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The Bluebelle
52 Plays1 year ago
A kindly crew rescues a man adrift on the ocean. The man, Julian Harvey, claims to be the only survivor of the Bluebelle, a boat that went down in a tragic accident. But as events unfold, people soon have good reason to question Harvey's narrative.
Sources:
https://www.today.com/popculture/orphaned-sea-tere-now-tells-story-wbna36964672
https://www.today.com/news/murder-rampage-left-girl-orphaned-adrift-2D80555998
https://allthatsinteresting.com/terry-jo-duperrault
In the future, we hope to revisit this story after reading the book Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard Logan and Tere Fassbender.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Bluebell case
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, I'm Sierra. And I'm Kaylee. And this is True Crime and Punishment. Episode three of season two. Today, Sierra will be taking us through the Bluebell case. Bluebell is the name of a catch, which is a ship with two masts. The main mast is taller than the mizzen mast, which is the mast at the back of the ship. This was a ship that sank on Sunday, November 12th, 1961, under mysterious circumstances.
00:00:29
Speaker
That's crazy. Because today is Sunday, November the 12th. You're right. Did you mean to do that?
00:00:36
Speaker
I did not mean to do that, but oh wow. So on theme. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, this is not a happy anniversary. This is a sad anniversary of a sad tale. But for our purposes today, the story actually starts after the accident.
Suspicion around Julian Harvey
00:00:51
Speaker
We're going to fast forward to Monday, November 13th, 1961, in the ocean waters near the Bahamas around 1235 p.m.
00:01:02
Speaker
A crew member from the oil tanker called the Gulf Lion was out on deck looking over the ocean when he spotted something in the near distance. There was a man on a dinghy calling out and waving his arms for help. As the dinghy drifted closer, the crew of the Gulf Lion saw that there was a man and with the man was a young child.
00:01:22
Speaker
The crew members pulled the man aboard. His name was Julian Harvey, and the child with him had been one of the passengers aboard the Blue Bell, the catch that he had been piloting. The child, whose name was Renee Duperrault, was dead. Harvey explained that the Blue Bell had been unmasted the night before because of bad weather and a terrible accident.
00:01:44
Speaker
The other passengers had been killed or had jumped overboard. He had tried to resuscitate Renee when he found her in the water, but he had been unable to.
00:01:55
Speaker
What does unmasked mean? I think it means that the mast came off like it's broke. He also apparently told the Coast Guard a fire had broken out on board as well. It was just one bad thing happening after another. Apparently strong winds had come up from the southeast and had just wreaked havoc. There was the accident and he was unable to help anybody on the ship.
00:02:18
Speaker
He actually didn't even ask that a search party be sent out to look for them, although the wreck had just happened the night before in that channel. He was convinced that all of the passengers, including his wife, Mary Dean Harvey, he was convinced that they were all lost forever.
00:02:35
Speaker
According to one article, he told the Coast Guard later that he had escaped with some flares on his raft, but he didn't even think of using them when he was drifting away from the carnage. Presumably perhaps because he was just so overwhelmed with all of the events that had happened.
00:02:52
Speaker
Oh yeah, sounds like a lot. The crew of the Gulf Lion contacted the Coast Guard and they wanted Harvey brought to Nassau Bahamas. And while the crew waited for Harvey to be picked up and taken there, they actually took up a collection for him of $165 because he had just lost everything.
00:03:09
Speaker
He was soaked. One of the crew members gave Harvey a new shirt, which he did take, but he refused to change his soaked khakis. He preferred to keep his trousers later. Really? Yeah, it was interesting. But you'll soon learn that was not the only interesting thing about his story. Oh no.
00:03:28
Speaker
So, Captain Christopher Brown and Captain Frederick Brown, they both had the same last name. It appeared from the article I looked at. I think they were brothers. They came from the Bahamas to pick up Harvey, as well as the body of Renee Duperrault, and they took him to shore. Christopher Brown later reported that Harvey seemed very calm, but he kept asking, do you think anybody could survive out there tonight? Meaning that Tuesday night.
00:03:51
Speaker
The captains explained that the weather was growing worse and that it was unlikely that anyone would survive the weather and being out on the ocean.
00:04:00
Speaker
Once at Nassau, Harvey was put in a hotel for the evening. Throughout the course of the night, he ordered several brandies sent up to his room, which makes sense, harrowing circumstances, all of that. Reggie Anderson, the night desk attendant who brought up the last of these brandy orders, later reported that when he came into Julian Harvey's room, there were two twin beds in that hotel room.
00:04:24
Speaker
Harvey was on one of them and on the other bed were tons of wet dollar bills that would have been laying out to dry. Lots of dollar bills. Notice they were soaked. So it wasn't the collection that the crew of the Gulf Lion had taken up for him. Reggie Anderson didn't know how to account for these. He just shared that detail later after other events had come to light. So that's why we wanted the soaked khakis.
00:04:50
Speaker
It was later, later friends of his mentioned that one of his two favorite places to store his cash. He was off if he was ashore was in his necktie. And if he was on the boats, he used to be in the military. By the way, I should clarify, he would slit the waistband of his trousers and stick them in there. He wanted to carry cash on him and hide it. So most likely that was where the cash had been in his khakis.
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, I mean, that doesn't necessarily
Terry Jo Duperrault's survival and revelation
00:05:15
Speaker
need to be suspicious unless it was more cash than he should have had.
00:05:20
Speaker
It was a lot of cash, and he had just told the crew of the Gulf Lion that he had lost everything. So that was an interesting discrepancy, but you know what? Maybe he just felt uncomfortable sharing these details. What did get suspicious was his later activity. So the next day, which was Tuesday, November 14th, he got up and called Mrs. James Williams. She was the wife of Captain James Williams. She and her husband, I never got her actual first name. The article just referred to her.
00:05:48
Speaker
to her as Mrs. James Williams. She and her husband, who was a ship captain, were taking care of Harvey's son Lance. And then after Harvey talked to Mrs. Williams, he received a call from his friend James Hoosier. And then he went shopping and got some new clothes. Then he stopped by the office of Nassau's port director, Captain Fennell Phillips,
00:06:09
Speaker
One article reported Harvey told the director he'd be around and wanted to see Phillips later under better circumstances. Which again, this is what, two days after the wreck, so understandably he might not feel like talking just yet. But he did not see Phillips later. He caught a 1.30 p.m. flight to Miami.
00:06:28
Speaker
Florida. Now I should say one source said that he left on Tuesday and the article made it sound as if the NASA authorities found out later that he had left. They hadn't been anticipating that he was going to leave. Another source said he was allowed to leave on the 15th. So I'm not sure of the exact time he went to Miami.
00:06:45
Speaker
But he did leave. He did not stick around. A funeral home in the United States had said they would take care of Renee Duperrault's body, so he didn't have any obligations to help with that. So he was free to leave because at the time there was nothing to hold him over. One source that I looked at said that his activity had appeared suspicious to the authorities in Nassau, but they didn't have anything to hold him over. You might have said this, but did you say how old the little girl was? She was seven years old.
00:07:13
Speaker
So he goes to Florida where he is questioned by the Coast Guard. He gives more of his story and talks about the events of that night. Forties and NASA must have thought that it was odd for him to leave because after his departure, they decided to do an autopsy on the body of Renee Duperrault. But the cause of death was ultimately deemed to be drowning. When word reached Sandy Point, which was one of the places that the Bluebell had stopped at on the trip about the Bluebell shipwreck,
00:07:41
Speaker
The fishermen and sailors in the area recalled that the weather had been good that Sunday night. Not turbulent, there hadn't been any major winds. Unlike Harvey's story that he told the Coast Guard, he told the Coast Guard that there had been bad winds which led to the accident.
00:07:57
Speaker
So some odd behavior, some discrepancies in his story. Now we're going to get to November 16, 1961. On this day, there was a Greek freighter called Captain Theo that was sailing through the same area where Harvey had been picked up and near where the Blue Bell had wrecked.
00:08:17
Speaker
And while sailing across the water, one of the crew members observed something on the surface of the ocean. At first, it looked like more of the white caps, you know, the tops of the ocean waves when they're white and they're just breaking. But he kept watching it. And as it came closer, he realized that was not a white cap. That was a raft.
00:08:35
Speaker
And on that raft, there was a child. He was severely sunburnt, severely dehydrated. They didn't know how long she had been in the water. She was also wearing very light clothing, which blended in with the raft and the white surface of the white caps in the ocean water. But they saw her and they pulled her aboard. There had been sharks that were starting to circle the raft. So they were calling out to her, you know, don't get off the raft, stay there. They were able to pull her up onto the boat.
00:09:01
Speaker
and they were able finally to get her to say her name, Carrie Jo Duperrault. Notice that it's the same last name as Renee Duperrault, the little girl that Julian Harvey had allegedly tried to save.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. She had been on the ocean water since the 12th of November, basically the 13th because it was very late when the accident occurred. So basically three and a half days she spent out on the water. She had a fever of 105 degrees according to one article. So she wasn't very coherent at this time. They couldn't get the full story from her. The captain telegraphed the Coast Guard and said picked up blonde girl brown eyes from small white raft suffering exposure and shock.
00:09:42
Speaker
name, Terry Jo Duperrault, was on Bluebell. Some other sea captains, after this story came out, pointed out that Terry Jo would have been only five miles away from the Gulf Lion when Julian Harvey was picked up. So if he had pushed for them to have a search party scan the waters, they likely could have found her on the 13th of November. But it also makes you wonder, he had been asking very insistently, could anybody survive that night?
00:10:11
Speaker
So they took her to safety. On November 17, Harvey had a scheduled interrogation with the Coast Guard to explain the whole story, everything that needed to be told, when he was informed that Terry Jo had been rescued and that her condition was improving. He kind of was startled and he made an exclamation, but then he quickly said, isn't
Julian Harvey's actions and demise
00:10:31
Speaker
that wonderful? Mmm.
00:10:33
Speaker
So then Lieutenant Ernest Murdock told Harvey that an official investigation into the loss of the Blue Bell and her passengers was to be launched that day. Then Harvey was explaining that he was really tired and he needed to talk to his wife's family because remember his wife had also passed away and he asked if he could be excused from being interrogated at this point. And they said sure. On that same day, November 17th, Julian Harvey committed suicide.
00:11:01
Speaker
I wasn't expecting that. I thought you were gonna say he hit the books and ran. Like...
00:11:05
Speaker
Nope. He went back to his hotel. He wrote a suicide note giving everything that he had to his son Lance. He wrote in his note, I am a nervous wreck and just can't continue. And then he also asked to be buried at sea. He didn't give any further explanation. He didn't really say why he was committing suicide other than the fact that he was a nervous wreck. However, on November 20th, after Terry Joe had had some time to recover, more light was shed on these mysterious circumstances.
00:11:33
Speaker
Let's back up to the whole purpose behind the voyage of the Bluebell. So Julian Harvey did not own the ship. He was just the pilot. The people who had hired out the boat, if you will, to go on vacation was 40-year-old Arthur Duperrault, his wife Jean, and then their three children, Brian, who was 14 years old, Terry Joe, who was 11,
00:11:53
Speaker
Renee, who was seven. Duperrault was an optometrist from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the family apparently, at least according to one source, had been saving up money for this vacation to go from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas. He had been down there during his service in World War II, and he wanted to show his family that part of the world and take them on an ocean cruise, and they were very excited for it. Julian Harvey was going to be the pilot, and then his wife, Mary Dean, was also
00:12:22
Speaker
going to be with them. Now, this is going to be important later, but Mary Dean was either the fifth or the sixth wife of Julian Harvey. Oh my goodness. Yes. One source said his fifth wife, and that was a newspaper from 1961. Another later source said sixth wife, so I'm really not sure, but the point is he's had many. It's a lot of wives. Before this trip as well, it should be noted that Julian Harvey and his wife, this fifth or sixth wife,
00:12:52
Speaker
had gotten a double indemnity life insurance. This is a clause or provision to life insurance or an accident policy whereby the company agrees to pay the stated multiple for example double or triple of the face amount if the person dies of an accident. Yeah, you hear about these.
00:13:12
Speaker
a lot in true crime where it's like, oh, that double indemnity. Well, I had never heard of it. So I was like, oh, that's very interesting. Also, a little bit more background about Julian Harvey. Although he had previously served in the military, he apparently was not the most noble person.
00:13:28
Speaker
There had been a few cases of insurance fraud where he'd been piloting boats that had sunk and he had gotten insurance money from those accidents. Not only were these different insurance issues that had happened before, but the second of his multiple wives had died under mysterious circumstances.
Duperrault family background and tragedy
00:13:45
Speaker
Both she and her mother passed away in a car accident that Harvey somehow survived.
00:13:51
Speaker
So here's what happened on the night that the bluebell sank. Terry Joe had been below deck sleeping because it was later at night when she thought she heard her brother scream and call out for his dad. And so Terry Joe went to go find out what had happened and she saw her brother and her mother lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Oh my goodness.
00:14:14
Speaker
And she saw Harvey who yelled at her to go down below deck. And so she did. And then she was noticing water and oil that were starting to spill into the cabin. There were sounds from up above. So she went up and she asked Harvey, is the boat going down? And he said that it was. And he did strike her at some point during the night. I think it was the first time when he told her to go below deck. He also at one point had a gun that he was holding, but he did not use it on Terry Joe.
00:14:40
Speaker
When she came up with Board Deck the second time, he handed her a rope to the dinghy and told her to hold onto it, but whether from shock or fear or whatever else, the rope slipped through her hands and the dinghy started to float away. Julie and Harvey dove in after it, leaving Terry Jo aboard the sinking vessel.
00:14:58
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Thankfully there was still that little life raft that she found so she was able to get that unfastened and get onto that to push away from the wreck and float until another crew found her a few days later. We don't know exactly what happened and Terry Jo herself was not able to see everything. But what people believe to be the most likely scenario was that Julian Harvey attempted to drown his wife.
00:15:23
Speaker
Some people think that might have been his plan all along and that he wanted passengers on the ship to act as witnesses, that there was an accidental drowning, because then she would drown and he'd be able to tell them the story so he had people there to kind of verify, oh it was an accident. But people suspect that perhaps either Dr. Duperrault or one member of his family saw it happen and so then Julian Harvey had to kill the whole family to hide his crime.
00:15:48
Speaker
Hmm. No one is sure why he spared Terry Joe. Some people think, well, maybe he actually wanted to get caught. He wanted to get punished for what he did. However, I'm not entirely of that persuasion because Renee Duperrault, her death was deemed to be drowning. My assumption is that he probably didn't feel as guilty killing Brian, the boy, because he was 14 and then the parents, but he probably would not have chosen to kill the girls with his own hands.
00:16:13
Speaker
That's my assumption, I obviously don't know. Yeah, that, and I think it's kind of bizarre that he held on to her body. I don't know, it doesn't seem like it would be proof of drowning. It would just be like, the boat sank. It's just like, oh, here's more evidence. I don't know. Yeah. And as like a captain, wouldn't you think that, I don't think I watch too many movies, but I feel like it's a thing where you can't just leave a body with you. If you're trying to like stay afloat, you can't have, you know,
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, his raft, his dinghy or whatever it was apparently was big enough and well-stocked also, which caused some suspicion when he was first recovered. So it probably wasn't too much weight to have her on it as well. Theoretically, it could have probably also held Terry Joe if he had bothered to actually rescue her. But of course, if she had witnessed her brother and mother lying in a pool of blood, she would be considered a witness. So I'm assuming he just expected her to go down with the ship, but that's why he was so eager to know, do you think anybody could survive out there? Sounds like guilt to me.
00:17:08
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
Terry Jo's legacy and book
00:17:10
Speaker
So Carrie Jo went to live with relatives who took care of her. She actually several years later wrote a book about her experiences. Yes, so we're probably going to have to come back and revisit this episode or do a tangent Tuesday after we read that book about her experiences. I found out about it too late to get it and read it, but we'll need to look into that and give her a count. What's the book called? The book is called Alone, Orphaned on the Ocean.
00:17:34
Speaker
It's so crazy that this happened in 1961 because I'm thinking like, I'm worried. It's like, you know, in England, they're chartering a boat to go somewhere. It's like 1800s, blah, blah, blah. It's like, it's literally the 60s. It looks like Terri Duperrault is now Terri Duperrault. I googled it. And Fassbender, like Fassbender. So it looks like she's still alive. So she is still alive. And she's doing fairly well. Different things that I looked at said when she was younger, nobody really helped her process her trauma, according to them, because back then you coped with things differently.
00:18:03
Speaker
because it was the 60s right but this was an interesting quote that she gave later she said i was never frightened i was an outdoors child and i loved the water and she said i had strong faith i believed in god and i prayed for him to help me and i just went with the flow this was something interesting i saw in an article from the 1960s talking about the incident
00:18:22
Speaker
It said, Coast Guard officers hope Terry Joe Duperrault's three and a half day ordeal on a white life float will prompt legislation requiring all such life-saving devices to be painted international orange so they would be spotted more easily by sea and air searchers. Oh yeah, because you said that she was blonde and was wearing light-colored clothes so they really couldn't see her.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, like at first it looked like it was just a white cap on the ocean. And she was in a heavily trafficked area. And again, like the Gulf Lion was probably about five miles away from where she was the day they picked up Julian Harvey. So theoretically, she should have been seen sooner. So that was something very interesting that I thought of from there. But yes, thankfully, for Terry Jo, it seems like she went on to
00:19:05
Speaker
have a good life after this. Her book sounds like it was really meant to uplift and encourage others through her story. She doesn't want to be seen as a victim. She wants to be seen as someone who came through this ordeal and survived. So I definitely am excited to read that in the future and get more insight to her personal thoughts about the experience. She was out there for days. That's harrowing. She's wow. And at 11 years old and just after having witnessed her family. That's very heavy stuff. So I think
00:19:33
Speaker
Hearing from her perspective, that would be such an interesting read, especially as someone who seems to be, you know, doesn't want to be seen as a victim and wants to be like uplifting. It'll be a thought-provoking read.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. So I'm looking forward to perhaps returning to this topic and bringing some more details to light. It definitely made me not want to go sailing anytime soon reading through this story. Yeah, I don't blame you. Sometimes the thought of open water freaks me out just a little bit. I believe, according to one article I looked at, she ended up living and working near the ocean. She's retired now, but for a while she worked near the ocean. Wow. Which again, just shows how well she came out of it and how strong she is.
00:20:14
Speaker
resiliency there. Strong, strong woman. Wow. The fact that, just the fact that he was, he waited and was like, do you think anyone could survive that? Do you think anyone could survive that? And then immediately ending his own life when he realized that it was going to come out, that he had a hand in that. Okay. This is a case that I didn't know anything about. And when you told me that it was going to be about a boat, I don't know what I was expecting, but I did not expect a story about a family that chartered a boat to go to the Bahamas.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't expecting this either. Taking some old-timey pirate story, but this was, wow, the pointlessness of this action. If he did in fact kill the family because he was caught trying to kill his wife or successfully killing his wife, even with the motive that he had, it ended up being completely pointless because
00:21:04
Speaker
Kerry survived. And so he still ended up taking his own life. So if he did that to preserve his life or his way of life to avoid sentencing, he still ultimately didn't succeed, and which just makes it pointless on top of pointless. So very sad. Well, thank you for sharing the story of the Blue Bell ship. That was really interesting. I always like hearing cases that I've never heard anything about. All right, so it's your case. I'm gonna make you go first for your uplifting thought of the week.
00:21:30
Speaker
oh um my uplifting thought of the week oh my oh i i do have something from this week on saturday i went to a play it was a performance of jekyll and hide and it was very well done but it was at first is suppressing because that story's exploring man's nature and like the wickedness of man's nature which honestly ties in very well with the true crime podcast because it's where you see all the hides coming out
00:21:55
Speaker
but just that reminder that all of us struggle with that darkness that from a Christian perspective from sin nature but just that reminder this isn't so much from Jekyll and Hyde but it was a reminder to me of how powerful literature can be in showing man's nature and then of course there is also that hope that we can have as well even with the darkness so
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's really true. I've been talking with a couple friends recently about literature and about the morality of literature. I need to reread Jekyll and Hyde. My sister bought me a pretty copy for my birthday last year. I'm trying to think of what interesting thing I can say about my week. I mean, I've been sick all week. I don't know. Oh, I don't know. Today, Sierra and I always go get coffee.
00:22:37
Speaker
before recording because, you know, we're millennial Gen Z cuspers and I can't do anything with that. And I caught like a frozen strawberry lemonade thing. That's very good. It makes me happy. Really good. For the win. I think that wraps up this week's case. Be aware. Take care. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye. Bye.