Episode 44: One Eyed Joe

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 38.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Not only was John Frankford a famous horse thief, he was also a notoriously good escape artist. People thought no jail was strong enough to keep him, but then in 1895 he was sentenced to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary. At Eastern State, Frankford became the victim of a strange practice: the prison doctor, Dr. John Bacon, dissected his body and removed his brain. The Frankford case would just be one of many others in the region and would illuminate an underground cadaver network supplying medical schools across the state of Pennsylvania. Reporter Elana Gordon from WHYY's The Pulse has today's story. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	He is indicted 25 times.
0:04.0	Is that a lot?
0:05.0	That is kind of a lot.
0:07.0	For horse stealing.
0:09.0	I imagine him kind of a horse whisperer.
0:15.0	John Frankfurt was born in 1839 and grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
0:20.0	He was a master at stealing and selling horses.
0:24.0	He once joked to a warden that he was responsible for every missing horse
0:28.0	in Eastern Pennsylvania.
0:30.0	And he just keeps getting caught and escaping.
0:33.0	So it's almost like a running joke.
0:36.0	We're hearing about him from Evie Newman.
0:38.0	She's an exhibitions manager at the Mooter Museum in Philadelphia.
0:42.0	In all the news articles, it's implied or set out right that he's famous.
0:49.0	He's talked about as famous or notorious horse they've caught.
0:55.0	That's one of the titles that you'll see.
1:00.0	Each time he was caught, he was put in jail.
1:03.0	But then he'd escape.
1:04.0	He'd steal another horse, get caught, and somehow escape again.
1:08.0	Frankfurt had the reputation of just not taking prison seriously.
1:17.0	He mostly worked alone.
1:19.0	But he once escaped jail with help from the so-called buzzard boys,
	...

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