Podcast: Play in new window
For today’s field trip, we travel to Isla Floreana to explore the murders which may or may not have taken place. Another real life story to inspire you!
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Transcript:
Field Trip! Come explore Isla Floreana and MURDER. (maybe.) – powered by Happy Scribe
Everybody, I am Laura VanArendonk Baugh,and this is To Write And Have Written,
and tonight is a field trip,so let me get organized here.
I had
a glorious, huge — like if you were here
for my marathon livestream and you kepthearing me say I needed an intern because
I was trying to managetwo or three screens.
And so for Christmas,I got a really nice
big monitor, it’s amazing, it’s huge,and I’m so excited about it,
except it turns out it’s an HDMI 2,and my machine only supports HDMI 1.
So my husband’s using it
and I don’t know if I’m going to get itback, but it’s a really nice monitor.
So that’s my goal, isto get it eventually get that
back.But yeah, that’s anyway.
So I have to like start the streamand then go rearrange all my things
for tonight so that we cango ahead and do it.
Hey ShyRedFox, thank youso much for resubbing.
I appreciate that.
Oh that’s very nice.Nice to see you again too.
Yeah.You’re so close to having a great monitor.
Yeah.It’s it’s so nice.
I’m so excited.
I’ll share photos,whenever it comes around again.
So.Yeah.
Anyway that’s that’s on my listof things that will eventually happen.
So OK,
let’s talk about tonight.OK.
Yeah.Tonight’s field trip
and we were dangerously close to nothaving a fun field trip tonight,
it’s beena very busy week for me.
I launched a novel Crown& Creed came out yesterday.
It was very much a surprise launch,not a long buildup like I would normally
do, you know, letting everybodyknow that it was coming.
But if you’ve been around on the stream,
you know that I was going to have Kin &Kind coming out as book three. That got
split into two books,Crown & Creed, then Kin & Kind.
And I just tried really, really,
really hard to get the first of the twoout by the end of 2020 just because
we needed somethingnice and still happening in 2020.
And people had been so patient waitingfor book three.
So now that book was book three and four.
I did go ahead and get bookthree out so that that happened.
That was rushed, I’ve beenreally hard on that.
And I got an audio book out, Shard &Shield came out in audio book this week.
I sent a short story offfor traditional sales.
We had Christmas.That was a thing that happened. Anyway.
So there was a lot that wasgoing on this week.
And, you know, it takes a while to puttogether a nice educational slide show.
And I wasn’t sure I was going to beable to pull something off this week.
Hold on a second.
I got way too many messagescoming in and I need to kill this
so it stops notifying me.
OK, so anyway, so we needto thank my sister Alena
for prompting me to do this topic here
today because she said, “Oh, no,this is really interesting.
People will like it.”
And I’m like, oh yeah,I can totally talk about that.
So that’ll be fine.So
yeah, Seeker is in the chattalking about the monitor.
“It’s beautiful,”he says. I know.
I want that back.Right.
Awesome.All right, so, yeah.
All right, sobut we are taking a field trip
and we are taking a field trip to, let’ssee if I can put, Isla Floreana.
So
this is, Floreana is an island.
It’s the southernmost islandof the Galapagos Islands.
The Galapagos being, of course,
a really amazingecological location right on the equator
owned by Ecuador and famousfor being just an amazing ecosystem,
very famous, obviously, for Darwin
visiting and writing some stuff about,you know, finches and whatever.
But
it just actually also just likea really fascinating history.
So we are not going to talk about all theamazing stuff that’s in the Galapagos.
That was, Seeker and I for our20th wedding anniversary,
gave ourselves a really awesome, like,you know, lifetime kind of trip.
So we went to Ecuador,
hiked for a week backpackingin the Andes and then went to Galapagos
to see wildlife and all that.
And that was a great trip.
There’s tons that wecould talk about there.
But this we’re just going to focus juston Floreana and in particular some of the
really interesting dramathat happened there.
So,
yeah, let me get my pictures back.
So all of the photos that arein color are photos that I took.
The photos that were takenin the 1930s were not taken by me.
That’ll be the easy distinction as we go.
So but I believe they are OK to use.
SoI can use them in this context.
It’s fine.So we’ll just say that.
So Floreana, as I said, southernmost
island in the Galapagos,
and this is where the post office orthe mailbox is, if you’ve heard of that.
So this is a tradition that dates backto the times of the whaling ships.
They had a barrel set up.
That was their mailbox.
And so sailors would write letters,leave them addressed in this barrel.
And because so many whalingships stopped here to take on
in particular food.
We’ll talk about that in just a second.
And so they would shuffle through
the letters and like, oh, well,we’re heading to Nantucket.
We’ll take these.We’re heading to…
So we’ll take these.And and so the letters would eventually
get to a port and theneventually get delivered.
This is a traditionthat still goes on today.
So you write your letters,your postcards, you leave them there.
Now it’s all just tourists, of course.
And the tradition is that you sort
through, you find something that’snear enough for you to deliver it.
And so when we were there,I left some letters,
I found some that were actually, you know,ultimately destined for my zip code.
And I took them and I hand delivered them.
So that is that is how you do it.
It’s all the honor system, of course.
But, you know, it’s a lotof fun to just maintain that.
So that is where we are.
This island has been receivingships for hundreds of years.
Poor Floreana, just going to say,like had a bit of a rough go.
I don’t need to go into, like, how badthe whaling ships were for this place.
But one of the things that they would
that the whalers would dowould stop and collect the tortoises.
Tortoises were very popular for foodstuffsbecause they could keep them alive
on a ship for a long time without givingthem food or water or anything to do that.
And then you could kill themand eat them at leisure.
So they would just pull up and justcollect a lot of tortoises and move on and
do some really devastatingthings to the population.
Meanwhile, also dropping off goats
and goats run over the island becausethat’s not, it’s a very invasive species.
Like, “oh, no, the goatsare destroying everything.
Let’s put some dogs on theisland to eat the goats.
Oh, that didn’t work out either.”
So basically take the history
of Australia and New Zealand with invasivespecies, put them over in the Galapagos.
We get the same kind of thing going on.
We’re still recovering from that today.
But the very famous disaster that Florianahad was in 1820, the whaling ship Essex
pulled up to take on tortoises and waterand as they left.
“Because” (that’s about as gooda reason as anybody can offer)
they set fire to the island,
the whole island burns,they wipe out that population
of tortoises,wipe out a lot of everything else, too.
But have no fear,
guys, the the spirit of nature
did a karma slap upside the head,because later in the voyage,
the Essex got rammed by a sperm whaleand sank and all of the crew went into
lifeboats where they ateeach other to survive.
And ultimately, only eight of themmade back to tell the tale.
And this was a very famous incidentwhich ended up inspiring Moby Dick.
So there’s your chunk of thing.
If you want to read afascinating story,
It’s a nonfictionaccount based on two firsthand accounts
from survivors, In the Heartof the Sea is a book that came out
around 2000 ish, I guess
I quite enjoyed it,not probably everybody’s cup of tea,
but it’s a really amazingaccount of what went down there.
So that is where we are.
Floreana.
And in 1832, Ecuador,
who now owns the islands,decides to put a penal colony there.
It’s a terrible place.It’s terrible idea.
Things are really harsh.Conditions are awful.
Lots of prisoners died and theydecided not to do that.
Fast forward, we’re nowin the 20th century.
This is where we’re going to startspending a little more detailed time.
Excuse me, so
sorry, I’m catching upon the on the chat slowly.
Yes, the mailbox is really cool.It’s so much fun.
It’s amazing how many different placesyou’ll see represented as you’re shuffling
through the mailbox and how manyof them will be close to you.
It’s pretty cool.
So, OK, so in the 1920s, Ecuador decides,OK, we’ve got these islands,
we should probably figure outsomething to do with them.
They are not yet appreciatedfor the ecological gem that they are.
They’re not yet appreciatedin the tourism sense that they are today.
So Ecuador is just, basically Ecuador gotthese because they were some
rocks in the middle of the ocean that wereon fire and nobody else wanted them.
Now we look at them.
We’re like, oh, wow, this is like a lotof really important fishing rights.
There’s like a lot of really important
ecological things to studyand to develop and all of that.
But
at this time, that was notnone of that was happening.
So Ecuador is like, we gotto do something with this.
How about free land?
You homestead the island,we’ll give you free land.
You can have hunting rights,
you can go fishing rights,and you don’t pay any taxes for 10 years.
Just show up and tellus that you want some.
And so
meanwhile, over in Europe,if you know European history,
we are between World War One and
World War two, which meanspost First World War Germany,
having a rough go of things.
Economically, politically,not a great situation, so Dr.
Fredric Ritter in 1929 and his former
patient, current lover, Dore Strauch, orand let me just preface this by saying
a number of these people will be usingdifferent names at different points.
And when you read reports of this,
you’ll see different namesused for the same people.
I’m going to try to keep it very simple.
She uses, I think, at least three names,
depending on the periodand who’s reporting.
But I’m going to try to make it tryto make it as simple as possible.
So, Dr.
Frederick Ritter.
Former patient/currentlover Dore Strauch or
cravenness, maybe a name she also used,
I don’t remember, I didn’twrite them down anyway.
They each of them say, hey, spouses,you guys take care of each other.
We’re leaving togetherand heading off to Ecuador.
And they moved to Floreana.
Again, part of us is moving awayfrom the political situation.
The economic situation is not great,and it’s partly in their case to go
someplace where they can indulgein their slightly less orthodox beliefs.
Very big into Nietsche, Frederic Ritter’s
writing a book,theosophist work, philosophy.
Lots of stuff.
They’re maybe into nudism before they go,
they’re definitely into nudismwhen they get there.
We’ll talk about that a little bit.
Vegetarianism.
And specifically,the practice of hyper mastication,
which is excessively chewing your food,that was a thing for a while
to the point that Dr.
Ritter actually damaged his teethjust by over chewing things.
So much so he had all of his teeth removedbefore he went over there thinking
that once he got out into nature with thenatural diet, his gums would toughen up.
And he did take some steel dentures thathe had developed for himself as well.
I have not found any indication that they
were involved in the Germannaturist movement,
but it kind of seems like something
that they might be into,especially with the nudism with that.
So I don’t know.
Definitely was a thingin that time and place.
I don’t know if that was a thingthat they were personally into,
but once they got to the island,it was really hot.
They decided that, yes,nudism was the way to go now.
Speaking as a
very pale northern European person who
really does not fare well under
equatorial sun,that is not a thing that I would ever do
because I would be deadof sunburn in like two hours.
But apparently that was somethingthat they practiced there.
So they were writing lots of
letters and accounts of theirvery much pioneer life out there.
And they’re sending them back to Europe.
They’re actually picked upand published in the newspapers.
And so they became kind of famous.
People were talking about, oh,
they’ve got this Eden, living thisAdam and Eve existence in Eden.
And so they would be sent gifts.
And, you know,they were famous, people would stop
by the islands just to seethem and that kind of thing.
Now, life is not all that great.
I mean, it’s a reallydifficult place to live.
There is not a ton of water on the island.I mean, it’s sort of.
It’s a volcanic island.
So you’ve got a few freshwater springs,but mostly you’re catching rainfall
when that happens.
Dore’s teeth begin to rot.
So they use garden implements to remove
them and then the two of themshare the pair of dentures.
It’s just very like a lot of collections…We’ll get into, like there’s a lot of
wacky characterizationsthat are going to come here.
But there’s a yacht that you’llhear about a lot called the Valero.
But Waldo Schmidt,who is one of the scientists on the
Valero, he’s a Smithsonian scientistand he wrote
“[Ritter’s book] is of Theosophical Leanings,but is the type of Theosophical writing
that no one cares to readafter seeing the first page.”
So it’s
you know, he’s out therejust doing this very serious,
You know, we are new types
of people in this new territory,you know, kind of thing.
Schmidt also noted that they weren’treally nudists because they went without
clothes for practical reasons, because itwas hot, not for philosophical reasons.
So they said they weren’t nudists,they were just naked, whatever.
Anyway, it is
often repeated that when if you stoppedat the island, there was a little sign
and a bell to ring so that you could letthem know that you had arrived
and that they would puton clothes and come to meet you.
So that’s 1929.
They move in.
They start developing their homesteadon Floreana. 1931, the Wittmers move in.
Now the Wittmers
are Heinz and Margaret.
They come because again,the situation in Germany is not good.
He had been in World War Onein the trenches,
did not do well with that, came out,
had no job, lost what savingshe’s had because of inflation,
and was reading about, you know,their adventures in homesteading
on Floreana and said,let’s go there and do that.
They arrive with their13 year old son Harry,
that they’re hoping is this is goingto be a better climate for him
(he’s not super well) and she’s pregnant.
So they’re going to havetheir baby on Floreana.
There’s not a lot of housing additionson the island, so they live in a pirate
cave until they get their housebuilt, to build a house of stone.
It’s actually supposed to be one of thenicest places that’s built on the island.
And, you know, they’rea fairly traditional family.
They didn’t come here so they couldrun around naked and quote Nietzsche.
They came because theywanted to make a new life.
And they
do a very traditional new life.
You know, they’re havingthree meals a day.
And I mean, they’rereally working hard to just create
a better life that theycouldn’t have in Germany.
So others did come.And you know what?
I’ve got photos that I’m not showing you.
I’m so sorry with those pictures.
So this is at the mailbox.
As I said, here we have Dore and then Dr.
Frederick Ritter.
And again, you sometimes you’ll see them
called the Ritters,but they weren’t married.
So that’s not strictly accurate.
But anyway, so this is the two of themand then this is the family.
So that was the
baby there who said,oh, gosh, what’s his name?
Roth.Roth.
First person born on Floreana that we’re
aware of and was born in a Pirate Cave,which is pretty cool and I believe still
alive today, he’s going to be one ofthe ones who makes it out of our story.
So spoilers.
So the fact
that the island is a tough place, as I said.
So this is a photo that Itook while we were there.
And you can just see that thethorns on the on the plants.
One of the reasons I don’t think
that going nude was the mostpractical decision, but sure.
And it’s a volcanic island.
Volcanic rock is really hard.
I mean, you get lots of nutrients for your
crops if you can get them in,but you have to get them in.
So they’re having to carry their soil in for their garden.
Yes.Bridger, they had a German shepherd.
They brought a German Shepherdpuppy with them.
And I just think that’s awesome.
I’ve not been able to findout the dog’s name.
It may well be in Margaret’s memoir.
She did write a memoir,
which I have not read,and so the dog’s name may be in there,
but that’s why the dog doesn’tget named in my recounting.
Sorry.
So some other people did come to tryEcuador’s, you know, homesteading
offer, but nobody else really stayedbecause that’s a very difficult place.
And this is hot.
You’re on the equator,lots of sun, lots of heat.
On a volcanic island.There’s thorns.
There’s not a lot of water.
There are you know, the whalersand the pirates have left hogs.
They’ve left goats, they’ve leftdonkeys, they’ve left dogs.
So you have a lot of things coming
in and trying to eat whateveryou put in the ground.
You know, it’s just a difficult situation.
And most of the people leave.
So then this group comes in, and they
they just walk in and colonize, like,
they just claim thisland in the name of her.
So this is and I apologize, myGerman names are not that great.
This is Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet, OK?
She is self-styled a baroness.
We…
don’t think she’s really a baroness.
The best guesswe have for her actual origin
is that she was an Austrian secretaryin Constantinople during World War One.
She’s stranded there withouta job when the war ends.
Thanks.Bridger, that was my best German attempt.
So she starts working in a cabaret.She finds,
she attracts a Frenchmerchant named Bosquet.
I don’t know really.Bosquet, sorry.
French is not one of thelanguages I do either.
They marry, they move to Paris.
They live with his mother.
His mother apparently not superkeen on this particular match.
She starts introducing Eloise to other men
with predictable results.
And then her son files for divorce,
leaving Eloise at liberty to do whatshe wants, which is, spoiler, everything.
So two of the eligible bachelors that she
picked up in Pariswere Rudolf Lorenz and Robert Philippson.
And those are the two that youwill see in this photo.
So she brings them to Ecuador for exactlythe purpose you are thinking of.
And
she is, one of the things she did while shewas married in Paris, was she bankrolled
a ladies’ clothing shop for Lorenz,who is the guy in the middle back.
And then they were like, oh,I’d like to go to Ecuador now.
We need money for the trip.
Let’s just ditch the shopand not pay anybody.
So they sold out the shop.
They left their creditors high and dry.
They did have a bunch of leftover French
silk lingerie, which she brought becausethat’s very appropriate beachwear.
This is completely within her,
I’m going to say her brand.
Yeah, because she did a fantastic jobof branding and marketing herself.
She arrives on Floreana.
Remember, we havethe Ritters and the Wittmers who are,
the household with Ritter and Dore,
who are
not like good friends,
but at least civil neighbors,like they talk to each other occasionally,
but they’re not really cooperativeand, you know, they’re not.
They’re not.
They came to get away from thingsand that includes each other.
Right.
So then she rolls in and she’s like,yes, I am the queen of Floreana.
I am the empress of the Galapagos.
I am going to builda five star resort hotel.
I’m going to develop the entireisland to bring in everything.
I’m going to invite multimillionairesto stop by on their yachts.
And she absolutely does.
Again, branding, marketing,
somebody to look at how she developsthis hyper sexualized persona.
She will meet boatsas they come in to the beach
wearing very little,
carrying a pistol,cracking a whip.
I mean, she is absolutely,
she works hard to develop her reputation
and people are stopping by. Like anybodytraveling in the South Pacific makes
a detour to get to Floreana so they cansay that they met this person, because she
is becoming famousin newspapers and whatnot.
And you can actually go back and find like
amazingartists’ interpretations and whatnot of her
meeting people in the beach and, you know,stuff. There’s great things out there.
So.
This is the opposite of the idyllic,quiet, pioneer life that we just sit
around and quote Nietzsche or to bring upour kids in a safe place
kind of thing that her neighborswho were there first had envisioned.
There’s a little bit of materialaspect to this as well.
Floreana is a really hard place to live.
You can’t get things liketea from that environment.
They have to be broughtto you from the outside.
So if you would like to have tea or
fresh tools or anything to make yourlife easier while you’re there,
when and remember that Dr.
Ritter’s letters were being published
in the newspaper. That’s how they getthe things. So people knew they were there.
People would stop by as they were
going through the Galapagos.
They would leave things for them.
So they actually were getting giftsfrom the outside world to help them
in their homesteading.
And now that there’s thisblazing star drawing all kinds
of attention and just sexing the place upand all of that, people are not bringing
them gifts because everybody’scaptivated by her.
And we’re going to getto that in just a moment.
But let me come back here.
We’ve got somebody else who usually getsleft out of the telling of the story.
But when I was looking things up,
I found more information on him.
And, darn it, he needsto be in this story, too.
So this is Captain Alan Hancock.
I put an orange arrow on there for him.
He’s captain of the Valero,which I’ve mentioned before.
And he’s kind of an interesting character.
He is an oil and a railroad magnate.He is a pilot.
He’s a ship builder and a captain.
He’s an agriculturist.
So he is rich and adventurous and
kind of trying to do somethingwith himself and his money.
And so I found a descriptionof him in the Smithsonian.
“He was one of thoseRenaissance man tycoons.
So typical of the early decades
of the 20th century.He financed the first nonstop flight
across the Pacific,donated the La Brea Tar Pits
to Los Angeles and toured cross-country asa cellist with his own string ensemble.”
So, yeah, so he’s in the Galapagoson the yacht, the Valero,
because he was doing, I think he actually
did multiple expeditions for theSmithsonian and the San Diego Zoo.
So he is financing and directing
and running this expedition to collectspecimens and to do research here.
So they are coming by Floreana,
several times, where he meetseveryone that we’ve encountered so far.
And some really interesting things.
So a lot of the photos and footage that wehave of these people
come from this expedition, but it nevergets cited in that particular way.
But
Eloise, the baroness,
is working her magic on everybody,
and so he’s gotphotographers and cameramen running film
cameras, you know,for this expedition as well.
And she talks them into and I’ve seen
this, you can find this film.
They madea movie starring her.
It’s a very short film.
And it’s the Empress of Floreana,I think is the title.
And it’s a thinly veiledadventure all about her.
Oh, so it’s no secret who that is.
But anyway, so that’s whatthey’re doing and they’ve got
video footage of, you know,they’re documenting their expedition
of meeting these people and introducing,”Yeah, we’ve stopped.
And this is Dr.Ritter.
This is Dora.”And so
we’ve got video of these people.
But these people,like collectively are messed up.
I want to say
that with a certain amount of judgment,we’re all messed up in one way.
But this is a collection of
this is not going to go well.All right.
So
remember, Eloise broughther two guys with her.
She also, I’m sorry,
there’s another guy who always gets leftout, and I almost left him out as well.
Let’s go back and grab his name,Manuel Valdivieso.
And he was anEcuadorian national.
And he was brought along
to do the heavy lifting andto do the work.
And nobody ever talks about him.
But I want to make sure that he’s,you know, mentioned as well.
So
we’ve got these collections of of people.
So Eloise brought Rudolf and Robert withher, but Rudolf’s definitely the low,
Lorenz is very definitelythe low guy in this arrangement.
And so she and Robert would team up and
pick on him, abuse him verbally,sometimes physically.
We don’t know all the details of that,but we know that occasionally he would
just escape to the Wittmers’ house,stay with them all day or several days,
whatever, until somebody would comeand take him back and then time would pass
and then he would eventually wouldshow up at their house again.
Eloise had lots of pets.
It is said that she would
first fawn on her pets and be really,you know, doting on them or whatever,
and then she would harm them in orderto be able to nurse them back to health.
Like, she shot a donkey so she coulddoctor it. Like, just not not healthy.
Dr Ritter, flashback, he’s our our firstteam of people who came in here,
had his own set of
beliefs that he wanted to comeover here to practice, and Dore
had, among other things,
multiple sclerosis, and in fact,if you look at some of the Valero
footage, you’ll see her movingwith a cane because she is
suffering from this.
And he had it in his head that she could
just willpower that thingaway and be fine.
So he was getting really upset with herwhen she was,
you know, struggling with it more and moreand needing the cane and struggling
and to the point where he would just notspeak to her for days at a time because he
was so angry that she was, you know,not just getting over this.
So that’s going on.
As I said, Eloise, you know,
got the research teamto make a movie about her.
Yay.
Dr Ritter and the Wittmers are concerned that
Eloise is going through the mail.
She’s close to the mailbox.
So she’s editing their lettersthat are going out to make
herself more fantastic and to putstuff in there to discredit Dr.
Ritter and the Wittmers.
Again, they’re not getting stuff becauseshe’s intercepting all the attention.
And so she’s maligning them and soRitter is very upset by this in particular.
So he complains to thegovernor of Ecuador,
but allegedly thegovernor of Ecuador has been another one
of Eloise’s side pieces, and shehas him wrapped around her pinky.
And he’s not going to do anythingto interfere with her interfering
with the mail or, you know,anything else that’s going on.
And there’s a lot of thingsthat might be going on.
Something that is not too disputed is thattwo people were lost in a boat
in trouble,
you know, got to shore,
started to come up on the island,and she ran them off with a gun,
not allowing them on her islandwithout giving them as castaways aid.
And then a story that mayor may not have happened.
But an awful lot of people of the timerepeated it,
which was that she accidentally shotsomeone in a hunting party
on the island and said, “oh, I’m sorry,let me fix you,” you know,
kind of considering whatother things we’re hearing.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on.
It’s getting down to petty theft,not just complaints and legal sense.
Robert Philipson steals Ritter’s donkey.
And again, these animals,
one, it’s their pet,
Two, they’re using it for for work and they’ll carry soil and water and things.
So he stole the donkey,put it in the Wittmers’ garden.
Remember, I mentioned they had all
the feral animals that were coming intothem to eat their garden and their crops.
And so they shot it thinking it wasone of the feral animals coming in.
So I got you through just a horriblecollection of things going on.
So all this comes to a head.
March 27th, 1934, so.
On the morning of that that day.
There may have been a gun shot,there may have been a scream.
These are reported only by Dore.
Nobody else heard a gunshot or a scream.
But
this is one of the days that Rudolfis staying with the Wittmers.
You know, he’s he has beenthere again for several days.
He’s off helping oneof the kids gather wood.
Margaret says that Eloise showsup very excited, asks where
Rudolph is and says, oh,
we’ve just you know,some friends just came in on a yacht.
They’re going to Tahiti,they asked us to go with them.
So Robert and I are goingto Tahiti with them.
Everything that’s left at
you know, at the hacienda, everybody left.Everything that’s left
can can go to Lorenz.That’s fine.
Bye.See you later.
Have a great day.Have a nice life.
So she heads off to Tahiti.
The problem with this story is that no one
else saw the yacht come inand no one else heard Eloise say this.
The house with Frederick and Dorehad the best view of the bay.
They never saw a yacht. No yacht carryingEloise and Robert ever made it to Tahiti.
They never showed up anywhere else.
Nobody has ever seen anythingof them since that day.
So Eloise’s belongings,after a couple of weeks start to show up
at the Wittmers’, I don’t view thisas particularly,
I don’t feel this is particularly
meaningful because honestly,like, if you think they’re gone,
you know, they left everything there,then go ahead and leave everything there.
You know, go aheadand take take some of it.
She’s brought really nice silverware.
Go ahead and use some of the silverware.
Don’t just leave it there,you know, kind of thing.
But the problem is some of the stuff she
left, Dore says she never would have left,such as a copy of The Picture
of Dorian Gray, which wasallegedly her favorite book.
And Dora says she never would havegone anywhere without that book.
I think it’s probably sounds like the kindof book that Eloise would read,
but she probably only read certain partsand missed, like, the whole point.
But that’s fine.
So
there are just thingsthat don’t match up here.
Dore says that she heard a scream
and a gunshot on that morningthat Eloise and Robert disappeared.
Dore says that Rudolphkilled them and the Wittmers helped.
And Dore says that acacia wood,
which can be found on the island, willburn hot enough to even destroy bone.
And so that’s what happened.
That where we are so far.
Valdivieso, who is thethe Ecuadoran who came to, brought
to the island by Eloise to doall the manual labor.
He hops the first boatback to the mainland. Gone.
And who can blame him.
I can’t imagine he,if all of that was going on anyway,
I can’t imagine he was doing well there
and he’s gone and he getshimself out of the story.
Yeah.So much drama.
So
Rudolf Lorenz hangs around for a bit.
He’s now the only personliving at the Hacienda and
I think it’s Paradise Haciendais what she named it.
And so he’s kind of thinkingabout going actually.
Thomas Howell, Senior,
no relation to Thurston Howell that I candiscover, sails into the bay and says,
“hey, do you want to ridewith me out of here?”
Because, you know,they knew each other, because everybody
everybody knew Eloise and wouldmake stops to see her.
And Lorenz actually turns that down.
But as soon as Thurston’s gone,
I’m sorry! As soon asThomas Howell’s gone,
he’s like, hey, passing fisherman,
would you carry me to San Cristobal?
And so take me to San Cristobal.
I will get to a ride from there to the mainland.
So.
Oh thanks ShyRedFox.
Yeah, I will be out, I’ll be on replay.You can catch the rest later.
Thanks for stopping by.I appreciate it.
Sorry I’m taking a long while to getaround to the fun part but.
Sorry, Rudolf Lorenz hires a Norwegianfisherman to carry him to San Cristobal.
Oh, well, I got pictures.
Here we go.
So.
They they disappear, they disappear,they they set sail from Floreana
heading to San Cristobal,they never make it to San Cristobal.
The boat ultimately isfound on Marchena Island.
Now, let’s quick review here.
Here is Isla Florianahere in San Cristobal.
Here is Marchena,
not even close to where theywere supposed to be going.
All right.
Now people see and report this.On the island that there is a
flag, a beacon of some sort, raised.
So excuse me, Captain Hancock
goes to check out, OK,what’s going on here?
Because there’s not a lot of stuff on
Marchena. It has no reason to be there.
And they find both men,
the fisherman, the Norwegianfisherman and Lorenz
are there, are dead,have actually been mummified by the sun.
Again, incredible amounts of heat andsunlight there. They died of thirst.
They saw that they had killedand eaten both a bird and a sea lion.
But there’s no fresh water on the island.
There’s no way to get water.
They were in the little skiff.
They had no oars.
Nobody knows what went wrong,what happened to the bigger boat?
Why are they there?
No idea.
So Captain Hancock, and I justwant to give you guys a heads up.
We have photos, but you are going to see
the photos that, again,the scientific expedition took pictures.
So, you know, Captain Hancock, of course,
immediately recognizesRudolph because he knew him.
And we had video and photos of them,you know, taken just not that long ago.
So they
were able to identify him.(Now we can move on.
So anybody stopping in
doesn’t just be like, oh, wow,there’s dead people on the screen.)
So, you know, he had he hadmade a movie with this guy.
He had taken film with this guy.
He’d eaten with this guy.
And so, yeah, now there’s some
indication that Nyggerud
I’m sorry, I’m
not good at Norwegian either,but he was known to be a little reckless
with his boat,but he had a pregnant wife at home.
He wouldn’t have been, you know,trying to do anything too stupid.
Who knows?
Nobody nobody has anyidea how they got here.
So jump ahead again to November,
where this is all relativelyhappening fairly quickly. In November
Dr Ritter eats some bad chickenand goes down with food poisoning.
Wait a minute, Laura, didn’t yousay that he was a vegetarian?
Yes.Yes, I did.
But again, it’s a reallytough environment.
There was a drought on, and Dore saysthat they were not able to grow enough
vegetables due to the drought,so they had to start eating some chicken.
Dore ate the same chicken.
Dore is fine.
Then Dore, you know, seeing that Fredrik’sreally struggling, he’s not doing well.
He’s near death.
So she goes to the Wittmersto ask for help.
Margaret says it’s curious that shewaited so long to come ask for help.
You know, so there’s all kinds ofinsinuation going on all over the place.
Then both Margaret and Dore arepresent when Fredrick Ritter dies.
Both of them record this in their separate
memoirs, and the end, those incidentscannot be more different.
So Dore reports that youknow, the entire thing.
She took care of him.She was devastated, even though he was,
you know, unpleasant to herabout her multiple sclerosis.
She was very, his death was
tragic and it was a thing of, he departedwith love and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Margaret reports that Frederick Ritter
accused Dore of poisoning him and atthe end when he could no longer speak.
But he did get a piece of paper and wrote,
“I curse you with my dyingbreath” and then expired.
These accounts are different.
So
but we just have, you know,
the two sets of the two differentaccounts for the two different people.
And the third account,that would be Frederick Ritter’s.
He’s not talking anymore.
So they bury Frederick Ritter. In December,
Captain Hancock rolls around again because
again, he’s just travelingaround on this expedition.
And so he stops by to say hello.
But they’re not he’s not greeted by Dr.
Ritter like he would be.
And he finds out that he’s dead.
The doctor traveling on
Captain Hancock’s ship, after talkingto Dore and hearing the symptoms,
he suspects it might not have been foodpoisoning, it might have been an aneurysm.
But Frederic Ritter hasbeen buried for a month.
You know, like nobody’s goingto be able to know this.
And anyway, lots of
uncertainty.
So let’s just quick review where we are.In the space of seven months,
we have three dead bodies and twosuspicious missing persons.
So we’re moving pretty quickly here.
Margaret Wittmer,
she is the last. She survives the longestof any of this group.
She did write a memoir.
Dore Strach, Ritter, Koerwin,again, several of her names.
She also wrote a book.
Dore’s book was
much more provocatively titled,It was Satan Came to Eden.
And she insisted that the Wittmershelped Lorenz kill
Eloise and Robert Philipsonand then conceal the evidence.
She did not present any evidence for this.
She just knows it to be true.
She eventually went back toGermany after all of this went down.
after Dr.Ritter died.
She went back to Germany, where shewas admitted to a mental institute.
She was in that mental institute when it
was struck by a bomb in 1943,and that is where she died.
Margaret’s memoir was much lesssalaciously titled. I think it’s something
like a mother in theGalapagos or something.
I can’t remember it offhand.
She died in 2000 at the age of 96,constantly dropping hints that she knew
more than she had eversaid and would never say.
And she died without ever saying
so.
Yeah, her descendants
are still in the Galapagos and still ownbusinesses and land there.
You can see her name if you go and
look around some of the tourismbusinesses in that area.
So in seven months, we went through
three, three confirmed deaths,two probable deaths.
And yeah, that’s that’s where we are.
So.
As far as I’m aware,
nobody’s ever written afictionalization of this.
There’s been there’s been a documentarymade of this, but nobody’s ever
done like the true crime novel or thebased on a true story novel or something.
So this is the thing to look at.
I know just
there’s a lot of unansweredquestions that I think
need some need some potential answersin some parallel fictional universe.
So.
All right, so that is the story ofFloreana and I feel really bad because I
would love to have like a neat resolutionthere, but it’s all just
and in seven months, we went through fivepeople and that’s everything we know.
And so
my sister told mea couple of days ago she saw a
tweet from a bookstore employeeor someone who was asking for it.
They wanted “true crime,but not based in real life.”
And so we had a good laugh about that.
So this is not true crime,
not based in real life because it’sdefinitely based in real life.
But it is true.
But it may or may not be crime because no
charges were ever brought and we haveno evidence of any murders happening.
Just a lot of very suspicious things.
So, yeah, that’s where we are.
So that was this week’sfield trip. We went to Isla Floreana.
Oh, I’ve got
got my nice pretty pictures.
So this is a couple of nestingalbatrosses and I’ve got
so many albatross pictures.
This is a sea lion.
I love this photo.He’s asleep here.
And then about every
four or five minutes he’d just pop up,suck air, and then go back down
underwater to nap,which made me laugh really hard.
Blue footed booby because required by law.The boobies come without blue feet.
They come in other varieties as well.
But these are the famous ones.
The Galapagos is such a trippyplace and (“pretending to be a rock.
Yes, absolutely.”)Such a trippy place.
You’ve got like
pinnipeds and cacti on volcanic rock,I mean, it’s just crazy, so all of that.
Penguins because we hadpenguins in our last field trip.
So I did include one.
And and this is a portraitof a Galapagos turtle that I took.
And I
particularly like this because I use thisphoto in my shaping seminar when I talk
about clicker trainingshaping for behavior,
because in my storyon why timing matters and
so
this with a guide and a tortoise comes
and is heading to go take shelter undera bush from the sun
and it gets to the bush and othertortoise is already under the bush.
And so now there’s a tortoiseconflict over this shade resource.
The way Galapagos tortoisesfight is they stretch up OK.
So I’m like, oh, my gosh, I’m goingto see a Galapagos tortoise fight.
Like, what are the odds?
These tortoises are like,Oh, I want the shade.
I want the shade.
OK, it’s like watching two glaciers comeup slowly moving,
and I’m so excited and I’m taking photos.Only I’m not actually taking photos.
I flubbed the camera.
I have no idea what happened, but I didnot get the photos of the tortoise fight.
And I talk about, you know, like,
you know, try to click accurately andthink of it as taking a picture.
At least that’s the way I do.
And look at these two glacial tortoises.
And I missed that photo,but I did get this photo.
So at least like this one.
So there we go.
So that is
that is the story of Floreana.
And
thanks for thanks for joiningme for the field trip.
So this is the lastTo Write And Have Written for 2020.
It feels so nice to saythe last anything for 2020.
Like, I don’t believe the world is going
to suddenly change when we arbitrarilyroll over a number on a clock face.
But
it’s really nice to have like a division
where we could be like, OK,fresh start. That works.
So in in January 2021,we are going to have some chats on
realistic goal setting,
appropriate goal setting,a lot of things like that,
OK, if you want to believe itwill arbitrarily change,
go for it.Like just, I’ll be here if it
it’s not as satisfactory as youhoped we’ll be here.
Still have the support group going.
So, uh, where was I going with that?Oh yes.
So we are going to have some,some goal setting and I don’t know,
I probably should check the calendarto remember, I have it on the calendar.
Look at the calendar.It’s there.
So we are doing coolthings into January and.
Yeah, that’s it.
So thank you guys so much for comingand hanging out. Do I have any other thing?
Let me check my notes.
I have anything else Iwanted to let you know?
I didn’t I didn’t writeanything down at all.
So I’m going to assume that means there’snothing that needs to be taken care of.
So that is it.
We’re going to wrap it here and I will seeyou guys next week with a brand new year.
And we will hope that the world willboom arbitrarily change and be awesome.
So shiny and sparkles and all the things.All right.
Thank you guys so much.Take care.
Have a great week.I’ll see you.
Yeah.The obligatory,
“I’ll see you next year, OK?”All right.
Bye.
