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76 – The Suitcase Killer & Mary Shelley (The Night Frankenstein Was Born)
44 Plays3 months ago
Jeff shares the gothic-Genesis story of Mary Shelley — how a cold, rainy summer inspired the terrifying beauty of Frankenstein. Sam delves into darkness with the chilling tale of Rosendo Rodriguez III, the “Suitcase Killer,” whose murders shocked a Texas town and left investigators piecing together a nightmare.
Visit us on Linktree for the full collection of links, our Instagram, or email us at jeffandsamshow@gmail.com.
Jeff’s Sources:
- How Mount Tambora Triggered the “Year Without a Summer” — and a Gothic Masterpiece Was Born — UCAR Science Education
- Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: A Personal History — Central Square Theater
- Frankenstein: The True Story of Mary Shelley — History.com
- The Night Frankenstein Was Born — The Real Story Behind the Classic Novel — Biblio blog
- The Birth of Frankenstein and the Roots of Gothic Horror — Utterly Interesting
Sam’s Sources:
- “Ep 3 – Rosendo Rodriguez, The Suitcase Killer” — Talk Murder With Me Podcast Apple Podcasts
- Rosendo Rodriguez III – Wikipedia Wikipedia
- Texas ‘Suitcase Killer’ Murders 2 Women and Discards Each in the Trash — The Oxygen True Crime Series Report Oxygen
- “They Pieced Together a Puzzle — and a Disturbing Picture Emerged” (Prosecutor’s Case Overview) — Texas District & County Attorneys Association article on the case. tdcaa.com
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Listener Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, can you say that one more time? We're here, we're queer, and we're fucking doing it! Okay, in three, two, one.
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, Sam. Hi, Jeffrey.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello everybody, this is the Jeff and Sam show, I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. Got it right, heck yeah, heck yeah. Just so everyone who's wondering why we're so excited about that um is aware, we just silently mouthed that to each other while the intro was playing so that Jeff remembered what this show is called, who he is, and who I am.
00:00:59
Speaker
i don't know why it's so hard from week to week, I don't even care. It's just every once in a while. It's us. It's who we are. It's how we be. know what I mean? It do be like that sometimes. It be like that sometimes. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. how are you? Good.
00:01:13
Speaker
We're going to get all the stuff out of the way. Follow us on Instagram. You can find all the stuff in the show notes. Send us recommendation if you want. Rate us, review us, leave us five stars.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah. One of these days it's going to matter. And one of these days we're going to know who likes us and who doesn't. And we will try to care. Meh, that's too much effort. Meh.
00:01:36
Speaker
We hope you like us, though. i mean, you know. I like us. I like us. I think we're pretty cool. I think we're great. I mean, i don't know about cool, but great. Some people probably don't. and They suck. That's fair. No, it's not. um So what's new? Honestly, I don't know if anything's new at all.
00:01:55
Speaker
Okay, that's really just coming off of, for context, people.
Work Exhaustion and Social Avoidance
00:01:59
Speaker
Sam and I just did four 12-hour shifts together every day. in a row.
00:02:06
Speaker
In a row. Yeah. Number one, we should be in comas today. Yes, and normally we are. Mondays are like a no-go show day for us. No-go nothing. We don't interact with people. We don't do things. But today, we had them some something. meep. Meep meep. Today, we made decision together.
00:02:23
Speaker
today we made a decision together to do this because we potentially have to do some other social things. And I was like, listen, we're just going to knock it all out in one day because i fully wholeheartedly intend to not get out of my bed tomorrow.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I'm going to get out of my bed. going to go work out because I got to drag my ass out to work out on my days off.
TV Show Recommendation: 'Defending Jacob'
00:02:53
Speaker
Hmm. and then i'm gonna come back home because it's gonna be shitty weather tomorrow yeah shitty weather tomorrow not even gonna put pants on which will be at all which will be two days ago when this comes out so when you're listening on thursday i think we might have had shitty weather on tuesday possibly and even if we didn't who cares who cares who cares not i not you Okay, so I watched a show okay i need to tell you about. Tell me about it.
00:03:21
Speaker
It's so good. It's called Defending Jacob. Okay. It's on Apple TV. Okay. there's a Jacob is like 13. Okay. Okay? And they're defending him.
00:03:33
Speaker
Who's defending him? Everybody. Like the lawyer, his dad, his mom. What did Jacob supposedly allegedly do? Murder another teenage boy. Did Jacob do it? I'm not telling you. Tell me! No. Oh my God. That was aggressive. I'm going to Google it. And I'm still not telling you. I'm going to Google it. Don't Google it. have to now. oh you don't because it'll ruin the whole ending for won't though. You know me. I have to know the ending in order to be able to enjoy the the middle.
00:03:59
Speaker
It's a thing. I can't. I have to know if so-and-so is guilty. I have to know if so-and-so is alive. have to know if so-and-so and so-and-so are in a loving, committed, happy relationship at the end. And as long as I know the answer to those questions, even if they're not ideal answers, then I can do the rest of it, whether it's read a book or watch a show or a movie. I just need to know.
00:04:20
Speaker
I don't like not knowing. Well... Oh, who's the killer? Sometimes I figure that out. Well, then you should watch it because you'd probably figure it
Narrative Complexity in 'Defending Jacob'
00:04:29
Speaker
out. I don't know. Maybe you wouldn't because it's eight...
00:04:33
Speaker
shows okay he's got eight shows in the series and it's like from the very beginning you know that they have jacob in their eyes for this right like a and because like a rumor online gets started that he's the one that did it okay So from the very beginning. They're not even looking elsewhere, really. Jacob's the one that's going to be tried for this. And he's going to be tried for murder at like 13 or 14 years old.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah. And so over the next so eight episodes, you also know that something else has happened because Chris Hemsworth, he's in this.
00:05:13
Speaker
Chris Hemsworth? Isn't that the one that was um Captain America? No. Fuck. that Who's ah Chris Evans? ah Maybe it's Chris Evans. Okay. Yeah. I don't know who Chris Hemsworth is. Thor.
00:05:27
Speaker
Oh, I know Chris Hemsworth. I know him. We go way back. So anyway, Chris, now you got me confused. Evans. Evans. evans Chris Evans is pretty boy Captain America. Chris Hemsworth is like big burly Thor. Thor.
00:05:43
Speaker
Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. So he does a really good job. And so, but you also know they're like defending Jacob for this murder, right? But you also know through the whole eight episodes that something else is happening because Chris evans Evans is also being interviewed by the prosecutor for something else. It's hard to explain, but there's like a couple of things going on all the way through the eight episodes that
00:06:16
Speaker
And you're just the whole time going, is the kid going to get convicted of this murder? Did the kid do this? Because you go back and forth. You're like, God, no, there's no way. And then and then who did it? and Really good. okay Really good. What's it so called?
00:06:34
Speaker
Defending Jacob okay on Apple TV. God, it was so good. And it's like drama. you know I like my stuff kind
Unexpected Photos and Facial Expressions
00:06:41
Speaker
of murdery and horror and that.
00:06:44
Speaker
But this was a straight up like suspense drama thing. I really liked it. Okay. I liked it so much that when I got home from work after one of those 12-hour shifts, maybe this is why I was cuckoo yesterday. i stayed up an extra hour just to finish the series.
00:07:02
Speaker
Because... Cuckoo every day. um Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. So there's that. You need to...
00:07:13
Speaker
know what I dropped but I dropped something you definitely did is there anything else um I just opened my phone to see our visa oh indeed yes um uh we are using Kelsey's um Box book thing for our coins now, officially. As of today, we christened it.
00:07:34
Speaker
And I tried to get it to stand on its side, Kelsey, in case you were wondering. And it opened. Every one of the coins came falling right out of it. But Jeff's face when it happened, like, he just... It was...
00:07:46
Speaker
in my mind, i like looked up at him and it was one of those, Oh Sam, why? just watched it unfold. I was like, she's not going to open that. All the coins are going to fall right out. Slow motion. You did.
00:07:58
Speaker
You damn sure Sure. Shit. I did. I did indeed. um But on the Kelsey note, what I was kind of going to say earlier, when I was making that face, so you were like, what are you making that face about? I don't know that my face does things without my conscious decision to do those faces. And so Kelsey has an entire album of like the faces of Sam. Oh, no way. and it's That's brilliant. Jeff...
00:08:31
Speaker
i jeff What is wrong with me? Also, every time you're taking one of the, or you're making one of these faces, she somehow sneaks a picture in. It's wild. And like, she showed me, um, after Croatia, she showed me just like a snapshot of like, and they're all over the, all over the map.
00:08:54
Speaker
And they're just, ooh. i i i don't I find myself a relatively attractive person, okay? But damn, um I am not photogenic.
00:09:06
Speaker
Well, so your favorite, the favorite face that can be elicited from you at any moment for me oh no is the, sometimes if I give you a quick decision to make, you freeze. It's a deer in the damn headlights face that is so much fun for me. Like is it A or B? Yeah.
00:09:30
Speaker
And then another one for me. oh my God. Callie. Callie. hate it. I can't believe you did that. We haven't recorded in a while.
00:09:42
Speaker
We had one come out last. Oh, hey, can you gobble for me? thus
00:09:50
Speaker
Wonderful. Alan, can you take that gobble and and triple it and make it go higher and higher and higher. yeah No. Oh, he did it to me. Well, he did it to you because you deserved it. And what's good for the... It was good for the... good i you ah but i i need you to to take that and triple it and then bring it up a couple octaves on each one um somebody said i did it three times and i was like i don't think i did that three times and they were like no you yeah and i listened to it and i was like alan did you triple my gobble He listened to the whole damn episode, y'all.
00:10:30
Speaker
And we never listened to our episodes. Jeff listened the whole thing. the whole first four minutes is what I listened to. Alan tripled the gobble. And he made it go higher and higher and higher. And then i still love that clip of everybody doing the gobble thing for me. That was great. i just i I was thinking about it when I was listening to it on Thanksgiving, right?
00:10:50
Speaker
And the fact that you were able to walk around our work And just ask people like, hey, let me record you doing this real quick. And so many people were willing to do it. It just brings me so much joy. Because those are like, those are the people that we spend so much of our time with, you know? and They gobbled. They love us. Some did not.
00:11:11
Speaker
Okay? Some did not. There was one, if you remember in one of our group texts, one of our mini group texts that we have. There's many. But um two of the docs, one of them said, um yeah, I don't know, but Jeff was trying to get me to gobble for some reason. She ran away. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rude. We know who you are. we know who you are. okay And just so you're aware, we take this as a personal affront to us and our show. And clearly it means that you don't love us or support us. That's okay.
00:11:43
Speaker
We'll be okay. We'll be fine. We'll be fine.
00:11:49
Speaker
We'll live. Gobble, gobble.
00:11:54
Speaker
And that was a guilt trip brought to you by the Jeff and Sam show. You are welcome. Guilty. and don't worry. We'll make sure that you listen to it. And we'll make sure you gobble for us one day. One day.
00:12:06
Speaker
And we will be there waiting. And then when I got off work last night, I was texting Dan. Okay. And i like I was full on. Kayla and I were talking about Cher at work yesterday. Lovely lady. One of my favorites. I know.
00:12:23
Speaker
She was asked by an interviewer um something about she's 78. She's dating a 38-year-old man. And the interviewer said something to her and kind of like what about what other people think and Cher was like, they don't live my life.
00:12:39
Speaker
and Anyway, whatever. I'm, you know, ill love Cher, but I was on the way home. So I was like, I'm going to just jam to Cher on the way home. i can't get no gayer than that.
00:12:50
Speaker
And then Dan was like, she's too, like, um surgery, like, plastic. I was like, no, no, no, no. That's sacrilegious, Dan.
00:13:02
Speaker
Sacrilegious. So he stopped it. He cut it off. I'm kind of calling him out on that today. Can you pop my a bottle open?
Weekend Recap and Social Events
00:13:12
Speaker
Do you turn off it upside down? Oh, my God. We have, like, the best drinks in the world today. so cute.
00:13:16
Speaker
I wouldn't shake it. It's sparkling. I told you to turn it upside down. Do you want to drink this one? No. Why? I don't know. don't know why do half of the stuff I do. The cute thing is that you can use these bottles to go on your bottle place. Grow more plants. There you go.
00:13:32
Speaker
I got water those. My mom has a whole bunch of plants and I didn't know that she knew how to keep them alive. So it's impressive. Wait, we had like we did so many things last weekend. oh my god we did There was um dinner on Friday night, really good restaurant.
00:13:52
Speaker
Then sun Saturday.
00:13:56
Speaker
jason i'm so sorry.
00:14:02
Speaker
oh Should I pause this? No, we're good. This is not the first time we've had shit blow up on us. ah that What did we do the Saturday after we went out?
00:14:13
Speaker
Oh, no. I went to see Chris in Nutcracker. Oh, my God. died. I died. that was They were so good. You saw them last year. Oh, God. and and was i told you i mean I told you. I told you ahead of time. like It's just you you hear, oh, it's you know it's a bunch of kids doing the Nutcracker. It's going to be like dancing. and Okay, but when I tell you hot dog, some of those girls and boys were...
00:14:40
Speaker
extraordinary incredible i mean i did yeah like i had no expectations and they were wonderful
00:14:53
Speaker
accidental memory so i was yeah i was talking about sorry we had like drinks explode and stuff we're good now though um as good as we can be yeah so chris's show oh yeah yeah not chris's show his kids were in it he was in it like there was it was a whole thing it was a whole production and it was really really good the burke civic center ballet yeah they do every year the the young boys and girls are awesome the teen like the older teenage boys and girls they're phenomenal they're so graceful but like also the five-year-olds and six-year-olds were just everything like they were doing the best you know yeah then sunday i went with you to have pizza at your parents house yep i met the fam met the fam had the pizza
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, you finally had Smitty's cash out of the oven. Worth the hype. Everyone gives me a hard time. They're like, yeah, but it can't be that much better.
00:15:53
Speaker
Boom. I have eaten pizza in Italy. made in one of those little ovens and it was really good this was better yeah yeah it just was man knows what he's doing he does i mean he's been doing it since he was 15 years old so man knows what he's doing It was good. It was good. It was lovely. And you got to meet Callie. Oh, God. I love her. Immediately, I was like, you're my people. Yeah.
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah. And her little baby did nothing but smile at me the entire time. At one point, I was just laid up in the floor with the little baby, playing with the baby. yep And he just was smiling at me the whole time. He oh god he's adorable he is adorable. cat and She's great. i love Callie. Yeah. She's extraordinary.
00:16:38
Speaker
And she puts up with my bullshit. Yeah. Yeah, she's great. She's she's good people. Indeed. Okay, are we... Do we want to stop chatting or we want to keep going? Let's cheers, Queers. Cheers, Queers.
00:16:54
Speaker
I love this little bottle. That's cute. Betty, did we even say the drink? No, we didn't. Betty Buzz. Yeah, like i said, I think it's Blake Lively's.
00:17:05
Speaker
Let me see. Sparkling grapefruit is what I'm drinking and you're drinking lemon lime?
The Filipino Coin Decision Maker
00:17:13
Speaker
it's great fruity i told you blake lively that's so lovely okay cool cool cool cool all right we have a coin today that we're gonna flip where's it from uh the philippines we finally with all of our little filipino mafia friends that we have this is the first time they've actually graced us with one may thank you that was very nice of her she was so happy to give us that it's so i mean it's so pretty yeah It's really pretty. It's like one of the prettier coins that we have. It is.
00:17:44
Speaker
um So there is a man on one side and a branch of some sort of flora on the other. have to be the flora. You have to be the man. Of course. one would ever. That's the this relationship works. It's just the way it is.
00:18:06
Speaker
Like a pro. I mean, there was even no like cringe or anything. I didn't think you were going to hit me with it. It just went so easily. i think that I'm really falling into something here. I think so too. I got to figure out if there's a way to like make money off of flipping coins because I think I'm getting there.
00:18:23
Speaker
It's the man. You ready for
Chilling Tale of the 'Suitcase Killer'
00:18:25
Speaker
this? Yeah, I'm ready for it. I just opened the box that Kelsey made and put the coin back in.
00:18:35
Speaker
Alright, Jeffrey.
00:18:40
Speaker
What was that? Yes. Let me tell you a story. No, that makes you sound like it's a good thing. i don't want to tell you. like It's not like a yay. Let me tell you story. I've been doing pretty good recently, right?
00:18:53
Speaker
Not making like bad things happen. But today I'm to tell you about the suitcase killer. boom, boomm boom, boom. I don't know why did that. i don't know why I did that. Because it was appropriate and it was well timed. You pointed at me with a wine, a cork.
00:19:10
Speaker
I don't know. What do you call that thing? I don't know. pops the... um I just keep thinking that this would make a lovely tree topper. Y'all, she's talking about the thing that we opened the water with. It was like a wine bottle opener that you remove the cork. and she I will let you take that home and put it on top of your Christmas tree. Don't do that.
00:19:31
Speaker
don't don't Don't encourage that. Okay. Anyway. Suitcase killer. Suitcase killer. Boom, boom, boom. On September 13th, 2005, a worker at the Lubbock County Landfill. What a stupid name, by the way. love Lubbock. Lubbock or leave it. Lubbock.
00:19:50
Speaker
Sorry. I had to. You did. and it You did. Now it's in my head. It is. He noted a suitcase mixed in with the heaps of trash. His job was known as the spotter.
00:20:01
Speaker
He was tasked with screening loads of trash for hazardous material. as are Like, bleh. You know, good. I mean, it's a job that has to be done. is. You know, but you're going to find shit every from time to time.
00:20:18
Speaker
Well, he found it. Yeah. So as a result of his job, he always gets the first look at what gets brought in before it's mixed in with the massive mounds of trash. As he was tracking one of these loads, the suitcase caught his eye.
00:20:32
Speaker
It stood out because it was in great condition and appeared almost brand new. It was pretty rare for such a thing to end up in their dump, so he decided to take a closer look.
00:20:44
Speaker
As he started unzipping it, he was startled to see what looked like maybe human toes. He wasn't sure if it was like a mannequin or if it was a human. Okay, crime junkies. We love crime junkies. Rule number four It's never fucking mannequin. It's never a mannequin. So this guy was like...
00:21:06
Speaker
I don't have a great feeling about this. So he calls the supervisor over together. They unzip it all the way inside. They discovered the naked body of a beautiful young woman.
00:21:17
Speaker
She was curled into fetal position, covered in bruises and wounds with beautiful red hair. They jumped back and immediately called the police on her body. There were no identifying features besides a small tattoo of script on her left ankle that read summer.
00:21:34
Speaker
With no indication of whether it was just an expression of how much she enjoyed the season or if it was a name. The autopsy revealed that she had been dead for approximately 24 hours and had endured a brutal beating before her death. Damn.
00:21:50
Speaker
She had signs indicating that she had been raped, had at least 50 blunt force trauma wounds throughout her body. Some of the most severe were localized to her head.
00:22:00
Speaker
There were also signs of attempted strangulation. The coroner found that she was 10 weeks pregnant. Worse than all of that, the cause of death was revealed to be positional asphyxia.
00:22:16
Speaker
what that means? Positional asphyxia. I mean, I know what both of those words mean, but I don't know together. What what is it? So it means that she had survived the violent and horrendous attack on her body, but died because of how she had been positioned inside the
Forensics and Arrest in Suitcase Case
00:22:34
Speaker
suitcase. Yeah, goddammit. She was alive when she was folded up and shoved inside.
00:22:40
Speaker
There was also another case recently, like in the last year that I'm thinking of where this crazy, psychotic woman stuffed her husband in the suitcase and then she got drunk. And like they were playing some kind of game at first and she was, I don't know what went on with him, but she wasn't playing the game that he thought she was. And she went upstairs and went to sleep and he could not get out of this suitcase. So he had positional asphyxia too.
00:23:10
Speaker
You know, the number of times that I've joked about just like climbing in someone's suitcase to like go with them wherever they're going. i think I'm gonna stop making that joke. You're gonna, I'm gonna constantly think, and when we're in Egypt, Sam the suitcase, where is she?
00:23:23
Speaker
Where is Sam? she in that suitcase? Like, Jeff, you're asking me this. Giving me another thing to worry about, damn it. You're welcome. That's for the airplane stories. your um So fingerprints were obtained and returned the identity of the young woman.
00:23:37
Speaker
She was 29-year-old Summer Lee Baldwin from Tacoma, Washington. Oh, that's her name. Oh, on the tattoo. She was the mother of four, but sort of four and a half because she was pregnant again, right?
00:23:50
Speaker
Gosh. At the time of her death, Summer had been struggling with drug addiction and was employed as a sex worker. She also happened to be a witness in a federal counterfeiting case, which put her murder on the FBI radar.
00:24:04
Speaker
There was very little evidence where they had found her body, and because of the fluid nature of women in her profession, they had little to go on on where to start looking. Investigators focused on the one and only thing they did have, the shiny new suitcase.
00:24:19
Speaker
The inside of the bag was almost untouched. Minus the dead body, obviously. They noted a small plastic tag on the outside handle that looked like it was where the price tag had been attached.
00:24:31
Speaker
And then on the inside, there was a sticker with the UPC number, which is like the identifying number of that item. Searching through databases revealed that the suitcase was part of a luggage set that was exclusively sold at Walmart.
00:24:48
Speaker
So they hauled ass over to the nearest supercenter to look around. Almost immediately upon arriving, they found the same suitcases on sale inside the store. An employee was able to assist the police in a global search of that UPC number in their own database.
00:25:02
Speaker
She scanned the records for the most recent 48 hours for any recent purchases matching the UPC. And bingo. She was able to find two purchases of that matching suitcase within their own store with a pinpointed date and time.
00:25:17
Speaker
So they had the date and the time. Then they decided to search the surveillance footage surrounding the time frames that she found. On the footage, they found a woman buying a suitcase at about 3 p.m. on September 12th.
00:25:29
Speaker
And the other was a man who appeared to be in his The police, and I don't know how I feel about this, the police quickly ruled out the woman as a suspect. You know, why? What about her? They didn't really give any descriptions about why they were like, well, it's definitely not her. Because, you know, women can be rude and brutal as well. Yeah. And killers.
00:25:48
Speaker
But the young man was physically spit fit Hispanic with a close-cropped haircut. He appeared calm as a cucumber as he was making his purchase. Huh.
00:26:00
Speaker
He was just out and about buying a brand new suit suitcase at the odd hour of 3 a.m., m which isn't super weird, especially coming from me, because, you know, some of us live in our best lives, working horrible hours. um And I very likely would maybe make that same decision if I left work and I had realized, oh, I need a new suitcase in order to not forget to buy that suitcase, I maybe would have gone to a Walmart. Yeah, that's fair. like Maybe that was his case. Exactly. Maybe that was her situation or his situation. Either one of them. like You never know with people. Exactly, right? So not the weirdest thing, but still. You're going to be like, it's going to be checked out though. Exactly. Yeah.
00:26:42
Speaker
So, I mean, I mean, but also like I probably wouldn't go to a store because I don't really like going to stores and like I have an addiction to Amazon. So I probably would have just gone home and been like, let me drink a beer and one click purchase, bitch. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah.
00:26:59
Speaker
But anyways, back to the murder. With the suitcase that he purchased, he also bought a box of latex gloves. But we were just talking about this yesterday. That's also not really weird because sometimes you need latex gloves at home. And, like, I need them at home because I have a visceral reaction to the idea of touching raw meat when cooking, but also at any other time. Even like beef? Yeah, nope, can't do it. Can't it. Really? Can't do it. Oh, God, can't do it. When I was making the sausage applause the other day, oh, absolutely not. I had gloves on the entire time. was like, went through like seven pair. Okay, can't do it. Okay. And then chicken? don't know. Some of those faces. Kelsey, be sure to go in your album. i can't stand it anyway but also i mean you have latex gloves because you like to do it like wear them when you're cleaning right it's cleaning products exactly so again not too super weird right a friend of mine years ago was like doing hamburger patties the raw beef with naked hands of course with her hands and then she like took some of the hamburger patty and ate it oh
00:28:10
Speaker
Intentionally? Uh-huh. No. Yeah. Stop it. Oh, God. Uh-huh. It was disgusting. was like, what? What did I just see? What the fuck was that? Did you just do that? And she did. it was not uncommon.
00:28:24
Speaker
Okay. Sorry. I interrupted your story. Back to the criminal mastermind murderer guy. Sorry. Sorry. That's my fault. As with all evil geniuses, he did a great job confusing the police and was so incredibly stealthy and sneaky.
00:28:40
Speaker
So sneaky that he used his very own debit card. This is the guy that bought the suitcase. At 3 a.m. Latex gloves. Also, okay, just the suitcase alone can be explained away. Maybe they work until 2.45 in the morning, and it's 3, and they're going to get a suitcase. And they don't have an addiction to Amazon.
00:28:59
Speaker
But when you add on the latex gloves, okay, now a little more suspish. Yeah. So the police continue watching this surveillance. It tracked him to like through the parking lot to a very large red pickup truck in the lot.
00:29:15
Speaker
Walmart was served a federal subpoena to turn over the name associated with that purchase. 25 year old Rosendo Rodriguez, the third, a native of which Wichita Falls, Texas and a graduate of Texas Tech in Lubbock.
00:29:30
Speaker
He had no criminal record on file. But his name did appear in a police file from 2004 for the disappearance of a teenage girl in Lubbock.
00:29:42
Speaker
According to the reports, he had been connected to the girl just kind of distantly, but was never actually considered a suspect in her case. Never even brought in for questioning.
00:29:53
Speaker
He was a Marine reservist in town for training. Records indicated that he was staying at the convention center Holiday Inn and had checked in on this so on September 9th. The rest of his training unit was staying at a totally different hotel, which some of them considered odd.
00:30:08
Speaker
But in an additionally odd move, when he checked into that Holiday Inn, he checked in under a false name. He went real wild with this one. Thomas Rodriguez. o But he still used his own fucking debit card.
00:30:24
Speaker
On September 15th, an arrest warrant was issued for Rodriguez. Not Thomas, but Rosendo. Mm-hmm. Police decided to divide and conquer. Someone to the hotel where he had used that debit card to pay for the room. Others started the six-hour drive down to San Antonio where he was living with his parents.
00:30:44
Speaker
Still more officers tracked down the big red pickup truck to a rental company in Midland. Investigators and crime scene techs photographed the truck and then began processing the hotel room for evidence. In that hotel room, they found a tag matching the new suitcase and Walmart bags, a used condom, and a condom wrapper.
00:31:05
Speaker
They also noted a stain of what appeared to be a pool of blood with what appeared to be blood splatters across the mattress and the walls.
00:31:17
Speaker
There were latex gloves disposed of in the trash can down the hallway from the room, which in itself is kind of gross because this has been multiple days now and like the trash can hadn't been emptied. So on that note, weird, right? But also good for them, right? but but but but DNA was tested on the blood. It was a match to Summer.
00:31:38
Speaker
The gloves were also tested and the DNA was from both Summer and Rosendo Rodriguez. Police pulled records for his key card to note when he used the key to enter the room. The timestamps gave the investigators a pretty clear picture of how he had spent that night.
00:31:52
Speaker
At approximately 1230 in the morning on the 13th, he swiped into his room, which is when they believe that he entered the room with Summer. A witness later confirmed that Summer had indeed been seen in a large red pickup truck with a young Hispanic male with a, quote, very short haircut shortly before midnight 30.
00:32:12
Speaker
Another card swipe at 3.50 in the morning, about 20 minutes after the Walmart surveillance footage of him making those not-so-subtle purchases.
Confession and Discovery of Joanna's Remains
00:32:22
Speaker
The officers who had gone to San Antonio took Rodriguez into custody upon arriving at his home. Immediately, he invited his right to an attorney and did not speak to the investigators.
00:32:31
Speaker
From his home, the police seized his computer, his phone, a bus ticket from Midland, which is where the rental car company was, down to San Antonio. Is he active duty? Reservist. Okay. Okay. the green shirt that he was seen wearing in the surveillance footage, and a rental car agreement for a big red truck.
00:32:47
Speaker
On his computer, the police found more evidence of his involvement. Again, because he's such a fucking genius, he didn't cover his tracks at all. Investigators did not have to dig to find the search history that upon returning home from his training, he started searching for Summer Baldwin and a woman's body found in Lubbock Landfill.
00:33:10
Speaker
They also found searches and browsing history for various dating sites because, you know, right after you kill somebody and then dump them in a dumpster, like, what else are you going to do but find your soulmate, right?
00:33:21
Speaker
Two weeks after his arrest, he still had yet to speak to the police. Rodriguez's lawyer reached out to them saying that he wanted to talk. He told police that he and Summer had consensual sex on the night he was seen with her.
00:33:33
Speaker
He claimed that after they finished, Summer started smoking crack, which he thought was wrong. So he tried to grab the pipe away from her and get her to stop, at which point she became enraged, attacked him with a knife.
00:33:46
Speaker
He tried to defend himself and managed to get her into a chokehold. He claimed she died accidentally at this time, and at no point during his tale of self-defense did he manage to explain the 50-plus injuries to her body or the reasoning behind the pool of blood and the splatter across his hotel room. He also had not a single defensive wound to show for his tale of her swinging a knife at him.
00:34:08
Speaker
The investigation continued. Lubbock County District Attorney Matt Powell worked with the investigators to find everything they could to make the case. As he investigated, he couldn't really... shake a thought that he kept having and he continued to think about this girl joanna rogers she was a young girl just 16 who had disappeared the year before summer's death the one who rodriguez had had a connection to that case had shown that rodriguez and joanna had both been active on a chat room prior to her disappearance powell got a crazy idea and decided to run with it
00:34:41
Speaker
He consulted the families of both Joanna and Summer. He told them what he suspected and what he wanted to do, but he wouldn't do it if either family objected. When he had their blessing to proceed, he made his move. He reached out to Rodriguez's lawyer, and as he called it, he made a deal with the devil.
00:34:57
Speaker
He said that if Rosendo had any involvement or could help investigators find Joanna's body, that he would offer him life in prison and not pursue the death penalty in Summer's case because they're in Texas. And so even just the the rape and the single murder obviously would have been death penalty, but she was also pregnant. So now that's double homicide.
00:35:20
Speaker
Rodriguez went for it.
00:35:23
Speaker
According to him, at the time of Joanna's disappearance, he was living in Lubbock approximately 20 minutes from where Joanna lived with her parents. He said that Joanna voluntarily came over to his house in the early hours of May 4th.
00:35:37
Speaker
It matched the phone records obtained from the time. There were two calls early that morning from Rodriguez, who, by the way, was 24 years old. Okay. Mm-hmm. And to Roger's home phone because she lived at home with her mom and dad because she was 16 years old.
00:35:53
Speaker
They had met online in that chat room where the police had first linked their names and then escalated to phone calls. So the first call that morning was about 10 minutes long. And then there was a second just a few minutes later that lasted only a few minutes.
00:36:07
Speaker
She showed up his house shortly after that and they had consensual sex. And then after she demanded that he pay her money. When he refused, she started blackmailing him and raging that she was going to the police to claim that he had raped her.
00:36:21
Speaker
According to Rosendo, she became violent and started attacking him. They got into a physical altercation during which he accidentally strangled her to death. Similarly to what had happened with Summer, his first reaction was to get a suitcase and shove her body in it and then throw it in a dumpster. Come on.
00:36:40
Speaker
Detectives recalled that as Rodriguez told them of what had happened, there was just no emotion. He was cold and distant and just callous when he was talking to them about it. At the time of Joanna's murder, there was a very organized system in place for the disposal of waste in that part of Lubbock.
00:36:56
Speaker
When Rodriguez told the police which dumpster he had thrown her body into, they were able to use that organization system to track where in the landfill it would have been emptied. That's so interesting.
00:37:08
Speaker
They received a grant of $100,000 from the governor to fund the search of the landfill looking for the body of the missing 16-year-old girl. For two months in the sweltering Texas heat, volunteers and workers searched the landfill.
00:37:22
Speaker
The search returned nothing and they were losing hope. But by October 2006, as that hope was waning of ever finding her in the landfill that was the size of three football fields and piled two years deep. Okay? So two years worth of trash was on top of her body at this point.
00:37:39
Speaker
In the summer heat. In the summer heat. God. And, like, they're in a landfill. So everyone's, like, volunteers are all wearing, like, full body suits. Like Michael Myers style, right? Mm-hmm.
00:37:50
Speaker
But they found her. Her small remains were found inside the suitcase Rodriguez had described. In a surprising move, on the day that he was set to enter his guilty plea, Rodriguez decided to change his mind and take his chances with the trial.
00:38:06
Speaker
Because he's a fucking idiot. Okay? Because of this, Rodriguez was in violation of the deal he had made with Powell. The prosecution was now able to file an intent to seek the death penalty.
00:38:19
Speaker
Due to the media frenzy in Lubbock County, was determined that Rodriguez would not receive a fair trial. The people aware of the case had already made up their minds about his guilt. So the trial was moved to Randall County, about 100 miles north of Lubbock.
00:38:31
Speaker
Of note, even though Rodriguez had confessed to killing Joanna and dumping her body, it was not considered to be admitted voluntarily because it was part of a plea agreement. As such, it was not admissible in court.
00:38:45
Speaker
So even though he had backed out of the plea agreement and violated the terms, and confessed he would not be tried for the murder of Joanna Rogers. On March 26, 2008, the trial began.
00:38:58
Speaker
He was indicted on charges of murder during sexual assault and murder of two or more individuals because Summer was pregnant. Both charges are punishable by death in Texas.
00:39:09
Speaker
The testimony of the pathologist was a powerful statement that made it clear to the jury that Rodriguez's story was nothing short of bullshit. Every bit of evidence contradicted what he claimed. From the simple statement that the sex was consensual to the claim of self-defense, not one shred of proof existed to support this.
00:39:26
Speaker
The sexual trauma was extensive and painted a very clear picture of rape. The vicious and numerous wounds she had sustained indicated that she had not been killed quickly or accidentally in the heat of the moment as he tried to subdue her.
00:39:38
Speaker
And although she had likely been unconscious because of the multitude and severity of her injuries, she was in fact still alive when he put her into that suitcase. Poor girl. The jury deliberated for less than three hours before returning a ger guilty verdict gertie for the charges of a rape and murder of Summer Baldwin and the murder of her unborn child.
00:40:02
Speaker
During the sentencing part of the trial, it was revealed that during the investigation, multiple women from Rodriguez's past had come forward to share their own nightmares of rape and assault that he had inflicted upon them.
00:40:14
Speaker
He was described as handsome and charming and seemed wonderful. However, every single one of those women noted that when they went to bed with him, he became a monster. They feared him enough that they were afraid to ever speak against him.
00:40:28
Speaker
The jury heard the testimony of the five women. And then Moore provided a brief bit of information about Joanna Rogers, but they couldn't include the confession. Police shared that during his online searches after Summer's murder, Rodriguez also searched for information regarding the disappearance of Joanna.
00:40:45
Speaker
And then he also downloaded photos of her onto his computer. The defense called multiple character witnesses for Rodriguez, mostly from his own family.
00:40:55
Speaker
They described him as loving, caring, and intelligent. They told these little humanizing stories about young Rosendo wanting to become the first Latino president and how much he loved his own son, Rosendo Rodriguez IV, although he had only ever seen him three times in his six years of life. Fuck off Okay. Okay.
00:41:16
Speaker
His own father took the stand and admitted that he had been a bad and abusive alcoholic and claimed that his violence has caused had caused so much harm and trauma to Rosendo, the number third.
00:41:30
Speaker
His mother called him a respectful and kind person. After hearing all the testimony from both sides, the jury deliberated for less than three hours again. They returned with a recommendation for death.
00:41:43
Speaker
His lawyers, because they're fucking skeez balls, fought up until the very end, filing appeal after appeal after appeal. In some of the appeals, they tried to question the credibility of the medical examiner and his testimony that Summer had been raped.
00:41:56
Speaker
Because let's be original here, right? She's a sex worker, so she can't be raped, right? So how could a medical examiner say that of someone who does that as a as a line of work, right?
00:42:07
Speaker
Come on. Well, also, she was murdered. So fuck off. Anyway, so. That's like the worst. Yeah, so the appeals went nowhere. Almost laughably so. They were like, get get out of here, right? Because they all felt the same way. like That does not entitle anyone to do what they did to her.
00:42:27
Speaker
Regardless of her profession or whatever addiction she had, the wounds and the traumas she sustained were irrefutably indicative of rape. and that was And if that wasn't proof enough, the testimony of the multiple women who were still alive and who had been raped by him additionally proved that he was a sadistic, dangerous man, had absolutely no qualms about and was capable of horrible sexual violence.
00:42:53
Speaker
He's like the worst kind. I mean, he's the kind that's good looking. Also probably charming. And he's a Marine Reservist. and Yeah. the Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
So they appealed his case again to the Supreme Court. With less than 30 minutes to go before he was scheduled to be executed, the appeal was rejected. The state's attorney described this final appeal as improper, untimely, and meritless, and, quote, nothing more than a last-ditch effort.
00:43:24
Speaker
He never showed any signs or expressed any remorse for the murders or the pain he had inflected on the families.
Execution and Final Words of Rodriguez
00:43:29
Speaker
To the very end, Rodriguez stuck with his story that he was the victim in these crimes.
00:43:35
Speaker
That the 16-year-old skinny girl had managed to pose enough of a threat to his 24-year-old Marine reservist ass that he had to fight her and then accidentally killed her. And that the pregnant 29-year-old Slim, quote, supposed crackhead, okay, had also been such a terror to his fit, strong self that he feared enough that he had to put her in a chokehold until she died.
00:43:58
Speaker
Immediately prior to his execution, when asked if he had any final words, Rosendo Rodriguez went on a seven-minute rant. urging people to boycott Texas businesses until the state got rid of the death penalty and claiming that Matt Powell, the district attorney, and the medical medical examiner needed to be investigated ah related to questionable cases they had been a part of and for their corruption.
00:44:23
Speaker
He complained about the rejection of his appeals. He finished with, quote, the state may have my body, but they never had my soul. I fought the good fight. I've run the good race. Warden, I'm ready to join my father. Gross.
00:44:38
Speaker
But like seven minutes, I get it It's his last words. But like maybe just start the injection a little early, cough and push it. I don't know. Like just get it over with. Like Ted Bundy defending himself.
00:44:50
Speaker
Did you ever see that? Yeah. It's the same kind of shit. It's just an unwell person and it shows. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So seven minutes. Not just unwell, like a horrific human, but it kind of. Yeah.
00:45:02
Speaker
So the people were there, seven minutes of their lives lost to this fucking weirdo.
00:45:08
Speaker
He was pronounced dead at 6.46 p.m. on March 27, 2018. The families will never have their girls back and Summer's kids will never have their mom back, but they all agreed that he got the level of justice and punishment for his brutality that was all that he deserved.
00:45:23
Speaker
During an interview with the Texas Tribune, District Attorney Matt Powell said, quote, Rodriguez's execution brought me no joy. However, in this case, the right guy got the appropriate punishment.
00:45:37
Speaker
who who sticks a human being in a suitcase and throws them out with the trash? This was a guy that left unchecked was going to hurt somebody else again and was going to continue to terrorize women.
00:45:49
Speaker
Wow. That was crazy. And like, I, the thing is, is like, to me, it's the, the story in that, unfortunately, kind of is more about,
00:46:07
Speaker
him and his arrogance and his like complete lack of respect for human life. But it's also for me, it's like, there's four kids out there.
00:46:20
Speaker
else their fucking mom? And not to mention like her parents and her, if she had siblings and the other girl. So her mom lived in, st still lived in Washington state and they spoke on the phone every week.
00:46:33
Speaker
But because her body was found so quickly after she was killed, Her mom, like, they did their weekly phone call hadn't happened yet. So her mom didn't even know she was missing or dead because they hadn't missed a call. So when the police called to inform her, she was like, no, she's not dead.
00:46:52
Speaker
Like, I'm going to talk to her later. Yeah. Damn. Good job. Fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. You want to go, like, in a different direction? Let's do it. In the most different direction. Oh. Okay.
00:47:07
Speaker
Okay, so April 5th, 1815. That's a while ago. Uh-huh.
Origins of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
00:47:15
Speaker
Mount Tambora, a volcano, started to rumble with activity.
00:47:19
Speaker
And over the following four months, the volcano went boom. Speaking of volcanoes, just real quick, have you heard about the volcanoes that are starting to perk up across the world? No. Okay, we're all going to die. Keep going.
00:47:35
Speaker
Okay, well, they won't be as bad as this one. Oh, good. Probably. I hope not. Many people close... So, this has become the largest recorded volcanic eruption in history.
00:47:48
Speaker
Or St. Dante's Peak? That's what they say. I don't know who says that. I just made that shit up. Many of the people close to the volcano lost their lives. About 100,000 people lost their lives. Damn.
00:48:00
Speaker
ah Mount Tambora ejected so much ash and aerosols into the atmosphere that the sky darkened and the sun was blocked from view. Large particles spewed by the volcano fell into the ground nearby, covering towns with enough ash to collapse homes.
00:48:15
Speaker
There are reports that several feet of ash was floating on the ocean surface in the region and that ships had to plow through the ash to get from place to place. This sounds very Pompey-ish. Right? Yeah.
00:48:26
Speaker
ah But the smaller particles spuden spewed by the volcano were light enough to spread through the atmosphere over the following months and had a worldwide effect on the climate. They made their way into the stratosphere, where they could be distributed around the world more easily.
00:48:42
Speaker
Earth's average global temperature dropped 3 degrees Celsius. The effect was temporary. oh so we're just making up for that, right? With this whole global warming thing. Exactly. Eventually, even the smallest particles of ash and aerosols released by the volcano fell out of the fell out of the sky. So eventually it would clear. But crops were killed, either by frost or lack of sunshine.
00:49:03
Speaker
This caused food to be scarce and caused farmers who were able to grow crops to fear that they would be robbed for what they were growing. The lack of successful crops that summer made the food which was grown more valuable and the price of the food went up.
00:49:19
Speaker
The summer of 1816 was not like any summer people could ever remember. Snow fell in New England. It was really gloomy. Cold rains fell through Europe. It was a cold, stormy, and it was really dark, not like your typical summer.
00:49:36
Speaker
Consequently, 1816 became known in Europe and North America as the year with no summer. sounds terrible and like right out of a gothic horror it was a stormy night in june of 1816 and lake geneva there was thunderstorms i know what's happening do you know what's happening sorry i'm so excited to tell you this one i'm so excited to hear it i don't know what we just did keep that in alan that was too good and
00:50:07
Speaker
I am obsessed. I am so excited for this. Okay. And everybody else listening, you better be just as excited because this is about to be, this is altering, life altering, like historical moments we're about to hear about.
00:50:20
Speaker
So there was lightning in the Alps all around. And it was there on the shore of Lake Geneva that 19-year-old Mary Shelley... had a really disturbing dream.
00:50:33
Speaker
It was sort of like the nightmare that we can't shake the fuck off. Not Mary Shelley though, because she would use this nightmare and she would turn it into a vision, one that would help her create one of the most iconic works ever. Which by the way, can we talk about how when I have really bad nightmares, like I don't come up with like amazing, again, life altering novels. I, they don't. So Mary Shelley was incredible.
00:51:02
Speaker
um I'm so fascinated by her. oh let me just tell the story. Hold up. yeah oh oh yeah um So she used this dream, this thing that she had to come up with one of the most iconic works of fiction ever, Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus.
00:51:20
Speaker
So Mary Shelley once wrote, and the the beginning is always today. That simple yet profound statement reflects her belief in the power of the present moment to transform lives and destinies.
00:51:33
Speaker
As the author of Frankenstein, Shelley pioneered the science fiction genre and delved into the complexities of human nature, societal expectations, and the eternal conflict between creation and destruction.
00:51:47
Speaker
Her life, marked by loss, lots of loss, and love, mirrored the themes in her writing, making her one of the most significant literary figures of her time.
00:51:58
Speaker
i think of, like, all time. Yeah. While many people know the story of Frankenstein, less people know the story of Mary Shelley, or when and how Frankenstein was conceived.
00:52:11
Speaker
That's the story that I'm going to tell you today. I love it. So, but I'm going to tell you her life story and I'm going to include how Frankenstein was conceived okay because i don't know. It's fascinating to me, right?
00:52:25
Speaker
Mary Shelley was born to famous parents. Mary Shelley, she was born Mary Wollstonecraft, but I'm going to just keep her. I'll refer to her as Mary Shelley or just Shelley because that's what we know her as.
00:52:38
Speaker
So both of her parents were radical, especially for their time. Her father was an anarchist who wrote about social issues. Her mom was sort of a badass feminist for the time. And she wrote a book in the 1700s called Of the Vindication of the Rights of Women.
00:52:55
Speaker
Oh, hey, girl. Yeah. yeah, yeah. And back then, women were seen as not to write books and not to be important, but rather to be have the babies. Be quiet and have the babies.
00:53:09
Speaker
Shelly would never get to meet her mom, though. When Shelly was born, her mom... had a hard delivery and became septic and her mom died 11 days later. That's horrible.
00:53:20
Speaker
Her dad went on to marry another woman named Mary Jane Claremont who wrote children's books. Not the same. No, not the same. Shelly and her stepsister Claire Claremont became friends for life. This is a relationship to the very end.
00:53:36
Speaker
Shelly and her stepmom, Mary Jane, never really got along. Mary Jane tried to make it work with Shelly, but it just never did. Meanwhile, Shelly's dead. William Godwin was his name. He was lionized in intellectual communities. This man was a genius.
00:53:53
Speaker
Scholars loved him. His students loved him. But he was not good with Mary Shelley. So that was missing from her world. his His father, his nurturing was missing from her world.
00:54:06
Speaker
But he would drag Mary Shelley with him to all of his intellectual events that he went to. And this enriched her in so many ways. So she became fluent in Latin. She became fluent in Greek. She became fluent in French.
00:54:22
Speaker
And she was intelligent, especially for, like, back then. She was exposed to a lot that just opened her world up. By the summer of 1812, Shelley packed her shit to move to Scotland for two years because she just couldn't make it work with her stepmom.
00:54:39
Speaker
So she was out of there. On one of her visits home to London, Shelley met a man, the man of her dreams. So this is like... But not her nightmares. 12, 13, 14, 15 years old.
00:54:51
Speaker
Okay. In 1800s time, that's like 40 today. do you know what I mean Yeah. um So one of her visits home to London, she met the man of her dreams. It was the man who would change her life. His name was Percy Shelley.
00:55:05
Speaker
Percy was from an aristocratic family. He was 20 at the time, and he was considered a radical atheist. Like, all these people are radical. That's so cool. Who she rolls with is just, like, radical people.
00:55:16
Speaker
And he's already been disowned from his family. Perfect. And he's also married. Keep this in mind. Oh, totally. So Percy charmed his way into Mary's life. Her father did not approve because the dude was already married, right?
00:55:31
Speaker
So when um Mary was 15, like is when she met him for the first time. And at the age of 16, she returned to Scotland, from Scotland to London and became romantically involved with Percy.
00:55:45
Speaker
Oh, scandal. Mm-hmm. During their relationship or courtship, the two of them would go to Mary's mom's grave and read like their works and their poetry, kind of sharing that with her mom in her own way.
00:56:00
Speaker
On July 28, 1814, Mary and her stepsister, Clara, ran away with Percy at dawn. They even had a carriage waiting for them. ah Yes, of course. And for the next six weeks, they went on an adventure of a lifetime from country to country throughout Europe. They traveled through France, and which was shattered by the Napoleonic War, and then they traveled through Germany and Switzerland.
00:56:21
Speaker
This inspired Shelley's first published work called History of a Six Weeks Tour. This was her first published work. In September of that year, Mary returned back to London with no money and a baby on the way.
00:56:35
Speaker
oh People in town were calling her names like whore, harlot. So they moved all together. They moved in together, sorry. And Percy was all about free love. So he was like encouraging her to sleep with other people.
00:56:49
Speaker
from what I read, she did. Radical. Radical people. Whatever. In February of 1815, Mary gave birth to her first daughter. But it was premature. premature And 11 days later, the baby passed away. 11 days. That's a thing, huh?
00:57:05
Speaker
Her unnamed daughter was now deceased. um And she had this dream. And there's one part of her writing where she writes about the dream that she had. It said, dreamt my little baby came to life again. That it had only been cold and that we had rubbed it by the fire and it lived.
00:57:22
Speaker
I awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. woof You really can see where she uses her pain and it comes into play in her works, right? Yeah.
00:57:35
Speaker
Shelley became pregnant again and gave birth to a boy named William. In the spring of 1816, they're fed up with the judgmental judgmental people in town. So they, along with Claire, decided to bounce. Get the fuck out of there.
00:57:49
Speaker
In May, she traveled with Percy and her half-sister Claire to Geneva in Switzerland to spend time with Lord Byron. Lord Byron. the man the myth the legend right a noble man and a major part of the romantic movement i went to many of his castles this past summer you told me about that i did that's so cool um claire was pregnant claire is the se stepsister she was pregnant with lord byron's child hey messy these people were so messy i loved everything about it sounds like a nightmare all its own The group lived for the summer near Via Diodati, the mansion where Byron was staying with his doctor and traveling companion, John Polidori.
00:58:34
Speaker
The weather in Switzerland, again, summer, 1816, was horrific. Rain, constantly, violent storms. But little did they know that they were about to make literary history that summer.
00:58:48
Speaker
Percy and Byron, who had been like big fan fans of each other, they soon formed an intense relationship, and they abandoned their other travel plans and rented nearby properties along Lake Geneva.
00:59:00
Speaker
During the frigid evenings, they gathered with the rest of the group at be Villa Diodati, a stately mansion that Byron had rented to stay with his friend and doctor, John Palidori.
00:59:12
Speaker
They read poetry, they argued, they talked late into the night.
00:59:19
Speaker
The peculiar combination of travelers, though, set the stage for this gothic drama. Lord Byron, self-imposed exile due to rumors of incest with his half-sister, arrived with John Polidori, a precocious young doctor who was secretly paid 500 pounds to keep a diary of Byron's escapades for potential publication.
00:59:43
Speaker
Byron's party also included a peacock, a monkey, and a dog. Oh, my God. The terrible weather kept them inside more often than not. Thunder, lightning echoed the hallways of the villa, and the conversations turned from the big debates of the day.
01:00:01
Speaker
One of the big debates of the day was whether human corpses could be galvanized or reanimated after their death. Mary described herself as, quote...
01:00:12
Speaker
A devout but nearly silent listener. So she wasn't talking, but she was listening really well. She sat near the men and absorbed every word of their speculation about the limits of modern medicine.
01:00:24
Speaker
As the days went on, conflicts between the vacationers began to simmer. Byron was annoyed at Claire's attempts to enchant him. Mary had to fight off sexual advances from John Palidori, who had become a. Wait, wait, wait. So Claire, who's knocked up by Lord Byron, is trying to seduce him.
01:00:43
Speaker
And he's like, be gone, witch. Shoo, shoo, shoo. And Mary Shelley was like having to fight off advances from John Palidori, who was the doctor. doctor friend who was writing a weird sex book. And he had become obsessed with her.
01:00:57
Speaker
Percy was depressed after a solid three days of being trapped inside the villa by the rain. Tensions had reached like either they had reached the boiling point. Either they were going to have an orgy or they were going to murder each other.
01:01:08
Speaker
One of those things was about to happen. big fan of the latter. So they coped by reading horror stories and morbid poems. And one night they were like sitting in the candlelight. Byron gave them all a challenge.
01:01:21
Speaker
He said, write a ghost story that was better than the ones we've just read. And then they all attempted to do it. Palidori immediately complied. Like he immediately did this.
01:01:34
Speaker
His novella called The Vampire published in 1819. It's the first work of fiction to include a blood sucking hero, which many think was modeled after Lord Byron himself.
01:01:48
Speaker
You and I were talking the other day and we said jokeker Dracula. yeah But I think we were thinking about the vampire. Yeah. Palidori. Mary wanted to write a story too, but she couldn't quite land on the subject.
01:02:00
Speaker
She said, quote, I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative. She later wrote, but one of those sleepless nights, as thunder and lightning echo echoed off the lake, she had this vision.
Themes and Impact of 'Frankenstein'
01:02:15
Speaker
She said, quote, I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then on the working of some powerful engine showed signs of life.
01:02:26
Speaker
She was lying in bed listening to the thunder and lightning, thinking about the guy's discussion about galvanism, that theory that human corpses could be reanimated with electricity. Shelley saw a vision some sort of that that vision that I said. the next morning, then she could say yes, she had indeed come up with this idea. And her idea was Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus.
01:02:48
Speaker
Incorporated the eerie setting of... Villa Diodati and the Morbid Conversations of the Poets. The story she later called her hideous progeny asks what happens when men pretend that they are gods, inspired perhaps by the hubris of the company that she kept in Switzerland.
01:03:07
Speaker
She had a story, a hubristic scientist who creates new life only to abandon it, driving the monster, quote, monster, to murder only when it had been abandoned.
01:03:19
Speaker
Frankenstein would go down in history as one of English language's earliest works of science fiction. In the throes of emotional turmoil, Mary conceived Frankenstein, the novel born from the nightmare that reflected her innermost fears about creation and mortality.
01:03:37
Speaker
The story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation was just... was not just a tale of horror, but a reflection of Mary's guilt, her loss, and her haunting specter of death.
01:03:51
Speaker
Writing became her refuge, a means to process her grief and make sense of all of the suffering she had endured. Through the lens of fiction, Mary explored the consequences of man's overreach, the isolation of the outcast, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge, themes that echoed her own struggles.
01:04:12
Speaker
Frankenstein is both a really simple story, but it's also a deeply laid work within its Gothic pages. Maybe it's an allegory for the French Revolution or a meditation on the advances advances of the Industrial Age. People have also said it's a veiled commentary on slavery and the fight for abolition in the British colonies because this was a passion of Mary Shelley's.
01:04:36
Speaker
Most importantly, this is my take on it, is the fact that it's still such a fucking amazing read 208 years later says so much about it. And the fact that we can watch Frankenstein on Netflix...
01:04:52
Speaker
And we're still so moved by it. There's something in it that resonates with human beings. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it just rips so many emotions from you. It's not it's not as simple as, oh, fear the monster. Oh, the man. Like, it's it's so much different than And I really think when I was writing this and learning about this, the yeah, had the French Revolution. Sure, Yeah.
01:05:14
Speaker
But the most important thing about this book is it still makes you so empathetic to the creature and so horrified by... Even me, who's borderline sociopathic and autistic on my empathy scale.
01:05:31
Speaker
Not quite. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I think that's the biggest takeaway from it all. It's 208 years later, and this is still a fucking incredible story, right? um It was a dreary night in November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils with an anxiety that almost amounted to agony.
01:05:51
Speaker
I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. That's a quote from the book that I love. The book was a sensation when it was published. Critics, they were divided. Some of the critics were saying that it was powerful and amazing. Some were saying that it was unseemly.
01:06:12
Speaker
Well, duh, because a lady wrote it. Well, here's the thing. And because her husband, Percy, thank you so much for saying what you did. It's like you knew what I was going to say. and because Percy, her husband, wrote the Ford in the book, people immediately assumed that he wrote it and would not give credit to Mary because a fucking woman couldn't have written such a brilliant book. Right.
01:06:35
Speaker
It wasn't until 1823 that Mary Shelley got the credit that she deserved for writing this book. And it was in August 29, 1816, when Shelley, Percy, and Claire returned to England.
01:06:46
Speaker
Shelley had the idea of Frankenstein, and Claire was... Yeah.
01:06:55
Speaker
this was actually the beginning beginning of a series of misfortunes for shelley the first misfortune took place that october october the ninth she lost her half-sister fanny to suicide Percy's actual wife, Harriet, threw herself into the Thames River while pregnant with his child.
01:07:13
Speaker
Her body was found December 10th, and apparently Percy was not the one to look a gift horse in the mouth because 20 days after his wife's body was found and pulled from the river, he married Mary Shelley.
01:07:28
Speaker
Messy people These are messy people Shelley reconnected with her dad Several months later Now he approved Because he wasn't Percy was no longer married ah Easy as that his His pregnant wife is dead yes But at least she's off the table She finished Frankenstein in 1817 Their daughter Clara was then born, but then in the spring of 1818, the couple returned with Claire to Europe because Claire, which is the step stepsister, wanted to introduce Lord Byron to his baby.
01:07:59
Speaker
But um in Venice, everything changed when she Shelley's daughter Clara contracted dysentery and she died. Clara had just turned one. And the following spring in Rome, their son William was taken by malaria at the age of three. Jesus Christ.
01:08:16
Speaker
Shelly withdrew into her relationship with Percy. The death of her two living children broke her that year. and then her relationship with Percy was also difficult. i mean, they've just had a shit ton of loss. Nothing's easy after that, right? Well, even before that. Right.
01:08:31
Speaker
But when William died, Mary was already pregnant with another child and gave birth to Percy Florence Shelley. Percy from her dad, Florence, because that was the city they were in. Original.
01:08:45
Speaker
Percy survived into adulthood. Shelley, Percy, and their son did settle in Pisa for a while and live a good life. And this was like a little spot of happiness in her life. I feel as though it's going to get bad again.
01:08:57
Speaker
du umto In May of 1822, the Shelleys arrive in San Lorenzo with Claire and their friends Edward and Jane Williams to spend the summer on the Italian coast. At the start of the trip, Claire's daughter with Lord Byron died from fever at the age of five.
01:09:13
Speaker
On June 16, 1822, Shelley suffered a miscarriage where she lost so much blood, it was a miracle that she even survived. Percy managed to help stop the bleeding by getting Shelley to sit in an ice bath for hours.
01:09:27
Speaker
After this, this was her first her fifth pregnancy, there would be no more attempts to have a child, and Shelley withdrew further into depression. On July 8, 1822, Percy took his boat out into the Gulf of Spezia, which people warned him not to fucking do but he's a man.
01:09:48
Speaker
So he took his boat out. There was a storm brewing, and the storm, when it hit the boat, Percy was lost at sea. He died, and his body was found 10 days later.
01:09:59
Speaker
His face had already been decomposed so much that the way they identified him was from a book of poems in his pocket. shelley which survived him being in the water what did he write it with dude i don't know what did they write with back then some really impressive absolutely shelly had his remains burned on the beach with his friends and attendants including lord byron the ashes of his heart was retrieved from the burning ashes and shelly wrapped it in silk and carried it with her around around with her for the rest of her life it's
01:10:30
Speaker
I don't know. was probably just like a gallbladder. And later on, she was buried with it. That's sweet. Let's say she thought it was as hard. She got the gallbladder. She was buried with the gallbladder later. Where where was that at? Mary Shelley would never get over the loss of her 29-year-old husband.
01:10:50
Speaker
Shelley said, quote, for eight years, I communicated with unlimited freedom with one whose genius far transcended mine, awakened and guided my thoughts.
01:11:02
Speaker
She did have her son Percy, though, and she needed to take care of him. She wanted to stay in Italy, but the money ran out, so she had to take Percy back grey-cold England. Which is really good for depression. Right.
01:11:14
Speaker
See outside. And she wanted to publish some of Percy's works, but Percy's father was kind of an asshole, so she wasn't he wouldn't let Mary publish his son's work. He said he would cut her off financially if she tried.
01:11:28
Speaker
There was one consolation, though. Frankenstein was more popular than ever. 1823 saw the first theatrical production of Frankenstein, and it was a hit.
01:11:39
Speaker
And in 1824, there would be six more versions of the story, and the story was so well known that the foreign secretary mentioned it in a speech to Parliament.
01:11:52
Speaker
Lord Byron died while fighting in the Greek War for Independence, and John Polidori... died by suicide. Shelley and Claire Claremont became the last surviving members of the bright young poets who had gathered at Lake Geneva only eight years earlier to change literary history.
01:12:11
Speaker
Shelley is only 26 years of age at this time, widowed with three kit three kids who had passed away and a horrible miscarriage. Shelley said, quote, I find myself famous now, though it wasn't just for Frankenstein, that she was famous, but for being the last living link to the romantics.
01:12:33
Speaker
Shelley did keep working. In 1826, she published a book called The Last Man, a story about a lone survivor of a devastating plague that's now considered her second best work.
01:12:44
Speaker
And Shelley, while not rich, she was still able to travel around and she even met, like, famous people, the Marquis de Lafayette. She met him in Paris. She did befriend, I thought this was interesting. She befriended a woman, a writer named Mary Diana Dodds, who was romantically involved with another woman and only ever appeared in public as a man. That's amazing. So interesting, isn't it?
01:13:10
Speaker
Shelley picked up regular work writing biographical sketches for famous people. And these years were considered to be the quiet years. Her son, Piercy, was healthy. And in 1840, Shelley published her deceased husband's writings.
01:13:24
Speaker
Her father-in-law passed away after this, leaving Shelley and her son enough money to never have to worry about poverty. And then Mary Shelley died in 1851 the age of 53.
01:13:37
Speaker
Her influence extends beyond her novels. Her works challenge the conventions of conventions of her time, particularly regarding women's roles, the ethics of scientific exploration, and the boundaries of human ambition.
01:13:51
Speaker
Moreover, her portrayal of the creature, often misunderstood and vilified, invites readers to question societal norms around acceptance and empathy for the, quote, other.
01:14:03
Speaker
Mary Shelley paved the way for later literary explorations of alienation and identity by giving the outcast a voice. Her legacy is resilience, innovation, profound empathy, and her ability to weave personal pain into universal stories has left an incredible mark on literature and society.
01:14:24
Speaker
Through her pioneering work, she demonstrated the transformative power of writing, not just as a tool for personal expression, but as a means to challenge those norms and inspire change.
01:14:39
Speaker
That is the story of Mary Shelley. Did you love that? i loved that. She was like a real person, you know? Yes, she was. And she went through the fucking ringer. She went through the ringer, but like, damn, she made such an impact.
01:15:01
Speaker
That's insane. And I was watching the other day. I was watching like two weeks ago now. I watched Frankenstein. And I've long known the story about Lake Geneva and them writing. But I've known of it. I didn't know the specifics of it. Yeah.
01:15:18
Speaker
Fucking fascinating though, isn't it? That's so cool. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That was so good. Oh, I'm glad you liked it. I'm glad you liked it. No, I didn't like it. I loved You loved it. What else? Do we have anything else? I think we did it for today. i think we're good.
01:15:32
Speaker
What is today? Is anything coming up that's important? ah Therapy. Never a bad time for that.
01:15:43
Speaker
Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. That's it. going to go home and sleep for 24 hours. Thank you so much, everybody who listened. We're grateful for it. um Thank you, thank you, thank you.
01:15:54
Speaker
And remember, we are here for a good time. not Bye, everybody.