My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 421 - The Wonderful World Of Podcasting
Episode Date: March 28, 2024On today’s episode, Karen covers the 1945 Empire State Building plane crash and Georgia tells the story of New York Assistant District Attorney Eunice Carter. For our sources and show notes, visit w...ww.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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My favorite world.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello. Hello. Hello.
And welcome to my favorite murder. That is Georgia Hartstark.
And that is Karen Kilgarafe.
And this is podcasting.
Hey.
Hoo-ah.
It's this, yes, it's this interesting.
Is this the first time you've ever listened to a podcast?
Yes.
Doesn't get better.
This is it.
Welcome to the wonderful world of podcasting.
Hey.
Listen, we're the pros, so take it from us.
Listen is the first word in that sentence
and could have been the last
because that's all you gotta do.
It's all you gotta do.
Yeah, pay attention to the road.
You're driving on.
Keep your eyes open, please.
Which is a part of paying attention.
Right, but not listening.
So.
Yeah, no, you can listen to us, but keep your eyes on the road.
And then if you get the shadow of a large, like a big ram truck coming toward the side
of your car, gas it.
Yeah.
Careful, gas it, go and then keep listening.
You know that is the thing that makes me the angriest.
Top two in a movie is surprise car accidents, which is like, it's so infuriating where it's
like, that does not need to be realistic. Car accidents are the worst thing to happen to people.
Yes. And then when they go in like, slow motion
and you're watching the person turn upside down
and the shattering of the film.
Oh, my God. Surprise car accident.
Yeah, they're very jarring to a point
where whenever you see someone driving in a movie now,
you're like, when's a surprise?
Even if it's like a romance, you're like,
when's this Hallmark Even if it's like a romance, you're like,
when's this Hallmark movie surprise car accident?
I'm braced.
The second I see somebody, an actor going back and forth
real fast with the steering wheel,
unrealistically, I'm like, something's gonna happen.
The first time it was a very strange Julianne Moore movie
in the late 90s or early 2000s.
I think she was running after a specter
or there was a book that was haunted.
I can't remember, but it was the first time
I had experienced it and it was so shocking.
I like kind of couldn't breathe.
I was like, you're not allowed to put me in a car accident.
Yeah, yeah, because you're witnessing it
as if it's happening to you.
Yeah, they're trying to make it happen to you.
Can you guess my number one above surprise car accidents?
That you hate in a movie?
Is it a surprise thing?
Also, or just something you hate?
A surprise thing you hate in movies.
It's not tornadoes.
I don't know why suddenly I'm thinking about the movie Twister.
Don't ask me why.
Go inward instead of outward.
Because the number two is outward in.
Something happens inside of you?
Heart attack.
I was trying to give you a clue.
I didn't get it.
What is it?
Surprise throwing up.
When people just turn and throw up and then all of a sudden you're like, well, that's
a can of Campbell's chunky soup.
Or like you immediately start,
I immediately started thinking of the prop people
having to make fake puke.
And clean it up time and time again.
Take, next take, you have to clean it up and do it again.
You don't mind it like when they're retching
and it's clearly gonna throw up,
but you don't want like surprise throwing up.
Right, there's for a little while,
I guess this was more on TV shows.
People would just turn and barf, like surprise style.
And it bummed me out every time
because I couldn't look away fast enough.
It's so gross.
It's so gross.
What do you hate in movies,
besides the length and being there?
I don't like the crazy camera shakiness.
Like I get carsick from a movie so quickly.
That's like trying to be like actual point of view of a person,
so they're making it all wobbly and shit.
Like Cloverfield?
Yes, I'm watching this because it's a movie,
so please get the fucking camera on a tripod
and leave it there.
If you can't do that with the dialogue
and the fucking action and everything like that quit it quit. Yeah
You know, I also don't like when they use a really like a Dolby
deep bass sound as a scare tactic in like
and the movie theaters when you're yes when like
Will Smith was the in the vampire world and it was just the zombie, fast zombie,
vampire type people and him left in the world.
And he turns a corner and there's just a pack
of them standing there and it goes,
boom, like that.
But it literally feels like a car crashed
into the building or something.
It's the craziest, anyway.
That doesn't happen in real life. Maybe it's the craziest. Anyway. Like that doesn't happen in real life.
Maybe that's like the sound of him
like shitting his pants or something like that.
Yeah.
Inside, it put inside.
Yeah, but God forbid something happens to you
where a Dolby Atmos level bass hits you.
That's when you know.
And that's when you know it's peak podcasting.
And that's when you know it's peak podcasting. And that's when you know the best podcast is playing.
What do you got?
What's going on with you?
That's why I just talk for 20 minutes.
That's all I got.
That's all you got?
That's all I got.
I keep trying to watch Shogun
and being put asleep by the subtitles
and then going into a Shogun dream state
that I don't have a problem with at all, but it isn't
I have no idea where I am in the show. I'm not I get that
I'm not ready to recommend Nan Hunt yet because I need to give it a little more time
The one about you know, John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln, although I love that they're showing John Wilkes Booth like a little bitch
Like he's such a little like fuck boy bitch in it.
He's so dislikable, congrats to the actor.
He's like playing it so like such a little bitch.
Like a true actor.
Like a true.
He's playing an actor playing an actor.
He is and it's going well.
That time period usually bores me, Civil War,
but Vince wanted to watch it.
But I actually am interested in it, so that's a good thing.
They're bringing it to life.
That's the one, I know Patton's in that.
Patton Hussle is in that, yes,
playing himself essentially in the Civil War,
which is a good thing,
because he's so hilarious, but.
That's funny. Yeah, yeah, it's good.
I think a midpoint recommendation is kind of very
reflective of the times we live in.
Don't you?
Because we don't trust anything anymore?
Yeah, and because like it's so hard
to only look at one thing.
So you have to be absolutely unbelievable
in a very perfectly for me way
to keep my eyes off of the phone
while I'm watching TV.
It's that kind of thing.
Right, I heard something that was like,
they now dumb down TV shows so that
for the people who are on their phones
while they're watching, so they can follow along.
Like it can't be that complicated now
because it's for like people on multiple screens
or something like that at the same time.
I get that theory,
although do you think they did that with succession?
I don't.
I think maybe some people are doing that,
but it's like people who are actually good at making TV
are like, that's okay, we'll lose those people.
Yeah, we don't want them.
I mean, those are people that can say to the executives,
no notes, please.
No, we're not taking notes today, pardon me.
No notes.
Or if you're in a relationship like me
and you see your spouse or your partner or whatever
on their phone while we're watching something
and you go, what's wrong?
Because you're like, get off your phone.
We're supposed to be watching this together.
Like you're not allowed to be on your phone
when you're watching something together.
It's like a forced shared experience
that you have to stay in.
I thought we were doing this.
Otherwise I'd go up and read by myself.
You know?
Like I'm here with you.
We're fucking in this TV show together.
I'm gonna need you to like pay attention for both of us.
Or he'll be like, do you want me to pause it?
So you can text whoever you're texting
and then get back in there. But that is codependency. Well, I don't know though, because I think that's,
I think a lot of people go through that same thing because the fun of like there's not,
I think there's nothing more fun than when you are watching something with your significant other
and you're both into it. I will never forget when we binged Battlestar Galactica
literally for a weekend and like weren't sleeping and stuff
because we were like, just keep going, just keep watching.
And it was the best.
One more?
Yes.
I love that.
So we're all trying to get that
Battlestar Galactica high back, I think.
Yeah, get me to the point of relationship
where we're fucking watching series on a couch.
Like that for me, fuck dating for me,
that's like peak relationship.
Who is going to find the trick,
like it's past dating apps, dating anything,
bring in the AI where you just get matched
to share a couch with someone.
Like you get a spooning, it's a spooning match.
It's much harder, it's harder.
I'm not saying this is gonna be easy,
but when it gets done,
that person that figures it out
is going to make a billion dollars.
You have to enjoy spooning.
You have to like have this right body temperature
that matches,
cause if one person runs hot and then runs cold,
then it's like a mess, you know, that kind of thing.
Oh, yep.
And you have to like almost exactly
the same kind of entertainment, Oh, yep. And you have to like, almost exactly the same kind of entertainment
because if someone goes AWOL
and just is suddenly watching like, whatever,
I don't wanna name something that people love, but.
The me going, you can watch that on your own.
That's what happens.
It's an any sports channel and you're like,
okay, that's my, you're asking me to leave silently.
So I will.
Roadhouse, goodbye.
The new Roadhouse, not interested.
I wanna see it though.
I wanna see.
Then swatched it.
Apparently Jake Gyllenhaal is cut.
And I don't know, it's not really Roadhouse in his mind,
something like that.
Oh, he's doing something else?
I don't know.
It's violent.
I said, I'm gonna go read.
Enjoy that.
Goodbye. Goodbye. I feel like Jake Gy gonna go read. Enjoy that. Goodbye.
Goodbye.
I feel like Jake Gyllenhaal's been very cut for a while
and not really getting the credit
that I think he maybe wants or deserves.
But did you ever watch the movie Nightcrawler?
Yes, because he's all, it's scary cut.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
It's like intensely, it's aggressive.
Why are you so cut?
It's scaring people.
You're sharp, you're too sharp.
Sharp faced, sharp chested, sharp, yes.
And he's gonna do something bad.
It's aggressive, I don't know why.
I like it.
Something about it is, you do.
Bring it on, yes.
Not into it, not into it.
Here's the thing you can imagine.
This is a person that's going to get things taken care of.
That's all.
Why is that so bad to want that all the time?
I guess, I guess.
But they're also gonna wanna hike on the weekend, you know?
Yeah, and like hit the gym with you.
That's when I go read.
That's true.
You take what we call now a reading dip and just leave.
This is where we practice being independent.
Bye.
No, I can't do it.
I need to be near you all the time.
What if something happens?
All right, well, we did that.
Should we do it?
We did it.
Guys, if you're listening for the first time to any podcast, we just did a thing roughly
10 minutes longer than anyone normally does it.
They get upset.
We don't care.
That's part of the thing.
Welcome.
If you didn't like how long that was, most of them are much shorter.
Yeah.
And you can skip it.
You can go skip, skip, skip.
We won't be offended.
No big deal.
We want you to have agency over your own podcasting experience in whatever way and however that
means to you.
That's right.
That's right. We're all about that agency over yourself.
Can you fucking imagine?
Can you imagine in this country,
women having agency over their own fucking body?
The thought it's just too happy and exciting
to even consider.
It's too 2006.
Yeah, there and we also make it a little political
and then we're done.
Here we go.
Yeah. Okay. Hey, we have a a little political and then we're done. Here we go.
Yeah.
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All right. I'm going to tell you a story now. Are you ready for this part to begin?
Let's do it. Okay. Well, this, strangely enough, and this is how our researchers have story ideas, usually
from us, sometimes found by our producers, but they're months in advance.
So we have a whole system.
It's really beautiful.
So much better than the system we used to have, which is I would write mine the day
of or just not finish it.
So this research starts by saying that I found this
story over on Twitter, we'll call it Twitter, and it was a tweet that was posted by at history
in memes on Twitter. And basically it told the story of this event. And I had never heard
of this event. And I was like, is this is this real could this be real so I sent it to
Marin and she's like it is in fact real I've I know about this and so we decided to do this story
So today I'm gonna tell you about a disaster that took place at the end of World War two in the heart of New York City
And the resilient woman who miraculously survived it
So you may not know this, Georgia,
but when they finish the Empire State Building in 1931,
it is the world's tallest building.
It had 102 floors of Art Deco grandeur,
standing in Midtown Manhattan
at a record-breaking 1,250 feet.
That doesn't sound high enough for me
for how big that building is, but it is.
Yeah, back then it was, wow, would you look at that?
It was, come on, that's more than three.
Hey, say, would you look at that?
That's more than three.
So this architectural feat becomes New York City's
newest source of pride.
Here's a little quote I pulled directly from
the Empire State Building Wikipedia page, which is a hoot if you want to go over there while
Vince is watching something you don't want to watch. The building has been named one
of the seven wonders of the modern world by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and
it was ranked first on the American Institute of Architects list of America's favorite architecture in 2007. So
Empire State Building has been a hit from the day it was built all the way through. But on the day
it was opened, a New York Fire Department captain at the time named Patrick Walsh has his concerns.
Well, we have a friend named Patrick Walsh.
Yeah, we know some Patrick Walsh's in our
lives. So the Empire State Building's offices can hold up to 35,000 people, which is a logistical
nightmare in the event of an emergency situation. And because pilots at that time and now are
permitted to fly as low as 1,100 feet over New York City. Uh-oh, I see the math.
The math doesn't add up.
Are you bringing it all together?
So the buildings on precedent at height
poses a new sort of threat to air traffic in the area.
Yet despite these concerns,
the building passes the fire department's inspection
and it opens on May 1st, 1931.
Thousands of New Yorkers file into this building,
make themselves at home in
their new spectacular workplace and among them is 20 year old elevator
operator Betty Lou Oliver. She has taken a job for some extra cash but by
summertime her fiance has returned home from the war so just a few months on the
job Betty Lou puts in her notice, but as fate would have it,
Betty Lou's last day at work is very nearly her last day alive.
This is the story of the 1945 Empire State Building plane crash.
Damn.
The main sources used in today's story are an article from History Collection entitled
****** which pretty much lays this story out for you kind of clearly.
That's why I've stopped reading the titles of the articles that we use in our show notes.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, maybe I should leave that one out.
Can we bleep that whole thing out, Alejandra?
Yes.
Entitled, beep!
That mystery history collection article was written by a writer named Patrick
Lynch.
Also, the Division 7 Training and Safety newsletter for July of August 2020 talks about this from
the website fdny'sbravest.com.
They also, there's a bunch of pictures they have on that website that are amazing.
And the person that I think put those pictures together, I don't think he took them, I think
he put them together, somebody named Michael Dick.
Okay, the rest of the sources are in our show notes if you want to know more about this.
So I take you now to Saturday, July 28th, 1945.
It's Betty Oliver's last day as an elevator operator at the Empire State Building.
World War
II is inching toward its final moments overseas and there's a celebratory
feeling in and around basically the entire country. But I bet you kind of
being in and around Manhattan was pretty unbelievable.
Totally. Although on this day you wouldn't actually be thinking about
anything celebratory. It's dreary and it's humid outside.
And there's a heavy fog that gives the city
a quiet kind of sleepy feeling.
But despite the weather and the fact that it's the weekend,
for many it's business as usual that day.
That's the case for 27 year old
Lieutenant Colonel William Smith Jr.
He's an experienced pilot.
He's flown many combat missions during the war
in both France and Germany.
Today, his assignment is stateside.
He will be flying a converted North American B-25 Mitchell bomber nicknamed old John Feather Merchant.
The fucking longest worst nickname of all time.
What is that?
Old John Feather Merchant.
That's elitism in our military.
That's the rich guys getting to fly the planes,
in my opinion, or something else
that I just don't know about.
So basically, the old John Feather merchant
was used to transfer military VIPs
from an army airfield in Massachusetts
down to the Newark airport in good old New Jersey,
Dirty Jersey.
This is a medium-sized bomber plane
with two propeller engines.
It has all of its guns removed, obviously,
and it weighs around 12 tons.
So it's like an old timey plane
like you'd see in World War II.
Yeah, I think it's like,
you know those ones that can turn on their back
and they pivot around because there's two things in the front.
It's like, it's one of those.
OK.
So on board is 31 year old Staff Sergeant Krister Demetrovich.
He's an experienced pilot in his own right.
He is actually the guy who converted this specific aircraft from a warplane
to one used in civilian airspace.
And although Sergeant Demetrovich is not the
co-pilot on today's flight, he is sitting in the co-pilot seat. Also on the flight is 19-year-old
Albert Perna. He is an aviation machinist's mate for the Navy. He recently lost his brother Anthony
in the war, so he is catching this flight home to see his bereaved parents who live in Brooklyn
Albert isn't actually supposed to be on this flight
He asked to hop on just before takeoff and lieutenant Colonel Smith who of course didn't want any more passengers felt sorry for Albert
Understood that he needed to be with his family and let him on board
Damn it. Mm-hmm. And then on the return trip to Massachusetts
They're planning to pick up one Colonel Harris
Rogner who will join them from Newark. So at 8.52 a.m. with Lieutenant Colonel Smith at the helm,
flight 0577 takes off from Bedford, Massachusetts heading to Newark, New Jersey. So up and down
the East Coast now, there's heavy cloud coverage, there's fog, and there's rain. But even though
the weather's bad,
Smith is flying by what are called visual flight rules.
He's relying on his own eyesight and visual cues,
like buildings, the placement of the sun, specific terrain,
to navigate the plane.
Usually in that low of visibility,
a pilot would fly by instrument,
which means they're relying on the equipment
in the flight deck, like GPS or altimeters.
But according to a write-up by the FDNY, this is not an option because
Lieutenant Smith's superiors think that the instruments will be bombarded
with civilian air traffic correspondence once they get, you know, close to Manhattan.
So they're basically saying, don't do any of that and keep it all clear
and just do it by sight. Which is, you know, strange in a bunch of fog and rain.
Yeah. Yeah. So as Lieutenant Colonel Smith flies over Long Island, he starts losing visibility,
but he presses on until he reaches LaGuardia airspace in Queens. But the scene at LaGuardia
is kind of chaotic. It's very crowded and Smith's
flight isn't actually scheduled to land there. And it so happens that another radio plane is buzzing
around in the airspace and it's lost contact with the controllers. So understandably the LaGuardia
flight controllers aren't happy about having to coordinate with this unexpected flight 0577.
So they assigned Lieutenant Colonel Smith a holding pattern over the Bronx.
And after some time passes, they give him the green light to head into Newark.
But he's given a warning because of all the fog, the top of the Empire State Building
is not currently visible.
Oh dear.
So it is not totally clear what happens next, but most onlookers think that Smith, as he
was flying from LaGuardia toward Newark, he gets confused about where he is, because the
plan was to cut across Manhattan, then head south when he passes over the Hudson River
into New Jersey.
But according to one PBS correspondent, Smith isn't familiar with the geography of New York
City. But according to one PBS correspondent, Smith isn't familiar with the geography of New York
City.
He seems to mistake the East River, which is east of Manhattan, for the Hudson River,
which is west of Manhattan.
So basically he didn't realize there were two bodies of water on either side of the
island.
Oh dear, you think you know that.
Yeah.
You're flying.
I mean, or that's just, I think that's a theory though, because no one really knows
what happened.
Yeah.
So that causes him to turn the plane south before he cuts across.
So then either to get underneath the fog or because he thinks it's time to descend into
Newark's airports airspace, Lieutenant Colonel Smith drops down to an elevation of around
650 feet.
But then once they get underneath the fog, he suddenly realizes his miscalculation.
He can see that he is flying a B-25 bomber at 250 miles an hour right down the heart of Manhattan.
So according to FDNY's Bravest, the website,
they say quote,
"'Lieutenant Colonel Smith narrowly missed
the Grand Central Office Building
near Park Avenue at the 22nd floor.
Flight 0577 banked and narrowly missed the building
and then narrowly missed 500 Fifth Avenue.
The B-25 Mitchell bomber was flying so close
to the buildings that occupants in the buildings
surrounding the plane could see the faces of the people in the cockpit.
The loud roar and the vibration shook items off of shelves and tables.
Holy shit, how terrifying.
Yeah.
So they were in it.
Suddenly in it.
Suddenly in it.
Oh my God.
Lieutenant Colonel Smith tries his best to retract the landing gear and steer the aircraft
upwards, but as old John Feather Merchant sharply ascends back upwards toward the clouds,
an unmistakable sight appears ahead rushing toward them fast, the Empire State Building.
Lieutenant Colonel Smith tries to clear the building as he steers old John Feather Merchant
sharply toward the sky, but it is too late. At 9.40 AM, the
old warplane crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building.
Have you ever heard of this disaster?
I've seen photos of it.
Have you? Okay.
Yeah. Sorry. Yes.
I never had. I was like...
It's crazy. I mean, it's not a story that's told very often.
I just feel like if I lived in New York City,
I would tell everybody the second I saw or met them.
Yeah.
Like, did you know this?
You point up and be like, see that building?
Okay, so because the plane is loaded
with around 800 gallons of fuel,
Oh no.
a huge fireball erupts on impact,
reaching nearly 100 feet high.
Windows explode, including a few all the way up
on the observation deck, which is 30 floors up.
Smoke envelops the entire top of the building
as it rocks back and forth
like it's being hit with extreme winds.
If there's one bright spot in this story
is that it is a Saturday.
So fewer people than normal
are inside of the Empire State Building on this day, but it is not a quiet
morning. There are office workers, there's a handful of elevator operators,
and even though it's foggy outside, there's multiple people on the
observation deck, including a US Army lieutenant named Alan Amon, who is there
with his wife. He is one of the first people to see the plane emerge
from the clouds, can you imagine?
Oh my God, the terror.
You're 102 stories in the air,
and all of a sudden, I'm sure they heard it first,
but then you see-
He probably thought he was having like a flashback
or something, if he was in the fucking war.
Yeah, that's right.
So he sees this plane,
he immediately throws his wife to the ground
and like jumps on top of her trying to protect her. And from the ground, they feel the impact,
of course, and then they feel the heat from the explosion. And then they feel the building sway
beneath them. And they described it as like a tree in a tropical storm kind of feeling like crazy.
described it as like a tree in a tropical storm kind of feeling like crazy,
but somehow they're kept safe up on the observation deck.
So it doesn't like the explosion doesn't just go upward
and take off the top of the building or anything.
Lieutenant Colonel William Smith Jr,
Sergeant Demetrovich and Albert Perna die instantly.
On the 79th floor, 18 people are working
at the offices of Catholic War Relief Services
and 10 of them are killed.
Whoa.
One man is actually shot out of the building
and lands on a sort of overhang a few four floors below
and dies on impact.
Oh my God.
Which must've been just shocking.
But those who aren't killed are of course absolutely panicked
This scene is horrifying. There's people who are injured who are burned
They're desperately trying to find the safest route down to the ground level as they do debris from the plane blasts through the opposite
exterior wall of
The floor it crashed into the 79th floor
of the floor it crashed into, the 79th floor. So basically it's obviously big enough
where it took a second, it hit,
and then it all had to push through
and came out the other side
and crashes down onto 33rd Street
and onto the nearby buildings.
Okay, yeah, the people on the ground,
I'm like, what's happening to them?
Oh yeah, hopefully they're running. Yeah.
Horrifically, the plane's nose and engine
continue moving throughout the floor.
So pieces of the nose smash through a nearby elevator bank
and a reception area, killing more people,
throwing several elevator operators out of their elevators.
And there's Betty Lou Oliver in her elevator.
She is thrown from her post on the 80th floor.
So she's above it.
She's the floor above.
And this violent action breaks her back,
her neck and her pelvis.
And she's burnt in the flames.
Oh my God.
But she actually survives.
The blast is so loud that several nearby fire stations
dispatch to the Empire State Building before alarms even come in for them to do
so. They're like, yep, we got, we got to go. So at least two fires are raging
simultaneously, one on the 78th and 79th floors and then another, so that's just
one big fire. And then another in the Astoria building next door on the 33rd
street side where the plane blasted through. So the other, so the Astoria building next door on the 33rd street side where the plane blasted through.
So the other, so the Astoria building caught on fire.
And inside the Empire State Building,
firefighters use the few operational service elevators
they can to get up to the 67th floor.
That's as high as they can go.
So from there, they have to get off the elevator,
take all their gear and walk up 11 floors
to get to where the fire is on the 78th floor.
As they put that out, dozens of doctors, nurses and EMTs begin to filter in and rescue as
many people as they can.
So people just started going up there, which is so New York City, so beautiful New York
City.
I love that place.
So people moving around go like, you get out of the way. Are you okay? Are you okay? I
heard a lady say that on the street one time and girl dropped her mirror. She clearly just
bought this huge mirror at Home Goods. And it's a super busy word. Seventh Avenue walking
up like a human highway and she drops this mirror
and everybody is like, and like backs up and freezes and then she looks around and everyone
goes, Oh my God, are you okay? And this old lady busts through the crowd and then like
throws her arm forward pointing at the girl and goes, No, are you okay?
Oh my God. I want that woman around in an emergency.
Right?
That's like, she's actually going to get shit taken care of.
Yeah.
So let's pretend that she also went up to the 78th floor.
Okay.
So the first responders are able to find Betty Oliver
among the rubble.
They put her on a stretcher.
They're like, if she's gonna survive all of this,
I mean, she's horribly, horribly harmed.
She has to get to the hospital immediately.
They take her down to the 75th floor
and take her on the one elevator
that they can still use, elevator six,
and they load her up onto it.
What they don't realize is that there's a third fire
raging inside of the building in the sub cellar
in the Empire State Building.
So one of the plane's engines went into an elevator shaft
and fell downward and spread flames as it went.
What? That's like a movie.
Yes. So in the process, the cables connecting
some of the elevator cars to the shaft are frayed.
And as soon as EMTs slide Betty's stretcher
onto the elevator, the cable snap
and an already badly wounded Betty plummets
a staggering 75 floors down to the bottom
of the Empire State Building.
It is a 1000 foot drop.
Holy shit.
Horrifying.
So meanwhile, down at street level,
there's a 17 year old pharmacist mate
from the Coast Guard named Donald Maloney.
And he runs into a Walgreens,
which is like, this is 1945,
and Walgreens were such a part of my life when I lived in New York
City.
And the idea that it's like, oh yeah, they've always been, that is like third star of the
show is Walgreens in Manhattan.
Okay, so he's, Donald is visiting New York.
He planned actually on going up to the Empire State Building observation deck that morning.
He's changing his plan now.
He goes into triage mode.
He runs into the pharmacy.
He has them give him morphine, syringes, needles,
first aid kits, bandages, rubbing alcohol,
any other supplies that he can hold.
And he runs into the Empire State Building
and just tries to, his plan is he's just gonna go
wherever anybody needs him and thinking that he's gonna
maybe take an elevator and go up.
But now none of the elevators are operational.
But then Donald notices a downed elevator, elevator six,
and he convinces a team of firefighters to come with him
and help him check it out.
So he was just kind of like a do-gooder from the street.
Who it was like, luckily all of these military men
who had all this training and who, it was like, luckily all of these military men who had
all this training and women, I'm sure, were just like there on hand and not scared of
a horrifying thing because they've just been living through horrifying things.
I mean, the idea of running into a disaster is so heroic and like,
that's how I'd hope I would react in a situation.
I know, I know, I know I wouldn't.
Okay, so the impact from the 75 floor drop has jammed the elevator doors.
So the firemen cut a hole in the side of the elevator to try to access the car.
And when they do, they find Betty trapped under fallen debris. And so now on top of
all of her other horrible injuries, she's got two broken legs, but by some miracle,
she is alive. So Maloney is the only one small enough who can fit through the opening that
they cut. So he climbs inside the elevator and helps get Betty out. And because of her
injuries and because of how small the opening was that they cut in the elevator and helps get Betty out. And because of her injuries and because of
how small the opening was that they cut in the elevator, it takes them an hour to get
her out of this elevator car. And then she's rushed in an ambulance to the hospital. So
24 people are hurt in the crash of flight 0577, but the injuries Betty sustains are by far the worst
of anyone.
Oh my God.
But in just eight months time,
she makes a full recovery.
Whoa.
Of course, our whole flight crew that we said already
and 11 other people die inside the Empire State Building
that day, bringing the death toll to 14.
And along with 14 lives lost,
about a million dollars in damage is done to the building,
which would be the equivalent of?
A million dollars in 1945 is 6.8 million.
17 million.
Whoa. I know.
I thought I was going too high.
Damn. No, you have going too high. Damn.
No, you have to go high, high.
But on Monday, July 30th, 1945,
less than 48 hours after the crash,
most of the offices in the building
are open for business again.
What?
No, thank you.
I'll work from home.
Did they have that back then?
I'll work from home.
They're like, nope.
That was back when they were really against work from home.
It takes them three months for all of the repairs to be completed.
And all that remains of the crash afterwards is a piece of charred limestone, which has
been kept in memory of the lives lost in the disaster.
So in very Manhattan business style, they were like, okay, and now we fix it,
and now we keep going.
Yeah.
One of the reasons most of us do not know
about this shocking disaster is because one week after it,
the US bombs Hiroshima, bringing World War II to an end.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
As for the miracle of Betty Lou Oliver's survival, inspection of elevator six's crash site leads
experts to believe that two things helped protect her from meeting an untimely end in that elevator.
First of all, I have had so many dreams of a snapped elevator cable and just like falling
in an elevator.
Have you ever had that dream?
No, but I, it's a nightmare. Yeah. It's such a horrible idea. snapped elevator cable and just like falling in an elevator. Have you ever had that dream?
No, but it's a nightmare, yeah.
It's such a horrible idea.
It's such a scary, scary thing.
But here's the upside to think about it.
The snapped elevator cable fell and then coiled
at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
So it actually ended up providing
a little bit of a cushion.
Okay, that makes sense, yeah.
Then the rapid drop of the elevator
in a space as tightly enclosed as the elevator shaft
created a pillar of compressed air
that actually slowed the elevator's drop just enough
to prevent total devastation.
So it wasn't the free fall that you would think it would be.
Yeah, some kind of hydraulic thing happened.
Some sort of science happened
that we don't need to worry about.
Hey, engineers, let us know what that's called.
Hey, engineers, can you just make it
so that when that happens in the future,
that pillar of air is stronger than the force of gravity
and it just gets sent back up to the floor
it needs to go to?
It's a big request, we'll work on it later
after the fascists are gone.
While it takes Betty eight months to make a full recovery,
she returns to the Empire State Building
just five months later on a pair of crutches.
Why, honey, no.
Because she wants to ride the elevator
to the top of the building, that's right.
Betty. Betty Oliver gets into an elevator and goes to the top.
Bad luck. Betty is brave. It turns out.
She is like, I will make my own luck. Thank you.
I will take this whole story back.
Also, I remember the elevator ride in the, in the Empire State Building.
It's a pretty smallish elevator, feels small,
like many things do in New York City.
And I started getting a little panicky in that elevator.
So the idea that that woman went through
what she went through and was like,
I'm doing it anyway, is so badass.
Like, I love her so much for that.
Like, I can't, she's like,
I can't be afraid of this my whole life.
I'm gonna do it again.
She must have, right?
Because that would be so, so scary.
I know, I know.
Okay.
Amazing, amazing.
The good news is Betty Oliver, she heals completely.
She moves to Fort Smith, Arizona with her husband.
She has three kids.
She has seven grandkids.
She has a healthy, fulfilling life for the next 54 years.
And she passes away on November 24th, 1999 at the age of 74.
And to this day, she is still in the Guinness Book of World Records for tallest elevator
crash survival.
Wow.
And that is the story of the 1945 Empire State Building
plane crash.
Damn.
Betty.
That's great.
I didn't know the story.
I'd seen the photos.
Vague description, but that is terrifying.
Horrifying.
Terrifying.
She broke her back, her hip, both legs.
Her pelvis.
Her pelvis. Man pelvis. Yeah.
Ah, man.
Did anyone else survive in the elevator?
Do you know?
They put her stretcher on and the elevator broke.
She was alone.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I thought she was like with other people.
No.
Oh, what a bummer.
No.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
Oh man. Fuck that. Fuck Yeah. Oh, man.
Fuck that.
Fuck that.
Yes, for sure.
For sure.
Yeah, her original horrible injuries
were from the explosion.
Yeah.
So and then it's like, OK, we got you.
We're going to get you to the hospital.
She's like, finally.
I'm on a stretcher.
We're going.
Let's do this.
Let's get this going.
And bye.
Fucking goodbye.
Oh, my god.
Five months later, she's like, hi. I'm back bitches.
I'm back bitches for real. Her and the Mothman walk in. I don't know if you're a member of
the fan cult or not or if you follow us on social media, but if you are or do, then you
might have seen me wearing a piece of clothing from Quince.
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Oh, falling alone.
Her shitty job that she didn't even want to be at anymore.
Last day.
She's about to
that's like a from lethal weapon where it's like I'm about to retire, but
here's one more call. Oh my God. Also, I was just saying to Alejandra, I was like, I'm doing the
story, but I'm like, what's coming up next if that's the first story? Right. Well, what's interesting
about my story, so you don't have to use too much brain power and imagination, we're staying in
Manhattan. Yes. I love it there. We're going power and imagination. We're staying in Manhattan.
Yes. I love it there.
We're going to stay there.
We're going to go to when the Empire State Building was being built in the
thirties. So like, don't even like, don't worry about it.
Don't even get up from the couch right now.
Close your eyes. Now we're going to let you close your eyes and listen to this
podcast.
Yeah.
This is great. And you can just tell we have great producers and everything on this podcast because these
stories go together.
Yes.
Nice.
So today I'm covering a story about an attorney who led a massive prostitution racketeering
investigation.
And I'm going to be using the word prostitution as it is in the legal sense a few times in
the story.
To take down mafioso kingpin, everyone's favorite,
Charles Lucky Luciano in the 1930s.
By showing compassion to the city's sex worker community,
this attorney is able to set herself, yes herself,
apart from her colleagues as a person these women could trust
enough to talk to openly.
At the same time, she fended off corrupt
police to build her case against the notorious mobster. And she did it all as one of New
York's first female African-American lawyers. Whoa. Yeah. This is the story of New York
assistant district attorney, Eunice Carter. Eunice. Eunice. Great name. This is one of
those stories where like, why don't we have like a national holiday every
year for this woman?
She's incredible.
We should talk about her more.
What a badass.
Here we go.
The main sources used in today's story include an essay from the Mob Museum website with
no author listed and an article on medium provided by the National District Attorneys Association
All other sources are listed in the show notes and there's a book. I'm gonna tell you to read at the end. So get your
Pencils ready. Did people use pencils anymore? I mean, you know me in my number two Dixon Dixon Ticonderoga
That's right. And I have a vintage pencil sharpener on my wall, but I don't use it. It just looks cool
Did you mount it? Mm-hmm. Nice. I'm gonna send you some unsharpened pencils That's right. And I have a vintage pencil sharpener on my wall, but I don't use it. It just looks cool.
Did you mount it?
Mm-hmm.
Nice. I'm going to send you some unsharpened pencils.
Okay. So first I want to tell you about Eunice Carter. She's born in Atlanta, Georgia on
July 16th, 1899. She comes from a prominent, accomplished black family. Before the Civil
War, her paternal grandfather, Stanton
Huntington, convinced his plantation owner
to let him buy his own freedom.
He managed to purchase his brother Ben's freedom
from a plantation in Mississippi,
and the two fled to Chatham, Ontario, Canada,
where Stanton helped abolitionist John Brown organize
the 1859 Slave Rev revolt on Harper's Ferry.
So this is all manhunt time.
Stanton's son, Eunice's father, William Alfius Hunton,
got a college education while living in Canada
and went on to found the black division of the YMCA.
Eunice's mother, Addie Waits Hunton,
is impressive in her own right,
having been the first black graduate
at Spencerian College of Commerce in Philadelphia.
So like, I'm lazy, that's it.
Look, compare and despair.
We can't be looking at people
that we are reading stories about
and be like I should be like them.
It's not over for us yet.
That's true.
Her mother works as a teacher, a social worker, and even sales to France
to serve in World War I in 1918 as one of just three black women in an all-black American unit.
Wow. I wonder if Bessie Coleman was over there with her.
Oh my god. Being the daughter of two prominent college-educated black parents in the early 1900s,
of course, puts Eunice in a truly unique elite family.
Even as they thrive, the family still no stranger to racism
and are vocal against bigotry in both their work lives
and their personal lives.
But when the Atlanta race massacre of September 1906
leaves dozens of innocent black people injured or dead,
the Hutton family decides to leave Atlanta
and move up north
to Brooklyn, New York.
Eunice is a product of her tough ancestry, and so she never lets the threat of hate get
in her way.
She excels in school and earns two degrees from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
She earns the two degrees at the same time.
So she's just like, you know what, I'm here.
I might as well make the most of it.
So she earns a bachelor's and a master's of social work
in 1921 at the same time.
Wow.
I literally couldn't go to class
and half of my classes were theater classes
and I couldn't bother.
Don't compare. Nope, comparing to spare. We're not Eunice.
We're not. Her husband, Lyle Carter, Eunice and Lyle, can you even? That's the best.
The best grandparents name ever. So who she marries in 1924, he's no slouch either. He's
one of the most prominent dentists in New York working in Harlem.
They have a son together named Lyle Carter Jr. in November of 1925.
Okay, so here we are.
Eunice follows in her mother's footsteps and serves as a social worker in New York and
New Jersey for 11 years.
She also serves alongside her mother in the 1927 Pan-African Congress, one of a series
of eight meetings
where black leaders and thinkers joined together
for the cause of peace and decolonization
in Africa and the West Indies.
And as rewarding as the Pan-African Congress experience
is for Eunice,
she doesn't find social work that stimulating.
She thought it would be a lot more interesting.
So she starts taking night classes at Fordham Law School.
She's the first African-American woman
to graduate from Fordham.
And she does it in just two years, graduating in 1932.
Come on.
Graduating from law school in two years?
While still working full time as a supervisor in the Harlem
division of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee.
Wow. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. She passes the New York Bar Exam, of course she does, in 1933
and immediately starts making a name for herself in both legal and political circles. She's hand
selected to join what's called the National Council of Negro Women, which is a nonprofit that helps improve the lives
of African-American women.
She's chosen by the organization's founder,
Mary McLeod Bethune.
But it's the recognition she gets from New York Mayor
Fiorello LaGuardia, what's up LaGuardia?
And the state special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey,
that will come to define her career
as she's named New York's first black female
assistant district attorney in 1935.
Wow.
I know.
Great.
Like fucking, that's historic.
That's historic.
It's huge and it's 30 years before people started fighting
for their civil rights.
Right, right.
Just like an accomplishment in an era and a time
where the racism was just like coming from every direction.
Yeah.
A given, like, ugh, God.
So with organized crime on the rise,
special prosecutor Dewey has been instructed
to build a team of lawyers
to try and dismantle these crime syndicates. So organized crime is like a big fucking deal
at the time. Prohibition had just ended in 1933, but at that point, I mean, the mobsters
had taken over everything, you know, in the city. And so Dewey wants to dismantle the
crime syndicates. Twenty lawyers are picked for this job,
a team nicknamed the 20 Against the Underworld.
And all of them save for Eunice are white men.
Wow.
Yeah.
Although I feel like if she was a lawyer,
that probably was how everything was anyway for her.
Yeah, totally.
She's like, yep, it's just another day.
Yeah, this is what I expected.
So as impressive as Eunice is,
her brilliance, talent, and hard work
are still undervalued because she's a black woman, of course.
So while the rest of her colleagues
are focused on dismantling organized crime syndicates,
Eunice is left fielding general complaints
from New York residents about organized crime issues. So it's thankless
work but Eunice rolls up her sleeves and handily does her job. Among the cheap
complaints she hears from citizens is about the uptick in the number of sex
workers around the city. They seem to be present on almost every street corner,
there's tons of brothels, and because sex work carried even more stigma at this
time than it does now, the outcry on supposed quote moral grounds is too much for Eunice to ignore, so she has
to go after it. So she unfortunately prosecutes many women for the crime of prostitution.
And for a while, these trials make up the bulk of her caseload. But in interviewing
and cross-examining dozens of sex workers,
as well as other witnesses for her cases,
Eunice quickly realizes something no one else sees.
These women aren't working independently,
they're being trafficked.
And the man at the top of the trafficking scheme
is none other than mob boss, Charles Lucky Luciano.
So she's like in it, still in the fucking mob scene.
Yeah. So let's talk about Charles Lucky Luciano for a minute.
After immigrating from Sicily to the Lower East Side of Manhattan
at eight years old in 1906, Charles Lucky Luciano quickly found gambling
and learned that he could make more money for his family on the streets
than he could by any legal means.
At just 14 years old, he drops out of school and starts his own gang.
Yeah.
Hey, you know what I'm going to do?
He's an entrepreneur.
And his gang gets looped in with the infamous Five Points Gang, which is comprised mostly
of Irish American immigrants.
And so Luciano and his gang make their money by charging local Jewish kids 10 cents per week
for protection from the other Irish and Italian gangs.
Which is like, it's like, it's just mind boggling.
It's always about oppressing the lesser,
the people who have less,
the people who are socially seen as less.
Making a dime off of some oppression
is the name of the game in this country.
That's right.
By 1920, at the age of 22, Luciano is recruited
as a gunman and bootlegger by the Genovese family,
which is of course one of the biggest Italian mobs
in New York.
You know, Karen, you love.
I love to talk about the Genovese crime family.
Mm-hmm.
And he's recruited by their leader at the time, Joe Masaria.
So when another one of Masaria's recruits
leaves to work for another crime family,
I'm going to say this name wrong, the Castellamarise.
Castellamarise.
There you go.
Castellamarise.
Yeah, you had to get your hand way up in the air.
I really did it.
Castellamar safe clan.
Masuria has Luciano arrange the revenge kill.
So this triggers a mafia war that lasts from February 1930
through April 1931.
And the war leaves several mob bosses dead,
which gives the now 33-year-old Luciano
the opportunity he needs to take over
as what's called the boss of bosses
in New York's organized crime network.
Hey, hey, it's me, the boss of bosses.
That was from my one-woman show, Lucky Luciano.
He's finally home.
Mama, I'm coming home.
Luciano uses his newfound power to establish a central governing body that all American
crime families must answer to, which he calls the commission in 1931.
So this really is like the height of the mafia takeover.
They take over every facet of businesses, you know, that they can, essentially drug
running and prostitution and what other ones, I don't know.
Being rude on the street, spitting.
Spitting, yeah.
Spitting, littering.
As the head of the commission,
he sets up streamlined operations for crimes
ranging from, oh, here it is, drug dealing
to illegal gambling, forgot about that one.
Oh yeah, gambling.
Loan sharking, there's another good one.
Extortion, that's another one.
And much more.
Today he's considered the father
of modern American organized crime.
So like he kind of took it to the next level, you know?
Yeah, well he was so organized that Lucky.
He was, and he was lucky.
And he was so lucky.
And he was just fun.
Yeah, everyone loved Lucky.
Everyone loved him and was not scared of him at all.
So between 1960 to 1936, Luciano is arrested a total of 25 times for various charges,
including insult, insult? Nope, not insult.
No.
Assault, that other one.
Yeah.
Blackmail, robbery, but none of them ever stick. He always walks
free, but thanks to the diligent work and keen observations of assistant district attorney,
Eunice Carter, that's all about to change. Okay. So as Eunice works the small time prostitution
cases that have been shoved onto her, like without a second thought, she's already thinking
beyond. And she notices some similarities between the defendants. First, their defenses all seem to
be the same, even if the cases are unrelated. She thinks it's as if these women, whether they know
each other or not, have been coached by the same person on what to say. Second, many of the sex
workers arrested in brothels, raids, or on street corners have the same lawyer.
And whenever this lawyer is involved,
none of their charges seem to stick
and they're released quickly.
So the pimps, or as they're called bookers,
they use the same lawyer as well.
And they too seem to always evade serving any jail time.
So she's like putting it together.
And third, many of these sex workers use the same bondsman for their prompt releases. So it's like kind of obvious to her. But the
most remarkable thing Eunice does is something no one else was willing to do or even thought
about doing. She talks to the sex workers like they're people.
Huh. Interesting.
Imagine that. Where everyone else looks down on these women
as discardable sinners, Eunice listens intently
to their stories about being forced into sex work
and needing to pay their mobster bosses 50% of their earnings
if they want to be, quote, protected.
She sympathizes with their struggles,
and she earns their trust.
And as the women divulge more information regarding
who they work for, the easier it is for
Eunice to put together a clear picture of what has really been going on. These aren't just women
trying to earn a buck. This is a prostitution racket run amok. There's enough evidence to
warrant a raid on dozens of brothels across Manhattan, Brooklyn, thanks to Eunice. But
before they execute the warrant,
Eunice is like, hold on a second,
here's one other problem that we face.
That is that many of the vice cops,
who are the cops who typically handle crime
related to sex work,
they've been corrupted and paid off by the mobsters.
Huh.
So she's like, you can't trust those guys,
don't send those guys in.
Like she fucking basically plans the whole outing.
Probably because she always had to be
is always 10 steps ahead.
Right.
So it just benefits her because she's super smart,
but she's also a black woman in a white man's world
and being like, all right, well, I have to think this
through about 16 different ways.
So here we go, watch this.
It's not enough to be good like everyone else is.
You have to be extraordinary.
Yeah.
So Dewey heeds Eunice's advice, which is rad.
And on February 2nd, 1936, he has 160 police officers outside of the vice squad
conduct raids on somewhere between 80 to 200 brothels.
The numbers are conflicting. That's still a lot
of brothels. This leads to the arrest of more than 100 sex workers and madams. Unfortunately,
these women have all been coached so well by their bookers and bosses that most of them refuse to
talk. The point is to arrest them to get after the higher ups. But Eunice, having earned the trust of
many of these women already, manages to get three of them to talk more openly on the record by mid-March of 1936.
And so these three women all point to the Italian mafia as the ones being responsible for the prostitution racket, and they all name Luciano as the head of operations.
But even more importantly, because of Eunice, they all agree to testify against Luciano in court.
I mean, that really is, she must have been so good
because how scary, it's like,
would you like to testify against essentially the devil?
The head of the devil?
The Sicilian devil that lives in the Bronx
or wherever you said, God.
Yeah, who knows who you are? My God, seriously.
So all that Eunice Dewey and the prosecution team need now
is Luciano in custody.
But essentially in late March of 1936,
just days after Eunice secures her critical
witness testimonies,
Luciano gets tipped off about his impending arrest.
He flees to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Oh. Have you been there?
No, is that the place where during the pandemic
all those people went and got into that pool?
There was like a picture going around of like,
Oh yeah.
I'm almost positive.
Oh my God.
But I could be, I'm so sorry Arkansas, if I'm wrong.
But I think that was like, no, we're doing it.
We don't care.
We're hanging out in the pool, which is gross enough
when there's not a fucking pandemic going on.
So he stays successfully hidden for about a week.
But then, and this is where I think he needs to stop
going by the moniker Lucky because it's like not true.
Okay.
Because a New York detective with no relation to the case
is in Hot Springs working a case of his own
and he sees Luciano and just like hanging out.
Just by chance.
Yeah, just by chance.
So he notifies Dewey, they issue a criminal warrant.
And on April 3rd, 1936, Arkansas police find and arrest
Charles, not so lucky Luciano.
And he's extradited back to New York
where he's arraigned on 90 counts of compulsory prostitution, basically meaning forcing people into sex work.
So his trial begins in May 1936, and even though Dewey is wildly impressed with Eunice's
investigation work, he still passes her over for the job of actually trying Luciano in
court.
Instead, he selects three white men from his team to take the case.
He does, however, appoint Eunice as a handler of sorts for the witnesses, since the women
testifying only trust her. While Luciano has skilled lawyers and an endless swell of confidence,
he's ultimately no match for the evidence laid out against him. Dewey and his team grill
the mob boss about phone calls and other monetary ties between him and the sex work
operation he built, tripping him up and catching him in lies on the stand. They also expose
him as a criminal by pointing out the fact that he manages to wear expensive clothes,
eat at fancy restaurants, and have all the trappings of wealth while only claiming $22,000
of yearly income on his taxes.
Oh.
He's just, he's spendthrift. He's income on his taxes. Oh.
He's just, he's spendthrift.
He's just spendthrift.
Yeah, he's saving.
He's like, fast fashion, you guys.
It's just fast fashion.
All of this coupled with the damning testimonies
delivered by the key witnesses Eunice secured
leads to Luciano's conviction.
So on June 7th, 1936, he's found guilty on 62 of the 90 counts of
compulsory prostitution against him, and he's sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison.
However, when World War II breaks out in 1942, Luciano does get a lucky break. The U.S. Navy
intelligence team has a growing concern that Italian and or German troops might try and attack America by entering New York's waterfront.
And that area is largely controlled by the Italian mob.
So in exchange for providing information to the US Navy about the inner workings of that waterfront, Luciano gets the sentence commuted, like for the good of America, I guess. And he's released on January 3rd, 1946,
after serving about 10 years in prison.
But they're like, you can get out, you can help us,
but you don't get to stay in America.
And so a judge rules for Luciano to be deported.
And so in 1946, he boards a ship back to Naples, Italy.
So that's that.
Back to Eunice, Luciano's conviction propels Dewey's popularity enough
to win him the governorship of New York from 1943 to 1954. So even though Eunice is the one who made
the conviction a reality, but despite never getting quite the credit she deserves, she continues on to
have an illustrious career of her own. Dewey does thank her by appointing her
as the chief of the Special Sessions Bureau
of the New York County Criminal Justice System in 1937,
a job that tasks her with overseeing
more than 14,000 misdemeanor cases a year
and makes her one of the highest paid black lawyers
in the country during this time.
Good.
Yes.
In 1945, Eunice expands her talents to the global stage
as she participates in the founding meetings
of the United Nations.
Wow.
I know. She takes on even media roles
as the UN gains traction, serving as chair
for several committees that promoted advancements
for women internationally through the 1950s and 60s.
She's a huge champion of black women and women in general. That's not enough. She also serves on the
International Council of Women, the National Association of Women Lawyers, the New York
Women's Bar Association, the YWCA and the Harlem Lawyers Association. She's busy. She's so busy.
She's doing it. She spends the rest of her life upholding her family's
fierce tenacity for black progress and success
before passing away on January 25th, 1970 in New York
at just 70 years old.
Today her legacy is kept alive by her grandson,
Yale professor, Stephen L. Carter.
He's written a book detailing Eunice's triumphs
called Invisible, The Forgotten Story
of the Black Woman Lawyer
Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster,
which was published in 2018.
And that is the story of New York Assistant District Attorney,
Eunice Carter.
Incredible.
Okay, so I am now remembering,
someone sent me that book, Steven L. Carter's book, Invisible,
because I have talked about,
I don't know if I talked about Eunice
in relation to a different case.
Right, yes.
From one of the cases that we did
maybe at a live show in New York.
Yeah, yeah, I'm remembering this now.
But it's truly like pre-COVID.
Please forgive me.
Somebody sent me this book with a letter in it talking about they were related to Eunice.
Yeah, I totally remember this.
I don't think it was Steven Carter though.
At first I was like, I think the person that wrote the book or the relative or whatever,
but I don't think it was.
And also I feel like if I looked around my house,
I could find the book,
because I think it's in my front room.
I'm looking on my bookshelf right now.
I bet I have it too.
Yes, we've talked about Eunice on this show before,
I believe, I believe.
But I love the focus being on her entirely.
How incredible is that?
Like mobsters, like no one fucks with the mob.
That's like, you don't do that.
And she was like, hold my purse.
She's like, I'm smarter than everybody.
I'm going to do something.
And why not go up against the people?
Because there's part of it where it's like,
oh, I better do it,
because there's so many of these people on the take
that it won't work.
If I'm on the outside,
I'm using being on the outside to make this happen.
Right, wild.
Amazing.
That felt like a short episode,
but it wasn't, it turns out.
It just went by so fast.
Yeah.
Great job, that was a great story.
Thank you.
And thank you guys for listening
and for listening to your first podcast.
You're so brave, we're proud of you.
How was it?
Most of them are not this long. No, or this good. Or this like swear based.
But you know, there's a bunch of other ones. So you should listen to those too.
Absolutely. Get on it. Yeah, do it. Download, rate, review, subscribe.
And also, oh, this is really important, stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
This episode was mixed by Liana Squillace.
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Ali Elkin.
Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com.
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Goodbye!