[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City.

[00:26] Meg: Where we still live and where we podcast about New York City in the 80s. I do Ripped from the Headlines, and.

[00:32] Jessica: I do Pop Culture.

[00:34] Meg: My favorite thing about this week, Jessica. Yes. Because, you know, January, February, New York, horrible. Not its best form.

[00:41] Jessica: Horrible.

[00:43] Meg: But the beautiful, magical snow last night, New York showed up.

[00:49] Jessica: Yes, the snow has been really pretty.

[00:53] Meg: Also, it's not so much snow that it gets, like, super slushy. It's still navigable. Could navig.

[00:59] Jessica: Navigable.

[01:00] Meg: Navigable. Navigable.

[01:02] Jessica: Navigable. Yes. It's good when you don't wind up wading through slush. And it's also, like, if the snow is too heavy, then it hides things that are on the street that you don't want to step in. And so I don't like that lack of transparency about filth.

[01:22] Meg: So, yeah, I also saw, I mean, a herd of rats that was. I know that sounds, like, awful, but it was also kind of like, whoa, this is such a New York moment.

[01:34] Jessica: Were you like, it's Wild Kingdom.

[01:36] Meg: It was so Wild Kingdom. And we were like, why are there so many. I mean, this is not like two or three rats. This is like 20 rats.

[01:43] Jessica: 20.

[01:44] Meg: And they were huge. And they were crossing the sidewalk in front of us. I mean, it was a lot.

[01:49] Jessica: But where were they going? From where to where?

[01:51] Meg: Well, this is what we investigated. They were eating, like, bird. There was birdseed. Someone had put birdseed.

[01:58] Jessica: That was fucking bird people.

[01:59] Meg: I think it was birdseed. I don't even know on the curb. We were interrupting their meal. So they were running from their birdseed meal to the abandoned lot that was across the sidewalk. And, I mean, honestly, I was like, I'm not gonna scream. I'm not gonna freak out. It is just very New York.

[02:23] Jessica: Well, that's extra New York. That's more than just very New York. So, yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine. No, the people who throw birdseed around the city. There is a little park in the median on Park Avenue between 97th and 96th, and there's some miscreants who put birdseed there. And there are so many, like, dozens of pigeons hanging out there. And then their rat friends come, and it's this really lovely, like, you should be able to sit there and have a sandwich and what have you. It is filth central, because these misguided people are like, I'm gonna be nice to the birds and put out birds. Shut up. Like you. And you're. No, it's like, if you are genuinely a resident of the. You know that what you're doing is attracting vermin, and that's not healthy for.

[03:26] Meg: I have a bird feeder on my roof.

[03:28] Jessica: That's different. That's not scattering it in a public place where people are trying to walk or eat or do whatever. Like, if you have a bird feeder on your roof. Like, I know that you were excited about having a pigeon coop on the top of the building on our last podcast, and fine, if you like. That's private. But the birdseed people, I hate them. Okay. Hate strong.

[03:54] Meg: I thought we were gonna talk about something really pleasant.

[03:56] Jessica: Well. But that's what February is.

[03:59] Meg: Okay.

[03:59] Jessica: Okay.

[04:00] Meg: But weren't you gonna say something lovely that happened on the bus?

[04:02] Jessica: Yes, but it's still kind of dark. But it's. It was. To me, it was lovely.

[04:07] Meg: All right. Why was it so.

[04:10] Jessica: Okay, I'm gonna just bring this back to zero. Okay.

[04:14] Meg: So it was my fault. I brought up rats.

[04:16] Jessica: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It wasn't that you brought up rats. It was that you brought up. You brought up birdseed.

[04:21] Meg: My bad.

[04:22] Jessica: No, not your bad. Just. It was, you know, an opportunity. To be clear. Yes. It was a trigger.

[04:31] Meg: I was triggered.

[04:33] Jessica: So one of the things that's happening in New York right now is there's a lot of unrest because the city is in very bad shape. Our mayor is now in bed with Voldemort and just got. Just got excused from all of his federal indictments. There's. It's feeling pretty bad around here. February and the cold and being cooped up doesn't help. The lack of sunlight doesn't help. And then, as you well know, Meg, there are crazies running amok in the city. Lots.

[05:11] Meg: Mental health issues.

[05:12] Jessica: Major.

[05:13] Meg: Yes.

[05:13] Jessica: So I know that it's a joke amongst our friends, but I don't love public transportation. And the subway has really been frightening me lately because it's not just that there are lunatics. It's that. And this has always been my problem. You're underground. You've got nowhere to go. Like, you cannot escape. So I took the bus yesterday.

[05:37] Meg: Awesome. Love the bus.

[05:38] Jessica: Love the bus. I love the bus so much that I tortured my friend who is here from London, who wanted to see the Cloisters, and I made it.

Meg: You took the bus all the way to the Cloister.

Jessica: He was like, this is taking, like, an hour, an hour and 45 minutes. And I was like, yes, but it's like a tour of the city that you never would have had otherwise. So I like the bus I got on at 96th street, and at, like, 90th, a lunatic got on, and he was yelling and screaming, and then he started yelling and, die, die, die. And he was sitting in that seat that's right behind the driver. Yeah, the driver stopped the bus.

[06:20] Meg: Good.

[06:20] Jessica: Yeah, he came out of his seat. He opened the door. He came out of his seat. He went up to the guy and he said, not on this bus. Uh, and he even said, you don't know me. You don't know what I'm capable of.

[06:36] Meg: Oh, wow.

[06:37] Jessica: So you're gonna get off this bus. And he was gonna say if, but the guy freaked out, and he's like, I can't walk. I can't wait. He was like, well, then I guess you're gonna have to be silent. Can you do that?

[06:50] Meg: Okay.

[06:51] Jessica: And he was like, yes. And he's like.

[06:53] Meg: So he left him on the bus?

[06:55] Jessica: And the guy was silent and behaved himself the entire time. And I was like, not all heroes wear capes. That was a moment of such unparalleled joy for me where, like, the bus driver said what everyone was thinking. Everyone was like. You could tell the whole bus was getting tense, you know, bracing themselves for.

[07:18] Meg: What's gonna happen next hosting you. I mean, it is different from a subway where you're kind of probably on your own. Unless there's, like, a police officer on the. On the car with you.

[07:31] Jessica: Correct. Although there are not that many bus drivers that I have encountered in the last several years who will do that. Like, remember when we were kids? Like, if you acted up on the bus, the bus driver was, like, off. Kids gone. Like, they were very. You know, they had some real authority. So anyway, this guy, I love him. I wish I had gotten his license or badge number or whatever.

[07:58] Meg: 96th street crosstown?

[08:00] Jessica: No, Lexington line. Yeah, it was the 103 going down Lexington.

[08:06] Meg: Got it.

[08:06] Jessica: So anyway, he was awesome.

[08:09] Meg: Tip of the hat.

[08:09] Jessica: Tip of the hat.

[08:21] Meg: So, Jessica, I loved Agatha Christie books when I was young. I. That was my favorite summertime reading. I can, off the top of my head, think I couldn't even pick my favorite. There's so many. Were you an Agatha Christie fan?

[08:38] Jessica: I was actually a Sherlock Holmes fan from an early age. And this is so completely me, this answer. Like, I can hear it before I even say it. So I'm very into the golden age of British mysteries, and that's Agatha Christie adjacent. So it's all these people who are doing these cozy mysteries in the 30s and 40s. I kind of like that. I didn't get into Agatha Christie until Ms. Marple on PBS.

[09:08] Meg: Okay.

[09:08] Jessica: And then I was like, oh, hell yeah.

[09:11] Meg: Awesome.

[09:12] Jessica: So that is my answer.

[09:14] Meg: I have a mystery for you today.

[09:15] Jessica: Oh, I'm so excited.

[09:17] Meg: My sources are Nantucket Current, which is the local newspaper, New York Times, an article by Gary Holmes, and New York Magazine. Always so good for a story.

[09:32] Jessica: New York Magazine is the gift that keeps on giving.

[09:35] Meg: Good Lord. Thank God they've archived it.

[09:37] Jessica: Indeed.

[09:37] Meg: That's what I have to say about that. On Monday, January 21, 1980, Margaret Kilcoyne called her brother Leo with some exciting news. She'd been working closely with neurologist Dr. Earl Zimmerman at Columbia Presbyterian as a specialist in clinical work with hypertensive teenagers. They had been able to locate Angiotensin II  in the brain of a rat. Angiotensin II is an enzyme that controls blood pressure. And Margaret and Earl's breakthrough was very promising. Because of hypertension, because of high blood pressure. I mean, this could be major. In fact, Margaret was certain it would result in a Nobel Prize.

[10:30] Jessica: Oh, my goodness.

[10:32] Meg: Margaret was 49 and single. She was devoted to her job, her God. She was Catholic, her family, especially her brother Leo, and Nantucket. In the early 70s, she had purchased a small house on the island and enjoyed long walks, tennis games, and sailing. She had a great group of friends. She loved having an escape from New York City where she could reboot. In fact, on the phone call, she told Leo she was headed to Nantucket that very weekend. She also told him she was receiving messages from God through Leo's dead wife, Julie.

[11:15] Jessica: Oh, no. Quote, oh, no.

[11:17] Meg: I know you must wonder whether I am completely crazy, getting fantastical spiritual messages from God, Julie, and all this other nonsense, but I have to count on the fact that we have been through, through enough and that, you know, I could somehow deliver the information to you and that you must be in complete control of it. Now, how do we know what she said so that we can quote her? She taped her side of the conversation.

[11:44] Jessica: How peculiar.

[11:46] Meg: Yeah, she didn't tape his side of the conversation. She taped her side of the conversation.

[11:52] Jessica: Well, it seems like she was in a prophetic moment, so her prophecy had to be recorded. And the, you know, the reaction to the prophecy is not that important right now.

[12:04] Meg: Leo was concerned as well he should have been. And he planned to join her in Nantucket that weekend and convince her to see a psychiatrist. Margaret left her apartment at 330 East 33rd street and headed out.

[12:17] Jessica: Wait, what was the address?

[12:18] Meg: 330 East 33rd.

[12:20] Jessica: Wow. Okay.

[12:22] Meg: And headed out of New York on Wednesday, January 23rd. Driving her Volvo towards Hyannis, she made a pit stop in Connecticut where she approached a stranger. 26 year old Avon lady, Andrea Principe. Interesting, right? So the Avon lady is like basically getting off work and a stranger comes up to her, this 49 year old woman. She told Andrea that she was a nervous wreck and was worried to drive and needed to find a hotel she knew well enough. She was like, I'm a doctor, I know I need to get off the road. I should not be driving right now. I don't know where to go. Do you know a hotel around here?

[13:08] Jessica: All right, so she asks this random person. Yeah, okay.

[13:12] Meg: And Andrea told her about the nearby Marriott. And Margaret was so appreciative that she asked Andrea to dinner. And actually Andrea was really taken with this woman. Like she thought Margaret was really smart and engaging. And she was like, sure, I'll have dinner with you at the Marriott.

[13:33] Jessica: Okay, timeout, Quick check in. If you were approached by someone saying, I'm having a nervous breakdown, would you like to have dinner with me? What would you say?

[13:46] Meg: It's unlikely, but honestly, like when I read Andrea's storyteller, I was like, okay, you just got off work, this woman comes up, she asks for your help. You give her help, you tell her where to go, and she goes, you wanna have dinner? And you go, you know what? Okay, sure. Especially cause she was like really taken with her. She thought she was really interesting.

[14:08] Jessica: Hmm.

[14:09] Meg: I don't know.

[14:10] Jessica: I'm, I'm, I'm.

[14:11] Meg: It's 1980.

[14:12] Jessica: I know. I'm just, I'm just having a moment of reflection. No, I get it. I'm having a moment, reflection because we were just talking about crazies on the bus and I'm kind of like, like what? When do you get that moment?

[14:27] Meg: This is something though. Just because she said she was having like, she was having a nervous attack, she didn't seem crazy. Andrea did not feel like she was crazy in any way. She was just being like, I need to get off the road. I am just not in a good place to drive. And that seemed actually to her rather responsible. So you can have dinner at the Marriott, Right? So they went and sat and had dinner. And at dinner, Margaret talked about her major medical discovery. She told her all about it. And she also ordered a bottle of Lafitte Rothschild, 1970.

[15:02] Jessica: What? So what is it like a $500 bottle of wine.

[15:06] Meg: I don't know how much it costs, but it's like really, really expensive.

[15:09] Jessica: Yes.

[15:10] Meg: And they also befriended the waitress. They started talking up the waitress and Margaret ended up offering the waitress a job at the lab she was going to build on Nantucket, which isn't. I know, I see your face. But the thing is, the waitress had majored in science in college. Like, it wasn't that far fetched. She met somebody who, you know, was being a waiter. She's like, well, you know what? I'm gonna be opening a lab on Nantucket. Do you want a job? And she's like, yes, I do.

[15:40] Jessica: This sounds like a very manic episode that our friend is having.

[15:44] Meg: Okay. Well, as it turns out, there was no vacancy at the Marriott. Ugh. Which they didn't quite realize until after dinner. So Andrea invited Margaret to stay at her place.

[15:57] Jessica: Oh, Andrea.

[15:58] Meg: Which she did. Which she did.

[16:00] Meg: And it was fine. It was absolutely fine. They just went and they. They actually, the dinner lasted a long time. They didn't get to Andrea's until like after one in the morning. But then they went straight to bed. And when Andrea woke up at 5:30 the next morning, Margaret was already gone. But then she called her later from the road and she said, I'm so sorry. I had to slip out. I didn't sleep well and I really needed to get on the road because I gotta make it to Nantucket. And so Andrea's like, oh, thank you so much for calling. It was really great to meet you. Okay.

[16:34] Jessica: I'm uncomfortable.

[16:36] Meg: Margaret made it to Hyannis and she took a flight on Gull Air and was soon settled into her house in Tom Nevers, which is a neighborhood on Nantucket. Her good friend and neighbor Donald Smith saw her light on and dropped by that Thursday evening because whenever she was in town, they would have dinner together or whatever, he and his wife. Margaret was super excited to see him. She had so much to tell him about. She told Donald that she had wonderful news from God.

[17:09] Jessica: Oh, that's always a bad sign.

[17:12] Meg: She was going to make God number one in her life. She would jump off the Empire State Building if she had to, is what she told him.

[17:21] Jessica: Oh, no.

[17:22] Meg: She told him about her major medical discovery and that she was returning to New York on Monday. She invited Donald and his wife for dinner the next night on Friday, but they already had plans, so they couldn't do that. Donald was a little worried about her state of mind when he left her Thursday night. He hadn't really been able to get a word in, but he was relieved to hear that Leo was coming. Remember, brother was like, I will meet you in Nantucket. Leo would be able to assess the situation. On Friday morning, Margaret took a cab into town and bought $650 in groceries at the A&P. $650 in 1980, which would be $2,489 of groceries now. Those groceries included six gallons of peanuts, six tubes of shampoo, 12 toothbrushes, and according to the checkout girl, everything had to be in threes. It had to be a denomination of three.

[18:37] Jessica: Okay.

[18:39] Meg: She told the checkout girl that she was announcing a major medical breakthrough at a press conference in Nantucket in February. So we're still in January. And she needed to stock two houses for family and friends who would come to celebrate. Well, that made total sense. I mean, the thing about the threes was a little off, but other than that, like, of course, yeah, you gotta, like, stock two houses.

[19:04] Jessica: I wish that the face I'm making had a noise that went with it. I'm. I'm. This is a mixture of dread and desperate curiosity.

[19:14] Meg: Margaret asked her friends, the Coffins, remember, she's very popular. She asked the Coffins to pick up $250 worth of liquor she had ordered. And they did. And when they dropped it off, they stayed and had dinner with Margaret and Leo. Leo is there. Okay, has shown up, and that's great. And they had dinner. The dinner conversation that night was driven by Margaret mostly about God and medicine. She'd always been an opinionated and outspoken person, so her demeanor was actually not unsettling. But it was hard to follow what she was saying. That's what the Coffins said. Afterwards, they were like. She seemed totally, like she always does, like nothing was off, but they just couldn't quite track what she was saying. And they had just come back from a vacation that they kind of wanted to talk about. And at one point they had to say, Margaret, stop talking so we can talk about our vacation, which we really wanted to tell you about. The Coffins left at 10:30 that night and Margaret went straight to bed. She was so tired. She hadn't been sleeping at all. She asked Leo to wake her at six so she could go to Mass. Very important. The next morning, Leo heard her alarm go off at 6, but he just let it go. He didn't get up. Then when he checked on her at 6:45, she wasn't there. He called the Nantucket police at 7:15. So that's half an hour later to say his sister was missing. Had left behind her coat, watch, purse and boots, and he believed she'd killed herself.

[21:01] Jessica: Have you buried the lead? Is there a background of Margaret having mental health issues?

[21:06] Meg: There was absolutely no history of any mental health issues.

[21:12] Jessica: And so Leo saying, I think she killed herself is a little out of the blue.

[21:19] Meg: A little bit. A little bit.

[21:21] Jessica: Okay.

[21:22] Meg: There was an extensive search. A hundred volunteers combed through the frigidly cold acres of dense scrub oak, the Tom Nevers pond, the shoreline, the moors and the cranberry bogs. How much do you love the idea of a cranberry bog?

[21:47] Jessica: I love the idea of a cranberry bog. I do not love the idea of dragging one for a body. That's grim.

[21:56] Meg: There were no footprints on the beach. She wasn't in the hospital.

[22:02] Jessica: Is that when God carried her? The footprints on the page, she had.

[22:07] Meg: She hadn't left the island by plane or ferry. See, that's the other thing. We're on an island where the comings and goings are recorded..

[22:19] Jessica: Except if you deposit yourself in a body of water.

[22:22] Meg: The Coast Guard turned up nothing. They even checked empty summer houses. No sign of her. Then on February 3, a couple walking their dog found piled neatly in a clearing that had already been thoroughly searched. Margaret's passport, bank book showing $386.09, summer sandals, and her white wallet with a single $100 bill inside. And 150 yards away from that pile, Margaret's neatly folded brown long sleeved blouse. Authorities interviewed her friends and they didn't think it was unusual for her to talk about receiving messages from her dead sister in law.

[23:13] Jessica: Wait, so how long after her disappearance did the. Did this stuff turn up?

[23:19] Meg: She disappeared on the 23rd. And it's February 3rd.

[23:26] Jessica: Okay, so it's about a little over a week.

[23:28] Meg: Yeah.

[23:28] Jessica: Okay.

[23:29] Meg: So actually, I mean, it might sound like, oh my God, she's receiving messages from God, but she's always been religious. And when her sister in law was alive, they would talk about like, I will come to you. I will be with you for the rest of your life, even when I am dead. Like, so all of that stuff, it might seem kind of like kooky, but to this particular community, it did not sound kooky. It sounded like totally in keeping with her. The way she. The way she. No, her religion. Really?

[24:04] Jessica: Oh, well, okay.

[24:06] Meg: Sorry. I'm just telling you the context. Colleagues at Columbia Presbyterian also said that her behavior was not unusual. On the other hand, the Columbia Presbyterian people were cagey about discussing her medical research. They would neither confirm nor deny that it was a big deal. They did say it was very weird for her to plan a press conference in Nantucket. That was not protocol. What up with that? That was the one thing that they were like what she said she was doing WHAT?

[24:42] Meg: No. No, no, no, no, no. That is not how that works. But everything else is totally normal. Her friends and colleagues all insisted she was not suicidal. This is from one of her colleagues. Quote. She was hilarious. She could make the most mundane subject fascinating. Hyperbole was her mode of expression. If she started telling you how she made junket, you'd expect Mount Vesuvius to rise up on the plate. So that's just her personality.

[25:15] Jessica: When is the last time anyone ate junket? I just want that on the record.

[25:22] Meg: But her brother Leo had a very different take. He told the police she had committed suicide a half hour after he discovered her missing. A bit of a leap. Margaret's neighbor Don tried to talk to Leo about his conversation with Margaret on Thursday night. Remember Don, who had dropped by?

[25:43] Jessica: Mm.

[25:43] Meg: But Leo didn't want to hear anything about it. He was completely uninterested in whatever Don had to share. Leo did not participate in the search and left the island the next day after her disappearance.

[26:00] Jessica: Leo's not making good choices.

[26:02] Meg: When authorities found out about Margaret's stopover in Connecticut, Leo did contact that waitress and told her Margaret was depressed and suicidal. But the waitress was unconvinced and told anyone who would listen that the woman she met was exuberant. Friends who have heard the recorded phone call with Leo insist that was how she always sounded. And they're offended at the implication that she was having some kind of mental break. Quote. When you start putting it together through a different lens, it becomes a different story. This is a Nantucket local said this. It becomes a story about a woman who was misunderstood by the people who were trying to find her. If you take the whole narrative with a different lens, she wasn't crazy. She was different from the prevailing culture. Interesting. A judge ended up agreeing with Leo and named him Receiver of her property six months after her disappearance, declaring Margaret an Absentee under the Law, much like a prisoner of war would be. But the Nantucket police chief thinks the whole thing was a hoax. He and many locals believe Leo actually managed to scuttle her off the island and into a mental institution where she may actually still be under an assumed name. The police chief periodically checks death notices for mental hospitals just to see if somebody with her description passed away and we may never know. No sign of her ever surfaced. And Leo died in a car accident in 1992.

[27:48] Jessica: So when you brought up Agatha Christie, were you equating this to one of her mysteries or to the never explained disappearance of Agatha Christie and her missing nine days? Both. Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure we're.

[28:10] Meg: Evil under the Sun. I think that's the one where there is a pile of clothing on the beach and then they end up figuring out how they constructed that. And no spoilers. But it's a great story. But yeah, Agatha Christie did disappear and no one ever found out why. But it is very, very odd that if she did drown, which is. I mean, I think you said manic episode earlier.

[28:40] Jessica: It has all the hallmarks. Right.

[28:42] Meg: The most obvious explanation… where's the body?

[28:48] Jessica: Very perplexing. And you know, Leo.

[28:52] Meg: And Leo's so weird. Why is he being so weird, Jessica?

[28:56] Jessica: You know what I was thinking? Like, let's set aside that he killed her or put her in a mental institution for just a second because both are valid.

[29:06] Meg: I think he killed her because again, where's the body?

[29:10] Jessica: Right. And there was nothing that in the reports that say that they had a strained relationship or anything like that. Right. That was her bestie that she would call her brother. So what I'm thinking, and this supports your mental institution theory, that in a deeply religious family, maybe it was like, we don't want anyone to get wind of the kooky and we're just going to cover this up and ship her off to God knows where. And so his caginess could be like, you know, up with this, the family will not put. And we love you, but that's it. But it seems drastic to me. It seems a bit

[29:54] Meg: I think it's far fetched. I think what ended up happening, all this grandiosity, too. It's a bummer that Columbia Presbyterian wouldn't just say, honestly, she was never gonna get the Nobel Prize. People, they wouldn't talk about the research she was doing because I think we would now know whether it was really impactful research. I think she was having a manic episode and that was delusions of grandeur. And maybe she thought she could walk on water.

[30:26] Jessica: Oh, that's a good one. But she would have gone to the bottom very quickly.

[30:31] Meg: And then why didn't she wash up on shore?

[30:35] Jessica: These are all very good questions. I don't. I mean, unless she went straight into the cranberry bog.

[30:41] Meg: What about. What about. And is still there. I mean, and what about the pile of clothes after they searched? And then the pile is like out in the open.

[30:52] Jessica: So in the manic episode, this is what occurred to me. I thought that maybe in her manic episode she scampered off, you know, without her boots and all that, and is having messianic moment, that it was Margaret who was arranging all of her stuff. So, and I'm saying this tongue in cheek, but so that the mothership could beam her up. That it's like the passport was interesting to me, that it's like, here's all of the id, neatly piled, which I don't need anymore. I'm moving on from it. Sure.

[31:28] Meg: Why wasn't that pile discovered?

[31:31] Jessica: Oh, I think she was still alive. I think that she was skulking around. Oh, I think that Margaret evaded. I think that she was in her mania, you know, up.

[31:42] Meg: How did she get off the island?

[31:44] Jessica: Well, I'm just answering first about the piles. Right? So that's the piles. I think that was Margaret doing that because there was no fault. Like if someone was doing it to throw people off or like to create some alternate story. There was nothing else that would lead from it. It was just weirdness. Right. So that to me feels like, you know, Margaret is now fully kooky and is doing some kind of like ritualistic godly letting go of her mortal possessions, letting go of her identity, ready to ascend, who knows what. Now, how did she get off the island? Were people still searching for the body a week after she disappeared?

[32:36] Meg: Everyone was on high alert.

[32:38] Jessica: Well, what I'm saying is that like there's a week where everyone is searching for her and she's like running around in the woods, who knows what. And then she in the freezing cold or she's, you know, like in someone's basement. Like, who knows? Okay, sure, sure. And so, and then she's like sneaks onto the fair. Here's my stuff. No, no, here's my stuff. Now no one's looking for a body anymore because they've done the full week of searching and it's a small area and they've covered ground. So they're like, she's not here. No one will see me. No one will. I have my hat pulled down, no one can see me. If I cover my eyes with my hands, I'm gone. And she then dies because she's like, I'm ready to join my sister in law or whatever. And at that point no one's looking anymore. So she's now at the bottom of a cranberry. I'm obsessed with the cranberry bog. She's at the bottom of the bog.

[33:39] Meg: Okay, I think I see what you're saying.

[33:40] Jessica: Do you see what I'm saying? That, like, the timing is like, they could have just been like, she's gone. Like, I don't know. And then she's like, ha, ha, off I go, and they've stopped searching. And maybe she just sank in some perplexing way.

[33:56] Meg: You've solved it.

[33:57] Jessica: I doubt it very highly.

[34:00] Meg: I'll take it. That's as good a theory as I have heard.

[34:02] Jessica: Well, I just feel like she's having religious mania. She's not sleeping. Right. So she's. And she's hyper vigilant. So she's on the cycle, the up cycle of the mania. Right. Which is then followed by a dark crash, usually. So that's why I'm like, she cycled through the mania and then she crashed. And maybe that's what Leo was thinking, that he's like, I've seen this pattern before. She goes from extreme elation to the darkest of the dark. And so I watched her be up, up, up. Now she's mysteriously missing. That's all I need to know. Maybe that's. Maybe he was, you know, clued in.

[34:52] Meg: Honestly, I would hope that our brothers would just spend a little bit more time searching for us. Like Leo.

[35:00] Jessica: Yeah, I think that. Come on, you know Leo.

[35:05] Meg: He left the island the next day.

[35:06] Jessica: I'd like to know more about. About Leo, but, like, leaving the island the next day wasn't the best move ever. Seems a bit weird. But do you feel like he killed her?

[35:18] Meg: No, I do not feel like he killed her.

[35:20] Jessica: So why would he have wanted to get off the island so fast?

[35:24] Meg: I don't know, but there's something about it that makes it all the more sad that her loved ones didn't. Didn't look for her.

[35:33] Jessica: I mean, also for Leo. Like, maybe. Maybe he had been through this cycle with her so many times.

[35:39] Meg: But that is actually that. You're making that up.

[35:41] Jessica: I am.

[35:42] Meg: That's what everybody said is not the case.

[35:45] Jessica: Oh, so this was an anomaly. Yeah, this was new.

[35:50] Meg: And that, in fact, she wasn't being different. She was being exactly the way she always is.

[35:54] Jessica: Interesting.

[35:56] Meg: But I do think there are all those earmarks, like, not sleeping, grandiosity, like we were saying.

[36:03] Jessica: And. Well, and also, if she was the way that she always was, would the Coffins have been like, why are you talking so much? We just want to tell our story. Like it's not all exactly the same.

[36:14] Meg: Yeah, no, it was amped.

[36:15] Jessica: Wouldn't it be amazing if somehow she turns up?

[36:20] Meg: Cranberry bog.

[36:33] Jessica: I was trying to think of an engagement question for you, but I couldn't think of anything that would even be like remotely appropriate. So I'm just not going to do. Okay, just jump in. I'm just jumping in. I decided to investigate what I'm going to present. I was going through stuff on my laptop, actually putting together my resume. And I was trying to figure find. And I haven't had a proper resume in like 15 years. So I was going through everything that I could find about like. Like, what the hell did I do? Where have I been? And I found a folder with material that I had written in the past, most of it fiction, which I've never. I've never published fiction. But in there was an article that I wrote that I never fully developed. Cause I just didn't know where to go with it. Now I know that I've mentioned on this podcast before that I had an upstairs neighbor here who was sort of like my Single White Female. She came to live in the building because she was obsessed. Oh yeah.

[37:40] Meg: With you.

[37:41] Jessica: With me. And I of course, was too slow to catch on. I met her where I get my hair colored. And she just seemed like a normal Connecticut lady. You know, tall, blonde, skinny, whatever. And she was wearing these Converse, like unusual Converse high tops. I was like, oh, I like your sneakers. And oh, she's. And we were on the same hair color schedule. So I would see her and I was like, oh, we'll have a glass of wine, whatever. She described to me that she had to leave her. She had recently been widowed, she had to leave her house in Connecticut, and she was looking for a place in New York. And at one point I had invited her for a drink at my place. And she was then like, would you mind if I got an apartment here? And I was like, oh, God. But what do you say? Like, yeah, I do. Cause like, it's my building. You can't live here. Like, that's super creepy and weird. And I was like, oh, there's no way she's gonna. Well, she did. She moved in. And then I found out that her situation, how it was being paid for was weird. Like there was a guy and she's widow. Like this guy was paying for it. Anyway, it took a little while to ferret out what the reality was, but she eventually told me she was a dominatrix.

[38:57] Meg: Okay.

[38:58] Jessica: And she had this really rough backstory she had been. And of course, like, who knows how much of it was real.

[39:07] Meg: She told you this? Were you surprised? Was.

[39:11] Jessica: No. Well, yes, I was surprised by the. What the details were, but I knew something was not right.

[39:18] Meg: But did she strike you as a dominatrix? Could you imagine her doing that job successfully?

[39:25] Jessica: Funny enough, it.

[39:27] Jessica: That didn't even cross my mind. And you. You and I both know this. Anybody could be anything fair. And so when someone says, well, this is what I am, and suddenly it's like all the tumblers fall into place, and you're like, oh, now I can see that. She told me this and that she had been kicked out of her house at 16 and that she was a stripper, and then she was running a whorehouse. And then her husband, who had died, was actually, like, a criminal, like a drug dealer and a pimp who had gone to U Penn and was, like, you know, ostracized from his family. And so it was this whole wild story. And of course, being me, half of me was fascinated, and the other half was like, danger, run away. But I couldn't run away because she was in the building. And that was when I started praying, like, oh, please, God, let something happen so she can't be here anymore. Which really, really. That feeling was particularly intensified when I found out she had a gun. And then I was like, oh, for God's sakes. Like, this is insane. But before that happened, and getting back to what I wrote, I was asking her tons of questions about being a dominatrix. And she said, I have a guy coming over here for a session. He's coming for the weekend, and he'll be in my apartment. Would you like to observe? And I was like, well, a normal person says no.

[41:08] Meg: Closed circuit tv? Hide in the closet?

[41:10] Jessica: Not hiding. She asked his permission. He said, and you did it? I did.

[41:15] Meg: Okay.

[41:16] Jessica: I sat in the corner, and then I asked him a bunch of questions. And unsurprisingly, he had a very religious background and lots of shame and all kinds of stuff that's, like, right out of central casting for why you want a dominatrix. But it was. It was the most.

[41:35] Meg: You yell at me when I say I'm gonna go camping, and you're, like, gonna sit in the corner with two total strangers in this kind of situation.

[41:45] Jessica: Yeah, but camping doors. Okay, no, no, no. I understand your point. I just. I really know she wasn't a stranger at that point. And I didn't know about the gun. You're just. You.

[42:02] Meg: I'M surprised by you, and your boundaries are interesting.

[42:09] Jessica: Well, as you know, I'm always curious, and it sounds safe enough. Right.

[42:16] Meg: And it was.

[42:16] Jessica: And it was. And I could tell that she kind of wanted her experience to be recorded in some way. And I was like, it's an adventure. It was a complete adventure, and definitely a tale for another day, but, boy, did I learn a lot.

[42:35] Meg: So what's our tale today?

[42:36] Jessica: So. But what it made me think about was, in the 80s, women, the idea of female power was shifting, and it was shifting in a lot of different ways. And I just started thinking about, like, how is that represented in the 80s? So this is a little path I'm gonna take you on. This is not just one particular story, but we're gonna end on a story that's gonna be part two. That's a normal story next week.

[43:06] Meg: Okay.

[43:06] Jessica: Okay. I was thinking, like, when did I even first know that there was such a thing as a dominatrix? I think it was, you know, when we were in high school, I was aware of this. And when we were in high school, the idea of the powerful woman was really more prevalent. You know, we talk about. We've talked on this podcast about, like, how women started dressing more like men so that they could be in the workforce.

[43:36] Meg: And, you know, power suits and big shoulder pads.

[43:39] Jessica: Exactly. And the power suits, you know, I looked at a whole series of them. I went, like, including Hillary Clinton. Like, all of these women. And even now, particularly in politics, when they need to make a speech, when they're in a public forum, they're wearing big shoulders still. So that's one thing. Cause, like, it went from the little. Little suits with a pussy bow to these giant shoulders. There was also a lot of. And Madonna was part of this. And she was on the BDSM scene that I'm about to describe. But corsets, remember? Like, everything had, like, I even had this. A wide, black elastic belt like, that you'd put over, like, a dress or, like.

[44:28] Meg: Yeah.

[44:28] Jessica: All of that iconography was really happening in the movies. You had Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, and you had Linda Hamilton in Terminator, and the strong woman who could kick your ass started to be a type. It was something that was sort of made attractive for the first time. So as I was going down the rabbit hole of looking up, like, powerful women, I eventually landed on dominatrices.

[45:00] Meg: Okay.

[45:00] Jessica: And so I was like, okay, who was a dominatrix in the 80s? Like, was there a famous dominatrix in the 80s? And interestingly, back to fashion. One of the first things that popped up, because there weren't a lot who were famous at the time, there are now. You can't go on the Internet and look up famous dominatrix without having a list as long as your arm, starting at around 2000. But prior to that, very undercover, which is also when my upstairs neighbor started doing it very undercover. The other imagery that is very popular that was drawn from that was the Robert Palmer girls and that, like, on one level, they were, you know, robots.

[45:45] Meg: Mannequins.

[45:46] Jessica: They're mannequins. But on the other hand, the makeup was so severe, it was this impenetrable, icy female who you. You could not, you know, ruffle her feathers. So that was all part of it. So I started looking this up, and there are none. So I was like, okay, I'm going to back up and look up BDSM in the 80s now in the Meatpacking District in the 70s and then the early 80s, you couldn't throw a stone, you couldn't throw a ball gag without hitting an S and M club. And they were all predictably called things like the manhole.

[46:32] Meg: Right. What's the famous one that's now Dos Caminos?

[46:37] Jessica: Hellfire.

[46:38] Meg: Yes.

[46:39] Jessica: So. And in fact, in looking up the Hellfire Club, I found out that in the 17th and 18th century, I think maybe 18th and 19th, in England and Ireland, like, there was a whole bunch of aristocrats who were like, we're going to be naughty. And they did a whole bunch of things that were considered, you know, outside the norm, and they called themselves the Hellfire Club. So there's a long history of that name. So before the Apple Store and high end clothing was all over the Meatpack District, but during the same time as Florent. That's our callback.

[47:13] Meg: Callback.

[47:13] Jessica: No Apple store, no high end clothing, but all BDSM and meat. So there's a crossover. In fact, one of the guys who have.

[47:23] Meg: And hogs and heifers.

[47:24] Jessica: Exactly. Bras hanging from the ceilings. One of the guys who went to one of the clubs, who I'm. That I'm going to describe, he would say that you'd come out of the dungeon in the morning, like, completely decimated, and there would be these carcasses hanging in the street.

[47:44] Meg: You know, of all those animals, this on the podcast. But we used to rehearse plays in the Meatpacking district. And the smell is hideous. Tense. It just is you. You know, meat. Meat goes bad fast.

[48:00] Jessica: The person who was describing this, he was like, the way that the carcasses were hanging on the hooks, he was like, no difference from what we were up to. But the clubs were the Hellfire club at 22 9th Avenue, the Vault, the Anvil, Mother, the Mineshaft, and of course my favorite, the Manhole. The Mineshaft was at 835 Washington St. And the Anvil was at 500 W. 14th St. They were all gay, all gay clubs except for the Hellfire. They let some women in. Interestingly, here's another little side note. In the late 70s and early 80s, Lee Radziwill liked to go to these clubs. So she would cross dress to go to the Anvil and dress up like a man.

[48:56] Meg: Fascinating.

[48:57] Jessica: Indeed. And the Anvil was used as the inspiration for another callback here, the movie Cruising.

[49:07] Meg: Right.

[49:08] Jessica: They shot outside of it, and then they modeled the sets that they built on the Anvil. These things were thriving for about 10 years, maybe a little more. They were all shut down in 1985 because of the AIDS crisis. So there were no women allowed. So where were the women? What was going on? Well, I'll tell you where they were. They were in apartments on the Upper East Side. Oh, so the Upper East Side, in these high rises that had gone up relatively recently, very anonymous buildings. People would have brothels in them. So I tried to find the women, because dominatrices have been something forever. Like, this is not new. So they were doing their thing. They were not included in the clubs. They were in apartments. But I was like, who were they? And the only one that I could find, and I loved this so much, I could find her, because the shows that we've talked about on this podcast that were super popular, that were lurid, would have her on all the time.

[50:28] Meg: Oh, like Robin Byrd,

[50:32] Jessica: Jenny Jones, Phil Donahue, Howard Stern, the Joan Rivers show, and on Univision, El show de Cristina. They were, if you recall, like, they started off trying to be kind of legit, and then they just devolved into Jerry Springer. I mean, Jerry Springer is one of them as well. They were all going after this really low rent ratings, and, like, they started to have the club kids on, and they loved having sex workers. They loved having trans people. They. Anything that was left of center, they were excited about. So this one woman, who is actually a trans woman named Bianca Maldonado, whose name in the industry was Exotica, was the only dominatrix who was on these shows in the 80s. And they must have been in heaven, because she was also trans. She was like, two for the price of one. And they would fly her around and pay her to be on the show. I read an account of her life written by her niece, and she loved it because it was glitter, it was advertising. Seriously, and it was money.

[51:48] Meg: Yeah.

[51:49] Jessica: So she was like, okay. But she. And a little farther in to the accounting. And who knows if this is the niece's opinion or it was Bianca's, but it was for trans visibility. She was not part of the legendary House of Extravaganza, but she hung out with them.

[52:10] Meg: Okay.

[52:10] Jessica: And one of the people who taught her how to cross dress was our favorite Dorian Corey, who had the dead body in the closet in the Naugahyde. And she was a mainstay at Sally's Hideaway, which was a mecca for trans nightlife in New York City in Times Square. Bianca was born in Ecuador in 1965, but grew up in Elmhurst, Queens. Dropped out of high school because wasn't a good environment for her, obviously went to beauty school and then became a sex worker. So this is what's interesting to me. So it's now the 80s, and all of these images of powerful women are coming up, and that is when Bianca decides she's going to be a dominatrix. So she goes to, trust me, this is going to be part of part two. But she goes to a dominatrix school called Victoria's Playhouse. And I was like, is that the only name that anyone who wants to have something sexy comes up with? Is it Victoria? Like? And so she goes there to learn to be a dominatrix. And she ran her own business for others, so she became kind of a Madam on 88th street on the Upper east side not far from here. And she charged the equivalent, the current equivalent of $665 per session, which, P.S. from the dominatrix I know was kind of cheap.

[53:43] Meg: For how long?

[53:45] Jessica: For a session. Now, a session could be anything from what I learned, an hour to three hours. Okay, so I know that it was $500 to $1,000 to $1,500 by the hour now, but who knows? Maybe that was just fantastic for Bianca. Sadly, Bianca died at the age of 30 of AIDS.

[54:07] Meg: No.

[54:09] Jessica: And that's how I found out about her, because her niece wrote this story about her for an AIDS project that's online. And then I found something else that I had completely forgotten about. And this is going to be for the next podcast, but there was a song that I heard all the time when I went out clubbing in the late 80s. It was already a hit by then, but it was called The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight. And it was by a band called Dominatrix that was from New York. And the band was established by a guy whose last name was Argabright, who was a landscaper to the stars. And he hitchhiked in 1977 and was picked up by a woman who he started dating, who is a dominatrix to the stars. And they started comparing notes and who their clients in common were. So he had this rich life with this dominatrix who I'll tell you all about. But from that came the song the Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight. And we'll learn more about that next time.

[55:24] Meg: Very fun.

[55:26] Jessica: Wacky, right? Okay. The tie in, I think, and I will fact check it later, but I think that Lee Radziwill had a house in Nantucket.

[55:47] Meg: Sure.

[55:48] Jessica: As well. All right, let's do it. That's. That's where I'm going, Lee. Okay.

[55:52] Meg: All right. We are having a party to celebrate the launch of our YouTube channel. It's gonna be on Monday, February 24th from 6 to 9 at Malt and Mold at 21st street and 2nd Avenue. Snack swag. 80s trivia.

[56:07] Jessica: Please come.