May 2, 2019 • 39 mins
In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Sofiya Alexandra to continue discussing George Tann, baby thief.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what's starting my podcast? That one wasn't very good,
so she's not proud of me. Uh, you know, they
can't all be what's cracking my peppers. They can't even
all be what's boiling my pig anus is um, which
was which was another another hit. I'm Robert Evans this
Behind the Bastards podcast where we talked about terrible people.
(00:22):
But you know that if you're listening, because this is
part two of the Georgia Can story, and if why
would you why would you just be listening to part
two first? Or you seem to get some kind of
sucking maniac? Did you murder a baby? Uh? Sophia Alexandra,
how are you doing? You are a guest for today, right,
thank you so much for having a host of the
(00:42):
Private Parts Unknown podcast. Kickboxing third place finalist and uh
actually first place. Kind of upset that you would not
mention that it's actually nude kickboxing so it's actually a
lot harder than regular kickboxing. Yeah, that seems a lot.
Pretty upset that I wrote down all my credits for
you and you just kind of messed them up. But whatever,
(01:04):
I'm sorry. Sorry you are not mentioned like at least
three other things that I've done. I am also America's
favorite lasagna, America's favorite lasagna. That is right, That is right?
Thank you. So apologized for mentioning that in America's uh
second favorite macaroni and cheese. Okay, yes, I don't like
to talk about second place, but I am also america
(01:25):
The second favorite considering the amount of mac and cheese
in this country. Pretty good, I mean yeah, I'm not
trying to be falsely modest. I am delicious. You are delicious,
Thank you. Well, we're talking about someone who's not delicious.
Georgia Tan actually is a baby thief and murderer. Yeah,
and that's what we're gonna talk about today. It's all
(01:47):
the murdering. Oh yeah. So Georgia Tan had a reputation
for being rather fearless. This was helpful because her habit
of abducting thousands of children from poor people occasionally brought
violent through It's down upon her head. According to Nellie, occasion,
occasionally some people, I don't know, I felt like it
wasn't right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. She had iron burglar proof
(02:11):
bars in the windows of windows of her home, and
over the course of her career, three separate people tried
to kill her, but all of them apparently chickened out,
either out of a reticence to take human life or
because Georgia scared them away. WHOA. Yeah, she was supposed
to be pretty terrifying. She was like a very large,
imposing presence um and and very mean and apparently at
(02:31):
least one case, like screamed a guy away who would
come to her house to get revenge. Yeah, she's an
imposing lady. I feel like it's like a challenge I'm
being presented, but it's like way too late in history,
or like, ya, Sophia, are you brave enough to kill her?
Are you brave enough? But it's too late now. George's
behavior was not strictly legal. There were actually laws in
(02:54):
the US about how to adopt babies, and she was
in violation of basically all of them. In most cases,
adoptive parents had to reside in the state they were
adopting from. Surrenders of parental rights had to be confirmed
in a court of law. Georgia tan broke both of
these rules flagrantly and regularly, in some cases on a
near daily basis. But also she had that judge in
her pocket. First was like Judge Daddy, and then the
second one was that lady that was crazy. Yeah, so
(03:16):
she like did funk with the legal system, but she
sometimes just stole babies. I mean yes. By the midnighteen
thirties show, social workers in Tennessee who weren't in George's
pocket had started to complain about all of the laws
that she was breaking and baby she was stealing. Her
connections to Boss Crump were enough to protect her. However,
(03:38):
in seven, I'm sorry, Boss Crump, is that from protecting
the castle and the princess? I was going to say,
he sounds like a guy from the Duke's a hazard.
Old Boss Crump is in a real mess of trouble again.
Pissed at them Duke boys. Yeah, just really a great
fake name. Yeah, it was a great fake name, but
in this case it was a real guy who helped
Georgia Tan steal thousands of baby uh. In n seven,
(04:01):
she succeeded in pushing through a new law which legalized
adoption for out of state residents. This president would have
a huge impact on the way adoptions are carried out
nationwide moving forward, including today. The new law, however, did
require adoptive parents to visit Tennessee before finalizing the adoption,
but Georgia just ignored this part of it and it
was fine now. Georgia had started out as an employee
(04:22):
of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, which is based out
of Nashville. The director of the agency, Fannie L. Rod,
was a rather soft person, and Georgia basically bullied her
into getting whatever she wanted. Fanny was scared of Georgia
and basically refused to do anything about the many complaints
made against her employee. Since the Children's Home Society did
not have a license from the state, every adoption carried
out by Georgia Tan and its name was technically illegal,
(04:44):
but again, no one did anything to stop her, so
it wound up not mattering that it was illegal. Also,
once you're getting like amazing newspaper coverage with your Christmas babies,
like good luck taking that lady down, everyone's like she's
a saint, She's the Christmas Baby, and she's the angel
that gave people babies. She's the not the Angel of death.
Not the angel of death. According to the book The
(05:05):
Baby Thief Quote, Georgia frequently falsified the birthdates of many children.
She placed for adoption in every case, which of which
I learned, she reduced the children's age. She did this
to satisfy clients wishes for the youngest possible babies and
to make the children a pair, bright, even precocious. While
Georgia reduced the ages of babies by only weeks or months,
she's frequently subtracted years from the ages of older children.
So not done. She's like basically like, Hollywood. Yeah, She's like,
(05:33):
you're a little haggard at ten, so we're gonna go ahead.
I'm gonna pull you down to a seven. It seems better. Also,
I just something like just smart about being like, well,
if I say this this seven year old is four,
then he seems smart. Like then he's really advanced four
(05:53):
year old and not just a normal seven year old,
and I can sell him to a richer family. They're like,
stop saying this girl is seven. She has a full
seecup's definitely least. It does make me wonder what Rick
Flair's real ages. Oh my god, I keep forgetting Rick
Flair's wants. It's the poor Rick Flair. It's got to
(06:17):
be traumatic, Like now, like the know how many babies
she stolen placed like so many Americans probably are not
living with their families. Seventy but we don't know that
he's seventy. He could be seventy two, could be seventy four,
and probably aged them down down. Made Rick Flair seems
like a super smart baby, not that he wasn't smart
as a baby. Yeah, I mean nothing against Rick Flair.
(06:39):
Smart guy. Sorry, Sorry you get stolen. Rick. Also, someone
stole the cave from you. Don't make stickers stay. Sorry
you got stolen. I don't even know what this podcast.
Sorry you got stolen totally. I feel like that's March.
You have fans, get on. This is the Sorry you
were stolen Ric Flair. Rick Flair March Georgia did not
(07:03):
abduct all of her products, of course, She trawled every
orphanage and children's home in the state in search of
fresh child flesh to sell, But once her operation was
up and running, her most common source of children were
the maternity wards of local Memphis hospitals. She hired a
network of spotters who would hang out waiting for poor
young women, particularly single mothers, to go into labor. Dude,
it's like ambulance chasers, but like baby chasers. Just looking
(07:26):
around for like a lady with a big baby bump
who looks like she doesn't have like I'm just big,
fuck you, I'm not even having a baby. Stop following me.
Just following a heavy set woman for a couple of days,
waiting until she she's like, please stop. Dr George loved Joy,
who delivered some of those babies, later recalled I'm sorry
love Joy, love Joy, you are loving the last names here.
(07:48):
The last names are kind of their own podcast because
they're amazing behind the ridiculous and Reverend love Joy is
a fake character on the and this is a real
person named love Joy. I think it is a pretty
common name. I'm running into some love Joys. Are you serious?
I mean, it is a silly name, but it's a
real one. Where are you from, Texas? Oh yeah, probably
(08:10):
more love Joys out there. Yeah, there's a lot of
Ukraine or California, which is where i've Ukranian name Ukraine Afornia.
Is there like a Ukrainian neighborhood in town that we
could there cultural center? They should call the neighborhood Ukraine Afornia.
Leaving money on the table. Yeah, okay, second piece of
(08:32):
fan arts Ukraine in the shape of California and it
just says Ukraine Afornia. It is for three people that
that's what we love doing. Here is is jokes that
that really appealed to No half a basketball team will
will identify with um okay uh. Dr George love Joy,
(08:53):
who delivered many of the babies later called quote Georgia
Tan's workers, stood outside the door of the delivery room
waiting the minute the baby was born, they would take
the paper in and have the mothers signed them, and
the baby would disappear. Now, many of these mothers were
still wasted from anesthesia when George's people forced them to sign,
were presented as routine papers. This ostensibly medical paperwork was,
of course, in reality, a surrender of parental rights. Babies
(09:13):
were taken right from their drug up mommies and flown
to new homes the same day. Part of why Jojo
was so successful in this was the fact that she
literally changed American cultures attitude towards single moms. See, being
a single mom has always been difficult, obviously, but for
most of American history there was not a huge stigma
attached to it. Husbands died, after all, it was like,
you know, there was no medicine back then, but starting
in Memphis, Georgia labored to convince courts and the public
(09:36):
that single white women should not be allowed to raise
their own babies. This is part of why, on the
few occasions she was taken to court over it, Georgia
nearly always won her cases. No judge was going to
take a baby from a rich or middle class too
parent household and give it to a single poor woman.
Damn yep, according to the baby would have sure had
me stolen a single mom. Yeah, that happened up until
(09:58):
very recently the seventies in a lot of cases, according
to the baby thief quote. By the late nineteen thirties,
single mothers were not only being prevented from bonding with
their babies, but often even from seeing them. Mothers were
sometimes blindfolded during labor. Some social workers urged pregnant way
young women to sign forms allowing doctors to circumcise their
child if it turned out to be a boy, so
that the workers could keep mothers uninformed of even their
(10:19):
babies gender. By the time adoption became nationally popular in
the mid nineteen forties, the reversal was complete, and for
the first time in history, white single mothers were expected
to surrender their babies for adoption. That relinquishment was endorsed
by leaders of such reputable organizations as the Child Welfare
League of America, the American Public Welfare Association, the Salvation Army,
Catholic charities, and most psychiatrists and psychologists. Lead dissenting social
(10:40):
scientists Clark Vincent to predict a future in which newborns
of all white single mothers would be seized by the state.
By the nineteen fifties of white singled on when we
go back to the fact that they were blindfolded when
giving birth so they couldn't say them that must have
been so terrifying. Yeah, holy sh it, it's already the
worst experience. You're all like drugged up the pain, they're
(11:01):
going to steal your baby, and then like they blindfold you.
Yeah that is nuts. Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty fucked Like
the only game of hide and seek we're going to
ever play with your baby. It's so much sadder. What
do you think about it that way? I know, but
there's no seek, It's just a game of hides. It's
(11:22):
a one time pika boo situation. Yeah. By the nineteen
fifties of white women in maternity homes, which is where
poor single women tended to give birth surrendered their children
for adoption. So Sam Yeah, Georgia also trawled the various
orphanages of Tennessee in search of new inventory. One worker
recalled quote, I can still hear her steps down the
hallway and see her funny hats. She had big feet
(11:43):
and more black lace up shoes. She always went upstairs
to see the babies. There would be masses of them
one day and they'd be gone the next. So Georgia
would take pictures of the best babies, which were usually
blonde haired and blue eyed, and then send them off
to prospective clients. These kids were the lucky ones, you know.
The kids who were in genuinely bad situations were off
and probably helped by George's work, but not always uh well.
(12:03):
Many of George's kids wound up in the hands of wealthy,
loving family. She didn't actually do any kind of vetting
at all to make sure of that. The only background
check was whether or not the new mom and dad
had hundreds of dollars exactly. George's kids didn't even all
end up in families. One of them wound up at
the University of Tennessee as a ward of the Home
Economics department. Oh my god, award of a school department,
(12:26):
serving as a flesh and blood textbook for students. The
department changed his name from Richard House to Richard Practice House.
What also Dick House? What practice House? They were like,
just so you don't forget that you're since essentially chattel, Like, yeah,
(12:47):
let's fucking change her name to practice guy. A lot
of the stuff that went on then did definitely verge
on child slavery. It's pretty dark for ar is. Georgia
Tan was seen as an authority on child welfare. She was,
in essence, America's chief social worker. Eleanor Roosevelt esther for
advice on improving conditions for poor children. She was invited
(13:09):
to collaborate it let me, let me steal or kill them.
She was invited to collaborate on books about adoption, and
sought out by the likes of The New York Times
for her commentary on stories of abuse and children's homes
around the country. This was a dark irony because the
reality is that Georgia Tan abused children on a scale
and with a viciousness more suited for a concentration camp
than an orphanage. Children who were abducted by Georgia would
(13:31):
spend weeks, months, or even years in a series of
dreadfully crowded boarding homes. These were often just small apartments.
A two bedroom might be filled with as many as
ten children. On at least one instant. Six infants were
found in a single crib. Babies were fed spoiled milk,
often because functional refrigerators were not always in the budget.
Tins of children would be crammed into spaces condemned by
authorities as fire hazards. Georgia refused to pay for medical
(13:53):
treatment for kids with syphilis or other contagious diseases that
would have cut into her profit margin. Damn, damn. You
know what, Now is a good time for an ad pivot. Products.
(14:13):
We're back. I don't know how to how to lead
into that ad pivot in a graceful way. Yeah, I
don't know if you can gracefully transition from baby murder
into products and then back to baby murder. But we're
doing it. We're doing it because we're going We're going
right back to Yeah. Uh so, um, we were talking
about how she often would refuse to pay for medical
(14:34):
treatment for kids with contagious diseases, because of course, that
ship's expensive and you're running a business here. According to
the baby thief quote, she refused to even acknowledge illness
and her children and forbade her boarding mothers from summoning
medical help. Faced with desperately sick children. However, some boarding
mothers panicked and sent them to the hospital. The trip
was often made too late. The deaths of most of
these babies were presumably recorded, and the children buried in
(14:55):
the area of Elmwood Cemetery used by her adoption agency,
but Georgia disposed of the bodies of children who death
she could conceal unless the regular ways. A reporter for
the Press Simitar passed George's home one night in the
nineteen forties and saw someone burying something in the backyard,
a child. The reporter believed. Former investigator Robert Taylor told
me that Georgia had had the local Thompson Brothers funeral
home cremate some of the children, getting rid of the evidence.
(15:17):
Taylor said a grave as proof. Yeah. Pretty the Charles Carter,
a pediatrician who volunteered at the Children's Home and treated
many of Miss Tan's inventory. Told Barbara Raymond that Georgia
would even overrule his express medical guidance at times. Quote.
I had prescribed penicillin and learned later that she had
ordered her nurses to stop giving it to the baby,
(15:39):
but continued to chart it as if they were. Georgia
Tans simply would not listen. She would say, I'll take
your words under advisement, but she never did. She did
what she felt best, regardless of what anyone said. She
felt she knew the babies and what the babies needed.
Yeah plague death. So many of George's children got sick
that one hospital in Memphis dedicated an entire ward to
(16:00):
taking care of them. A Los Angeles hospital had to
do the same thing for the river of sick and
dying babies Georgia brought into the city to sell to
Hollywood types. By nineteen thirty two, Memphis, Tennessee had the
highest infant death rate of any major American city, mostly
fights to Georgia Tan. Now we don't know how many
babies died in Georgia Tan's care. We do know that
in one particularly brutal winter, the winter of nineteen forty five.
(16:21):
As many as fifty babies died in the children's home alone.
Babies died when they were left out in the sun unattended.
Some died within days of arriving in their adoptive homes
because no care had been taken to make sure they
were fed or medicated in the days and weeks before transit.
In at least one case, Georgia Tan abducted a set
of premature twins and removed them from the hospital before
they were stable. Both twins died. In total, it's estimated
(16:42):
that as many as five hundred babies died in Georgia
Tan's care. The real death toll maybe even higher, perhaps
much higher. Yeah, that's kind of what it seems. Five
doesn't seem right. It seems like you might have killed
a couple of thousand, Yeah, definitely, Yeah, five hundreds kind
of the minimum. It doesn't Yeah, it doesn't even make sun.
And if you're saying about someone they killed at least
five hundred babies, kind of I can't really imagine much worse. Like,
(17:06):
the only other people you can say that about are
usually like concentration camp guards, Like yeah, yeah, Like when
you talk about that many dead babies. That's so many
dead babies or people that orchestrate, like specifically genocide. Yeah. Yeah,
like it's Georgia Tan and genocide committers. I mean she's
a death all star. Yeah, definitely an achiever. She's over achiever.
(17:29):
People ask a lot, you know, you should cover more
women bastards on the show, which we're doing, But it's
Georgia Tan. She belongs on the list. Yeah. Man, she's
she's right up there, She's right up there. She's one
of the worst people I've heard about. Question. Is she single? Yeah,
well no, Actually she had a partner who was I
(17:51):
think on paper her secretary because she was Muspian. But
did she help murder the babies? Probably right? Yeah, we
don't we not, I mean, not that I know of,
but probably probably right. Yeah. I know how you wouldn't
be aware of that if you're girlfriends like heavy into
murder and he probably seeps into your relationship. And from
what little we know about it, it it seems like it
(18:11):
was a pretty abusive relationship. Georgia was definitely the dominant one.
Oh yeah, And it would be a shocker if you
were like she was the abused one and be like,
oh my god, she's that's what she's taken out on
the babies. Yea. But clearly something happened to her, right
was pretty domineering in a dick like wouldn't let her
be a lawyer and stuff? Yeah, but that that doesn't
lead to baby murder. I just feel like, do you
(18:32):
think she was abused to have like a weird preoccupation
with babies like that? Yeah? I think she was abused.
I think, um, she got addicted to like the sense
of setting these babies up with somebody, And I think
I think some of it is just like you know,
she came from this period of time where you didn't
really give that much of a ship about babies in
like the eighteen nineties, Like you know, I think people
(18:53):
like thinking of themselves as a good person even when
they're doing terrible things. So she probably was like, I
am saving these babies, and she really believed it. And
she thought the ones that died, well, they would have
grown up poor and that's worse than death, right exactly
or what does it matter? Or like they were supposed
to die? Yeah, I mean you can say anything to
yourself when you're like trying to justify some fucked up
ship you really, I say that ship when I'm like getting,
(19:14):
you know, like an extra fucking Taco Bell thing that
I don't need, it's like, you know, it's it's really
close to baby murder, basically getting that you didn't need.
Taco Bell sponsored the show, and you will stop comparing
your products to murdering babies. No, no, no, it's way
better Taco Bell better than killing a baby. That's a
(19:35):
slogan right there. It's sell some fucking again merch. I'm
just coming up with all these merch ideas and I
feel like you should pay me, so thank you. We'll
let you know if the Taco Bell people reach out, Yeah,
I think they kind of have to. I think they're
really gonna like this is unbeatable pad campaign. Yeah, yeah,
better than murdering a baby. So one of the babies
(19:58):
that Georgia Tan murdered was the daughter of Alma Sipple.
In the spring of nineteen forty six, Miss Sipple moved
to Memphis with her infant daughter and two year old son.
Her boyfriend, Julius Talos, was in the military and had
just left for Panama. They planned to marry. Alma later
recalled quote, we were so crazy about each other. It
didn't matter if we were married or not. So six
weeks after moving to Memphis, Alma was visited by a
(20:18):
representative of the Children's Home Society named Georgia Tan. Georgia
said she was looking into allegations of child abuse against
one of Alma's neighbors, so at first Alma thought nothing
was wrong, at least not with her. The next day,
Georgia Tan returned in her large black limo. This time
she had questions about the child's father, questions Alma Sipple
could not comfortably answer. Next, according to the New York
(20:39):
Post quote, the woman looked at Irma, who had a
running nose, and said, your baby sick, isn't she? You
should get her a checkup. Simple explained that she had
no money for a doctor, so the woman generously offered
to take the child to the Memphis General Hospital. Looking back,
Simple wonders at her own naivete How I how did
I mess up so bad? I guess she knew the
dumb ones. Still, she had been worried about her baby's health,
(21:00):
and she'd assumed that she would go with them to
the hospital, so she had signed a piece of paper
when Tan had told her it would be impossible for
her to go along. Simple remembers, I had a weird feeling,
but I thought, well, you've got to trust somebody. Yeah,
paper was, of course, a surrender of parental rights of
Simple's baby went along with Georgia Tan, and that was
the last Alma ever saw of her. When she showed
(21:22):
up at the children's ward of the hospital the next
day to inquire as to her child's status, the nurse
told her you don't have a baby in there. Those
children belonged to the Children's Home Society. For days, Alma
Sipple called the children's Home and Georgia Tan. No one
answered until weeks later, Georgia picked up and told her
that her daughter had died of pneumonia, in the same
sort of way you might tell someone a carton of
eggs had broken. Being a human, Alma said that she
(21:43):
wanted to bury her child. Georgia told her that would
not be possible, saying the state had put her daughter away.
After that, Alma says, I guess I went crazy. She
left the other children in her mother's charge and went
to Memphis to find her baby's grave. She never located it, because,
of course, Georgia Tan never bothered to give her baby
a grave cool fun story. You gotta joke to to
(22:07):
live on the sup live and that one up. Nah, Well,
I guess it's time for another ad pivot. Oh, I
mean this baby murdering story was always could be a
rough one to pivot to products with buy stuff, but
(22:28):
not not babies. No, the only thing you should not
buy his babies. People. Yeah, grown up or small. You know,
let's just let's put it. I don't want to don't
buy people. Yeah, I'm not trying to be you know,
all uh controversial. Yeah, not trying to the anti capitalist here.
Just maybe don't buy people. It's probably probably a good
(22:49):
rule of thumb. Maybe keep that line. Products. We're back,
good products, solid services. Let's get back to talking about
horrible thing babies. No, at this point, I'll bet you
(23:11):
might think something along the lines of Georgia Tan couldn't
possibly get any worse. Well, straw man, listener, you were
dumb for thinking that. Of course she can get worse.
In addition to stealing thousands of babies and killing hundreds
of this is where the molestation comes in. Yeah, he
was waiting for that. Yeah, she molested a bunch of babies.
One of her victims as a fifty four year old
man from Memphis. You know babies. Yeah, it seems like it.
(23:34):
You see, this is interesting. I think both genders. Uh
yeah what sometimes people who lost really young. So it's
not much of a difference, not much of the difference.
Just wants them to be probably like helpless. Yeah, I
think that's sad, big part of it. So one of
her victims, you know, decades later, is a year old
man claimed he and his twin brother were molested by
(23:57):
Georgia when they were eight. He told the Daily Pantograph quote,
we remember being in a big bed, strip naked. Georgia
Tan and some other people were there reaching for us
and kissing us and touching us where we shouldn't be touched.
Sexual assault and physical assault sort of blended together for
many of George's victims. One of them, a young girl
named Mary, recalled Georgia beating her with a wooden spoon
in a bathroom. She squatted over me, gouging me. She
(24:17):
seemed like a giant. She was sadistic, evil. I thought
of her as the devil. Another adoptive, five years old
at the time of the abuse, recalled to Barbara Raymond
that yes, sexual abuse at the hands of Georgia Tan
was very true, and it was presented as your favor.
She says, the abuse occurred in a gorgeous room. I
remember the shock of the room, so overwhelming and beautiful.
I remember being told to come sit in her lap.
I keep trying to block it all out, but it
(24:39):
keeps coming. It's caused me a lot of problems. You
won't find a whole lot of healthy adults who went
through there now. Over the course of this podcast, I
referred to Georgie's children as products and inventory several times.
This was not a joke on my part. Georgia Tan's
own lawyer called them products. He wrote to one of
her clients in n four, it is not often we
have the good luck that we have in your case,
namely of having the merchant dice in hand to stock
(25:01):
and deliver to you immediately. Jesus a baby he was
talking about. On an occasion in which he couldn't fulfill
an order, he told another client, this is one business
in which we can never tell when we can fill
an order. You know, he just never knows to hold
on a second until we steal another baby. Yeah, human
babies retreated very much as commodities in this industry, as
the baby thief records. Quote, blue eyes were decided advantage,
(25:23):
as was female gender. Baby girls are more feminine, alluring.
They are grand little self advisors, and they know instinctively
how to strut their stuff. They stretch out their dimpled arms,
gurgle at some secret baby joke, blow air bubbles from
moist cupids, bow mouths, and women and strong men grow mad,
become besotted with adoration and want to kidnap them on
the spot. The author contended that males with the wrong
(25:44):
hair color were at a distinct disadvantage. If a boy
is redheaded, his chance of finding a new mama or
papa is practically zero. Nobody wants him at all. I mean,
we were joking about that, but that's sucked up. That's
super fucked up. Brandon, a young child abducted by Georgia Tan,
later recalled what it was being abducted for sale. Quote.
We were herded into the car and brought back to Memphis.
(26:04):
When we got there, they dropped my two brothers off
at another holding place, and they took me to the
house on Poplar. I remember the parties where they would
dress up the children and take them downstairs for a
meet and greet. Some of the children would come back,
some wouldn't cool. Virginia Simmons, one of the babies sold
by Georgia Tan, later recalled that she felt like she
was ordered like quote out of a Sears robot catalog.
When she developed scoliosis. Her new mother rejected her, saying,
(26:27):
I spent a lot of money on you, and you're
such a disappointment. If I knew you were going to
develop that crooked back, I would never have picked you out. Cool,
I'll told. Georgia is suspected of arranging at minimum five
thousand adoptions in her career. She built the bones of
the modern adoption system that persists nationally and worldwide today.
In the mid forties, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer,
(26:48):
which would kill her in nineteen fifty. This coincided with
the gradual collapse of her adoption empire. For one thing,
Boss Crump's influence had started to crumble in this period.
Crumb's political nemesis, Gordon Browning had been elected governor in
ninety eight. He'd gone after Georgia Tan as a way
to attack Boss crumb crumbled, Boss Crump crumbles. Yeah, that
has to have been a newspaper headline. Boss Crump crumbles, Yeah,
(27:11):
a hundred. I think it's crazy that she okay, obviously
crazy that she molested those kids, but that one kid
said there are other people in the room molesting with her,
so like she clearly arranged these like weird sex parties
where like her children could get abused like a mass
That's like, yeah, that's fucking crazy. And it was also
(27:32):
one of the things that the Baby Thief makes a
point of pointing this out is that in this period
of time at orphanages and stuff, an awful lot and
perhaps most of the employees and like you're talking about thirties, forties,
fifties molested the kids. Like that was kind of like
why you do a job that terrible like that, because
it's like the little bonus for you, Yeah, you're a pedophile.
(27:53):
This is a percent like like a lifetime series, you know,
like they did that, they did that one about that
lay the who with the munchaus On syndrome. Oh god,
the m um, Yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
This is very much this, Like this definitely should be
a multipart story because this is so crazy. It's one
of those things it should be. But also like, I
(28:14):
don't know how many people are gonna be able to
listen to all of this episode. Yeah, I don't like
it's just so dark. Yeah, like, yeah, you would only
want to watch that movie if there's like serious come
up and yeah. Yeah, and the teran cancer is like
kind of a weird ironic cancer is ironic situation. But
(28:36):
I say that as a breast cancer survivor. Yeah, my
my cancer was not ironic. It was just straight up
but hers, that's super ironic. Every now and then cancer
gets it right for real, for real. Now. As Georgia
was in the later stages of her cancer, Governor Browning
appointed a special investigator to look into her child abduction work.
(28:57):
The case was announced in September of ninety less than
a month before her death. It was the sort of
justice you can expect from politicians, late enough to avoid
any real conflict or controversy. Most of the allegations against
Georgia had to do with her improper allocation of the
funds she had made through adopting out children. They only
care about the money, They only cared about the money,
not her mass kidnapping, rape or all the dead babies
(29:18):
after Tan's sounds like America. Right after Tan's death, Justice
Kelly retired from her the judge ship. She was protected
from prosecution until her death in nine. George's life has
had a lumber of long standing impacts. For one thing,
the concept of adoption was normalized on a national level.
The shame around it was gone, which was an objectively
good thing. However, another holdover from Georgia Tan's uh career
(29:41):
is the fact that adoption records were sealed and adopted
children were held back from knowing the identities of their
birth parents, and many parts of the United States the
law still works this way, a holdover from the era
of Georgia Tan because it made it easier for her
to sell an abduct in the molest Babies. Has any
work been done in trying to locate all the kids, Yeah,
a lot of that work has been done somebody, like
the kids themselves. There's a lot of people who have
(30:03):
tracked down their own history. Barbara Raymond, the author of
The Baby Thief, did a lot of that work and
like it has done very good journalism to try and
put it together. It's one of those things. It will
will never have a comprehensive list because there was no
of course, this was a criminal enterprise. Yeah, she specifically
hid a lot of the things so you wouldn't be
able to figure out. But I just feel like, what
what a crazy thing to grow up and then find
(30:25):
out that you were one of the babies that was abducted.
Whether they had a nice life with your parents or not,
it would still flip you out to find something like
that out. Yeah, And I didn't include a lot of
the stories that she does in The Baby Thieves about
what these people, like, these stolen babies like, like the
trauma they dealt with as adults, but like a lot
of them their lives were just fucked because they were
old enough that they remembered being ripped from their mom's arms.
(30:46):
There were five or six when it happened, and they
spent the whole their whole lives trying to like find
their parents again, like they would turn out their mom
and died or whatever. Um, it's just it's just it's
just terrible. It's it's the worst. Like I said, this
might be the most depressing episode of the show we
ever do I have trouble imagining like obviously someone recovering
from this, or yeah, I have trouble imagining like a
(31:08):
worse tale than the tale of Georgia Tan and what
she did. Yeah, Like there's even like obviously, like on
an objective like level of scale, stuff like a concentration
camp is worse and bigger and involved a lot more people.
But on like a level of human evil, there's something
about Georgia Tan specifically that's so wretched. Um, it's it's
(31:30):
really hard. Well I think about yeah, yeah, murder obviously
is terrible, but when you think about like children, like
babies being murdered, who you know are the most innocent
of what we have, then it is like a different level.
And then yeah, when you add the slavery and the
molestation into it, and then you think about how many
(31:50):
people because it broke up families. It didn't just break them, Yeah,
the children that broke the moms, the dad's Yeah, you're
talking in their in their siblings, like you're talking talking
mass mass generational trauma that they're like, that's your legacy, essentially,
tens of thousands of victims. You know, if you're if
you're five thousand babies stolen tens of thousands of victims.
(32:12):
It's yeah, and I mean probably those numbers are low
to probably those numbers are very low. Yeah, that's just
best estimates. And I mean I feel like there's kind
of a weird, interesting level of maybe sexism um that
plays into it, where it's like women maybe are given
more leeway and things like this because they're like, well,
(32:33):
women are natural caretakers, caregivers, women are naturally maternal, women
naturally are drawn to children. So I feel like then
when you have like a woman who's like heading and
spearheading a campaign and it's like I'm doing this and
I'm helping babies, I think people are more likely to
believe her or something because of that level of like
women are natural. Yeah, you're getting two sides of sexism there,
(32:57):
because she's able to get away with it because of
this idea that like, you know, she's a woman doing
this is what they should be doing. She knows what's
best for these kids. But also they're getting taken from
single mothers because single mothers are seen as a table
of raising. Like it's it's this like double edged sort
of sexes. Yeah, I mean it hurts everybody and Also
when you think about the fact that, like who knows
what would have happened if she had been allowed to
(33:17):
be a lawyer, Right, that's also another level to be
like maybe she just would have been terrible on a
smaller scale without baby murder. But also like you just
you don't know, and the fact that like she has
that abuse thing and whatever. It's like, who knows what
the fun her dad did to her? You know, it's like,
yeah he was he was domineering. Who knows there might
(33:38):
have been like a level of like he molested her
and then sucked her up for the rest of her life.
And I feel like, yeah, just like the amount of
sexism and not trusting women also and letting people the
signing a way parental rights and then having women have
no power to get them back. Like, yeah, it's all
a weird. Sexism goes both ways in a really weird
way in this story. It's pretty well. Sophia also, sorry,
(34:07):
but I think it's crazy that no one talks about this.
I know, right, how is this the first time? And
this is actually I should give some credit to a
couple of different fans have independently suggested that I look
into Georgia Tan for some time. Yeah, that's that's incredible story.
I can't believe. I didn't know that. I've never heard
of this lady before, and it's fucking nuts. And she's
like a big building block in our society. The modern
(34:32):
system of adoption. Yeah, which, like adoption, I think is
objectively one of the best things you can do, you know,
a kid a family, but not this way, not like style, yeah,
not like ordering them out of a catalog, being like
i'd like a blonde Yeah. Yeah, man, Yeah, that's rough. Sorry.
(34:53):
Rick Flair, Oh my god. Also, has Rick Flair ever
talked about this? I don't know, because, oh my god,
can we please reach out to him and be like,
this is crazy, Rick Flair, what do you think? I
mean part of me is like if he if he's
lucky enough to not remember it, I probably wouldn't want
to like push on somebody to like look into that
part of their past, like and it wasn't bad. Like
we're afraid of upsetting Ric Flair. I mean, that's a
(35:15):
tough thing to have in your background. Rick Flair is
a wrestler, but he's still a person. I'm not saying
he's not a person. But I'm saying like, maybe you
would also bring him peace to talk about it. If
Rick Flair wants to come on the show and talk
about because this is so crazy being abducted as a baby, Like, yeah,
we're You'd love to talk to you. And also on
(35:35):
any listeners that have listened to this, they're like, this
was part of my family or something they should reach
out because what an insane thing. Suspect at least one
person is going to be like, oh shit, my grandma
or my my mom or whatever like and I'm sure
like at a certain point when you find that out,
you want to find all the people that that this
has happened to, because it's such a particular awful thing
(35:58):
that you kind of want to have some of belonging
to somewhere to talk to somebody about it that knows
what it's like well. And one of the things that
occurs to me now is that you know Georgia tan
we're looking at her victim cauntas around five thousand or so,
but like she is the reason why for decades it
was the norm to just take babies from single women
when they give birth. So really that's maybe even a
(36:20):
couple of I don't know how many women had happen to,
but it's insane, Like I didn't know that was just
the norm for until pretty recently, Like not when I
was like, but when my parents were young adults, Like
they might have given birth to me, you know, they
like the doctor who delivered me might have delivered babies
(36:42):
a few years earlier and handed them straight to an
adoption agency. Basically, Like that's fucking wild. Yeah, that's crazy.
Who have that? Everyone hamation? Now you're ready to take
on the rest that year to a Yeah, I know
(37:03):
a lot of people listen to the show on the
way home driving to work, and you're gonna have a
lot of dead eyed people in work today thinking about
all the babies Georgia stolen. We're all sorry about that. Sorry,
you know what podcast? I warned people up front? You
did did you you gave a trigger warning? I did that.
This is the only time I've done that. Um, I
(37:25):
mean I feel like I'm triggered. Yeah, a little bit,
feeling a little sad. Feel like you should be after this,
do some aftercare. Listen to I still don't know what
the show is, but the name Come Town makes me laugh,
and the come Boys I'm just gonna make myself come
after this. That's the only way to recover. That is
(37:46):
the better. I want the glow, that postmasturbatory glow to
envelope me and to obscure any negativity from this, wipe
out the horror of Georgia Tan's existence. Yeah, and I've
said that, like, I'm for sure going to remain umber
her name. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be stuck in everybody's head
just like no, but we got to think about Rufus Raspberry,
(38:07):
Rufus Raspberry. That's that's the walk away with that Rufus Raspberry,
Boss Crumb, Yeah, Rufus Raspberry. Yeah, I think about that. Yeah. God,
it does sound like an old TV show. Yeah, alright, Sophia,
you wanna plug them plugable? Sure? Um find me on
(38:29):
Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia k so so f
I y A and uh I co host a podcast
called Private Parts Unknown, where we're talking about love and
sexuality around the world. So come listen to that. See. Um,
I'm Robert Evans probably and I have a website behind
(38:52):
the bastards dot com. Uh. You can find us on
the twin Instagram at Bastard's pot I'm doing that from
now on, So if you can call it on the
twin Instagram, it's the way it's gonna work. Uh. We
you sell shirts uh to public dot com from behind
the bastards by your shirt, by stickers, cups, hand grenades.
You can buy and it could happen here shirt. If
(39:13):
you want people to know that that it could happen here,
that's a good thing to do. Uh. We'll probably have
other shirts soon. Um tweeted us with ideas, podcasts, good times,
I love let's say nine. I feel like I feel
like we need to up that in light of how
to depress us. All is goodbye,
Hmm, what's starting my podcast? That one wasn't very good,
so she's not proud of me. Uh, you know, they
can't all be what's cracking my peppers. They can't even
all be what's boiling my pig anus is um, which
was which was another another hit. I'm Robert Evans this
Behind the Bastards podcast where we talked about terrible people.
(00:22):
But you know that if you're listening, because this is
part two of the Georgia Can story, and if why
would you why would you just be listening to part
two first? Or you seem to get some kind of
sucking maniac? Did you murder a baby? Uh? Sophia Alexandra,
how are you doing? You are a guest for today, right,
thank you so much for having a host of the
(00:42):
Private Parts Unknown podcast. Kickboxing third place finalist and uh
actually first place. Kind of upset that you would not
mention that it's actually nude kickboxing so it's actually a
lot harder than regular kickboxing. Yeah, that seems a lot.
Pretty upset that I wrote down all my credits for
you and you just kind of messed them up. But whatever,
(01:04):
I'm sorry. Sorry you are not mentioned like at least
three other things that I've done. I am also America's
favorite lasagna, America's favorite lasagna. That is right, That is right?
Thank you. So apologized for mentioning that in America's uh
second favorite macaroni and cheese. Okay, yes, I don't like
to talk about second place, but I am also america
(01:25):
The second favorite considering the amount of mac and cheese
in this country. Pretty good, I mean yeah, I'm not
trying to be falsely modest. I am delicious. You are delicious,
Thank you. Well, we're talking about someone who's not delicious.
Georgia Tan actually is a baby thief and murderer. Yeah,
and that's what we're gonna talk about today. It's all
(01:47):
the murdering. Oh yeah. So Georgia Tan had a reputation
for being rather fearless. This was helpful because her habit
of abducting thousands of children from poor people occasionally brought
violent through It's down upon her head. According to Nellie, occasion,
occasionally some people, I don't know, I felt like it
wasn't right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. She had iron burglar proof
(02:11):
bars in the windows of windows of her home, and
over the course of her career, three separate people tried
to kill her, but all of them apparently chickened out,
either out of a reticence to take human life or
because Georgia scared them away. WHOA. Yeah, she was supposed
to be pretty terrifying. She was like a very large,
imposing presence um and and very mean and apparently at
(02:31):
least one case, like screamed a guy away who would
come to her house to get revenge. Yeah, she's an
imposing lady. I feel like it's like a challenge I'm
being presented, but it's like way too late in history,
or like, ya, Sophia, are you brave enough to kill her?
Are you brave enough? But it's too late now. George's
behavior was not strictly legal. There were actually laws in
(02:54):
the US about how to adopt babies, and she was
in violation of basically all of them. In most cases,
adoptive parents had to reside in the state they were
adopting from. Surrenders of parental rights had to be confirmed
in a court of law. Georgia tan broke both of
these rules flagrantly and regularly, in some cases on a
near daily basis. But also she had that judge in
her pocket. First was like Judge Daddy, and then the
second one was that lady that was crazy. Yeah, so
(03:16):
she like did funk with the legal system, but she
sometimes just stole babies. I mean yes. By the midnighteen
thirties show, social workers in Tennessee who weren't in George's
pocket had started to complain about all of the laws
that she was breaking and baby she was stealing. Her
connections to Boss Crump were enough to protect her. However,
(03:38):
in seven, I'm sorry, Boss Crump, is that from protecting
the castle and the princess? I was going to say,
he sounds like a guy from the Duke's a hazard.
Old Boss Crump is in a real mess of trouble again.
Pissed at them Duke boys. Yeah, just really a great
fake name. Yeah, it was a great fake name, but
in this case it was a real guy who helped
Georgia Tan steal thousands of baby uh. In n seven,
(04:01):
she succeeded in pushing through a new law which legalized
adoption for out of state residents. This president would have
a huge impact on the way adoptions are carried out
nationwide moving forward, including today. The new law, however, did
require adoptive parents to visit Tennessee before finalizing the adoption,
but Georgia just ignored this part of it and it
was fine now. Georgia had started out as an employee
(04:22):
of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, which is based out
of Nashville. The director of the agency, Fannie L. Rod,
was a rather soft person, and Georgia basically bullied her
into getting whatever she wanted. Fanny was scared of Georgia
and basically refused to do anything about the many complaints
made against her employee. Since the Children's Home Society did
not have a license from the state, every adoption carried
out by Georgia Tan and its name was technically illegal,
(04:44):
but again, no one did anything to stop her, so
it wound up not mattering that it was illegal. Also,
once you're getting like amazing newspaper coverage with your Christmas babies,
like good luck taking that lady down, everyone's like she's
a saint, She's the Christmas Baby, and she's the angel
that gave people babies. She's the not the Angel of death.
Not the angel of death. According to the book The
(05:05):
Baby Thief Quote, Georgia frequently falsified the birthdates of many children.
She placed for adoption in every case, which of which
I learned, she reduced the children's age. She did this
to satisfy clients wishes for the youngest possible babies and
to make the children a pair, bright, even precocious. While
Georgia reduced the ages of babies by only weeks or months,
she's frequently subtracted years from the ages of older children.
So not done. She's like basically like, Hollywood. Yeah, She's like,
(05:33):
you're a little haggard at ten, so we're gonna go ahead.
I'm gonna pull you down to a seven. It seems better. Also,
I just something like just smart about being like, well,
if I say this this seven year old is four,
then he seems smart. Like then he's really advanced four
(05:53):
year old and not just a normal seven year old,
and I can sell him to a richer family. They're like,
stop saying this girl is seven. She has a full
seecup's definitely least. It does make me wonder what Rick
Flair's real ages. Oh my god, I keep forgetting Rick
Flair's wants. It's the poor Rick Flair. It's got to
(06:17):
be traumatic, Like now, like the know how many babies
she stolen placed like so many Americans probably are not
living with their families. Seventy but we don't know that
he's seventy. He could be seventy two, could be seventy four,
and probably aged them down down. Made Rick Flair seems
like a super smart baby, not that he wasn't smart
as a baby. Yeah, I mean nothing against Rick Flair.
(06:39):
Smart guy. Sorry, Sorry you get stolen. Rick. Also, someone
stole the cave from you. Don't make stickers stay. Sorry
you got stolen. I don't even know what this podcast.
Sorry you got stolen totally. I feel like that's March.
You have fans, get on. This is the Sorry you
were stolen Ric Flair. Rick Flair March Georgia did not
(07:03):
abduct all of her products, of course, She trawled every
orphanage and children's home in the state in search of
fresh child flesh to sell, But once her operation was
up and running, her most common source of children were
the maternity wards of local Memphis hospitals. She hired a
network of spotters who would hang out waiting for poor
young women, particularly single mothers, to go into labor. Dude,
it's like ambulance chasers, but like baby chasers. Just looking
(07:26):
around for like a lady with a big baby bump
who looks like she doesn't have like I'm just big,
fuck you, I'm not even having a baby. Stop following me.
Just following a heavy set woman for a couple of days,
waiting until she she's like, please stop. Dr George loved Joy,
who delivered some of those babies, later recalled I'm sorry
love Joy, love Joy, you are loving the last names here.
(07:48):
The last names are kind of their own podcast because
they're amazing behind the ridiculous and Reverend love Joy is
a fake character on the and this is a real
person named love Joy. I think it is a pretty
common name. I'm running into some love Joys. Are you serious?
I mean, it is a silly name, but it's a
real one. Where are you from, Texas? Oh yeah, probably
(08:10):
more love Joys out there. Yeah, there's a lot of
Ukraine or California, which is where i've Ukranian name Ukraine Afornia.
Is there like a Ukrainian neighborhood in town that we
could there cultural center? They should call the neighborhood Ukraine Afornia.
Leaving money on the table. Yeah, okay, second piece of
(08:32):
fan arts Ukraine in the shape of California and it
just says Ukraine Afornia. It is for three people that
that's what we love doing. Here is is jokes that
that really appealed to No half a basketball team will
will identify with um okay uh. Dr George love Joy,
(08:53):
who delivered many of the babies later called quote Georgia
Tan's workers, stood outside the door of the delivery room
waiting the minute the baby was born, they would take
the paper in and have the mothers signed them, and
the baby would disappear. Now, many of these mothers were
still wasted from anesthesia when George's people forced them to sign,
were presented as routine papers. This ostensibly medical paperwork was,
of course, in reality, a surrender of parental rights. Babies
(09:13):
were taken right from their drug up mommies and flown
to new homes the same day. Part of why Jojo
was so successful in this was the fact that she
literally changed American cultures attitude towards single moms. See, being
a single mom has always been difficult, obviously, but for
most of American history there was not a huge stigma
attached to it. Husbands died, after all, it was like,
you know, there was no medicine back then, but starting
in Memphis, Georgia labored to convince courts and the public
(09:36):
that single white women should not be allowed to raise
their own babies. This is part of why, on the
few occasions she was taken to court over it, Georgia
nearly always won her cases. No judge was going to
take a baby from a rich or middle class too
parent household and give it to a single poor woman.
Damn yep, according to the baby would have sure had
me stolen a single mom. Yeah, that happened up until
(09:58):
very recently the seventies in a lot of cases, according
to the baby thief quote. By the late nineteen thirties,
single mothers were not only being prevented from bonding with
their babies, but often even from seeing them. Mothers were
sometimes blindfolded during labor. Some social workers urged pregnant way
young women to sign forms allowing doctors to circumcise their
child if it turned out to be a boy, so
that the workers could keep mothers uninformed of even their
(10:19):
babies gender. By the time adoption became nationally popular in
the mid nineteen forties, the reversal was complete, and for
the first time in history, white single mothers were expected
to surrender their babies for adoption. That relinquishment was endorsed
by leaders of such reputable organizations as the Child Welfare
League of America, the American Public Welfare Association, the Salvation Army,
Catholic charities, and most psychiatrists and psychologists. Lead dissenting social
(10:40):
scientists Clark Vincent to predict a future in which newborns
of all white single mothers would be seized by the state.
By the nineteen fifties of white singled on when we
go back to the fact that they were blindfolded when
giving birth so they couldn't say them that must have
been so terrifying. Yeah, holy sh it, it's already the
worst experience. You're all like drugged up the pain, they're
(11:01):
going to steal your baby, and then like they blindfold you.
Yeah that is nuts. Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty fucked Like
the only game of hide and seek we're going to
ever play with your baby. It's so much sadder. What
do you think about it that way? I know, but
there's no seek, It's just a game of hides. It's
(11:22):
a one time pika boo situation. Yeah. By the nineteen
fifties of white women in maternity homes, which is where
poor single women tended to give birth surrendered their children
for adoption. So Sam Yeah, Georgia also trawled the various
orphanages of Tennessee in search of new inventory. One worker
recalled quote, I can still hear her steps down the
hallway and see her funny hats. She had big feet
(11:43):
and more black lace up shoes. She always went upstairs
to see the babies. There would be masses of them
one day and they'd be gone the next. So Georgia
would take pictures of the best babies, which were usually
blonde haired and blue eyed, and then send them off
to prospective clients. These kids were the lucky ones, you know.
The kids who were in genuinely bad situations were off
and probably helped by George's work, but not always uh well.
(12:03):
Many of George's kids wound up in the hands of wealthy,
loving family. She didn't actually do any kind of vetting
at all to make sure of that. The only background
check was whether or not the new mom and dad
had hundreds of dollars exactly. George's kids didn't even all
end up in families. One of them wound up at
the University of Tennessee as a ward of the Home
Economics department. Oh my god, award of a school department,
(12:26):
serving as a flesh and blood textbook for students. The
department changed his name from Richard House to Richard Practice House.
What also Dick House? What practice House? They were like,
just so you don't forget that you're since essentially chattel, Like, yeah,
(12:47):
let's fucking change her name to practice guy. A lot
of the stuff that went on then did definitely verge
on child slavery. It's pretty dark for ar is. Georgia
Tan was seen as an authority on child welfare. She was,
in essence, America's chief social worker. Eleanor Roosevelt esther for
advice on improving conditions for poor children. She was invited
(13:09):
to collaborate it let me, let me steal or kill them.
She was invited to collaborate on books about adoption, and
sought out by the likes of The New York Times
for her commentary on stories of abuse and children's homes
around the country. This was a dark irony because the
reality is that Georgia Tan abused children on a scale
and with a viciousness more suited for a concentration camp
than an orphanage. Children who were abducted by Georgia would
(13:31):
spend weeks, months, or even years in a series of
dreadfully crowded boarding homes. These were often just small apartments.
A two bedroom might be filled with as many as
ten children. On at least one instant. Six infants were
found in a single crib. Babies were fed spoiled milk,
often because functional refrigerators were not always in the budget.
Tins of children would be crammed into spaces condemned by
authorities as fire hazards. Georgia refused to pay for medical
(13:53):
treatment for kids with syphilis or other contagious diseases that
would have cut into her profit margin. Damn, damn. You
know what, Now is a good time for an ad pivot. Products.
(14:13):
We're back. I don't know how to how to lead
into that ad pivot in a graceful way. Yeah, I
don't know if you can gracefully transition from baby murder
into products and then back to baby murder. But we're
doing it. We're doing it because we're going We're going
right back to Yeah. Uh so, um, we were talking
about how she often would refuse to pay for medical
(14:34):
treatment for kids with contagious diseases, because of course, that
ship's expensive and you're running a business here. According to
the baby thief quote, she refused to even acknowledge illness
and her children and forbade her boarding mothers from summoning
medical help. Faced with desperately sick children. However, some boarding
mothers panicked and sent them to the hospital. The trip
was often made too late. The deaths of most of
these babies were presumably recorded, and the children buried in
(14:55):
the area of Elmwood Cemetery used by her adoption agency,
but Georgia disposed of the bodies of children who death
she could conceal unless the regular ways. A reporter for
the Press Simitar passed George's home one night in the
nineteen forties and saw someone burying something in the backyard,
a child. The reporter believed. Former investigator Robert Taylor told
me that Georgia had had the local Thompson Brothers funeral
home cremate some of the children, getting rid of the evidence.
(15:17):
Taylor said a grave as proof. Yeah. Pretty the Charles Carter,
a pediatrician who volunteered at the Children's Home and treated
many of Miss Tan's inventory. Told Barbara Raymond that Georgia
would even overrule his express medical guidance at times. Quote.
I had prescribed penicillin and learned later that she had
ordered her nurses to stop giving it to the baby,
(15:39):
but continued to chart it as if they were. Georgia
Tans simply would not listen. She would say, I'll take
your words under advisement, but she never did. She did
what she felt best, regardless of what anyone said. She
felt she knew the babies and what the babies needed.
Yeah plague death. So many of George's children got sick
that one hospital in Memphis dedicated an entire ward to
(16:00):
taking care of them. A Los Angeles hospital had to
do the same thing for the river of sick and
dying babies Georgia brought into the city to sell to
Hollywood types. By nineteen thirty two, Memphis, Tennessee had the
highest infant death rate of any major American city, mostly
fights to Georgia Tan. Now we don't know how many
babies died in Georgia Tan's care. We do know that
in one particularly brutal winter, the winter of nineteen forty five.
(16:21):
As many as fifty babies died in the children's home alone.
Babies died when they were left out in the sun unattended.
Some died within days of arriving in their adoptive homes
because no care had been taken to make sure they
were fed or medicated in the days and weeks before transit.
In at least one case, Georgia Tan abducted a set
of premature twins and removed them from the hospital before
they were stable. Both twins died. In total, it's estimated
(16:42):
that as many as five hundred babies died in Georgia
Tan's care. The real death toll maybe even higher, perhaps
much higher. Yeah, that's kind of what it seems. Five
doesn't seem right. It seems like you might have killed
a couple of thousand, Yeah, definitely, Yeah, five hundreds kind
of the minimum. It doesn't Yeah, it doesn't even make sun.
And if you're saying about someone they killed at least
five hundred babies, kind of I can't really imagine much worse. Like,
(17:06):
the only other people you can say that about are
usually like concentration camp guards, Like yeah, yeah, Like when
you talk about that many dead babies. That's so many
dead babies or people that orchestrate, like specifically genocide. Yeah. Yeah,
like it's Georgia Tan and genocide committers. I mean she's
a death all star. Yeah, definitely an achiever. She's over achiever.
(17:29):
People ask a lot, you know, you should cover more
women bastards on the show, which we're doing, But it's
Georgia Tan. She belongs on the list. Yeah. Man, she's
she's right up there, She's right up there. She's one
of the worst people I've heard about. Question. Is she single? Yeah,
well no, Actually she had a partner who was I
(17:51):
think on paper her secretary because she was Muspian. But
did she help murder the babies? Probably right? Yeah, we
don't we not, I mean, not that I know of,
but probably probably right. Yeah. I know how you wouldn't
be aware of that if you're girlfriends like heavy into
murder and he probably seeps into your relationship. And from
what little we know about it, it it seems like it
(18:11):
was a pretty abusive relationship. Georgia was definitely the dominant one.
Oh yeah, And it would be a shocker if you
were like she was the abused one and be like,
oh my god, she's that's what she's taken out on
the babies. Yea. But clearly something happened to her, right
was pretty domineering in a dick like wouldn't let her
be a lawyer and stuff? Yeah, but that that doesn't
lead to baby murder. I just feel like, do you
(18:32):
think she was abused to have like a weird preoccupation
with babies like that? Yeah? I think she was abused.
I think, um, she got addicted to like the sense
of setting these babies up with somebody, And I think
I think some of it is just like you know,
she came from this period of time where you didn't
really give that much of a ship about babies in
like the eighteen nineties, Like you know, I think people
(18:53):
like thinking of themselves as a good person even when
they're doing terrible things. So she probably was like, I
am saving these babies, and she really believed it. And
she thought the ones that died, well, they would have
grown up poor and that's worse than death, right exactly
or what does it matter? Or like they were supposed
to die? Yeah, I mean you can say anything to
yourself when you're like trying to justify some fucked up
ship you really, I say that ship when I'm like getting,
(19:14):
you know, like an extra fucking Taco Bell thing that
I don't need, it's like, you know, it's it's really
close to baby murder, basically getting that you didn't need.
Taco Bell sponsored the show, and you will stop comparing
your products to murdering babies. No, no, no, it's way
better Taco Bell better than killing a baby. That's a
(19:35):
slogan right there. It's sell some fucking again merch. I'm
just coming up with all these merch ideas and I
feel like you should pay me, so thank you. We'll
let you know if the Taco Bell people reach out, Yeah,
I think they kind of have to. I think they're
really gonna like this is unbeatable pad campaign. Yeah, yeah,
better than murdering a baby. So one of the babies
(19:58):
that Georgia Tan murdered was the daughter of Alma Sipple.
In the spring of nineteen forty six, Miss Sipple moved
to Memphis with her infant daughter and two year old son.
Her boyfriend, Julius Talos, was in the military and had
just left for Panama. They planned to marry. Alma later
recalled quote, we were so crazy about each other. It
didn't matter if we were married or not. So six
weeks after moving to Memphis, Alma was visited by a
(20:18):
representative of the Children's Home Society named Georgia Tan. Georgia
said she was looking into allegations of child abuse against
one of Alma's neighbors, so at first Alma thought nothing
was wrong, at least not with her. The next day,
Georgia Tan returned in her large black limo. This time
she had questions about the child's father, questions Alma Sipple
could not comfortably answer. Next, according to the New York
(20:39):
Post quote, the woman looked at Irma, who had a
running nose, and said, your baby sick, isn't she? You
should get her a checkup. Simple explained that she had
no money for a doctor, so the woman generously offered
to take the child to the Memphis General Hospital. Looking back,
Simple wonders at her own naivete How I how did
I mess up so bad? I guess she knew the
dumb ones. Still, she had been worried about her baby's health,
(21:00):
and she'd assumed that she would go with them to
the hospital, so she had signed a piece of paper
when Tan had told her it would be impossible for
her to go along. Simple remembers, I had a weird feeling,
but I thought, well, you've got to trust somebody. Yeah,
paper was, of course, a surrender of parental rights of
Simple's baby went along with Georgia Tan, and that was
the last Alma ever saw of her. When she showed
(21:22):
up at the children's ward of the hospital the next
day to inquire as to her child's status, the nurse
told her you don't have a baby in there. Those
children belonged to the Children's Home Society. For days, Alma
Sipple called the children's Home and Georgia Tan. No one
answered until weeks later, Georgia picked up and told her
that her daughter had died of pneumonia, in the same
sort of way you might tell someone a carton of
eggs had broken. Being a human, Alma said that she
(21:43):
wanted to bury her child. Georgia told her that would
not be possible, saying the state had put her daughter away.
After that, Alma says, I guess I went crazy. She
left the other children in her mother's charge and went
to Memphis to find her baby's grave. She never located it, because,
of course, Georgia Tan never bothered to give her baby
a grave cool fun story. You gotta joke to to
(22:07):
live on the sup live and that one up. Nah, Well,
I guess it's time for another ad pivot. Oh, I
mean this baby murdering story was always could be a
rough one to pivot to products with buy stuff, but
(22:28):
not not babies. No, the only thing you should not
buy his babies. People. Yeah, grown up or small. You know,
let's just let's put it. I don't want to don't
buy people. Yeah, I'm not trying to be you know,
all uh controversial. Yeah, not trying to the anti capitalist here.
Just maybe don't buy people. It's probably probably a good
(22:49):
rule of thumb. Maybe keep that line. Products. We're back,
good products, solid services. Let's get back to talking about
horrible thing babies. No, at this point, I'll bet you
(23:11):
might think something along the lines of Georgia Tan couldn't
possibly get any worse. Well, straw man, listener, you were
dumb for thinking that. Of course she can get worse.
In addition to stealing thousands of babies and killing hundreds
of this is where the molestation comes in. Yeah, he
was waiting for that. Yeah, she molested a bunch of babies.
One of her victims as a fifty four year old
man from Memphis. You know babies. Yeah, it seems like it.
(23:34):
You see, this is interesting. I think both genders. Uh
yeah what sometimes people who lost really young. So it's
not much of a difference, not much of the difference.
Just wants them to be probably like helpless. Yeah, I
think that's sad, big part of it. So one of
her victims, you know, decades later, is a year old
man claimed he and his twin brother were molested by
(23:57):
Georgia when they were eight. He told the Daily Pantograph quote,
we remember being in a big bed, strip naked. Georgia
Tan and some other people were there reaching for us
and kissing us and touching us where we shouldn't be touched.
Sexual assault and physical assault sort of blended together for
many of George's victims. One of them, a young girl
named Mary, recalled Georgia beating her with a wooden spoon
in a bathroom. She squatted over me, gouging me. She
(24:17):
seemed like a giant. She was sadistic, evil. I thought
of her as the devil. Another adoptive, five years old
at the time of the abuse, recalled to Barbara Raymond
that yes, sexual abuse at the hands of Georgia Tan
was very true, and it was presented as your favor.
She says, the abuse occurred in a gorgeous room. I
remember the shock of the room, so overwhelming and beautiful.
I remember being told to come sit in her lap.
I keep trying to block it all out, but it
(24:39):
keeps coming. It's caused me a lot of problems. You
won't find a whole lot of healthy adults who went
through there now. Over the course of this podcast, I
referred to Georgie's children as products and inventory several times.
This was not a joke on my part. Georgia Tan's
own lawyer called them products. He wrote to one of
her clients in n four, it is not often we
have the good luck that we have in your case,
namely of having the merchant dice in hand to stock
(25:01):
and deliver to you immediately. Jesus a baby he was
talking about. On an occasion in which he couldn't fulfill
an order, he told another client, this is one business
in which we can never tell when we can fill
an order. You know, he just never knows to hold
on a second until we steal another baby. Yeah, human
babies retreated very much as commodities in this industry, as
the baby thief records. Quote, blue eyes were decided advantage,
(25:23):
as was female gender. Baby girls are more feminine, alluring.
They are grand little self advisors, and they know instinctively
how to strut their stuff. They stretch out their dimpled arms,
gurgle at some secret baby joke, blow air bubbles from
moist cupids, bow mouths, and women and strong men grow mad,
become besotted with adoration and want to kidnap them on
the spot. The author contended that males with the wrong
(25:44):
hair color were at a distinct disadvantage. If a boy
is redheaded, his chance of finding a new mama or
papa is practically zero. Nobody wants him at all. I mean,
we were joking about that, but that's sucked up. That's
super fucked up. Brandon, a young child abducted by Georgia Tan,
later recalled what it was being abducted for sale. Quote.
We were herded into the car and brought back to Memphis.
(26:04):
When we got there, they dropped my two brothers off
at another holding place, and they took me to the
house on Poplar. I remember the parties where they would
dress up the children and take them downstairs for a
meet and greet. Some of the children would come back,
some wouldn't cool. Virginia Simmons, one of the babies sold
by Georgia Tan, later recalled that she felt like she
was ordered like quote out of a Sears robot catalog.
When she developed scoliosis. Her new mother rejected her, saying,
(26:27):
I spent a lot of money on you, and you're
such a disappointment. If I knew you were going to
develop that crooked back, I would never have picked you out. Cool,
I'll told. Georgia is suspected of arranging at minimum five
thousand adoptions in her career. She built the bones of
the modern adoption system that persists nationally and worldwide today.
In the mid forties, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer,
(26:48):
which would kill her in nineteen fifty. This coincided with
the gradual collapse of her adoption empire. For one thing,
Boss Crump's influence had started to crumble in this period.
Crumb's political nemesis, Gordon Browning had been elected governor in
ninety eight. He'd gone after Georgia Tan as a way
to attack Boss crumb crumbled, Boss Crump crumbles. Yeah, that
has to have been a newspaper headline. Boss Crump crumbles, Yeah,
(27:11):
a hundred. I think it's crazy that she okay, obviously
crazy that she molested those kids, but that one kid
said there are other people in the room molesting with her,
so like she clearly arranged these like weird sex parties
where like her children could get abused like a mass
That's like, yeah, that's fucking crazy. And it was also
(27:32):
one of the things that the Baby Thief makes a
point of pointing this out is that in this period
of time at orphanages and stuff, an awful lot and
perhaps most of the employees and like you're talking about thirties, forties,
fifties molested the kids. Like that was kind of like
why you do a job that terrible like that, because
it's like the little bonus for you, Yeah, you're a pedophile.
(27:53):
This is a percent like like a lifetime series, you know,
like they did that, they did that one about that
lay the who with the munchaus On syndrome. Oh god,
the m um, Yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
This is very much this, Like this definitely should be
a multipart story because this is so crazy. It's one
of those things it should be. But also like, I
(28:14):
don't know how many people are gonna be able to
listen to all of this episode. Yeah, I don't like
it's just so dark. Yeah, like, yeah, you would only
want to watch that movie if there's like serious come
up and yeah. Yeah, and the teran cancer is like
kind of a weird ironic cancer is ironic situation. But
(28:36):
I say that as a breast cancer survivor. Yeah, my
my cancer was not ironic. It was just straight up
but hers, that's super ironic. Every now and then cancer
gets it right for real, for real. Now. As Georgia
was in the later stages of her cancer, Governor Browning
appointed a special investigator to look into her child abduction work.
(28:57):
The case was announced in September of ninety less than
a month before her death. It was the sort of
justice you can expect from politicians, late enough to avoid
any real conflict or controversy. Most of the allegations against
Georgia had to do with her improper allocation of the
funds she had made through adopting out children. They only
care about the money, They only cared about the money,
not her mass kidnapping, rape or all the dead babies
(29:18):
after Tan's sounds like America. Right after Tan's death, Justice
Kelly retired from her the judge ship. She was protected
from prosecution until her death in nine. George's life has
had a lumber of long standing impacts. For one thing,
the concept of adoption was normalized on a national level.
The shame around it was gone, which was an objectively
good thing. However, another holdover from Georgia Tan's uh career
(29:41):
is the fact that adoption records were sealed and adopted
children were held back from knowing the identities of their
birth parents, and many parts of the United States the
law still works this way, a holdover from the era
of Georgia Tan because it made it easier for her
to sell an abduct in the molest Babies. Has any
work been done in trying to locate all the kids, Yeah,
a lot of that work has been done somebody, like
the kids themselves. There's a lot of people who have
(30:03):
tracked down their own history. Barbara Raymond, the author of
The Baby Thief, did a lot of that work and
like it has done very good journalism to try and
put it together. It's one of those things. It will
will never have a comprehensive list because there was no
of course, this was a criminal enterprise. Yeah, she specifically
hid a lot of the things so you wouldn't be
able to figure out. But I just feel like, what
what a crazy thing to grow up and then find
(30:25):
out that you were one of the babies that was abducted.
Whether they had a nice life with your parents or not,
it would still flip you out to find something like
that out. Yeah, And I didn't include a lot of
the stories that she does in The Baby Thieves about
what these people, like, these stolen babies like, like the
trauma they dealt with as adults, but like a lot
of them their lives were just fucked because they were
old enough that they remembered being ripped from their mom's arms.
(30:46):
There were five or six when it happened, and they
spent the whole their whole lives trying to like find
their parents again, like they would turn out their mom
and died or whatever. Um, it's just it's just it's
just terrible. It's it's the worst. Like I said, this
might be the most depressing episode of the show we
ever do I have trouble imagining like obviously someone recovering
from this, or yeah, I have trouble imagining like a
(31:08):
worse tale than the tale of Georgia Tan and what
she did. Yeah, Like there's even like obviously, like on
an objective like level of scale, stuff like a concentration
camp is worse and bigger and involved a lot more people.
But on like a level of human evil, there's something
about Georgia Tan specifically that's so wretched. Um, it's it's
(31:30):
really hard. Well I think about yeah, yeah, murder obviously
is terrible, but when you think about like children, like
babies being murdered, who you know are the most innocent
of what we have, then it is like a different level.
And then yeah, when you add the slavery and the
molestation into it, and then you think about how many
(31:50):
people because it broke up families. It didn't just break them, Yeah,
the children that broke the moms, the dad's Yeah, you're
talking in their in their siblings, like you're talking talking
mass mass generational trauma that they're like, that's your legacy, essentially,
tens of thousands of victims. You know, if you're if
you're five thousand babies stolen tens of thousands of victims.
(32:12):
It's yeah, and I mean probably those numbers are low
to probably those numbers are very low. Yeah, that's just
best estimates. And I mean I feel like there's kind
of a weird, interesting level of maybe sexism um that
plays into it, where it's like women maybe are given
more leeway and things like this because they're like, well,
(32:33):
women are natural caretakers, caregivers, women are naturally maternal, women
naturally are drawn to children. So I feel like then
when you have like a woman who's like heading and
spearheading a campaign and it's like I'm doing this and
I'm helping babies, I think people are more likely to
believe her or something because of that level of like
women are natural. Yeah, you're getting two sides of sexism there,
(32:57):
because she's able to get away with it because of
this idea that like, you know, she's a woman doing
this is what they should be doing. She knows what's
best for these kids. But also they're getting taken from
single mothers because single mothers are seen as a table
of raising. Like it's it's this like double edged sort
of sexes. Yeah, I mean it hurts everybody and Also
when you think about the fact that, like who knows
what would have happened if she had been allowed to
(33:17):
be a lawyer, Right, that's also another level to be
like maybe she just would have been terrible on a
smaller scale without baby murder. But also like you just
you don't know, and the fact that like she has
that abuse thing and whatever. It's like, who knows what
the fun her dad did to her? You know, it's like,
yeah he was he was domineering. Who knows there might
(33:38):
have been like a level of like he molested her
and then sucked her up for the rest of her life.
And I feel like, yeah, just like the amount of
sexism and not trusting women also and letting people the
signing a way parental rights and then having women have
no power to get them back. Like, yeah, it's all
a weird. Sexism goes both ways in a really weird
way in this story. It's pretty well. Sophia also, sorry,
(34:07):
but I think it's crazy that no one talks about this.
I know, right, how is this the first time? And
this is actually I should give some credit to a
couple of different fans have independently suggested that I look
into Georgia Tan for some time. Yeah, that's that's incredible story.
I can't believe. I didn't know that. I've never heard
of this lady before, and it's fucking nuts. And she's
like a big building block in our society. The modern
(34:32):
system of adoption. Yeah, which, like adoption, I think is
objectively one of the best things you can do, you know,
a kid a family, but not this way, not like style, yeah,
not like ordering them out of a catalog, being like
i'd like a blonde Yeah. Yeah, man, Yeah, that's rough. Sorry.
(34:53):
Rick Flair, Oh my god. Also, has Rick Flair ever
talked about this? I don't know, because, oh my god,
can we please reach out to him and be like,
this is crazy, Rick Flair, what do you think? I
mean part of me is like if he if he's
lucky enough to not remember it, I probably wouldn't want
to like push on somebody to like look into that
part of their past, like and it wasn't bad. Like
we're afraid of upsetting Ric Flair. I mean, that's a
(35:15):
tough thing to have in your background. Rick Flair is
a wrestler, but he's still a person. I'm not saying
he's not a person. But I'm saying like, maybe you
would also bring him peace to talk about it. If
Rick Flair wants to come on the show and talk
about because this is so crazy being abducted as a baby, Like, yeah,
we're You'd love to talk to you. And also on
(35:35):
any listeners that have listened to this, they're like, this
was part of my family or something they should reach
out because what an insane thing. Suspect at least one
person is going to be like, oh shit, my grandma
or my my mom or whatever like and I'm sure
like at a certain point when you find that out,
you want to find all the people that that this
has happened to, because it's such a particular awful thing
(35:58):
that you kind of want to have some of belonging
to somewhere to talk to somebody about it that knows
what it's like well. And one of the things that
occurs to me now is that you know Georgia tan
we're looking at her victim cauntas around five thousand or so,
but like she is the reason why for decades it
was the norm to just take babies from single women
when they give birth. So really that's maybe even a
(36:20):
couple of I don't know how many women had happen to,
but it's insane, Like I didn't know that was just
the norm for until pretty recently, Like not when I
was like, but when my parents were young adults, Like
they might have given birth to me, you know, they
like the doctor who delivered me might have delivered babies
(36:42):
a few years earlier and handed them straight to an
adoption agency. Basically, Like that's fucking wild. Yeah, that's crazy.
Who have that? Everyone hamation? Now you're ready to take
on the rest that year to a Yeah, I know
(37:03):
a lot of people listen to the show on the
way home driving to work, and you're gonna have a
lot of dead eyed people in work today thinking about
all the babies Georgia stolen. We're all sorry about that. Sorry,
you know what podcast? I warned people up front? You
did did you you gave a trigger warning? I did that.
This is the only time I've done that. Um, I
(37:25):
mean I feel like I'm triggered. Yeah, a little bit,
feeling a little sad. Feel like you should be after this,
do some aftercare. Listen to I still don't know what
the show is, but the name Come Town makes me laugh,
and the come Boys I'm just gonna make myself come
after this. That's the only way to recover. That is
(37:46):
the better. I want the glow, that postmasturbatory glow to
envelope me and to obscure any negativity from this, wipe
out the horror of Georgia Tan's existence. Yeah, and I've
said that, like, I'm for sure going to remain umber
her name. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be stuck in everybody's head
just like no, but we got to think about Rufus Raspberry,
(38:07):
Rufus Raspberry. That's that's the walk away with that Rufus Raspberry,
Boss Crumb, Yeah, Rufus Raspberry. Yeah, I think about that. Yeah. God,
it does sound like an old TV show. Yeah, alright, Sophia,
you wanna plug them plugable? Sure? Um find me on
(38:29):
Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia k so so f
I y A and uh I co host a podcast
called Private Parts Unknown, where we're talking about love and
sexuality around the world. So come listen to that. See. Um,
I'm Robert Evans probably and I have a website behind
(38:52):
the bastards dot com. Uh. You can find us on
the twin Instagram at Bastard's pot I'm doing that from
now on, So if you can call it on the
twin Instagram, it's the way it's gonna work. Uh. We
you sell shirts uh to public dot com from behind
the bastards by your shirt, by stickers, cups, hand grenades.
You can buy and it could happen here shirt. If
(39:13):
you want people to know that that it could happen here,
that's a good thing to do. Uh. We'll probably have
other shirts soon. Um tweeted us with ideas, podcasts, good times,
I love let's say nine. I feel like I feel
like we need to up that in light of how
to depress us. All is goodbye,
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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