you google it, there's a picture of Andrew Doyle being taken out of the apartment by the firefighters. And he just looks like, in a daze, obviously.


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[Assistant] So when Lafferty reached the third bedroom, he discovered James Sr. lying on the floor next to his daughter's bed. This is really, really, really sad.


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[Assistant] So the firefighters removed mother and child from the apartment and they attempted to perform CPR on Christine.


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[Assistant] He was badly burned across most of his body and like his father and brother James, he was laid outside while the emergency responders used a resuscitator to keep him alive.


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[Assistant] Now the extent of the damage to the Doyle's lives and property was massive and shocking.


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[Assistant] My god. Daniel and Andrew were also placed in the burns unit and their situations were considered serious.


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[Assistant] Lillian was treated for smoke inhalation and shock actually, but was actually discharged later that day, so she survived.


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[Assistant] Several of the Doyle's neighbors, including those who attempted to rescue the family, were also treated for smoke inhalation.


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[Assistant] And the saddest thing I think is that he was sought out to do this. He didn't even...


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[Assistant] So his father, Andrew's father, James, or excuse me, his brother, James Jr., died the following day from his burns and smoke inhalation.


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[Assistant] So as fire officials sifted through the wreckage of the apartment, they couldn't identify the origin point of the fire because, I mean, it had been just like ravaged. Yea, just demolished.


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[Assistant] The best they could tell was that the fire had started around the door, going into the old coal cellar. However, it appeared as though an accelerant had accidentally or intentionally been poured under the front door.


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[Assistant] Which provided the flames a direct path into the main apartment.


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[Assistant] So it's likely that whoever set the fire didn't know that the doils had been using the old coal cellar as storage and behind that door were a ton of highly flammable items like tires, dry wood, stuff like that, which when held under pressure created a way larger and way deadlier explosion than hopefully was intended.


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[Assistant] Now given Andrew's conflict with the drivers from 50 Ices and the recent escalation in violence, investigators were immediately sus and assumed that the fire was arson and murder.


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[Assistant] Now despite having been told about the feud between the ice cream van drivers, he didn't really have any concrete leads. He didn't really have any evidence because everything was burned in the fire. So he was just, didn't really have much to go on.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so he's going door to door in Rukezi. And a few neighbors in Rukezi reported seeing three or four boys in the area shortly before the fire. And another had seen three teenagers buying a can of gasoline a little after midnight on the night of the fire.


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[Assistant] So Walker finally got his first concrete lead when he interviewed a neighbor by the name of Reginald Rankin. Now, the fact that he didn't just like run with this is insane, because this man tells him everything he needs.


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[Assistant] So that lead, like I just said, would be ignored for years. That's good. This lead that I'm about to tell you. According to Rankin, he and a friend had been driv- I literally can't believe this has been ignored. Wait, you're gonna get so mad.


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[Assistant] He and a friend had been driving back to his apartment in Rukezi in the early morning hours of April 16th, and he said as he turned the corner into the apartment complex, he was hit on the front corner of his car by a red Ford Escort seemingly racing away from the estate.


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[Assistant] And notices a gas can in the back seat, along with a strong smell of gas.


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[Assistant] We're real, we're just ignoring this? No, he didn't report the incident initially or the accident because he didn't have a license or insurance and he was like, you know what, I think we're just gonna let this go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna re-up that and then I'll let them know. He didn't know about the fire yet either. Yeah. But he came forward once he knew of the fire and the deaths of the Doyle family.


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[Assistant] So after telling this story to the officers who were literally going door to door for leads, he expected to hear from them sooner or later.


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[Assistant] Like y'all. How does this shit happen? Is what I wanna know. Like shitty detective work. Yeaah. You've been on the force 30 years and this tip was just literally like neatly wrapped in a bowl and tossed or in a bow and tossed under your lap. Under a fancy cloche.


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[Assistant] Why would I do that? Why? So searching for any lead in the case or maybe not, uh, or maybe not. Perhaps not.


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[Assistant] Detective Superintendent Walker started interviewing the men being held at, uh, Barlany Prison's Sea Hall, which was a holding area for prisoners awaiting trial. Now it was in this Sea Hall that they encountered a man named Billy Love. He was a thief and he was awaiting trial for armed robbery. Yeah, he was.


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[Assistant] Absolutely. And he was there along with his accomplices, Ronald Carlton and John Campbell.


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[Assistant] So Love told Walker that he had information about the Doyle family murders.


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[Assistant] But, if he was gonna give that information, he wanted to be let out of prison. Of course. He has something to gain, he's gonna give you what you want. Of course. He's not just gonna give it up for free? Uh, in my personal opinion,


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[Assistant] Yep, yep. So according to Billy Love, he had been the driver of the red Volvo spotted on the night of Andrew Doyle's van, uh, the night that it had been shot up.


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[Assistant] He claimed that it was his accomplice Thomas Tamby Gray who pulled the trigger.


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[Assistant] Now, Love claimed that the two had been paid by Tommy Campbell's brother-in-law, Thomas Lafferty, to destroy Doyle's van.


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[Assistant] That very well could have been the truth. Because Thomas Lafferty was always giving people money to do bad shit. Of course. And Billy Love was like, you know Billy Love.


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[Assistant] I believe maybe Billy Love was there that night and like shot at the van. I don't know about the rest. So he adds that a few weeks later he was in the Netherfield bar and he overheard Tommy Campbell, Thomas Gray, Joseph Steele, and a few other men that he didn't know talking about setting fire to the Doyle's front door.


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[Assistant] Okay. I don't know if you're like, uhm, really big on organized crime that you're gonna be talking about it where people can hear you talk about it.


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[Assistant] In a random bar? Yea. I dunno. Maybe, who knows. His story seemed a little too easy. Almost too good to be true. Yea. But it fit a narrative that had begun to take shape in the local press.


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[Assistant] Just wait. So the press, they were chasing down and publishing any and all information they could on the Doyle family murders, regardless of fact or accuracy. They didn't give a shit. According to Douglas Skelton,


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[Assistant] It's skeleton, I don't know why I'm saying it weird. The tabloids quote, we're talking about the infiltration of the ice cream trade by gangsters, often citing unnamed sources. I mean, there you go. I'm just running amok.


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[Assistant] Now the information from love led Walker to 23 year old criminal Joseph Granger, who was an occasional associate of Tommy Campbell. Now on April 23rd, so this is before


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[Assistant] Uh, Detective Walker gets the information from love. Okay. Before he gets this whole story.


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[Assistant] Granger gave police a detailed nine-page statement.


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[Assistant] In which he confirms his association with Tommy Campbell and acknowledges Campbell's role in the ice cream van feud, but explicitly denied having been in the Netherfield bar, having participated in any conversations about setting fire to the Doyle's front door, or knowing anything about the murder of the Doyle family.


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[Assistant] Now his statement was critically important because, among other things, he denied having participated in the conversation at the Netherfield bar.


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[Assistant] More than a week before Walker supposedly got that tip from Billy Love. Huh.


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[Assistant] Which raises the question, why would the police ask Joseph Granger about his presence in a bar and participation in a conversation that they didn't even know about yet? Yeaah, that's strange. How did that work? How did that work? Or was the paperwork just dated incorrectly because, uh, you're lying? Mmmm, I don't know. I don't know.


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[Assistant] So based on the information provided by Billy Love and their suspicions of Joseph Cranger, the police arrested Tommy Campbell, Joseph Steele, Thomas Gray, and Gary Moore


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[Assistant] On May 12th for the arson murders of the Doyle family.


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[Assistant] And nearly two weeks later, detectives re-interviewed Granger, during which they claimed he broke down and started to sing like a canary. I bet. I'm sure.


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[Assistant] Now according to detectives, he admitted to his involvement in the fire at the Marchetti Brothers' garage, which he was driven to by Campbell and Gray, he said. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now Granger's statement claimed that they cut a hole through the roof and poured gasoline from a small, from small bottles into the garage and then dropped lit matches and pieces of paper in to catch the gas.


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[Assistant] But interestingly, his statement made no mention of the gas can that was found by investigators outside of the building, which at the time was identified as the can from which the gas was poured.


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[Assistant] Whenever he would like slip up on a detail that they had already created. They'd be like, oh, did you mean that this entirely opposite thing of what you just said happened?


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[Assistant] So finally Granger's supposed statement got around to the night that he and the other man planned to burn Doyle's front door.


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[Assistant] And a week later he recalled the men dropping him off at home before they left to set the fire.


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[Assistant] What a worthy source of information. He confirmed the accused men's participation in the ice cream van feud and the attacks on vans and drivers. He maybe left out the part where he was completely involved.


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[Assistant] You have something else to say. Always. So the detectives also managed to get Joseph Reynolds, whose sister was dating Gary Moore at the time of the fire, to identify Camblin Moore as having shown up outside his sister's window shortly after the fire had been set. So they're putting them all in like the right places. Of course.


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[Assistant] So the ice cream wars in Glasgow's East End, they were violent, disruptive, destructive, but for the most part they were confined to a certain area and within a certain social group, and they rarely affected those outside of the Markettian 50s firms. The murder of the Doyle family on the other hand,


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[Assistant] That's confined there and like, we don't talk about that. That's not for us. It's a class thing. And it's fucked that.


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[Assistant] Now between the negative public sentiment and basically like hysteria tabloid reporting, there was little chance of anybody getting a fair trial.


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[Assistant] When the case finally made its way to court, and that was on September 3rd, 1984.


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[Assistant] Tommy Campbell, Joseph Steele, Thomas Gray and Gary Moore.


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[Assistant] All of them had maintained their innocence since their arrests.


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[Assistant] It's really unlikely that anybody gave a shit about what they were saying. No. No, also charged at the same time where George Reid


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[Assistant] Uh, because Tommy Campbell had purchased his first van from him. Oh yeah. And John Campbell. Those charges actually would be dismissed not long after the trial started, but it's worth mentioning that they were, uh, players in the beginning of this. Now in total there were 16 charges ranging from intent to intimidate and disorderly conduct to arson and murder.


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[Assistant] The trial was six weeks long and the Crown's lead prosecutor Michael Bruce painted a picture of


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[Assistant] Basically a mafia style campaign of intimidation against Andrew Doyle.


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[Assistant] And all the other Marchetti drivers, which was led by Tommy Campbell. Mhm. He's the frontman. Now through the testimony from literally hundreds of witnesses, Bruce presented a condensed timeline that started with Agnes Lafferty and Andrew Doyle's beginning the, uh, fucking autocorrect, hold on.


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[Assistant] Gartham Lock run in the fall of 1983. It set off a pattern escalating violence against Marchetti drivers, but Doyle in particular, which then led to the murder of those six members of his family on April 16th, 1984.


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[Assistant] So on paper, the case against all these men definitely seemed like a slam dunk.


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[Assistant] Thanks to the press, the public had already formed opinions of all these guys and their guilt or their innocence. Guilt. Guilt. So all Bruce really had to do was reinforce what they thought they already knew, support the narrative with evidence and statements to the police.


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[Assistant] But the problem was that a lot of the prosecution's case was built on criminals and other unsavory characters making accusations and claims against other criminals and unsavory characters. That's the thing. It's a he said she said.


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[Assistant] For instance, during an interview with detectives, Agnes Lafferty's daughter Carol told us, Carol, I just said Carol, Carol, her name was Carol, she told the police that she had seen Joe Steele quote, quote, carrying a big gun about two feet long in the days before Andrew Doyle's van was shot up. Now she said that like before the trial started.


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[Assistant] She did not know very much at all because she was always full of drugs. Oh, alright. Like she literally said that. Yea, I'm just always full of drugs. She was like, I don't actually know if I saw that cause, uh, I'm always full of drugs. So I probably didn't see that. Just the wording of that. Yea.


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[Assistant] Now similarly, other witness, another witness for the Crown, uh, Gordon Ness testified that he, Steele, and John Campbell were paid to harass the Marchetti vans in the fall of 1983, and that the three of them frequently traveled together in Ruchese looking for their targets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now like Carol Lafferty, Ness also struggled with addiction and he later said that he'd been using heavily at the time and actually had trouble remembering the specifics of his previous statement, uh, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not great witnesses. Not great. Now a few days into the trial, the prosecution's case took several more hits when key witnesses changed their stories, flat out rejected their previous statements to the police, all of the above. Tony Capuano, who the police claimed had admitted to being present during the first attack on Irene Mitchell's van,


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[Assistant] He testified that he had actually never admitted to such things. The police were lying. He said he was never present for the attacks. He was set up by the investigating officers. Same thing in the case of Joseph Granger who like


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[Assistant] Was singing like a canary about everything and had a story that made no sense because things hadn't even happened yet that he was talking about.


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[Assistant] His statement was the one that all of these arrests were really largely based on.


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[Assistant] And in addition to those threats, he claimed that the officers, quote, pulled his hair, jostled him, kicked him in the shins, and assaulted him even more prior to him agreeing to sign statements. Damn. Which like, I believe. I believe. I definitely believe that.


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[Assistant] So the prosecution really wasn't like living their best life. No, definitely not. And then they were dealt another blow on the seventh day of trial when another key witness, Billy Love.


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[Assistant] Pretty largely also on statements from Love, who told a similar story when he was questioned by Bruce Underoath.


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[Assistant] But then he was questioned by Lafferty's attorney John Smith, and his story started to change.


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[Assistant] He had testified that there had been no inducements or promises made by the prosecution or investigators in exchange for his testimony. But when Smith pushed back, Love replied,


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[Assistant] So the more and more they pushed him, the more his story unraveled and his truthfulness ended up being called into question.


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[Assistant] But since all, since all these men were being tried together, love was subjected to cross-examination from every defense attorney. Damn. Yeah.


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[Assistant] One was poking additional holes in his story, the other was poking more holes, just kept going until Tommy Campbell's attorney, Donald McCauley, finally suggested that Billy Love had been lying all along and had simply gone along with the information that he was being fed by the detectives in order to get himself out of jail. Boom.


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[Assistant] So in their closing arguments, the defense attorneys for the accused men rested their cases, reminded the jury that the case against their clients was basically all on speculation and supposed statements from people who under oath fully denied giving those statements. Yea, like come on.


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[Assistant] It was a compelling argument, and it was backed up by the seriously limited physical evidence and testimony given on stand during the trial.


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[Assistant] So the judge in the case, Lord King Craig. I just love. I'm loving all of this. Lord King Craig. All these names.


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[Assistant] So what do you, what do you think is gonna happen here? Do you think they're gonna get off or do you think they're gonna get convicted? I'm not looking, uhm. I'm covering anyway. She's covering the screen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I am. On October 9th, 1984, the jury retired to begin with their deliberations and that spilled over into the following day. And then the following day, they finally come back with their verdict.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Joseph Steele was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, also found guilty of conspiracy to assault a van driver and of vandalizing the Marchetti vans, and he was sentenced to six years and one year respectively to be served concurrently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But not all of them were. Thomas Gray was found guilty of the attempted murder of Andrew Doyle in the shotgun attack and he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.


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[Assistant] Thomas Lafferty was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for the shotgun attack on Andrew Doyle, sentenced to three years imprisonment.


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[Assistant] George Reed was convicted on a lot of lesser charges, including a knife assault on a driver, vandalism, stuff like that. He was sentenced to three years.


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[Assistant] And John Campbell was convicted of vandalism, conspiracy to commit murder for the shotgun attack.


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[Assistant] And he received a sentence of one and three years respectively to be served concurrently.


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[Assistant] Damn. Yeah. So all in all, Thomas Campbell and Joseph Steele, and really Thomas Grey got like the heaviest sentences, but definitely Thomas Campbell and Joseph Steele.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow, got like really intense sentences. So in the end, the verdicts really had little to do with evidence and testimony presented at trial, and really everything to do with the reputations of the accused and what they represented to society.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Each of the six accused in the case, all of them, were violent men, they had extensive criminal histories, and they were young too, so it was like really, it spoke to their character.


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[Assistant] And their father. It was kind of just like the family's way of life, you know? Yeah. Now Reg McKay, who wrote a book with Tommy Campbell, acknowledged the past. He actually referred to Joseph Steele as quote, a low life crook who would rob your granny's meter. Damn.


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[Assistant] While the appeals court reconsidered their case following Bill Love's 1992 confession that uh, he had lied to the detectives in 1984.


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[Assistant] Um, they reviewed the case and they actually upheld the initial ruling saying there had been quote, no reasonable explanation as to why a key witness who now claims he lied during the original trial has changed his mind. Um, guilt? Yeah, I was gonna say.


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[Assistant] But then the case was appealed again in 2004 after having been selected for review by Scotland's Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is quote, a body set up to examine alleged miscarriages of justice, which I believe this was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The case was chosen when Brian Clifford, who's a professional, uh, professor of psychology at the University of East London, he was chosen to review the evidence and he discovered, quote,


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[Assistant] Officers never had probable cause to arrest or sufficient evidence to convict.


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[Assistant] Yeah, like in ice cream roots. It's just so somebody else could make better money. That's horrific. It's so sad. And I think whoever went there that day and did do that, I don't think they intended to kill that family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And maybe they did do it. Maybe all of them did do it, but it was just that the police didn't go about the investigation in the right way. Yea, they didn't correctly gather the evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.


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[Assistant] What that is. Yeah, but with all that being said, we do hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird! But not so weird that ice cream vans do this, cause no thank you, I just want the spongebob one with the eyeballs that are gum. There you go. Bye!


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[Assistant] So we're like, let's just, let's supplement our lives with some chili cheeseburgers because health and wellness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Marquardt. Marquardt. I always say it wrong, fuck my life. You know what, Bridget from Girls Next Level podcast, go listen to it, it's fucking awesome. Yeah, if you're not listening, what are you even doing with your life? Bridget has a name like my last name, that like, it looks...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, go listen to their podcast, because they are two delightful human beings. Their podcast is awesome.


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[Assistant] To the future, happy new year. Ash, happy new year!


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[Assistant] All of your holidays were beautiful. And I hope you're ready to start this year and have a great one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, and you know what? Before we get into this episode, I need to tell you guys a crazy story.


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[Assistant] Okay, so I've heard this thing where if you lucid dream, I don't know if you, I know some of you lucid dream because you sent us like listener tales about it. So lucid dreaming.


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[Assistant] That's not me. Yeah. Lucid dreaming. I've heard this thing where you're supposed to, or you're probably not supposed to, ask people in your dream, like once you figure out that you're lucid dreaming, ask the next person you see and anyone else you see, what's the date and time?


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[Assistant] And I always thought these things are kind of bullshit and I thought they were maybe just like everyone's personal experience. And like, you're like, it's a TikTok trend. Yeah. It was kind of just like, ah, I don't know. But then I was like, I want to try that though, if I can like remember to do it. But I figure I can never remember anything in my lucid dream. Like I can't remember to do something in my lucid dream. Usually.


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[Assistant] But this time this past weekend I was lucid dreaming.


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[Assistant] And he wasn't, but two women were. And all of a sudden in my head I was like, ooh, ask them the date and time. So I was like, excuse me ladies.


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[Assistant] I don't even know, like ask them something really personal about themselves. They got that angry. So I like scooted through them cause I was like, oh, get away from me. And I was like, damn. And I came across John and I was in like someone else's living room.


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[Assistant] And I saw John and I said, John, what, what's the date and time? And he grabbed me by the arms, which was terrifying in my dream. Cause that's not a John move. Cause that is not a John move. And he got right in my face and was like, what?


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[Assistant] Don't ask that. Don't ask me that. And he started like yelling it in my face.


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[Assistant] And I like to fuck around and find out. So I saw a couple of people in the kitchen behind him and I yelled, Hey guys, what's the time of date? And they got angry and started coming over with him and all of them were surrounding me, yelling at me. And I woke up as that happened.


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[Assistant] No they're not. Something is up here. There's a simulation happening and they get pissed when you start poking holes in it. Something's happening. But guys, I couldn't believe that that actually happens. Like, I thought that was bullshit. I fully thought that was bullshit. I'm not trying.


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[Assistant] But they get mad at you. Ask your dream people what the date and time is. I want to see if anybody gets the date and time.


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[Assistant] That's true. So maybe me and Tobias together are going to solve the case. Maybe. I think so. Uh, 2023 let's manifest. So this doesn't technically have like a connection to the Jack the Ripper case, but they, it was during the same time period kind of, and


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[Assistant] So there's that. But this is a wild case. Uhm, there's a book called Sympathy for the Devil, the Emmanuel Baptist murders of old San Francisco, and it's by Virginia McConnell.


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[Assistant] I'm pretty sure and I will look for it, hopefully I can find it. I think there's like uhm, you can read it for free online I think. I'll have to see if I can find it.


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[Assistant] This is another case, like I said, that has some kind of weird connection to Jack the Ripper, in the sense that the fear from it was rooted in Jack's murder for pleasure way of living, because that was new.


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[Assistant] You know, this, like, this whole murder for murder's sake was not something people were used to at this point. Usually it was for gain. You know?


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[Assistant] So this is the story of Theodore Durant. He was a Canadian immigrant to San Francisco, California in the late 1800s. He was a medical student known as a very kind, very giving man and also was the assistant superintendent of the 21st street, Emmanuel Baptist Church Sunday school. Shit. Yeah. Lastly,


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[Assistant] So he had a lot of layers. Yeah. But of course with any case like this, there were people who thought he was, there was people who actually kind of.


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[Assistant] People find any way to just go against what reality is at this point. So there's that.


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[Assistant] But it's still a wild story, it went across the nation, it went overseas, like it was a big story at the time. So let's talk about this asshole here first.


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[Assistant] Like I said, his name was actually William Henry Theodore Durant. He was born on April 24th, 1871, although later, I think in part two of this case, I'm gonna talk about the trial and


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[Assistant] He'll tell ya, he doesn't even know if that's his real birthday, except he does.


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[Assistant] After their marriage, they had Theodore and two years after Durant's birth.


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[Assistant] Of course she did, with a name like Oola Maud. Yeah, which made her brother's later crimes even more shocking that she was like this famous dancer. Uhm, the family had another boy in 1877, but he unfortunately passed away only weeks after birth.


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[Assistant] Now apparently the Durants were not like a match made in heaven. They were not turbulent really, but people just found their union very odd.


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[Assistant] So people just were kind of like, I don't know about you guys, but they had both met when they were working at the Charles and Hamilton shoe factory in Toronto. She left to be a homemaker once they had Theodore and he stayed working there.


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[Assistant] So according to Virginia McConnell, it seems, who wrote that book that I mentioned, it seems- Sympathy for the devil. Sympathy for the devil. It seems like William May, William the father, may have suffered from bipolar disorder. Okay. That's what Virginia is surmising from her research.


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[Assistant] He had some unstable moods, like I said, his behavior was a little unpredictable at times, and this may have been exacerbated by their son Edward's tragic and untimely death.


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[Assistant] Now William traveled to England a few times for unspecified treatment for his, like what was going, what he was had going on mentally and was not present in the home a lot as the kids were growing up.


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[Assistant] Isabella however was there 24-7 and she formed a very strong bond with her children.


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[Assistant] Which means Theodore was there with his sister and his mom 24 7. Okay.


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[Assistant] Also, it seemed kinda like Isabella was like, sure, sure, you go, we're fine here. Like she, it was kinda one of those things where the doubt was just not really around.


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[Assistant] Exactly. So she was probably like, yeah, just get out. I got this. Right. So it became kind of, she was the main caretaker. Now in 1878, William returned from one of his treatments in England, which we don't get any specifics for what these treatments were or what they are for. It's just kind of like his treatment, quote unquote.


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[Assistant] So he comes home from a treatment in England and told his family he was going to move to San Francisco.


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[Assistant] Where he believed he could get a better job and make more money. San Francisco, California.


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[Assistant] Well, he said he was going to, but not right away. He said once he got himself stable there, he would bring out the family.


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[Assistant] But he was not able to hold down a job because of the, what he was going through, like because of his erratic moods, because of his erratic behavior, he just wasn't able to hold down a job.


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[Assistant] He had a lot of outbursts and you know, it was kind of, it was left unchecked at this point. So employers at this point and at this time were definitely not willing to deal with that or understand it. They just weren't willing to know.


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[Assistant] But things got so bad that the whole Durant family had to move in with William's parents for a time, because otherwise they would have just been without a place to live.


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[Assistant] Oh man. Theo however, was doing alright. Okay. He was popular with his peers and his teacher said he was a good student, never gotten any trouble.


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[Assistant] He especially excelled at things that let him get his hands busy and tinker with things. He liked mechanical stuff, technical stuff, electrical things.


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[Assistant] He reminds me a little bit of Peter Sutlett clip in that way. Yeah, in that manner. Sure. But he eventually went to Cogswell Polytechnical College and took more classes involving engineering and electrical things.


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[Assistant] And he registered for the 1891 semester at Stanford University. Shit. Unfortunately, likely due to his family's financial woes, he was unable to attend that semester and it did bother him.


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[Assistant] So instead of letting it just stop him in his tracks though, he did end up enrolling at San Francisco Cooper Medical College in 1893 and decided his love of tinkering and opening things up to explore would serve him well for a medical degree.


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[Assistant] Which is not a bad idea. His mother really steered him in this direction with the hopes that he would be able to make money and raise his social standing.


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[Assistant] Which was huge back then. 1890s, like social standing is everything. Classes were very distinct back then. And he did. He did well in school. He received very high grades as a result. He was also known to take extremely meticulous lecture notes and he would share them with anybody if they asked.


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[Assistant] Oh no, he literally went out of his way to help people.


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[Assistant] Yeah, this is a very strange case in that sense.


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[Assistant] It's very weird it's like he just he must have been hiding some deep dark shit.


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[Assistant] But I think something may have helped unleash it, but.


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[Assistant] So Theo had learned to work with what he had basically, both financially and fashionably. He was not a bridge troll, but he was slightly different looking when it comes to like the beauty standards of that time. I don't think he was like ugly by any stretch.


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[Assistant] But by the standards of the time, he was shorter than most butt men, he was five foot five.


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[Assistant] Wow. Which I'm like, how do you even tell that with hair?


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[Assistant] Yeah. Like I don't know about that one. I'm looking for a pic right now. And then they said he had like bigger lips, which I was like...


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[Assistant] That's like an attractive quality by today's standards. What's happening here? Like, and then you look at pictures and you're like, yeah, I wouldn't, he's a pretty normal looking dude. I just wouldn't even notice. Like I'd just be like, hello sir. Yeah. Like it wouldn't excite me. It wouldn't repel me. I wouldn't say anything. I don't really see it.


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[Assistant] Right? It's a very strict, but it was very much like stated that he had a misshapen head. Weird. But instead of focusing on those things that may have brought his confidence down, he really decided to focus on the sartorial part of his life. He was going to be a fashionista.


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[Assistant] He always had what was in fashion, it was always in season, he always was put together. Stacey and Clinton would be so proud. They would. He didn't put all of this on his parents either. He didn't because you're thinking like, okay, so his parents are having to pay for this fucking wardrobe of his.


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[Assistant] But apparently he didn't want to do that because again, he was a weirdly nice guy for some period of time.


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[Assistant] He would eventually move on to work at a lot of department stores across the city. He also did clerical work at the Mannheim Insurance Company and he was known to be very handy.


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[Assistant] And he became known as the handyman who would help you out in a pinch for anything. You knew you had electrical issues. Theo will come over for no charge and I'll help you out. That's crazy.


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[Assistant] Eventually, he actually became the volunteer handyman at the 21st Street Emmanuel Baptist Church.


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[Assistant] He would paint, repair anything around the church. He would build things for gatherings. He would build stages for the events. He was giving, he was kind, he was helpful. What the fuck happened? I don't know.


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[Assistant] Well, I can tell you what I think at least contributed to something snapping that was already there. There had to have been something already there. You don't do what he did and we'll obviously get into it without some kind of darkness being inside of you.


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[Assistant] So in the spring of 1894, Theodore contracted a quote, near fatal case of viral meningitis, which is the inflammation of the lining of the brain caused by a virus or bacteria.


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[Assistant] It can be life threatening. It has severe consequences, especially back then.


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[Assistant] He contracted it, a very severe case of it, and his mother Isabella was the one to actually nurse him back to health.


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[Assistant] But he lost 40 pounds during the illness and according to the previously mentioned source, um, the quote, there was undoubtedly some neurological damage. Yeah. So boom. So that's what I think kickstarted.


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[Assistant] Some of these thoughts he was having and some of these things he was doing


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[Assistant] But apparently he had some kind of complex. I don't know if somebody had said something to him or what.


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[Assistant] But he had to pretend, and I do believe it has to do a lot with stature. I think stature had a lot to do with it back then. Like 5'5", not that tall.


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[Assistant] And he wasn't like a big guy either, so I think then it was like important to be tall and really


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[Assistant] It's not right, but it's okay. But it's okay. But I think he tried to make up for it with a lot of bravado and a lot of like, I'm like a god, I'm this like sexual, like I'm sexual prowess, very much a Napoleon complex.


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[Assistant] So I think that, that inflammation there, that meningitis definitely,


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[Assistant] I know it's hard to stick with working out. We've all been there.


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[Assistant] It's not easy to get into a routine. You fall off one day, that turns into a week, that turns into two weeks and then it's even harder to get started again.


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[Assistant] But I'm telling you right now, believe me, trust me, we're friends here. Trust me when I say that the Peloton bike, it's going to keep you on a good routine and it's going to do that because it is completely personalized for you. If you need a five minute quick little warmup workout and that's all you have time for, they got it.


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[Assistant] I will always love Bradley Rose, and I still take his classes literally daily, but I love finding new instructors, and you will too, because it's more than just a bike.


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[Assistant] Peloton also makes treadmills and has tons of other classes like yoga, strength training, hill, and boxing.


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[Assistant] Workout when it works for you. Peloton offers thousands of on-demand classes, so you will always find a workout that fits into your day. Peloton has the best playlists and tons of music genres. Try Peloton risk-free with a 30-day home trial.


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[Assistant] Murdering people. So it's like you can't point to just like, well, his father had something going on that's like, I think there had to have been something. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So the next year on Wednesday, April 3rd, 1895, uhm, this was the next year after he had like recovered from this illness, uhm, the family of 21 year old Blanche Lamont, and this is 21 year old by the way.


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[Assistant] Barely out of teenagers. I know what's gonna happen now that you've specified that. They were beginning to panic a bit on this night.


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[Assistant] Because she had not returned home after, uhm, after that afternoon she had a violin lesson. And it wasn't like Blanche to disappear without notice. Blanche had moved to California recently from Montana.


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[Assistant] And she had been a school teacher in Montana, but she was in California taking courses to further her education.


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[Assistant] So she had last been known to be with her friend Minnie Edwards.


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[Assistant] Report of the trial of William Henry Theodore Durant. She is holding it right now. It's like leather bound. It's this cool old ass book.


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[Assistant] Now several other witnesses corroborated Minnie's story and remembered seeing this man because apparently at this time it was not allowed for women to be in the company of men at the school.


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[Assistant] Oh. So this, many Karens were out there taking notes this day. Scandalous. And weirdly not one of them could give a physical description of this man. So they weren't taking like proper notes. Yea, so I'm like, I don't know, you weren't doing your job. Too easy gossip.


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[Assistant] A woman named Elizabeth Crocette told investigators that she got onto the streetcar and saw one Theodore Durant sitting on the seat next to a young lady and they seemed to be enjoying each other's company.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth recognized Theodore because he was friends with her grandson Jim, and she liked Theo.


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[Assistant] She thought he was very kind, very helpful, very generous young man. In fact, she knew him to be such a gentleman and so helpful.


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[Assistant] So the woman, there was another woman who lived across the street from the Emmanuel Baptist Church. Her name was Caroline Leake.


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[Assistant] She also said she saw Theo out her window that day when, when uhm, what was her, the Elizabeth Crocette, what Elizabeth Crocette said that they had got off the streetcar.


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[Assistant] Caroline Leake said I saw her hit Theo out my window and that he was with a woman that she didn't recognize and they were walking towards the church.


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[Assistant] They're going into church, Chica. Like calm down. She was so bothered by this that she sat by her window to watch and see if they, when they came out together. Wow. She said she sat for a long time, but they didn't come out. What a creep. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So what we have is we have, just to give you a quick little rundown, we have Minnie Edwards who is Blanche's friend. One. They were standing at the bus stop, the streetcar stop.


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[Assistant] Theo walks up and says, hey girl, hey, and they start flirting. Correct quote. They get on that streetcar, Minnie kind of sits away, but she sees them get on the outside of the streetcar. We got Elizabeth Crocette who knows Theo very well, saw Theo in the presence of Blanche. She didn't know it was Blanche at the time, but later said, yes, that was Blanche.


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[Assistant] Didn't know her, said they seemed to really like each other. It was really cute. She was going to ask Theo to let her off, help her off the streetcar, but he had left on the stop for the church.


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[Assistant] This was the last anyone saw of Blanchelot. Yea, I had that feeling. She entered the Emmanuel Baptist Church with Theodore Durant and she never came back out.


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[Assistant] So immediately the following day she was reported missing. Since this story included, and remember, the 1800s of it all.


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[Assistant] Since this story included the salacious bit that she was last seen alone with a man.


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[Assistant] They assumed she ran off and eloped with him. Where are my pearls? Now this, this sounds crazy, cause you're like, this random man that like, yea she knew him, but like she's just running off and eloping with him? Right. This wasn't completely out of left field, because Theo and Blanche did know each other.


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[Assistant] Minnie was a new friend of Blanche's, so what Minnie didn't know was that Theo and Blanche had dated. Pretty seriously.


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[Assistant] Pretty seriously in the sense that it was like three months of dating, but back then it was like, well you might as well propose now. I was gonna say that's a whole courtship.


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[Assistant] Exactly, and before this event happened, it was like months earlier, he had proposed.


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[Assistant] And she had told him, it's not a no, but it's not a yes. I would like to slow things down. Okay, fair. So she said I'd like to slow things down. I'd actually like to call this off for right now. Just let me have some time. Okay. But like.


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[Assistant] Maybe just, let's see what else is good. Like, I just want to slow it down, that's all. Alright. I want to take a step back from this relationship, I'm not sure if this is what I want.


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[Assistant] And the investigators were just quietly working to find her. This led to Theo Duran actually stopping by the relative's house where Blanche lived. He stopped there on that Friday and dropped a book off to her sister Maude.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and dropped the book off and said, I promised Blanche I would let her borrow this book. Can you give it to her? And her sister was like, uhm, she's not home.


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[Assistant] And he was like, and at that time she was missing, but he didn't, she didn't want to let him know that because they were supposed to keep it quiet. And he was like, Oh, where is she?


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[Assistant] Like asked questions and was like, but seemingly a court like mod was like now looking back on it, it almost seemed like.


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[Assistant] Oh really? Like she's not home. Weird. Like almost like, you know.


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[Assistant] So it's like, and to me, this is a perfect way for him to just use this. It's like, I didn't know she was, I didn't, I even brought her a book. Right. I loaned her a book on Friday. That's how much I didn't know that she was missing.


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[Assistant] So the next week was when everything came public because the family couldn't keep any of the secrets any longer.


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[Assistant] Now they just wanted everybody to know because they just wanted to find Blanche. So they opened up everything and now police actively were speaking to anyone Blanche may have been with or dated at any point. I'm confused because they interviewed a lot of former suitors, but not the one man who she was seen with that day, Theodore Duran.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They really focused more on this man named Tom Vogel who was a doctor that she had dated. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now Vogel pointed this out and said Theo was with her that day. Like several people are saying he was with her that day, but even her family was like, no, that's not possible.


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[Assistant] Actually posted ads in the classified sections of the newspapers in the area that said Blanche, no matter what has happened, come back to me. And she never got a response.


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[Assistant] By this time, news was flooded with the details of this case so far. They had printed the details, now they were finally printing details of Theo being the last one to be with her. And now about their relationship that they had, so gossip started forming, but it was mostly just kind of like harmless gossip at the time.


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[Assistant] No one actually believed Theo had anything to do with Blanche's disappearance. It was more now.


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[Assistant] Who's that? And this party, well the party that she was supposed to go to was Tom Vogel's party. Oh shit.


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[Assistant] There was a lot of like, inner, inner hanging out here. Well, class. Exactly. Uhm, and she didn't show up to this party. This woman was Marion Minnie Williams. I know there's a lot of the same names too, but you know, 1800s. Uh, and again, this is not to be confused with Minnie Edwards, who was Blanche's new friend.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Minnie Williams had met Theo through the church where she was working as a quote, domestic worker. So she was a maid. She was vivacious and brought a lot of life into anywhere she went. In fact, she too, like Theo had come from Canada and when she first moved to California, she settled in Almeida.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she got work as a maid for Clark Morgan, who was the former head of the California Casket Company.


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[Assistant] She was apparently not a great maid, but they kept her because the family adored her so much and came to think of her as such a happy presence in their home that they were like I don't even care that she's not that great of a maid. I like to think that's why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she was that kind of person. She was just like a really awesome person.


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[Assistant] Now after she had taken on a job at the church in San Fran, that's where she met Theo.


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[Assistant] So, he was very interested in her, but then quickly showed her that he was very interested in having a sexual relationship.


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[Assistant] Was a respectable woman of the time and wasn't going to give in to his crazy desires.


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[Assistant] And when Minnie wouldn't do it, he was shocked and probably a little shamed because he was thinking this was going to be easy. And then he decided to move on to Blanche who was pretty much in the same class as he was. Okay. A lot of class shit happening here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he moved on to Blanche, and so at the time of Minnie's disappearance, she was actually, Minnie was, interested in pursuing Tom Vogel. Oh wow, this is wild. I know, this is a love record.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's very much like Peyton's place. So. What's that? It's, wow, it's like an old show. I probably should've, uh, Melrose Place?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know what that is, but I didn't watch it. But okay. But you know, it's like a scandal of shit. Sure. Uh, it's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is why that evening that Minnie did not show up at this party, she had put on her fanciest dress and got her hair done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Charles Dodge, who was a fellow student with uh, with Theo and a friend from the Cooper Medical School, actually talked to Theo at the ferry entrance. In fact, he reported that he made a joke because of the recent headlines.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And said, Durant, what have you done with that girl you made away with? And he was obviously talking about Blanche and another man named Frank Saidman actually stopped and talked to Theo at the ferry entrance. He was the janitor for the church or one of the janitors for the church and knew Theo very well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Saidman told police that part of their conversation, including, included Theo telling him that he was at the ferry because he was looking for Blanche.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He told him he had quote, received a clue that she will be leaving the city and going over to East Bay. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like what are you doing? Like sir, do you have her body? That's everybody. So he was basically being like, I heard something that said that she was going to be leaving on the ferry. So I'm here to try to intercept her so I can bring her to her family. I'm a hero. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even after this interaction with a witness, yet another man who he was friends with saw Theo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his name was Adolf Holm, which sorry about that name bro, who was another friend from school. And he saw him with walking with a very short young woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps the most damning witness report was from Alexander Zenger. He lived down the street within eyesight of the church. So he was kind of like Caroline Leake there, uh, who was across the church. He was just like one over from her. A busybody. And he was a regular parishioner there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had recently heard gossip and that maybe this is why Caroline was like, they're going in there unattended. Cause he had heard gossip that young people were sneaking into the church late as night to like, fuck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was peeking out that window and he saw Theo and Minnie enter that church around 8pm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, he was on, again, like I said, he was on his own Karen bullshit, watching like a hawk. So, he said he watched the whole time, and an hour later, at 9pm, he saw Theo exit the side door of the church, and many didn't leave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 930, only a half hour later, Theo showed up at Tom Vogel's door where the party was, cause he was invited to the party. Oh, I know. These are all friends. Party.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tom said, Tom Vogel said that Theo looked a little disheveled and frazzled and that Theo told him he was sorry he was late, but he quote, had trouble catching his horse at the armory. I bet. Vogel noted that he was a little weirded out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he also said he noted that Minnie Williams never showed up to the party and she had planned to attend. And he wanted her to be there. He did, I think. I know. And her family said she never made it home either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now we have another missing young woman and nothing had moved in Blanche's disappearance at this point.