My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 426 - Hell Never
Episode Date: May 2, 2024This week, Georgia covers the murder of Donna Doll and Karen tells the story of the Hindenburg Disaster. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Learn more about your ...ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstark.
That's Karen Kilgarriff.
Dottie's in the house.
That's Mimi.
Oh.
How dare you, Karen?
I just saw a tail going like this.
I didn't see a face.
Your favorite, Mimi.
Mimi!
Angry Mimi.
Since our last episode, I think everything is changing.
Yeah?
How are you?
Everything in the world.
You going through some existential shit? No, I'm talking about the world.
The world is going through some existential shit.
Yeah, nothing to be surprised by.
Well, but as a Gen Xer who is from a culture of people
in a time where being political was not cool
and it was kind of frowned upon,
watching college students rise up in this way against not only genocide, but against basically kind
of everything.
Like it is, it just gives me the chills.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah.
It's like rising up against ignoring and or funding genocide, one would say.
Yeah.
And then getting just trampled for it.
Did you see the thing where there's a refugee encampment in Gaza and they wrote like, thank
you Columbia students?
No.
They wrote all these messages in English saying like,
thank you to these 19 year olds
who are just like holding their own in the face of,
I mean, it's just so, it's so fucking cool.
It is, I'm at the very end of a, not post-apocalyptic,
like current apocalyptic, How does that sound?
Everything- Plain apocalyptic.
Yeah. Just like it's crappening right now kind of thing. And so I'm feeling a little like I can't
stomach a lot of the news because the apocalyptic stuff in this book isn't that far-fetched.
It takes place in like 2090. So it's like- Based on reality.
Yeah. Yeah. It's happening. like 2090. So it's like based on reality. Yeah,
yeah. It's happening. Yeah. So yeah, that's rough. You didn't say it was a book at first. So I'm just
like, what? Where are you? Where are you? What's happening with you? Well, what I really love too
is then it's like student protests combining with now there's going to be a women's strike on June 24th.
There's like a, it's time to rise up.
It's time to rise up.
Yeah.
What a vibe.
I love it.
The time has come.
Women's strike on June 24th.
If you can, don't go to work.
Don't do anything.
As a woman, you show people how valuable women are and the fact that we have to fight
to have the same bodily autonomy as men in 2024
is disgusting and ridiculous.
And it needs to be changed immediately.
And if you can't not work, wear a red shirt and stand up.
We have to do something.
Something has to change.
I love that.
Take inspiration from college students all across this nation.
Stand up.
Oh, I wanted to tell you.
So there's this four part synanon, the cult synanon documentary on HBO.
Vince and I have been watching.
It's great.
And the beginning of it, the beginning of Synanon,
what became a cult was in Los Angeles in the 60s.
It's kind of like a drug rehab type of place.
And so I was like, I wonder if my parents
ever went to Synanon, because they were in LA,
you know, they're from LA,
and they were like teenagers at the time.
So I texted my mom first being like,
if anyone joined a cult, it's my mom.
And she was like, no, no, I heard about it,
but I never went.
Cause they had like a house in Santa Monica
that was like the hangout house.
It sounded fricking amazing.
And so then I text my dad and I was like,
maybe one of my uncles went or something.
And my dad was like, yeah, I went there a few times.
My dad went to fucking Synanon.
Hell yeah, like, because it was a hipster.
I mean, when I covered this, we talked about it.
Yes.
Oh, I have the episode number that you covered.
You covered Synanon in episode 132.
It's called Awful Peanut.
I wonder why.
I have no idea.
Oh, and my dad told me he's fine with me
sharing the story, by the way. But he said he went because he went to AA meetings there.
Yeah. And I asked him if he ever met the psycho leader and saw the yelling circles that they had.
Because they talk about that in the cult. And he's like, I watched it once and it was very
uncomfortable. But otherwise it was just like regular AA meetings.
Marty witnessed the inception of Synanon, which is incredible because Marty witnesses
the inception and then cut to like six-year-old me in the back of my parents' car watching
the Synanon people.
By that point, they were wearing all white robes
with shaved heads riding their bikes down country roads.
So like in the middle of truly nowhere,
here's just some people with shaved heads who are like,
it was so intense.
You gotta watch the documentary.
There's so much footage of that time that is just like,
and seeing how it slowly became inescapable is
so interesting. Also, the reason he stopped going is because he was dating my mom at the
time they were in college and she was worried that he was going to meet someone, a hot lady.
At Synanon?
At an AA meeting, which is like, okay, that shows you where I get my co-dependence from,
for sure.
And also didn't, but didn't they use like beautiful women to get them to come?
It made it like the cool place to go to AIA.
Yeah, yeah.
He said that and then he said, I mean, there was a beautiful older lady there and then
she was beautiful, but I left.
I was like, okay, so she was right.
My mom was right.
She was right.
But yeah, but vibes count too.
And the vibe was way off, I'm sure in that place.
And also it's just so fascinating because a lot of the things that they developed by that guy and in that group
are the things that were based on these those horrible schools like the Elon school.
The stuff we've talked about about the kidnapping and taking your kid to like, we're gonna make it all okay schools.
Those are all people that like kind of stole it from that.
We'll just sit you in a chair and scream at you.
This is what's best, tough love.
The kid part is really hard to watch
because it's just breaks my fucking heart so much.
But this is why you need to ask your parents
the craziest thing that happened to them
when they were younger, you know,
because they might be hiding the fact that they went to a cult before it was a cult.
Marty, yeah, I went through, I kind of, I audited some classes there.
I feel like he'd be way too chill to join a cult. He'd just be like, can we all calm
down please? It's like a nap.
The second they're like, Marty, shave your head. He's like, I've got to go.
Thank you so much for everything.
That is good.
That's all I have this week.
What about you?
No, I got nothing.
But we do have a network where we can talk about the highlights.
Want to do that instead?
We sure do.
Yeah, let's do it.
We have a podcast network.
It's called Exactly Right Media.
Hey, here are some highlights.
Hey, there's a new episode at Memmifem animated on the Exactly Right YouTube channel called
Box City from Minisode 366.
It's very funny.
Michelle Butoh and Jordan Carlos are joined on adulting by comedian Lisa Trager, co-host
of That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast.
She's so funny.
She's so funny. And the final episode of The Butterfly King is out now. Host Becky Milligan
finally gets to the truth about the mysterious death of King Boris. Binge the whole series now.
The Butterfly King is such an incredible limited series that Blanchard House made basically for
us and with us and we love it so much. So please give it a listen.
That Unburied Bones, Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes cover the servant girl Annihilator,
an unidentified serial killer who preyed on the city of Austin, Texas in the 1880s. Crazy
story.
And also on a lighter note, we really apologize. We underestimated how much you would all love
our new hot dog merch. So Aaron Brown, he's in charge of all of that, is working on restocking all of those items
as soon as possible.
But please in the meantime, go look at the My Favorite Murder merch store.
There's a new SSDGM muscle shirt in there for summertime.
There's a bunch of stuff to look at.
And then you can also get ready for your hot dog merch when it's back
I love it. I already ordered one for me and Vince love it
It's like epic hot dog summer instead of hot girl summer
Listen there are a lot of people in life who can give maternal advice sisters aunts and even
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Am I first?
Yeah, you're first.
Okay. Well, look, I hate to tell you this, but I'm about to do a classic cold case.
It's one of those stories that you always see on the threads of like what's a cold case that should have been solved by now or a cold case that has some weird details in it,
because this one does. And yet it hasn't been solved. It should and it could. So I'm going to
cover the unsolved murder of Donna Doll. The main sources used in today's story include
an article from Northern Star by Stuart Warren, an article from Medium by Fatim Hemraj,
and an article from the Chicago Tribune
by Angie Leventis Lorgos and Becky Schleicherman.
And all the other sources are listed in the show notes.
So just a little background on Donna Doll.
She's born in 1949 and raised in Brookfield, Illinois.
She is bright, hardworking, and she is very responsible
because she has to be as the eldest of four children.
It's that thing where I think, especially back in the day,
the eldest child became like a surrogate parent
and was expected to essentially parent the younger kids.
Especially the oldest sister.
Right, oh right.
It was a given, you didn't even get to choose. No,
I can't imagine that life where it's just like all she had these chores. She had to babysit.
Even her friends were like, she always had like chores to do. She could never hang out,
but she doesn't let that get in the way of her academic achievements. She is super smart. She
gets good grades. She's a member of the National Honor Society. Her dream is to become a Russian language teacher,
which is like, that sounds hard.
Oh, my god.
I think Russian is one of the hardest languages, isn't it?
Let's say yes. It's got to be.
Backwards R's and stuff.
She is described by her peers as never wild, innocent.
When she graduates from her local high school in 1967,
she ranks 15th in her class.
Oh, wow.
Which is wild.
So how many kids were in my class?
Because I was the last one.
Were you?
I was ranked the last.
I have to have been.
I have to have been.
So that's impressive.
She gets a scholarship to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
It's a farm town.
It's 74 miles west of Chicago.
So you think it's close to Chicago. Maybe it's metropolitan. It's a farm town. It's 74 miles west of Chicago. So you think it's close to
Chicago, maybe it's metropolitan. It's not. It is rural at the time, corn fields, and
everyone thinks of it as a safe place, even though it's a college town. By the fall semester
of her senior year of college, where she's majoring in Russian. It's 1970, she's 21 years old and she is deep in
her honors studies while also working part time at the Swen Parsons Library on the campus.
But she also has a busy social life. I think when she moved away to college, suddenly she
had less responsibilities than she, you know what I mean?
It's like imagine. Yeah. She's like finally breaking free. Yeah, I have free time. I'm a college student. Like I just, I think she like
flourished and had a life of her own there. And so she is able to make more friends. She goes to
parties. She goes on dates for the first time. In fact, she has her first boyfriend, a graduate
student at NIU studying math named Charles. I kind of don't want to add his last name.
You can find it anywhere, but he's a suspect, obviously,
his boyfriend, but he was never charged.
And he's still living and working out there in the world.
It feels a little weird to say his last name.
What do you think?
Yeah, you can just say her boyfriend, Charles.
Yeah, okay, her boyfriend, Charles.
But Donna's childhood best friend, Donna Charlotte, doesn't really like Charles. Yeah, okay. Her boyfriend, Charles. But Donna's childhood best friend, Donna Charlotte,
doesn't really like Charles. I'm going to call her Donna Charlotte because they're both named
Donna and that's confusing. So Donna Charlotte often describes Charles as controlling and possessive
and she wants better for her friend. And so when Donna returns from a summer long foreign language program in the summer of
1970 and has a new love interest, her friend, Donna Charlotte, is really happy for her.
This man is older and there's not much known about him.
He's either still married or recently divorced.
So while her friend approves of her new partner, her parents aren't really thrilled about it.
So we don't know a lot about him. In any case, Donna breaks things off with Charles for this new guy that she met. And it doesn't
sit well with Charles. So in the fall of 1970, Donna and her best friend, Donna Charlotte,
are going to hang out and catch up after they've both been busy doing their own things. So Donna
Charlotte is going gonna pick up Donna
from her job at the library once her shift ends at 10 p.m.
on Friday, October 2nd, 1970,
so they can grab coffee and go for a walk.
When the day comes, Donna Charlotte arrives
at the library and a little after 10 as planned,
she waits about 20 minutes for her friend,
but Donna never shows.
And she just figures something must have come up
or that Donna forgot about their plans.
And so she drives off without thinking twice about it.
But two more days go by and no one has seen Donna.
Her house parents, which are basically like the assistants
of the dorm house, you know, RAs, call the DeKalb police on Sunday, October 4th, 1970,
at 1130 p.m. and report Donna missing.
So it's been two days, which we all know is not good.
Yeah.
To wait that long.
So police go and search Donna's room.
They find her clothes, her suitcase, and her allergy medication,
which is a total necessity for Donna.
It's all still there.
There's also a paycheck from her library job left uncashed.
And it's figured out that she probably couldn't have
more than $10 on her wherever she is.
And it's unlike Donna to leave without a warning.
So what do the police do?
They figure she left to go hang out with her boyfriend.
Mm-hmm.
As they do, despite her not
having brought anything, which is not how you go visit anyone.
I mean, everybody talk, we all talk about it all the time, but it's like the runaway
built in excuse for police to not have to look into things is so frustrating. In hindsight,
it's like this is so egregiously lazy.
Yeah, absolutely. So, police just chalked the whole thing up to a secret weekend meetup with her boyfriend.
The end. Another day goes by and then another. Donna misses her little sister, Becky's 10th birthday party back home in Brookfield.
She misses classes, which is totally unlike her. And so the Doll family is sick with worry,
as are all of Donna's friends,
including her now ex-boyfriend, Charles.
He organizes a search party to look for her
in all the areas surrounding campus.
So he's the one who's like,
-"This isn't normal." -"Yeah."
And organizes a search party.
But no sign of Donna turns up.
Okay, so then, at about 8. at about 8 30 PM on October 11th,
1970 three local teens are on their way to a party.
And I guess maybe this is a normal rule thing,
but they have alcohol stashes like in the fields,
like in cornfields, they'll be like, here's where we keep all our alcohol.
We grab it on the way to the party.
Yeah. Well, cause you'd get someone, you'd probably,
what we call tap shoulder at a 7-Eleven,
get some old weirdo to buy you your liquor.
But then you can't put it in your parents' refrigerator.
You can't, right?
So you have to put it somewhere where you won't get caught.
Totally, totally.
So they stop at their secret booze stash to pick up beer.
It's a remote part of a cornfield in DeKalb,
just over a mile west of NIU's campus.
And one of the teens, a first year college student,
hops out of a station wagon, runs into the tall grass,
growing from the ditch along the side of the road
to grab the beer.
And instead he finds the body of a woman
laying on her back beneath a tree.
Of course, he's with other people.
He like demands that they don't look.
He like saved them from having to see this,
which is, you know, heroic.
He hops back in the car and they drive straight
to the police department to report what they found.
Police follow the kids back and find the body.
And so at 3 a.m. Charles, the ex-boyfriend,
gets worried about police finding a body.
He's the one to come and identify 21 year old Donna Doll,
and she's dead.
So here's a couple of weird things.
So Donna's body is found fully clothed,
except her shoes aren't there and her purse isn't there,
and they're never found.
Her trench coat isn't found either.
However, she is in a jacket, it's not hers.
Like just whose fucking jacket was that?
I've just, I find little clues like that
should have had someone come forward, but they don't.
Well, also it tells you that there was something else,
a bunch of other things perhaps that happened in between.
It wasn't just this linear kind of thing,
which is also upsetting to think about.
Yeah.
Donna's body shows no signs of struggle
or any kind of violent altercation.
That indicates to them that she probably knew the killer,
but I don't know how,
if someone holds a gun to your head,
I'm not gonna fight, you know what I mean? It doesn't mean that.
It's the same thing when they're like,
she opened her front door to a stranger,
she would never do that.
People do that, it happens.
Especially when strangers have uniforms,
things that you're like, oh, this is a male man,
this is trustworthy, whoever.
Totally.
According to the pathologists,
Donna was most likely suffocated
with either a pillowcase or a
plastic bag. There are, however, no fibers found in her airways, which is unusual because that's
actually an indicator of death by suffocation. So that part's strange as well. Records at the
library show Donna had clocked out of work at 9.59 on October 2nd, 1970. And remember her friend
was there at 10 o'clock. So she just missed something by minutes.
And police find mysterious substances present
in her toxicology report.
Although the science at the time
isn't able to properly identify these substances.
And it's like, can we please fucking test those now?
But the other part that's really weird
is what pathologists find in Donna's stomach.
Somehow she had consumed
somewhere between five to six pounds of potatoes before her death.
What?
Uh-huh. And for context, one large russet potato weighs roughly one pound. So that would be five
to six large russet potatoes, which totally gives me the movie Seven vibes.
Right. Yeah. Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That some very mentally ill person had some strange plot in their head or, I mean, God,
that's weird.
That's really bizarre detail.
Yeah.
And then also like the fact that they could have missed back then, you know, a needle
mark or
something that had shown. I don't know, like it just the toxicology stuff is weird to me that they
think she didn't fight back because she knew the person. That's just so, it's such a weird assumption.
I don't know. Well, also when it could be anything, then all assumptions are just that, right? It's
like, what can you actually,
because the first thing I think of
is there's somebody hiding in the library
as she's closing it.
Totally.
And then she's surprised by someone,
maybe someone she's recognized from library
and doesn't think, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
Did I close down with you and then it turns, but God.
And also like she clocked out,
so someone was waiting outside for her. And then it turns, but God. And also like she clocked out.
So someone was waiting outside for her.
She clocked out and a minute later,
her friend was waiting for her and didn't see anything.
So something happened right then that was so quick.
So, yeah.
Interestingly, the search party
that Donna's ex Charles had arranged
came just a quarter mile short
of where Donna's body was finally found.
And the site where Donna's body was found
is very close to Charles' apartment building.
So that does seem like one of those things
where it's like he's trying to involve himself.
But I think wouldn't he have stumbled upon the body?
Maybe he just hadn't done it yet.
Maybe he was keeping them away from the body.
Right. Right.
They were so close and they
didn't find it. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. So these facts, coupled with Charles's reportedly
possessive behavior and his being upset over being dumped by Donna, mark Charles as the police's
prime suspect. But the day after Charles is named a suspect, he attempts to take his own life.
So they're like, OK, is he doing this
because he feels guilty having killed Donna?
Or is he maybe just upset that the woman he loves died?
It's one of those things.
And after the attempt on his own life,
Charles is admitted into the University Health Services
Hospital.
And even before he checks out, he
retains a lawyer for himself named Ed Dietrich.
On October 20, 1970, the lawyer puts out a statement
via the DeKalb Chronicle on Charles' behalf,
saying Charles has been quote,
quite emotionally disturbed, end quote, by Donna's death,
but that he's quote, been extremely cooperative
with police working 20 out of 24 hours with them, end quote.
So I don't know, yeah, does that mean
they've just questioned him that long? I don't know. Yeah. Does that mean they've just questioned him that long?
I don't know.
And he said that he even offered to take a polygraph test.
Through all their efforts and conversation with Charles, police never get enough evidence
to charge him with Donna's murder.
And this unnamed boyfriend in Pennsylvania is also questioned.
And he tells police he hasn't spoken to Donna in days and that he was nowhere near DeKalb
at the time of the murder.
And so police quickly dropped him as a suspect.
So Donna lived a pretty quiet life.
She only had two love interests.
They were both ruled out as suspects,
or at least they don't have enough evidence
to charge either of them.
And the police prospects of solving her case dry up
and the case goes cold.
So the ex-boyfriend Charles moves on with his life.
When anyone tries to get in contact with him
for a news story about it, he always
just says no comment, which is his right to do.
Donna's friends and family have sadly never gotten the answers
they so desperately crave.
But in 2010, DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott
tells the Chicago Tribune
that the case remains open, quote, with the hopes that somewhere along the line,
something will materialize that will make a difference, end quote. And that is the story
of the strange unsolved murder of Donna Doll. Whoa. I know you hate it. I know you hate it.
Well, also, I don't know why, but that felt fast.
And so it's just like, and what,
did something happen recently or like,
that's just sitting there.
That's just sitting there.
It's just sitting there waiting
for some other thing to turn up to help solve it.
And there's these like little clues that make you think
like, oh, somewhere in these little,
somewhere in here in these little clues is the answer
and everything will be explained.
Like whose jacket was she wearing?
And what's the deal with the potatoes?
And you'll finally figure it out, you know?
And like, I don't know,
it's just these kinds of cases drive me fucking crazy.
Yeah, yes.
Wow.
And so many of these cold cases feel like
we're getting to a point in history where
they could be solved.
You know, I know it's not an easy thing to do.
Their funds aren't there, but.
The funds are there.
They're not using them for what they need to be using them for.
I'll fucking say it again.
But like when you said, oh, it's they should test that now.
It's like, but do they have, do they still have this evidence?
Do they still have the materials?
Like it requires that kind of like pristine, what's the word for it? Like archival evidence
collecting. Yeah. Yeah. Archival evidence that like not every, it's just so frustrating. I know.
The worst are when it's like there was a fire in the 80s that destroyed the evidence
room or whatever it is.
There was a flood that destroyed all the evidence from before 1990 or they destroyed all evidence
and anything that happened before, you know, when they moved to a new fucking facility.
Like that shit happens all the time.
Yeah.
There should be some sort of a federal law passed about cold cases.
And I don't know what it should be.
And I certainly can't make it up. But it's like, we should start acting like cold cases
are still important police work that has to get taken care of.
Yeah. Did you see a dude last week confessed on his deathbed to a case from 2000 that he
killed a mother and her like 10 year old daughter on his deathbed.
Yeah. Wow. Maybe we'll get more of those. I mean, this is what you like. You like this
frustrating feeling. That's what it is. I like it. I like a mystery. I do. I mean, I don't like it.
I want to solve it. I just think the answer's there and it drives me crazy that I can't find it.
I become fixated when I think the answer is there.
And it's incredibly satisfying when that case, you know, like you just said, that the deathbed confession or something is somebody goes through it,
or there's a new detective that actually gets back into it and re-questions people.
The victims deserve to have justice and their killer answer for their crimes.
So I just am always thinking about those cases.
Yeah. Well, good. Thank you for that. That was good.
Thank you.
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Oh, goodbye.
Goodbye.
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Goodbye.
Let's take a 180 degree turn.
Please.
But towards something equally terrible, but
just in a different way.
Okay, today I'm going to tell you all about the infamous air disaster that changed the
course of air travel as we know it.
It's March of 1936 and most of the world is unaware that World War II is on the horizon.
Hitler's hell bent on making Germany a global fascist superpower.
And because of this, the German engineered rigid airship or dirigible called LZ 129 Hindenburg,
which is one of the first passenger aircrafts capable of flying across the Atlantic Ocean,
becomes the ultimate symbol of German might.
It's 808 feet long, 135 feet in diameter. It's referred to as the Titanic of the sky.
Oh dear.
Which is a little bit kind of ominous. And they call it that because it's almost the same length
that the Titanic was 882 feet.
So it's like, you know, this is also gigantic,
but the comparison would turn out to be more apt
than anyone could have ever guessed.
This is the story of the Hindenburg disaster.
Fuck yeah.
Right.
How big is that?
How many football fields?
Is that at least one,
that's a one football field size, right?
It's the size of a ship.
800, it's a ship's length.
That's a large flying machine.
That's gotta be two and a half football fields.
I have no idea.
If you knew how many feet were in a yard, we could, we can maybe do it that way.
If I know how many yards were in a football field.
If we watch football, ever, except for when my dad forces me to.
The main sources for today's story are an essay from airships.net, your favorite website
and mine, and an article from Smithsonian Magazine by Donovan Webster.
And all the rest of our sources are in our show notes.
Please go look if you're interested in reading more about this.
Okay, first I'm going to talk to you about dirigibles. Finally,
which I think is this,
it is this part of history that is so fascinating where it's like for a little
while people thought this would be the way we're going to get around.
It works like this. So we can do it like this.
There's a dirigible docking station on top of that that or there was on the top of the Empire State Building.
What's a dirigible? Will you tell me?
A dirigible is the Hindenburg. It's a big rigid airship. Yes, I will tell you about it.
Blimp? Like it's like a blimp kind of.
Yes, there are type of aircraft that fly using a contained gas like helium or hydrogen.
fly using a contained gas like helium or hydrogen, different from blimps in that a dirigible
or a rigid airship has a skeletal structure
that holds the balloon-like shape
rather than the shape coming when the balloon is inflated,
which is what a blimp is.
So basically it's like it has a built structure,
like a little skeleton inside there that keeps that shape.
I'll describe all of this to you.
I wish you would, sorry.
Because I'm answering you like I know,
and I absolutely do not.
So in rigid airships or dirgibles,
the gas is stored in smaller balloons or cells
that line the airship's interior.
And that creates more space for passenger cabins,
dining rooms, and other rooms that
you would find in a commercial airship.
And so the flagship brand of Rigid Airships is the Zeppelin, which was invented by German
general and inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin for his company Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.
And that name becomes so synonymous with airship travel that most people refer to rigid airships
as zeppelins, even though they were crafted by many other companies much in the same way
as we call hot tubs jacuzzis because of the great jacuzzi family or Q-tips cotton swabs.
I'm going to think of seven more examples.
There you go, tissues.
So the first Zeppelin, the LZ-1, takes its inaugural flight in the year 1900. Wow.
Yeah, by the time Zeppelin makes the LZ-3,
six years later, it performs well enough to attract interest from the German Army.
So together Zeppelin and those army officials
improve the engineering and add features like 24-hour flight capability. During one test in
1908, a storm causes the LZ-4 to crash and burn in front of dozens of curious spectators.
But instead of that turning the public off to airship travel, German citizens becomes really invested
and enthusiastic about getting it right.
So they start donating tons of their own money
to the Zeppelin company to keep up the work
so that they keep developing.
So now other countries like England and France
wanna get in on the rigid airship game.
So they tried their hands at crafting their own airships.
During World War I, both the German army
and the British Royal Navy use dirigible in combat.
They don't actually make any significant contributions
in battle per se, but they use them.
They're not very stealth, I would think.
No, I'm just kind of like kind of slow. So the Germans would eventually come to find the real value of airships is in their commercial use.
So by 1925, passengers are able to take domestic zeppelin flights in Germany.
But the chairman of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, a man named Dr. Hugo Eckener, he set his sights on international passenger travel.
He served in the German army and then he got work as a journalist.
And while he was writing a story about the LZ-1 and the LZ-2, Dr. Ekener got so interested
in these airships that he actually joined the Zeppelin company in 1908.
Then in 1911, he became an airship captain
and he eventually worked his way up to a chairman position
planning to use his newfound power to expand the reach
and the capabilities of airship.
So he was like a big Zeppelin nerd.
So with funding from the public and the German government,
Luftschiffbau Zeppelin develops the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin,
which flies for the first time on September 18th, 1928.
And the Graf Zeppelin makes a trip from Germany to South America,
which is the first journey of its kind with passengers aboard.
Wow. How scared must those passengers have been the entire fucking time?
The level of trust and kind of like, I believe in the future and whatever you guys are doing.
Yeah.
Tough.
So the US is also working on airships of their own because we're never to be outdone.
In the early 1920s, the US establishes a dirigible airfield at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New
Jersey, but they take a slightly different approach in their design.
They use helium as their buoyant gas instead of hydrogen.
Because hydrogen is far cheaper to produce and lighter than helium, the only drawback
is hydrogen is highly flammable and helium is not.
So noting those safety concerns, the Germans also want to use helium in their zeppelins,
but wouldn't you know it, the US now has a monopoly on helium as they pass the Helium
Control Act of 1925 in order to ban its exports.
So they're business people, they see it coming, they know how to do it.
So now the Germans have no other choice
and they have to stick to hydrogen
as they construct their greatest zeppelin model yet,
the LZ 129 Hindenburg.
This ship is named in honor of the late former
German president and field marshal Paul von Hindenburg.
And it's completed in 1936.
So there's two levels on this airship.
The A deck, which houses 25 cramped two passenger cabins
and a communal dining room, a writing room and a lounge.
And then there's the B deck
and that houses all the bathrooms,
the crew mess hall and a bar.
Guests also have access
to a sealed,
pressurized smoking lounge, of course.
Oh my God, no.
Yeah, that can be entered through the bar
through a single swiveling airlock door.
Again, the Hindenburg uses hydrogen,
so extra precautions have to be taken with the smoking room
in case of course there's a hydrogen leak
so that the sparks from the
cigarettes don't ignite the entire ship. And it's next to the bar. So like go get ship face
and then then go smoke and you know be silly with your cigarette like you do when you're drunk.
Also it's a time in the world where the idea of not smoking is absolutely not a consideration.
No.
There's just no way.
No.
So there are actually bar stewards who are like posted to make sure that no one walks
out of the smoking room with a lit cigarette or a cigar in their hand.
It's that important and yet.
So the Hindenburg's technology is far more advanced than any other airship on the market at the time.
And this confirms Germany's lead position at the cutting edge of airship travel.
But at the same time, airships in general are becoming obsolete because airplane technology is on the rise.
But commercial passenger airplanes still can't cross the Atlantic Ocean.
And that won't happen until June 28th of 1939,
which is a Pan Am flight that finally does it. Meanwhile, the airship has made dozens
of successful transatlantic passenger flights, mostly from Germany to either Brazil or some
other South American countries. So I guess Germany and Brazil have long had a relationship. Why you keep going back and forth to Brazil, we ask.
Someone answer.
It'll only be a matter of time until planes can achieve the same feat, but for this short
window of time, the Hindenburg is the peak of passenger airship technology.
And because it's so impressive, it draws the attention of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph
Goebbels. So yeah, on March 7th, 1936, Nazi soldiers occupy the Rhineland, which is the
section of Western Germany that borders France. It's supposed to be a demilitarized zone,
but then Hitler writes a referendum that authorizes the remilitarization of the Rhineland and puts it to a vote for
German citizens to ratify on March 29th, 1936.
And so to make sure that the German people actually vote the way Hitler wants, Goebbels
has an idea, and that is to fly the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg over Germany to drop pro-Nazi
propaganda leaflets, encouraging everyone to vote yes
on Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland.
But when Goebbels approaches Luftschiff Bauzeppelin with this idea, Dr. Ekener refuses.
He hates Nazis.
He doesn't want to help them in any way.
He tries to say that Hindenburg needs more testing, that it's not ready to make the flight
yet.
But Goebbils makes it clear
he is not asking for Echner's permission.
So Echner just has to refuse
and another pilot named Captain Ernst Lehman takes over.
The flight's delayed when weather conditions
damaged the ship, but then the ship is quickly repaired.
They make the trip, the leaflets are dropped.
The vote goes Hitler's way, although make the trip, the leaflets are dropped, the vote goes Hitler's
way, although at that point, the fix is probably in anyway.
Then on March 31st, 1936, the Hindenburg departs on its maiden passenger voyage to Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, but Goebbels is still mad that Echener refused to fly the ship for the leaflet drop. So he makes Captain Layman pilot this first flight
instead of Echener.
And this will be the first of 17 round trip
transatlantic flights that the Hindenburg takes in 1936,
including trips to the US.
The flights last anywhere from 53 to 78 hours
when they're heading west.
I know. And 43 to 61 hours when they're heading west, I know, and 43 to 61
hours when they are heading east, all of them successful.
Wow.
That's so long, but it's not longer than taking a ship.
Yeah, and at the time probably groundbreakingly fast, you know, for that.
And you could smoke and drink the whole time.
So now the Hindenburg is proven to handle long flights,
so American Airlines charters it to shuttle passengers
from Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey,
so they can then catch connecting domestic American flights
out of the Newark airport.
Luftschiff Bausseplin signs on for the Hindenburg
to complete 10 of these round-trip flights
from Frankfurt, Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey over the course of 1937.
And the first one of these flights is scheduled to depart from Frankfurt on May 3rd, 1937
at 7.16 p.m.
There are 36 civilian passengers aboard and 61 crew members.
And while the 36 passengers make up only half the Hindenburg's 70 passenger capacity, the
flight back to Germany is fully booked because the coronation of King George and Queen Elizabeth
is coming up.
So a bunch of people are going back to London.
So the departure piloted by Captain Max Pruss goes off without a hitch.
There's some strong headwinds along the way
that kind of prolong the journey. Otherwise, everyone on board enjoys a smooth three-day ride
over the Atlantic Ocean. That's the other thing. You're not flying over land. Like you're just
flying over vast open ocean. That's stressful to me. I feel like that's stressful to us.
Yeah. That's stressful to me.
I feel like that's stressful to us. Imagine people who like have never experienced what the ocean, the vast, you know, like seen photos and
seen it out the window of a plane and
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very brave people to be like I want to be there. I want to see it for myself like
Adventurers, I'm sure also probably very rich. Okay, so
Like adventurers, I'm sure, also probably very rich. Okay, so as they approach the coast of basically Massachusetts,
you know, near Boston, around noon of May 6th, 1937,
Captain Pruss gets word that some thunderstorms
are moving in from the south.
So he redirects the Hindenburg back out over the Atlantic
so he can let the storms pass before heading back inland and south down to Lakehurst.
So this idea that you're flying in a ship that if a storm comes, like you're just going to get tossed around.
Yeah.
Imagine the turbulence on a zeppelin.
No, I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it.
No, thank you.
So this redirection puts the Hindenburg over Manhattan.
And of course, everybody suddenly gets a surprise view
of this massive airship
and it's around three o'clock in the afternoon.
Of course, it causes a huge stir.
People come running out of their offices
and out of their apartments and out onto the street
to catch a view of
it, the Hindenburg finally reaches Lakehurst around 415, but the weather conditions at
the airfield are still rocky, so Captain Pruss flies back out over the Jersey shore to wait
it out.
So finally the storms pass around 622 on May 6th, and Captain Press heads back to Lakehurst for landing. So the Hindenburg reaches
its landing site just after 7 p.m. Despite the delay, a small crowd of spectators have gathered
to watch this landing and there are a few news outlets that are on site to report the event.
Taking the wind direction into consideration, Captain Pruuss initiates a wide left turn so he can properly line the airship up with its mooring mast.
So that's basically a tower that allows you to dock an airship in the air with cables and wires before then slowly lowering it to the ground so passengers can get on and off. So to initiate descent, the crew releases some of the ship's hydrogen, but as they
head downward, the wind changes and Captain Press is forced to make another sharp turn,
resulting in a difficult S-shaped maneuver to line the ship up with the mast. And in the midst of
that, the crew has a hard time what's called trimming the ship, which means getting it to
the right altitude at the right angle, so more crewmen are sent to's called trimming the ship, which means getting it to the right altitude
at the right angle.
So more crewmen are sent to the bow of the ship
to valve more hydrogen cells, which means release it.
Then at 725, spectators on the ground,
notice the fabric above the rear fin fluttering.
Others claim that they saw a small blue flame at that time. And then everyone
watches in horror as the rear of the Hindenburg suddenly goes up in flames. This fire just
races through the airship and the airship plummets to the ground, sending flames shooting
back up through the nose of the airship like a fire-breathing dragon.
People scream in horror and run from the burning mass. On board, it's even more terrifying.
Those lucky enough not to be in direct line of the flames can hear its muffled reverberation.
The glow of the flames reaches them in what feels like a fraction of a second and forces them to jump out of the ship to the ground.
Fire races to the starboard side of the ship
and traps many of the passengers and crew,
preventing them from escaping.
Of the 12 crew members stationed in the bow of the ship,
nine are killed by the fire.
A 14-year-old boy named Werner Franz
is in his cabin when the
fire starts. He sees the flames, he's frozen in fear, and then miraculously a water tank
over his head bursts and puts the fire out that's all around him. He snaps out of his
like frozen state and he runs and actually escapes the ship. Another eight-year-old boy, eight-year-old Werner Gustav Donner, he and his brother are
thrown out of the ship by their mother.
So their mother grabs them, throws them out, she jumps out after them, she breaks her hip
when she lands, all three of them have severe burns, but they survive.
Oh my God.
So the people who jumped actually survived.
Yeah. What the
fuck. When the ship hits the ground Captain Pruss and the rest of the crew in the control car
jump out of the windows to escape. Captain Pruss has severe burns on his face but he still tries
to go back in and rescue as many survivors as he can. He's later taken to the hospital. He survives his injuries. Captain Ernest Lehman, the pilot who flew the Hindenburg for Gerbils, propaganda
leaflet drop, he's also aboard. He is rushed to the hospital with his own
injuries, but he actually dies at the hospital. The Hindenburg holds a total of
seven million cubic feet of hydrogen, but the gas is so light that the entire 808 foot
airship burns out in just over 30 seconds.
And in 30 seconds, 35 people are killed.
So the news of the Hindenburg disasters, of course, sweeps the nation, mostly in large
part to the on-scene reporting of a 31-year-old radio announcer named Herb Morrison.
And Herb's reaction to witnessing this scene, it's so raw and heart-wrenching that NBC Radio breaks its own rules
and it airs the recorded audio because at that time, news outlets usually only air live broadcasts for authenticity,
basically so it's like nobody's edited this, right? It's like real time.
So families all across America gather around their radios and they hear Herb Morrison describing this awful scene,
which at this point, I mean, you know, how many years later, I know what it sounds like.
I've heard it.
It's infamous.
Of course.
Yeah.
And so horrible.
So Morrison's describing the airship bursting into flame reach four or 500 feet into the
sky.
Onlookers watch as the wreckage comes crashing to the ground.
And then at one point, Morrison interrupts himself to urge the onlookers to get out of
the way of the blast.
And then at one
point he delivers his now infamous phrase, oh the humanity. So what caused
such a terrible disaster? Both the US and German governments launched their own
official inquiries and several theories emerge among the public. The first theory
is that an engine failure within the airship could have ignited the
hydrogen.
Dr. Ekener, however, denies this theory.
He says the heat generated from the exhaust of an engine failure would not be hot enough
to ignite the hydrogen.
The second theory is that a buildup of static electricity within the airship made its way
to the skin of the vessel.
So when the vessel
came into contact with that mooring mask, wet with rain, it created a spark that triggered
the fire.
None of the eyewitness accounts match that.
The dim blue flame that some witnesses reported seeing more closely matches another theory,
which is St. Elmo's fire. And St. Elmo's fire is a phenomenon that occurs
when weather conditions charge the air
and create plasma in the air around an object.
I don't know why that phrase
and that theory creeps me out so much.
Right.
It's almost like saying an act of God,
and then it's like, but what does that mean?
Right.
Well, it's like an act of science.
It's like all these things that are kind of always there, but we don't recognize or know
about them.
And when I say we, I mean you and I specifically.
Specifically us.
We're like, plasma?
Uh-uh, that's blood.
So because of the stormy conditions that day, it is possible that this was the cause of the fire.
But the most far out theory was that the explosion
was sabotage because the Hindenburg had Nazi ties.
Anyone with anti-Nazi motivations
could have wanted to destroy the vessel.
One of the first people to introduce this idea
is Dr. Ekener, who floats it saying that there could have been a gunshot that caused the explosion.
So he just heard about it. So he's theorizing, you know, basically third person.
But then when he learns the details of the fire, including Captain Pruess, because he navigated through several
safe journeys aboard airships and through thunderstorms.
So he has a very hard time believing the static electricity theory.
He and other suspected passenger by the name of Joseph Spie caused the fire.
Spie is a German acrobat and he was very anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler.
And he was on the ship that day.
He brought a dog with him on the flight and he kept the dog in the freight room and he
frequently visited the dog by himself.
He told everyone he was feeding the dog, but sabotage theorists suspect that he was actually
contorting himself into interior crevices to plant incendiary
devices to make the ship explode.
There's no evidence to prove this.
They basically kind of put it together from acrobat, anti-Nazi, and then a dog, I guess.
So these theories offer a lot of intrigue.
There are two official inquiries by both the German and the US governments to get to the bottom of it really happened.
They both announced their findings in summer of 1937, and they both agree that the most likely cause of the fire was some form of an accidental electrical spark,
either in the atmosphere or within the machinery of the airship itself.
Still no one's talking about the smoking room.
No, they're just like, there's no way it could, it couldn't be our precious cigarettes.
No, or like someone sneaking a cigarette and they're like somewhere they shouldn't have
been too.
Seriously.
Right?
Yes.
Two drunks are like, yeah, we have our hats, really quick.
Yeah, let's just light. Let's just slide out. Really quick. Like, come on.
So the Hindenburg disaster brings an abrupt end to the era of rigid airship travel.
Zeppelin's manufacturing wings closes its doors in 1938. The frame metal from the LZ 127 Graf
Zeppelin and Graf Zeppelin II and scrap metal from the Hindenburg are repurposed
for the construction of fixed wing airplanes
for the Luftwaffe, which is not the Nazi Air Force
in World War II.
And then when in 1939, that PNM flight
finally completes its first transatlantic flight,
all rigid airship operations are done. By 1940, it's all over with.
Then in 1993, the Zeppelin company is revived as the Zeppelin Luftschiff Technik,
GMBH, after almost 50 years of being out of commission, and they develop a new helium-based airship, the Zeppelin NT,
which stands for new technology.
They forge a partnership with Goodyear in 2011, replacing the old Goodyear blimps with
three rigid airships.
And so the first one that they make together, the Wingfoot 1, is launched on August 23rd,
2014. The Wingfoot 2 and 3 follow soon after,
and all three are still operational today.
So if you see a Goodyear blimp,
it's not actually a blimp anymore.
It's actually a dirigible or a rigid airship.
Would you ever take a flight?
Hell never.
Hell, God no.
Hell never.
While a total of 35 people died in this horrible accident, 13 passengers, 21 crew members,
and one grounds crew member,
62 people miraculously survived.
Wow.
The last survivor, Werner Gustav Donner,
the one who was eight years old at the time, he
just passed away on November 8th, 2019.
So he was the last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster.
In 1968, hangar number one, the intended hangar for the Hindenburg at the Lakehurst Naval
Station gets national historic landmark status.
And on May 6th, 1987, a memorial at the site of the Hindenburg disaster is established
to commemorate the tragedy on its 50th anniversary.
A chain outlines the body of the Hindenburg where it fell and a plaque is laid at its
center.
Today, visitors can take tours of both that hanger and the site of
the crash that pays homage to the lives lost. And that is the story of the Hindeburg disaster.
Wow. I didn't know the details of that since I was in elementary school, probably.
Right. I basically only knew, oh, the humanity. I like the fire and the reporter reacting
to it is kind of the only details
I knew. So. And the video. I mean, it's not a video. It's it's snapshots that are all
lined up to make a video probably. Right? Yeah. Newsreel. I don't know. Maybe it's newsreel.
It's probably newsreel. That is crazy that we have that footage. Yeah. Right. Wow. Great
job. Do you know, I once heard that the reason
the band Led Zeppelin was named that was because they were named something else in the beginning
and then a music critic said they were so bad, they were going to, they were going to
crash like a Led Zeppelin. Yeah. They were going to go over like a Led Zeppelin. Right.
Yup. Fuck you critic. You don't know shit. Wow. Great job.
Thank you.
That was a good one. Such a good one.
That was a great one. Wait, we need to ask our listeners right now. What are you even doing?
Oh, hey, what are you doing right now?
What are you even doing?
Hey, we now end the episode with you telling us what you're doing,
what you're even doing right now. So here's a couple of them. Okay. This says, I heard the question and I'm here to answer.
I'm a third mate on merchant ships. Most days are long coast-wise or ocean transits, standing watch
and navigating, watching blips on radar screens and going in a straight line more often than not.
So usually I'm on the bridge or ship bobbing around in the ocean at 2 a.m.,
moving our things from one place to another.
Wow. All right.
I'm typically the only woman on the ship.
So some female energy and humor is much appreciated.
Thanks for keeping me company.
Stay sexy and don't run aground, Devin.
Oh my God, that might be like the best view
anyone ever had while listening to this podcast.
You know what I mean?
Yes. Don't go to the North Sea, Devin.
Oh my God, that's amazing. Okay, mine's quick. It's a little conversation back and forth on TikTok.
Caitlin Preston says, hashtag, what are you even doing right now? I was grabbing samples at the
wastewater plant I work at. And then Annie Marie responds and says, I work for a wastewater slash stormwater utility
too. I'm on the stormwater side. And then Caitlin responds, cool. Hi, wave emoji. And
that's it. Bringing murderinos together. Wastewater besties. Hi. Wastewater murderinos. Is that
a thing? What are you even doing right now? Are you listening? Let us know in the comment.
Yes, please tell us.
And thank you guys for listening in this crazy time and place.
We are all in together by some weird coincidence or it's the matrix and here we are.
It's fate.
Either way, rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up.
Yeah, we got this.
And stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
Kalei.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?
Ah.
["Alejandra Keck's Awe"]
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.
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder and Twitter at MyFaveMurder.
Goodbye!