The Wild Adventures of Walter & Aloha Wanderwell

you feel better? I mean it doesn't feel as genuine. I'll go no. I feel like I feel like I could come up with one really fast. Let's hear it. Eli, Okay, how's that all right? You lucked out? Because that was very good. It kind of sounds like a gum commercial, which is all I ever really wanted for myself. Car something jingle anyway, go what a week? We got to go see some friends again. Last night we Scream five for five cream as the local says, that's great. I

love the Scream movies. We're not big horror people, no, especially me. I'm I'm a bit of a woosh. I don't like to stress myself out with my entertainment. You're stressed out enough with my life, you know, getting carved up and running for their lives. Well, I'm glad we're talking about movies, because that's kind of what we're talking about today, is somebody who made a lot of silent films.

I'm travel documentaries specifically, which we also have a lot of interest in doing one day in our lives, because today we are talking about a Loha wander Well. She was yearning to travel when she answered an ad looking for a lady with brains, beauty and breaches to rush it through unexplored terrain all over the world and make silent film travelogs of their adventures. Now, this trip would

change her life forever. She would become in nationally famous as the first woman to drive across the world, and she would meet her husband, the leader of the expedition, Walter wander Well, listen to all. This story has everything. It's got a pants wearing adventurous a fake dad, a plane crash in Brazil, Hollywood, hob Nobbin, j Edgar Hoover, and even a murder mystery. Yes, let's go. Hey, their French come listen Well, Elia and Diana got some stories

to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationshift. A lover might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons at a concrete wall. But if there's a story with the second plant, ridiculous

romance A production of iHeart Radio Aloha. Wander Well was born in dressed Galcia Hall in nineteen o six in Winnipeg, Canada, and her father, Herbert Hall, joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the start of the Great War in teen, and then he was transferred to the British Army when he was seriously injured in nineteen sixteen. It just his mother, Margaret, put her in a boarding school and she took herself and her youngest daughter to England like hang out with Herbert.

In seventeen, Herbert died in action in Apra, and even though she was only twelve years old at the time, it just traveled from her boarding school in Canada to England by rail and steamship, all by herself, so that she could be with her mother in this time of grief. Jeez, when I was twelve, okay, you know, well, I rode my bike around the neighborhood. But I feel like I did very little on my own. I think a steamship was out of the question. Can I ride my bike

down to Mike's house? Sure? Can I take a steamship to Canada? Ask your father? Now? When she got to England, it just made a shocking discovery. Herbert Hall failed to mention it dress in his will, and her mother was forced to admit that Herbert had been his stepfather all along. Her real father was a man named Robert Welch, and according to The New York Times, he died when she was only two years old. But I feel like it's still shitty that he left her out of his will

because he was still her dad like most of her life. Yeah, yeah, so weird choice on Herbert's part. And you know she just have Did he just have this disdain for her her whole life? I don't think so, because in her autobiography she's like, oh, we had a love and laughter filled childhood and everything was just great. All this time. He's thinking, in the back of his mind, Okay, this girl's great, but I ain't gonna leave her none of my money. They're not a single Canadian dollar. That doesn't

seem very nice. I know, very young Canadian un Canadian, of so that was a shocker, and uh, it just definitely was like at that point, I kind of felt like I didn't belong anywhere in the world. So she was feeling a bit unmoored by this, of course, and like disconnected from her childhood and everything. But at that point, Margaret it sent both of her daughters to like a stuffy French convent in nice to be educated, and then she went to the front where she was searching in

vain for Herbert's body. Just really sad. So in dress, this girl is like nearly six feet tall, and she's gorgeous. She's got a total movie star face. She's got curly, dark blonde hair, she's got big, wide doe eyes, very beautiful, something of a tomboy. Though. She was really restless, and she was very outspoken, so at the convent, you know,

didn't quite fit in. She was always kind of annoying the nuns by demanding things like you need to give me a room with a window that will open so I can let the breeze in, which I mean reasonable demand, I think, but the nuns obviously weren't used to hear in that kind of talk. A breeze the Lord doesn't send a breathe. The Lord wants you to suffer in the She would also speak up on behalf of her class mates, which obviously the nuns don't like either. Not

big on challenging authority, those nuns not so much. But she was able to learn languages really easily. She was comfortable with English and French and Spanish and Italian. She also started to learn to drive, just very exciting because the car would have been very new at this point. Oh yeah, and most women didn't learn how to drive period. In fact, Idris said that she even wished she'd been born a boy so they could she could do things like drive and join the navy and travel the world.

She was, also, incidentally, crossover alert here, a big fan of Collette. She read her books well. She was in France at the right time to be reading like Claudine and stuff Collecte real Hot right now amongst the tomboys and outspoken young women of the world, right all the like liberated ladies of the twenties. Well. Finally, in her chance to escape the confines of her life came in the guise of an advertisement reading Brains, Beauty and Reaches World tour of for a lucky young woman who is

as clever journalist as her appearances attractive. She must forcewear skirts and incidentally marriage for at least two years and be prepared to rub it in Asia and Africa. You have to forcewear skirts and incidentally marriage, because if you get rid of those skirts, you know you ain't getting married anyway. No man marries a lady and pants. Yeah

right now. This ad was Austin. Sensibly they were looking for a secretary, a driver, and a French translator, but the ad also concluded she must learn to work before and behind a movie camera camera camera brand new. We haven't learned how to pronounce it yet. Now. It just could not resist this ad. I mean it was basically written for her. I can barely resist this ad. I'm

ready to bosom buddies this job. I want to show up an address and be like, I'm going to give up my skirts for this job and just put on a wing. Oh wear pets for you, hi and me? What a beautiful lady get in here. I do hate that. It's like you gotta be cute, wink wink, Like what's that got to do with anything? But whatever? She's like, look I'm cute, I'm hot, I can speak French, I

know how to drive. Let me go for it. So, even though she's only sixteen years old at this point, she answered the ad and she met the expedition's leader and organizer, Captain Walter wander Well, and he met her and he was like, you know, maybe you're going to be the one to save me. Oh no, I was waiting for the oasis, because after all, I was over here, like I came in, like, go wander Well, and I don't know why. I wonder whall it makes more sense, That's what I was doing. Walter wander Well was a

Polish national. His real name was Valerian Johann Paisynski, but he changed it because no one in America could pronounce it, and he threw in captain just for good measure. And he went beyond just the title. He actually loved to illegally wear a military uniform in public, and he got quite a few petty criminal charges throughout his life because of it, impersonating an officer and all that. He was

kind of a shady character in general. He'd spent a brief time imprisoned in Atlanta during the War on suspicion of being a German spy, and he also accounts suggest that he was probably a rum runner during the Prohibition as well. So real slippery dude doing all kinds of little petty crimes getting away with it. In nineteen eighteen, he met a Broadway chorus girl named Nell, and he married that woman, and together they started the work around

the World Education Club. According to an article on Morristown Green dot com by Jeffrey V. Moy, they vote envisioned it as a volunteer international police force that would monitor countries for signs of military build up to prevent a repeat of the atrocities and death of World War One. Interesting idea, Yeah, an international police force, right started by these two randos, like a fake captain and a Broadway

chorus girl. You're going to go out and stopped the Nazis from rising, you know, they spoiler alert, They didn't know well, and like I guess this is sort of they were marching alongside like Woodrow Wilson's trying to start League of Nations, which is supposed to be you know, eventually becomes a U N And it's sort of supposed to be that kind of world police thing. So he's like,

I'll help a little weird way by doing this. I don't know right well, And some people say that Walter and Nell and later Eddress who joined them were genuinely working towards peace and justice, but others say that Walter was just kind of a guy who was really good at finding money to support himself without ever actually holding down a job. So this club was just a way to get what they called volunteer cadets to fork over expensive fees that he would just use to support himself.

So basically he's a con artist. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, whatever, it was, their main activity and promoting peace around the world was just going on a bunch of trips and sharing their footage with paying customers. Wait a second, we've been trying to get a travel podcast this whole time. Well, maybe we should just approach some world governments and say, hey, well we'll promote peace around the world. Yeah, prevent the atrocities of World War ones, World's War, World Wars one,

then two. Yeah, what will you do? Well, we'll go places and we'll film what's happening there, and then people can buy that footage from us. It'll be great. They'll be like Instagram already exists, thank you all right now. But of course, at this point, you know, travel was something I was pretty out of reach for the average person.

So going and the cameras knew, the cars knew, there's a lot of new things going on, so um, it was pretty special to see someone's travel foota looking at their vacation photos was like the real a real get I actually wanted to see that. And this is not long after everyone was freaking out reading books about Amelia Earhart's put them and all of them, you know, going on these global treks and explorations, and they're reading about them.

But imagine if you could see it exactly. So by nineteen nineteen, Walter and Nell decided to do a Forge sponsored million dollar wager race around the world. Each of them would lead competing teams and see who could travel the most miles and visit the most countries, and they

would film their travels. They would do screenings and lectures to pay for their time on the road, and Nell always wore pants, which she found to be quote more practical and comfortable, but it had the added bonus of always grabbing a headline was very good for headlines, because at the time, a woman wearing pants was about as weird as someone wearing a duck for a hat or something like just like, what are I seeing? Well, now I've seen everything, a woman in pants, what's next? Horses

with glasses? But by two Nell and Walter were separated. Nell once said that walter quote couldn't be true to any one woman. He was the eternal mother, Oh, the looking nothing, an actress from here, a stenographer, a shop girl, Geisha's quiet Girls, dowagers from sue As to the Straits, Sebilance and back against everything in skirts had a fascination for their romantic gaptain. Oh I want you to play

a scorned wife. Yeah, she's not having it. I could just see you with a little cigarette, like, get out of here. I've said it all. This is the last time you'll be cheating on Nay saying see yeah, I don't know why she suddenly I gang from Hey, she went through a lot. It hurts you, hardens you. So Nell and Walter on the outs. And this is around the time that Idris saw this ad and applied got the gig. She joined the team, and Walter and Idris,

we're going to be the new partnership. Their main competition was Walter's estranged wife Nell. As they traveled around the world. They have modified a nineteen seventeen Ford Model Team to have a bigger gas tank, oil tank, and even wheel modifications so the car could also travel on railways and then at the back of the car it could fold out accordion style into a traveling dark rooms. They could develop film and photographs right there in the car. Incredible.

I want this car. Diana put it on the old Christmas list. I love it, and she did. They did eventually, um donate it to the Ford Museum. I don't know if they still have it, but you you probably, I'm sure what they do which to me, you know what, it sounds like We've got a heist coming on you and I steal that. Yeah, ridiculous crime is going to be covering us next year. Yes, amazing copy trying to steal uh in dressed Wanderwell's car wonder Well Model t

It probably goes like driving out of the museum. Slow, let's get out of here, let's burn rubber lot. The security guards were like, we'll walk, We'll wait. It was no gas. That's a half mile per ten gallons. You're not going anywhere. Let meet you at the door, all right. Well, before they left on this race around the world, Interest changed her name to Aloha wander Well. Now, Aloha was apparently a family nickname. I think it's kind of cute. If she's like, I want to travel and I want

to run around with the navy. They were like call her hello, goodbye. But as far as taking Walter's last name, sources kind of very on why. Some say her mom had Aloha declared as Walter's ward so that she would not like, she wouldn't ruin her reputation by traveling with a man alone, and she she actually may have gone as far as adopting Walter herself so that they would legally be brother and sister. Unclear, Mom, will you adopt

this old man who wants to take me around the world? Okay, Henney, so we could be brother and sister and it won't be weird. Some say that Walter gave her the name himself for like ease of travel and branding and all kinds of little reasons like that. Uh, speculation station. I think Aloha was just like wander Well, what a great name. I mean, it's a great name. Yeah, if you're a traveler.

So whatever the case, she had her nom de root and the dash around the world began and we will hear more about it right after this Welcome back to the show, everybody. So during Aloha and Walter's first trip from Aloha didn't just translate French and drive the car. She also became like the face of the expedition basically, and its main camera operator and narrator. She was their seamstress, their lawn dress, their editor. She was a salesperson and

a negotiator, a mechanic, and a photographer. She did vaudeville performances where they would sell photo pamphlets. They would screen their silent films, and she would give lectures about what was happening on screen during their films. Obviously silent films you need someone to do that. These events not only turned her into a star, they helped fund the trip, so Walter was pretty happy. I mean he's say, you have to admit savvy fundraiser. Yeah, and this trip was amazing.

I mean it was grueling, but it was incredible. Aloha was often low on supplies, so she had to get clever with it. She would use kerosene in place of gasoline. She would crush bananas for Greece, and she used water and elephant fat for oil in the car. So it's like the original biodiesel basically, right, this is pretty cool. And the fact that the car would run on any of those things, right, pour anything in there. It might explode,

but it'll move. It's like doc and back to the future, like corn beer into the Florian mr fusion And yeah, I mean they went through it, Okay. So in India, Oxen had to tow the ford through impassable mud flats and rivers because of course a lot of places don't have roads yet. In China, it was laborers who were paid to drag the car eighty miles after it broke down, and I hope they're paid well. Okay. They also went through war torn France. They saw Italy right before Mussolini

took control. They went through food riots and hostile mobs in Germany, which was, you know, suffering a deep depression at this point after the harsh reparations that world governments demanded after World War One. In Saudi Arabia, she disguised herself as a man in Mecca so that she could enter and pray. Another time she did the same to

fight with the French Foreign Legion. She made friends with Chinese bandits, and the Red Army in Siberia made her an honorary colonel for being the first woman to drive into Siberia. They camped at the feet of the Sphinx in Egypt. They drove into Palestine to watch the beginnings of a new nation being built for Jewish people. They wandered the highlands of Portuguese East Africa. They nearly died

of thirst in the Student Desert. I mean, this trip was christ insane, way harder than our drive out to Utah. I know, the worst thing that happened to since we stayed at Ojo, right, we didn't have to disguise ourselves as men at any point on that trip, not even on The trip ended in New York in nine and by this point Aloha was famous as the first woman to drive around the world, and she mingled with stars like Douglas Fairbanks and her childhood idol Mary Pickford. Newspapers

started calling her the Amelia Earhart of the Open Road. Yeah, and then she cut together their most famous film with car and camera around the world for which they had shot forty thousand feet of film, which is in Calcutta. They'd even crossed paths with the aviators who were trying to fly across the world in eighty days, and Aloha

filmed their encounter In all. Aloha went through forty three countries across four continents, and even though Walter was kind of a demanding and tyrannical boss, throughout their years together, they forged a real connection and eventually they fell in love. But when they landed, Walter was arrested on charges of white slavery under the Man Act, which prohibited the transportation of any woman or girl across state lines for quote

unquote immoral purposes. Um, because Aloha was still a miner, so they were like, you're taking this girl all over the place. Now. The sources vary on the exact reason for this as well. Some say the FBI was still suspicious of Walter because of his wartime activities the German

Sky thing. UM and j. Edgar Hoover thought that his whole work around the World Education Club that he had started with Nell I'm still doing with Aloha was actually his attempt at putting together his own private army that could be hired by any country at any time, which just sounds like some crazy ship Jed or Hoover would come up with, because Walter is really just trying to

scamp people out of two hundred bucks. He could he could be lazy and not work and go travel everywhere, And I was like, Hooever never liked a regular explanation. He's like, it was some weird ship going on on top of this, So the Man Act was just kind of a convenient excuse to get him arrested. But other sources say that Nell Underwell, who was still technically married to Walter at this point, accused him under the Man Act so that she could force a better divorce settlement

and get some more money out of him. Either way, the most expedient solution was to marry Aloha, of course, so Walter got his divorce and they tied the knot, and they would go on to have two children together, Nile and Valerie. I know, there's not a lot of details about it, but speculation station Nell got a really good deal in that divorce. She's like, oh, you want to marry Aloha to keep yourself out of jail, do you well? Let me bust out the list here for

that divorce. Yeah, I'll give it to you, no problem. You just give me the following one helicopter smokerenades. Who knows what she was looking for? How many membership fees did it take in this year? But neither of the wander wells, Aloha or Walter. We're looking for a quiet life on the home front. It wasn't time to settle down with a picket fence and a dog and TV dinners.

So those two children they had ended up staying with family members or in foster homes as the couple took to the road again, which they did famously in nineteen thirty when Aloha learned how to pilot a plane and they decided to fly to South America to search for the explorer Percy Fawcett, who had vanished while trying to find the mythical lost city of z in Brazil. But

they found something very different. According to Mysterious Universe dot Com, their little German seaplane ran out of fuel and came down somewhere along the Paraguay River. This area was remote, it was unexplored and uncharted, and the couple probably would have died there if they hadn't met the boro Ro tribe. Now,

this is an indigenous tribe. It was from the most part, completely unknown to the outside world, and they provided a safe place for Alohattes stay while Walter hiked through the jungle back to civilization to get few and replacement parts to you know, get the plane flying again, which was supposed to just take a couple of days, but Aloha ended up being alone with this tribe for months. However, we know our girl, she did not waste her time.

She learned their ways. She became the first to film the tribe's daily routines and rituals, including ceremonial dances, a first contact meeting between the tribe and Aloha, and the men of the tribe experiencing sympathy labor pains while a woman gave birth, which I think is just really interesting. Had like they were like trying to be a part

of it. And Aloha edited this into a thirty two minutes silent documentary called Flight to the Stone Age Bororos, which, as Mysterious Universe rites quote is still considered by the Smithsonian Institute's Human Studies Archive to be a very important anthropological study and resource. Now finally, Walter made it back and they flew home in one and no trace of Percy Fawcett was ever found. Wo uh, I got to imagine. I mean, this is super cool, you know, But a

couple of things. One, it's impressive to see these sympathy labor pains, yes, coming out of this tribe, and and and realizing that, you know, technologically advanced. Though some civilizations became others were still far more advanced. Other ways, Yeah, like, oh,

you guys have empathy for your women. Although I did learn that they had like an odor thing where they thought your body odor corresponded with like your your moral goodness or something, and your your breath corresponded with your soul. So like when I wake up, when I woke up this morning, I was like, the barobros would be like, she needs to go. Yes, that's something. Um. Also, I can't imagine, like it's still nineteen twenties white people going

out in South America. I can't imagine she was, you know, the picture of of empathy and understanding. Yeah. No, I mean she was definitely ahead of her time in a lot of ways as we're learning, but in this way, you're right, she was very much of her time. She wrote a nine autobiography um called Call to Adventure and This Lady. Tracy Landecker on Aloha wanderweld dot Com wrote

that it's not always pleasant to read quote. While the nineteen twenties was an era of ideological and technological growth, American exceptionalism and racism were still the order of the day for the majority of white people. In most of her accounts, Aloha retains the haughty distance of a missionary and an imperialist. Never, at any time is that wall penetrated, no matter the beauty or the courageous character of the cultures that either welcome her or look on her with

perplexity and sometimes derision. So which is interesting too, because it's clearly like other cultures would see her and be like, who's this tall white lady? Like right, Yeah, it was just culture clash stuff. But yeah, she definitely felt superior to the people she was talking to. I think she wasn't so shitty that she couldn't charm them and live with them and feel a kinship with them and stuff like that. But yeah, she held herself apart in a

lot of ways as well. So a good point. I mean, you know, It's always the challenge with dealing with these early twentieth century explorers because their lives are so cool, and also like, I don't know if you should be doing that right. In fact, that might be why Percy was never found. Some people say that he got real uppity with some locals in South America and like slapped him around and they were like, and then he disappeared. So he's probably got killed because he was being an asshole.

He's like, it's called a smoking jacket, and we all wear them where I come from, and you should too. It's uncivilized. And they were like, to kill man. Done with this? Oh my god. Well, Walter and Aloha we're back in Los Angeles in ninety two after this adventure, and they planned to do more trips and more films together. Aloha stayed with her sister in Los Angeles cutting together a film of their latest adventure, while Walter was working on fixing up their hundred and ten foot yacht called

the Karma. The plan was that they would sail to Tahiti and film a voyage around the South Seas. It was stocked in Long Beach, and he and his two wanderwell children lived on the ship. As usual, he put out advertisements for young attractive adventurers to join our crew at two hundred dollars ahead, and of course there were several people either on board the yacht or just ashore doing various tasks to prepare for the trips. They show up, they pay him the two hundred dollar dues, and then

they are permitted to do all the work for him. Yes, I'll also say a yacht sounds really fancy, but apparently authorities at the time said it was about as seaworthy as a cardboard box, so they were kind of like, you shouldn't go on this trip, but they couldn't really do anything about it, And like, I hope he's fixed the note it seems like a guy who would cut costs.

He does definitely now. On December five, some of these crew members were playing cards on the yacht when a man in a light gray trench coat and hat pulled down partially to obscure his face, appeared at a porthole and asked, Hey, there, can I see Walter Wanda Well please, Well, they figured he was just another potential crew member or maybe a worker who was called to fix something, so

they said, yeah, he's back there in his cabin. The man walked away, and moments later they heard a gunshot and they went running to Walter, only to find him dead with a bullet in his back from a thirty eight revolver. What there was no trace of the man in the great coat. Who done it? We'll find out more right after this. Welcome back to the show. Everyone. There's a murder afoot there, sure is. Walter was shot in the back and the police were a little stumped

because thanks to Walter's shady dealings. As Mysterious Universe says quote, the list of possible killers with a motive would have made Agatha Christie's head spin. It could have included husband's boyfriends, jilted women, jilted business partners and agents of a foreign power, rogue police, and Aloha herself. Check check check check. They're like, motive, motive, motive, motive, motive.

Oh the poor Long Beach p D. You're like, we do not have the manpower to go down this list of aspects, like there are a hundred and twenty local sess specs and over fourteen thousand across the world. Now Aloha is a suspect because even though they had definitely

planned to take another trip together. Their marriage was on the rocks by this time, mostly due to Walter's philandering, because he was always getting it wherever he went, wherever he went, and a few days before the murder, Walter had the crew searching for his thirty eight Revolver, which he said had disappeared from his supply supplies Aloha had access to. Aloha also did not react to his death

the way that people expected. She's a little detached kind of no, you know, she didn't like start screaming and crying and grief for anything. Instead, she just immediately asked about her kids, and they were not only just buying, they had slept through the whole thing. And after that she just kind of withdrew into herself. Aloha wanderwell dot Com writes that she quote lapsed into a state of glittery immobility, which was to earned her the name of

the Rhinestone Widow. I mean, she didn't react to his death the way people expected. I'm not really expecting much of a reaction at all. I'm like, well, first of all, he sucks what he She's like, ah ha, sure somebody killed him and took him took him so long. Not very surprising, No, not at all. You know, she's like, okay whatever. Or also if she's like lapsing into a state of glittery immobility, I think that's also a sign of grief for shock, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, and its

own way. I mean, but I'm always lapsing into glittery immobility. It is what people say about you, the most glittery and immobile. But the police really felt that they had found their Well Guy when they heard about William James Guy. Crew members who had spoken to the mysterious man in the porthole said he had a slight act scent and William Guy was either Welsh or Australian. He also owned

a light great trench coat and a hat. But the most damning evidence against him was motive because a year or so before the murder, William Guy and his wife Vera, along with another woman, had been in Buenos Aires and saw an advertisement for English and Spanish speakers to join the wander Wells Latest Expedition. So they answered it. They said,

sounds great, that's us, let's do it. And William had to pay the two d dollar feet to get the three of them on board, and he told the police quote, I didn't like wander Well from the beginning, or no, he's Welsh or Australian. He told the police quote, I didn't like Wanda Well from the beginning. He was a disagreeable and pettyman, a regular dictator, likes to be called the little admiral, all that sort of thing. He worked

us like dogs. We were principally fed on beans. That's enough for anyone to it, not two Viking cruise beans here, you know. Well, totally fed up, William Guy had gone to Walter and demanded better conditions, but Walter called this an attempted mutiny, and he docked the ship and left William Guy, his wife, and their friend on the beach. Dang. William Guy told the police quote, where you were absolutely stranded,

now money to get anywhere. Finally I arranged for a steamship company to take the new girls back to England, which was the address on their passports, and I set out on foot to Nicaragua. I haven't seen my wife since, and I haven't seen the money I gave wander Well. Just sometimes I'm a little more Cockney than Australia. Well, it's a mysterious accent. William Guy. No one was quite

sure where he's from. So yeah, this William Guy guy had plenty of reasons to kill Walter, so he was formally charged for the murder and he was put on trial. That's literally what the headlines are. It's so funny, they're like guy indicted. But there were a few problems with

William Guy being the murderer. One was that Walter, after he was shot, was found with six hundred dollars in his pocket, so that kind of ruled out robbery or money as the motive, although you know, he shot a guy while there were definitely people nearby, so maybe just didn't have time to like roll his the pot go through his truck before he had to run off. Who knows, but they're kind of like clearly that wasn't the reason

he was here. Um. The other problem was that William Guy was able to produce six witnesses, putting him at a friend's house thirty miles away when the shooting happens. Pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty tough to get over, so he was acquitted. Um. The only other suspect named by police was Lord Edward Montague, who was the second son of the ninth Duke of Manchest and his dad was a spendthrift who exhausted the family fortune, so Edward became

a world traveler himself. He gravitated to America, where, according to Michael Newton's Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes quote, he lived at various times as a taxi driver, hot dog vendor, private in the U. S. Army, a hobo drifter, and a seagoing deckhand. What a life to go from being a duke's son a hot dog vendor. Pretty interesting. That's like Prince Harry to be a hot dog vendor. I heard, I can't wait to see him hock and hot dogs. Flenty of people would would want his sausage. I heard

it was all frost bitten. You're right, maybe they don't want it anymore. The main evidence against Edward Montague was that he owned a thirty eight revolver that he had lent to a friend, and then the friend had then lent it to a third guy, so nobody was aware of where it was anymore. And they were like, so, you might have had some to it with that murder weapon, but otherwise it really wasn't anything to pin on him,

so he was never even formally charged. So the murder of Walter Wanderwell is still unsolved to this day, and they never found his revolver either. What you hear that super sleuths get out there past? Yeah? Yes, Aloha. Meanwhile, she was left with only fifteen hundred dollars to support herself and her two kids, so she memorialized Walter in the most appropriate way she could think of for him. She used the scandal around his death and murder trial

as publicity for their latest film, River of Death. Now that didn't help with the folks who thought that she was the murderer, but Aloha didn't care. She needed the money, so she got back on the road, touring America, screening her movies, doing lectures, everything she used to do with her husband. And then in nineteen thirty three, she met

another Walter, Walter Nicholas Baker. This guy was eighteen years old and he was working as a gas station attendant and Laramie, Wyoming when he met Aloha, and he joined her crew as a driver and a mechanic. He was eight years younger than her, but sparks were flying, spark plugs were flying, and They married only two months later,

and they toured the world together. They made films from nineteen thirty three until nineteen thirty nine, when, of course, World War Two started and kind of made international travel pretty impossible. But in ninety they also documented a wild horse round up in the Red Desert of Wyoming called Explorers of the Purple Stage, and ultimately, by the end of her life, Aloha traveled over five hundred thousand miles through six continents and eighty countries. A long way from

that convent. She made over a dozen films, She wrote two books, She worked as a journalist and radio operator. She just did a whole bunch of cool ship and she and Walter Baker settled in Newport Beach. She gave her last lecture in nineteen two. Apparently she asked the crowd like, how did y'all get here? And they were like car and plane, and She's like, let me show

you what that was like. Walter Baker died in They had been together for over sixty years at that point, and Aloha followed a year later in having more than earned her nickname of the world's most traveled girl. Amazing, I want to this is another person I would just love to be on the next go round. Yeah right, I mean, you know, not without her struggles, But jeez, I think it balanced out. She got to do the coolest stuff ever, um, you know, minus the racism. Yeah

well yeah, imperialism and all that stuff. Not have that part. But I do admire her for being willing to put up with all this stuff. I mean, she was really uncomfortable and cold and hot and starving and thirsty and covered in mud and who knows, you know, just immortal danger many times, and she's just like all of it

was a dream. I loved it. I loved every minute. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that's go into those situations the you know, you hear about a lot of that, the horror stories and the near death experiences and all that, But what's the opposite of that that you're getting as well? Right, it must balance out because if you're in those extreme situations, the highs have got to be you know, as intense as the lows, if not more so. Well, and I think it just says something about her, like the type

of travel she wanted to do. She wasn't just a travel enthusiast, she was an explorer because there's people who like to travel at this time, but they wanted to take like the Titanic to England, you know what I mean. They wanted to be comfortable the whole time. She liked the ads she read because it was like, you're going to rough it incasion, and you're going to be in places that people don't go, and that's I think what

was the real attraction. And I think that makes her really unique, especially in her time, especially as a sixteen year old, She's like, please make me uncomfortable for a very long time, right, because there was even another woman, right who also drove across the world. Yes, um, the first woman to circumnavigate the world in an automobile was Harriet White Fisher in nineteen o nine. But she used a chauffeurs. She did not drive herself. She was sitting

on a silk cushion the whole time. Probably, alright, Hattie, you did something. Someone sitting right next to her with a fan seeded her grapes the whole time. Speculation stage, speculation, stage, I don't know. She probably was also pretty tough, but right, I'm sure she wasn't fixing flat tires herself. No, that's again Yeah, just that's why they give a little how this honorific because she drove the car. She wanted to

get her hands. Yeah, she and she, I mean she's crushing bananas and stuff like she's doing all kinds of crazy ship and yeah. Her films are still really important today. You can watch a lot of them online as well as you're interested. But hark around the Greats dot Com says that her footage of the taj Mahal and the Ganges River in six dazzles to this day. They say, quote she gives viewers a sense of the scope and scale of the taj Mahal, displaying the building from unfamiliar vantages.

And she and Walter Baker also visited like New Zealand, Hawaii, Cambodia. I want to see that taj Mahal footage we've got. Don't worry. All the tash Mahal is on the list. It is so we are going to tell that story of Shah Jahan, But I want to do that episode at the taj Mahal. So let's start a little go fund me and see if we can't get out there and record that episode on site. Wouldn't that be never happened, Well,

we'll record it before then. Oh and this guy Captain Wanderwell here, like, what a character, Yeah, what a wacko. He seems like the kind of guy that could only exist. But if he was alive today, he would still be a grifter. It would just be different. It would be different and probably really annoying. You think he'd be like a scam artist on those dating apps or anything like that like that. Yeah, I was like, oh, he kind of it was like a cult of personality sort of

person So maybe he'd just have a podcast. But now he'd be he'd have a pyramid scheme. Yeah, you're right. Maybe, like you buy into this and then you can do all the work for me. That's right, You're still right. He would have like leggings or vitamins or something. Captain wander wells leggings. You could wander Well in Wanda Well leggings. Hey, you already we should do this pyramid schemes all right, but it wants to buy into our pyramid scheme. Wink

wink wink. Then please send to Dick Romance at gmail dot com. Send us anything ever, Dick Romance at gmail dot com. We would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, episode on any episode on suggestions for new episodes, just reach out. Yeah. You can also find us on social media. I'm at Dyanamite Boom on Twitter and Instagram, that's right, and I'm at Oh Great it's Eli there as well, and the show is at ridicul Romance. Don't forget to follow us on TikTok as well, where you can find

little video clips we're doing and summaries of episodes. That's at Ridiculous Romance on TikTok. So hopefully loved it as much as we did, and we will catch you next time with another amazing ridiculous romance. That's right. By bye, so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends Nabor's uncles in this to listen to our show Ridiculous roll Nance