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

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

[00:26] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:31] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:33] Meg: So Alice has gone ice skating.

[00:36] Jessica: Cute.

[00:36] Meg: I know. I want to go ice skating.

[00:38] Jessica: I'd go ice skating.

[00:39] Meg: Let's do that. Let's make a date.

[00:41] Jessica: I'm in.

[00:41] Meg: And I had one other thing.

[00:43] Jessica: In other words, I'll go falling with you.

[00:45] Meg: I love ice skating. And Happy New Year, because this. We're back.

[00:50] Jessica: Yay. Happy New Year. It's all happening in 2024.

[00:56] Meg: And the other thing I wanted to tell you about before I forget, is that one of our listeners wrote in and said he's almost positive that David Lee Roth is bi.

[01:08] Jessica: After I made my comment about him being gay.

[01:13] Meg: You are absolutely definitive about him being gay. And there is word on the street that he is, in fact, bi.

[01:21] Jessica: Well, you know what? I'm not gonna go to the mat on this. I wanna have a discussion about it. I wanna know how this person knows. Like. Cause I wanna triangulate the information. I want to you know, this is. This is my.

[01:35] Meg: I think there have been quite a few women who have been like, oh, my God, he has so many women and has sex with so many women.

[01:42] Jessica: Are they all named George?

[01:49] Meg: Okay, so on the to do list, let's.

[01:53] Jessica: He's on.

[01:53] Meg: He's on Instagram. We should just ask him. It's not a big deal anymore. It's not the '80s. You can actually tell people if you're gay or bi or whatever.

[02:02] Jessica: He might be more nervous about being the son of a dentist. Who knows? Yes. I'm all in. Okay. Research.

[02:19] Meg: I have a feeling that I have asked you this question before on the podcast, but it. Because I can't remember exactly. I think we can revisit it.

[02:29] Jessica: Well, considering that I've told the same story on the podcast a few times, I think it's fine.

[02:35] Meg: Like, oh, my God, Jessica, that's episode 16.

[02:37] Jessica: You're like. You have. Look, look, I have a lot of things on my mind. All right.

[02:42] Meg: Fair enough. What was the discipline like in your home growing up? Were you grounded? Were you, like, you know, I mean, nowadays, it's, time out.

[03:00] Jessica: I think I've told you the answer to this.

[03:02] Meg: Okay, remind me.

[03:04] Jessica: I'm gonna give you a really good answer.

[03:06] Meg: Okay?

[03:06] Jessica: Okay. Discipline in my household was enacted by my mother. There was never a wait till your father gets home and my mother was what you might call a loose cannon.

[03:21] Meg: Okay.

[03:22] Jessica: And I never knew exactly when something would be punishable.

[03:29] Meg: Oh. So there wasn't a set list of rules that would be broken and therefore something would happen.

[03:35] Jessica: Right. And if I was, it was all murky. And if I was like, why the hell, blah, blah, blah. It's like, how could you not know that? And I'm like, what? It's like, are you human? You should know that.

[03:47] Meg: That is interesting.

[03:48] Jessica: I would get. So the things that were major offenses were bad grades.

[03:54] Meg: Fair enough.

[03:55] Jessica: Watching TV when I was not supposed to be because..

[03:59] Meg: Oh my God, I just had a flashback. Yes.

[04:00] Jessica: And which, which was bananas because they put a TV with cable in my room. It's like, I'm a teenager. What do you think is gonna happen? Anyway, watching tv, I was like a good. Like on, on paper, I was an extremely good kid, but I was lippy. So as you had your moment of saying F off, which you've kindly shared with our listeners. I think.

[04:31] Meg: No, I haven't.

[04:32] Jessica: Oh, you haven't?

[04:33] Meg: It was in my show.

[04:33] Jessica: I think I called my mom a few really choice names in the heat of the moment, which I still stand by. I just want that on the. On the record. So what were the punishments? Well, the television punishment, eventually. And this happened more than once, my mother ripped the cable out of the wall, which I've told you before.

[04:55] Meg: My father did something similar.

[04:56] Jessica: Yeah. She would have like these fits and like, had way more energy than a woman and strength than a woman of her stature should have.

[05:04] Meg: And honestly, considering what we do for a living, all of that pop culture absorption has served us so well.

[05:11] Jessica: She didn't.

[05:12] Meg: Thank God we were watching tv.

[05:13] Jessica: She did not have the vision.

[05:15] Meg: Okay.

[05:15] Jessica: No. And bad grades was first a good round of humiliation.

[05:23] Meg: Yeah. In my family, shame.

[05:25] Jessica: Shame was big.

[05:26] Meg: And then shame and derision.

[05:28] Jessica: Yeah. A short lived, like, you better stay close to home studying until you show a good test grade or something like that. And then, you know. But I wasn't like out drinking and smoking. And when I did on the few occasions really fuck up, I had my cover story pretty good. So that wasn't part of my world.

[05:52] Meg: I wasn't gonna tell this story, but now I kind of feel like I have to because you just reminded me of it. So, yes, I got in trouble for watching too much tv. And also I felt like my parents were snooping around in my room and it would drive me crazy. So I figured out how to take, my way of locking my door was to unscrew the door handle, and so I carried around my door handle and I was able to go in and out of my room. But unless one had a spare door handle, you would not be able to go into that room. And my father took the door off the hinges.

[06:30] Jessica: Well, he said, I'll see you your door handle and I'll raise you a hinge.

[06:35] Meg: And there was a lot of like, you know, you're destroying my home and stuff.

[06:40] Jessica: Yes, lovely.

[06:42] Meg: Anyway. But there was accountability in your home, I assume.

[06:47] Jessica: Oh, my God. There was constant. I mean, here's a story, here's a good example. And did I ever tell the story on this podcast about the one moment in high school when I had an overwhelming sense of well being at the dinner table? John was already in college and I bizarrely, like and you and I took AP French together. Like, I was a good French student. Maybe I had like an A minus at that point. Amazing. It was a hard class. It was a very hard class because it wasn't grammar. Like, we were up, like analyzing French literature. Like, and I remember I stretched my arms. It was like, ah, I. And I said, like, I am so happy right now. I have such a sense of well being. And my mother said, why? You're failing French, but it's an A minus. So let that just set the. It sets the tone for Baby Jessica. Baby Jessica had a lot of look, I'm this way for a reason. Virtual hug. Thank you. But yeah, that was the, you know, the whip.

[07:56] Meg: My sources today are the Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York, which is a documentary on HBO, and the book Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York, which the documentary is based on by Elon Green. On July 11, 1988, a Monday night, Richard Rogers went to The GH Club on East 53rd Street and 2nd Avenue. This area near Sutton Place and the Queensborough Bridge was known for its wrinkle rooms. Have you ever heard of that term?

[08:32] Jessica: Oh, it's like chicken hawk, right? Yeah.

[08:34] Meg: Piano bars known to cater to older gay men and the young men who wanted to spend time with them. Places like Regency East and the Townhouse Bar and many more. Pegasus Club, Rounds, Bogart's. I mean, did you know that there was a whole cluster of them in this neighborhood?

[08:50] Jessica: I only knew about the Townhouse Bar. That was it.

[08:54] Meg: It was actually a neighborhood for these particular kinds of bars.

[08:59] Jessica: That is amazing information.

[09:01] Meg: Some of these bars were more upscale than others with dress codes. Some attracted closeted men, while others were more transparent about their clientele, including sex workers. But the vibe overall was very different from the gay bars in the Village and the East Village and Chelsea and the Meat Packing district. Each one of those neighborhoods has a whole different kind of gay bar scene. Elegant, chill, mostly on the down low. And it was here that Richard met a man we'll call Frank Smith. Frank was a 46 year old businessman who was at the bar with friends at around 6pm talking about real estate and the stock market. Richard joined the conversation and talked up his new one bedroom condo on Staten island, which he had bought for $45,000 a steal even at the time, Frank's friends left for dinner and Richard offered to drive Frank to see the condo. It was early, 8:00, so Frank, who initially was uninterested in visiting Staten Island, agreed, as long as Richard could drive him back to his place in midtown. An hour later, they were at Richard's condo. On the way there, Richard had warned Frank that his apartment was very hot. And it was. It was impeccably neat and very warm.

[10:35] Jessica: I'm sorry, I have a question. How old? So Richard was 46. Or Frank was 46.

[10:39] Meg: Frank is 46.

[10:40] Jessica: How old is Richard?

[10:42] Meg: Richard is also in his late 30s, early 40s at this point.

[10:47] Jessica: Okay.

[10:48] Meg: Frank asked for a Diet Coke and Richard brought him an orange juice.

[10:54] Jessica: Not a good host, but I'm sure it gets much worse. Oh, yeah.

[10:59] Meg: After a couple sips, Frank began to feel woozy and felt himself pass out face forward onto the blue carpet. When he came to, he was naked and hogtied with a dozen hospital ID bracelets and he could tell he'd been unconscious for hours. As Frank began to scream, Richard injected him with a hypodermic needle, saying, quote, "this will take care of you for a while." When Frank gained consciousness again, he was dressed and woozy and being pushed into his midtown apartment.

[11:39] Jessica: Okay. Terrified now.

[11:40] Meg: Now, as soon as he was able, he called a friend and went to the police station to report the assault. Again, this is 1988. He was taken to Roosevelt Hospital where the bruises and injection site were noted and he was given a rape kit which came back negative.

[11:58] Jessica: Interesting.

[11:58] Meg: He was so scared of getting AIDS. But fortunately, apparently, he had not been raped. Richard, who was a nurse at Mount Sinai, was arrested two weeks later. It was pretty easy to track him down, but was released pending trial. That trial wouldn't take place until February 1990. It was a bench trial on Staten Island. Richard was charged with assault in the third degree and unlawful imprisonment in the second degree. Frank told the court of how he had had a glass of wine with friends after work at The GH Club when he met Richard, he admitted to being homosexual, but said he had no interest in Richard romantically or sexually. Apparently, it really was about real estate. He told of what Richard did to him and how he suffered from PTSD as a result. Quote, "I have enormous fears of any kind of intimacy with anybody." The defense lawyer. So this is Richard's lawyer, countered, quote, "Are you in fear of picking up any more men in bars now?" To which Frank responded, "I did not pick Mr. Rogers up." The defense lawyer peppered him with questions like, "have you been to apartments with male men?" And, "sir, isn't it"

[13:20] Jessica: Male men? That's what he said. Wow.

[13:20] Meg: And, "sir, isn't it a chance that if you were drugged by the orange juice that this might not have all happened?"

[13:27] Jessica: What a, well, you know what, women are treated like that every fricking day. Not surprised.

[13:33] Meg: And he went to the police station and he went to the hospital, and so there was a report of the bruises and the injection site. So, like..

[13:42] Jessica: Well, grasping at straws, perhaps.

[13:46] Meg: When it was Richard's turn to testify, he admitted he was homosexual and claimed that Frank came on to him, asking to spend the night on Staten Island.

[13:56] Jessica: No one asks to spend the night on Staten Island.

[14:00] Meg: Very, very, very unlikely. When they got to his place, Richard said Frank asked Richard if he was into bondage. Richard said no, and that pissed off Frank. Richard said Frank accused him of leading him on. So basically, Richard's saying Frank was the aggressor. The defense lawyer closed with, "the problem here is, judge, that I believe that Mr. Frank Smith is nuts." He actually compared him to Fatal Attraction.

[14:30] Jessica: That was the defense. I think he's crazy.

[14:34] Meg: Yes, that's what he said. The judge must have agreed because the case was dismissed and sealed.

[14:44] Jessica: Wait, tell me, is this one of the judges that we've heard about in the past? Okay, so it's not one of our.

[14:49] Meg: Like, it's a Staten Island judge. Sorry. Our other judges have been on Manhattan.

[14:53] Jessica: Well, you know, very, very. Staten Island is the most conservative part of New City. So not surprised that it would not be gay positive.

[15:03] Meg: Now, this was the second time Richard had been found not guilty of a violent crime. When he was in graduate school at the University of Maine, Richard killed his housemate. What? Frederic Spencer. By bludgeoning him in the head with a hammer eight times and then suffocating him with a plastic bag. He wrapped Frederic's body in a tent and disposed of it by the side of the road. Once the body was found, investigators quickly homed in on Richard, who confessed to Killing Frederic, claiming self defense. At trial, he employed the gay panic defense, which is a legal strategy in which a straight person charged with a violent crime against a gay person claims they lost control and reacted violently because of an unwanted sexual advance. So basically Richard said that dead guy was gay and he came onto me and that's why I bludgeoned him eight times in the head.

[16:05] Jessica: Can you imagine if a woman like, let's flip this right.

[16:09] Meg: Good frigging point. And by the way, can't we.

[16:13] Jessica: Can we have the asshole panic defense? Can we have the rapey mcraperson panic defense in 2023?

[16:23] Meg: Some states banned. Some states ban the gay panic defense, but it is still an acceptable defense. In 33 states. You can still claim that I'm just so uncomfortable by the gay advance that this person deserves to die. You can still do that.

[16:40] Jessica: That's 33 states. I wonder how. I mean, interesting that you can still do that. I wonder how frequently that defense holds water in court. That's interesting.

[16:49] Meg: Richard Rogers was found not guilty of murdering Frederic Spencer in 1973. This is in Maine. It was shortly after his acquittal that Richard moved to New York. New York?

[17:05] Jessica: Yes.

[17:05] Meg: Well, New York is a special place for gay people in the '70s and '80s.

[17:09] Jessica: Oh, it was his hunting ground. I hear what you're saying. Okay.

[17:13] Meg: And he became a pediatric surgical nurse at Mount Sinai. Just a year after Richard's charges for assault and kidnapping of Frank Smith were dismissed, the mutilated body of 54 year old Peter Stickney Anderson was found alongside the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He had been castrated and his penis was inserted into his mouth. Peter.

[17:39] Jessica: I need a minute actually on that one. Wow. Okay.

[17:43] Meg: But his body was except for the penis, his body was intact. Okay, that will become relevant in a minute. Peter had been drinking heavily at the Townhouse Bar the night before. A year after that body was found, in July 1992, the body of 57 year old Thomas Richard Mulcahy, a married father of four from Massachusetts, who was last seen at the Townhouse Bar, was found along Route 72 in New Jersey. He, race yourself had been disemboweled and dismembered and was separated into various bags, disposed along the highway.

[18:29] Jessica: Fucking hell.

[18:30] Meg: And almost exactly a year after that, the body of Anthony Edward Marrero, a 44 year old sex worker from Manhattan, was found separated into seven bags along Crow Hill Road in New Jersey. Only two months later, so things are speeding up. You see what I'm saying?

[18:55] Jessica: There's a momentum here.

[18:57] Meg: Yeah. Michael J. Sakara was enjoying himself at Five Oaks, a piano bar in the Village. He was a regular and very close with the bartender, Lisa Hall. She overheard Michael talking to a man who said he was a nurse at St. Vincent's and had a generic name, Mark or John, she couldn't remember, something but generic. Michael's body was discovered the next day in seven pieces in garbage bags in and around Stony Point, New York.

[19:34] Jessica: Interesting that the method of disposal is now becoming standardized.

[19:42] Meg: Absolutely. Agreed. It's like he's perfecting it.

[19:49] Jessica: Yeah.

[19:50] Meg: Finally, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, because those have been the three places where the bodies had been found set up a task force fueled by Lisa Hall's description of the stranger at the bar. The New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project raised $10,000 as a reward for information.

[20:13] Jessica: Wait, what year are we in now?

[20:14] Meg: We are in 1993.

[20:16] Jessica: Okay.

[20:17] Meg: They knew. The police knew that the garbage bags with the body parts had been purchased at a CVS on Staten Island. They were able to track the bags. Fascinating.

[20:28] Jessica: That is fascinating. How?

[20:30] Meg: How? Because of their lot numbers printed on the bags.

[20:35] Jessica: On the bags. Wow.

[20:36] Meg: But in spite of a number of leads, the case went cold. So they're like, all right, it's a nurse who lives on Staten Island who has a generic name. And now we have. And we have a facial description, but it went cold. It wasn't until 1999, when the New Jersey State Police were able to use a new technology to lift prints from the garbage bags that they nailed Richard Rogers, whose prints were still on file in Maine from his first murder arrest. And the woman who made, basically, there was a woman who was working at the police station in Maine, and these prints came in, and she's like, oh, they're coming in from New Jersey. I mean, there's no way there's going to be a match. Why would, why are they even sending them? But whatever. It's a slow day in Maine.

[21:32] Jessica: That's as in every day she's sitting at her desk. Yeah.

[21:38] Meg: So she just actually starts doing a visual check, and she's like, wait a second. Wait a second. Oh, my God. And she realized she had him.

[21:49] Jessica: Wait, so how did Maine?

[21:49] Meg: What are the odds?

[21:51] Jessica: Well, did they send them to Maine for a reason, or was it like.

[21:56] Meg: They sent them all over the country.

[21:57] Jessica: Nationwide search.

[21:58] Meg: Nationwide. But the guy in LA, trust me, he didn't have time to be checking the prints. He's got a lot of other things going.

[22:06] Jessica: That is a needle in a haystack.

[22:08] Meg: Yeah. And it's a little bit of a miracle. A search of Richard's condo yielded a bottle of a date rape drug. His blue carpet fibers were found on Mulcahy's body. And the plastic bags in his home were the same as those used to wrap the bodies. So lots of evidence. Also, and this is just weird, he'd highlighted passages in the Bible about decapitation and dismemberment. He had lots of videotapes of The Golden Girls. Sorry. It's true.

[22:50] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[22:51] Meg: And horror films. That was his two. Two passions.

[22:56] Jessica: The Bible thing doesn't surprise me because isn't that, like, every wackadoodoo killer like, at least in the movies, there's always like.

[23:05] Meg: Definitely in the movies.

[23:07] Jessica: In. In. You know. Of course, I know nothing about the Bible. I'm like, in Ezekiel, blah, blah, blah. They said, don't do. I don't know. Don't do crack. I don't know.

[23:18] Meg: Okay, okay. I know the class you didn't take.

[23:24] Jessica: Not strong on theology.

[23:26] Meg: A New Jersey road map was also in his condo. And Polaroid pictures of shirtless men with stab wounds drawn on them in Sharpie.

[23:37] Jessica: On the photos or on the men who then were photographed.

[23:41] Meg: No, no, no, no, no. It was like he did, he was stalking people.

[23:45] Jessica: Oh, my fucking God.

[23:46] Meg: And then he drew on a Sharpie on the photograph where he did.

[23:49] Jessica: Did he scratched their eyes out too?

[23:50] Meg: Would want to stab them.

[23:54] Jessica: He was making a game plan.

[23:56] Meg: Plus, he had taken off work every day after one of the victims disappeared. It's a huge coincidence. In 2005, he was found guilty of the murders of Marrero and Mulcahy, the bodies found in New Jersey, and is currently serving two consecutive life sentences in New Jersey State Prison. People have written in a lot wanting me to tell this story, even though it is kind of a '90s story, but we did have that first.

[24:32] Jessica: It started in the '80s.

[24:33] Meg: It started in the '80s.

[24:35] Jessica: It makes sense.

[24:35] Meg: And actually, that was the most interesting of the stories to me because of the gay panic defense. And again, it was the second time he'd gotten away with something. So it's like he got invigorated. He was motivated. He started perfecting things. And it's all because he wasn't held accountable.

[24:59] Jesica: Well, that's the part of it that really interests me.

[25:02] Meg: Because of the homophobia.

[25:03] Jessica: Like, you and I lived through this. We know this. That crimes against gay people were not, not only not prioritized, they were dismissed out of hand by most. Not most, by a large number of detectives.

[25:19] Meg: And one thing that came up in the documentary was even the detectives who were absolutely like, we want to solve this. We will do what we can. The culture is very different and they were estranged from the gay community because of some bad policeman who had done some bad things to gay people historically.

[25:41] Jessica: So they didn't have the, the info about, like, where to look like, what's.

[25:44] Meg: The culture, know, what questions to ask. So we've got. I wrote How to Make a Killer because I started thinking about it.

[25:52] Jessica: Oh, that is fascinating.

[25:53] Meg: All right, we've got homophobia just at the very beginning, which is why he's probably killing people in the first place. Because he's a self loather. Yes. And a judicial system that supports the homophobia.

[26:08] Jessica: Yes.

[26:08] Meg: And that's why he's not held accountable. All right, so that's how we begin the story then. We've got a culture that keeps men in the closet because it's so uncomfortable to have gay men being gay and stuff, right?

[26:21] Jessica: Yes.

[26:22] Meg: So that makes them really good prey. Their closetedness. Yes. Makes, makes them.

[26:29] Jessica: Well, they're, they can be relied upon not to say what's going on because they out themselves. Right. Like the, the married father of four isn't going to go down to the local precinct and be like, look, on my gay outings, this guy trussed me up like a chicken and I've got some puncture wounds.

[26:50] Meg: Well, actually that was what was so remarkable. How many times had he done that to people who didn't come forward and didn't report it? But this guy actually saw it through. He was like, screw that. I'm going to the police. I'm going to the hospital. I'm, I'm going to report it. I'm going to hold him accountable. And then they let him go.

[27:12] Jessica: Yeah. I mean, again, there, there's a reason that gay men and women really connect. The treatment that gay men and women historically have received is identical. So. Yeah.

[27:24] Meg: And also they, they're all different jurisdictions too. So you've got Matt, a Massachusetts man killed on Staten Island found in New Jersey. So even when they figure all that out, the jurisdictions are like, who has this case? The police don't know. The judicial system doesn't know. Like, are we supposed to have the trial in New Jersey or are we supposed to have it in Staten Island? Like, it's very confusing. It can it. This guy knew what he was doing. And the more he got away with, the further he pushed it. He actually went back to the Townhouse Bar and chatted up a guy who he knew was friends with one of the victims.

[28:09] Jessica: Oh my God.

[28:10] Meg: Because just. Well, he's kind of getting off on it. Right?

[28:13] Jessica: Fucking psycho. Yes, right. That's good solid psycho behavior.

[28:17] Meg: And as we discussed earlier, the escalation. So he started with closeted men and sex workers because those are good marks. But that popular guy who was out and everybody knew him and he was best friends with a bartender, that's risky. And that's actually what ended up getting him caught.

[28:40] Jessica: Moral of the story, don't hide in the shadows. Let yourself be known.

[28:46] Meg: Well, not to blame the victims.

[28:48] Jessica: I'm not blaming the victims. I'm saying, you know, we are fortunate enough not to live in the same culture as the '80s and the '90s. I guess my point is that young people now, now don't seem to live in the shadows the way that our contemporaries and people in, you know, boomers did. But I think that people our age are still saddled with a lot of those feelings and a lot of that baggage. So I'm just like, get rid of it. If it's, you know, you're entitled, it's time.

[29:22] Meg: Yeah.

[29:23] Jessica: Let go. No, I'm not blaming the victim, but, you know, it's empowerment.

[29:28] Meg: Right.

[29:28] Jessica: Be empowered.

[29:29] Meg: And it is. It was also interesting. He didn't hunt for like he started hunting gay men in who were in the shadows. And then he ultimately was like, ah, now I'm feeling emboldened. So I'll go down to the Village and go to a really popular piano bar and pick up a guy who everybody knows.

[29:51] Jessica: He wanted a challenge and he wanted to prove that he, he to himself or to, you know, the dog next door that was talking to him. He wanted to prove I'm, I'm up to the task.

[30:03] Meg: And he's still around in the tri state area. NJ State prison.

[30:06] Jessica: At least, at least he doesn't walk amongst us.

[30:10] Meg: That's true. That is better than a lot of these guys who do.

[30:13] Jessica: Yes.

[30:28] Meg: Another thing I want to do is go to Marie's Crisis, the piano bar.

[30:32] Jessica: Oh, I love Marie's Crisis.

[30:34] Meg: Brandon is the piano player there.

[30:37] Jessica: Oh.

[30:38] Meg: Who was at my show and he's incredible. And I just think it'd be so much fun and I've been meaning to do it for forever. And Lauren, who was one of the background singers, she also works there. So we should just coordinate and friggin go.

[30:50] Jessica: I'm, I'm an easy mark for that.

[30:53] Meg: Awesome.

[30:54] Jessica: I'm in. I love a gay piano bar. That's my scene. Yay. All right, are you ready?

[31:02] Meg: Yes, I am.

[31:02] Jessica: Okay, so the title of my section today is Proud to be a New Yorker.

[31:10] Meg: Fun. I am proud.

[31:12] Jessica: Now, here's why. Our next federal holiday coming up is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

[31:19] Meg: Yes.

[31:20] Jessica: And I did what I always do. I love reading the newspaper. And so I was thinking, like, well, what's going on in, I don't know why I randomly chose 1985. Maybe because it's smack in the middle, but December 27th of 1985 was an interesting year, and you'll find out why an interesting year in the context of what I'm about to describe.

[31:49] Meg: Okay.

[31:49] Jessica: There's this little article, very easy to miss. Two pages after a larger article about Mayor Ed Koch and how he's throwing a bone to city developers, as usual, real estate. But there's this little article that says Bellamy to pay cost of disputed holiday. City Council President Carol Bellamy said yesterday that she would make good a pledge to repay personally the costs of an unauthorized holiday she gave her staff in honor of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. Only two days ago Ms. Bellamy suggested that her staff members who took the day off at a cost to the city of about $6,500 were entitled to that day, and that if anything, the city owed them money for their work.

[32:49] Meg: Wow.

[32:49] Jessica: But after Mayor Koch announced that he would have her staff records audited and where necessary.

[32:57] Meg: Ed, why are you being a dick?

[32:58] Jessica: Would dock employees for the day.

[33:01] Meg: That's so crazy.

[33:03] Jessica: Wait, wait, wait.

[33:04] Meg: Get.

[33:04] Jessica: Get ready. You don't even know. This is really interesting. Ms. Bellamy changed her position. She said yesterday that on quote, "the recommendation of my staff, she would permit the city to subtract the holiday from annual leave payments to the employ and personally guarantee that each staff member, about 50 in all, be reimbursed." "During the mayoral campaign, Mr. Koch refused to grant city workers the holiday unless this was worked out in union contract negotiations."

[33:37] Meg: What? What? Why is Ed have his panties in a bunch about MLK Day?

[33:43] Jessica: Okay, so do you know, and I didn't know before this, so this is not a shaming question. Do you know when MLK Jr. Day came into existence?

[33:55] Meg: I don't, but I do remember being a person in the world when it happened.

[34:01] Jessica: Okay.

[34:01] Meg: That it didn't exist and then it did.

[34:03] Jessica: Right after the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

[34:10] Meg: 1969. 68.

[34:13] Jessica: '68. There was a lot of lobbying on the part of. Of his. His wife. But, you know, all of the politics, all of his political supporters and individuals in the United States to create this memorial federal holiday, and they could not get any traction. It clearly, this was, you know, this man was just murdered for a reason. Hello racist America. So that wasn't really going to happen. In 1979, on what would have been MLK Jr's 50th birthday, the proposition was reintroduced to Congress and was shot down, even though President Carter supported it. So..

[35:02] Meg: I love Jimmy Carter.

[35:04] Jessica: I know. And there was. I think there was a.

[35:07] Meg: Poor Jimmy. And Rosalynn just died. Rosalynn. Sorry.

[35:10] Jessica: You know, and there were signed petitions. Like, it was clear that there was a groundswell. Like, come on, you know, now is the time. In 19, but that same year, one of the people who got really pissed off about this was Stevie Wonder.

[35:27] Meg: Okay.

[35:28] Jessica: And Stevie Wonder wrote a song, Happy Birthday, that is about.

[35:34] Meg: No way.

[35:35] Jessica: Yes. It's about Martin Luther King Jr. What? And it is.

[35:40] Meg: Did you know that?

[35:41] Jessica: No, no, no. This is all what I found out. And the lyrics are about, you have to honor, you know, this person.

[35:49] Meg: That's the right song, right? Happy Birthday.

[35:53] Jessica: Is it? I don't know. We'll have to find out during the break.

[35:57] Meg: Okay.

[35:57] Jessica: I thought that's what it was, but I can't actually say for sure. So let's check it out. As a result of his efforts, 6 million people signed a petition. And finally it was, it was moved into Congress and it passed.

[36:15] Meg: Okay.

[36:15] Jessica: And then it went to the Senate and our good old friend fuck face Jesse Helms, if you don't know who he was.

[36:23] Meg: Actually, I am going to do a story on the Moral Majority because they came to New York and it was eventful.

[36:30] Jessica: He. He was.

[36:31] Meg: That's.

[36:32] Jessica: He was. Yeah, he was like. If you've seen Poltergeist, the second one and you know, like that old guy who's like, you are gonna die. That was Jesse Helms, basically. It's like if you did anything that wasn't wildly conservative, Christian based, you were gonna die. And he made. And white. And he made an incredible stink, but also blocked a lot of things from happening that should have. That were progressive.

[37:02] Meg: Okay, so that's on the federal level.

[37:05] Jessica: Yes. So when he does this. Now this is the, so Bellamy is the first part of Proud to be a New Yorker. Right?

[37:12] Meg: Oh, great.

[37:12] Jessica: So that happened in 1985. At the end of '85. Now, what makes it more appalling that Ed Koch did what he did because, yes, as you quite rightly say, that was on the federal level. All 50 states did not recognize this day, this holiday until I believe 2013 or 2003. We'll take a quick look. But yeah, I mean, it's like way the fuck later. But what happened was in 1983, there it was, Jesse Helms trying to stifle it. The bill easily passed the House with a vote of 338 to 90. However, when the bill moved onto the Senate, Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms attempted to dismiss the legislation by submitting documents alleging that the civil rights leader harbored ties to the Communist Party. Lies. Outraged by the personal attack on King's character, Democratic legend New York Congressman Daniel Patrick Moynihan threw the more than 300 page binder to the ground and stomped on what he described as a packet of filth. After two days of debate, the bill passed in the Senate and President Ronald Reagan reluctantly agreed to sign it into law.

[38:36] Meg: What a friggin pale.

[38:37] Jessica: On October 20, 1983, he said, "I would have preferred a non holiday in King's honor, but since they seem, they seem bent on making it a national holiday, I believe the symbolism of that day is important enough that I will sign that legislation when it reaches my desk."

[38:57] Meg: Okay, so that's 1983.

[39:00] Jessica: So I made a mistake. It didn't become statewide until 2000.

[39:06] Meg: Okay, so this all happens in 1983. And then it didn't become.

[39:11] Jessica: Well, wait, wait, wait. So this all happens in 1983, but states have not adopted it. So it's a federal holiday. Think about federal workers versus state workers.

[39:21] Meg: Got it. Thank you.

[39:22] Jessica: That makes sense. And private employers do not have to give anybody the time off. But this is about the recognition of the federal government and state governments.

[39:34] Meg: If you work for the post office, you will have the day off. But if you work for Carol Bellamy, you will not because of New York State.

[39:43] Jessica: Correct. So what I thought was very interesting is that it had not become. It had not gotten adopted by New York State. But guess what? And I was so confused by this, it took me a little while to get it. He signed the law in '83, but it did not, it was not enforced or it was not put into action. I regret that I can't remember the terminology until 1986. So in 1985, it's just way there. Yes. Bellamy is making a point and she's saying state workers should be able to do this. This man deserves the recognition. And if you're not gonna be.

[40:25] Meg: The federal government already said it's a go.

[40:28] Jessica: Exactly.

[40:29] Meg: So why are you dragging your.

[40:30] Jessica: And so that's how she made a stand. Lovely. So I thought that was really kind of interesting. And it also threw some light on what Koch said. During the mayoral campaign, Mr. Koch refused to grant city workers the holiday unless this was worked out in union contract negotiations.

[40:52] Meg: Oh, so he didn't want to go against the unions? Is that what it was? The unions were not happy with it. Why wouldn't the union want a holiday?

[41:03] Jessica: There's no information that I could find about that specifically. I think that he was, you know. No, there wasn't a single state at that point that had. In fact, the federal government didn't make it an observed holiday until 1986.

[41:19] Meg: And so we don't know why he was being. He just didn't want to be the.

[41:22] Jessica: Well, tune in next week, I'll find out why he was that way. But I thought that was very interesting because I was like, why didn't it get observed until 1986? It was very confusing to me to figure out, like, what the timeline was and why '83 to '86, that's another thing to research. And I was desperately trying to find it, but I have a feeling it's gonna require significant digging. But why? Why there's this lapse and I'm sure that with people like Jesse Helms running around the Senate, that there were all these reasons to delay. You know, like the post office can't, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And one of the arguments that was made against it was that it's too expensive to have federal holidays. Like there are all of these really racist cover stories that happened.

[42:07] Meg: That's wild.

[42:08] Jessica: Yeah. So Moynihan, you know, again, like another person to talk about at some point. Total legend.

[42:14] Meg: We need to find a good Patrick Moynihan story.

[42:17] Jessica: Yeah, and like a great representative of what New York liberalism and Democratic Party activity really was like during our entire growing up period. And he had a long, long history before that. But anyway, two cool government folk raging against the machine. Awesome.

[42:40] Meg: Woohoo. Carol Bellamy is still with us, thank goodness. And did you know that she ran for mayor in 1985?

[43:03] Jessica: Ohhh. Now we know why Koch was throwing a wrench in the machinery. Of course, of course.

[43:10] Meg: She was a rival.

[43:13] Jessica: She was a lady who got ahead of herself. I know. And by the way, here's, we have two tie ins. The first one is gay New York. Mine includes Ed Coch.

[43:27] Meg: Is that what we're doing?

[43:28] Jessica: Yeah. Okay, well, come on. I mean, like, it's like that is way. And talk about being in the shadows.

[43:34] Meg: Right.

[43:35] Jessica: That's. Now you know that a straw, a klieg light has been shown on that.

[43:40] Meg: And that's a callback to an earlier episode.

[43:42] Jessica: Indeed. And the other thing is how obstructive state laws can be. Yes. And so, you know, state laws not allowing workers, you know, what is it? 7. Until some of them, 17 years after the law was signed, to be to be recognized. Obstructions. And, you know, for your story, the gay panic. Yeah, gay.

[44:09] Meg: Right, the gay panic defense. Which, as you pointed out, can you imagine if women were allowed to say, he really upset me so I killed him.

[44:23] Jessica: My God. Like no man would be left standing. It would be a bloodbath.

[44:28] Meg: My God, he offended me, so I bludgeoned him.

[44:33] Jessica: In fact, my delicate sensibilities were offended.

[44:39] Meg: World on its head.

[44:41] Jessica: Yes. So we have not one, but two tie ins.

[44:45] Meg: We do indeed.

[44:46] Jessica: So welcome back.

[44:47] Meg: Welcome back. Happy 2024.

[44:50] Jessica: Woohoo.