Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Welson. It's a History Mystery Day. Yay.
These are fun. This is the thing that some people
(00:24):
use this like a Halloween episode. That doesn't feel right
to me. I'll talk about why. In nineteen forty four, though,
a small town in Illinois was gripped with fear that
there was a person spraying a toxic gas into their
homes as they slept. And while there have been several
explanations of what exactly was going on, there is not
any one explanation that's recognized or accepted as the truth.
(00:47):
So it will stay a mystery. But the mystery perpetrator,
if there was one, got a lot of nicknames in
the press, including the gas Fiend, the thin Man of Mattoon,
the Mad Phantom, the mad Gasser, the Anesthetist Prowler, and
the screwball Chemist, among others. And the thing that's really
fascinating about this entire thing to me is that it
(01:08):
is a story that plays out in a very condensed timeline.
It all happened over the course of just ten days.
So to tell this story, we're mostly going to pull
apart the news coverage of it and then look at
the various explanations that were given both at the time
and in more recent history. So Mattoon, Illinois was a
(01:28):
relatively small community in nineteen forty four. It had a
population of about eighteen thousand people that had been founded
in eighteen fifty five as a railroad community at the
place where Illinois Central and the Terre Hate and Alton
railroads crossed. It was named for railroad executive William B. Mattoon,
(01:49):
and as it developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
it continued to be an important shipping center. During the
Second World War, the town also became an oil center.
There were drilling fields opening just outside of the town.
As we mentioned in the intro, in the fall of
nineteen forty four, the town of Mattoon, Illinois was the
site of a series of very strange reports over the
(02:13):
course of a couple of weeks that September, multiple households
claimed that they had awakened in the night to an
odd odor described by some as sickly sweet, and then
they experienced some odd symptoms like nausea and limnumbness. The
first report was on the front page of the Mattoon
Journal Gazette on September second, nineteen forty four. Under the
(02:36):
headline anesthetic prowler on the loose, it stated quote, A
prowler who used some kind of anesthetic or gas to
knock out his victims was on the loose in Mattoon
Friday night. This first article featured the account of Aileen Kearney,
who was at home with her daughter Dorothy Ellen and
other family members while her husband Bert was at work
(03:00):
a taxi. Eleen's statement to the paper was this quote.
It was shortly after eleven o'clock Friday night when I
went to bed, taking with me my daughter Dorothy. My sister,
missus Edgar Reedy, was in the living room with the
home and my daughter Carol Too and Missus Reedy's son,
Roger Too, were in another part of the house. I
first noticed a sickening, sweet odor in the bedroom, but
(03:23):
at the time I thought it might be from flowers
outside the window. However, the odor grew stronger and I
began to feel a paralysis of my legs and lower body.
I grew frightened and screamed for Martha missus Reedy. When
Martha Reedy got into the room, she also noticed the odor,
and it seemed to come from outside through an open window.
(03:45):
Reedy called Earl Robinson, the next door neighbor, and Earl
called police. Both Robinson and police searched the Kearney's property.
They found nothing. Bert Kearney was contacted. He immediately went home.
Mister Kearney got there around twelve thirty am, and as
he pulled up, he saw quote a man at the
window wearing dark clothes and a tight fitting cap. Bert
(04:09):
Kearney chased this man, who evaded him, and then he
called the police, but the police could not find anyone
matching the description when they searched that neighborhood. The Kearney's
and the Readys left the house and stayed with another relative.
Helen Kearney's symptoms subsided pretty quickly. Within thirty minutes of
the first onset. Their daughter Dorothy, was totally fine by
(04:32):
the morning. That first report offered up an assortment of
theories about what had happened exactly and what the motive
may have been for someone to target the Kearney home.
The guesses as to the nature of the gas included
it possibly being chloroform or ether, and the police thought
it was probably sprayed into the room quote in a
(04:52):
fine mist. The paper also stated that Missus Kearney and
Missus Reedy had been counting quote considerable sums of money
that evening in a location in the house which could
be seen from the street. I don't know about you,
but that seemed really odd to me, but it was
offered as a possible motive. But it turned out the
keirne Ham was not actually the first one to have
(05:15):
experienced this odd smell accompanied by temporary limb paralysis. The
Kearneys were just the first ones who went to the press.
On September fifth, the Journal Gazette ran a story titled
Anesthetic Prowler covers City. This opened with quote, the scope
of the activities of Mattoon's Anesthetic Prowler ranges across the
(05:36):
entire city. It was disclosed today as four more cases,
including one several months old, were brought to light. This
account listed as the newly accounted for victims Urban Raife
and his family and Lyssa's home address of eighteen seventeen
Grant Avenue, missus George Ryder and her two children, Joe
and Anne Marie, and a woman and children who lived
(05:59):
near of writers whose names were withheld. It also mentions
Missus Olive Brown and her daughter, Miss Chrissy, who had
a similar experience several months earlier. The night before the
Kearney home smelled the mystery smell, the RAFs had a
very similar scenario play out at their home. According to
the newspaper quote, mister Raefe said today he and his
(06:22):
wife were made sick by the fumes, which apparently poured
through a bedroom window at their home. He said he
awoke about three o'clock in the morning and felt ill
and as if he were paralyzed. This article goes on
to quote Urban Reef directly saying, quote, there was a
peculiar heavy odor, and I at first thought it was gas.
I asked my wife if she had left the gas
(06:44):
stove turned on, but she hadn't. We both had the
same feeling of paralysis and were ill for approximately one
and a half hours. Persons visiting us, who slept in
another part of the house got none of the fumes
and were not affected in any way. Missus Ran and
her family were apparently affected the same night as the
Kearney home, reported awakening to this sickening, sweet smell that
(07:08):
temporarily impacted their mobility. The story, as it was pieced
together by the paper was that after the perpetrator had
been scared away from the Kearney house, he went to
the Rider home. Missus Ryder noticed the smell in the night,
and when her husband, who worked nights, got home in
the morning, she told him she had smelled something that
(07:29):
did not smell like chloroform, but which had made her
light headed. It's not established why she would know what
chloroform smelled like. The third home in that article, the
one that was not disclosed by name in the write up,
reported more severe reactions. When the woman of the house
was awakened by the smell, she discovered that her children
were quote ill and vomiting. Olive Brown told the paper
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that when she experienced the smell and its effects, she
didn't tell anyone because quote, it seemed so fantastic, But
once she saw the other reports that were so similar
to hers, she shared that she and her daughter, while
sleeping in separate rooms, had almost identical stories to that
of ailing Kearney. The police had been putting together a
(08:16):
theory based on the Kearney incident when the other victims
came forward, and that, along with two sightings of prowlers,
according to the police, that all changed the case. Two
days later, the Times Tribune of Scranton, Pennsylvania ran a
short piece that said that the quote anesthetic prowler who
sprays a sickeningly sweet gas through the screens of bedroom
(08:37):
windows was believed by police to have fled the excited
community of eighteen thousand. The authorities came to that conclusion,
at least, according to the paper, because they had searched
the town and had quote failed to reveal a trace
of the loan suspect. That article also mentions that the
prowler had not entered any homes and that there was
no solid theory on motive. Well, pause for a sponsor break,
(09:01):
and when we come back, we'll talk about another article
that came out the same day but painted a very
different picture. So that article that we talked about before
the break is wildly different in tone from another that
(09:23):
appeared on the same day, September seventh, in the Chicago Tribune.
That second article was titled intensify hunt for paralysis gas
prowler Matoon orders police on twenty four hour watch. Why
was the reporting so different, It's unclear, but it seems
like the first story was filed before a new development
(09:44):
in the case that took place on September sixth, because
that night, a Mattoon couple, Carl and Beulah Cords, found
a strange cloth on their porch, presumably not thinking it
could be related to the gas spray that had been
in the news. Missus Corda's picked up the rag and
sniffed it. What actually happened to her when she did
(10:04):
this is reported with varying degrees of severity depending on
which paper you read. In the Evening World Harald of Omaha, Nebraska,
it was stated that missus Corda's quote suffered burns about
the lips and throat when she sniffed a rag that
she found on her porch. The Chicago Tribune gave more details,
stating Quote Corda's reported to police that he and his
(10:25):
wife returned to their homes last night about ten o'clock
and entered the house by the back door. Missus Cordoes
opened the front door and noticed a large white cloth
lying on the porch, she smelled the cloth and at
once became violently ill. Her lips and face became swollen
and inflamed, and she was unable to speak. This condition
persisted for two hours. There are also accounts that say
(10:47):
she was hospitalized, but not all of them say that
so unclear. So, regardless of the severity of Beula Cordas's symptoms,
there still was no sign of an actual person who
may have left this cloth behind. But Carl and Bula
Courtis did find two other things, either on the porch
(11:07):
or close to it on the lawn. There was a
skeleton key and an empty lipstick tube. Reports suggested that
the perpetrator had quote dropped these articles in flight. Once
the Courtis home became part of the story, the Mattoon
Police asked the Illinois Department of Public Safety for help
with the case. I have to admit that I always
(11:30):
wonder if a random bird or something had not dropped
those like the presumption that someone dropped it while fleeing. Yes,
just that it's a presumption, and it's reported as though
this must be what happened. It's the fact complination that's
some weird pair of items for a person to just
have to drop in flight. Yes. And as things played
(11:54):
out and more and more reports were made, people around
the country and even around the world in some cases,
became more and more fascinated with this story, and people
in Mattoon started to get more and more scared. On Friday,
September eighth, a Long Beach, California paper, The Independent, reported
that quote, insomnia in Mattoon tonight was easily understandable. The
(12:17):
paper described how the town had gone into a total
state of lockdown, mentioning that quote an open first floor
bedroom window was harder to find than a pair of nylons.
Just in case you need a refresher. That quip was
referencing the fact that because of the war, all nylon
was allocated for things like parachutes, and people who would
normally where nylons had to go without. Residents of Matune, though,
(12:40):
were so frightened about this whole thing that they started
banding together in patrol groups. No one stayed home alone,
and groups of friends worked out arrangements to all stay
together in each other's homes at night. And articles appeared
in the Times Herald of Port Huron, Michigan on September ninth,
titled Madman of Meta Tune. Two more are victims of
(13:02):
Phantom Prowler. This particular article really makes clear how scared
and frustrated people were starting to feel. It mentions that
one of the recent victims who chose to remain unnamed publicly,
was a school principle and a woman, so it seems
like it would have been pretty easy to figure out
who that was for members of the community. But the
(13:24):
story transitions to say that the high school laboratory in
town was missing a box of chemicals and that police
were trying to trace it to figure out where it went.
Heads up that the quote that I'm about to read
villainizes mental illness, but it shows that the public was
starting to see the perpetrator almost as a caricature. This
article read quote school officials said a student might have
(13:48):
taken the chemicals, or they might be in the possession
of a former teacher. Authorities believe that anesthetic is being
produced by an insane person with a knowledge of chemistry,
perhaps in a weird laboratory in his home. According to
The Times, Harold State's Attorney William Kidwell was urging the
Office of Civilian Defense to quote organize a core of
(14:09):
three hundred persons to patrol the streets after dark. On
September twelfth, the Palladium Item of Richmond, Indiana ran a
story about the gasser under the headline wave of hysteria
hits Mattoon Police Watch amateur Chemist. So this sense of
the idea that this entire thing was mass hysteria, but
it also clearly states that there was a person of interest.
(14:34):
It seems that the fact that there was a suspect
has gotten lost or ignored over the years, because many
stories about the Mattoon gasings that have been written over
the last eight decades make it seem like everyone was
just kind of scratching their heads or even engaging in
the thinking that some sort of supernatural being might be
responsible an unidentifiable phantom and no possible explanation or suspect,
(14:57):
of course, is a lot more compelling. We're going to
come back to that person of interest. But the idea
that what was happening in Mattoon was a hoax or
mass hysteria was starting to be mentioned more and more
by news outlets. As Mattoon newspapers were starting to question
just why the police had virtually no leads. Others started
(15:18):
to wonder if everyone in Matuon was having a collective panic.
On September fourteenth, Time magazine featured the story of Mattoon's
strange gas events, opening with quote, the mad anesthetist of Mattoon, Illinois,
population seventeen thousand, five hundred is a tall, thin man
who wears a black skull cap and carries an instrument
(15:39):
not unlike a flit gun. He moves through the night
as nimbly and secretly as a cat, squirting a Swedish
gas through the bedroom windows. His victims cough, awaken with
burning throats and find themselves successively afflicted with one nausea,
two a temporary paralysis, and three a desire to describe
their experiences in the minutest detail. This latter result often
(16:04):
enables them to overcome their symptoms with startling dispatch. As
that opening paragraph suggests, this write up finds the idea
of a mad gasser running around a town pretty dubious.
It notes that no one has seen this person. It
mentions that quote Mattoon's ten policemen, who had been ignoring
the arch criminal now sallied forth that night, seeking they
(16:28):
knew not what, and not finding it. Time, even skewers
the journalists from Chicago who made their way to Mattune
to write sensationalized articles about the terrifying attacker who remains
so mysterious. As the idea of people simply being swept
up in their own fear started to circulate more widely,
(16:48):
the police were still getting pressure, and Police Chief c.
Eugene Cole, along with Captain Harry Curtis of the State
Highway Patrol, issued a statement two days before that time
article Pup, which for some people seemed like it kind
of came out a left field. On September thirteenth, the
Palladium Item reported that Police Chief Coal said that the
(17:09):
excitement that came from all the reports of a gaser
on the loose was quote a mistake from beginning to end.
Cole told the press that the culprit was no man
skulking about the Mattoon streets, but a nearby plant, the
Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company. According to Harry Curtis, the
entire affair was quote a perfect example of the working
(17:32):
of mass psychology, in which rumors of a gas spraying prowler,
spread by a community whispering campaign, blossomed into mass hysteria.
Any instances where people reported they had seen a prowler
were dismissed simply as coincidence. The chemical that caused the
issue was, according to Coal and Curtis, carbon tetrachloride, and
(17:54):
that was something Atlas they said was using in its
war work. Carbon tetrachloride is not a naturally occurring chemical.
It has to be manufactured. It's a clear liquid with
a rapid rate of evaporation, It has a sweet smell,
and it is toxic, so much so that its use,
which was normally in things like pesticide, refrigeration, fluid cleaning supplies,
(18:16):
and fire extinguishers, was completely stopped by nineteen eighty six.
The symptoms of exposure include headaches, dizziness, sleepiness, nausea, and vomiting.
These symptoms go away quickly if a person is only
exposed for a short time. Long term exposure has much
more serious and damaging effects on the body. Though, and
(18:37):
there had been mentioned in the press before this that
Captain Curtis in particular was working on trying to identify
the chemical substance in play in the case. He told
the press that his team was trying to get victims
to identify the source of the smell they had experienced
by smelling various chemicals, saying, quote, every person who reported
a gas attack is being asked to submit to the
(18:59):
odors of Lewis U sits mustard gas, methyl chloride, tear gas,
and chlorapickrin. Chlora pickrin was the one that Curtis thought
might be the culprit because it caused similar symptoms, because
it was pretty easy for an amateur chemist to make.
The investigator who had been instrumental in this theory was
Richard T. Piper, who was sent sim atune by the
(19:20):
Illinois Criminal Investigation Laboratory. Piper collected the cloth from the
Cortes's porch and made the determination of chloropicrin, though we
should mention he was not a chemist. According to the
Time magazine article we mentioned earlier, Piper gave himself a
crash course in chemistry and kind of made an educated guess.
(19:41):
He told the press, quote, it is the strangest case
I have ever encountered in many years of police work.
There were chemists that were consulted, though, and they said
it was probably a hoax. The FBI also got involved
and tried to track the chemical. Part of the problem
for investigators that while most of them believed some of
(20:03):
the attacks were real, there were also likely some that
were false instances born out of fear and panic. So
it became hard to differentiate between what authorities perceived to
be the real crime scenes versus instances of hysteria because
they took some calls less seriously than others. There had
also been a growing concern among residents that the whole
(20:25):
thing was being handled badly. But when it came to
that announcement that it was a product of the Atlas plant,
State's attorney William Kidwell immediately denounced that explanation. He told
the press quote that is simply ridiculous. People working in
the plant haven't been affected, neither have people living in
houses within seventy five feet of it. I still think
(20:48):
there were some authentic gas cases which were the work
of a prankster or someone with a more serious motive,
And of course the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company was
not really pleased to suddenly be named in the press
as the cause of people getting sick. The plant's works
manager WJ. Webster also talked to the press and made
(21:10):
it clear that the determination of Police Chief Call and
Captain Curtis didn't make any sense given the evidence. He
said that Atlas didn't produce anything that anyone would have
described as smelling sickly sweet or like Guardinia's and said quote,
after all, we have to live with any condition in
our plant. We would be the first to notice and
(21:31):
be affected by any fumes. In four years, not one
person has been ill at the plant by gas fumes.
He went on, quote, the only carbon tetrachloride we have
is in the fire extinguishers at the plant. We do
use another gas, tetrachlorthylene to clean shell casings, but we
never have had one single case of employees working with
(21:53):
it being made ill. Webster called for the statement made
by Cole and Curtis to be retracted as it was
full of falsehood information. The Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company
also issued its own statement, echoing everything Webster had said,
and also noted that an inspector from the State Department
of Health had visited the plant just before these incidents began,
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and stated after the authorities blamed the plant that quote,
there was no possibility of trichloroethylene vapors getting into the
outside atmosphere in any amount of concentration that would even
closely approximate a toxic condition. The company also stated that
it believed the testing conducted by authorities used outdated methods
and that the true nature of any chemical found on
(22:35):
the Courta's rag would probably never be known. And really
the most damning part of the Atlas statement, they made
a point to say that no one from any of
the involved authorities or investigative units had even ever come
to the plant. Coal and Curtis did have to walk
their statement back. Two weeks after the Coal and Curtis statement,
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Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company took out a full page
add in the Mattoon Journal Gazette that definitely reads as
though it is post conflict pr It's a statement about
the company that's laid out with fancy graphic treatment. It
reminds the citizens of Matoon that the company has been
working hard during the war and has made lasting friends.
(23:18):
It reads in part quote this making of friends builds
job security and business security for US, all security based
on accomplishment. It goes on to say that the war
production months have shown nothing but quality and concludes with quote,
we hear in matun can all face the future knowing
we have one staunch friends coming up. We'll talk about
(23:41):
the way the gassing panic in Matune seemed to die
down almost as quickly as it sprang up. But first
we'll pause for a sponsor break. So that statement issued
by the Whole and Curtis team that we talked about
(24:02):
earlier may have included incorrect information from a scientific perspective,
but it did seem to have a calming effect on
the town. Just to have some kind of explanation, the
Mattoon Journal Gazette somewhat playfully reported on September thirteenth the
police had gotten two calls in the night, one to
deal with a noise that turned out to be a
(24:22):
black cat that allegedly purred really loudly, and the other
was a reported break in that turned out to just
be a doctor breaking into his own office after he
accidentally left the keys inside. And though there weren't new
attacks or reports of strange gas exposure, there was this
lingering fear that someone had been committing these attacks and
(24:43):
would never be caught. Today, a lot of people chalk
this whole thing up to mass hysteria. It's even used
in college classes as an example of how these kinds
of things can happen. But there has also been renewed
interest in that one suspect that was alluded to in
reports of the day but never actually named. In two
(25:05):
thousand and three, a science teacher named Scott Marona wrote
a short book in which he dove into the case
and determined that the mass asteria claim was unfair because
there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed to
a man named Farley Llewellen. So there's a lot of
conjecture about the motivations that Llewellen may have had. In
(25:25):
this book, and the interviews that Marouna conducted with people
who lived in Mattune during the ten days of the
mad Gasser scare all include a whole lot of otherism.
They all kind of make the Llewellyn family seem like
odd outsiders with poor hygiene. A description of the family's
grocery store business describes it as untidy and that there
(25:48):
were a lot of cats hanging around in it. That
sounds great to me. I wish my grocery store had kiddies,
but I know that's not an opinion shared by everyone.
Farley's father was known for his kindness in generosity. He
was quite well respected, but Farley and his two sisters,
Florence and Catherine, are definitely characterized as people no one
seem to like to be around. There's also a suggestion
(26:11):
that comes out through these interviews that Farley, who lived
in a trailer behind the family home where he constructed
a chemistry lab for himself, might have been secretly homosexual.
And this is kind of all laid out like this
whole pastiche of things that could have been wrong with
someone in Matune in nineteen forty four. So it's an
(26:31):
account that is heavily weighted with the kind of small
town gossip that is very dehumanizing to people. Apparently, Farley
Llewellen was a very good chemistry student when he attended
the University of Illinois, and Maruna puts forth a theory
that the gassings were Farley Llewellen's attempt at revenge on
a town that never embraced him. That's obviously a lot
(26:52):
of theoretical conjecture. Farley is reportedly said to have died
in a mental institution, and all of the other Llewellyns
were deceased by the time this book was written, which
is laid out as the reason that locals were finally
comfortable talking about it. And this book offers interesting ideas.
You know, it's all theories, but to be clear, the
information about Farley Llewellen is based on personal accounts given
(27:15):
by people almost six decades after the events that they're discussing,
and even in interviews about the book, Maroona has never
been adamant that he had like cracked this case, but
stated that this case remains so interesting because of all
of the possible truths, so it remains a history mystery.
It does. Indeed. Oh, I like this one because it's
(27:39):
very interesting. I have lots of feelings about it. I
have listener mail that has got a completely different subject
from all Right are our listener Jesse, who writes, I've
been meaning to write this email for almost two years,
but I always think of it in the midst of
listening to an episode, which means I'm walking and not
(27:59):
in a good emailing situation. I started listening during the
pandemic and tend to jump around and look for episodes
that sound interesting for a given day. When I saw
the title Paxton's Crystal Palace. I was immediately intrigued. I'm
married to someone who loves to watch a variety of sports,
including soccer. Over the years, I've seen the name of
English Premier League team Crystal Palace scroll by on the
(28:21):
ticker many times. I can't explain why, but every time
I see it, I think of some tacky adult entertainment
venue and always wondered why that is the team's name.
I don't recall anymore, but I don't think you actually
mentioned the football club in your episode, which prompted me
to do some additional research on my own. After the
building was relocated from Hyde Park to Sydenham Hall renamed
Crystal Palace, the company that owned it started an amateur
(28:44):
football club in eighteen sixty one. The professional club of
the same name was formed in nineteen oh five. Could
I have learned this year's earlier with a quick and
simple Google search. Absolutely, but I'm so glad I happened
upon the episode and learned the backstory about the building myself.
Is one of our first post COVID travel activities. In
twenty twenty one, we spent a short weekend in Chicago.
(29:05):
In addition to an architecture walking tour highly recommend. We
visited the Art Institute of Chicago. We did not recreate
the Ferris Bueller's day Off experience mentioned by Holly in
an episode during a listener mail segment, but we did
see the attached painting of the Crystal Palace. We ate
lunch near Haymarket Square, which prompted a listen to the
Haymarket Riot episode on our drive home. Apologies for this
(29:27):
lengthy and somewhat rambling email, but I guess that's what
happens when you have years worth of info to relate.
My husband is always amazed by the random topics that
come up where I will say, oh, yeah, I learned
about that on stuff you missed in history class. Thank
you for making me seem so well educated and for
all the work you put into making learning about history enjoyable. Jesse,
I love this because it's I mean, this is like
(29:48):
the exciting part of history for me, right, is when
you realize like the connections of current real world things
in your life. Yeah, are still touched by things all
the way back to history. Also listen. I love any
mention of the Art Institute of Chicago because I love
that place. So if you are in Chicago. I highly
recommend it's a really good museum. I just love it.
(30:11):
It's great, and I I like, I actually love the
idea of like some really weird, techy place having a
really good football team. So if that happens, fabulous. If
you would like to write to us, you could do
so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can
also find us on social media as Missed in History
and if you haven't subscribed yet easiest Pie, you can
(30:34):
do that on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen
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