Thinking Sideways: The Impossible Murder of Isidor Fink

free month of Stitcher Premium. We're not the only ones on there. You can get access to a lot of other great content, ad free and early and bonus content. So check out stitcher dot com slash thinking sideways and use the promo code sideways to get one month free. Trust me, you don't want to hear my voice anymore. Hey there, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. This week, we're going to talk about another mysterious mystery. But first, let me tell you my name. I'm Joe. Across from

me to my right is and other right is Steve. Okay, pretty much, we're just both in front of you, so yeah, pretty much. Okay, So our mysterious mystery. This week we're going to talk about the strange death of or think the story this one yet I don't. I don't know why, but but it's time. Fine this This is a classic, really is it really is? It's probably a lot of you guys have heard of it already. This happened in

New York City. I feel like it's one of those stories where we all kind of think, oh, yeah, I should do that. I'm not quite ready yet. Yeah, it's so classic. I'm not quite right to quite ready yet. And Joe was just like, whatever, I'm doing it, Oh, this is on the list, Okay, cool, I'll run about it by Yeah, I just running over with a tank or great. Yeah, it's it's got but it's got a lot of cool stuff. It's got some egget to Christie you kind of twist and a nice murder and it's

like a locked room mystery, locked room genuine. Yeah. And actually, uh, it has got a lot of publicity at the time. Actually, a couple of big time crime writers wrote wrote fictional stories based on it, and there was a movie based on it too. I think, yeah, so it's at least one if not, and you know, who knows. I mean, how many other stories it might have inspired. It's like there's not that many real life locked room mysteries. This is definitely one of those Colonel situations. Is the kernel

of a lot of things. Yeah, we've done We've done one other one and that's really it was at La Plaza. No, it was, I did it nothing. She started talking about locked room. She's talking about stories that are Colonel. So I'm talking about a lot of What was the one with the woman who may or may not have poisoned her husband who was like twenty years older than her. Yeah, I did this one too, or that it was in London, right, yeah, yeah, yeah that was Williams or something. Oh god, what was it?

What was that name? Yeah, yeah, I know on you're talking about. Yeah, okay, yeah, wow. I'm usually really good at us. I actually don't because by the time you hear this figured it out. The murder of Julia Wallace, Yes, that's it. Yeah, okay, so Julia Wallace and then that's also a good lockroom mystery La Plaza. Yeah. So yeah, there's some out there, but you know, I don't think those are as great as this one is the best. Yeah,

it's it's so so awesome. Nobody ever actually spends much time wondering who actually killed is it or a Fank? They just want to know, They just want to know how they did it, whoever it was and killed him. First, I want to give a shout out to our listener Emily, who suggested this story a long long time ago, like three years ago. I thank so thanks Emily. And now into her story. First, is it or Fank? He was a Polish immigrant to America. He was thirty years old

when he died. He owned a small laundry in Upper New York City, Like you know, like, oh God, where it was it? I think I had her in thirty second Street. Which neighborhood is that because I'm really bad with my New York geography because it is neighborhood upon the neighborhood that's Upper Manhattan. So I don't know, is that Harlem hundred seconds? That might? I feel like it was different. I'm not sure it was. Yeah, I mean yeah, but you know that it's still there. I believe it

or not. I don't know. I don't know the same building. It looks like kind of an old bill New York, New York this recording, who knows in you know, three weeks. Yeah, back to istor. So he had a small laundry, uh, and it was one of those ground floor things in the department buildings. So he had an apartment that was right there attached to. So it was like like everything in Portland right now where it's just like retail on the bottom and the apartments on the top. Yeah, kind

of like that. Yeah, typical condensed Yeah, yeah, I density stuff, but urban dwelling. But to his apartment was on the ground floor, attached to Yeah, I believe it was on the ground floor when there was there was an exit, there was a door connecting the business in the apartment, makes sense. Yeah. And it was a laundry like people would It wasn't like a laundry mat. It was like a dry cleaning kind of that kind of thing where

people stuff drop, drop the stuff off. And that was more typical in the in the you know, early nineteen hundreds where the clothes were hard to wash. Well, that's typical anywhere that isn't a Western civilization or Western country where we have washers and dryers that we keep in our homes are in some place. I mean, you go to anywhere outside of the first world, and it's some

place where everybody takes their stuff and somebody watched. And some places I've gone to actually people just take their stuff down to the river and wash it down there. Yeah, I went to places where they were they were thrown all by laundry in a machine and hanging it on showed up like that's my drawers can have those In the early nineteen hundreds, you guys probably know this is my little tiny tangent. But the way that they made closes.

You know, everything had detachable collars and cuffs for the dirty and so you could hand wash those. They were really easy to hand wash at home. And then you would have to take your shirt every two weeks, your pants every two or whatever you know, to be actually cleaned. And so you know that the sink in your house was not big enough to hold that garment while wet. You could hold the cuff in the collar, but that

was it. And your little armpit pads, because they do have that, I mean dress dress pads and stuff like I was wondering what for me after two weeks of wearing a shirt, what the arm pits would look like. Well, also, things just were smellier back people were diffused to it. But you also didn't throw your stuff in a dirty hamper. You hung it. That was the thing is if you hang sweaty clothes, a little vodka spray on those. They're great vodka sp If you mix vodka and water together

and spray your clothes, it will totally deodorize. To waste a good vodka. No, you just think you buy the bad. Yeah, we're anyway. I'm sorry. I just like clothes. I don't want to. Yeah, I know you do, but you've learned a lot more that you wanted to know about laundry. But back to our murder here. It was a night of Saturday in March ninth, is it our think, made a few laundry deliveries, and then he went home for

the night. I think it was around nine or ten, locked himself in because he was a cautious type, if not even a little bit paranoid. But on the other hand, he did live in a fairly crime ridden neighborhood. Robbery was pretty common, so his behavior wasn't crazy tintfoil out there or anything like that. And then his laundry itself, you know, and his apartment. I have no idea how big they were. I assumed they were pretty small. I think they The sense I had was that they were

comparable sizes to each other. Yeah, you know, but it was like a half and half space. But I but it seems like a like a maybe max one bedroom more. But that's the thing that I've never understood is like square footage. I've never seen anything that said it was a hundred were foot and a hundred square foot or five hundred and five. And I'm making these numbers out well, all I can assume is all I from what I know about current New York living situations. That can't have

been bigger the most New York apartments these days. And would you say, would you say an easy average number is five hundred square foot business? And this speculations, Okay, that's a problem a lot of Yeah, the and I think it was doing some of the work in his apartment to you would problem if it was open, which is also a question for me. Where they bisected so that the business portion was separated from the living portion or was it one open space and there was snow division.

I believe they were separated like by a door or something like that. I got the impression of like, you know, motel rooms that connect with a door kind of like you know, but other than that, you know, that's uh, there's not enough information out there for a story that's been written about as much as this one has specifics like that are possible to come by. I did some looking special looking just to see if anybody had ever written a book about this or anything like that I

could find. I couldn't find anything. And there were some New York Times articles about it. I tried to find some of those. They're not available on the eater webs unfortunately. So you know, there's just no I'd love to see some drawings and more pictures and stuff like that, but any kind of measurements of any kind would be really helpful. Yeah,

so I don't know. So so, so can you explain, I mean, now getting getting away from that bit of tangent, which is my fault, but because I brought it up before the recording, But like, what were the kind of precautions that kind of semi paranoid level. Yeah, I don't know if this was you know, ultra paranoid even, but he had apparently had extra bolts on his doors and his windows were nailed shut, and I'm not sure what

that means. Okay, yeah, I was gonna ask, like nailed hut, Like you know, like you know, you have a couple of nails in to hold the door or to hold the window panes closed, or you've like nailed over. Yeah, I think nailed shut is in what I think it probably was. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, he could it could have meant that he took a hammer and nails and actually just wanged away until he had nails driven into his windows and they were never

open again. But more likely, it's really common, and it's even in my house. I've got this with my wooden double doubles hung windows. If you drill a hole through the wood and then you put a long nail in there so that people can't open it from the outside, it's a block. Yeah. Yeah, it's extra security advice. Similarly with people, yeah, with like sliding doors where people put the piece of wood, Yeah, exactly, so that you can't open it's like that, right, Yeah, exactly, That's what I

would also assume. But sometimes, you know, somebody says nailed shut, and I think they've totally boarded up their windows. Yeah, or they've nailed six hundred nails and bent them all over sideways because yeah, yeah, and so I think in this case he probably just drilled holes, but he might have driven a nail or two in there too. Mean,

that's that's one way to do it, you know. Yeah, but it settles the issue permanently so well, except for a few women have single pane windows are pretty easy to break in, but you know, whatever, good point, But then people gotta like, you know, they gotta break through the window, and then because they can't reach in and unlatch it and slide the window up, and they have

to crawl through an open broken glass. And if you're not panel windows situation, that's even because because because here's the thing is that having a single pane of glass, a big pane of glass, if you can pop a hole in it, you can kind of quietly break bits of that glass away once you've got a hole in it. But if it's got the wooden lattice in it, you know where it's sheet becomes six panels. Now you've got to break the wood away, and that's a lot more effort,

a lot more obviously, a lot louder. So I say windows were divided. I just always assumed that, like, you know, these guys that we're sitting next to you, single pane, huge, huge sheet, it's probably, yeah, probably that would be the cheapest way. You know, probably this was cheap housing. Probably as far as as far as stealths goes, I don't know. I uh, I don't think burglars these days, at least, they don't really bother to try to be stealthy if

they just kick your door down. But he just assumed that, I mean, usually the case a place, right, they just decide if you're not home, it doesn't matter. Yeah, they're gonna break in and they're gonna take yeah. So yeah, anyway, but okay, so sorry. So yeah, he's got the extra bolts. And there's no information really about what kind of bolts he had in his door, where they key operated dead bolts orhere they just sliders, sliders. I mean, I don't know.

I think they might have been sliders, although we'll get more into that second here. But so's he's home for the night, locked in and everything, and about ten thirty pm, his neighbor, a woman named Mrs Locklin Smith, heard sounds of a scuffle as in fighting, uh and and in a kind of a thud, but no gunshots. She ran out to find a policeman and brings a patrol woman back. His name was apparently Albert Captain Vane or Captain Born,

depending on the Virgin he read. He comes back to the building and he bangs in the door, gets no answer from Mr Fink. Uh, And I started trying the doors. If there were at least two doors in the apartment. I think there was one in the hall, maybe one in the laundry. I'm not sure that was the impression or maybe. Yeah, And so he tried how he got into the laundry and not I'm not sure about that either. Yeah, but apparently there was there was at least well, obviously

there's at least one door. But I most of the reversions said there were two doors into the apartment, but the doors were locked from the inside. The windows, as I said, nailed shut. Uh and the windows reportedly were not broken also, but they're the only thing that was opened. There was a transom window above the front door. You know what a transom window is, right, I was gonna say,

you need to explain that for folks. Yeah, old and older buildings in some houses and stuff, there's like a doorway and then a whole separate frame window above the door. That's just the same with nine. Yeah, it's just right over the depending on the heights the door. Yeah, doors are usually six seven ft high, so yeah, they're usually like, yeah, seven I think about seven ft yeah, typically what the door is. And so there they're the same width typically

as the door, but they're not very high. They're kind of like, you know, not not terribly high, and they're usually usually are hinged like in the middle. So it's a frame. It's a it's a wood frame with glass in it and hinged in the middle so it can be rotated, and the whole idea is just to provide ventilation. You have un doubted you as you know what this is. Even if you don't think you know what this is.

You know what this window is. You've seen it mostly like older hotels and things like that, they don't think it's a It's a window that is hinged along it's horizontal center line, and it typically pivots in towards the room that it is opening up into and out towards the space where if you're outside of the spooks looking at so that the hot air on the outside the inside of the room can float out along the roof or the ceiling and cooler air can then because it's

it's for ventilation. Yeah, it totally is. Yeah, And so so you had one of those, uh, and it was not open at least on the latch. Apparently kind of a lapse on is the doors part. But you know, maybe it's kind of high and besides what, she probably didn't think burglars were likely to come into it because frankly, an adult couldn't fit through this window. Speaking of adults, as I said, the windows, the windows were nailed shut, doors were locked, but the trans and window was open.

So opposite Captain Bain, apparently some people, you know, this is like back in the day, people didn't have internet or TV, and so when anything looked like it was happening, people would immediately Yeah, I started rubber necking. So he founds in the crowd. In the crowd, he finds a small boy and boost them up and threw the transom opening. So the kick and dropped on the other side and unbolted door and let him and let him in. But it had to be a right, So that's important. Yeah,

the kid was because it's a very small opening. I know, no adult could fit through. I couldn't even I'm a little Maybe could if you really try, I'd have to lose some weight. Yeah, there'd be some contortion. Yeah, but yeah, so realistically, it couldn't be a normal size of human. And I'm a small, normal size, small human. No, yeah, you are small, but yeah, definitely it's a kid thing

or extremely emaciated adults existing. Yeah, So the kid goes in and unlocks the door, the police come in, come in, and then and they find Isador Fink laying on the floor dead. Three gunshot wounds, one of which was in his left wrist or hand depending on the version of read. But this one had and this one had powder burns on it. So a close range shot, like maybe even a contact shot. So like, yeah, and we've talked about this before, but to get that kind of powder burn

the gun has to be ballpark about half of float away. Yeah, it's got to be super duper close for the powder to actually be hot enough to burn the skin as well. Yeah, and at a little bit more distance, even I have a couple of feet, you'll get particles of gunpowder like, but it won't be a burn yeah, but yeah, but if you want to so this was this was my possibly even a contact yeah right, like a yea almost suggests maybe a struggle that does hand. Hand wounds generally do, right,

they usually are defensive nature. So yeah, it's like, oh, please don't shoot peas. But you know, and I guess, I mean, depending on the gun, maybe that'll stop it, it won't. Martha Wayne scenario Yeah of Martha Wayne for batman. Okay, oh that's right, I'm there. Yeah, thank you? Who never heard of such a thing? A man that is a bat? Yeah, flies around at night with echo location. Saw the best comic today, which was Young Bruce Wayne falls down the well hole that he falls down, but instead of a

horde of bats, it's a horde of rats. Then twenty years later, it's rat man sitting on a precipice in a building, just looking miserable. And you've seen that, You've seen the man bat man one right, where it actually a bat who's choosing to be a man, who's actually man bat. I like it, sorry, sorry, but part of the way yeah, yeah, yeah, back, we've got a bullet

hole in his hand with burn marks. Yeah, with burn marks and then two in his chest, which apparently caught in the medical medical examiner should have killed him instantly and probably did kill him instant. So likely the hand

was first, Yeah, when the chest was second. Yeah, there's not much point in shooting somebody did and then shooting in the hand too, you know, right, or you wanted to appear as though there was a struggle or it's And it's also conceivable, depending on the kind of gun that was used, maybe he only fired two shots and one world the hand was over the chest, hand into the chest. But but so do we know which side of the hand the burns were on. Yeah, See, that's frustrating,

like freaking details of the story that killed me. That's an important one, right, If if the hand was over the chest, it'd be on the outside, just for people who are having arts and visually thin things. But if it was a defensive yeah, yeah, I know, it would be good to know, and maybe someday I want to know. Next time I'm back in New York, I'm going to go to the NYPD and demand the records. Listen, I was.

I spent a lot of time in the New York Times archives, very upset because there was so many articles that looked like they might be related not but yeah, not quite well no, No, The problem is I couldn't read the articles because it turns out from the late eighteen nineties to anyone are free to read anything after that requires a membership, which is paid and is at

an exorbitant amount of money. And I was very mad because I kept having these threads and then I couldn't ever get in there to confident that somebody we know has a membership, So we should, I hope so, and if they do, they need to find it and send it to us. So. But so the windows were closed and locked, and the door was locked, and the only thing that was open was that that one tiny little window window. So that the initial conclusion, obviously that you

would draw is he killed himself. No, yeah, I mean I don't know anybody who shoots themselves in the hands always an obviously conclusion. But yeah, I mean if there's no yeah, it could there's no gun that that that screws the whole thing up. There's no gun. Speaking of shooting yourself in the hand, I I think I once who had shot himself accidentally through the hand and then shot himself twice in the chest. No, he didn't do that.

It was an I'm not saying, screwed up and shot himself in the hand and then okay, so it doesn't matter, I'm going to kill myself anyway back. But also like, maybe this is off topic, maybe this is going too fast, but I just who you don't I don't know the statistics behind this, but I feel like most people who would try to kill themselves with the gun don't shoot themselves in the chest. Yeah, that's an awkward I mean, we've actually had this conversation before. It is a very

difficult and awkward angle. But more than that, you would usual people who do it don't usually use their trigger finger. They use their thumb because they have to backwards face. But even more than that, the gun would be right there. So well that's the problem. That's a gun murderer. But so yeah, it's looking like murder. But then that that opens up another can of worms. Looking around the apartment, there was nothing missing except for his Maltese sculpture. Yeah,

it's that real at the Maltese. Yeah, of course it's real. What they made a movie about it. I'm just but but what did you really have a Maltese He did not. I'm sorry, I just want to be very clear. Yeah, that's just I'm just joking. Yeah, I know it would be great, that it would be amazing, I know, but now, uh, you never know, maybe there was something like that in

there that got taken. I don't know. Yeah, it didn't seem like he had a lot of close personal friends or connections that would be able to really vouch for. I mean, you know, the police that it didn't seem like anything was missing, but like, how do they know, I mean dust marks. Usually if you don't know what is in the house originally, you don't know what he's missing. Could be hard. It's hard to say, you know, because he had a painting on the wall for ten years

and there's that till ring around it. Yeah. In this case, they concluded robbery wasn't the motive because he had money in his pockets and also he had a cash drawer that for the laundry that had cash in it. So they concluded that robbery was not the motive. Although on the other hand, you know, on he knows, but so they ruled out robbery um and they found no fingerprints on the cri crency, except for isidor thinks uh he uh typically didn't let people in that he didn't know

because he was security conscious. The room was not all that's a political term, that's a politically correct term from what he was. Yeah, a little paranoid, but well else the room was not all torn up from a struggle or anything like that. So there wasn't a huge thing. But his iron had been left on. He was apparently doing some late night ironing and for his business. Hard working guy, and so his iron was turned on sitting on the ironing board. Question, Yeah, was it an electric

iron iron? It was a gas iron, and I don't know how that works, So that's that's what I had. One place I read it was a gas so it wasn't like one of the old time ones that you would heat over front of plane. I presumed that that's what they meant by a gas iron stove. And it was an o steel iron all And then he ended up and then that's probably that's what. I don't know one that came out with electric I do not believe that there was ever such a thing as a gas iron.

I believe that it is what Devon is saying that's what I would think, which also I don't think so. But that also that also takes credit away from the statements about how long that gas iron was out because we don't know how hot that device was when he used it. Well, a gas iron won't scorch fabric. It'll

score the time that it is the hottest. Sorry, I know, I'm jumping ahead a little bit because the next thing, well, the next thing you were going to say, I know because of your script, was that you know, but iron had not had time to scorch the fabric, right, So that was supposed to set a timeline. And I'm about to do some googling. But if it is the kind of old time iron that we're talking about, where you set it on a heat source and then you put it, the time that it it is most likely to scorch

the fabric is when you first because that's cool. Yeah, And so even if it's sat on there for a long period of time without moving, it's going to continue to cool. It's not going to eventually scorch. It will starch immediately or not at all. That's where electric irons burned things because they are continually at a consistent temperature yeah, temperature. That's in my case, it is always too hot because it messes up everything I have. But I don't know

why you do that. It's easy shirts. Yeah, and your socks, Man, socks don't need a crease. There are people do that. I met a guy wants to obviously ironed his blue jeans because he had a nice sharp crease and down the front of his blue jeans. Have I not ever talked about the cowboys that I used to hang out with that had that. That was a thing in the nineties, was your wranglers had to have a create a seam

in the front. And there were guys that you could tell those paths had been ironed a hundred times and could never ever be ironed again, and they would still have a hard ridge down the front. Yeah. No, And it's a thing. Okay, I guess it was a thing. It's a fashion thing. I don't get that. Devon might, but I don't know that shows you ignant. I am okay, alright, So anyway, but enough about the iron But you know, it looks like though he was still doing some work.

He's doing some work. He's interrupted, he's killed. But robbery or burglary was not the motive, and so police were puzzled about this. They talked to everybody he knew, which is, you know, the customers and neighbors and stuff like that. Um, and he had no known enemies as far as anybody knew. And of course, as I always said, we tell it,

we really don't know that nothing was taken. I mean, there might have been something really valuable in there, and so it was maybe it's something so valuable the killer grabbed it and didn't bother looking for anything else to take.

But uh, there's another story that we're going to be covering soon that I have the same question, which is the perpetrated or may have found the initial stash or a stash of many and thinking I found the treasure trove, booked it but didn't get all of the treasure because they left too soon. That's why. That's why when you're hiding your treasure, your cash, whatever, you don't put it all in one place. Yeah, you know, you don't want to do that. Too many eggs in one basket exactly.

But of course, Uh, the one thing they found out from talking to everybody is that they said, especially as customers, they said he'd been a little paranoid for about the past year. He said he kept his door locked even during business hours. Uh, and he would only let people in that he recognized. And he told that it can't be conducive to a profitable business. Well, it's kind of annoying for your customers to have to stand out there

knocking on the door, and especially if it's raining. But well even if they're in the apartment hallway, but if it's somebody he doesn't know what he's like, I'm not taking your clothes, dude. I've been living down the street for a month and I've never come here. I'm trying to give you business. I don't know. You go away.

I mean, on the other hand, like there are plenty of business, especially one like this that he could have been on his capacity, He could have been literally washing as many clothes as he possibly could and said like, listen, I have my repeat customers. I'm making a fine living, I you know. And also I'm terrified and paranoid and whatever. So I am just only going to let people that

I recognize in. And that's that, you know, that's certainly, that's that's possibly or or it is possible that something happened within the past year to cause this change of behavior. There was nobody, nobody, as far as I knew, reported that he had been robbed or assaulted. He would have to have reported that, but yeah, that's true to somebody. Yeah, he didn't say anything anybody about that though, but you know,

who knows. Maybe somebody was out to get him. I mean maybe like maybe, like said, maybe he did actually find a Maltese falcon in a flea market or something like that, and he had and he was really paranoid about it. He could or maybe maybe he found the gas operated iron that Devon just found on the internet waved at it. Ye that actually exists. Yeah, it was

like the future is coming for me gas iron. I mean he could have also this, It happens plenty, that he could have had a mental health breakdown that you know, he could have already been which is a little paranoid, and that he just had some sort of breakdown that was maybe triggered by something but also maybe triggered but nothing, and that he just suddenly became a very paranoid human being because his mental health had deteriorated. But a certain yeah,

that's which happens. Yeah, actually, uh, and so it could have been that. It could have been that it really was maybe he heard about some robberies and that's sort of scared him. Or maybe there were neighborhood monsters that were offering a protection and he wasn't paying them money for protection, you know, and they don't like it when you don't like their protection. Now they don't. Maybe he had had his first running with an insurance salesman. Well,

sure had a nice laundromat. You've got here to be a shame of something happened to it. This burned down with that gas power all the way, yeah, with you in it, yea, and no financial compensation. Why would I wanted if I'm dead, never mind just passed, You would, wouldn't you? Yeah? Well, yeah, that's the way it worked in those days and probably still doesn't many parts of the world. Yeah, that's how Triple A has been around

this long. But the whole big trick with that thing, right is that like okay, like, yes, it would be cool to know who did it and why, Yeah, but the how is bigger? Right? Yeah? How do Yeah? That's actually the larger question that nobody really cares about, about, which is unfortunate. Certainly, you know, nobody cares about like who killed him, how the killer did it? Yeah, I know, That's just what I wanted out to. It's like, like

I said, total lockdoor mystery. Which was the thing we talked about with the with the Wallace was they were like, well, we're pretty sure that she did it, and we don't really care about why or if she actually did. We just care that she tells us how well. There was the same thing with Joe said blows, because they were like, oh, no he did It's fine. Side everyone was like, we don't really care why, just how so help us understand some of the scenario that they find Joe. So well,

that's what we got here. Um. We got the doors and windows secured from the inside. The windows of course with nails. The doors were bolted, which, as we mentioned, could be a steel bar just to slide into position, kind of kind of bolts with no key. It could also be a dead bull with a key, yeah yeah, dead bull or not even even not a key operated one won't just a little handle on the inside, or you could have had a regular old door lock. And you guys have probably all seen these. I've got him

in my house. That kind of had to play with. At the top there's a knob and then below that there's a keyhole that's shaped like a keyhole. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it's called keyhole exactly. And you stick your old fashioned key in there to locker unlock it, and want to to lock it. You close the door night and you stick a key in their turn at three sixty yeah, during a three sixty degrees, and then pull it back out and the door is locked. He's throwing

the dead bolt, right. But a lot of people in those days would leave the key in because the keyhole goes all the way through people, so people can peek through it. And some some plates would have a swing plate that would cover the keyhole for privacy, but that was an additional cost, so very few had that. And another thing too, is that is that those old fashioned locks actually were not that incredibly hard to pick. So

that's another thing. There's a reason that a skeleton key is called skeleton key, and it's that many of the keys worked. Yeah, you can kind of buy a yeah, and it probably kind of works for most I mean, you know, they like three tumblers or something. It's super easy. Yeah, they were easy to pick and so, so the idea for those of you wondering, I'm sorry, just to interrupt with those of you wondering, Joe has other locks on his door. Now, yeah, you can't just break into his house,

you can't. Those are just internal but the not the exterior ones. But yeah, So, so when you want to lock up a night in this case, what you do is you turn it three sixty degrees, but instead of pulling it out, you turn about another ninety degrees. Yeah, right there, and just leave the key and it locks it in place. The the teeth are now barred. Somebody can't just push it out from the other side right there, lodged against the interior of the frame of the locking mechanism,

which stops him from just being pushed out. Yeah, and so uh, and so it was very common, I think probably more often than not people did this. They left the key in the lock. Yeah, and so also helps you know, you not forget your key when you leave. Yeah, that's that's another good point. And it's very hard to leave the house if the door is locked with yeah,

and you've had it in your hand as you walk out. Yeah, And I think this is probably what happened because I did in one account that I did read that the key that the door had been had been locked and the key had been left in the lock on the inside. But again I'm not adercent. There's so many account thing zone in the story, it's difficult to say, I know that, Uh so we did. You did say that there were extra bolts on the door. I believe there was at

least yeah. And whether that was the true like slide or a bar drop in U shaped blocks for a bolt like you see the old uh the castle door blocks. Yeah, I know, they could could be a lot of things in the reporting. Yeah, and so I don't think it was anything quite that elaborate. It could have. That's a very elaborate that's a really simple, pretty simple. Yeah, that's a good point. It's simple. But there have been I mean,

you can look up on YouTube. Even there are ways to pick those skeleton key lots with the lock with the keys in them, or to relock the door from the exterior. Harder to do with a slide bolt. So that's why the dropping bars, right, And so that's why I'm just bringing that up as that it was a slide bolt that probably had to be locked from the inside.

It probably was. And the reason I would say that because the police spent a lot of time thinking about this, so they probably would have thought of just, you know, all the permutations about this. The police, like I said, they were, they investigated this and then went over it very thoroughly, and the best they could come up with is that somebody the murderer was somebody very small, thin and very agile shot who shot Fank and somehow crawled

out through the trans and window, you know. And their support for that was that one of the one of the hinges on the trans and was broken, so maybe somebody forced his way through that window. But it also sounds like he didn't live in the most well maintained space. Yeah, and that's that's true too, or or it could be too. Let's not forget the policeman did boost a kid up and shove them through the trans and window. But worth

mentioning that. And we don't know what the kid did, you know, as soon as they dropped in, but the gold coins he found on the ground and then well or if there was like a chair or something, But you wouldn't need some kind of boosting macca is m Yeah, would that would have probably still been sitting. Would it would be, So it's convenient. There's a chair right here,

I'll just jump onto that. Kids are dumb, you know, you dropped right onto the chair and then kid, they don't know what to look for or what to think about. Recording in their memory. Yeah, I don't even know. If this kid was twelve, twelve years old, would have been too big to fit through this trans and window. There was some suggestion that maybe the killer fired through the

trans and window itself. So he gets out of the killer sneaks up on in Fink's department, bringing a chair with him or something like a ladder or a ladder or something or a crate down standing ladder killer and that shoots down through the trans and and kills Fink. There was a problem with that, and the corner said

that the angle of the bullet wounds. It appeared that the killer was standing face to face and at the same level, and there burns and they're also on the stand also, so that kind of shot the hell out of that and pill pun intended. Yeah, the windows were attacked, so he hadn't been shot from outside through a window either, And of course they're again that's the whole powder burn in the hand thing kind of rules that out too.

But but another question is is that you know somebody somehow shot him and got out of the room, leaving it locked from the inside. But the other question I have is that why why do you do that? Yeah, not why do you kill him? But like, why, yeah, why you go to the trouble unless you're maybe like some sort of true crime mystery aficionado. Yeah, it could have been old enough. Yeah, no, I'm not old enough. Yeah,

but yeah, I don't know. I mean, I The only reason I can think of is that, other than being a true crime aficionado, is that maybe the idea was to get the cops so puzzled over that that they'd be puzzling over that part of the mystery to forget to go out and look for Apparently, I think they did look for his killer. They at least talked to enough neighs in acquaintances and stuff to try to figure out, you know, the usual way you saw murderers, like, well,

who wanted to kill this guy? That's your murderer? Probably, and they did that. They did their due diligence. I guess another reason. Another reason I can think of is that like, well, you could always say to the jury, it's like, do I look like Hoodini? Do I look like I gotta fit through that trans and window? Do you you know? And maybe you know if you get caught from two pound dude, there's no way I could have done that. Yeah, so we've got there are some

theories out there. Believe we had kind of a lot of theories, and actually, so we're gonna talk about that, but first let's take a break. Hey, guys, For those of you who know Joe well, and that's most of you, you know, there's only one thing that Joe hates more than shopping, and that's shopping for cleaning products. I mean, let me tell you, Joe does not like spending time in the store or waiting in line or figuring out

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all right. So our first theory this is actually I found this at least one place on the webs, which is that this was not actually a big mystery at all. It was just basically a common urban legend slash built from miss reporting by the media or police in competence.

The sloppy story turned into a legend. Yeah, and so there was one comment I saw, I think it was on Reddit that said that the killer probably just had a copy of the key, so he just killed him and locked the door from the outside when he left, which would be pretty easy. He was not actually in the door. That yeah, yeah, I can't disagree with that. Yeah, and so that makes sense, except that kind of assumes that the police were morons, I mean, right, so yeah, well,

I mean a little bit. But again, we we are admitting one thing here. No, we're admitting one thing here, and that is that a small child was sent through into the crime scene before anyone else, right, so they had to take on faith that small child said yeah, yeah, the door was bolted, and he was law. I mean, you could see the key was in the lock or it wasn't and whatever, but you know, maybe it was locked and you could actually see through to the crime scene.

But they assumed there was these extra bolts that were bolted and the kids said, yeah, I was bolted, of course. Well yeah, but in those days, I don't think the kid. I think the kid was just turned the key and unlocked it and left the key in there. I don't I don't see why he would have removed it and then lie about there being a key in there. No, I totally agree with that. Well, it's it's curiosity killed

the cat. It literally the kid could have got in and stood there and pulled the key out and looked around for a minute, and then so many things under, hey, kid, what's going on? Open up the door, and then when oh, oops, kind of opens it up and sorry. And if the key is the whole thing, I mean, I'm just saying the key is literally the key to the story. It had to be there for the key for the kid to turn it and unlock it, yes, yeah, or things had to be bolted on the other side or whatever.

But if there was a little bit of misreporting on his end where he was like, you know, they opened the door and saw the bolts and said, oh, these must have all been bolted, but they weren't and it was just a key. And there are some other eyes we're going to discuss in a minute. There are some other ways that you could have locked the door with the key from the outside side. I mean, I just

think I agree grilled the kid pretty pretty well. I'm really just playing down here, but I will just say, you know, it's long enough ago that there's there could be some room for something. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure they went over it pretty carefully. He would hope they did, because they spent some time on this one. Actually the

police did, so. I I think it's it's probably a safe assumption that there was that there really truly was some sort of a thrown a bolt that was thrown from the inside, or you know, a key in the lock on the other side, or something that made them believe that, although, like you said, the kid could have somehow said something misreported it, but you would think that they would have sat him down and really straight in

that you've gotten that story straightened out. And you would think, but again, we don't know how old the kid was, you know, and the younger the kid. Oftentimes there's just some kind of if a police officer says to them and all the bolts were locked, right, and the kid would say yes, sir, and that that is also the problem is that this was an era where crime scene,

as we've talked about before, crime scenes weren't protected. Police said whatever they wanted to to the news agencies to get a buck, and so they could have just started saying it was so weird it was completely locked, when in fact it wasn't. And there's this and we're going to talk about this a zillion times in this story, but there is a million scenarios where there's gradations of the truth that could have sent it off in another direction.

I'm just saying all of this to just again be the devil out gat I agree, but I think it's likely all of this was true. But I think it is because, you know, for one thing, I mean, there were there are lots of murders in New York City, and so why why did they picked this particular one to say, oh, it's all locks from the inside, you know, when you know, they could have like they could have

lock mysteries all over New York. There's probably all kinds of dead bodies founded apartments that are locked, you know. So but it could have been a situation where, I mean, we've seen this today where it is a what is the turn? It's a firework case, is it? Or think he is an immigrant and suddenly there's an immigrant push for like people who are like, we're immigrants, we are not getting the protection we need in the service we deserve. We see this today and what the hell? And suddenly

he is just he's it's that that that gunpowder story. Yeah, the powder thank you, it's the powder cake story. And so he gets launched and then drops immediately after that. But all we're left with is those those hot details. And so you're saying that, I'm trying to figure out

your reasoning here. So he was a Polish immigrant, the Polish American community got up in arms, and then so the police because the Irish American cops didn't give a rip and so that you know, inflammatory gets in the papers, but only certain details get saved, or the cops were trying to cover their butts, you know, maybe didn't do as good a job. Again, this is total speculation. I think you guys are thinking, thinking the current modern unfortunate

media lens. Well, no, yeah, I think I agree, But again I'm going to just reiterate again. I'm just kind of I'm just saying it to to voice it. But unlikely. Yeah, I don't think that's what happened, but but it is possible that it is vaguely possible that cops could have said, you know, after the fact, well, here's all the reasons that we couldn't really figure out what was going on. It's just a locked door mystery. It's not a murder mystery.

And yeah, well, I mean, but again unlikely. It is highly unlackily because a lot of murders didn't get solved in those days or these days. So that's why we have a show. Yeah, and the police actually, uh, considering the amount of trouble they went to in this particular case, it would be awfully dominant. Just say, hey, did anybody ever ask that kid if maybe, you know, maybe it wasn't really locked on the inside, you know, and after they torn the place apart, you know. But so that's

one reason I think it probably. But also we've got a whole bunch of other theories though, well, no, I wanted to say one of the thing about that the New York Police commissioner at the time, his name was Edward mulrooney, who gave an interview on the radio This is Pretty TV. So he did a radio whenever about two years after the murder and said that the think he talked about three cases and that this was one of them. He said that he considered it insoluble and

one of the greatest mysteries of his police career. Of the NYPD and since there's probably a lot of unsolved murders, I'm thinking that that happened in New York when he was during his tenure. I'm thinking the part about it that was insoluble was the locker room aspect of the case. And I'm thinking he probably had aspects access to the files, the actual files, and not whatever was reported in the press, because that always gets distorted, the mistakes are always made.

So that's another reason I think this is really truly an Austin God lockdoor mystery. I totally agree, not just a screw no, so you know, we do that thing sometimes I feel like we have to argue the counterpoint, but totally yeah, I think it happened. Yeah, and so so we got a mystery. Okay, our next sery, our next serious suicide. He actually did commit suicide. But of course there's a problem with that. No gun, but well, the kid was alone in the room for a few moments.

Maybe the gun was just laying there on the floor, and the guns and the kid grabs the gun and sticks in his pocket, you know, and so that's possible. Of course, you think the police would have grilled him pretty hard and actually wrung the truth out of him, because unless he squirmed away in the press of people that were right there outside the door and just vanished and they never saw the kid again, it's possible that

happens candidate to one of his newsy friends. I don't think he would have handed it to one of his newsy friends. I think it would have just you know, sold us to one of the gang members of the local game. But but it's possible. I'm pretty sure they probably tracked the kid down and grilled him pretty good about you know, stuff like the lock and everything else, you know, and did you take the gun? Because they must have occurred to somebody that perhaps the kid did

take the gun. I feel like there are bigger problems than just the missing gun. You mean, like the fact that he ended his life while Ironingcause everybody loves ironing exactly so is iron is on? Yeah? Is that? Is that how you want to end your life ironing? I mean it's not. But I also I've actually kind of wanted to end my life because I like ironing. Yeah I do, I really did. I think really sad listen next, No, I mean it's you know, it's kind of like picking

like a scab or something. It's there's just something super satisfying about like seeing all those wrinkles and just like and they're all gone. But I'm also hearing good. I'm also just good at ironing, so it doesn't really that. But we've talked about this before a lot of times with the theory of suicide, and that suicide is oftentimes not a rational thing, right. The bigger problem that I have is not the like iron being on or anything like that. It's the hole in the hand, well in hand,

and the shots. That's the bigger problem I have with it. Suicide sometimes do shoot themselves more than once. I mean, it has happened times, but oftentimes not like in the hand. And then again, as we talked about a little bit earlier, I feel like, again with no statistics to back this up, I just feel like people more often shoot themselves in the head much. Yeah, but you it's it's a definitive shot.

You're much more likely to expire from a head wound then you are, some kind of general check, much more likely to expire instantly rather than you know, taking a long ticktome a while to bleed out. And and remember that this is so the kind of gun that he would have likely used would not have been some kind of semi automatic, but something that had a very exposed trigger.

And like we talked about, if he has to use his thumb right, So if you had to use his thumb to pull the trigger, your hand, the web of your hand, if not your your pointer finger will get up underneath the hammer and get caught. And so there's usually obvious signs of damage to your hand from using it backwards. It it tends to catch and tear flesh. So he should have shown if the emmy had the examiner at the time had been looking for that, would

is it? That's weird. There's some square notches out of his pointer finger. Odd. He must have done that with an iron Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's that's possible to Yeah, definitely, it's an awkward position to shoot a gun in. I mean, it's definitely the gun's gonna Of course, it could have been some whimpy little thirty two that didn't recoil very much too. I don't know. Well, mostly it's just that that that trigger, that hammer action flailing in my hand

at my head. It's the hammer action that is usually what catches the webbing of your hand or your people's four fingers when especially when they're using a gun backwards because they're they're holding it at a weird angle because of course there's a slope to the handle. I never shot a gun backwards, you know. They taught me that in my n R A safety class. If you ever held one backwards, though, you can see very easily how

it would happen. Well, but and here's another question, is they made no pretty specific note of the gunpowder burns on his hands but not on his chest. And you would assume that if he had point blank he would that they would, And they have also mentioned likely Yeah, yeah, well he may have done one through the hand. The odds of him shooting himself twice through the same spot in the hand, yeah astronomical. Why would you do that? You know, it's like, okay, that didn't work and act

and match it perfectly with the whole Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, I don't think so. There's too many variables, yeah, now there are. No. I don't think that suicide is a good one. Another series This is another Another popular one is that he was shot in the hallway and ran his side through the bowls. I personally have always believed this was the answer to the story. This theory. This is like because it's unsatisfying, but it's logical, it does make some sense. But it was the same thing with

de la Plaza. I mean, you know, even though the police concluded that he must have committed suicide, there was blood on the steps outside his apartment, so he was obviously stabbed outside and then ran inside locked the door. But was there blood outside of this apartment in this case, No, there was no blood shot three times or at least twice.

But this is my my problem with this portion of the story, and a lot of this story, is that I don't know if the details were recorded that was there a blood trail outside because some of the reporting says, well, if he was wearing heavy clothing, which we don't know what he was wearing, So let's just say he's got four wool shirts on at a big trench coat, that would soak up the blood while he was falling back into his apartment. But we don't know that for sure,

and so it's it's hard to say. I personally feel like it just it makes the most sense that a guy it's it's the panic room scenario we've seen this a lot of movies where oh God, shut the latch and then realized that you've been shot and then fall down dead, but nobody can get you because you're already dead. So which of his hands was shot? Left one? Okay, well, that I guess is less helpful. But but the one thing I will say is that chest wounds aside, he

had a hole in his hand that was shot and bleeding. Right, So if he's making his way back into his apartment, he's closing and locking the door, there's going to be blood on the door. In some capac it's his left hand and he is right handed. That is not the case. You've never in your life only walked in with your right hand, closed the door and locked everything. Yeah, I do it all the time. I pushed the door closed and then everything and I throw the bolts. I feel

like there would be some sort of blood. I'm a lazy jerk, and I shut the door with my shoulder a lot, or I push it with my foot when I go in so that I can reach up and use my my free hand to rabbit. So can't see this, but I've got my hand on my chest, and it's my left hand, which is now my bleeding hand, which now bleeding into my uh, spongy clothing, which is absorbing all of the blood for me very conveniently. I feel like at the end of the day, there's some blood

something even. And also I'm not going to disagree with that. I have a hard time believing that you got shot in one hand and didn't reach over with his other hand and grab the hand and then get blood on it. You could have armed pitted it like I'm doing here, where he sticks in his armpit and squeezes, so now

his right hand is still free to operate. But then here's the follow up question to that, is, is your theory that he was doing some ironing in the house, went out into the hallway, got shot, came back in, or how otherwise You' not I'm not answering why he

left his apartment because I cannot answer that. The only thing that I'm trying to answer, just like everybody else, is how did he get into his apartment and to be shot fatally three, you know, once in the hand and twice in the chest, And we can't figure it out. And so my only thing is that I've always thought, well, he did the armpit action you know, one hand up under the armpit, squeezed, ran in, slammed the door, locked the bolts, fell down, and died. Yeah, but that's all

I got. Yeah, I know that's it. But but of course, but as far as the minutes, okay, as far as as far as you weren't supposed to say good oh sorry, now I didn't mean that at all. No, I mean, but as far as the multi layers, I don't think he was wearing multiple layers because he was inside ironing, so you're not gonna you know, So I don't think that conceivable that he got functioned by some amasily a little thirty two bullets and there was not a lot

of blood. It seems unlikely, especially with the hand one, especially the handman. Also, I feel like, emmy pronouncements are pretty I mean, they're not full proof certainly, but generally I feel like I'm willing to trust the fact if they say, like that would have been it all immediately like that that is probably was. But even more than that, if your theory is like, arn't armpit hand you know, um, there was a it was a pretty good description of

the crime scene. You would think they would have said, also there was all this blood all over his other hand, his arm, his armpit, whatever. But but the other Okay, But my counter that that is in some of the information that Joe shared with us ahead of the script was the fact that there were emmy accounts where people have said that person should have died instantly and instead they wandered around for half an hour to an hour a lie before keeling over dead. That is typically head wounds.

So I mean, if you get shot through the heart and you're not going to wander around, But he wasn't. He wasn't shot through the hardest near as I can tell. He was shot in the chest near the heart, and they said that should have killed him instantly near the heart and the harder prey. Yeah, as long as a lot of material between your exterior and your interioring your rib cage, in your heart, and things can go very very close and cause bleeds that are slower bleeds. I'm

not gonna say they're slow, but they're slow. I thought you were going to be quiet for the next twenty minute. You're right, I'll be quite till the next THEERI. How's that? Yeah, I'm only two minutes from now. Yeah, I'm only assuming that he got shot through the hard or too. You know, maybe you know one of the arteries going into the harder out of the heart, I should say, or something like that. Well, because I mean, there's no other organ in your body that's going to cause you to instantly die.

You get shot to it either long you get shot through your long, you'll still live for a little while. You can have a totally collapse long and be fine, I mean not fine for a long time. I have a friend who joined the military with a lung that collapsed spontaneously, and they were like, yeah, you're fit for duty.

Well that's that says something different doctors. But he, I mean he was able to function with just sometimes yeah, and so he must says the must have found some damage to the heart that would have been instantly fable for him to say something like that, But I guess like more than that, Yeah, I just don't. There's not enough evidence exterior too. I mean, there's no real evidence

interior to the apartment to say what happened. But I just feel like there's very little exterior evidence as well too. It seems like there should have been some blood at least from the hand wound. The found myself. On the hand, I bleed pretty profusely from a small cut. Hands bleed a lot. There really is a lot of age. You're flailing it around and screaming about it. Well, but even like a paper cut that I mean, they don't believe like they're not throwing blood everywhere, but they are. They

just like sit there and they believe forever. And it's You're like, that's like three layers of skin, how are you doing that? But it does. It just bleeds and bleeding bleeds, and because again you know, there's a lot veins and stuff that you need in there. So it just seems like there would have been more evidence. But again, that should have been a blood fail. If he ran inside, there should have been a blood fail from the door to wherever they found his body, because I don't think

they found him right next to the door. That's the bigger part for me, because I am willing to say if somebody shot them in the shot him in the hall, he ran inside, locked himself in, you go better clean this blood up quick, right, Okay, But there's just a lot can we think, can we answer? Can we try and settle on a description of something here that before we go into the next theory or any of that the following theories, which is the lady that heard the

scuffle and ran outside and got a cop. Do we think that was five minutes? Do we think she went and got a drink at the local pub and came back and got a constable, and so it's thirty minutes. Do we have any sense of we don't know how long it took. I mean, I'm som assembly it was not long, and I think it was a ran outside and I need a yeah in a corner like that's my thought too. But this is again a variable that I feel changes the story dramatically. I never have a

clear confident answer. It's possible she shot him in the hallway, cleaned up, and then went out for the had a cigarette. She was cool as a cute camera when somebody killed that man. The only thing that's tricky for me again is the like iron thing is even if it was again, we've like I've done some googling, and there's this gas powered situation that could have still been hot, but even not, it is my impression that it was still hot or

at least warm. They came turn it on to do some ironing, right, But even if it was this kind of sits on a fire, gets hot pressing old tiny iron, my impression was that it was still warm. Yeah, and they don't do and but they also those things don't retain heat. Well, you know, fifteen minutes Okay, okay, you know, it's like for going for I guess we're we're kind of all in agreement that there is a fifteen minute lag between the incident and they and actually finding the

kid and getting the kids. And I feel like we need to establish that because otherwise I'm going to keep saying I think fifteen minutes is like the most time that elapsed in my mind. So, yeah, it was. It was fairly recent. There were a lot of a lot of beat cops walking around in those days, you know, and so he was you know, he might have just been walking right past the front door. I don't know. Uh, a very unearth theory. We're still on that he was

shot in the hallway and ran inside. There was a scuffle, he gets shot in the hand, then he runs inside and bolts the door. There's still a problem with that, of course. But then the gunman went and got a chair or something and stood on it shot him through the transom again the same probably that there's a bullet angles, Where did the chair come from? That? Where did the chair go to? Yeah, all that stuff. So that's about that. People have theorized on that one was quite a bit

new theory. He was so apparently he was making people look through the transom window to prove to them that he knew them. Then that would prove that he was an idiot for leaving it unlatched. So he was standing up talking to somebody, said I don't know, you're not letting you in, and they said, oh, yeah, I have a gun, and he goes no, and they shoot him in the hand, shoot him twice in the chest. He falls off of the stool that he was standing on.

They take their stuff and like run away. The little boy who crawls through lands on the stool and moves it to open the door and the and just doesn't even mention it to the cops. And that's how it happened. No, I thought I was Velma at the very least. So that was that was Scooby level. Okay, yeah it was. It was good. But there's still the whole problem of you know, snaking the hands through the transom and down to the right level and shooting him in the chest

a couple of times. But if he was standing, if they were both standing on a if they were both standing on it did like a slightly performers who happened to walk around all day long, every day. And still if they were both standing on a stool, it would have been a slightly downward angle. But okay, okay, okay, let's go. Let's go to our next series, which is that our killer was still in the room when the policeman entered the room. He was a Maltese salcon. I

like this one. I like this way more than it was. He was pretending to be a statue the maltesecon the whole time. This reminded me of just just today, actually I was it would reminded me of this old mad TV skit. Did you ever see the one with the department store mannequin killer mannequin? Yeah, that was one of the very first episode of the New Doctor Who series when they reached arted with Christopher Eckelson. Was mannequins come

to life? Yes? Yes, yeah, yeah, so it could have been like that and this one, uh, these two women are it's after hours at the mall and they're cleaning up, and there's this guy dressed in a tennis outfit and pretended to be a mannequin, but he's like looks like a total psycho, and he's started moving towards them, and

then whenever they turn around, he just freezes. He's like the angels, yeah from yeah, and then and then and then they said, and then one of them said, I don't know something about that mannequin just kind of creeps me out. Yeah, and then you go back to whatever they're doing. Yeah, it's great. It's it's a hilarious skip. It's called like Mad TV Killer Mannequin if you want to look it up. Um, but yeah, it could have been like that. You just stood there and pretended and

just held very still and they didn't notice something. They just sort of split up, just to make sure I understand. The whole theory is that the killer was actually still in the apartment when the cops arrived. Yeah, okay, so I can I can see this theory playing out well, because door shuts, fight goes down, suddenly, here's ladies screaming and people pounding down the hallway and has to find

somewhere to hide. My difficulty is I don't know the layout of the apartment, the way that it's connected to the business. I mean, he could have had sacks of laundry that somebody jumped into to hide and crawled out of in the middle of the night, or they could

have been in his wardrobe. But there's a b jillion places that somebody could have not in the silly What was the story that the silly the William marchway, But there could have been real places that somebody could have actually hid for hours until everybody left, or even I mean even simpler than that, somebody could have hid in there.

The kid comes in, the cops come in, the crowd comes in, They entered themselves with the crowd, and just makes his or her get away and then But that the thing, the thing about it is is I don't know that there was a crowd. I don't know, ye a crowd of people the trek, right, we don't know that. I don't know. Listen, we we don't think that they should let a crowd in. And yet what is the story that you did about the preacher that was having

the affair and they let everybody trample all over this. Yeah, they shouldn't do what do that? But they did? Yeah. I mean. The other thing is is like I got I don't know how easy it was to find cop uniforms or even Yeah, I mean, it could have been a cop, but it could have been in the apartment dressed as a cop. The cop comes in, it's like, well the body he like slides behind him and then like you know, you know, makes them like pretend running noises and it's like, oh, here I am second on

the scene. Here, let's do I mean, like a silent movie, somebody goes and the copses. That's weird. It sounds like somebody's running in a well, I mean like not even that, but you know, just slides in, you know, walks like tiptoes two steps back in the hallway and then walks around the corner back into the room and says, here, I am on your backup. Let's deal with this. You would again assume that you know, cops would know who

the other cops in their beat. Well, it could have been it could have been a real co And you know, back in those days there was a lot more corruption, and so there's still a fair amount of corruption. There's some of that, but it was a lot more endemic in those days, and so there probably were the occasional cops who would maybe wax somebody, you know, for one of their mopster friends. You know, So it could have

been something like that. I guess that would be you know another Yeah, again, I think this is a fairly tiny little apartment, and so I don't know how feasible that would actually be to pull off a stunt like that. And I don't either because we don't really know the layout either. That's the trek. With the right layout, Yeah, yeah, with the right layout of the building and the apartment, it could work. Yeah, it's not great, it's not a

good theory. It's just you know, again, at all, it all kind of depends, you know, when the if you've got witnesses standing around like by standards, even if they haven't entered the room, they're blocking the exit from the room, and there, you know, when the cops sort of moves into the frame and says, hey, I'm here, there's got to be at least one or two people say where did he come from? Here's the question. Was there a fireplace with like a chimney? Nothing? Yeah, I don't know,

this is like a New York City tenement building. I don't think any of those things had fired. I mean, those things were tinder boxes to start with, so I can't imagine they would laugh or have a set up to encourage fire. All right, Well he may have had a fire because the iron stove, but not a fireplace. Okay, never mind. I was gonna think it was like, you know, it came down the chimney, or came up Santa Claus'll knock out the chimney. Maybe came in and or just

hit in the chimney. Yeah, maybe the whole time. Yeah, I I kind of doubt it. The only stories I hear about real life people using chimneys to get in and out of it always yeah, always yeah. So yeah, yeah, I don't think so. Uh well, let's move on to our next story, which is very similar to what you were thinking, which is the killer. Uh was the killer actually was dressed as a cop, and he happened to

be the first cop on the scene. So he's like what he so what he does is he liked that it's like this, So you kill the guy and then you leave lockingtrough behind you. And then when when the woman comes, comes and gets you. You come back and you say, like, oh, well, knock, knock, knock. Nobody asked, I'll try the door. It's locked, even though it's not

actually express situation. Yeah, yeah, I'm not buying this one because again, you know, the kid did actually go on the inside and actually unlock it from the you know, so I don't know how the cop really could have faked that well, but I'm desperate for theories here. No, I mean, I guess there is like some ambiguity about who went to get the kid, yeah, and where the kid came from. So, you know, is it possible that the copt up the key in the door? You know,

it wasn't it wasn't locked. He had the key he or he locked it from the outside, try to get in. He said, hey, go find a kid for me. The woman runs away, He opens the door, sticks the key in the lock, pending still pretending it's locked. Always the kid up over. Okay, that's that's a great I had never kid, because that's part of these locks that we're talking about, is bolts. Aside those locks, you can turn

right forever and think you're unlocking it. You could turn left, you know, and you turn it the three degrees left or to the right, whatever whichever way it is, and you lock it, and you can keep turning it as you mentioned forever and it'll just keep locking it and locking and locked right. Or you can turn it the other way and keep unlocking it unlocking on looking it. And it's likely that you wouldn't. You don't really know, you know, it's kind of makes the same kind of

sound a lot of times. And so he sticks the key in, locks it back up, poists the kid up, and the kid goes down and unlocks it and says, yeah, he was in the you know whatever, we've relocked it, blah blah, and goes in, or the woman stays the cock goes to the kid and says, hey, kid, I'll pay you, you know, twenty bucks that time money, more like a penny that time money, like, you know, some absurd amount to a child to say this door was locked, and again you would assume right that they would have

done their due diligence and that kid would have admitted and blah, we gotten to the bottom of yea, but also as possible, maybe not. But I kind of like this introim he says to the woman, go find a kid. You have kid, right, of course you do. You're a woman. You have a kid. Go find go find your smallest kid, find your smallest child. We're going to and she goes, yeah, of course I will, and he sticks the key in

and yeah. There's only one problem this theory, and that's just you know, even though it's my own theory, and that is that if the cop actually was the hit man, which is not beyond them, no, not at all, but if he was, then uh, why go through all these gyrations essentially call a lot of attention to this case to make it his lockdoor mystery kind of delio when that's gonna cause a lot more attention to be paid

to this whole thing. When typically, you know, murders in those days, especially poor immigrants and stuff like that, it probably they probably weren't investigated too terribly hard. But but again we've talked about this in in freaking numerous stories. What was the Jim Gray? Was he the one that was on the boat that disappeared and his wife was inflicated as doing it to him? Oh yeah, now that was in Tasmania, that was, but but you know, nobody

expected that story to really make the news. It was this guy disappeared and and it's weird and if his wife really did it, she was like people disappear from their boats all the time, and the boats go down and it's no biggil. Suddenly boom it's we've talked about this before. Boom it's suddenly it sticks. And the cop is like, O, S, I have to fabricate a story real fast because everybody's asking what happened about the locked door? Yeah?

I have a theory about this, okay. My theory is that since we don't know how long it took this woman to find this cop, we don't know where she found him. He could have been walking down the hallway and she came down exiting the crime scene. He could have been standing right outside the front door. Well, I mean he could have, and she could have said, oh, thank goodness, officer, I heard a scuffle, please help me,

and he thought a crap, uh, you know whatever. He's a cop, but also he's a human, and he thinks she, you know, as I did this, Okay, cool LL's we got to find a way to make it seem like she doesn't like I didn't do it. So he goes to the door and he goes it was locked, and she goes, oh my gosh, officer, what do you mean it's locked? How could it be locked? And he says, I don't know. We'll look this, windows open, you gonna find your smaller child. No, I'm just saying there's like

there's some it's good. Yeah, king on the officers part, right, but also like kind of dumb thinking, right, because he could have been like, wow, whoops, an immigrant got killed? Who right? But I don't care. People. People are often idiots, especially if they are carrying out a hit for them or whatever. If they're doing something bad, they're trying to there there, and their gut reaction is going to be to try to cover for it. It's not a good

it's not great. Strange way to cover it is, but I can kind of understand the thought process of saying, well, it's locked, and maybe even she said, well the windows open, so I had a kid, he'll he'll fit right through that. We'll see he'll unlock it. And the cop coast Oh my god, what no, like yeah, really hopeful person, Yeah, stop it. I mean it's possible, it's not. It's not

a great theory, but none of these are really great theories. Anyway, So one conceivable reason why I can think that he would he would claim that it was locked, and that is that he was not totally sure that is a door was yet totally dead, which is possible, you know, And so okay, let's pretend. Let's let's pretend, we'll let him bleed out for a little while, but they go find a kid. But other than that, I can't really think of any reason. But that is a possibility right there.

That's but other than that, I can't think of any possible, conceivable reason why he would say, oh, you know, hey, look at this a lock door mystery unless she unless she saw him coming, I mean kind of even then, it's like, even then, it doesn't make any sense. Well, if she saw him at the door, and she said, but if she saw him closing the door, then well,

not closing. But if if he was at the very I mean, this would be like an incredible coincidence, right, this would be just one of the most incredluences the news. But if she saw him at the door and he had just closed it and she goes, officer, it's crazy, I just heard a scuffle coming from there, and he goes, Yeah, I heard the scuffle too. I was trying to get

in but it locked. Yeah. Again, it would be an incredible I'm literally just spitballing at this point, but that, Yeah, that wouldn't be That wouldn't be even that incredible a mystery. Every account that I've heard, she went and got a police officer. He wasn't just standing there. But we've also already decided that the reporting that great. But it's not, like I said, I'm spit bawling. It's not a great theory.

But it's something that I'm struggling because all of the theories we've done, and all of the theories that we have here, they're all bad. They're really grain it up. They're very grainy. Yeah, there's there's that's a nice way I can say it. Not much reason for her for the for the cop if he was a killer, to actually, you know, create a lockdoor mystery. You know, there really isn't no, no, let's just take that off to the table. Though they didn't in to create the genre of the

locked door mystery. Yeah, well they didn't because that hadn't even a thing that wasn't at least one before that Joseph found L, Well, you are you making this up? Because I didn't know that. Well no, let me let me re rephrase what I'm saying. I didn't think in the general conscious or the consciousness, that such a thing as a locked door mystery was a thing. I didn't know that people were calling it that and would say, let's create one. That's where I'm going with that statement.

And I think people knew what to say. Hey, I'd like to create my own blah blah blah. Yeah, yeah, there actually had been a well publish eyes case and in nine years pretty okay, Okay, then I take it back. I didn't. I didn't quite realize that. That's one of the issues I had with the they wanted to make a locked door mystery fully fledged. Example of this type of story is generally held to be Edgar Allan pose the Murder of the Room Morgue in eighteen forty one.

So in the mid eighteen hundreds is when lockedoor theoretically po created that based off of some actual thing that would assume, but that they were rose to prominence in popular culture in the mid eighteen hundreds. This was the nineteen thirties. They were a thing By the way, can we talk about for a second about so we already did to pome mystery? Oh? I know, but I'm just so I have been binging Altered Carbon on Netflix. That's

just a disaster. Yeah, oh no, no, no, no, there the whoever it is that has been writing and writing the script for and then playing the po character. Uh, I did not read a lot of Pope, but is to me the perfect Poe character. So if you haven't watched it, it's very apropos. Was that what you say? Exactly? Thank you, Joe. We're now friends again, continue on my friend. Okay, let's move out to another area here. This one actually makes one more sense. Uh, that is, what if there

was a secret passage and we're not friends again? You don't like this one. I hate this theory. Yeah, well it makes the most sense, because really, why bother with all this locked door crap, you know, unless but if there's a secret passage into there through the through the walls, like you pick up the the what's the Murphy band Like he's got a Murphy bed that opens and it's

a hole in the floor kind of thing. Yeah, maybe something like that, you know, I mean, some floor a group of floor boards you lift up out of the way and there will hold out of the basement. And it makes the most sense because otherwise why bother. But apparently the police had thought of that. They looked really hard first. Yeah, of course I could have been super well concealed. But apparently the police tore the place apart. I mean they really, they really tore up the floorboards

and everything. So I have I have known people that have had those kind of situations in their home, whether they were new or old. And it is only when it is one very large feature that covers another feature in the home, like a sliding bookcase or a swinging bookcase that goes against the wall, that they tend to go unnoticed. This whole like a lot of times you see the well, I pulled the rug aside and I grabbed the ring, and these set of floorboards popped out

after a short order. They tend to not appear as if they should sink together. They don't blend it. They don't blend because they're not sealed. And so you know, if anybody's ever worked with wood and let a cured piece of would sit next to another, they bend and they twisted a growing up. One of our neighbors has actually still has a beach house, um, and he's kind of like an actual pirate in life, and the beach

house that he has has a bunch of these. The entrance to the master bedroom is a bookcase hidden doorway, um. And then there's a secret treasure trove room upstairs. There's this bunk room that has like four bunk beds, and there's a room hidden behind one of the panels behind the bunk bed that the panels are right behind the posts. You have to know, yeah, it's they're right behind it's it's really well hidden because the posts aren't totally in

the wall. I mean, it's really it's really really well done. That's the hard thing if you're if you're looking to say, like you've got to do something like that to hide the seams, because like if you've got just a plane plaster wall like on the walls of the room right here, how did that seem It's been popularly really hard. But behind like that chest of drawers there totally be hidden there. There's definitely ways to do. Of course the police thought

of that. You would think, yeah, so I wanted to know how much When you say they tore the place apart. I really want to know. Were they in there with claw Hammer's tearing crap up. I don't know. I had heard they actually took up floorboards. Again, I'm not totally sure about that, but yeah, I know they're they're all done. It's like, well, we're all done here, see you later.

I'll see you next week at the ballroom fundraiser. Yeah, but you know, I'm assuming it is stuff like you know, if they were bookcases and tables, they moved them aside to look at the wall behind. I took up the ruck and yeah, yeah, of course they must have. I mean, because you know, they've got to look for that secret passage.

They didn't find one. They looked pretty hard. Yeah, And again, these are these are guys or policemen that are used to searching places, and they know where people hide stuff and stuff like that, you know, especially I mean, and we're also talking like what I mean, Prohibition was kind of like around this time, and so we're talking like actual Prohibition cops who are actually used to looking for hidden speak easy right. Obviously they weren't always looking for it,

but some were looking forward because they wanted it. And many of these cops. Would you know that was that was the thing. They were actually specializing in finding these kind of hiden hidden spots. There was a lot of that stuff going on with prohibition too. I saw this thing. I read this article a while back, is about some

famous place in New York. I can't remember the name of it, but the bar it had, and behind the bar there were all these shells with bottles on them, and they had this cool set up right there where the bartender. If there was a raid, you could just pull a lever and essentially the bottom would drought would open and all the shelves would just just wrote ninety degrees and the bottles would just drop straight down and into a shoot that went down into the basement. Yeah.

I just totally destroyed everything. I mean it was really it was a really cool set. Yeah. I mean it's lose a dozen bottles were the booze or get busted. I would break a bottle. My grandfather ran booze. I had a great alcohol who was a bootlegger. He but

he was a kid when he did. He was like early teens um and he and his brother would um run like driving cars and if they got pulled over, they was like, it wasn't suspicious because the suspicion was of these like thirteen year olds or somehow driving right, It wasn't like the bootleggers, And so that was there,

the like bootlegger trick was. Yeah. Yeah, I actually had a conversation today with my grandmother about prohibition booze and the things that happened, and it's it's funny, like the things that she would be immediately like, well, obviously they were doing this, and like, Grandma, nobody's done that since like the what do you mean obviously you weren't even born? Then why are you saying that heard that stuff from she heard it growing up. But you know, it was

just a funny. It's just funny that at dinner tonight I had that conversation with her about Yeah, it was a fun time, man, but it's worth mentioning. Yeah, the cops all that time, we're probably pretty good at finding hidden things. I think they would have found a secret passage even though so even though that this one makes the most sense to me, and maybe it was some super fantastically well concealed secret passage. It was so professionally done that pooled the cops but also like, why, well,

I'm pretty sure it was a renter and so he did. Yeah, that would make sense. He didn't have a huge amount of money to sink into creating some sort of secret passage, you know. That would have been a lot of work and expense to create a really perfect secret passage. Hey, well, okay, let's me want to another sory? Uh? This one is another one that I found on the webs. Really, it's not my theory. This theory is that the killer brought a little kid with him. This is so weird. It's

a dumb theory. But the idea said, the killer breaks a little kid, shoots as a door and then walks out and and tell us a kid to lock the door from the inside and then climb up through the transom, you know. And and this is I mean, that's it's It's totally it would work. But why the hell would

anybody do that? What's what's that Tom Hanks movie where it's a prohibition era movie Perdition Road And it is Tom Hanks who had nobody right as angry emails about the fact that I remember this plot of this movie wrong. But there was something about Hanks and his son and be involved in murder stuff and they were. They were running around the robbing banks and it was involve halving his son in it. And so you know, the the kid is like totally invested in this is what we're

gonna do. So let's apply this Hollywood mystique of enamored child to parent figure to say, Dad did this. We shut the door. I climbed out the door, and we locked the whole place behind us, and we happened like that is very hollywood esque. That that is a story we have heard, and it doesn't answer the question of why.

But no, but I also think you know, when you say he brought a child, well, it it's a crap theory because it or a crap answer, I should say, because it answers the question of how did this kid get here? But then it's just it's phenomenal in how it would happen. Well, yeah, and I hope you're talking about a pretty small little kid too. Yeah, yeah, they bring along. But you know what, weird people do some

weird stuff and they bring their kids to terrible Yeah. Well, particularly if it was this kind of undocumented robbery, you know, it's it's like totally possible too, that like, we don't know.

It could have been that this was a robbery of this undeclared Maybe maybe Isador was stealing diamonds out of people's pockets for all we know, right, I mean a time or even if it was just like change and there was some like hidden undeclared treasure in or you know, it could have been this vindictive that maybe he did steal a diamond necklace from some client and he said I'm talking about and then the husband and kid came in, shot him, took the diamond necklace back. The kid, you know,

crawls out. The dad says, okay, we did this for mommy. It was totally you know, we're in the right. I'm so sorry that you had to see that. Keep your mouth shut about it and still keeping it still. I'm sorry. It's in that day and age. It's shut your trap, kid, this is what you do for the family. But whatever happens, I mean, it is possible that there was this sort of well integrated theory. Yeah, you know, I think that I did think it is possibly he did have something

valuable in there that was taken. But it's still it's still it still makes no sense to me. To bring a kid and I have to kid. No, no, no, I'm not. It makes utterly no sense. It's yeah, it really is. But but it was a theory that's out there, so you know, I gotta I gotta put them all out there for you guys. All right, Joe, So let me ask you this. I'm gonna try and speed this up. You have two or three very very minor theories here.

Can you just give us the headlines of each one? Well, because there's not a whole lot of discussion for him if I'm unless I'm wrong, No, there's not, there's Uh. This is one that the police was saying, Well, all we configure is this, which is that the killer was really small and skinny and acrobatic and just shinting out through the transom himself off after committed the murder, which is possible. Again, you know, the question again is why.

But also apparently we're not talking we're talking about somebody's super super skinny, and and that it's still the question still is why you do it? I feel like I want to address this why for two seconds. The thing that I want to address with the why is discovery. Discovery, Yeah, and that like we've talked about this before. So you want to leave the door locked to just delay the body.

You just assumed that this kind of reclusive, paranoid human has just locked himself in his apartment for a couple of days, right, And maybe it's the weekend, Maybe it's he knows there's not going to be clients coming in. Whatever it is that assumedly delays discovery of this murder, of this crime to give you even more time to escape.

Clearly that did not work in this case, but I feel like that could be a reason to do that locked door because if the door is locked and barred, a cop comes and knocks it's locked, they can maybe they can even see if there is an actual bar in its glass door whatever, they can see that it's locked. It delays that, you know, they just assume the guy's asleep inside his own house. The keyhole is is blocked

because the key is locked from the inside. What I mean if not, well, yeah, there's still there's still I'm gonna give standard because I just don't know at this pointed I don't know either. I just would add that to the year, so they're not going to look in and see some guy laying on the floor, they've heard sounds of a scuple and just say, oh, he's just sleeping. They're gonna say he died, he had a heart attack,

or chilled himself. There's all sorts of possible yeah, but all sorts of possibilities that would make them take, well, we had to kick the door in and check this. But if the lock has the key in it, yeah, they're going to assume he locked it from the inside. He's in there, and then and then well, yeah, but if he locked it from the inside and then had a heart attack, he locked it from the inside and then shot himself, you know, and so you know, I mean, so they kind of do you I mean, even if

they do if somebody heard the scuffle. But the assumption here is that if this person thinks they're so like nimble and amazing, they've created this lock door situation, nobody heard anything, and then like you get a couple of days distance and then question because I hadn't thought about this before, and maybe this is where you're going with this, Devin, is My long standing presumption was that the door to is it or Fink's apartment or business wherever it was,

who was found was a solid wooden door. Are you saying that. No, a matter of fact, it was a door that had a large glass panel in it. I don't know the apartments, but for his business. And I'm asking because again we don't know how it was set up, and maybe the business side had a large plate glass window which would afford the view that then he is talking about where they're saying, oh, look he's sleeping it off.

I'm not saying it's like a clear panel like Joe's door where you can just look in and it's like, but nobody come here and try and rob Joe because you can see in his door, but he's got lots of guns. The kind of door I'm thinking of is like, uh, have you watched Jessica Jones frosted? It's frosted right in New York every once in a while, or old in times, like older buildings sometimes they had frosted one like the

top handle was frosted. But even more than that, it wasn't that that whole mention wasn't necessarily that like you can see a body and there. It was more than like, oh you can see the steel bar, it's across it, that's across it, and that maybe it was locked it's not. Again, that was not the important point for me. The important point for me was that but that it would perhaps be that if some body went to all this trouble, it would be to buy themselves some time to continue

to give them an albi or whatever. Maybe that's the only reason I can ever get behind these kind of locked door mysteries, right, is that somebody had a reason that they wanted to make sure that the body wasn't found for a while. Yeah, that's other than that, or like I said, the it might just be they want to just have a little fun with the whole thing, create this big and I enjoy watching reading the papers and reading out you know, everybody's all, you know, like

scratching their heads over this. Well, there's another possibility, was and it's maybe if if assuming the windows were nailed shut and the way that I was talking about, by drilling a hole, typically something that's removable, yeah, to removable long nail then and basically removable peg yeah, or a

peg or nail. But you know, I mostly see people do it with nails, but you know, you could do a peg or whatever, and typically you don't drive the whole horse bottle you drill it from the inside, you droll it down angle an angle so that lifting the window up locks it in, so that no matter how much you shake Jimmy back and forth, you can't pop

it out. Gravity is gonna keep pulling it back into place. Yeah, exactly, because, yeah, if you have a slide quietly the other way and somebody just shakes the window for a little while, it'll just vibrate, but right out of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's

the reason you know we have in my house. I always call him Jimmy bars, is that they're the bars that lay horizontally in my window so that when I crack my window, it's still flat, and even if somebody opens and slams it back and forth, it won't pop out. You know, if you are foolish enough to open it far enough and put your bar to forty five degree angle or whatever the window afford you, somebody can grab the window and start wailing it back and forth and

knock it out. So yeah, it's it's it's a it's a method of ensuring that it does not come out of place. Yeah, And so if if somebody to say, say, if his door had somebody had been let in the front door, and it killed this door. Decided to exit by the window. Maybe maybe he heard the neighbor outside the yelling one you know, I'm along for the police, you know, And so he decides to pull you out the window. What's that? How did that go? What's that? He said? For the police. But I really wanted him

to get that, wouldn't do it? Yeah, And so as he decides to exit, buy it through the window. So he pulls the nail out and pulls it out just partially and slides the window up, goes out and slides the window down. And then if he if he's a clever burglar type, he might even act. It could be the nail would just accidentally sort of slide into place and locked the window just all unintentionally. It could be too, if he's a clever guy, he might actually pull a

shut then vibrated a little bit. Watch that nail from the other side of the glass and see the nail sort of going down as he vibracal window. I had never considered it that way. And that is that is ingenious to use a lock against the person who set it up. I mean it's yeah, So that that would assume that is the door. I had left somebody inside and then bolted the door after and they went out through another which would be the window. Yeah, that's contanious.

We could have had it open with the nails sitting in the slots above where they were there. Locking point was to get fresh air, and whoever went out the window slammed it shut, which then pushes the nails fall into place. Especially if he was using a gas iron, you would walk for the carbon monoxide. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so he could have and I again, this is the big assumption here, is that he hadn't powdered nails

under the window permanently seen the fullow bend him over. Yeah, I'm assuming that he actually because you don't want to open your windows occasionally. Yeah, I was something he just had, especially you have a laundry. Yeah hell yeah yeah, not by far the best theory. It's not he committed suicide, but the rats just carried the gunaway. That's another theory, Okay, I like the other one. Yeah, thinking rats the pizza the rat man. Yeah, rat truth way is a terrible

theory for this one. Yeah. So I'm thinking it's like that window one out the window and and just you know. Yeah, he's official for once you change my mind. Alight that one? Then Okay, it's good. Alright, Well I guess that wraps it all up then except for all the housekeeping. Yeah, if you've got a theory, you probably want to send us an email. Yeah, we've got one of those things. It's Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. We also

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month I think, sign up for a year. Uh. And don't forget what Stitcher premium you do get at free content. You get the episode four days early. You get bonus content also once once a month. Yeah. So so it's a it's a pretty swell deal. So schmium it's swell. Yeah. And there's other places if you don't want to pay, there's lots of that. You got iTunes and and other streaming websites Googlegal Play, Stitcher and a Stitcher regular uh uh.

And of course if you do that, subscribe, give us a rating and a review, preferably good rating, good review. We like that. We're also social media. We're on Facebook where we have a group of a page. So you want to join the group, like the page, and when you join the group, you've got to answer two questions. What is your favorite color and what a swallow? You could, honestly, you could answer those two questions and ignore, and our mods would probably still a prove you because you answered

two questions. Are you are you are you knocking the quality of our moderators, which I don't agree with, or are you saying the creativity of giving a completely different answer? Might. Actually I'm saying, all you have to do is prove that you're a human who wasn't show but if you but we love you and you do great work, and I don't want to. Mostly all I want is they send me pictures every time somebody else every time I'm still wrong, and um I love seeing those. So answer

however you want. But realistically the answers are yes and thursdays or weekly, whichever you prefer. Or if you but if you respond to the second question with European or African question mark, yeah, you'll still get I will let them know right now. I actually think that is an automatic acceptance and we need to code that into Facebook. Yeah,

so remember that then. Oh, back to beyond the Facebook group in the page, there's also Twitter, where we are thinking sideways without the lots of lots of cool stuff going on there. We have Subreddit thinking sideways on Reddit. Uh. And of course, as I said already, we're on Instagram where we are thinking sideways podcast. Uh. And that's about it, I guess, So alright, So sure, so you guys, I guess we will see you all next week. Until then, good puns for me, you guys. No, I'm still so

freaking conflicted about this one. Yeah, it bugs the crap out of me, and I'm now upset that you've you've chosen it. I was very happy at the beginning, but now I'm upset. We finally got it out of the way, al right, guys, next week. Bye,