Maintenance Phase - The Scarsdale Diet Murder feat. Sarah Marshall

00:00:00.000 I don't think there are many podcasts that call the victim a dick this many times. 0.97

00:00:15.600 Sarah, do you do you want to do the honors? 0.98

00:00:18.260 Oh, my God.

00:00:19.180 Okay.

00:00:19.600 Yes.

00:00:20.120 All right.

00:00:20.840 Ah, welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast where we're making you a Scarsdale surprise.

00:00:27.140 whoa that is 100 better than anything i would have come on no it's just more seinfeld related

00:00:36.320 i am michael hobbs i'm aubrey gordon i'm sarah marshall yes sarah is the host of a podcast

00:00:43.280 called i forget the name sarah what's the name you're wrong about that i was gonna do this joke 0.57

00:00:47.860 damn it it's called what is wrong with you and it's beloved by all dads 0.74

00:00:52.980 this one is kind of a departure for our show but we have been wanting to do 0.98

00:00:59.080 like a maintenance phase you're wrong about crossover event for as long as we have been

00:01:04.860 doing the show so this kind of is it we were waiting for a story that had like some fun health

00:01:10.060 stuff and also some fun like true crimey media debunking maligned woman stuff and this story

00:01:17.380 has been requested by a number of listeners and as soon as i started looking into it i was like

00:01:21.700 this is it this is the one i'm so excited i'm so happy you guys asked me to talk about this

00:01:26.800 particular topic this is going to be very illuminating i should also say before we get

00:01:32.040 started that this episode has some abuse stuff and some like very detailed suicide stuff so if

00:01:39.300 that sucks we love you we'll see you next time yes so aubrey you're coming in fresh right you

00:01:44.140 don't know anything about this i am coming in totally fresh i am on vacation with my extended 0.95

00:01:50.340 family. Okay. And last night at dinner, somebody asked what our I was like, I'm recording tomorrow.

00:01:56.800 And I said, we're recording about something. I was like, my job is to come in fresh. So I don't

00:02:00.780 really know anything about it. But it's called the Scarsdale diet. And she was like, Oh, my God.

00:02:05.360 Oh, yeah. And everyone around the table immediately started talking about the Scarsdale

00:02:09.200 diet. And I was like, I have to go. And then Sarah, you I heard you mentioned something like

00:02:15.740 an oblique reference to this on a you are good episode i think yeah i was amazed that you even

00:02:21.540 noticed this yeah because it's because i was already reading for it yeah i mean it's funny

00:02:25.540 because like my knowledge of this is like of its little droppings as a cultural event and so i'm

00:02:32.100 really excited to get the the full story from you um but yes i can give you cultural event stuff

00:02:37.720 okay great this is a massive cultural event are you guys familiar with this concept of a forgot

00:02:42.820 buster no well i remember you using this example in like a very early you're wrong about episode

00:02:49.260 it's like a movie that like everybody sees it's like culturally obligatory and then 10 years later

00:02:55.920 nobody can really say what happened in it and they don't and it's because it's like you watch

00:03:00.560 it once and then you're like that was great do i feel the need to like sit around watching avatar

00:03:05.260 on my tv right not particularly so avatar is a good example this was one of the biggest cases

00:03:11.740 of the early 1980s. One of the things I came across in the reading was that 100 journalists

00:03:17.440 flew in for the verdict of this trial. Wow. Whoa. It also says something about the American

00:03:22.280 journalism industry at the time. Like there were 100 newspapers. Yes. It was a massive deal. There

00:03:27.080 was a TV movie that came out just after it with Ellen Burstyn that was based exclusively on the

00:03:33.620 trial transcript. It's really weird. It's on YouTube. It's really weird. I've never heard

00:03:39.500 of someone doing that but then nobody like no one has heard of this and also so for this episode i

00:03:45.220 read two books the first is called mrs harris by diana trilling and she wrote this book in 1982

00:03:51.580 that was a finalist for the pulitzer prize and there's now there's no wikipedia entry for it

00:03:58.500 it's out of print like it has completely fallen off the cultural radar and then the other book

00:04:04.720 that i'm basing this on is called very much a lady by shauna alexander who was the first female

00:04:10.700 reporter for life magazine and sarah you will know this the you know the snl sketches where 0.98

00:04:17.320 it's dan akroyd and jane curtain and he's like jane you ignorant slut yeah those sketches are 0.94

00:04:22.380 based on shauna alexander's segments on 60 minutes she used to have the segment where she would like 0.97

00:04:27.980 a feminist debates with a conservative i didn't even know those were like based on anything right 0.92

00:04:32.880 because we end up with these like parody fossils and we've forgotten like the actual event has

00:04:37.860 just decomposed it's just this fascinating forgot buster turducken where it's this like

00:04:43.420 forgot buster case that produced forgot buster books by forgot buster journalists i've been

00:04:49.460 watching a lot of disaster movies but i feel like you're like the disaster expert who comes in who's

00:04:54.280 like ladies and gentlemen it is a triple mudslide avalanche meteor our sleepy little vacation town

00:05:03.120 won't know what hit it so this episode is the story of gene harris she's born in 1923 in cleveland

00:05:10.400 she's raised mostly by her mother because her father sucks gene harris later says he never

00:05:16.480 should have had children an unbelievably unhappy man to be around he only remembered the unpleasant 0.99

00:05:21.760 things nothing made him happy and there was no way to not make him mad wow i don't know if this

00:05:26.900 is typical of people who grew up in homes like this but she she sort of deals with the chaos of 0.99

00:05:31.460 her home life by being a super high achiever at school she's the class president she's on the

00:05:36.720 swim team she wins something called the current events contest i don't know what that is but it's

00:05:42.040 something they did in the 1930s in cleveland this is the event that's most current i guess

00:05:47.820 congratulations as she gets older she goes to smith college in 1945 she marries her high school

00:05:56.520 sweetheart a guy named jim harris she says that the only reason she married him was that her dad

00:06:01.820 didn't like him so it was like her only act of rebellion basically in her life up to this point

00:06:08.060 good for her i know you know first marriage it's just for practice yeah so after they graduate from

00:06:14.060 college, he gets a job in the auto industry doing something with carburetors. And they move to

00:06:19.460 Detroit. She gets work as a school teacher until she gets pregnant. And then after she has her

00:06:24.900 kids, she's at home taking care of the kids. But she sort of misses work, misses having a career.

00:06:29.200 So she starts running a daycare slash primary school out of her basement.

00:06:33.440 Well, you just can't run daycares out of your basement anymore.

00:06:35.660 Nobody wants to work anymore. This period also establishes a theme in her life

00:06:40.640 where she's extroverted. 1.00

00:06:42.980 She's hanging out with all the other wives. 1.00

00:06:45.040 She's like kind of a social butterfly 0.99

00:06:46.260 and doing really well.

00:06:47.160 But she thinks that she's really bad at everything.

00:06:49.740 So her friends from the time tell Shauna Alexander

00:06:52.540 that she was always just saying something self-deprecating

00:06:55.560 and she could never take a compliment.

00:06:57.460 When you're like, oh, that was a nice cake

00:06:59.420 that you made for the brunch this weekend.

00:07:01.600 She'd be like, oh, it doesn't, oh, it's not a real recipe.

00:07:04.040 I just like whipped it up from like powdered mix or something. 1.00

00:07:06.480 I challenge you to find a woman of this generation

00:07:09.560 or who came of age in the 20th century who can take a compliment on her baking because like there 0.98

00:07:14.420 are some but this is her serving as an example of kind of like what female socialization will

00:07:22.500 do to a person over time yes i ate a lovely cake last night served by a woman in her 70s who kept

00:07:29.760 saying i'm just learning how to bake it's not very good was it my mom that's great i'm so happy she's

00:07:36.920 having a vacation. She really needs one. So basically, as she is getting more into her

00:07:42.840 career, and she's actually getting more ambitious, she goes back to school to get a master's degree

00:07:46.360 in education at Wayne State University. She finds that she's just drifting apart from her husband.

00:07:51.760 He's kind of not that into his career. And he's also not as into all the socializing. He's just

00:07:56.120 like an introvert. So in 1964, she files for divorce. And so she's still in Detroit. She's

00:08:02.740 43 years old. She's now a single mom. She gets a job as an administrator at something called

00:08:08.780 Springside, which is a super posh girl school in the Philadelphia suburbs. Shauna Alexander says

00:08:15.560 she tackled her new job at Springside with a level of dedication that would have brought joy

00:08:20.300 to the heart of Vince Lombardi, which I think from context clues means that she's working hard.

00:08:25.480 That's a sports metaphor. Vince Lombardi said winning, I forget the exact quote, but like

00:08:30.660 winning isn't the most important thing. It's the only thing which like, I fail to see how that

00:08:36.080 really relates to administrating a girls school. But like, it's a very competitive culture we live 0.99

00:08:42.200 in. So she's in Philadelphia. And in December of 1966, she meets Herman Tarnauer. Is he as sexy

00:08:52.980 is his name i was just gonna send you guys a photo oh oh that's a face i don't want anywhere 0.99

00:09:01.100 near my vagina that's how i'm gonna fight yeah he's got uh who he's just sort of showing his 0.90

00:09:10.940 teeth is how i would describe his expression in this photo just like here's what my teeth look 0.98

00:09:16.460 like yeah it's like he's been reading like an incel subreddit all day about how smiling is a

00:09:22.720 sign of submission and chimps and then someone asked him to smile for a photo and he's like

00:09:26.980 really torn about whether to do it yeah i mean ordinarily i would feel bad about talking about

00:09:34.800 somebody like this but it's a very weird case in that everyone like including his friends 0.98

00:09:40.700 say that herman tarnauer is just a huge bag of dicks oh really yeah with teeth on top he has 0.99

00:09:47.440 a life story that should make him appealing. He grows up dirt poor in Brooklyn. He works his way 1.00

00:09:53.720 into medical school. After he graduates, he moves to Westchester, which is an hour outside of New

00:09:59.560 York. And at the time, it's like the boonies, but it's kind of quickly becoming a bedroom community

00:10:05.000 for old money New York people. So it's where the Astors and the Carnegies and stuff go for their 0.95

00:10:11.420 summer houses and their weekend homes and stuff so he sets up a practice there and immediately

00:10:17.660 becomes like the doctor to the wealthy he has this kind of idea of like a country doctor he knows

00:10:24.140 them he knows their names he knows their servants names he goes golfing with them he goes to their

00:10:28.420 parties he has these big parties at his house he's a really good listener he's really good at like

00:10:33.000 bedside manner when it's rich people everybody else in the entire county who's like middle class 0.98

00:10:38.300 or working class says that he's just a complete dick and like will not listen to them wow he will 0.67

00:10:42.340 he says that he will treat their servants for free like oh if you have like someone who works 0.98

00:10:47.120 in your house i'll help them but then he will report back about their medical conditions to

00:10:52.360 their employer oh gross he's also known as like a inveterate womanizer he at one point apparently

00:11:00.140 tells a friend he says women were never a problem for me because there were always nurses available 0.78

00:11:05.200 oh god goes through his employees apparently grotesque he apparently disconnected the gas

00:11:13.300 in his own house because when women would come over they would try to cook breakfast for him

00:11:18.200 in the morning and he didn't want them sticking around so there just wasn't gas in his house and

00:11:23.940 he ate out every meal for 12 years i don't know how to react to that this guy never wanted an egg

00:11:29.520 so gene meets him at this party in philadelphia in late 1966 and it's one of those things where

00:11:38.380 like you sit next to somebody at dinner and you're at a big party but then you just kind of

00:11:42.000 take each other onto like the love seat in the corner and you just talk to each other for hours

00:11:46.700 and ignore the entire party around you that's a very sexy description afterwards like he lives

00:11:51.460 in upstate new york and she's in philadelphia but he starts sending her like little gifts

00:11:56.360 he sends her like history books of stuff that he mentioned he sends her a christmas card with a 0.98

00:12:02.300 wicked fucking neg it says you were a delight to be with i kept wondering if you could keep 0.98

00:12:08.460 up the pace also whether or not you're a good dancer oh i hate men i know this guy later had 1.00

00:12:16.640 a son and that son was mystery the pickup artist i kept wondering if you were as smart as me but

00:12:23.060 Almost.

00:12:23.940 So I'm impressed.

00:12:24.980 I love it when men talk about intelligent women as if they're like a dog walking on their hind legs.

00:12:35.080 So he invites her to New York City and he's going to like show her around New York City.

00:12:41.080 This is an incredible crossover moment for the show, Aubrey.

00:12:44.700 On their second date, they go see Angela Lansbury in Maine. 1.00

00:12:49.880 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:12:51.260 Are you kidding me? 1.00

00:12:52.120 it's so weird yeah i love this so much that's the role that she talked about she was like i was

00:12:58.540 living that new york city life and i put on some pounds and one day i saw the glint of teeth in

00:13:03.900 my audience and i thought those people are having a nice date right now so they do that on the

00:13:10.140 saturday and then on the sunday he invites her up to his like estate he lives in this apparently

00:13:15.320 like frank lloyd wright knockoff house with like a bunch of buildings frank lloyd wrong yeah one of 0.50

00:13:21.620 the weirdest fucking details about this story is that he has two live-in servants who are named 0.78

00:13:27.280 Suzanne and Henry and they like handle the house and his scheduling and all this kind of stuff 0.96

00:13:31.980 and they're both French-speaking Belgians and according to both books that I've read for this

00:13:39.060 this was like a trend among rich people was like not to have French-speaking servants not to have

00:13:45.800 belgian servants but to have french-speaking belgian servants was like as a status symbol

00:13:51.180 in upstate new york in the 1960s did they make chocolates for you i guess they were all just

00:13:57.760 really into poirot so they start dating sometime in 1967 within a couple months he asks her to

00:14:06.800 marry him he gives her a ring which i looked this up adjusted for inflation it's worth 90 000

00:14:13.000 and he offers her the ring gets down on one knee the whole thing and apparently she hesitates

00:14:20.080 she's like uh i don't know if i want to be tied down i don't know if i want my kids to move to

00:14:26.300 upstate new york and like move in with this guy into like this big house she's really focused on

00:14:31.140 her career at this point she's just like uh give me some time to think about it and then a couple

00:14:36.860 months goes by eventually she's like uh should we talk about the wedding ring thing and he's like

00:14:43.040 you know what i changed my mind i i don't think i'm a settling down kind of guy oh herman there's

00:14:48.500 then a period where it's sort of like well well what now you've asked me to marry you you've now

00:14:53.220 kind of reneged on the invitation so it's kind of weird for a little while and eventually she

00:14:57.720 writes him a letter basically saying i don't care that you don't want to marry me like let's just

00:15:02.320 keep hanging out so their relationship goes on for the next 14 years and he basically takes this

00:15:10.360 letter her kind of reaffirming of the relationship he takes it as an invitation to just act like he's

00:15:16.800 single they see each other on weekends and during the weekdays he's dating other people and sometimes

00:15:23.000 carrying on serious relationships sometimes less serious relationships in 1970 he asked at least

00:15:27.800 two other women to marry him basically everyone including his friends in his life say that he's

00:15:32.820 just a a take it or leave it guy he's just like this is the relationship if you want to see me

00:15:36.940 on weekends that's what our relationship is going to be we're not going to be in like a normal

00:15:40.220 relationship if you like that great if you don't buy can i ask a question it sounds like by all 0.95

00:15:46.520 accounts he is a dick in the books that you read was there anything reconciling was she like into 0.99

00:15:53.800 the dickishness was she also a little bit of a dick like what's the what's her response so diana 0.98

00:15:59.380 trilling's book which is like kind of reactionary and like quite bad for reasons that we'll get into 0.98

00:16:04.960 her theory is that basically gene harris is a masochist and she she liked being abused i don't

00:16:12.760 love this explanation that's not what being a masochist yeah totally proceed yeah i don't find

00:16:17.860 that very convincing in shauna alexander's book she talks about how it might be something to do

00:16:23.000 with her father that she had this kind of distant, horrible presence in her life who like never gave

00:16:28.960 her approval. And that's essentially the pattern with high. She calls him high. In the writings

00:16:34.640 with her and various interviews with her that I've seen, she seems to kind of be like fascinated by

00:16:38.720 him and admiring of him. He was somebody who considered himself a sophisticate. He was someone

00:16:44.380 who knew a lot about history. He traveled a lot. And it seems like she liked listening to him and

00:16:50.060 she thought he was smart it seems like he liked bouncing himself off of her and she liked being

00:16:55.880 bounced off of but like does she know about the non-monogamy of the situation she knows about it

00:17:02.820 they have various conversations where she's like just don't rub it in my face okay my sense from

00:17:07.820 her is actually that it's something that she wants to be okay with right because it's like

00:17:11.960 she's agreed to this he's basically said take it or leave it and she's like okay i i can handle this

00:17:16.080 I can handle this. But then in the actual reality of it, she really can't. Like it really hurts her

00:17:20.700 feelings. It feels like we're getting very close to just being like, she's a chapter in, he's just

00:17:26.540 not that into you. I know. But then another thing that I think is an important factor to take into

00:17:33.280 consideration here is that in 1971, she gets a new job. She moves to Connecticut. She moves to

00:17:39.920 another school where she's the headmistress. So she's like moving up in the world. She's finally

00:17:43.460 in charge of a school and almost immediately she starts getting fatigued it's like an unbelievably 1.00

00:17:48.680 stressful position to run a school especially at this time where it's like only women did this for 0.97

00:17:52.640 for women's schools which means the pay was abysmal and no one takes your job seriously and 0.98

00:17:57.540 you have to live on campus so if you lose your job you also lose your housing at the same time

00:18:00.880 and like your car and stuff it's really amazing how like bad these jobs were so she's just like

00:18:05.700 super duper stressed out. She's getting this fatigue. So he prescribes her desoxone, which

00:18:14.060 is like a straight up methamphetamine. It's not like like a methamphetamine. It's like an actual

00:18:19.240 methamphetamine. And people used to use it for diets back in the day, even though she's not

00:18:24.320 dieting. But it's something that basically just like revs you up all day. You're not hungry. You

00:18:30.880 can't sleep and it gives you this sort of i can do anything kind of feeling studio gave those to

00:18:38.220 judy garland and you know that worked out great for her it's weird to prescribe this to your

00:18:42.800 girlfriend and not like explain to her like it's sort of a big deal it's weird to prescribe anything

00:18:49.000 to your girlfriend yeah i think about it at some point this is years later she goes to a doctor for

00:18:55.520 something else you know they're like are you taking any medication she's like yeah i'm taking

00:18:59.120 dezoxin and they're like what how long have you been taking that for and she's like oh six years

00:19:03.780 and they're like what like this is not normal and i guess the doctor at that time is like you're not

00:19:10.060 taking anything else are you and she's like oh yeah the guy i'm seeing also gave me like some

00:19:13.560 downers for my back and also some sleeping pills to help me sleep at night because the dezoxin 0.95

00:19:17.440 keeps me so ripped up and i guess this other doctor is like you gotta be fucking kidding me 0.57

00:19:21.680 with this and eventually she goes back to high and she's like oh this other doctor was kind of 0.96

00:19:25.720 uncomfortable and he's like ah he's just a quack he doesn't know what he's talking about so she

00:19:28.880 just keeps taking it i feel like she's about to be like listen his regimen for me is that i just

00:19:33.600 swallow a couple tablespoons of baking soda and then chug some vinegar it's fine don't worry about

00:19:39.280 it i'm a science fair volcano but it's for him sean alexander's theory on this is that what is

00:19:46.300 actually happening is that gene harris is depressed and the fatigue is a sign of depression she's

00:19:53.640 extremely lonely her kids are now grown up and out of the house because she's the headmistress of

00:19:58.780 the school she can't really like make friends at work yeah she's in this sort of high society

00:20:03.680 connecticut world that she doesn't really understand she's dating somebody who like 0.99

00:20:09.220 kind of treats her like shit and like doesn't really value her as a person shauna alexander's 0.98

00:20:14.720 theory is that basically she's been suffering from depression for an extremely long time but because 0.99

00:20:19.660 she's taking these pills which deal with the fatigue and the other symptoms of the depression

00:20:24.620 right like insomnia and these other things that happen when you're clinically depressed

00:20:27.300 she doesn't know that she's depressed and she doesn't know that she's covering up the symptoms

00:20:32.060 so it just sort of simmers underneath the surface and she's not like aware of how much she's

00:20:38.360 struggling partly because also when you're taking methamphetamines every day you are like insanely

00:20:42.980 productive like she's very good at her job i think that like mania not that that's what it is if

00:20:48.680 you're on a methamphetamine but sort of like a state where like vibrating in a very high frequency 0.99

00:20:54.000 is often not noticed in women because people are like yeah she's like doing what she's supposed to 0.93

00:21:00.180 do for once so after like three years of taking this insane drug cocktail that her boyfriend is

00:21:06.640 giving her he starts seeing someone else pretty seriously so there's a receptionist at the medical

00:21:13.380 clinic where he works named lynn triforos who throughout all of this has never spoken to the

00:21:19.620 press. Everything we know about her is like second and third hand sources. So like very big grain of

00:21:25.000 salt. She starts working for Herman Tarnauer in 1964. It's not totally clear when they begin

00:21:32.300 dating. But by 1974, it becomes clear to Jean that like they are becoming more serious. She's

00:21:39.320 basically his like weekday girlfriend. And the way that she finds out, I guess Lynn will send

00:21:46.140 letters to hi whenever they're traveling so they'll go to like athens and they get to the

00:21:51.460 four seasons and it's like oh there's a letter for you dr tarnower and it's like hi sweetie i miss

00:21:56.100 you or whatever and it's like little things like this where just it makes it harder for gene to

00:22:01.340 ignore what's going on she finds cufflinks where he's like oh a patient gave me these like nice

00:22:07.300 new cufflinks and then she looks on the back of them and they're like i love you love lynn or

00:22:11.320 whatever. My patient really loved me. I also just want to appreciate that we're nearing what I'm

00:22:16.360 assuming is going to be some level of sex scandal with two women named Jean and Lynn. I know.

00:22:24.560 The fact that like Jean is now like 49 and Lynn Traforos is 37. It's just like a bunch of adults

00:22:31.720 doing like some kind of middle school stuff like the rest of the story. Love it. So speaking of

00:22:37.820 middle school stuff shortly after he starts dating lynn more seriously this is wild gene starts

00:22:45.280 getting anonymous phone calls nope i feel like this is something that like you have to explain

00:22:50.960 to like the youths because we're so used to a world where like you know who is calling you

00:22:54.980 right and if it's a blocked number you just wouldn't pick up so like the the institution

00:22:59.780 of anonymous phone calls has kind of disappeared from american life but like there were a couple

00:23:05.580 decades in there with like the phone just rang and you just picked it up and like you would just

00:23:10.260 be talking to like whoever was on the other end without warning you guys remember like obscene

00:23:16.200 phone calls like that was something we heard about as kids right sure yeah heavy breathers

00:23:20.260 i definitely like picked up the phone at one point and there was just like random heavy breathing and

00:23:25.480 i was like what before there was chat roulette there was obscene phone calls so gene starts

00:23:31.260 getting anonymous phone calls in 1974 but they're not just like random heavy breathing phone calls

00:23:38.040 they're about her so she'll pick up the phone and someone like a male voice will say do you ever 1.00

00:23:45.660 think about herman tarnauer fucking other women do you ever think about how bad you are at fucking 0.99

00:23:50.600 him one of them says you should go to sex school which is kind of weird that is extremely middle 1.00

00:23:57.120 school you promised middle school stuff yeah never has a more seventh grade thing been said

00:24:03.320 she starts getting obscene letters too that are like about her like specific things about her 1.00

00:24:09.460 and the obscene phone caller whoever this is will leave numbers they'll they'll call her office and 0.83

00:24:16.500 leave like oh call me back at this number and then she'll call the number and it's lynn triforos 1.00

00:24:21.560 what lynn picks up and she's like is this lynn triforos and then lynn is like why are you calling

00:24:26.760 me like this is really inappropriate and weird that you're calling me and gene is like i didn't

00:24:30.520 know this was you and then lynn is like nice try gene it gets to the point where lynn triforos

00:24:36.680 changes her own number 10 times and every single time the anonymous caller calls gene harris and

00:24:44.940 gives the new number to gene harris and then lynn has to change her number again wait mike i have a

00:24:50.020 theory the person making these phone calls is it jigsaw it sounds like something jigsaw would do

00:24:56.260 the thing is i'm actually very frustrated by this because like dramatic catharsis wise you'd want to

00:25:03.220 know who was doing the phone calls we never find out to this day we do not so we don't know that

00:25:09.020 it wasn't jigsaw technically you can't prove this negative can you the only theory that makes sense

00:25:17.460 the only person who would do this right obviously is lynn but it's like a man's voice so lynn put

00:25:24.040 someone up to this or gene is making all this up or herman's doing it or there's like some

00:25:30.340 other person who like is meddling for like i'm like does does herman tarnauer have like a like

00:25:38.900 a fellow freemason who's like meddling in his love life or something who runs a sex school

00:25:45.520 just trying to get business for the sex school those recruiting flyers under the windshield

00:25:53.660 wipers didn't really work so there's also a really weird detail in shauna alexander's book

00:25:59.580 where she says that herman tarnauer is also getting obscene phone calls for nine years

00:26:04.920 but he just like doesn't think it's that big of a deal this is what people cope with in the 70s i

00:26:10.540 guess it's just like okay no no reason to like look into that at all but like fair enough but

00:26:17.520 then whatever is happening is basically like driving gene nuts every time she brings this up

00:26:23.440 with hi he's like you're crazy this is not real like you need to stop bothering lynn but then he 0.92

00:26:30.820 will also talk shit about lynn to gene obviously he'll say like oh i could never settle down with 0.99

00:26:36.880 lynn like she's too much of an intellectual lightweight she's not like you gaslight gatekeep 0.99

00:26:40.620 girl boss exactly and like he's he he talks shit about his other like exes to gene and you can only 0.99

00:26:47.800 assume that of course he's talking shit about gene to his other women that he's dating this is a this 0.98

00:26:52.880 is an excerpt from diana trilling's book she says herman tarnauer had an insatiable appetite for 0.99

00:26:58.140 small power whatever his seriousness as a physician in his private life he was in the business of

00:27:03.520 indulging some profoundly unserious notion of what constitutes manhood there's something disturbed

00:27:08.720 and disturbing in the sexuality of someone who plays women off each other as he played these

00:27:13.120 women off of his this was not altered by the fact that they obviously conspired in it the world is

00:27:18.260 full of masochistic people dedicated to their own worst interests but a developed person doesn't

00:27:23.440 look for his proofs of strength by moving in upon other people's weaknesses so it's very like very

00:27:28.560 1970s phrasing it's not a good book that's a lot of ideas that i don't really like but i do think

00:27:35.900 herman tarnower could have put a stop to this on some level right yeah he could have said like look

00:27:40.480 lynn is a nice person i'm not gonna say anything negative about her to you you should not speak 0.69

00:27:45.000 negatively about her to me well hart tarnower has not read the ethical slut i i would wager

00:27:50.380 and like this is a hypothesis but potentially maybe the point of this for him is not to have

00:27:56.100 one woman he's in a relationship with or two women or a bunch of women but to like

00:28:01.180 play them off each other in a relationship drome this is some major like divorce dad energy too

00:28:08.880 your mom would never let this happen like oh no thanks so in 1977 as all this is going on

00:28:17.760 she gets a job at madeira which is another posh girl school in the dc suburbs it's like half an

00:28:25.080 hour or an hour away from dc at the time the school motto is i swear to god i'm not making

00:28:30.480 this up function in disaster finish in style why would you have disaster in your school motto

00:28:39.440 because they knew where america was going before anyone else did 0.99

00:28:44.720 so she gets this headmistress job at this like very prestigious school she's apparently very

00:28:52.740 good at the job i guess this school was just essentially like a glorified summer camp for 0.99

00:28:57.560 rich kids and when she gets there she's like what the fuck are you doing that the christmas break 0.97

00:29:02.360 apparently is six weeks long they're only in classes four days a week i guess the school 0.98

00:29:09.520 is not accredited so like people couldn't write off donations it's just like a mess when she gets

00:29:16.980 there sounds like a great school and also because she's on a bunch of meth she's like very efficient

00:29:22.920 so she like goes about sort of reforming this school i mean this is the period where under 0.98

00:29:28.960 normal circumstances like this is where she should have started to drift away from high

00:29:34.440 because it's it's now a five hour drive to see him he's getting closer to lynn he's now going on

00:29:41.560 these elaborate vacations with lynn that's something he used to do with her all the signs

00:29:46.260 are there that this has basically run its course and also that he's swapping her out for like the

00:29:52.100 younger, hotter model story as old as time, right? But she's both in denial about what's

00:29:59.600 happening and she's kind of addicted to him. It seems like she can't stop herself from wanting

00:30:05.300 to see him. Another sign that this is becoming just a really negative force in her life is that

00:30:11.440 the weird attacks start escalating. So she leaves a dress in his house, like in the attic or in the

00:30:18.980 closet or something she pulls it out and it's covered in shit what well human shit that's the 0.99

00:30:26.760 thing i don't both of the books just say excrement why would you not say whose it was the only 1.00

00:30:32.020 explanation that makes sense is lynn triforos but also it's like a 37 year old woman like smearing 0.96

00:30:38.160 shit on someone else's clothes that seems weird listen guys i'm 38 now but me a year ago 100 0.69

00:30:46.200 percent could have done i've really grown leaps and bounds in the last 10 months 0.98

00:30:53.720 and of course she is convinced that lynn is doing this she's convinced that lynn has done all of 0.99

00:30:59.340 this to fuck with her and to make her seem crazy and it's sort of gaslighting and that every time 0.98

00:31:04.500 she brings it up to him he's like are you kidding me like of course that wasn't her and he he starts 0.99

00:31:09.780 doing something where he'll threaten to not see her if she brings it up and so there's a point

00:31:15.340 where he refuses to speak to her for two weeks when she brings up something that she thinks

00:31:20.440 lynn does she sends her an obscene valentine's day card and he's also punishing her like a child

00:31:25.520 too it's like giving her a time out from the relationship which is so demeaning exactly and

00:31:30.280 then also because she's been on meth for so long and also because this job is like a pretty big

00:31:35.400 step up in responsibility there's also like signs of erraticness starting to show up at work so

00:31:41.760 people say she'll just like trail off in the middle of sentences she starts to cry kind of

00:31:46.900 randomly in conversations she'll have these tantrums and like storm out of meetings and just 1.00

00:31:51.800 disappear for the rest of the day she has like a weird thing with rules she really wants all the 1.00

00:31:56.640 girls to follow the rules she at one point she bans oranges from campus because kids are leaving 1.00

00:32:03.160 the peels around and then anytime she sees a peel she just like melts down or like a kid

00:32:10.600 eating an orange she like goes nuts and the other teachers are like sometimes you just gotta let

00:32:15.540 stuff go it's like we get that it's a rule but like you can't have an event every single time

00:32:20.140 you see an orange this is a real cane mutiny type situation it's to the point where she stops

00:32:25.560 eating in the cafeteria at lunch because she gets so triggered by the oranges like me in eighth

00:32:32.180 grade yeah she's in the band room she's basically like she kind of feels the walls closing in on her

00:32:39.820 And she feels like stress coming at her from every direction.

00:32:43.520 So she later says, I think it had something to do with being a woman who had worked a

00:32:48.760 long time and had done the things a man does to support a family, but still been a woman.

00:32:53.400 And I always felt that when I was in Westchester, I was a woman in a pretty dress and went to

00:32:57.100 a dinner party with Dr. Tarnower.

00:32:58.660 And in Washington, I was a woman in a pretty dress and the headmistress, but I wasn't sure

00:33:02.580 who I was and it didn't seem to matter.

00:33:05.180 I was a person sitting in an empty chair.

00:33:07.440 I can't describe it any better than that. 0.77

00:33:09.060 Yeah, I feel like most of the ways that I've heard sort of depression and anxiety discussed around particularly women of this particular generation is that it was just sort of the price of admission, right? Oh, yeah, you were gonna feel emotionally bad, most slash all of the time. And you would go to the doctor and get whatever, you know, pills you would get and sort of hope for the best. And that was about it. No one was talking about much.

00:33:35.260 Right. There's a reason mother needs a little helper. 1.00

00:33:37.660 I think there's something I mean, I think this is this also happens now, too, where it's like, there's something in your consciousness that has changed. So Jean Harris identifies as a feminist at this time. She's actually like quite progressive. What can I say for her? I mean, every single school that she works at the one of the first things she does is increase teacher pay.

00:33:55.000 oh jean you know in her head she has this new consciousness but she also lives in an extremely

00:34:00.180 conservative world still you know she's at a girl's school she's the head mistress in the 1.00

00:34:05.000 system where like she just has to suck up to men all the time like the board is all dudes 1.00

00:34:08.480 yeah and she's she talks about how she's barely making more than suzanne like herman tarnauer's 1.00

00:34:15.100 like live-in servant lady and she's like running a school with i think it's like 450 students i

00:34:19.720 think stories about people who are adjacent to the rich are always really interesting right

00:34:24.880 this way and like that these are two people who are like like the fact that they have to perform

00:34:30.040 stately wealth is just creating more stress for them and having to like conjure that with very

00:34:36.320 minimal resources totally right and also if she brings that up with the people like that can

00:34:41.240 change her pay it's like this awkward conversation like they perceive it as an attack it's like

00:34:46.220 listen she piloted the orange band she deserves a raise so she's feeling terrible the walls are

00:34:53.260 closing in. And so in October of 1978, she goes to a gun store and buys a handgun.

00:35:00.520 Does she have a story at the time where she's like, oh, my car got keyed by one of the orange 0.84

00:35:06.760 people?

00:35:08.320 She says it's complicated. I mean, she did apparently live in like a big scary house

00:35:13.840 on campus, but she had been sort of intermittently suicidal throughout her life. And so she says it

00:35:20.580 was a gun just in case but it was like just in case of two different things i feel like this gun

00:35:26.400 purchase is when this turns fully into like a miranda lambert song you cheated on me and now

00:35:33.080 you're gonna die right like it's like some real like lady revenge stuff i feel like is where we're

00:35:38.400 headed well okay do you we're actually getting to the darkest chapter of the story do you want to 0.98

00:35:41.860 know what it is sure by far the darkest fucking chapter of this is we're finally going to talk 0.93

00:35:46.680 about the scarsdale diet yes can't wait so this is the reason why like anybody knows about this 0.88

00:35:53.120 because the scarsdale diet was like of course now completely memory hold also a forgot buster

00:35:58.160 but like was massive at the time apparently the queen of england was on the scars oh my god

00:36:05.720 but okay i remember hearing about this as a tween because i read a lot of kathy comic

00:36:11.440 compilations and this definitely got mentioned what did it say about it what do you know about

00:36:15.620 So all I remember about it, but it was that you got like a half a grapefruit and like whole like plain whole wheat toast for breakfast, I think.

00:36:26.760 OK.

00:36:27.180 Yeah. I mean, I feel like so this is we're in the 70s. Yeah.

00:36:30.560 78. Yeah.

00:36:31.380 This is some peak cabbage soup diet time.

00:36:35.100 The master cleanse is like having a moment during all of this.

00:36:39.000 This is the heyday of carob.

00:36:41.900 Yeah.

00:36:42.080 Oh, carob's 15 minutes are happening.

00:36:45.620 Trigger warning, carob.

00:36:47.560 There was also a diet that a family friend got married in the 70s,

00:36:52.400 and the diet that she did before her wedding was you just eat grapefruit and eggs.

00:36:56.980 Oh, okay.

00:36:58.080 So, like, it is peak time for people treating super wacky diets as, like, somehow reasonable and normal. 0.98

00:37:06.480 What I'm fascinated by is it was also a time where you could just say the most deranged shit about a diet and people would believe you.

00:37:15.360 not like now i know like not that we've gotten like so much savvier now but it's like okay so

00:37:22.320 the the origin of the scarsdale diet is a single paragraph in an article in the new york times in

00:37:28.820 april of 1978 which is a completely wrote nothing burger of an article that's like new yorkers are

00:37:34.260 trying to get in shape for the summer the paragraph reads a vice president of bloomingdale's was shown

00:37:40.100 the scarsdale diet by the owner of a fish restaurant decided to try it lost 20 pounds

00:37:45.740 in 19 days and claims that he was never hungry and never tired on six out of seven days you can

00:37:52.680 have substantial dinner and you can eat in large quantities he reports the diet available from the

00:37:57.900 scarsdale medical group consists mostly of steak fish chicken vegetables and fruits no liquor is

00:38:03.520 allowed that's it that's the paragraph and everyone was like tell me more yeah i mean the birth of the

00:38:09.100 diet is like pure cynicism. So book publishers see this paragraph. They contact Herman Tarnower.

00:38:16.060 It turns out there is no Scarsdale diet. There is a single piece of paper that he hands to patients.

00:38:23.380 He's tired of giving them the same advice all the time. So he and the other doctors in the clinic,

00:38:28.960 by the way, who get no credit for this, come up with this diet plan of like, it's basically Monday

00:38:33.440 eat this, Tuesday eat that. Like that's all it is. It's just a seven day diet plan and you repeat it

00:38:37.580 for another week and it's they call it a two-week diet plan as soon as he explains this to the

00:38:42.540 publisher the publisher is like oh yeah no big deal we'll just expand that into a book like we'll

00:38:46.600 just add filler like make a book out of this like single piece of paper that's the birth of every

00:38:53.200 diet book by the way if we're honest like yes we have one to two pages of information or analysis

00:38:59.960 to offer and then the only way we can turn this into a profiting venture is to turn it into a

00:39:06.260 book which has to be like i don't know 150 to 250 pages so we gotta get to work now that you say

00:39:13.380 that it is really funny to think about a diet complicated enough that it requires an entire

00:39:18.040 200 page book to explain it just this weird byzantine choose your own adventure if you

00:39:24.160 had oats for breakfast turn to page 67 or like the tapioca diet first he must journey to south

00:39:30.940 america to find the tapioca tree and pound its bark yeah so they bring on this guy named sam

00:39:38.380 sinclair who was like a madison avenue advertising guy and had previously written 27 self-help books

00:39:45.760 wow their conversation with herman tarnauer is taking place in june of 1978 and they need the

00:39:52.340 book to be out by january because that's when everybody buys diet books right oh yeah i mean

00:39:57.740 i was shocked reading this book it is one of the most unethical things i've ever read i don't i

00:40:03.120 don't even mean like the most unethical diet i've ever read like i read alan dershowitz's book

00:40:08.060 like this this might have been worse it's it's something that i think the diet industry

00:40:15.280 does in more subtle ways now where every time it describes the diet in general it's like oh it's

00:40:22.860 easy. It's not that hard to follow. You'll never be hungry. You don't have to remember anything

00:40:27.980 complicated. It's so simple, right? Is it math? Yeah. And then the minute you get to the actual

00:40:36.140 specifics, it's just like an unbelievably restrictive diet. So yeah, it's like a half

00:40:42.100 a grapefruit and one piece of bread every morning. And then lunch will be like a bowl of fruit salad.

00:40:47.720 One of the lunches is a half a cup of cottage cheese and six walnuts.

00:40:53.360 So like no food.

00:40:55.500 And then it'll be like a whatever, a four ounce thing of fish and some like steamed broccoli for dinner or something.

00:41:03.120 So you just feel like you're going to pass out all the time, which is exactly, you know, what you want.

00:41:07.680 I have not done the analysis, but like most of these daily diets are probably less than a thousand calories.

00:41:13.540 It's like extremely restrictive.

00:41:15.520 You're not allowed to snack. 1.00

00:41:16.900 you're not allowed to drink alcohol it just like it just sucks ass and then of course because all 0.99

00:41:21.700 the rhetoric around the diet is like it's easy and you'll never be hungry it's also like well 0.99

00:41:25.840 if you can't do it you clearly just don't have the willpower and like it's your fault yeah that's

00:41:30.580 like the rhetoric of diets right is just like wow we came up with this simple easy thing and you

00:41:36.340 can't even manage that there's a decent amount of fiber in it which suggests that if someone were on

00:41:41.760 they could poop on their girlfriend's clothes so file that away oh my god this is the smoking gun 0.89

00:41:49.240 i know but what's amazing this this book sells six million copies holy shit this also becomes 0.93

00:41:58.520 like a source of tension in his relationship with gene because she behind the scenes was trying to

00:42:05.200 like tone down the book a little bit the first paragraph of the book i think kind of rather

00:42:10.100 famously is like the only thing to know about this diet is that it works gene had like scrapped that

00:42:15.780 paragraph and was like this is unethical this doesn't really work for most people and you 0.60

00:42:20.520 shouldn't do that and she got in a big fight apparently with the this like scammy author

00:42:26.180 that they brought on to write the book and she apparently at one point rewrote the entire

00:42:30.640 manuscript whoa she does i mean she does like months of work on this because she kind of thinks

00:42:35.060 it's like beneath him to be doing a diet book one thing that i think really has changed in america

00:42:39.340 is like it's he is considered extremely tacky for being a doctor who's peddling a diet like that

00:42:45.700 that is something that we have lost i'd like to go back to that bring it back make it gauche

00:42:53.700 after the book comes out and it's this like massive smash hit he sends her a check for four

00:43:00.300 thousand dollars and a note that says i must make all disbursements at this time what and it becomes

00:43:07.400 this like source of tension in their relationship and kind of like a metaphor for like where their

00:43:12.380 relationship is now she's just like i didn't want money i wanted you like i wanted you to tell me

00:43:18.900 that like i couldn't have done this without you sweetie right i wanted recognition yeah it's like

00:43:23.620 i want you to tell me that like you value me as a person the only time i've heard the word

00:43:28.300 disbursement was when i got like a stipend check from a school i was a grad student at and yeah i

00:43:34.980 did not have like a really loving tender relationship with the university of wisconsin

00:43:38.940 right she's all she's she's torn between i would rather get nothing and recognition or like what

00:43:45.900 i'm worth he will eventually make three million dollars off of this book she's also like okay 0.99

00:43:51.340 either tell me that you love me and i helped with your book or pay me what i'm worth you dick 0.98

00:43:56.440 that's right pick one but you've done the worst of both worlds right now yeah you've done the 0.87

00:44:01.860 most insulting thing yeah basically this book kind of marks the beginning of the end of their

00:44:08.980 relationship they're five hours apart he is also now that he's a celebrity he has like just 0.80

00:44:14.540 logistically he just has like a lot less time he's like going on the tonight show and shit and he 0.93

00:44:18.200 probably has more groupies i would imagine they're like hey you're the creep i saw on tv as opposed 0.93

00:44:23.640 to hey you're the creep i saw at the country club exactly and it's it's feeding his ego too so he

00:44:28.460 just like isn't around and he's kind of thinks he's better than all of this now and he starts

00:44:33.700 becoming more distant like she'll she'll write to him and he just won't write back or she'll call

00:44:38.400 him and he won't call back he he instructs the servants to not patch her through yikes once again

00:44:46.640 bringing the divorced dad energy this is the thing he's he's basically ghosting her even though we

00:44:52.160 didn't have a word for that yet he's not having a conversation about it he's just like chicken

00:44:56.660 shittically cutting himself like slowly backing out of her life and they've been together for like 1.00

00:45:02.820 14 years 14 years god what a piece of shit piece of shit have a one conversation hi it seems like 1.00

00:45:14.300 she's also in denial for a lot of this period it seems like she didn't really get the fact that 1.00

00:45:20.060 the relationship was kind of petering out and also some of her friends report her saying oh hi is

00:45:26.080 going to ask me to marry him any day now as this is happening there's also all these rising tensions

00:45:31.600 at school so even though she's quite good at her job because she's getting a little bit more erratic

00:45:36.760 there is like a increasingly vocal contingent that is like anti-gene so they hire uh i think

00:45:45.320 like an investigator to do an investigation of her first two years on the job and they produce

00:45:49.360 a report where they interview a bunch of students and teachers who aren't happy with her for

00:45:53.500 whatever reason and she gets a copy of the report and so she finds out all these like nasty things

00:45:58.220 that people are saying about her again she just sort of starts to feel like the walls are closing

00:46:03.200 in she's been on the drug now for like nine years at this like pretty high dosage oh yeah she later

00:46:09.340 says i felt like i had failed everyone i was doing the best i could and it didn't seem to be enough

00:46:15.060 and I didn't have the strength to do any more. And then on March 2nd, 1980, she runs out of

00:46:23.480 desoxone. Oh, no. She knew this was coming. She had been calling him, but he's not picking up the

00:46:30.040 phone. And I guess it takes a couple days for methamphetamine withdrawal to kick in. So at

00:46:36.580 first she's like, oh, this isn't so bad. I can just like not take the pills. But by like a week,

00:46:40.760 six days later you get like severe really severe depression you get more erratic you get like this

00:46:47.680 sense of fatigue and hopelessness she says she keeps walking into the living room which i guess

00:46:53.100 is a mess in her house and she says i had this urge to clean it up but i didn't know how just

00:47:00.100 hanging up a dress felt like more decisions than i could cope with so she just like goes into the

00:47:05.700 living room looks at it is overwhelmed and then leaves i really i feel like i know that feeling

00:47:11.160 and that i mean there's like many ways to get to it but it does feel like

00:47:14.900 one of the sub basements of depression where it's like your body feels like a mech suit

00:47:20.300 yeah that you've forgotten how to manipulate yeah it's not clear if she sort of even understands

00:47:25.340 what's going on with her too because i don't think she ever quite got like what a big deal

00:47:29.500 it was to be on this like huge dose of desoxone and like the fact that she's now she's gone cold

00:47:35.520 turkey off of this medication now yeah so the day before the murder she sits down and writes him an

00:47:43.280 11 page letter it starts with i'm distraught as i write this your phone call to tell me you

00:47:49.020 preferred the company of a vicious adulterous psychotic was topped by a call from the dean

00:47:54.140 of students 10 minutes later and has kept me awake for almost 36 hours it's basically it's

00:48:00.920 like an airing of grievances email i've written like a very long one of these yeah yeah i i don't

00:48:07.700 really know any humans who haven't done this at some point yeah it is one of those things where

00:48:12.460 like something happens to like set you off or like something becomes a metaphor for much something

00:48:16.940 much larger and then you sit down and you're like it reminds me of this time two years ago where you

00:48:21.540 said this and then three years ago you also said this and then four it's like the kind of letter

00:48:26.100 that's very important to write and very important not to send not to send i know the important thing 1.00

00:48:32.940 is she she has a lot of really nasty stuff in there about lynn she calls lynn a psychotic 1.00

00:48:40.760 whore at one point she's like mad about money stuff because of the four thousand dollars thing 1.00

00:48:47.400 she says i've grown poor loving you while a self-serving ignorant slut has grown very rich 1.00

00:48:54.120 Did people just call each other ignorant sluts in the 70s? 1.00

00:48:57.660 What was going on? 0.99

00:48:58.840 As a sign of her mental state, like where she is, it's an 11-page letter.

00:49:02.840 And she doesn't even bother putting it in order.

00:49:05.180 She just like stuffs it in an envelope and sends it to him.

00:49:08.300 Okay.

00:49:08.700 So that was March 9th, 1980.

00:49:11.560 March 10th, 1980, the fateful day.

00:49:15.940 She wakes up early.

00:49:17.960 she decides to call high tarn hour at his office because she can't get a hold of him anywhere else 0.80

00:49:25.660 there's been this really fucking weird thing where he has updated his will because he's getting all

00:49:33.180 this extra diet money and in his will he has given gene 220 000 and lynn 200 000 which seems like a 0.80

00:49:45.640 needless like pitting them against each other thing but okay right everything he does he finds

00:49:51.240 a way to do it the shitty way the shitty way exactly so a couple weeks after they have this

00:49:56.560 conversation about the will she gets an anonymous note in the mail that is a photocopied page of his

00:50:04.820 will the page where he says how much he's giving them her 220 000 is crossed out and lynn is written

00:50:14.760 in her place in his handwriting can i just honestly say that like at this moment if i

00:50:22.100 were this woman who'd been on methamphetamines for like what seven years or something and has

00:50:28.300 just gone off of them and i've just seen my monetary value literally decreased by the hand

00:50:34.980 of my lover i'm not responsible for what happens next i'm having a purge goblin mode it's goblin 0.99

00:50:40.840 mode yeah that's right that's right so she calls him at his office to be like what the fuck is this 0.97

00:50:46.780 real or is this like this deranged person who's been sending me weird stuff good job jean good 0.63

00:50:52.560 job calling i know good job being confrontational we love this for you yeah so far he denies that 0.57

00:50:58.100 he's changed his will he's like i don't know who forged my handwriting but like nothing has changed

00:51:02.680 in my will calm down but also like who's doing this who's making the calls i am also annoyed

00:51:08.500 by the fact that we don't know i know and we do actually find out later that like yeah this is

00:51:15.040 fake this didn't happen somebody faked the photocopy oh wow what's going on according to

00:51:22.260 gene this phone call with hi goes okay he's like no it wasn't me it's not a big deal there's some

00:51:29.740 big gala dinner for him like celebrating i don't know 40 years in westchester county something

00:51:35.420 something and he had been thinking of inviting lynn to the gala and this of course gene saw this

00:51:42.260 as like a huge extremely hurtful thing because like she's the one that goes to like formal events

00:51:46.020 with him and so according to her he said like you're right i'm sorry i haven't called i'll

00:51:53.200 refill your prescription right now and you can come to the gala with me that's in like six weeks

00:51:57.820 time so according to her according to a patient who was in his office at the time and happened

00:52:04.640 to overhear this extremely faithfully unprofessional i know but then the patient only

00:52:11.240 hears the part of the conversation where he raises his voice so the patient hears him at one point

00:52:18.360 snap why the hell are you always bugging me about this and then silence silence silence and then 0.98

00:52:24.740 god damn it gene i want you to stop bothering me oh lord and then doesn't hear anything else 0.98

00:52:30.380 Oh. 0.99

00:52:31.460 So Jean, after this call, she tells her secretary to cancel all of her appointments that afternoon.

00:52:39.200 There is apparently a pond, like a nice pond with a bench near Hightower's house.

00:52:45.520 And so her plan is to drive up there, see him one last time, kind of say goodbye, and then go sit on this bench by the pond and kill herself. 0.90

00:52:54.140 This is her plan. 0.97

00:52:55.120 She goes home.

00:52:56.740 She finalizes her will.

00:52:58.400 she writes a letter of resignation that starts with i was a person no one knew

00:53:05.080 she writes a note to a friend that starts with i am so desolately lonely at 5 16 p.m

00:53:14.320 she calls hi to tell him she wants to see him she's like uh can i come up and see you you know

00:53:21.900 if i leave right now i can be there by like 10 p.m and he's like uh tonight's not good i'm having

00:53:26.360 friends over for dinner can you come tomorrow and she's like look i can't tomorrow and she says

00:53:32.300 just once let me say when this is also demeaning because he's like i'm far too busy for your death

00:53:39.320 i know i know also just once let me say when is like yeah rip your heart right out yeah she also

00:53:46.380 has a whole thing in the letter where she says like he never came to visit her in philadelphia

00:53:51.600 rdc at least come for the museums so she puts her gun in her purse and she gets in the car and she

00:54:04.780 starts driving up to his house in another like herman tarnauer dick move he had friends over

00:54:11.160 for dinner they left and then he just like went to bed he didn't like wait up for her yeah of course 0.81

00:54:17.180 Suzanne the housekeeper also says right before he went to bed he took his typical nightcap of

00:54:23.520 laxative and applesauce no one no one in any of the like 1980s books that I read like seem to

00:54:31.780 like react to this at all they're like oh yeah the 80s have an Aperol spritz man live a little

00:54:37.660 so very importantly everything from here on out that we're going to hear about this is

00:54:43.160 100% from her account. She arrives at the house around 1030. He is asleep. She has a bouquet of

00:54:51.080 flowers in her car because she like bumped into a student and a student was like, Mrs. Harris, 1.00

00:54:55.220 here's a bouquet of flowers. I like your student voice. That's my student voice.

00:54:59.840 That's beautiful. I love that. I want more. Will the student come back into the story? That's all

00:55:05.060 I want. So she has this bouquet of flowers on the passenger seat and she's like, 0.74

00:55:11.860 hi might want these i'll grab the flowers so this will later be in the press as she went into his

00:55:18.860 house with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a gun in the other which is not quite true but is

00:55:24.000 like kind of true if you're gonna murder someone or whatever you should never do it in a way that

00:55:29.520 produces good copy listen murder people in a boring way everyone exactly so she goes into the

00:55:35.660 garage she goes into his bedroom and like turns the lights on and is like hi i guess he's just

00:55:41.740 sort of like kind of confused she says like don't worry about it i just want to talk for a second

00:55:46.820 and he's like i what i don't want to talk i'm i'm i'm asleep right it's this interesting thing where

00:55:52.420 it's like she in her head has planned this like nice kind of ending of the relationship ending of

00:55:58.640 her life conversation between the two of them but she's also like kind of too impulsive to create

00:56:04.600 that moment at a time that it's like appropriate based on what we know i feel like perhaps herman

00:56:09.100 Tarnauer could be sort of less invested in practicing his empathetic muscles every day

00:56:16.100 than a lot of other people. And I can see him reacting with this genuine like,

00:56:20.700 what the fuck is this about? I'm sleeping. You know, just like, hey, this is really fucking up 0.99

00:56:25.560 my situation over here. And that's as much as I'm looking into it. 0.57

00:56:29.080 So apparently, he just like goes back to sleep. And she's just like, well, what do I do now?

00:56:34.980 just like in this guy's bedroom and he's sleeping so she goes into the bathroom and of course what

00:56:42.380 she sees in there is a bunch of like lynn trifurosis stuff because it's a weeknight and

00:56:47.240 she's like the weeknight girlfriend and one of the jobs of his housekeepers for years has been

00:56:51.180 to like swap the girlfriends and like take all of lynn's stuff away and add her stuff that sounds

00:56:57.040 very stressful for suzanne apparently suzanne hated them both i don't really know why if i

00:57:04.200 If I were Suzanne, I would hate everyone.

00:57:06.660 Yeah, that seems right.

00:57:08.700 So Jean goes into the bathroom, sees a bunch of Lin's stuff and kind of like freaks out. 0.86

00:57:13.900 So she grabs her curlers and like throws them at him. 0.70

00:57:18.960 She grabs like a jewelry box and throws it and hits a dresser with a glass door and the 0.87

00:57:24.720 glass door breaks. 0.99

00:57:25.860 She sort of storms out of the bathroom with like a nightgown of Lin's in her hand.

00:57:32.420 And Herman Tarnower is up at this point. 0.86

00:57:34.780 He's standing up and he hits her in the mouth.

00:57:36.740 And according to her, he's never hit her before.

00:57:39.140 Well, she's probably also never destroyed his furniture before.

00:57:42.460 It's not clear that she's like ever stood up to him particularly.

00:57:44.660 So I don't think he's like used to this.

00:57:47.280 Right.

00:57:47.620 She says, hit me again. 1.00

00:57:48.720 Hit me hard enough to kill me. 1.00

00:57:50.280 Oh, jeez. 1.00

00:57:50.880 And he says, get out of here. 1.00

00:57:52.720 You're crazy. 0.93

00:57:54.080 She looks out the window and she's like, well, my plan of like going to the pond is probably done now. 1.00

00:57:59.680 So I'm just going to kill myself here. 0.98

00:58:01.800 So she reaches into her purse, she grabs the handgun out, and she points at her head.

00:58:07.640 And Hermann Tarnauer lunges at her to, like, wrench her hands away from her head, right?

00:58:13.020 So he grabs her hand right when this is happening, and the gun goes off.

00:58:17.440 And she shoots him in the hand. 1.00

00:58:19.980 So he has a bullet hole through his hand, and he's like, ah, what the fuck? 0.99

00:58:25.380 You know, all of this has happened in the space of, like, two minutes. 0.99

00:58:28.240 Yikes.

00:58:28.720 so he goes into the bathroom to like dress his wound and meanwhile in this little tussle the 0.99

00:58:35.320 gun has fallen out of her hand so the gun is like it's not clear where the gun is so she gets down 0.83

00:58:41.400 on the ground and she's like putting her hand under the bed to get the gun and right when she

00:58:46.120 grabs onto it she feels his hand on her other arm like pulling her out from under the bed

00:58:51.820 he pulls her out there's sort of like a a tussle takes place so he's trying to get the gun and then

00:58:58.760 she has the gun and he has the gun and at one point he sort of falls over on top of her and

00:59:06.040 she has the gun in her hand and she can feel the muzzle the barrel of the gun in her own stomach

00:59:12.100 so she's now kind of has her arm crunched under him and is pointing the gun at herself

00:59:17.000 and she pulls the trigger she says she doesn't feel anything and her first thought is why didn't

00:59:23.880 i do this before oh god i'm sorry that's uh he sort of gets off of her she shoves him off somehow

00:59:31.480 he's like slumped over across the bed now and she puts the gun to her own head and pulls the trigger

00:59:39.460 again and click it's out of bullets she keeps pulling the trigger click click click click

00:59:44.820 click and meanwhile he has buzzed the servants he has like an intercom phone like the phone also

00:59:51.920 works as like an in-house intercom system to call them so he has buzzed the servants to come up

00:59:57.600 and so she knows that she only has like one or two minutes before they get there and she's like 0.93

01:00:03.560 oh shit i have to kill myself like before they get here because like this is just a mess 0.98

01:00:06.740 so she goes into the bathroom she says when she bought the gun she didn't ask the guy how to 1.00

01:00:12.800 unload it because she was like, well, I'm only going to need it once. So she doesn't know how

01:00:17.100 to take the bullets out. She opens it up. She's like banging it against the tub in the bathroom 0.70

01:00:22.940 to like get the bullets out. So she sees him kind of struggling to get up and struggling to like go

01:00:28.260 for the phone. She runs back into the bedroom. She picks up the phone. She sees that it's dead.

01:00:34.340 And she knows that there's like a rec center or something about a quarter mile down the road that

01:00:38.560 has a payphone and so she decides she's gonna go to the rec center and use the payphone there to

01:00:44.000 call an ambulance and so she runs out and she gets in her car and she starts driving toward the rec

01:00:49.580 center and as she's driving to the rec center she sees a cop with his flashers on coming the other

01:00:54.520 way so 911 has already been called and this cop is like coming thinking that they're investigating

01:00:59.420 a burglary as the cop passes her she pulls a u-turn follows the cop into the driveway of

01:01:06.000 Herman Tarnower's house and like leaps out of her car and tells the cop like there's been an accident 0.99

01:01:10.860 a man has been shot you've got to get up there as fast as possible and the cop is like holy shit

01:01:15.240 so the cop runs up the stairs they both run up there Suzanne and Henry are in the room and when 0.72

01:01:22.100 they see the police officer like running up the stairs apparently Henry goes that's her that's

01:01:28.400 the one she's the one that shot Herman Tarnower and Jane is like yeah I'm yes I'm not like this

01:01:35.700 isn't like a whodunit situation so they run up the stairs the cop looks at herman tarnauer kind

01:01:40.860 of figures out what is going on he runs back to his car to get some medical supplies and she sits

01:01:46.260 down next to herman tarnauer and strokes his face and according to everybody all the witnesses that

01:01:52.220 were there she says oh hi why didn't you kill me oh gene oh and he dies at the hospital like an

01:02:00.700 hour later so mike here's my question and maybe this isn't the moment for it how much do you

01:02:05.860 believe her account do you 100 believe it i don't know i emotionally believe it i think that it is

01:02:11.400 broadly true the problem is that herman tarnauer has four bullet wounds oh all right m night

01:02:20.420 shamalan i know yeah so in her story she remembers shooting him in the hand and she remembers like

01:02:27.180 whatever the shot was when she thought it was pointed herself which would have been like in

01:02:31.760 his stomach or something but he has one bullet wound in his palm one in his chest pointing

01:02:39.480 downward one in his shoulder and one in his upper arm so that doesn't match up but then at the same

01:02:46.260 time there's lots of evidence that does match up so when the cops get there she has a cut on her

01:02:52.380 lip from where he hit her. There's like chunks out of the bathtub from where she banged the gun

01:02:58.900 against it. Lynn Triforos' nightgown is on the ground from where Jean dropped it.

01:03:06.600 The reason why I emotionally believe her is that when you read Shauna Alexander's book,

01:03:12.080 which is actually really good, you don't get a portrait of somebody who's like calculating,

01:03:17.540 manipulative, puppet master type of person. Like she's not somebody who tells a lot of lies.

01:03:22.380 you get the portrait of somebody who's messy. And like her description of shooting a guy twice

01:03:29.280 when he has four bullet wounds sounds more like human memory to me than lying.

01:03:36.580 Yeah. Because if she was going to lie, if she was a calculating person,

01:03:39.960 she would account for the four bullets. That's like the first thing you would account for if

01:03:44.560 you were going to make up your motivations and make up this, you know, what happened in that room.

01:03:48.960 I mean, we're also getting into the question of, like, if you're in such a kind of, like, self-destructive, like, Michael Douglas and falling down type state, then, like, how lucid is your reckoning with sort of anything that you're doing?

01:04:01.620 Yeah, this is one of those kinds of things where I'm like, it's very easy to speculate from a comfortable distance, but I feel very convinced that I have no idea how I would respond or what I would remember.

01:04:13.600 Yeah.

01:04:13.860 Oh, yeah.

01:04:14.260 There's also the by far the worst detail about all this is that the next morning her desoxone arrives in the mail.

01:04:21.760 Oh, God.

01:04:22.780 Oh, my God.

01:04:23.980 I thought you were going to say that the next morning she eats half a grapefruit and a piece of bread.

01:04:30.120 The absolute worst part of this is that she went all in on the Scarsdale diet.

01:04:35.420 As penance.

01:04:36.360 but so it is i mean if he had managed to talk her down or just rescheduled for the next day

01:04:44.460 it's quite possible that none of this would have happened oh yeah or what if he just like

01:04:49.480 stopped at a days in and was like you know what i'm gonna try and have a good night's sleep yeah

01:04:55.460 when this story appears in the newspapers and it becomes i mean within hours it's like a massive

01:05:00.940 media story sure people put it into the frame of like the spurned lover murders her man people

01:05:07.840 kind of fill in the blanks as they always do from this like very incomplete information

01:05:11.320 and what it sounds like is just a pretty clear love triangle story this lady is dating this guy

01:05:15.820 she finds out that he's cheating on her and so she goes over to his house with a revolver and 0.95

01:05:19.960 shoots him in cold blood god damn it it really is sort of perfectly packaged to scratch a similar 0.96

01:05:26.240 kind of itch in the public imagination as like amy fisher and joey buttafuoco or like yeah look at 0.99

01:05:34.680 these crazy ladies just being driven to the brink by these dudes right like shooting people for no

01:05:42.020 reason out of the blue and it's like oh it was out of the whatever lightning comes out of i guess

01:05:48.240 one of the things that's so interesting about this is like you know there's a temptation to

01:05:52.500 see older stories like this and kind of find the misogyny in them but it seems like the public was

01:05:57.720 really on her side oh interesting there's a lot of i mean i read a lot of like think pieces from

01:06:04.840 the early 1980s about how women were talking about this you know like in in hair salons i mean this

01:06:09.660 was this was like the the amber her johnny depp trial of the time it was it became this bellwether

01:06:14.380 of like how you think about all these other broader social trends and a huge number of people

01:06:21.200 were just like, yeah, I've dated guys like this. Fuck this guy. I mean, there were people that went 1.00

01:06:24.940 to the trial and would like clap for her. The crowd in the courtroom was super pro-Gene.

01:06:32.360 Don't you think it's interesting that Lorena Bobbitt had a much rougher time

01:06:36.260 in this situation and she didn't kill anybody?

01:06:38.300 It's so weird. I kept thinking this. So the next chapter of the story is the trial,

01:06:44.540 which happens eight months later.

01:06:45.980 it's actually a very weird trial so diana trilling's book is one of the most boring

01:06:54.600 things i've ever read and is basically a day-by-day description of the trial it's for

01:06:59.880 people who want the thrill of jury duty but haven't been selected yet there are dozens of us

01:07:05.300 mike it's a really weird trial because first of all it's the it's at the time the longest

01:07:12.080 murder trial in New York state history. It's four months long. What's so weird about it to me is

01:07:17.140 that there's not that much debate over what actually happened, right? Because as far as the

01:07:23.820 facts, Jean Harris is not saying I didn't shoot him. I was somewhere else that night. She confesses

01:07:28.520 to the crime within minutes of it. And then the prosecutor never even tries to say that this was

01:07:34.720 premeditated. No one at any point says like she's a black widow and she plotted this for months.

01:07:39.480 all the stuff about acting erratically and like writing out her will all of that is really well

01:07:44.960 established so if the prosecution tried to make the case that this was like a cold calculated

01:07:50.020 murder the defense would just eat their grapefruit like it would just not work so both the defense

01:07:57.680 and the prosecution admit that she killed him in the middle of some sort of mental breakdown

01:08:04.000 The only thing that this comes down to is, was this an accidental death or did she intend to kill him?

01:08:14.220 That's basically it.

01:08:15.080 It's actually like quite a narrow question.

01:08:17.620 And it relies on either having witnessed the event or knowing her mindset.

01:08:24.040 Right.

01:08:24.440 I mean, there's some evidence here that she didn't even totally know her mindset.

01:08:27.680 And she also, because there's the mental illness stuff, and because she's also deeply in denial about the fact that she has mental illness, the whole thing of desoxone is, like, not mentioned.

01:08:38.400 What?

01:08:38.980 Really?

01:08:39.960 They're just like, yeah, we're all on speed back now, so whatever.

01:08:43.540 Oh, my God.

01:08:43.880 It's unbelievable to me.

01:08:45.960 So most of the trial, again, mind-numbing tedium, is forensic experts.

01:08:53.120 Tell me more, tell me more. 0.96

01:08:55.160 sarah the level of fucking pseudoscience in this trial it is incredible so the there's 0.97

01:09:04.120 peer-reviewed articles after this trial the one good thing that comes out of this trial is 0.98

01:09:09.240 a broader debate about how important medical examiners and forensic testimony have become

01:09:15.620 in murder trials i think it was like kind of a wake-up call because the medical examiner

01:09:20.860 who testifies at the trial for the prosecution obviously he changes his own autopsy report four

01:09:27.980 times that's a lot of times the prosecution's theory of the case is that basically she walked

01:09:34.160 into his bedroom in cold blood boom boom boom and then walked out okay and the the hand wound

01:09:39.880 is a defensive wound so the idea is she walked into his room pulled out the gun he's like no 1.00

01:09:46.140 no no and he put up his hand in a defensive pose which like is quite normal and then she shoots

01:09:51.700 him through the hand and the bullet goes into his collarbone and that's the chest wound it's the

01:09:56.720 same wound that's compelling i guess yeah so this medical examiner has this whole thing where like

01:10:02.200 you can tell that the shot in his chest had already hit the hand because it didn't hit with as much 0.61

01:10:08.940 force completely fake shit they also later in the trial they like recall him and he says oh 0.95

01:10:16.140 there's something special about palm skin what's different than other skin and we found a flecks 0.99

01:10:23.480 of palm skin in his chest cavity is there any anything to that no it seems like the argument

01:10:31.760 that they make when they try and sell you a separate moisturizer for under your eyes

01:10:37.200 the experts that talk about this later are like we can't even tell if it's skin

01:10:44.160 like it might it might be pajamas it might be a piece of grapefruit you cannot tell

01:10:49.820 things with this level of granularity from gunshot wounds right you just can't the more specific

01:10:55.220 the forensic theory if it's something like this where it's like based on the blood spatter or

01:11:00.580 based on the gunshot wounds we think that this one very specific scenario happened and it's like

01:11:06.280 that doesn't sound very persuasive like it would be not like i get why it's very appealing to

01:11:11.300 believe that people can look at a scene post-mortem and be like this is exactly what

01:11:16.420 happened but like it that's no no exactly and then also there's there's also a defense expert

01:11:23.220 who is also pseudoscience so he says that he can triangulate from like the bullets ricochet and

01:11:29.600 how it broke the window where gene harris was standing when she fired the shot no you can't

01:11:35.340 like from a broken window right you cannot tell where a bullet came from you can be like she was

01:11:42.000 probably right around here but not right yeah he also does some blood spatter stuff he says

01:11:48.420 the shot in his hand should have made blood spatter but it actually made blood mist what

01:11:55.820 so that's how we can tell that gene that gene harris is not lying dexter reporting for duty 0.99

01:12:01.960 blood sperm expert let's roll it's the fakest shit i mean i think it's just a really interesting 0.98

01:12:08.160 example of how first of all criminal trials are just bad ways to get to the truth in general 0.99

01:12:13.900 because that's not really what they're set up for they're they're set up to answer these very

01:12:17.240 narrow questions and secondly there's there's just a lot of stuff you're never gonna know

01:12:22.360 yeah there isn't any forensic science that is going to be able to say what took place in this

01:12:28.280 like six minute period between two people one of whom cannot tell us what happened yeah and even

01:12:33.180 if they could tell us even if we could get herman tarnauer's ghost to come testify his account would

01:12:38.760 differ in you know various ways memory differs between two people who are both at an event and

01:12:44.320 then we would still be confused yeah and then the the real fireworks of the trial are gene harris

01:12:50.040 testifies for eight days oh this is the thing that turns basically everybody against her oh really

01:12:56.200 because she's terrible on the stand oh no gene as so many of us are i worry about this all the

01:13:03.820 time now about your impending trial well i as a person who has like a kind of weird demeanor the

01:13:11.120 idea that like people are judged purely on their whether their demeanor is weird yeah totally i

01:13:16.460 think about this every day totally as someone with also a weird demeanor as you know as someone who

01:13:22.180 deals with almost all discomfort by laughing right it's not a great look for this guy either i know

01:13:27.980 it's not like right now so basically i mean she wears dark glasses on the stand which do not help

01:13:36.820 her she never makes eye contact with the jury she tells like weird lies she says when she first

01:13:43.840 started dating high they weren't very intense at first because like i had small children at home

01:13:48.540 even though her children were like 14 and 16 when they met were they like gymnasts or something yeah

01:13:53.400 she doesn't seem to take the proceedings seriously like during cross-examination you

01:14:00.160 know the prosecutors do the thing isn't it true and it's kind of this back and forth and she sort

01:14:04.780 of stops at one point and turns to the judge and is like is he gonna keep doing this i'm exhausted

01:14:10.300 it. Oh, I love that. That's killer. Wow. More people need to ask that. They also set traps for

01:14:17.340 her. So this phone call that she had with High on the morning of the murder, where she calls about

01:14:22.280 the will and the pills and everything else. She describes that in her testimony as like, we talked,

01:14:28.380 he said he was going to send me the pills. He invited me to this gala. Everything was fine.

01:14:32.080 But then this patient who heard one side of the conversation was a surprise witness.

01:14:38.440 Oh, boy. That person was only called in the last day or two of the trial. So the jury had already heard Jean Harris describe this as like a peaceful coming together conversation. And then they hear this patient say, oh, I heard him snap at her. Like, it sounded like a fight to me. So it sounds like they've caught her in a lie.

01:15:00.780 but shauna alexander's explanation of this is basically that gene harris for most of their

01:15:06.800 relationship was kind of in denial about how he felt about her so the fact that what she fixates

01:15:12.720 on in this conversation is that he invited her to this dumb gala and doesn't remember the fact

01:15:18.760 that he snapped at her isn't necessarily a lie it's kind of the nature of their relationship and 0.85

01:15:24.540 the nature of her mental illness yeah totally so that just really does not do her any favors

01:15:31.880 and then the big thing is that they read the letter out loud that kills her because the 1.00

01:15:38.760 prosecutors had very deliberately built her up as like a classy lady right she's wearing mink 0.99

01:15:44.480 on the stand she has this upper class bearing about her isn't it true that you function in 1.00

01:15:50.280 disaster and finish in style so they they build her up as this like high class lady and then they 1.00

01:15:59.360 read the letter where she's talking about like you psychotic whore and so all of a sudden it 1.00

01:16:03.660 starts to look like she's this huge hypocrite i mean this is something that like men love to say 1.00

01:16:08.280 about women right like she acts like she's so classy but deep down inside she's a terrible 0.99

01:16:12.720 person all of the air goes out of her as someone that you can sympathize with just immediately as

01:16:19.360 soon as they read the letter up it also feels like coming right off of our pete evans two-parter

01:16:25.720 right like there's so much that that guy has to say about like sort of quote-unquote victim mentality

01:16:31.020 and i think that that is something that culturally certainly in the united states we cannot abide

01:16:37.920 and we slot mental illness into victimhood mentality headspace we slot drug addiction

01:16:46.520 into victimhood mentality

01:16:48.860 space. There are all of these

01:16:50.760 things that we sort of mis-scribe

01:16:53.120 these kind of cultural

01:16:54.780 scripts to that allow us to stop

01:16:56.840 paying attention to them. Ideally

01:16:58.920 we would meet that with more compassion, but

01:17:00.780 instead I do think there is an undercurrent

01:17:02.820 of like, oh, she's just another

01:17:04.980 victim, right? Yeah.

01:17:07.180 Our preference for the other story also

01:17:08.960 suggests, as many other things

01:17:11.060 do, that like as a culture we kind

01:17:12.940 of think murder is cool,

01:17:14.960 which I don't know what to do with that.

01:17:16.520 when it comes to the verdict the jury is given three options the first option is second degree

01:17:24.320 murder which means that she intended to kill him it wasn't necessarily premeditated but in the

01:17:29.740 moment she intended to kill him if they don't think that she's guilty of that they can say

01:17:35.640 that she's guilty of second degree manslaughter which is like reckless endangerment you have a

01:17:41.420 gun at your house and you're playing with it with a friend and you accidentally kill them right it's

01:17:45.460 like you didn't mean to kill the person you never intended to kill the person but you know you should

01:17:49.480 have been more careful they can also just declare her not guilty right basically this is a tragic

01:17:53.800 accident nobody needs to pay any penalties for this so if you two were given those options what

01:18:00.580 would you guys go for well aubrey i feel like we have to come up with a unanimous verdict because

01:18:04.400 that's how juries work yeah oh yeah good point two angry ladies boy there's both evidence and

01:18:11.140 not evidence of her own intent right yeah there's clear evidence that she's going through it there's

01:18:17.460 not clear evidence that she intends to murder this dude if those are the only two options on the

01:18:23.720 table as they often are for juries i would go manslaughter would be my my the way that i would

01:18:31.140 lean how about you sarah yeah i mean to me manslaughter makes sense because to me when

01:18:36.480 there isn't specific evidence affirmatively pointing to somebody having intent to kill,

01:18:42.500 then I lean toward the lesser charge, which is why I can never run for mayor because I'm soft

01:18:47.940 on crime. Yeah, so okay, the jury is unanimous. This is great. Fastest deliberation ever.

01:18:54.420 Yeah, it's funny you say that because the jury deliberated for eight days, which was the longest

01:18:58.800 deliberation in New York State history at the time. Wow. And they came up with a verdict of

01:19:04.520 guilty of second degree murder which carries with it a minimum sentence of 15 years she won't even

01:19:12.720 be eligible for a parole hearing for 15 years what was the public response to that verdict

01:19:18.520 by the time we got there everyone hated her because of how she was on the stand

01:19:22.900 it turns out it's not this like badass story of a revenge killing or like i am woman hear me roar

01:19:29.600 type of thing. All of the details that we know about things like she was on methamphetamines 0.99

01:19:35.820 and she knew about Lynn Triforos basically the entire time. All of that stuff feels to people

01:19:41.880 like some sort of betrayal or some sort of twist because all they've gotten is this really one

01:19:48.080 dimensional revenge story. I also think this is a huge part of why the case is such a forgot buster

01:19:53.980 that it looked at the time like this was going to have all this resonance for men are from Mars,

01:20:00.740 women are from Venus kind of narratives. And then it turns out to just be like a woman with

01:20:07.980 a long history of depression and a precipitating incident and access to a gun, which is like

01:20:16.460 exactly the kind of killing that like we're used to in America.

01:20:19.480 Mike, Aubrey, don't you find it extremely interesting that people are, like, more prone to sympathize with somebody who formed murderous intent in a revenge kind of way than somebody who is just, like, really sad and beaten down by circumstance in a really shitty relationship and, like, lost herself and, like, what?

01:20:41.560 But, like, it's so interesting that we're like, no, give me the, like, she killed someone totally on purpose out of revenge one.

01:20:50.600 Like, what's that?

01:20:51.600 I find this totally baffling.

01:20:54.720 Shauna Alexander's theory on what happened is that her lawyer made the disastrous decision to remove first-degree manslaughter as an option.

01:21:08.120 So first degree manslaughter is where you intend to harm someone, but you don't intend to kill them under New York state law.

01:21:14.920 Oh, that's interesting.

01:21:15.760 So it's like I'm getting a bar fight.

01:21:17.440 I punch the guy and then he like stumbles backwards, falls down, cracks his head open and he dies.

01:21:21.960 That one feels like it at least it gives them another option. 0.96

01:21:25.360 And also that sentence would have been two to six years. 0.98

01:21:29.000 And considering that she has no criminal record, she probably would have gotten two years.

01:21:33.800 But to me, I don't understand how her lawyer thought he would get not guilty.

01:21:39.020 Like she did do something extremely reckless, right?

01:21:43.360 When you're in the middle of a fight with your boyfriend or a slowly dying relationship,

01:21:50.640 it's a really bad idea to show up at your boyfriend's house with a loaded gun.

01:21:54.940 So I think that what she did is understandable given everything else we know that was going on.

01:21:59.900 But it's not defensible.

01:22:00.800 Well, this is also interesting, because I've been researching John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Reagan in the early 80s, like around this time, I'm pretty sure it was 81. His trial, like led to dramatic reforms of the ability to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, because he actually was found not guilty on that basis.

01:22:21.920 and so i feel like possibly if he was going for an insanity defense i can see him expecting

01:22:28.720 the proceedings to like make that a lot more possible than they are today but like yeah but

01:22:34.680 was he though well apparently so they of course had three different psychiatrists examine her 0.76

01:22:40.300 and one of the psychiatrists who examined her i guess just fucking hated insanity as a defense 0.87

01:22:48.020 Like he just had a huge chip on his shoulder about it. And so if he was ever going to testify in the trial, he would have said, no, she's not criminally insane because he didn't believe in the concept. 0.88

01:22:58.720 Right. This is what sane people do.

01:23:00.260 Totally. And this is also like not long after the Harvey Milk and George Moscone assassinations and the Twinkie defense stuff, which just sent people into fucking orbit about any kind of emotional distress defense, any kind of insanity plea, any kind of any of that.

01:23:19.900 Well, also what's so weird is that no one testified about her mental state in the entire trial.

01:23:24.580 No psychologist.

01:23:25.320 Jesus Christ.

01:23:26.520 Yeah, that's astonishing.

01:23:27.720 They're just like, yeah, she was having a normal one.

01:23:30.120 What they were worried about was that if a defense psychologist testifies,

01:23:34.680 then all of their notes have to be given over to the prosecutor.

01:23:37.000 And then you also have to have a prosecution psychologist examine her.

01:23:41.500 But it's weird in a trial that is 100% about her intentions. 0.86

01:23:47.220 Yeah. 0.99

01:23:47.480 To not have anyone testify to that and only rely on this forensic bullshit. 0.88

01:23:53.100 Do you think she was able to get a good lawyer? 0.99

01:23:55.220 Like, how is she paying for all this? 0.99

01:23:56.820 Because, like, she doesn't have that much money.

01:23:58.700 Oh, my God.

01:23:59.140 So in the hours after she is arrested, she has friends that are lawyers.

01:24:03.380 They hook her up with this lawyer guy.

01:24:05.620 And he shows up and he's like, I will defend you.

01:24:08.520 And she's like, I don't know if I can afford this.

01:24:10.280 My entire life savings is $25,000.

01:24:13.040 And he's like, $25,000 sounds right.

01:24:14.860 Oh, God.

01:24:15.780 It's like every penny to her name.

01:24:17.220 he's like don't worry you're going to prison they'll feed you there but this is another reason

01:24:21.460 why she was convicted is that her lawyer had been part of like one of these big shoe law firms

01:24:28.840 and had left like a month before he was defending her so ordinarily you have a lawyer but they're

01:24:34.520 backed up by like you know there's paralegals yeah but this guy had left his law firm and still had

01:24:39.060 all of his clients so he was juggling all this other stuff and had essentially no team it was

01:24:43.680 him and one assistant and apparently he collapsed from exhaustion at one point during the trial

01:24:50.200 because he wasn't sleeping should have gotten some meth they didn't get access to the crime

01:24:54.160 scene until two months after the crime because he forgot to file some weird thing nobody one of the

01:25:00.980 reasons why he was so incompetent was basically because he believed her and he thought like if

01:25:05.940 she tells her story to the jury they will believe her too but the problem was he didn't prep her 0.99

01:25:12.880 to testify at all no he told her the night before oh you're going on tomorrow oh my god it's fucking 0.81

01:25:21.240 wild and also she also had this idea that like well it's it's criminal justice all i need to do 0.82

01:25:27.160 is tell them what happened and i'll be fine oh my god no one told her like this is theater you are

01:25:32.300 giving a performance yeah right and part of your job is not to volunteer additional information

01:25:37.360 even though that's how human conversation works right like yeah i will say i have a good friend

01:25:43.060 who's a litigator and boy oh boy that dude spends weeks prepping people yeah this is bananas and it

01:25:51.000 also it makes it really hard to file appeals because they tried to file a couple appeals on

01:25:57.380 grounds that she had ineffective counsel but he is the only person who like knows the case well

01:26:03.140 enough in all the details to make the filings so basically the same lawyer was filing that his own

01:26:10.120 defense was incompetent so like they make a couple appeals none of them go anywhere huh that's i mean

01:26:17.500 that's kind of the end of the story she she goes to prison there is a concerted effort by this is

01:26:24.140 very weird by shauna alexander the author of this book who quite openly became friends with gene

01:26:29.660 harris in the course of writing this book ellen burston who played her in the movie and liked her

01:26:34.860 and orrin hatch the center of utah who's like a right-wing asshole was not expecting that to

01:26:42.540 happen i think he sat next to shauna alexander on a plane and then they became friends of course 0.67

01:26:49.720 the good news is after 11 years in 1992 she's granted clemency by mario cuomo another cameo

01:26:56.320 She basically dedicated the rest of her life to like raising money for the women's correctional facility that she had been in.

01:27:02.420 When she was in there, because she's a headmistress and a teacher, she basically set up like a preschool. 0.95

01:27:07.920 A lot of the people that are in there are pregnant.

01:27:10.480 And there's a deal where you can either give up your baby the minute it's born or you can keep it for the first year and then give it up for adoption. 1.00

01:27:18.980 and so jean harris became this like mom to these like mostly black almost all poor ladies that 1.00

01:27:25.900 have been like ground up in the criminal justice system and she like every you know she does a 1.00

01:27:30.920 barbara walters interview like every time she's interviewed she's like yeah the criminal justice

01:27:35.060 system exists to like incarcerate black people like poor black people all right and that's like 1.00

01:27:39.840 basically what she spends the rest of her life doing and talking about she just like lives a 0.90

01:27:44.060 quiet life and then she dies of a heart attack in 2012 oh wow this is harris so what do you guys

01:27:48.980 think this was uh this was a crossover event this one is a mad lib man yeah i know it's weird i'm

01:27:55.500 thinking about i just spent a week with my extremely cool teen niece i had asked her about

01:28:02.340 like what kind of sex ed she got and she said that they have a bunch of classes on like healthy

01:28:08.180 relationships and they watch clips of like two people interacting and they go okay what do you

01:28:13.900 think like happened there did you see boundaries being set did you see boundaries being respected

01:28:18.360 like I was like sort of astonished that there had been this absolute quantum leap in thinking about

01:28:24.980 how to teach kids about not just sex but relationships right and boy oh boy do I wish

01:28:31.840 gene had access to some of that i know like man i wish somebody like had sat down gene and there

01:28:38.160 had been sort of the cultural pretext to do this right and just said like this dude is bad news 0.99

01:28:45.380 and he's treating you like shit and you actually deserve significantly better you gotta have 0.99

01:28:50.500 other people in your life to tell you when your boyfriend sucks i mean i had a mental image 1.00

01:28:56.720 earlier of like, women eating tiny salads, or you know, little fruit salads for lunch, for that 0.77

01:29:02.920 matter, as like the sort of diet metaphor for this kind of relationship practice where you're like, 0.85

01:29:10.100 in a race with all other women to prove that you're the lowest maintenance. And then you win 0.96

01:29:15.440 and you demonstrate that and then you obviously lose by winning because your boyfriend is giving

01:29:19.740 you like 75 emotional calories a week. Yeah. Good Lord. But it's easy. And if you can't stick with

01:29:26.540 that it's your problem yeah i also i mean this is something me and you talked about a lot when we

01:29:31.820 were doing you're wrong about sarah i'm always worried that bringing context to stories like

01:29:36.940 this is going to make it sound like we're saying he deserved to get murdered which like obviously

01:29:42.180 is not the case i think that this relationship destroyed her life destroyed her mental health

01:29:48.300 destroyed her life and i think it's easy to hear something like that as he intended to destroy her

01:29:55.000 life but i don't think that's the case yeah as i often say it's the the people who tend to destroy

01:30:00.620 your life are the ones who like don't value it very much and therefore just don't think about

01:30:05.660 terribly much either like the idea that you have to really be planning to destroy someone's life

01:30:11.040 to do that maybe allows more of these casual life ruiners to fly under the radar this is all from

01:30:17.100 the sweetie nose school of jurisprudence yeah i'm like oh honey so that was uh that was jean

01:30:25.780 harris that was the scars down diameter thank you uh thank you for coming for a crossover event

01:30:30.400 so mike i had such a good time i was wondering and this is totally my idea because nobody has

01:30:38.120 brought it up to me this entire time uh if you would like to visit you're wrong about and talk

01:30:44.800 about OJ a little bit?

01:30:46.840 I've heard of it.

01:30:47.720 I've heard of him.

01:30:48.480 First time going on.

01:30:49.500 It'd be interesting.

01:30:51.200 I don't know if you've heard of the show.

01:30:53.240 Oh, my God.

01:30:53.780 But we like to re-examine

01:30:56.360 a misremembered cultural event.

01:30:59.260 All I know is it got a lot better

01:31:00.580 last October.

01:31:01.540 I don't know why.

01:31:02.100 I haven't heard that, actually.

01:31:04.040 Yes, I would love to.

01:31:05.120 Oh, my God.

01:31:05.800 Thank you.

01:31:06.540 Thank you for coming back

01:31:07.740 into the courtroom with me.

01:31:09.260 Guys, I love this.

01:31:14.800 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - August 23, 2022

The Scarsdale Diet Murder feat. Sarah Marshall

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