December 28, 2021 • 44 mins
As towns go, Vernon, Florida is pretty tiny -- it has a small population, has struggled with economic depression, and doesn't get a ton of tourists. But that all changed several decades ago, when Vernon became a subject of national interest as insurance investigators discovered a grisly scam. You may not have heard of Vernon, but you may know it by its other, unofficial name: Nub City.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for a
one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called
me ben No, No, it's the end of the nub
as we know it. Wait, it's the nub of the
year as we know it. Nubbings, what's a nub? I
(00:47):
like a nub? I like the I like the expression
whittled down to a nub in referring to someone just
like being insufferable and just like beating you down and
your resolve until there's nothing left of you. Um, that's
uh yeah, it's kind of heavy actually if we think
about it. But also Nubbins that that's that sounds like
a cute little like a gummy of some sort, like
(01:08):
a gum drop maybe because like a Pixar squirrel that
gives you good advice and has a weird thing about
acorns from a tree. I don't know. Yeah, I always
thought for some reason, some some words just hit us
on these levels that are difficult to articulate, Like everybody
hates the word moist. I used to ask people what
their least favorite word is and a lot of people
(01:29):
don't like the word moist. For me, nub is kind
of like a boundary crossing word when it shows up
in conversation, even even correctly applied, I'm just like, whoa,
this is a there's a nub conversation. Now we're at work, dude,
kind of like, how you know you've seen it before, nol.
I have a hard time not giggling when we're in
(01:49):
conversations and someone references dongle, and I'm like, Okay, get
the dongle. We've got to make sure we're ready to record.
That's just that's a me problem. But I think that's
a societal problem then, because I'm just I don't know
who came up with the word dongle if they did,
because they thought it was inherently funny and they were
hoping to evoke giggles from across the land. Um for that,
(02:12):
we thank you, kind sir or madam whomever came up
with this term, but it is inherently absurd. Nub by
the way is defined by Webster's Oxford English Dictionary as
the crux or central point of a matter. The nub
of the problem lies elsewhere that use of it. Yeah,
two means what's the what's the second meaning? I think
this is what most people in the US mean. Yeah,
(02:34):
this is the second one. And this is the one
that is uh apropos for today's episode. A small lump
or protuberance he pressed down on the two nubs on
top of the phone. Okay, but also it can refer
to the stump of a severed body part, which also
could be seen as a small lump or protuberance. Yeah,
(02:58):
that's where we're going today. Well on, my friends, So
we have heard this story. We don't know about your
neck of the Global Woods, folks, but every every region
of the US has some kind of bizarre small town story.
And today's story is about a place called nub City,
which is gonna be familiar to fans of documentaries. It's
(03:20):
gonna be familiar to people who have gone on Southeastern
road trips, and it's gonna be infamous to people living
near a town called Vernon, Florida, because Vernon, Florida has
the street name nub City. Why is it called nub City.
That's what today's episode is about. Warning folks, there is
(03:43):
there is possibly some graphic descriptions of bodily injury here. Yes,
and also um uh, let's say abhorrant human behavior. What's
another word for that? Uh, that's the word. Yeah. And
you mentioned been that every region of the country, of
the world perhaps has its own strange and bizarre stories,
(04:06):
none more so than the region what we call Florida,
specifically the Panhandle. It feels like that is just rife
with odd behavior and tales of debauchery and just just
general strangeness. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, Vernon was
what you call a company town, you know, or or
a mono industry town, right. We talked about that recently
(04:29):
on stuff they don't want you to know. In terms
of the manufacture of asbestos, a lot of towns in
Russia and around the United States were entirely tied to
the industry, the one industry that that town was built around.
In this case, in Vernon, it was a sawmill. Uh.
And like many places that rely so much on one industry,
(04:50):
and more specifically one you know, physical mill or factory,
Vernon became depressed, not like got the sads, but like
you know, financially depressed in terms of its economy because
the sawmill closed. Uh. In that town only had a
population between five hundred and eight hundred people who were
all out of the job. And you know a lot
(05:12):
of times when things like this happened, people just move on.
But the folks of Vernon, Florida had a little bit
more pluck to them than the average Oh yes they did.
And I suggest we hold just one moment on on
the big reveal here, but keep this name in your head, folks,
nub City. Uh. And you guys might if I jump
(05:35):
in here is this is reminded me of an episode
we did earlier this year. I cannot remember the name
of the town, but we did that episode about the
Bowl Weevil, Yes, saving a town in Alabama, because it's similar.
It's like, you know, a town it was built on
one industry was caught in that case and their industry
got depressed. And it was actually a good thing enterprise
because yeah, enterprise Alabama, that's what it was. Yeah, and
(05:57):
um because it helped them expand their industry. And let's
just say Vernon took a very different direction. You gotta
do what you gotta do. And we also, as awkward
is is to shout out our other show that we do.
We do want to shout out stuff they want you
to knows Florida Man episode which solves the mystery about
why Florida Man became a thing, and it's actually it's
(06:19):
it's yeah, it's pretty sad story. Actually. But but even
if Florida Man laws did not apply and do check
out that episode, eventually people would have to learn about
the tragic and unusual events of Nub City. It's, like
you described notes on the panhandles, very small. If you
are reading through different parts of the town's history, you'll
(06:43):
see that it's in a very rural area. It's about
a hundred miles east of Pensacola, west of Tallahassee. It
used to be it had a sold mill like we're saying.
It also was once upon a time a shipping route
for gopher tortoises. Uh, this is you know, spoiler it is.
It is not a booming industry and hasn't been for
(07:05):
a long time. And these folks had it rough man.
Their industries were closing down. They were no longer on
a major shipping routes for steamboats, and the railroads passed
the town by. Voters moved the county seat somewhere else,
and people are leaving for college. They're never coming back.
(07:25):
There's a big brain drain. You can read all about
this an article on Tampa Bay dot Com. Not going
to give you the title just yet. Things were getting desperate.
We're right where you were describing. No. Mid nineteen fifties
into the nineteen sixties. Really when Vernon's residents said something
has to be done and they picked I would say
(07:48):
one of the most famous systemic bad guys in modern America.
They picked insurance companies as their victims, and they started
doing a scam, a scam that calls them in arm
in a leg heyo. Okay, first of all, I have
to say, there is a gentleman mowing my lawn. Um
(08:08):
it's I've let it, let it go too long. It's
the season when the leaves drop and you don't really
have to worry about keeping your lawn nice. But I'm
having some family over for Christmas and so having someone
blow off all the leaves and kind of make things nice.
So unfortunately we don't have the luxury to stop and
hold for the leafman. Um. So he's gonna he's gonna
be part of this episode two. But he has appears
to be moving away from my studio window. Can we
(08:30):
name the Leafman? I'm just gonna call him the leaf
the leafman. Come. Maybe it's like sir Leefman, earl of Blow.
I don't know. That could go a couple of different directions,
(08:51):
but but you know, no, we have had the same
situation on my end before. So we're just gonna welcome
him to the show the way we ware cats and
the various other side characters that that dropped by. Uh,
I had chainsaws last week. Chainsaw, Yeah, the chainsawman. So
(09:11):
so they will join us on this journey. Okay. By
the end of the fifties, people notice something weird. Nineties
insurance like policy walks and underwriters and analysts and everybody
was looking around. They said, hey, the Florida Panhandle is
responsible for not half, but two thirds of all of
(09:35):
these particular accident claims. This particular kind of accident claim
in the entirety of the U s. What was this
very particular accident, Uh, dismemberment. I guess for that, I mean,
what's the word. Yeah, that's the right word, right, or
is it more specific than that dismemberment? Loss of limb?
You nailed it. Loss of limb. Yeah. When I think
(09:56):
of this rememberment, I think of, like I guess, because
I have a six six sad mind, I think of
a full taking a part of a human person piece
by piece. Right, But it can just be a single
dismemberment of of of our arm or a hand or
a foot, right, and that's the deal, right. The people,
we don't know exactly how it happened. One person came
(10:17):
up with this idea and realized that it paid to ching.
The insurance company paid out for the loss of limb,
and then others appeared to follow suit. At this point,
we're not sure, at least by we, I mean the
insurance company, whether or not this is a scam, because
you know, Florida even then probably already had a bit
of a reputation as being a little bit wild and
(10:38):
wooly and rugged. You know, a lot of potentials for
hunting accidents and things like that. So you would get
reports of people having hands shot off, for example, people
getting in farming accidents perhaps what else, Whether kind of
reports were we seeing, Yeah, there were. There were a
number of ways this would happen. Their official reasons became
(11:00):
it became difficult to pars whether these were truly accidents
or where they or whether it was calculated acts of
self injury. Um, maybe there was an accident in a factory,
like you said, maybe someone did it on purpose. In
a In a mental Pluss article by Brooks Hayes called
Nub City, Vernon, Florida's decade long insurance scam, we learned
(11:22):
the phrase nub club, which is the unofficial name for
people who started receiving these injuries and started receiving checks
for it. We also see that a few Vernon residents
actually sawed off their own limbs, but it seemed most
most of the people were point blank firing at their
(11:44):
limbs with a shotgun. And insurance agents in the region
we're going wild. Dad's stories about a guy who said
he was aiming to shoot a hawk and he took
off his own hands somehow with his gun farmer who
saw his foot and thought it was a squirrel. Sorry,
I know, I feel bad for laughing, but yeah, it's
(12:07):
like that one's not true, right, he gotta have the
cover story, right, And I mean, who are we, as
meager insurance adjusters to question the veracity of this tale?
Confirm It's like, I gotta ask about the guy shooting
the hawk though, because we're talking about a shotgun, not
(12:28):
a small gun. Is he firing with one hand? How
does he shoot his own a hand off? Like it
wasn't a misfire on his hand to frame the shot right,
It was like doing it like a director where he
kind of had it out the teacher of the little
l shape, you know, and he was using it as
sort of a makeshift site, and then he put it
right in front of the barrel and blasted is probably
thumb and four finger off. First of all, you know
(12:49):
shoot hawks with a shotgun? Do you that's a bit
more of a precision tool. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I
would think you would. That would require a longer range weapon.
I think of a shotgun is more of a close
range weapon. It stuff. It depends on what kind of
shot you're putting in it, you know. But also also, yeah,
this here's the other factor that makes these stories sketchy
(13:11):
and suss to insurance agents. It turns out that many
of the people who are reporting these things had also
taken out multiple specific types of insurance policies, sometimes just
days or get this, hours before the injury occurred. So
I have had a long day filing my insurance claims
(13:33):
and I was tired, and I thought my foot was
a squirrel. So well, I mean that that's like, that's
the biggest red flag in the insurance industry. And this
is me complete insurance, you know, outsider. But you know,
if someone takes out a policy on their wife and
then the wife turns up dead, that is going to
be the suspect, the first person that is looked at
(13:56):
for committing this crime. If someone takes out kind of policy,
you know, like a like a particular I mean, you know,
you you we We just recently had to re up
our work insurance plan and there are a lot of
pages in those e documents that talk about things like
limb and like very specifics that a lot of us
just kind of gloss over. But the fine people of
(14:18):
Vernon would not have glossed over those pages. They would
have zeroed in on those pages and taken out as
much as they could. Because if you pay in US
or you check that box, you can ensure your if
they're like your livelihood right, you can ensure your limbs
for more than just a standard policy. Isn't that right, guys,
It is absolutely right. You can also, I mean there's
any number of like long term disability things you can do,
(14:40):
unintentional death or accidental like injuries that make you unable
to work. Uh, it's a business for sure, you know.
And they you're right, they did read these things carefully.
The way that privatized insurance works. For anybody who lives
in a in a first world country with first world healthcare,
(15:00):
you might need to understand how US healthcare works. It's
it's a business that has calculated for profit, not for
the health of the customers. It's a product that becomes
more expensive when you use it. So the first thing
that happens. We see this everywhere in the US for
other kinds of insurance, like your zip code will affect
(15:21):
how much your car insurance is, for example, because they'll
look at how many accidents occur in that zip code.
And these folks were facing mounting insurance premiums, which is
the money you have to pay for insurance. Because they
were like, hey, thanks for you know, working with United
Blue of Florida or whatever your monthly cost for this
(15:42):
long term disability, dismemberment insurance or whatever. It's gonna be
a little higher because a lot of people in your
neck in the woods are losing stuff. Yeah, it's the
same reason that, like, if you moved to a big
city from like a more rural area or a smaller town,
your car insurance will go up. Why because you're in
a situation where you're much more likely to get into
a car accident or be hits, you know, because there's
(16:05):
just the odds go up when there's more cars in play,
and when you know you're driving in narrower streets and
like more kind of tricky conditions. Right, it's the same
exact deal. Your insurance premium goes up by virtue of
where you are, based on the likelihood of a particular
event to happen there. And since Vernon at this point
I believe was reporting what has it been, something insane
(16:27):
like two thirds of the dismemberment reports or insurance claims
in the whole United States. Yeah, I do have. That
was the Panhandle, Hanhandle. That's that's even that's even crazier.
I mean, that's just one little sliver of Florida, which
is quite a large state that makes up a big
chunk of the of the East Coast. So yeah, these
insurance companies were understandably losing their ship and starting to
(16:50):
be like, you know what, I don't think we're gonna
start inste I don't think we're gonna ensure people that
live in this part of the country anymore. Yeah, And
there were there were other things that were kind of
messing with that average. One guy, a guy named Murray
Armstrong who was working for Liberty National. He said that
(17:14):
he found a customer who took out insurance with twenty
eight to thirty eight different companies before he lost his
left foot. Yeah. There was a point made in a
fabulous article from our pals at Mental Flaw Snub City Vernon,
Florida's decade long insurance scam by Brooks Hayes that said,
at the height of this, uh, this grift, it was
(17:35):
making some people millionaires. Yeah. Yeah, at least we know
that by the nineteen sixties, at least fifty residents had
gotten in on this strategy and they were getting payments
of anything from five thousand to three hundred thousand dollars.
And even though five thousand was a lot more back
then and purchasing power, that still seems like not enough
(17:59):
my me to lose a body part permanently, because you
think about what would you how you would handle the
rest of your life, prosthetics, walking, manipulating tools. These people
were desperate, and we're talking about it with some levity
just because the stories, the cover stories in particular, sounds
so hilarious. But these were very serious times, and you know,
(18:23):
like you said no, The insurance companies quickly rocked the trend,
and before long they started being much more skeptical. I
believe they they took some of these folks to court
for their claims. They would say, Okay, we don't believe you, right,
we saw a picture of a squirrel next to a
picture of a foot shoe on and shoe off, and
(18:46):
they look different, So we'll see you in court. But
the problem was, now, if you're going to a jury trial,
you have to convince a jury, not that the cover
story is ridiculous, but you have to convince the jury
that some one would knowingly take a firearm true themselves
for a couple grands. Yeah, I mean, what what naive
(19:08):
summer children we were back in those days, you know,
I mean, I think now this would not be hard
to convince just about anybody of you know, we know
people are capable of really insane, depraved acts, you know,
but even as as recently as the fifties and sixties,
we were like, oh no, you couldn't convince the jury
of of their peers. And this was you know, in
(19:29):
presumably in the same region that anyone would would do
this on purpose. No one could be that desperate, uh, people,
I mean, we know that like a rabbit or like
like an animal in a trap will gnaw off its
own leg to get out of the trap. What more
of a trap is there than financial destitution. That's a
very good point. Yeah, And this is like, unless you
(19:52):
are experiencing that kind of hardship, it can be difficult
for people to put themselves emotionally mentally in that situation.
Of all the people who went to court, not one,
not one amputee in Vernon, Florida or the surrounding area
ever got convicted of fraud. Like every time they went
(20:13):
to a jury trial. The insurance companies lost, and so
they changed their strategy as well. They got together and
they hired a guy named John Joseph Jingles kidding. His
name is John Joseph Heally, and he goes to Vernon,
I love this kind insurance Colombo type figures, he's like
(20:34):
our hero coming into kind of like crack the case. Yeah,
like Edward Norton's character in a Fight Club. Right, he
was an insurance investigator. That's right. So here's our fight
club guy Colombo in Fight Club. That's John Joseph Healely.
He goes to town, he's their man on the ground
and he says, yeah, I am Well, we'll give you
(20:56):
the actual quote. It was the way he reports back
to the companies. He says, to sit in your car
on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of
nub City. He called it this in the official report,
watching anywhere from eight to a dozen. This is his word,
not ours. Cripples walking along the street gives the place
a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere. Yeah, it sure does. And this
(21:18):
investigation is laid out pretty extensively and accidentally on purpose,
making of a personal injury. Underworld in America, Uh Mouthful
of a title booked by Ken Dornstein, came out in
nine and Dornstein says that Healy did not appear to
think very highly of the town of Vernon. First of all,
(21:40):
he's coming in there being pretty much convinced that there's
a scam going on. He just has to find proof.
He refers to these people pretty derisively in that quote
that you just did for us Ben with the term
now that would be considered pretty off. Uh. And he
remarked um that he he believed that one of the
and this could well be true, but he's saying it
obviously with a bit of a there's an inherent sneer
(22:02):
in this. To me that one of the most popular
pastimes in Vernon was for folks to gather in the
town square to quote watch the local stray Mutt's mate. Wow. Okay,
so there's there's a prejudice here, right, and let's not
forget what he said was the number one That's right,
that would have been the second most popular pastime, the
(22:22):
number one being quote self mutilation for cash. So maybe
not our hero of the story, No, No, he's definitely.
He's definitely like a hard nosed antagonist right at best,
and anti hero. But there's a story with very few heroes. Yeah,
I mean, I feel for the plight of the people
(22:43):
of Vernon, but also like, wow, this is Cormac McCarthy production.
Almost you know what I mean like the guy who
wrote the road would write this kind of story. So
he he says furthermore, you can also tell that these
injuries are premeditated because Healy and his opinion, believes that
people are removing the limb they need least, so he
(23:07):
doesn't see a lot of cases of right handed people
removing their right hand. A lot of left hands go missing,
and there are more left hands and right hands because
more people are going to be right handed in a
random population. And you can certainly argue that again, I'm
no limb lawyer here with that's circumstantial, right like that
there's no inherent calculus involved in that would be hard
to prove that intense on a one on one case. Yeah,
(23:29):
exactly exactly could prove it as a trend, but again
it's not a huge population, so it might be hard
to to do or maybe not. Anyway, point is, they
would oftentimes remove a left limb up top and a
right limb down low, because people would be doing multiple amputations,
taking out multiple policies. That way, the person could walk
with a crutch, you know, because they would be like
(23:52):
they would have the opposite. They would put the crutch
under the one arm that wasn't amputated and then have
the good leg on the opposite side yep. Yeah. Or
as he also found, you could maybe learn about someone's
injury in relation to their livelihood. He said, if someone
had like an office job, they'll be more likely to
take off a leg or a foot because they'll sit
(24:14):
down for work. And he pointed out that a lot
of white collar folks were doing this as well. A
guy who owned a car dealership, so a pretty successful
guy was found to have taken out one of his
own eyes because he could use the four hundred thousand
dollar insurance payment to buy a ranch. Now, all of
this stuff is super grizzly. Obviously, sawing off your own
(24:37):
limb is gnarly. But to me, I stuff, especially self
inflicted I stuff, is one of the gnarliest things in
light horror movies, like I remember the scene and uh,
then those spoilers. You can't really spoil a twenty year
old movie. But in Event Horizon, you know, remember the
part I'm talking about the spaceship and as the spaceship
(24:59):
goes into goes to hell, and you see these videos
that are like blurry, crazy good videos of like the
previous crew like clawing their own eyes out. That always
gives me the heebie g. I love it. It is
a slept on film because also I remember not to
get too far off the rail here, But when that
movie came out, the way it was promoted just made
(25:21):
it seem like a run of the mill kind of
sci fi adventure thriller maybe, And it was pure hell raiser. Man.
It was like way above my pay grade at the
age that I was when I saw that in the theater.
It's got surgery stuff, it's gotten nasty stuff. Yeah, it's
one of my favorite, like my favorite unofficial HP Lovecraft movies.
(25:44):
This is around the same era that actor was it,
Sam Neil says, Sam Neil did some weird madness. Yeah,
he did those around the same era. Yes, so event
Horizon great. I stuff weird. I actually I can't remember
if I told you this. I um, I went through
a period where I was trying to see if I
(26:06):
could just voluntarily donate one of my eyes. Uh oh,
well it's a weird ben. Well, it's a thing that
it's a thing that I is like thought experiment kind
of like people you were really wanting to do this,
you just wanted to find out if it was possible. Conceptually,
I was on the fence. I would I think that
(26:27):
like giving somebody the gift of site would be really cool. Also,
I think I would look cool with an eyepatch. So
it's not entirely well thinks I've seen you with an
eyepatch before. Ben, there was a time where you were
just going out with an eyepatch for fun. I'm not
talking about it and just seeing if people would bring
it up. But also, Ben, they've made leaps and bounds
and glass eye technology. I'm sure you could get a
(26:48):
convincing you know, prosthetics. Also, Ben, didn't you just have
surgery on your eyes? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I don't want
a premium dude. That was I mean, they can have
my eyes, they can't take your. No, No, just one
you know and you it's like how you cleaned up
a car yourself. That's the point. Um, I totally forget folks.
(27:08):
That is a true story, Noel, blast from the past.
That was one of the one of my social experiments.
I remember, that's the reason you good friends. Nolan is
one of the only people who asked me about it. No,
No was like, well, I think I think people mostly
would assume that you'd had some sort of procedure or
maybe the shingles or something like that, and they didn't
(27:29):
want to be rude. But I knew you well enough
to be like, what's up, man, I was so excited
I leaned in, Max, you would have enjoyed this. I
was so excited because I leaned in, and I remember, like,
I don't think I messed with it quite at that
point where I leaned in and told Noel. Uh, I
was like, dude, you can just start wearing these. No
one will ask you about it. It's amazing. And uh no,
(27:51):
if I recalled correctly, your spots was okay, but why yeah,
And I just envisioned Ben turns and his bumps into
a wall if he has no depth reception, that's all
part of the bit, that's all part of the all
part of the thing. But in that case, that social
experiment aside. And this is, by the way, uh, this
was an exercise in persona changes or disguises. This was
(28:16):
not meant in any way to mock site or lack
of sightedness. And I think we need to we need
to say that. But I was interested in, um seeing
if I can voluntarily donate a cornea. Uh, it is
I think a gray area unless you know somebody, right,
unless it's like you're doing this for your sibling or something.
You're just randomly giving away an eye. People look at
(28:38):
you a scans the same way that insurance agents, oh
we got there, looked askance at these people in the city,
because this is if you're purposely injuring yourself. It turns
out that is a fairly common type of insurance fraud.
And heally in in the book you had mentioned earlier, No,
(29:01):
he is saying that rings of these people can occur,
like people will collaborate. Sometimes it's a close knit family
or community, and then other times there is just a
region where people catch on to this idea, and that
seemed to be the case with nub City. And he
was like, look, there are a lot of accidents occurring
(29:22):
in the same place in a short period of time.
He says, here's what happens. One guy gets away with it,
meaning self injury fraud. He tells a friend about it
after he collects and his friend says, that's a cool idea,
But his friend tries to kind of one up it
and takes out even even bigger insurance policy right up there, Annie,
(29:43):
as as they say, and let's not forget there's only
about five residents of this town at the time, and
only about a dozen or so were involved in this,
but many of them did it multiple times again, causing
these insurance premiums just go through the roof. And as
Heale say, I solved it pretty quickly this quote. Everyone
already knew about the town, and the witness to the
(30:05):
injury was a guy who had witnessed another phony accident.
There were lots of holes in his story, so essentially
this came crashing to a halt. Nothing lasts forever, even
something is incredible as what The New York Times described
a three year orgy of self maiming. Yes, I love Yeah,
(30:26):
that's the event Horizon right there of self maiming. Yeah,
we have to watch of the Horizon. Uh. Yes, great
Christmas movie, Yeah, which is insane, Sam Neil, If you're okay,
I think and it's got a cult status for sure,
but I think it even did okay in the theater.
It's got a cliffhanger, it's got it's got everything I
(30:47):
want in his story, weird power, super Okay. I'm not
turning this into it and it is round tomatoes right, absurd,
absolutely blasphemy. That doesn't make any sense. People just didn't
get it. You know's got Hulu Premium. We can watch
it right now. I've got Hulu Premium and the episode
right now. Max. We don't have time. We've got to
get to the stunning conclusion of this, because, like we said,
(31:08):
nothing lasts forever. This, uh, the proverbial Aquimini curtain was
closed on this chapter in Vernon's history, but not before
it became so notorious because to to the the investigator's point,
this is like an open secret. At this point right
(31:30):
in the region everybody knew was called nub City. You
don't get a nickname like that for nothing. Um and
words spread to one of my favorite I think, probably
one of the most famous documentary filmmakers in the world,
a guy named Errol Morris, who at this point was
early in his career, in his twenties. I think he
was really just getting started as a documentary filmmaker. He's
(31:52):
known for films like The Thin Blue Line, Um The
Fog of War. Also, his son Hamilton Morris, has that show,
Hamilton's Pharmacopeia. Yeah, iceory. He like takes all the weird
drugs and stuff. He's a He's an odd character, but
anyway comes from a neat line of creative of folks
and um. Errol Morris caught wind of what was going
(32:13):
on down in Vernon, down in nub City. He saw
a little blurb in a newspaper about a place called
nub City and it it made him raise his eyebrows.
Want to check it out? Yeah? Yeah. He was about
twenty years old. Sorry, he was in his twenties at
the time. And he had heard about this in the
(32:33):
fall of nineteen seventy six when he came across a
newspaper clipping that caught his interests just like you said,
so he said, you know what, I'm gonna go down.
I'm gonna make a film about what's happening in nub City.
He's read this piece in the New York Times Sunday
magazine and it's the Heally piece where Heally is talking
(32:56):
about the worst cases in his career and he says, Wow,
there's this self mutilation in this small town in northwest Florida.
And he says, I've got to find out more. He
visits and speaks with John J. Healy, who doesn't, by
the way, say the specific name of the town in
(33:18):
the article. He uses the nickname nub City. And eventually
this guy heally tells Errol Morris, all right, the real
name of this place, if you must know, is Vernon, Florida.
But you can't go don't go there. It's not the
kind of place you want to be snooping around. It's
(33:39):
it's got a bad vibe. And so the director promptly
ignores everything heally says and travels down to Vernon. He lives,
He lives in the area, and he spends a year
making this film. Um well, the focus of his film
shifted right, like he was initially going to make a
(33:59):
film specifically about this town where folks blow or saw
or hack or maame their limbs off to collect insurance money.
So this would have been in the late seventies, early eighties,
So this would have been, you know, a couple of
generations removed from like the peak of this practice, you know,
which was taking place in the fifties and sixties. So
we would have had anyone that was still around who
(34:20):
was one of the nub clubbers would have been quite
old at this time, or it would have been like
their descendants, you know. And obviously this is not a
cam that was running anymore. This is a part of
the history of the town that probably some folks you know,
who were part of that history wouldn't really want out there,
especially by some outside or New York City socialized intellectual
(34:42):
filmmaker documentarian. What you're doing with that camera. We can
say that because we're from the South, but can but
we live or we live here at least, But so Yeah,
he maintains that he loved, loved, loved the people of Verdon,
But then he also points out these strange quotes. Uh.
(35:07):
One sheriff told him. This is from Errol himself, when
sheriff said, down here, we don't have motors, we have
disappearances and these people this is great. Yeah. And then
like I said, um he uh, he initially pursued that angle. Um,
(35:27):
And he tells it himself that you can read in
this mental Flass article that we cited earlier. He knocks
on the door of a double amputeam man who was
missing an arm and a lay on opposite sides of
the body minds you, which he refers to as the
preferred technique so that you could use a crutch like
we were saying. And then he goes quote his buff
son in law, a marine beat me up. I decided
(35:49):
whatever I was doing was really really stupid and dangerous.
He wasn't sent to the hospital, thankfully, but he did
change the folks of the film. And you can now
check this out. It's a documentary from ninety any one
called Vernon, Florida, and it focuses more because you know,
you've got to imagine a town where people are compelled
to like blow their limbs off or hack their limbs off.
A gotta be some characters in there. And what Errol
(36:12):
Morris does in the film Vernon Florida's highlights some of
those characters, uh, including like uh one guy who's like
a really avid turkey hunter to doing all these like
turkey calls and stuff. And there's like another guy who's
like a weird kind of tap dancer or something that
they're they're all it's very gummo, kind of like the
Harmony Kouran movie Gummo, but like a real documentary. Yeah yeah,
(36:35):
And this refocus is move of self preservation, right, and
it's still is a very strong film. It premiers at
the New York Film Festival, and people are over the
moon for it, and Morris himself, well, I think was
was very affected by the poverty he saw and very
(36:57):
inspired by this self reliance he saw, and he is
still like as we record now, he's still apparently is
thinking about returning to the original story, the story of
what Healy called nub City. And with this we we
kind of we kind of leave it there. The question
(37:19):
becomes something for everybody listening in the audience today. Obviously
we mean no disrespect to the people of Florida, but
this is like an ethical question of quandary, what would
you do? And we can't assume, you know that every
person who did this committed this kind of fraud, was
(37:40):
doing it because they wanted extra fun money. Some people
may have been doing it entirely because they couldn't get
a job and they had to feed their family. You know.
I mean we talked, I made the analogy of an
animal caught in a trap knowing it's you know, limb off.
I mean, these these these towns, when they're economically depressed
in that way, and your your choices to uproot your
(38:00):
whole family maybe been living there for generations or to
get clever, you know, or do something desperate. Um. There
is a really interesting coda to this story. There is
a an incident that happened in Vernon that actually made
the national news way way separated from this whole nub
city business. In ninety four, there was a bloody, really
(38:21):
gnarly brawl that broke out at a very run of
the Mills City council meeting where they were discussing the
possibility of firing the town's only policeman. And it's caught
on film. You can see this reporter from Panama City
from the network w m b B was there and
like there's screaming and punching and bloody noses and like
(38:41):
men beating up women and like it's it's a real melee.
But there's a very interesting detail that is almost like
the creepy closing of a movie where you see this
detail and like it's like kind of the like cherry
on top. Yeah, this is a dust up, it's an altercation.
It was filmed by a reporter out of Panama City.
(39:03):
In the video, you see a city councilwoman Marvel Armstrong
and her son Coleman fighting and you see a man
who is missing one hand. That is uh Marvelle's husband J. C. Armstrong.
And there's there's a thing where a reporter asked councilwoman
(39:23):
Armstrong how her husband lost his hand, and she says,
I think you know, so that's that is. That's not
the end of the movie, pad role credits because we
are extremely positive people, and we we always try to
end on like a less heavy note. So we can
(39:47):
at least no, in a positive note, we can say
that Vernon, Florida, does have a specialty hamburger as an
official town burger. There's that Maybe that's what we had
it good? What's what's special? You like spicy? Do you? Okay?
It is covered in Cajun seasoning and fried halapenos, and
(40:10):
it's apparently it's very very hot, and it has its
own theme song, slash, rhyme or jingle. This is according
to Tampa Bay dot Com. Oh they should know if
anyone burn and Vernon, Oh what a treat with its
onions and peppers stacked up so neat Okay, yeah, you
know kinking. No better way to end an episode of
(40:33):
ridiculous history than with a ridiculous rhyme about a burd
that's true. I know, I feel like we could freestyle
off that one. Stacked up so neat Max dropped the beat, right, Uh,
don't saw off your hands and feet? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?
Or do yeah, It's entirely up to you. Even though
the money feels so sweet, don't saw off your hands
(40:54):
and feet. Wait beep? The beep is part of the rhyme. Okay,
And you gotta wonder too, has it been enough time?
Has enough time passed that in this kind of grift
could pop up in some other rural pocket of the
United States? Let us know? Yeah, yeah, I think. Let
us know. You can find us on our community page,
(41:14):
Ridiculous Historians. We love it. We love the questions, We
love the conversations that we see there. You can also
find us on social media, not just as a show
but as individuals. If you wish, you may find me.
I am on Instagram pretty much exclusively at how now
Noel Brown. If you want to tweet at me, I
don't really look at it very often, but I am
at embryonical on the twitters. How bet you've been bowling? Well,
(41:37):
thank you for asking, Mr Biel Brown. You can get
a behind the scenes look at the research I'm doing
my various misadventures at Ben Bolan on Instagram, bo w
l I n or at Ben Bowland h s W
on Twitter, and Word on the Street is our very
own super producer. Mr. Max Williams is also to be
(41:57):
found on the tubes of the Internet. Yes, I am
hiding out on Twitter. I don't say much, but I
am always around and I'm at at L underscore Max
Williams about a hot sports takes on their huh yeah,
and a couple of star trek ones. No, actually, Ben,
I changed that handle. Oh in the World Series, Michigan's
in the college football Playoff. Okay, I'm a passionate sports
(42:19):
fan again. All right, Oh well that's awesome, man, I'm glad.
Oh it's gonna break my heart to be miserable. I'm
gonna be terrible in the New year. Probably ah. Yes,
speaking speaking of terrible, terrible things. You can also you
can also find our good pal slash Nemessies the Quister
a k. H. Jonathan Strickland on the Internet, and if
(42:41):
you do find him, ask him when he's gonna be
on Ridiculous History again. Is that too much or we
like pranking? Him at this point. I don't know. I
think we just haven't really followed up. Yeah, it's totally
it is. These things do actually go peak behind the curtain.
These things do typically go to the proper channels. He
doesn't just a zoom, mom, Sorry to demystify the whole
(43:01):
quister bit. Wow, I mean I could, I could saw
in him right now. I me to say it's the same. No, no, okay, yeah, no, thanks,
thanks of course to him, the quister. Thanks also at
Alex Williams, who composed our amazing soundtrack. Thanks to you,
Max Williams, son of Alex, no, brother of Alex, blood
of Alex. How about that? Um Eve's Jeff Code and
(43:23):
Christophrastiot is here in spirit? Who else, my mom? Yeah,
the people of Vernon, Florida. I hope they're doing okay
gay bluesier. And I'll say it, the people who work
in those levels of the insurance industry. It can be
often a thankless job. So don't let your work to
find you. Uh, probably really erodes your trust and humanity.
(43:45):
But it's also a very despicable profession. So maybe I
don't no, no, no, not despicable profession in industry it's
got a certain amount of hick to it, and I
think even people that work within it probably are aware
of that. So no offense meant to anyone working in insurance,
and stay tuned for our next episode on something called
a Little Ice Age. We hope you're having a wonderful
(44:08):
last week of the year from We'll see you next Stempbooks.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for a
one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called
me ben No, No, it's the end of the nub
as we know it. Wait, it's the nub of the
year as we know it. Nubbings, what's a nub? I
(00:47):
like a nub? I like the I like the expression
whittled down to a nub in referring to someone just
like being insufferable and just like beating you down and
your resolve until there's nothing left of you. Um, that's
uh yeah, it's kind of heavy actually if we think
about it. But also Nubbins that that's that sounds like
a cute little like a gummy of some sort, like
(01:08):
a gum drop maybe because like a Pixar squirrel that
gives you good advice and has a weird thing about
acorns from a tree. I don't know. Yeah, I always
thought for some reason, some some words just hit us
on these levels that are difficult to articulate, Like everybody
hates the word moist. I used to ask people what
their least favorite word is and a lot of people
(01:29):
don't like the word moist. For me, nub is kind
of like a boundary crossing word when it shows up
in conversation, even even correctly applied, I'm just like, whoa,
this is a there's a nub conversation. Now we're at work, dude,
kind of like, how you know you've seen it before, nol.
I have a hard time not giggling when we're in
(01:49):
conversations and someone references dongle, and I'm like, Okay, get
the dongle. We've got to make sure we're ready to record.
That's just that's a me problem. But I think that's
a societal problem then, because I'm just I don't know
who came up with the word dongle if they did,
because they thought it was inherently funny and they were
hoping to evoke giggles from across the land. Um for that,
(02:12):
we thank you, kind sir or madam whomever came up
with this term, but it is inherently absurd. Nub by
the way is defined by Webster's Oxford English Dictionary as
the crux or central point of a matter. The nub
of the problem lies elsewhere that use of it. Yeah,
two means what's the what's the second meaning? I think
this is what most people in the US mean. Yeah,
(02:34):
this is the second one. And this is the one
that is uh apropos for today's episode. A small lump
or protuberance he pressed down on the two nubs on
top of the phone. Okay, but also it can refer
to the stump of a severed body part, which also
could be seen as a small lump or protuberance. Yeah,
(02:58):
that's where we're going today. Well on, my friends, So
we have heard this story. We don't know about your
neck of the Global Woods, folks, but every every region
of the US has some kind of bizarre small town story.
And today's story is about a place called nub City,
which is gonna be familiar to fans of documentaries. It's
(03:20):
gonna be familiar to people who have gone on Southeastern
road trips, and it's gonna be infamous to people living
near a town called Vernon, Florida, because Vernon, Florida has
the street name nub City. Why is it called nub City.
That's what today's episode is about. Warning folks, there is
(03:43):
there is possibly some graphic descriptions of bodily injury here. Yes,
and also um uh, let's say abhorrant human behavior. What's
another word for that? Uh, that's the word. Yeah. And
you mentioned been that every region of the country, of
the world perhaps has its own strange and bizarre stories,
(04:06):
none more so than the region what we call Florida,
specifically the Panhandle. It feels like that is just rife
with odd behavior and tales of debauchery and just just
general strangeness. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, Vernon was
what you call a company town, you know, or or
a mono industry town, right. We talked about that recently
(04:29):
on stuff they don't want you to know. In terms
of the manufacture of asbestos, a lot of towns in
Russia and around the United States were entirely tied to
the industry, the one industry that that town was built around.
In this case, in Vernon, it was a sawmill. Uh.
And like many places that rely so much on one industry,
(04:50):
and more specifically one you know, physical mill or factory,
Vernon became depressed, not like got the sads, but like
you know, financially depressed in terms of its economy because
the sawmill closed. Uh. In that town only had a
population between five hundred and eight hundred people who were
all out of the job. And you know a lot
(05:12):
of times when things like this happened, people just move on.
But the folks of Vernon, Florida had a little bit
more pluck to them than the average Oh yes they did.
And I suggest we hold just one moment on on
the big reveal here, but keep this name in your head, folks,
nub City. Uh. And you guys might if I jump
(05:35):
in here is this is reminded me of an episode
we did earlier this year. I cannot remember the name
of the town, but we did that episode about the
Bowl Weevil, Yes, saving a town in Alabama, because it's similar.
It's like, you know, a town it was built on
one industry was caught in that case and their industry
got depressed. And it was actually a good thing enterprise
because yeah, enterprise Alabama, that's what it was. Yeah, and
(05:57):
um because it helped them expand their industry. And let's
just say Vernon took a very different direction. You gotta
do what you gotta do. And we also, as awkward
is is to shout out our other show that we do.
We do want to shout out stuff they want you
to knows Florida Man episode which solves the mystery about
why Florida Man became a thing, and it's actually it's
(06:19):
it's yeah, it's pretty sad story. Actually. But but even
if Florida Man laws did not apply and do check
out that episode, eventually people would have to learn about
the tragic and unusual events of Nub City. It's, like
you described notes on the panhandles, very small. If you
are reading through different parts of the town's history, you'll
(06:43):
see that it's in a very rural area. It's about
a hundred miles east of Pensacola, west of Tallahassee. It
used to be it had a sold mill like we're saying.
It also was once upon a time a shipping route
for gopher tortoises. Uh, this is you know, spoiler it is.
It is not a booming industry and hasn't been for
(07:05):
a long time. And these folks had it rough man.
Their industries were closing down. They were no longer on
a major shipping routes for steamboats, and the railroads passed
the town by. Voters moved the county seat somewhere else,
and people are leaving for college. They're never coming back.
(07:25):
There's a big brain drain. You can read all about
this an article on Tampa Bay dot Com. Not going
to give you the title just yet. Things were getting desperate.
We're right where you were describing. No. Mid nineteen fifties
into the nineteen sixties. Really when Vernon's residents said something
has to be done and they picked I would say
(07:48):
one of the most famous systemic bad guys in modern America.
They picked insurance companies as their victims, and they started
doing a scam, a scam that calls them in arm
in a leg heyo. Okay, first of all, I have
to say, there is a gentleman mowing my lawn. Um
(08:08):
it's I've let it, let it go too long. It's
the season when the leaves drop and you don't really
have to worry about keeping your lawn nice. But I'm
having some family over for Christmas and so having someone
blow off all the leaves and kind of make things nice.
So unfortunately we don't have the luxury to stop and
hold for the leafman. Um. So he's gonna he's gonna
be part of this episode two. But he has appears
to be moving away from my studio window. Can we
(08:30):
name the Leafman? I'm just gonna call him the leaf
the leafman. Come. Maybe it's like sir Leefman, earl of Blow.
I don't know. That could go a couple of different directions,
(08:51):
but but you know, no, we have had the same
situation on my end before. So we're just gonna welcome
him to the show the way we ware cats and
the various other side characters that that dropped by. Uh,
I had chainsaws last week. Chainsaw, Yeah, the chainsawman. So
(09:11):
so they will join us on this journey. Okay. By
the end of the fifties, people notice something weird. Nineties
insurance like policy walks and underwriters and analysts and everybody
was looking around. They said, hey, the Florida Panhandle is
responsible for not half, but two thirds of all of
(09:35):
these particular accident claims. This particular kind of accident claim
in the entirety of the U s. What was this
very particular accident, Uh, dismemberment. I guess for that, I mean,
what's the word. Yeah, that's the right word, right, or
is it more specific than that dismemberment? Loss of limb?
You nailed it. Loss of limb. Yeah. When I think
(09:56):
of this rememberment, I think of, like I guess, because
I have a six six sad mind, I think of
a full taking a part of a human person piece
by piece. Right, But it can just be a single
dismemberment of of of our arm or a hand or
a foot, right, and that's the deal, right. The people,
we don't know exactly how it happened. One person came
(10:17):
up with this idea and realized that it paid to ching.
The insurance company paid out for the loss of limb,
and then others appeared to follow suit. At this point,
we're not sure, at least by we, I mean the
insurance company, whether or not this is a scam, because
you know, Florida even then probably already had a bit
of a reputation as being a little bit wild and
(10:38):
wooly and rugged. You know, a lot of potentials for
hunting accidents and things like that. So you would get
reports of people having hands shot off, for example, people
getting in farming accidents perhaps what else, Whether kind of
reports were we seeing, Yeah, there were. There were a
number of ways this would happen. Their official reasons became
(11:00):
it became difficult to pars whether these were truly accidents
or where they or whether it was calculated acts of
self injury. Um, maybe there was an accident in a factory,
like you said, maybe someone did it on purpose. In
a In a mental Pluss article by Brooks Hayes called
Nub City, Vernon, Florida's decade long insurance scam, we learned
(11:22):
the phrase nub club, which is the unofficial name for
people who started receiving these injuries and started receiving checks
for it. We also see that a few Vernon residents
actually sawed off their own limbs, but it seemed most
most of the people were point blank firing at their
(11:44):
limbs with a shotgun. And insurance agents in the region
we're going wild. Dad's stories about a guy who said
he was aiming to shoot a hawk and he took
off his own hands somehow with his gun farmer who
saw his foot and thought it was a squirrel. Sorry,
I know, I feel bad for laughing, but yeah, it's
(12:07):
like that one's not true, right, he gotta have the
cover story, right, And I mean, who are we, as
meager insurance adjusters to question the veracity of this tale?
Confirm It's like, I gotta ask about the guy shooting
the hawk though, because we're talking about a shotgun, not
(12:28):
a small gun. Is he firing with one hand? How
does he shoot his own a hand off? Like it
wasn't a misfire on his hand to frame the shot right,
It was like doing it like a director where he
kind of had it out the teacher of the little
l shape, you know, and he was using it as
sort of a makeshift site, and then he put it
right in front of the barrel and blasted is probably
thumb and four finger off. First of all, you know
(12:49):
shoot hawks with a shotgun? Do you that's a bit
more of a precision tool. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I
would think you would. That would require a longer range weapon.
I think of a shotgun is more of a close
range weapon. It stuff. It depends on what kind of
shot you're putting in it, you know. But also also, yeah,
this here's the other factor that makes these stories sketchy
(13:11):
and suss to insurance agents. It turns out that many
of the people who are reporting these things had also
taken out multiple specific types of insurance policies, sometimes just
days or get this, hours before the injury occurred. So
I have had a long day filing my insurance claims
(13:33):
and I was tired, and I thought my foot was
a squirrel. So well, I mean that that's like, that's
the biggest red flag in the insurance industry. And this
is me complete insurance, you know, outsider. But you know,
if someone takes out a policy on their wife and
then the wife turns up dead, that is going to
be the suspect, the first person that is looked at
(13:56):
for committing this crime. If someone takes out kind of policy,
you know, like a like a particular I mean, you know,
you you we We just recently had to re up
our work insurance plan and there are a lot of
pages in those e documents that talk about things like
limb and like very specifics that a lot of us
just kind of gloss over. But the fine people of
(14:18):
Vernon would not have glossed over those pages. They would
have zeroed in on those pages and taken out as
much as they could. Because if you pay in US
or you check that box, you can ensure your if
they're like your livelihood right, you can ensure your limbs
for more than just a standard policy. Isn't that right, guys,
It is absolutely right. You can also, I mean there's
any number of like long term disability things you can do,
(14:40):
unintentional death or accidental like injuries that make you unable
to work. Uh, it's a business for sure, you know.
And they you're right, they did read these things carefully.
The way that privatized insurance works. For anybody who lives
in a in a first world country with first world healthcare,
(15:00):
you might need to understand how US healthcare works. It's
it's a business that has calculated for profit, not for
the health of the customers. It's a product that becomes
more expensive when you use it. So the first thing
that happens. We see this everywhere in the US for
other kinds of insurance, like your zip code will affect
(15:21):
how much your car insurance is, for example, because they'll
look at how many accidents occur in that zip code.
And these folks were facing mounting insurance premiums, which is
the money you have to pay for insurance. Because they
were like, hey, thanks for you know, working with United
Blue of Florida or whatever your monthly cost for this
(15:42):
long term disability, dismemberment insurance or whatever. It's gonna be
a little higher because a lot of people in your
neck in the woods are losing stuff. Yeah, it's the
same reason that, like, if you moved to a big
city from like a more rural area or a smaller town,
your car insurance will go up. Why because you're in
a situation where you're much more likely to get into
a car accident or be hits, you know, because there's
(16:05):
just the odds go up when there's more cars in play,
and when you know you're driving in narrower streets and
like more kind of tricky conditions. Right, it's the same
exact deal. Your insurance premium goes up by virtue of
where you are, based on the likelihood of a particular
event to happen there. And since Vernon at this point
I believe was reporting what has it been, something insane
(16:27):
like two thirds of the dismemberment reports or insurance claims
in the whole United States. Yeah, I do have. That
was the Panhandle, Hanhandle. That's that's even that's even crazier.
I mean, that's just one little sliver of Florida, which
is quite a large state that makes up a big
chunk of the of the East Coast. So yeah, these
insurance companies were understandably losing their ship and starting to
(16:50):
be like, you know what, I don't think we're gonna
start inste I don't think we're gonna ensure people that
live in this part of the country anymore. Yeah, And
there were there were other things that were kind of
messing with that average. One guy, a guy named Murray
Armstrong who was working for Liberty National. He said that
(17:14):
he found a customer who took out insurance with twenty
eight to thirty eight different companies before he lost his
left foot. Yeah. There was a point made in a
fabulous article from our pals at Mental Flaw Snub City Vernon,
Florida's decade long insurance scam by Brooks Hayes that said,
at the height of this, uh, this grift, it was
(17:35):
making some people millionaires. Yeah. Yeah, at least we know
that by the nineteen sixties, at least fifty residents had
gotten in on this strategy and they were getting payments
of anything from five thousand to three hundred thousand dollars.
And even though five thousand was a lot more back
then and purchasing power, that still seems like not enough
(17:59):
my me to lose a body part permanently, because you
think about what would you how you would handle the
rest of your life, prosthetics, walking, manipulating tools. These people
were desperate, and we're talking about it with some levity
just because the stories, the cover stories in particular, sounds
so hilarious. But these were very serious times, and you know,
(18:23):
like you said no, The insurance companies quickly rocked the trend,
and before long they started being much more skeptical. I
believe they they took some of these folks to court
for their claims. They would say, Okay, we don't believe you, right,
we saw a picture of a squirrel next to a
picture of a foot shoe on and shoe off, and
(18:46):
they look different, So we'll see you in court. But
the problem was, now, if you're going to a jury trial,
you have to convince a jury, not that the cover
story is ridiculous, but you have to convince the jury
that some one would knowingly take a firearm true themselves
for a couple grands. Yeah, I mean, what what naive
(19:08):
summer children we were back in those days, you know,
I mean, I think now this would not be hard
to convince just about anybody of you know, we know
people are capable of really insane, depraved acts, you know,
but even as as recently as the fifties and sixties,
we were like, oh no, you couldn't convince the jury
of of their peers. And this was you know, in
(19:29):
presumably in the same region that anyone would would do
this on purpose. No one could be that desperate, uh, people,
I mean, we know that like a rabbit or like
like an animal in a trap will gnaw off its
own leg to get out of the trap. What more
of a trap is there than financial destitution. That's a
very good point. Yeah, And this is like, unless you
(19:52):
are experiencing that kind of hardship, it can be difficult
for people to put themselves emotionally mentally in that situation.
Of all the people who went to court, not one,
not one amputee in Vernon, Florida or the surrounding area
ever got convicted of fraud. Like every time they went
(20:13):
to a jury trial. The insurance companies lost, and so
they changed their strategy as well. They got together and
they hired a guy named John Joseph Jingles kidding. His
name is John Joseph Heally, and he goes to Vernon,
I love this kind insurance Colombo type figures, he's like
(20:34):
our hero coming into kind of like crack the case. Yeah,
like Edward Norton's character in a Fight Club. Right, he
was an insurance investigator. That's right. So here's our fight
club guy Colombo in Fight Club. That's John Joseph Healely.
He goes to town, he's their man on the ground
and he says, yeah, I am Well, we'll give you
(20:56):
the actual quote. It was the way he reports back
to the companies. He says, to sit in your car
on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of
nub City. He called it this in the official report,
watching anywhere from eight to a dozen. This is his word,
not ours. Cripples walking along the street gives the place
a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere. Yeah, it sure does. And this
(21:18):
investigation is laid out pretty extensively and accidentally on purpose,
making of a personal injury. Underworld in America, Uh Mouthful
of a title booked by Ken Dornstein, came out in
nine and Dornstein says that Healy did not appear to
think very highly of the town of Vernon. First of all,
(21:40):
he's coming in there being pretty much convinced that there's
a scam going on. He just has to find proof.
He refers to these people pretty derisively in that quote
that you just did for us Ben with the term
now that would be considered pretty off. Uh. And he
remarked um that he he believed that one of the
and this could well be true, but he's saying it
obviously with a bit of a there's an inherent sneer
(22:02):
in this. To me that one of the most popular
pastimes in Vernon was for folks to gather in the
town square to quote watch the local stray Mutt's mate. Wow. Okay,
so there's there's a prejudice here, right, and let's not
forget what he said was the number one That's right,
that would have been the second most popular pastime, the
(22:22):
number one being quote self mutilation for cash. So maybe
not our hero of the story, No, No, he's definitely.
He's definitely like a hard nosed antagonist right at best,
and anti hero. But there's a story with very few heroes. Yeah,
I mean, I feel for the plight of the people
(22:43):
of Vernon, but also like, wow, this is Cormac McCarthy production.
Almost you know what I mean like the guy who
wrote the road would write this kind of story. So
he he says furthermore, you can also tell that these
injuries are premeditated because Healy and his opinion, believes that
people are removing the limb they need least, so he
(23:07):
doesn't see a lot of cases of right handed people
removing their right hand. A lot of left hands go missing,
and there are more left hands and right hands because
more people are going to be right handed in a
random population. And you can certainly argue that again, I'm
no limb lawyer here with that's circumstantial, right like that
there's no inherent calculus involved in that would be hard
to prove that intense on a one on one case. Yeah,
(23:29):
exactly exactly could prove it as a trend, but again
it's not a huge population, so it might be hard
to to do or maybe not. Anyway, point is, they
would oftentimes remove a left limb up top and a
right limb down low, because people would be doing multiple amputations,
taking out multiple policies. That way, the person could walk
with a crutch, you know, because they would be like
(23:52):
they would have the opposite. They would put the crutch
under the one arm that wasn't amputated and then have
the good leg on the opposite side yep. Yeah. Or
as he also found, you could maybe learn about someone's
injury in relation to their livelihood. He said, if someone
had like an office job, they'll be more likely to
take off a leg or a foot because they'll sit
(24:14):
down for work. And he pointed out that a lot
of white collar folks were doing this as well. A
guy who owned a car dealership, so a pretty successful
guy was found to have taken out one of his
own eyes because he could use the four hundred thousand
dollar insurance payment to buy a ranch. Now, all of
this stuff is super grizzly. Obviously, sawing off your own
(24:37):
limb is gnarly. But to me, I stuff, especially self
inflicted I stuff, is one of the gnarliest things in
light horror movies, like I remember the scene and uh,
then those spoilers. You can't really spoil a twenty year
old movie. But in Event Horizon, you know, remember the
part I'm talking about the spaceship and as the spaceship
(24:59):
goes into goes to hell, and you see these videos
that are like blurry, crazy good videos of like the
previous crew like clawing their own eyes out. That always
gives me the heebie g. I love it. It is
a slept on film because also I remember not to
get too far off the rail here, But when that
movie came out, the way it was promoted just made
(25:21):
it seem like a run of the mill kind of
sci fi adventure thriller maybe, And it was pure hell raiser. Man.
It was like way above my pay grade at the
age that I was when I saw that in the theater.
It's got surgery stuff, it's gotten nasty stuff. Yeah, it's
one of my favorite, like my favorite unofficial HP Lovecraft movies.
(25:44):
This is around the same era that actor was it,
Sam Neil says, Sam Neil did some weird madness. Yeah,
he did those around the same era. Yes, so event
Horizon great. I stuff weird. I actually I can't remember
if I told you this. I um, I went through
a period where I was trying to see if I
(26:06):
could just voluntarily donate one of my eyes. Uh oh,
well it's a weird ben. Well, it's a thing that
it's a thing that I is like thought experiment kind
of like people you were really wanting to do this,
you just wanted to find out if it was possible. Conceptually,
I was on the fence. I would I think that
(26:27):
like giving somebody the gift of site would be really cool. Also,
I think I would look cool with an eyepatch. So
it's not entirely well thinks I've seen you with an
eyepatch before. Ben, there was a time where you were
just going out with an eyepatch for fun. I'm not
talking about it and just seeing if people would bring
it up. But also, Ben, they've made leaps and bounds
and glass eye technology. I'm sure you could get a
(26:48):
convincing you know, prosthetics. Also, Ben, didn't you just have
surgery on your eyes? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I don't want
a premium dude. That was I mean, they can have
my eyes, they can't take your. No, No, just one
you know and you it's like how you cleaned up
a car yourself. That's the point. Um, I totally forget folks.
(27:08):
That is a true story, Noel, blast from the past.
That was one of the one of my social experiments.
I remember, that's the reason you good friends. Nolan is
one of the only people who asked me about it. No,
No was like, well, I think I think people mostly
would assume that you'd had some sort of procedure or
maybe the shingles or something like that, and they didn't
(27:29):
want to be rude. But I knew you well enough
to be like, what's up, man, I was so excited
I leaned in, Max, you would have enjoyed this. I
was so excited because I leaned in, and I remember, like,
I don't think I messed with it quite at that
point where I leaned in and told Noel. Uh, I
was like, dude, you can just start wearing these. No
one will ask you about it. It's amazing. And uh no,
(27:51):
if I recalled correctly, your spots was okay, but why yeah,
And I just envisioned Ben turns and his bumps into
a wall if he has no depth reception, that's all
part of the bit, that's all part of the all
part of the thing. But in that case, that social
experiment aside. And this is, by the way, uh, this
was an exercise in persona changes or disguises. This was
(28:16):
not meant in any way to mock site or lack
of sightedness. And I think we need to we need
to say that. But I was interested in, um seeing
if I can voluntarily donate a cornea. Uh, it is
I think a gray area unless you know somebody, right,
unless it's like you're doing this for your sibling or something.
You're just randomly giving away an eye. People look at
(28:38):
you a scans the same way that insurance agents, oh
we got there, looked askance at these people in the city,
because this is if you're purposely injuring yourself. It turns
out that is a fairly common type of insurance fraud.
And heally in in the book you had mentioned earlier, No,
(29:01):
he is saying that rings of these people can occur,
like people will collaborate. Sometimes it's a close knit family
or community, and then other times there is just a
region where people catch on to this idea, and that
seemed to be the case with nub City. And he
was like, look, there are a lot of accidents occurring
(29:22):
in the same place in a short period of time.
He says, here's what happens. One guy gets away with it,
meaning self injury fraud. He tells a friend about it
after he collects and his friend says, that's a cool idea,
But his friend tries to kind of one up it
and takes out even even bigger insurance policy right up there, Annie,
(29:43):
as as they say, and let's not forget there's only
about five residents of this town at the time, and
only about a dozen or so were involved in this,
but many of them did it multiple times again, causing
these insurance premiums just go through the roof. And as
Heale say, I solved it pretty quickly this quote. Everyone
already knew about the town, and the witness to the
(30:05):
injury was a guy who had witnessed another phony accident.
There were lots of holes in his story, so essentially
this came crashing to a halt. Nothing lasts forever, even
something is incredible as what The New York Times described
a three year orgy of self maiming. Yes, I love Yeah,
(30:26):
that's the event Horizon right there of self maiming. Yeah,
we have to watch of the Horizon. Uh. Yes, great
Christmas movie, Yeah, which is insane, Sam Neil, If you're okay,
I think and it's got a cult status for sure,
but I think it even did okay in the theater.
It's got a cliffhanger, it's got it's got everything I
(30:47):
want in his story, weird power, super Okay. I'm not
turning this into it and it is round tomatoes right, absurd,
absolutely blasphemy. That doesn't make any sense. People just didn't
get it. You know's got Hulu Premium. We can watch
it right now. I've got Hulu Premium and the episode
right now. Max. We don't have time. We've got to
get to the stunning conclusion of this, because, like we said,
(31:08):
nothing lasts forever. This, uh, the proverbial Aquimini curtain was
closed on this chapter in Vernon's history, but not before
it became so notorious because to to the the investigator's point,
this is like an open secret. At this point right
(31:30):
in the region everybody knew was called nub City. You
don't get a nickname like that for nothing. Um and
words spread to one of my favorite I think, probably
one of the most famous documentary filmmakers in the world,
a guy named Errol Morris, who at this point was
early in his career, in his twenties. I think he
was really just getting started as a documentary filmmaker. He's
(31:52):
known for films like The Thin Blue Line, Um The
Fog of War. Also, his son Hamilton Morris, has that show,
Hamilton's Pharmacopeia. Yeah, iceory. He like takes all the weird
drugs and stuff. He's a He's an odd character, but
anyway comes from a neat line of creative of folks
and um. Errol Morris caught wind of what was going
(32:13):
on down in Vernon, down in nub City. He saw
a little blurb in a newspaper about a place called
nub City and it it made him raise his eyebrows.
Want to check it out? Yeah? Yeah. He was about
twenty years old. Sorry, he was in his twenties at
the time. And he had heard about this in the
(32:33):
fall of nineteen seventy six when he came across a
newspaper clipping that caught his interests just like you said,
so he said, you know what, I'm gonna go down.
I'm gonna make a film about what's happening in nub City.
He's read this piece in the New York Times Sunday
magazine and it's the Heally piece where Heally is talking
(32:56):
about the worst cases in his career and he says, Wow,
there's this self mutilation in this small town in northwest Florida.
And he says, I've got to find out more. He
visits and speaks with John J. Healy, who doesn't, by
the way, say the specific name of the town in
(33:18):
the article. He uses the nickname nub City. And eventually
this guy heally tells Errol Morris, all right, the real
name of this place, if you must know, is Vernon, Florida.
But you can't go don't go there. It's not the
kind of place you want to be snooping around. It's
(33:39):
it's got a bad vibe. And so the director promptly
ignores everything heally says and travels down to Vernon. He lives,
He lives in the area, and he spends a year
making this film. Um well, the focus of his film
shifted right, like he was initially going to make a
(33:59):
film specifically about this town where folks blow or saw
or hack or maame their limbs off to collect insurance money.
So this would have been in the late seventies, early eighties,
So this would have been, you know, a couple of
generations removed from like the peak of this practice, you know,
which was taking place in the fifties and sixties. So
we would have had anyone that was still around who
(34:20):
was one of the nub clubbers would have been quite
old at this time, or it would have been like
their descendants, you know. And obviously this is not a
cam that was running anymore. This is a part of
the history of the town that probably some folks you know,
who were part of that history wouldn't really want out there,
especially by some outside or New York City socialized intellectual
(34:42):
filmmaker documentarian. What you're doing with that camera. We can
say that because we're from the South, but can but
we live or we live here at least, But so Yeah,
he maintains that he loved, loved, loved the people of Verdon,
But then he also points out these strange quotes. Uh.
(35:07):
One sheriff told him. This is from Errol himself, when
sheriff said, down here, we don't have motors, we have
disappearances and these people this is great. Yeah. And then
like I said, um he uh, he initially pursued that angle. Um,
(35:27):
And he tells it himself that you can read in
this mental Flass article that we cited earlier. He knocks
on the door of a double amputeam man who was
missing an arm and a lay on opposite sides of
the body minds you, which he refers to as the
preferred technique so that you could use a crutch like
we were saying. And then he goes quote his buff
son in law, a marine beat me up. I decided
(35:49):
whatever I was doing was really really stupid and dangerous.
He wasn't sent to the hospital, thankfully, but he did
change the folks of the film. And you can now
check this out. It's a documentary from ninety any one
called Vernon, Florida, and it focuses more because you know,
you've got to imagine a town where people are compelled
to like blow their limbs off or hack their limbs off.
A gotta be some characters in there. And what Errol
(36:12):
Morris does in the film Vernon Florida's highlights some of
those characters, uh, including like uh one guy who's like
a really avid turkey hunter to doing all these like
turkey calls and stuff. And there's like another guy who's
like a weird kind of tap dancer or something that
they're they're all it's very gummo, kind of like the
Harmony Kouran movie Gummo, but like a real documentary. Yeah yeah,
(36:35):
And this refocus is move of self preservation, right, and
it's still is a very strong film. It premiers at
the New York Film Festival, and people are over the
moon for it, and Morris himself, well, I think was
was very affected by the poverty he saw and very
(36:57):
inspired by this self reliance he saw, and he is
still like as we record now, he's still apparently is
thinking about returning to the original story, the story of
what Healy called nub City. And with this we we
kind of we kind of leave it there. The question
(37:19):
becomes something for everybody listening in the audience today. Obviously
we mean no disrespect to the people of Florida, but
this is like an ethical question of quandary, what would
you do? And we can't assume, you know that every
person who did this committed this kind of fraud, was
(37:40):
doing it because they wanted extra fun money. Some people
may have been doing it entirely because they couldn't get
a job and they had to feed their family. You know.
I mean we talked, I made the analogy of an
animal caught in a trap knowing it's you know, limb off.
I mean, these these these towns, when they're economically depressed
in that way, and your your choices to uproot your
(38:00):
whole family maybe been living there for generations or to
get clever, you know, or do something desperate. Um. There
is a really interesting coda to this story. There is
a an incident that happened in Vernon that actually made
the national news way way separated from this whole nub
city business. In ninety four, there was a bloody, really
(38:21):
gnarly brawl that broke out at a very run of
the Mills City council meeting where they were discussing the
possibility of firing the town's only policeman. And it's caught
on film. You can see this reporter from Panama City
from the network w m b B was there and
like there's screaming and punching and bloody noses and like
(38:41):
men beating up women and like it's it's a real melee.
But there's a very interesting detail that is almost like
the creepy closing of a movie where you see this
detail and like it's like kind of the like cherry
on top. Yeah, this is a dust up, it's an altercation.
It was filmed by a reporter out of Panama City.
(39:03):
In the video, you see a city councilwoman Marvel Armstrong
and her son Coleman fighting and you see a man
who is missing one hand. That is uh Marvelle's husband J. C. Armstrong.
And there's there's a thing where a reporter asked councilwoman
(39:23):
Armstrong how her husband lost his hand, and she says,
I think you know, so that's that is. That's not
the end of the movie, pad role credits because we
are extremely positive people, and we we always try to
end on like a less heavy note. So we can
(39:47):
at least no, in a positive note, we can say
that Vernon, Florida, does have a specialty hamburger as an
official town burger. There's that Maybe that's what we had
it good? What's what's special? You like spicy? Do you? Okay?
It is covered in Cajun seasoning and fried halapenos, and
(40:10):
it's apparently it's very very hot, and it has its
own theme song, slash, rhyme or jingle. This is according
to Tampa Bay dot Com. Oh they should know if
anyone burn and Vernon, Oh what a treat with its
onions and peppers stacked up so neat Okay, yeah, you
know kinking. No better way to end an episode of
(40:33):
ridiculous history than with a ridiculous rhyme about a burd
that's true. I know, I feel like we could freestyle
off that one. Stacked up so neat Max dropped the beat, right, Uh,
don't saw off your hands and feet? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?
Or do yeah, It's entirely up to you. Even though
the money feels so sweet, don't saw off your hands
(40:54):
and feet. Wait beep? The beep is part of the rhyme. Okay,
And you gotta wonder too, has it been enough time?
Has enough time passed that in this kind of grift
could pop up in some other rural pocket of the
United States? Let us know? Yeah, yeah, I think. Let
us know. You can find us on our community page,
(41:14):
Ridiculous Historians. We love it. We love the questions, We
love the conversations that we see there. You can also
find us on social media, not just as a show
but as individuals. If you wish, you may find me.
I am on Instagram pretty much exclusively at how now
Noel Brown. If you want to tweet at me, I
don't really look at it very often, but I am
at embryonical on the twitters. How bet you've been bowling? Well,
(41:37):
thank you for asking, Mr Biel Brown. You can get
a behind the scenes look at the research I'm doing
my various misadventures at Ben Bolan on Instagram, bo w
l I n or at Ben Bowland h s W
on Twitter, and Word on the Street is our very
own super producer. Mr. Max Williams is also to be
(41:57):
found on the tubes of the Internet. Yes, I am
hiding out on Twitter. I don't say much, but I
am always around and I'm at at L underscore Max
Williams about a hot sports takes on their huh yeah,
and a couple of star trek ones. No, actually, Ben,
I changed that handle. Oh in the World Series, Michigan's
in the college football Playoff. Okay, I'm a passionate sports
(42:19):
fan again. All right, Oh well that's awesome, man, I'm glad.
Oh it's gonna break my heart to be miserable. I'm
gonna be terrible in the New year. Probably ah. Yes,
speaking speaking of terrible, terrible things. You can also you
can also find our good pal slash Nemessies the Quister
a k. H. Jonathan Strickland on the Internet, and if
(42:41):
you do find him, ask him when he's gonna be
on Ridiculous History again. Is that too much or we
like pranking? Him at this point. I don't know. I
think we just haven't really followed up. Yeah, it's totally
it is. These things do actually go peak behind the curtain.
These things do typically go to the proper channels. He
doesn't just a zoom, mom, Sorry to demystify the whole
(43:01):
quister bit. Wow, I mean I could, I could saw
in him right now. I me to say it's the same. No, no, okay, yeah, no, thanks,
thanks of course to him, the quister. Thanks also at
Alex Williams, who composed our amazing soundtrack. Thanks to you,
Max Williams, son of Alex, no, brother of Alex, blood
of Alex. How about that? Um Eve's Jeff Code and
(43:23):
Christophrastiot is here in spirit? Who else, my mom? Yeah,
the people of Vernon, Florida. I hope they're doing okay
gay bluesier. And I'll say it, the people who work
in those levels of the insurance industry. It can be
often a thankless job. So don't let your work to
find you. Uh, probably really erodes your trust and humanity.
(43:45):
But it's also a very despicable profession. So maybe I
don't no, no, no, not despicable profession in industry it's
got a certain amount of hick to it, and I
think even people that work within it probably are aware
of that. So no offense meant to anyone working in insurance,
and stay tuned for our next episode on something called
a Little Ice Age. We hope you're having a wonderful
(44:08):
last week of the year from We'll see you next Stempbooks.
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