Episode 529: Ann & Billy Woodward | Morbid

Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.

Have you heard of Wondery Plus?

With ad -free episodes and one -week early access, it's like having an all -access pass to our lighthearted nightmare.

So come join us on the dark side and try Wondery Plus today.

You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

You're listening to a Morbid Network Podcast. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar.

Whether you listen to stories, motivation, innovation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking.

Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and ultimately, your overall well -being.

Audible has an incredible selection of over one million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals, all in one easy app.

Find the genres you love and discover new ones, explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all all they want, with more added all the time.

Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.

I never want to pause it.

I'm literally like loading the dishwasher listening to it, on the treadmill listening to it, constantly.

It's so awesome. I love being able to listen anytime, anywhere I want to.

And there's more to imagine when you listen.

Sign up for a free 30 -day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free.

Visit audible .com slash morbid.

You guys, I tried my mochi ice cream the other day, and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely.

It is a cool, creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft, chewy dough.

It's literally like a little sweet ice cream dumpling.

It's pillowy soft, D to the E to the L -I -C -I -O -U -S, and it just feels very indulgent.

I loved it. I tried the the cookies and cream flavor and I still have the mango flavor to try.

I'm so excited to try the mango because if it's half as good as the cookies and cream, I'll probably just like fall on the floor and start crying.

Tears of joy. My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece.

My mochi is gluten -free and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.

And guess what? My mochi is the original mochi ice cream.

The founder of My Mochi invented mochi ice cream.

That makes My MyMochi the Mochi OG.

Feel joyfully chill this summer with every bite of MyMochi ice cream.

Look for the purple box of MyMochi ice cream at Walmart or visit MyMochi .com to find a store near you.

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna and this is Morbid.

it's morbid it's morbid in the new year 2024 it's like on us some of them probably have come out in the new year but it hasn't been the new year and we never know when episodes come out no i think you know this we know this we all know it we all know i think this one comes out in like two weeks from now is my assumption so you know what you guys are well into the new year and i hope it's going great tell us how it's going yeah our new our last year ended just just perfectly for what the year was a crescendo of shit but you know literally 2024 is gonna be great it's gonna be so much better everybody's

walking into 2024 i think everyone's walking into it in their villain era which is like i like that i like that i've seen a lot of people that i love and respect doing this.

So I'm like, I'm glad we're all just walking in hand in hand here.

I like that. Do you know something about me?

I don't think I am going to have a villain era.

I don't think you are either, but I don't think you should.

I don't think I want to.

So like, it makes sense.

I think I'm just walking into like, maybe like, how about a hot girl era?

I like that. I feel like you've been in your hot girl era.

I want to continue my hot girl era like better.

And like, I need to get more steps in.

Yeah. So I can really be amongst these hot girls.

There you go. I just need to could start moving again well that's that's okay we're we're a little we're a little bit centary little centary we did buy walking pads but they're still over there oops right under my couch right now well I ring in the mirror watching uh Married at First Night Married at First Night Australia and might I say American Married at First Night take a couple fucking notes wow Married at First Night Australia Drew and I binged almost the entire season yesterday damn it is so good you if you have hulu you can watch it i don't know what else it's on but the drums well i mean australia i

love australia better australian people yeah our australian listeners have always been lovely as fuck and they say the best things have you ever heard i'm not trying to fuck spiders no but i agree with that sentiment or they say like i'm not gonna fuck spite respond to that sir he doesn't know how to respond to that she said i was like like, I don't understand.

I also am not going to fuck spiders.

It means like, I'm not trying to mess around.

I'm not trying to fuck spiders.

That's what they say.

Like, I'm not going to fuck spiders.

They're like, I'm not here to fuck spiders.

Oh, I'm, can I, Australian listeners, is it okay if I use that?

Yeah. Because that's fun.

I will give you credit.

Lindle, who is my favorite on this season, I'm watching season 10 of Married at First Sight.

She said that during her wedding vows.

And I was like, that's a queen right there.

Wow. That's a queen.

That's just, to that's an elite person it's so good and they have you've have you ever seen like the married at first sight like American version I think yeah I've seen like um that that one that one episode that everyone's seen or that one season that everyone yes I think is that I don't know if that's season one or no it's one of the very early ones Jamie and Doug right yeah um well this one they like they do like dinner parties and they get them all together and then they have a commitment ceremony every single week where like everybody shit gets fucking aired like out in front of everybody

like recommit or not you have to recommit you have to stay or leave and if one person writes stay in the couple and the other person writes leave you have to stay another week to work on your marriage as long as you're both as long as they're like are you like are you gonna do it this person's like i'd like to leave and you're like too bad i know when i first saw that i was like shit but damn it's wild yeah and there's a cheating scandal oh my god well it's reality tv fucking on everything it's just it's so good i just went to disney on ice this weekend so that's different it's different that's

different for you especially was that triggering it was a little bit but i will tell you the girls faces oh yeah the cutest thing i've ever seen like it was by far the best part of the weekend I also think that's just like as soon as you become a parent you just do that yeah like Disney on parent Disney on ice yeah absolutely everyone I know or follow on Instagram that is a parent has been to Disney on ice in the past two weeks kids love it and they do a great job with it I can't wait to go it's it's wonderful I mean I love ice skaters I think ice skaters are like real like I just love watching

oh yeah that was always my favorite part of the Olympics me too all right so that was fun I'm so happy wholesome moment in an otherwise wise stressful end of the year yeah my god but very wholesome at the end of the year it just keeps flashing through my brain I got food poisoning so we'll just leave it at that yeah but um it's you know fun fun fun fun fun fun but 2024 we're all here it's gonna be great let's all just like you know I think just like everybody's resolution should be uh just don't be an asshole and worry about yourself and stop worrying about everybody else mine should be that's

mine like mine is there you go see mine is just like worry about the the ones who matter i don't worry about the ones who don't hell yeah you're not gone brother you know just take care of your own i'm into it that's what i'm saying i think we'd all be happier i think that's a theme of this story is take care of your own but they that was not their resolution no this is just a very tragic sad story but it has high society and you know I'm a sucker for that so I mean I love listening to your stories about high society I am a great Gatsby fangirl so like I do love just like like sitting sitting

and watching yeah from the outside just on a quick note of high society have you watched Saltburn yet no but I've heard many many any things about it you have to be in the right headspace to watch that movie let me tell you and you know what you will you have to be in the right headspace and you will never be in the right headspace all at the same time okay it's also very long it's a commitment but yeah i don't know when i'm gonna be ready for that cinematically it's beautiful i've heard great things i've heard interesting things but oh my god yeah who knows maybe i'll have time for that at some

point it's cuckoo nuts bananas but i said high society so i thought yeah but anyway sorry let's go back to of the story.

My story today much like Saltburn is highly tragic but other than that it doesn't really have any correlation we're going to be talking about Anne and Billy Woodward today and if you know anything about Truman Capote and um that new show that new Ryan Murphy show Feud that's coming out then you will you will probably know about this a little bit.

Because that's what it is right?

It's Feud. Is it a new season?

Because it's like an anthology like American Horror Story where it's a new feud every season.

Okay. Um and this this new one which I thought was a very interesting concept and i'm excited for it um this feud with truman capote's women right he ended up feuding with so this this lady was like never friends with him at all but he ended up doing her so dirty like real bad but before all of that came we got to go back to the beginning so ann woodward uh we're going to focus on her and billy woodward but we'll start with To say that Ann Woodward came from humble beginnings would be the profoundest of understatements.

Oh, boy. She was born Angeline Lucille Crowell on December 12, 1915 in Pittsburgh, Kansas.

Her early life was a very far cry from New York high society, like the farthest possible.

The farthest cry. Yes.

Her father, Jesse Claude Crowell, he was an occasional farmer and railway driver who spent more of his time looking for money than he did actually trying to earn it.

He was just looking for quick, easy money.

Yeah. But her mom, Ethel Crowell, couldn't have been any different from her husband.

She was an incredibly hard worker and she had a very stubborn personality.

Not only did she take care of her and Jesse's two small children, she took care of his parents and really, for all intents and purposes, took care of him too.

Oh, Ethel. Ethel had a lot on her shoulders.

And at the time, she was also taking correspondence courses in teaching.

Wow. Through the state manual training normal school.

Look at this badass.

Just doing it all. Yeah.

Now, Ethel and Jesse's marriage in 1913 had gotten off to kind of a rocky start.

They were married at an age, and this is going to blow your mind, where schoolteachers were expected to be single women.

So Ethel had to keep her marriage to Jesse a secret for years so as not to affect their income.

So I feel like you can't win.

No. Because you're either single and a spinster or you're married and shunned anyways because you're not supposed to be married.

Isn't that strange that like if you were a school teacher, you weren't supposed to be married?

That's incredibly dumb.

Yeah, 1913, man. Don't get that.

But despite her work ethic and commitment to providing for others, Ethel Crowell believed that Kansas was just a desert.

And she wanted way more for her children than what they were going to have working the family's already struggling farm.

I love Ethel. I do too.

And she didn't know it at the time, unfortunately.

But her near obsession with self -improvement and disdain for poverty would have a considerable influence specifically on her daughter, Anne.

Now, unfortunately, tragedy struck the family in 1918 when five -year -old Jesse Jr. died in the middle of the night.

He choked to death on his own fluids is what they said.

Oh, my God. But today, most likely, we would assume that he probably had pneumonia and didn't have the proper treatment at the time.

That's horrific. Terrific.

But the death of her child caused Ethel to turn away from her family, first emotionally and then physically.

She was just distraught after losing a child.

And she just had this unrelenting guilt that she thought her child's death was her fault in some way.

Yeah. I mean, I can understand.

Like, it absolutely wasn't.

No. I can understand why she thought that.

And she convinced herself that if she had the money to take her son to a hospital, his death could have been prevented.

That's so sad. It is.

And that line of thinking eventually grew into the belief that the whole thing could have been avoided if she was able to get out of Kansas and had never married a poor farmer.

Oh, the guilt she put on herself.

She had so much guilt.

And then because of that guilt, she just started resenting everything and everybody around her.

Of course. And despite friends and family urging her to, you know, think of her husband, think of her daughter, think of what you do still have. And they desperately need you.

She was like, I can't do this.

And that's when she enrolled in the normal school and moved several hours away to pursue her education.

Oh, wow. She just needed to get away from it all.

Damn. And maybe it was like the best thing for her at that point, because I don't know that she was going to be great at home.

I think she needed to take that break, but at the same time, it's like you kind of can't.

Yeah, it's a tough one.

It's a catch -22 either way.

Now, the extreme poverty and emotional tumult of the early days, or the early years, sadly didn't improve much as Anne grew older.

her by the time she was 10 her parents relationship had just completely deteriorated to the point that jesse finally did ask ethel for a divorce which back then was huge yeah like nobody got divorced back then but at that point there had been so many affairs and emotional betrayals that respectability didn't matter much and ethel was like yeah sign me up yeah i'm good like bye so she packed up her daughter and their few belongings and moved back to pittsburgh and pittsburgh kansas uh in the years that followed ethel met and married another man whom she also divorced not long after and she and ann

relocated again this time to kansas city where ethel actually opened her own taxi business that grew to employ several drivers and a ton of company -owned cars damn so she's taken hit after hit but she's she's still chugging along she's getting back up the move to kansas city got them out of the crushing poverty of kansas farm life but it did little to improve Anne or Ethel's lives, like, emotionally.

Ethel was away working day and night to support herself and her daughter.

So Anne found an escape in the movie houses and film magazines of the day, all presenting this glamorous life in Hollywood.

Hollywood? Hollywood.

That now she was just determined to find for herself.

She wanted to be on the big screen.

She wanted to get out of Kansas.

She wants to be a star.

She wanted to be a star.

See a name in lights.

Yes. Now, that determination to find her way out of poverty was only strengthened then by the hardships and just terrible time that she saw her mother go through every single day.

As a single woman and a female business owner, Ethel was subject to all kinds of misogyny and harassment.

Oh, I'm sure. And most of which came from her male employees.

Her employees? Her employees.

Funny. Because they resented having to work for a woman.

Too fucking bad. And just didn't have any reservations about showing it.

That's absurd. It's like, cool, you're fired.

you're tiny bye now by the time she reached her 21st birthday angie crowl had reinvented herself as anne crowl aspiring model and movie star no longer content with the impoverished life in kansas city that she was living she took a move and decided to go to denver to stay with her aunt and cousins and while she lived in denver she actually managed to secure a few jobs modeling for catalogs before she eventually returned to kansas city now more restless than ever because she had a small taste of what she had been dreaming of.

Yeah. She wasn't content to just dream of wealth and fame anymore.

She was like, I got to make this happen.

So she finally made the decision at this point to move to New York City just a few months later.

New York City. The big city, the big apple.

And she figured, you know, I did make some connections in Denver.

Maybe those will pay off once I get to New York.

And Ethel obviously hated to see her daughter go, but at the same time, this was what she wanted for Anne, to get out of Kansas.

and to experience big things and have the life that Ethel didn't get to have. So she talked to Anne before she left and told her, never talk to strange men.

Never look at them past daylight in the street.

I mean, that's good advice.

Sound advice. And with that advice dispensed, she gave Anne, I love this because I just picture it.

It's like a movie thing.

She gave Anne this bag of $5 bills that totaled out to about $400.

Oh, my gosh. And one of the cars from the taxi company.

And she watched as Anne drove out of Kansas.

So she just handed her daughter this bag of cash that she'd been saving.

Yep. And one of her taxi cabs.

That's some mom shit.

Right? That's some mom shit, Ethel.

Here you go. Take care of yourself.

Take this big bag of cash that I've been saving.

I love her. I love that.

I know. Life doesn't happen biweekly, so why?

Why should payday? The money that you earn can be in your hands today with Earn It.

Earn It is an app that gives you access to your pay as you work, up to $150 per day with a max of $750 between paydays.

Just download the Earn It app and verify your paycheck, then access up to $150 a day as you work, and leave an optional tip.

Any money you access plus tips are automatically repaid from your next paycheck.

I feel like you should have your money as you earn it, and Earn It makes that that possible you want to go out for a little date night and spend your money you know sometimes things pop up unexpectedly i would hate this for you but you might have to go to the vet and drop some cash there you need the cash when you need the cash download earnin today spelled e -a -r -n -i -n in the google play or apple app store when you download the earnin app type in morbid under podcast when you sign up it will really help the show morbid under podcast earnin is a financial technology company not a bank cash outs

are based on your available earnings standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees option to expedite your transfer for free tips or voluntary and don't affect the service see the cash out user agreement for detail services not available in all states summer is in full swing whether you're traveling taking kids to summer camp or heading to the pool we are all looking for ways to stay healthy and save money this summer with go to rex you can save up to 80 on prescriptions for you and your family pets too check go to rex before every single trip to the pharmacy for big

savings on both brand and generic medications.

GoodRx is free and it's easy to use.

Just search for your prescription on the website or the app, compare prices, and get a free coupon to show your pharmacist. Use GoodRx to save at over 70 ,000 local pharmacies nationwide, including Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Publix, Kroger, and many more.

And now, you can enroll in GoodRx rewards and earn points every time that you use a coupon at the pharmacy.

Remember, GoodRx is not insurance, but it works whether you have insurance or not, and it could even beat your insurance co -pay price.

Today, I saved $5 on a prescription from my grandpa because I pulled up the GoodRx app and I said, look at this.

So you could save too.

Save at the pharmacy this summer with GoodRx.

Go to GoodRx .com slash morbid.

That's GoodRx .com slash morbid.

So when she arrived in New York in August of 1937, Anne was 22 years old now, Unemployed and homeless.

She literally had nowhere to go at this point.

But she had that drive that her mother had instilled in her.

And it was only intensified now by her fear of having to go back to Kansas being like, yeah, I didn't make it.

So she found a cheap hotel room using some of the money that Ethel had given her.

And the next day, I love this too.

This story is awesome.

She went straight to the Powers Agency, which was a modeling agency on Park Ave. She didn't make like any contacts there.

There's like a famous modeling agency.

It is, yeah. Nobody was expecting her at the agency.

She didn't have like an appointment or anything like that.

She was walking. Good for her.

And the secretary was like, okay, like, why don't you take a seat until somebody's, you know, available to speak with you.

But by 6 .30 that night, everyone had left for the day.

And Anne was like, she was asked to leave. So she sat there the whole day?

And no one was like coming out to talk to her.

But she was committed.

So she returned the next day and the next day.

That's awesome. And the next day.

And same thing, she arrived right when they opened.

Take a seat, someone will be able to talk to you when they can.

No one. And then finally, on the fourth day of sitting and waiting, John Powers agreed to see Ann.

John Powers. Like, head dude.

He didn't refuse to hire her, but he did tell her that she would need a nose job in order to succeed with his agency.

He was like, the rest of you's fine, but your nose is a little off.

Oh, what an awful world.

Truly. But you know what?

Ann said, bet. And she borrowed some money from a friend and paid $500 for her nose job, which also like great friends.

I was just going to say, what a friend you made.

Now, she figured she'd be able to pay the money back to her friend when she saved up some of her earnings from a new job that she got at the Saks Fifth Avenue Hat Counter.

The Hat Counter. So that was like her little side hustle, or I guess modeling was her side hustle.

Yeah, that was her job.

She never really did manage to get the big glamorous modeling jobs that she hoped for, but she did manage to find success at the powers agency.

As one of the more popular models for soaps, toothpaste, and like home and beauty products kind of thing.

Between the money she made from her modeling job and her job at Sac, she was able to move into her own small apartment on East 50th Street, which she wallpapered, quote, with menus from chic nightclubs and restaurants such as El Morocco 21 and the Stork Club.

That is so cool sounding.

Isn't it? I just like you're making it in the big city.

You're going to these nightclubs.

Yeah. And you're like, you know what?

I have an idea. Just a DIY queen.

Like, and it just sounds so like, it sounds so like bohemian and cool.

It does. You know, doesn't it?

It also reminds me of like when we would put like Abercrombie bags on our walls and be like, this is fashion.

This is the height of luxury.

We really thought. No. We all thought.

We really did. During the day, Anne, she modeled, of course.

She worked the counter at Sax, and she took acting and dance classes.

Damn, she is hustling.

Hustling, and she had to.

We love to see it. And then at night, she dined at the city's most popular restaurants and nightclubs.

Hell yeah, she did.

And it was all paid for by the powers agency, and it was because she was one of their more popular models in the space that she was, so they wanted to promote her more and more.

That's badass. So she got to go to these fancy places.

Her hard work finally paid off in November of 1938 when she landed a role as a chorus girl in a new musical review called Set to Music.

Set to Music. Set to Music.

music the Broadway show and then subsequent national tour put Anne in contact with some of the idols that she worshipped as a teenager in her room back in Kansas but she still wanted more Ethel's daughter baby I was just gonna say that's the Ethel she wanted more recognition more fame more wealth more everything she was she was tenacious yeah but unfortunately just as she was really coming into her own, things back in Kansas took a turn.

Oh no. One morning, Ethel woke up with a really bad sore throat, and over the course of the next few weeks, it worsened into a cough and eventually respiratory problems that landed her in the hospital.

Eventually, Anne paid to have her mother transferred to a hospital in St. Louis, where she would have access to a specialist, but it did little good.

According to the doctors, Ethel had, quote, developed a rare lung disease that was common in cattle.

And sadly, they didn't have much hope that her condition was going to improve.

If anything, she was just going to slowly get worse.

And what a, like, what?

A disease that is common in cattle?

That's awful. And probably because of all her work on the farm.

I was going to say, yeah.

So Anne called her mother regularly to check in, wondering if she should leave the show and go be by her side.

But each time, Ethel insisted, persisted.

Nope. You do not leave the show.

You finish it out. She's just momming till the end.

She's like, you're going to get something better than I did.

Exactly. And like, don't mess it up for me.

That's some true mom shit.

Like, don't worry about me.

I'm fine. You, I want you to succeed and do what you want to do.

But you feel bad for Ann to be in that position because that's your mom.

Of course you want to, like you would feel so selfish being away from her, but then she's telling you, no, like you got to do what you got to do.

It's a near impossible choice to me.

It is. But she did finish it out, and when this tour of Set to Music came to an end, Ann caught a ride from New York to Missouri to be by her mother's side.

By September of 1940, she was covering all of Ethel's medical bills and hospital bills, and she was spending almost all of her time by her mom's side to make up, I think, for the time that she was away.

A mother -daughter duo right now.

I know. Like, I'm loving it.

But the sad thing was, because she was spending all this time by Ethel's side, all the progress she had made in New York and all the connections that she had were slowly slipping away.

Oh, jeez. And now she was faced with a decision to stay in Kansas with her mom or return to New York.

And Anne was like, I can't stay in Kansas.

Like, this is not what I want for myself.

I've made too much progress.

This isn't what my mom wants for me.

So she borrowed money from a friend again, and she had Ethel transferred to a special unit at the New York hospital.

oh my goodness and also these friends i know damn which makes you think like obviously anne had to be like somewhat of a good person yeah she definitely had to you said at least at this at least at this point maybe she was the whole way through i don't know who knows but again like you said having friends like that does tell you who you are as a person yeah you think so see you right so in the short amount of time that she'd been away unfortunately like i said things in new New York had changed for Anne.

The medical bills had taken a serious financial toll, which forced her to give up her penthouse apartment on East 50th Street and move to a studio apartment on East 56th Street.

Man, oh, man. And most of the personal and professional connections that she had made during her time in Set to Music had either moved on to other productions or gone out to Hollywood to try their luck in the film industry, which is what she really wanted to do by the end of 1940 and she still hadn't found any steady work and her expenses mostly due to paying ethel's medical bills were threatening to send her back to kansas if she didn't find something reliable soon i smell a little desperation here well as luck would have it in december of 1942 and heard that the monte carlo the monte carlo monte

carlo a small exclusive nightclub just a few blocks from her apartment so convenient they were looking for chorus girls and dancers.

Hell yeah. Don't we know?

Anne is a dancer. She is.

The work would be obviously a step down from the glamorous Broadway stage and the tour that she had just been on in the past but it was steady work and the evening hours meant that she would have her days free to spend with us.

Oh, that's ideal. So through tenacity and the few connections that she did have left in the city Anne managed to land the job as a dancing girl at the Monte Carlo which would pay her $50 a week.

Look at her. Which back then that's pretty good income.

Also I love that like her having to leave to take care of of her ailing mother was like yeah sorry you're just gonna lose your connections like no one was willing to be like yeah she's just taking care of her like dying mother like it's humans need to get better humans need to get better and we all need to get better that's such a that's so industry you know what i mean it's just so cold it's like all right you do have to realize people are humans but people don't give a fuck nope no working at the monte carlo was a far cry from the the dreams of stardom that Anne had for herself but as one of the premier

nightclubs in New York I was gonna say that was like the nightclub it was and of course because it was it attracted a good amount of stars from stage and screen oh yeah so she was still within that circle even though she wasn't quite one of them kind of just hanging on the fringes right but you were almost in there that's a perfect way to describe it now it was during one of these uh late night floor shows that Anne caught the eye of a man called William Woodward Sr. He was a wealthy banker and racehorse enthusiast. I recognize that last name.

Racehorses just keep making an appearance in my story.

They do. You love a racehorse.

Yeah, I do. You're living in a place of racehorses.

I really do, except I don't...

I don't actually. I don't fucks with that, but we'll talk about it.

I feel like it's just part of high society.

100%. Especially back then when everybody was just smoking cigars and racing horses.

Oh, yeah, of course.

You're just holding a giant bagel right now, and you were talking with your hands, so you're, like, smoking cigars.

Just, like, wagging your bagels.

Eating bagels. That was great.

You know, fancy high society stuff.

It's an Asiago bagel.

Oh, Asiago. That's high society right there.

It is high society.

So, Anne knew just who Mr. Woodward was.

Mr. Woodward. Mr. Woodward, because she had read about him in the society pages, which bring back— pages motherfuckers i want to read them william he kept coming back at least several times to see it and perform she really caught his eye and one night he asked her hey baby you want to see one of my horses run come down to the racetrack with me is that a euphemism you know you want to see my racehorse yes i would think probably i think that's deeply upsetting when you put it it that way it's deeply upsetting either way to be honest but it's really upsetting the other way it's very upsetting when you

uh really think hard about it yeah so don't but you're probably doing it just romance romance romance uh and of course knew that woodward was married oh but so were a lot of the men who bought her drinks and sent her jewelry so she should not be asking her to come see his fucking racehorse if you are married sorry not in a euphemistic way not not in the real way Not in a physical way.

Oh, come on. No, keep your racehorse to yourself.

That's right. Keep it in its...

Track. What is it? The stall?

Stable. Keep it in its stable.

Stable. There you go.

Stall? I think you were correct.

Okay. I don't know.

Anyways. Going with yours.

But the thing was, a lot of the men who, you know, made advances on Anna got her nice things.

They were married, so she didn't see anything wrong with just going to the track to have a date.

And I think there's something wrong.

I think there is something wrong, definitely.

I decided it's 2020.

when she was like let me have those nice things oh man so one afternoon in march 1941 ann was visiting with her mother in her room at a new york hospital to celebrate ethel's 45th birthday which she's only 45 yeah only 45 at this point she had lived such a life that even i at this point i was like she's not like 70 something i thought she was 70 45 damn yeah and the holy Holy shit.

Exactly. That just blew my mind.

Same, it blew mine too.

But in the weeks leading up to the visit, Ethel's condition had gotten worse.

And on that afternoon, Ethel didn't even really recognize Anne, it seemed.

And after a brief visit, Ethel's doctor suggested to Anne that maybe she should go and come back when her mom was feeling a little better.

So Anne was like, okay, and she made her way home and climbing up the stairs to her apartment, she heard the phone ringing and she ran to answer it before the caller hung up.

And it was a nurse from the New York hospital calling to tell her that Ethel had died peacefully 10 minutes earlier.

After she had left?

Right after she had left. Like, she probably died while Anne was on her way home.

Oh. Which, like, I understand why that doctor thought that she should rest, but you're like, fuck.

Nobody could ever know, but it's like, fuck.

And it's also, that's why it's like, don't even tell people to go home and rest, because you just don't know.

Yeah, that's the thing.

So on March 20th, Anne boarded a train back to Kansas for her mother's funeral.

The drab landscape and poverty of her hometown felt – it always felt suffocating to Anne, but this time specifically, it was just overwhelmingly suffocating.

Oh, I'm sure. And it wasn't that she didn't love her family, her aunts and her cousins and everything, but being in their presence reminded her of where she had come from and where she desperately didn't want to return.

Oof. This really is like a movie.

It is, I know. Or like some kind of like miniseries.

Honestly, and it will be.

Oh, there you go. But she ended up spending a total of 48 hours in Kansas.

She went to the funeral.

She gave her mother's eulogy, visited with family and friends, the whole deal.

But then she got the hell out of there.

And before leaving, she asked her cousin Paul to keep an eye on Ethel's grave for her, make sure it was, like, neat and tidy all the time.

She was 45. Damn. I know.

And Paul said, well, won't you be coming back, Anne?

Like, are you coming back?

And she said, I'll be back soon.

soon but that afternoon she boarded a train for New York and she never ever came back to Kansas yeah I could have told you that there was nothing in Kansas for Anne after that and what a terrible last memory to have yeah mom exactly like you already pretty much hated this place so much and then that's what you have to go back for and her mom believed in her yeah like supported her and like really was just like a like her cheerleader for yeah exactly sad and she should should have had many, many years of that.

Oh my God. You know, her mom should have been able to see her success, you know?

But back in New York, Ann resumed her routine of performing at the Monte Carlo in the evenings and auditioning during the day.

And eventually she landed a recurring role as a nurse on an afternoon radio called Joyce Jordan, girl intern.

I love that. Girl intern.

Girl intern. Not boy intern.

Girl intern. And that led to other roles on other radio programs like Lincoln Highway.

Radio programs. I love it.

You know, just tune into the radio.

Just gather around the radio, folks.

Turn that up, Pop. I can't hear.

Drink your Ovaltine.

Oh, Ovaltine. That's adorable.

Adorable. Now, in time, Ann's relationship with William Woodward Sr. there grew from this harmless crush to something more serious.

He's married, Ann. Yeah, Ann, he's a married high society man.

Yeah, it's a scandal oh the fact that this exactly you were you were on the right track the fact that this was getting a little more hot and heavy threatened a serious scandal to the wealthy family if anyone were to find out and it was one thing for a man of woodward status to you know have an occasional dalliance with a showgirl i love that that that was just i love that it's like that shit happens of course of course guys are gonna fuck showgirls when they're married have your quiet little affair with a showgirl but don't actually give a shit about don't be in public with it it's like we Can we

stop? That's the thing.

That's the thing. But an ongoing secret romance, it was something else entirely and it would not have been tolerated by New York's high society.

High society is a wild bitch. But it also definitely wouldn't have been tolerated by Woodward's wife, Elsie.

Yeah, no, I'm with Elsie here.

I also wouldn't tolerate that.

Retweet. But not wanting, this is where shit is going to get, you're not even going to be able to stay on track with this at this point because it gets wildly fucked in here.

Uh -oh. Okay? I'm here.

I'm strapped in. I'm glad.

Hold on to your butt.

So not wanting to give up his relationship with Anne, but knowing that the two couldn't carry on as they had been, Woodward Sr. devised a wild ass plan Uh -oh.

where Anne would make the acquaintance of and start a relationship with his son, Billy.

I'm sorry, what? Why, you might ask?

I didn't. I don't even want to, what?

One might ask why. Why?

Well, this would allow Anne and Woodward Sr. to go on spending time together under the guise of a strictly platonic relationship between a father and his son's girlfriend.

This is so fucked up.

I can't even begin.

In what world is that going to work, motherfucker?

You two are having an affair and because you want to keep having an affair, you have her date your son?

You're going to bring your son into this?

So now you're going to fuck your son's girlfriend?

That's fucked. That's even weirder, my guy.

Like, just have the straight up affair.

That's the thing. Honestly, I'd much, in the society papers, that's going to look better.

Exactly. Than you fucking your son's girlfriend.

But they figured, or he figured, I should say, that it wouldn't get into the society papers that he was fucking his son's girlfriend because that would be behind closed doors because now she'd have an excuse to be in his home, I think, was the thought.

Oh, yeah, of course.

That's the thought process.

Because it's like, oh, she can be around.

We can still see each other.

Oh, yeah, so just fuck up your son's life so that you can get your rocks off.

That's the thing. That's the thing because I'm like, are you gonna let your son in on this or is he just gonna be allowed to potentially be heartbroken well you just wait my dear oh boy you just oh boy for fucking some reason or another i don't know which one and agreed oh like i don't know i've never had an affair with a high society man personally never checked that off my bingo card but i could i could imagine that if i did and he suggested you know like my wife and everything so just hang out with my son I'd be like are you are you a loony total like I lost it completely I understand that there's

a power dynamic here that is totally much imbalanced totally come on but I'm like keep dancing at the Monte Carlo meet a single high society man dear god there's plenty of rich older guys that I'm sure you can dab that are not gonna ask you to date their son I mean she's beautiful Yeah, gorgeous.

She's tenacious. She's, you know, she's like a hard worker.

She's got all... She's checking all the boxes.

Yeah. So it's like, honey, you can find someone better.

You don't need this one.

You don't need this one that's already taken.

Taken. And is now wanting you to date his son.

Like that's just messed up on a whole slew of levels.

That's when you go, you know what?

This has been fun. This has been a great time.

I don't want to get you into trouble.

I definitely don't want to get your son wrapped up in this.

So I'm going to keep dancing and meet some other cool guy.

Give Elsie my regards.

See you later. Yeah, honestly.

Yeah, man. When Anne agreed, it set into motion a chain of events that would forever alter the lives of literally every single person involved in this family.

I can imagine. All of them.

Yeah. I didn't think this was going to go smooth.

No, it doesn't. But it goes way different than I think you would imagine.

Probably, because I'm not even wrapping my brain around it.

Because I was like, oh, this is going to end in, like, knock -down, drag -out fight.

Not really. No? I mean, it ends horribly, but.

In a different way.

Yeah. So in March of 1942, while Billy was home for a visit during his break from Harvard, Billy being.

From Harvard. Woodward's son.

So Billy will be the young Woodward. Yes.

He is William Jr., but we refer to him as Billy.

And I think, I'm pretty sure they did, too.

That makes sense. So he was on a break from Harvard, and his father asked him, do you have a regular girl?

Which meant, like, are you dating someone?

one you got a regular girl normal like are you dating someone like consistently not are you dating someone regular his son was like nah pop i don't and billy woodward's extremely limited experience with women was of particular concern to his father mostly because it had become the source of rumors amongst his peers and i think that was a whole other i think woodward senior thought he was killing two birds with one stone here yeah he was taking away that whole the rumor or Mel there and also getting his cake too exactly and it's like what again I ask I'm always gonna ask this who the fuck cares

that much about somebody's romantic life high society it's like his peers are all upset about his limited experience with women what the fuck do you care what does it have to do with you what does that matter worry about your own goddamn lawn why are you worrying about his lawn like damn they were all bored I think that's what it all comes down about too and bored and gossipy yeah that's when that's when shit pops off which i love with nothing to do i love a good gossip but like don't be a bitch about it and it's like i don't care about things like that oh no i don't care about shit like this like

can you imagine worrying about like who somebody that kind of somebody's dating or like or not dating or if they haven't dated you're like why yeah that's stupid that's not my fucking business like rumors should be fun worry about suzy shitty pie that she brought to the potluck last week that's the kind of shit I want to talk about.

Inconsequential shit.

Right. But the thing was, Billy was a really handsome guy.

He came, like we know, from a respectable, wealthy family.

So as far as everybody saw it, he shouldn't have any trouble meeting women.

But it seemed to many around him that he just wasn't interested in them.

So that, of course, led many to speculate whether or not he was gay, which deeply troubled his parents.

Yeah, I mean, that's everybody's problem in everyone's business, of course.

It makes total sense.

And the thing was, like many high society rumor speculation about billy woodward's sexuality actually persisted long after his death that's sad it's unclear whether or not he was gay and it actually has no bearing on the story so we're gonna move on because who cares like everybody else should have but regardless of his orientation william woodward senior suggested while he was home for break billy might look up and crawl yeah you know you know he said i met her out at the monte carlo a few months earlier and uh i don't know i think why don't you take her for a date she's cute yeah he's like you

know i've I've been having an affair with her for a while, so I can tell you she's awesome.

Yeah, I love her. To be clear, though, this was less of a suggestion than a command.

Yeah. So Billy was like, okay, I will do that.

He's like, you will ask this girl out.

And he's like, all righty, Pop, cool.

I don't know what my thing is with Pop, but it just feels right.

You're my Pop. You're my Pop.

So a few nights later, Billy took Anne to a dinner at 21, which was a popular speakeasy -turned -restaurant.

Oh, my goodness, I love it.

on west 52nd street uh ann was on a diet and billy was quote unquote too nervous to eat guys it's dinner guys eat up but they still ordered an extravagant meal and a bottle of champagne billy was obviously uh completely unaware of ann's relationship with his father so he didn't know anything about this strategic setup oh my god this is so fucked but ann was well aware of the plan for her to date billy and having to go through the motions kind of of made her impatient in short with billy which i'm like honey it's not his fault he doesn't know this poor guy so a few glasses of champagne it luckily

did help soften her attitude i guess luckily i don't even know why i said that but eventually she started to find his shy inexperience somewhat charming billy on the other hand he didn't need any champagne in order to enjoy ann's company he thought she was confident forward exciting he she was nothing like the society girls that his parents had steered him toward in the past. And he was like, damn, like, why did my dad set me up with you?

You're awesome. Yeah, he's like, shit, this is great.

So it started as kind of a sham relationship orchestrated by William Woodward Sr. soon actually developed into something real.

He did not see this coming.

I was just going to say, well, shit.

That wasn't part of the plan.

And much to his chagrin, you can imagine.

Yeah. Billy, like we said, was instantly taken with Anne.

He found her beautiful.

He loved her assertive personality.

He thought she lived her life without reservation.

it was great. And for Anne, excuse me, Billy was an entry into high society and the respectability and status that came with it.

And at the same time, she also was kind of charmed by his affection and devotion to her.

Ah. So they're each getting things out of it.

One is a bit more self -centered than the other, I'm going to go out on a limb and say.

They're getting different things out of it, but you know.

But you know, they like each other.

They do. So the early days of their romance were spent at New York's finest restaurants, nightclubs, theaters, or with Anne just cooking meals for them at Billy's apartment.

They were literally dating.

Yeah. Like just like anybody else would have. Straight up dating.

So the fantasy of Anne's extravagant and carefree relationship with Billy eventually collided with reality, as you can imagine.

Yeah. And that happened in August of 1942 when Billy invited her to the races in Saratoga where she was to quote unquote meet meet his parents, and extended family.

I think she had already met one of his parents.

That's going to get weird. Yeah.

So when race day finally arrived, Billy and Ann drove the 150 miles to Saratoga Springs in his Packard, stopping for breakfast along the way.

And stopping for breakfast made them late to meet William and Elsie, which instantly got the day off on the wrong foot.

You are not late to hot society functions.

Absolutely not. You can fuck showgirls, but don't you dare be late.

So things didn't get much better, when they finally made their way inside the clubhouse at the racetrack where they were surrounded by some of the wealthiest people in the country.

Elsie Woodward shook Anne's hand politely, but she was barely able to hide her disapproval.

Yeah, I just feel, I'm like, Elsie just happened to shake her hand.

Yeah, and she's on to her.

I was going to say, I don't know if she knows or not, or you can always get a vibe.

She knew. That's tough.

And she didn't, she felt like Anne seemed to disregard guard nearly every convention of high society that Elsie had been raised in so held dear to her heart yeah I was gonna say so she you know when you're raised in it you hold it pretty yeah high and William senior when he was greeting Anne was like over the top and like very like oh hi so nice to meet you for the first time ever oh my god never met you before in my life you're so great good to To meet you.

So, Elsie was like...

Don't be all, like, uncool.

To quote the countess.

So, Elsie's like, so y 'all have met before.

Y 'all are like, you guys did a real good job.

Yeah, and of course, people had been talking.

Yeah, of course. You're not going to get away with that stuff.

You had a full -blown affair.

So, the way he was acting basically effectively confirmed Elsie's suspicions that they had indeed met before this.

Oh, man. Ann years later she would tell her bridge bridge friends one look at Ann and I knew the whole story oh boy so you don't want to fuck with a lady like this to the Woodward family matriarch Ann was a gold -digging interloper who was trying to force her way into a world that one never welcomed her and to a world where Elsie didn't think she belonged damn and that was exactly how she felt the moment she met her that day in Saratoga Springs and it is precisely how she would treat ann until the day she died now here's the thing i understand she's got a vibe here and she's like i'm pretty sure

you have met my husband before and there's something here so i would be like you're an asshole too in that sense yeah but the whole like you don't belong here because you were raised in poverty is stupid is so dumb because also i know that ann is trying to climb the ladder here of course clearly that was the way back then it was just like people do it now like it's not not changing but it's also like it's not like she hasn't worked her tail off to get at least I mean she was paying her mother's medical bills up until the end like she was really working her ass off absolutely and it's just such

a weird way to look at things to be like because you were born into poverty you don't deserve to make it anywhere else even though you worked harder than I did to land here yeah but they look at it as like you didn't work as hard as I did because you don't know all the interworkings of this world it's just a bizarre line of thinking and it's one that that still exists, so it's just so weird. It's just very exclusive.

Yeah, it's just strange and bizarre.

But the thing was, Elsie wasn't entirely wrong.

Anne's relationship with both Woodward men...

Yeah, I mean, that's where the black mark comes from.

Exactly, and her relationship with senior and junior were a calculated attempt to climb that ladder into high society.

So from Elsie's point of view, she's like, not only did you try to use my husband, but now you're using my son.

So, like, maybe stop infiltrating my family.

I can see, and I can see that frustration, for sure.

It's a mess. Yeah. But none of this mattered to Billy, who absolutely reveled in Anne's ability to get under his mother's skin.

He thought it was great.

That's some high society rebellion right there.

Truly. But regardless of how Billy felt about the impression Anne made on his mother, Anne herself was and would remain deeply self -conscious around her future mother -in -law.

Yeah, I'm sure. Which I might feel self -conscious, too, if I had, you know.

Slept with her husband.

I can't even, I'm not even gonna, like, yeah.

Yeah. That's fucked up.

You honestly should feel a little self -conscious if you sleep with someone's husband.

Definitely. And then date their son.

And then date their son and have to be around them at family dinners.

Yeah, that's just like a wild.

I feel like that's pretty natural.

That's cray -cray. Yeah.

Now, it seems that no matter what she did, though, Anne always managed to transgress some unknown social convention of the elite.

She didn't get it. She was too loud.

She dressed inappropriately, according to them, smoked in public, and worst of all, as far as Elsie was concerned she was vulgar in her empowered sexuality I mean to me you look at that part of it and you're like she sounds pretty cool I would tell her to stop smoking but back then they didn't know so I'm like you know back then they were like that's the cure to everything you seem pretty awesome other than the sleeping with a married man we don't even know if sleeping other than hanging out with a married man not great but other than that all those things that pissed Elsie off I'm like that makes

her kind of cool But nevertheless, that race day was when Anne decided, quote, Billy was the main catch of their crowd, and she was determined that no matter what Elsie Woodward thought, she would become a proper society woman no matter what it took.

It's like, oof. Uh -oh.

What an enemy to make.

Yeah. So as Anne and Billy's relationship continued to develop into something serious, Elsie Woodward hired a private detective to look into Anne's background.

Damn. Also a common theme among my stories lately.

Very high society. Oh, yes.

Yes. Now, she didn't really learn much about Ann's past in Kansas because Ann really hadn't revealed any clues to that.

But the detective nonetheless confirmed Elsie's suspicions that Ann had a rich sexual history that was hardly befitting for a woman of class.

Oy. But what made Elsie truly irate was learning that Billy had given Ann a gold bracelet passed down from his grandmother.

mother oh more than the affairs with multiple men or her past as a showgirl this gifted family heirloom was the thing that caused elsie to demand that her son stop seeing ann immediately oh boy um of course that demand only made billy want to see ann way more that's a good way to get your kid to do something more is to forbid exactly it just drove the two of them closer together his mother could yell and scream she could threaten disinheritance all she want and And she very much did.

Oh, damn. But Billy was undeterred in his all -consuming passion for Ann.

Nothing that Elsie said was going to change that.

So in January of 1943, Ann arrived at Billy's apartment, where rather than lounging about in his pajamas like he usually would be, he was dressed in his Navy uniform.

The U .S. had just entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor over a year earlier, and the fighting had been really intensifying ever since, so it was going to require additional troops.

Billy had graduated from Harvard a few weeks earlier, so now he was eligible for the draft. And he had got emergency orders to report for gunnery school in Washington immediately.

So the idea of Billy leaving to fight and possibly even die in the war made Ann, of course, completely despondent because they're like fully in love at this point.

Now, what started as a scheme to gain entry into high society had actually grown into something real.

So the thought of losing him was something she couldn't bear and also something that seemed pretty likely because of how bad this war was.

But this wasn't a modeling job or a wealthy patron at the Monte Carlo.

It wasn't a decision Anne could just overcome with sheer willpower and tenacity.

As she had done before.

As far as she was concerned, though, there was only one thing to be done.

She told Billy, and this is a quote, marry me now or go away forever.

This sounds like a movie.

marry me now or go away forever like it's you could just see somebody overacting that marry me now or go away forever and then just like slamming the door just go that's wild and also like so not romantic no you're just giving him a straight up ultimatum like damn marry me or go away forever that's it she's my only two options okay luckily billy knew that That Anne could be stubborn and had a flair for the dramatics.

Dramatique. But he also sensed that she did mean what she said.

So he told her, I'm going to think about it while I'm away and I'll let you know.

Oh no. He hit her with a maybe.

He hit her with a I'll think about it.

Yeah. Wow. That's rough.

Marry me now or go away forever.

I'll think about it.

Let me think about it.

Woof. In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became one of America's richest, most infamous men, practically overnight.

He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermind behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi scheme.

Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award -winning comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco.

This is Easy Money, The Charles Ponzi Story, an Apple Original Podcast produced by Atwill Media.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

You know what time it is?

It's time for a fresh approach to dog food, and that's where the farmer's dog comes in.

Developed by board -certified nutritionists, which is pretty impressive, the farmer's dog is human -grade dog food that's made with real meat and veggies and gently cooked to preserve those nutrients.

Traditional pet food is highly processed and difficult to portion correctly, but the farmer's dog, it's changed that with their freshly made food.

They take the guesswork out of serving sizes by precisely portioning your dog's food based on their very unique nutritional needs.

Sydney and Blanche are eating the farmer's dog right now, and we absolutely love it.

What's really fun is each packet has their name on it, so it says Blanche's food, Sydney's food which is just fun they love it they can't read but I kind of pretend that they do maybe they can't who am I to say get 50 % off your first box of fresh healthy food at the farmers dog comm slash morbid plus you get free shipping just go to the farmers dog comm slash morbid to get 50 % off that's the Visit thefarmersdog .com slash morbid.

So a few weeks after he left for Tacoma and called Billy at the base and was like, hey, really sorry for that ultimatum.

I would actually just be happy to live with you whether we're married or not.

Wow, she really took that down a notch. She was like, I think I might have fucked up.

I got upset. Yeah, Billy responded by asking whether, and I was like, aw, he was like, Like, is there someone in your family who I can ask for permission to marry you?

And she's like, so you're saying there's a chance.

And she's like, so you're trying to marry my ass.

Just saying. Which like, you might want to know that if you're getting to the point where you're going to marry someone.

That's also the thing.

Like, is there someone in your family I should like, do you have a family?

I'd like to ask one of them if I could marry you.

And it's like, you haven't asked her this before.

It's like, you don't know if she has a family and you're going to get married.

Like, there was no discussion where you were like, what's your family like?

like who's you know do you get along with your parents yeah what's going on like what's your name who's your daddy talk about like that's the thing so terrified of billy or anybody else especially in his circle learning of her impoverished upbringing in kansas that's so sad oh no oh no you can't be born into poverty how dare you and lied and told billy that her father was dead she told him i'm an orphan just ask me woof so when she wasn't she wasn't she had a dad But I mean, he was off somewhere.

Yeah. I don't really know if he would have been able to track down.

Yeah. So they did get engaged.

And the announcement of Billy and Anne's engagement came as a shock to William Sr., who initially assumed that there was some sort of emergency, a .k .a.

pregnancy. Oh, he thought she was pregnant.

He was like, oh, fuck.

He's like, oh, shit.

Elsie, on the other hand, was outraged.

She told Billy, and this was a quote, it's a matter of money.

That's what she's really after.

This had been her position all along.

Although she wasn't entirely wrong, Billy was now 21 years old and he was able to access his trust fund at $4 ,000 a month, which today would be like receiving $69 ,000 per month.

Holy shit, out of a trust fund?

Out of a trust fund.

You're just like, ding, ding, ding.

Damn. So her threats really carried little weight with Billy at that point because he has access to his own money.

Yeah, so he's like, bye.

I mean, not really his own money.

I was just going to say the money that was held aside for him.

To his trust. distrust. But she couldn't stop the wedding from going forward, but she could stop the rest of the family from attending.

Oh, no. And Elsie did just that.

Oh, shit. She was like, that's fine.

You want to get married?

We won't be there. Elsie.

Yeah. Which I. Elsie's in her villain era right now.

That's mean. Like, I get her distrust. Of course.

I get that. She sensed.

She had Anne's number William there kind of gave up the ghost there oh my god it's so nice to meet you you're lovely oh my wow I hope you guys stay together great to meet for the first time this is the first time I've ever seen you I've never seen a woman before Elsie's the only woman I've ever seen I wow there's other women on the planet like what I don't what's your name again so I understand that she's like uh pretty sure you had something going with my husband and now you're You're just going to marry my son.

Like I understand that vibe not being great.

Yes. And I mean that is a level of petty that most strive to achieve.

I think she thought she was going to stop it by not going.

Like fine then, we're not going to go to your wedding.

I think she thought Billy was going to be like, oh my God.

Okay, then like I can't do this if you're not going to be there.

Then we can't go forward. But he was like, okay.

He was like, okay, don't go.

Cool. He was like, I don't really like you that much. so and it sounds like regardless of how this all started that ann and billy did love each other yeah like at this point i don't i think so i don't know this story which i'm sad to say i mean it's it's honestly just a matter of opinion like based on what we know seeing what we know at this point and at least seems like they are enjoying each other's company i mean like we said like it would have been nice for them to know whether you know things about each other her like uh whether she had a family or not yeah that would have been good or maybe

for him to know she had dated his father and this had all started as a lie you know that would have been nice to have that would have been pretty I don't know how I feel about this it's all very reckless that's the thing you think you feel one way and then you look at the facts again and you're like fuck because I just talked myself through that and then was like I don't know I have no idea how to feel this is reckless you won't you won't know how to feel even at the end yeah and I you you know i get it elsie yeah i get it but the week of march 8th 1943 and arrived in Takoma washington where billy

was stationed and where the wedding was to be held the wedding was to be a small affair with just a few friends and billy's father in attendance oh wow so william went oh of course yeah and bought her dress at a seattle department store and on march 14th and crowell married william woodward jr at a lutheran chapel chapel in takoma with a small reception that followed at the Tacoma Hotel.

Wow. It's a small affair.

Small affair. After their wedding...

That's how this all started.

A small affair. A small affair.

After their wedding, Anne and Billy moved into a five -bedroom Tudor -style house overlooking Washington's...

I think it's Puget Sound, which was furnished with the finest furniture and luxuries that money could buy.

But what should have been a time of celebration and elation was almost immediately undermined by tension and conflict.

conflict. Elsie refused to publish a marriage announcement in the New York Times, the paper of record, signaling to her society friends exactly how she felt about the marriage.

And to make matters worse, a few days after the wedding, Anne had casually mentioned that she had seen one of William Sr.'s horses, Johnston, run at the races before they had met.

The comments seemed innocuous at the time, but when Billy pressed Anne for details, she was forced to to explain that she knew his father longer than he or virtually anyone else in the family had known for a fact.

Oh no! You knew this was gonna come forward. Anne swore to Billy that her relationship with his father had been totally innocent.

But you're lying! And at the same time, he was still humiliated by this revelation.

Anne immediately recognized her mistake and told her grandmother, I really am the luckiest girl in the world to have gotten such a truly wonderful husband.

Now I feel like it's up to me to make it work.

Oh boy. Yeah. This is messy.

So from the house in Washington, Anne quickly got to work making the self -improvements that she felt were necessary to be a proper society woman.

She planned menus and dinner parties.

She researched antiques and facts about horse racing.

She studied etiquette books.

She just wanted to remake herself into somebody that Elsie would welcome into the family.

Oh boy, I think that ship has sailed, girl.

Oh, that ship is on the opposite coastline at this point.

That ship has turned into a spaceship, and it's gone into orbit.

Exactly. You've never seen that ship again.

It's as far away as humanly possible.

The problem, however, was that Anne was too much her mother's daughter to ever be considered a proper society woman.

That's so sad. I know.

She could certainly learn to be refined, poised, and cultured, but all the qualities that had so attracted Billy to her, her passion, sexuality, her bold personality, were too ingrained in her to be repressed in the way that was required for proper society yeah you gotta be boring as fuck exactly pinkies up baby and she's like i can't do that i'm not boring and as a married woman those qualities now seemed less attractive to billy than they had in the past which like fuck you yeah that's not cool no you can't decide that you love those things and then you get married and you're embarrassed and you're

like now you need to stifle them all right it's like as long as she i mean like you don't want her like cheating on you and having affairs like Like, I understand that.

No, of course not. You've got to trust that you love each other and trust each other.

And she can still be bold.

And she's trying, you know, like she's she's trying to be what your world requires.

But he resented the way that she carried herself at dinner parties and the, quote, spell she cast on his friends and her dramatic decolletage.

What? So he was like, you have a sexy neckline and it makes me angry.

Were you yelling about her fucking clavicle?

i think she wore low -cut dresses a lot that's it's like what the fuck you're just like come on it's like you liked that about her and now all of a sudden she gotta put her titties away she's got great boobs it's like she's leave me alone my titties ain't going nowhere i got married you that's the thing like you're the one who gets them you get the whole deal it's just a little a little something just feels like it's a little judgy it is judging that's exactly what it's a lot judgy it's a little bait and switch to like be like I love these things about you and then be like now stop all of them

right because that's the thing prior to getting married he found her assertiveness her brazen sexuality a refreshing change from the society girls that his mom was constantly pushing him towards she was fun she was exciting she spoke her mind and at the time he found that all alluring but after the wedding those qualities seemed to be diminished by her intense desire to fit in with the crowd of New York's elite he was He was like, no. He felt that her, quote, eagerness for self -improvement betrayed exasperating insecurities.

So, in simple terms, her desperation felt obvious, and it was embarrassing to Billy, who now often made fun of her in public and behind closed doors for her attempts to gain acceptance with his friends and family.

What the fuck happened here?

That really was like a bait -and -switch with him.

It really was. What?

I thought you were nice.

I think he was going through this rebellious phase where he was like, fuck my family.

This is great. Fuck you mom.

Yeah, literally like, you don't understand.

It's not just a phase mom.

And then it really was in a phase and mom was like, this girl's not for you and she knew that this wasn't gonna work because you are who you are at the end of the day.

And now he's flipping the switch. And now he realizes like, fuck, this really isn't what I...

He was raised to want a certain kind of girl and then he was like, no that's not what i want and then that's he went for something completely opposite and was like well i want the girl that i was raised to have and it's like but no you can't have doesn't work like that but the thing was worse while anne toned her personality to down to fit in she still had an incredible sex appeal that was never lost on the other men in the room i mean that's not her fault which incited a jealousy in billy that hadn't shown itself prior to the marriage so So shit is just getting toxic as fuck up in here.

Yeah, she's like, I'm sorry that I'm hot.

And you're not. Top that.

No, I'm not saying Billy wasn't hot.

No, he's actually – They're all beautiful.

He's very handsome.

Yeah, he's handsome.

She's beautiful. Yeah.

Everybody in this story is gorgeous.

Yeah, they're all just beautiful.

But it's tragic as hell.

So to cope with the growing tension between them, Anne and Billy started drinking more heavily, which is, you know – That's a great solution.

Always the best solution.

You know what? I think everything's going to be fine now.

Yeah, it's totally going to be fine.

uh he frequently criticized her for her drinking at home and in front of their friends but when she and billy weren't locked in some frustrating argument and spent most of her time trying to win over elsie woodward which was just impossible no while they were still living in washington the two women exchanged polite correspondence you know asking about the health of family members and exchanging pleasantries that were really nothing more than transparent attempts to keep up appearances man imagine watching those interactions at a party standing there with your dirty martini just sitting there

watching talking to your neighbor like these two girls fucking hate each other love it well hate it because it's sad but you know the drama of it all but the drama here so in hindsight the small struggles the personal digs and the ongoing rejections led to an explosive conclusion uh -oh but she really thought that she was somebody at this point because of the money and the luxury but really her heart is broken yeah it's not of substance and it's only going to get worse with this next uh incident that we were going to talk about so on thanksgiving morning 1943 billy was temporarily in charge uh

on the uss liscombe bay an aircraft carrier that was stationed in the south pacific he was in charge while the captain slept okay to billy this opportunity felt like an enormous achievement and also a chance to prove his masculinity to those who criticized him or were spreading rumors behind his back because that was a common theme throughout his whole life of course he had a wife at this point and people were still talking shit yeah now around 5 a .m a torpedo from an enemy u -boat slammed into the side of the ship and that ripped open the hold and it caused a series of explosions from one end

of the boat to the other for nearly half an hour this boat that they were on slowly sank as explosions just ripped the interior apart and flung the injured and dead from the boat to the water below.

This was beyond tragedy.

That's awful. Billy, who was still in charge at the time, was in a state of shock and could do little more than stare at the chaos as his own body was thrown around by the repeated explosions.

Luckily, Lieutenant Commander Oliver Ames stepped into action, grabbed Billy and dragged him into the safety of a lifeboat.

If it weren't for For Commander Oliver Ames, Billy most likely would have been among the two -thirds on board to die that day.

Oh, my God. In just a short 30 minutes, Billy's chance to prove himself as something more than a soft -handed trust fund kid had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean with nearly 550 officers and enlisted men.

550 died? Yeah. Wow.

Two -thirds on board. the survivors were quickly rescued by a ship a nearby ship and billy was treated for minor burn injuries and shock and a month later he was awarded several purple ribbons or excuse me several ribbons and a purple heart in a ceremony decorating him for his bravery and heroism the ceremony only seemed to compound the shame that he felt for not only failing to avoid the attack by steering the ship away from the area but also failing to show any type of leadership ship that could have maybe saved the lives of any number of his crewmates but he was going through all of this and like

blaming himself for not doing what he thought was the right thing exactly it was all survivor's guilt because in his defense a report published many years later actually found that the USS Liscombay was a poorly designed ship that was not properly designed to safely carry the amount of ammunition on board at the time of the attack so this really wasn't his fault it was that that bad design and poorly secured cargo, rather than poor and inexperienced leadership, that was the main cause of the disaster.

Oh, jeez. But Billy wouldn't live to see that publication of the report, and he carried the weight of those deaths with him until the day he died.

Oh, that's awful. And it really, really changed him.

Yeah, I can't imagine.

Of course it would.

I can't even begin to fathom that.

He was obviously suffering from some kind of PTSD.

Absolutely. Which only pretty recently became part of a national discussion, and now we recognize the effects of combat and what it can do to people.

But back then, for Billy and the countless soldiers coming home from all of those horrors on the battlefields of World War II, there was this implicit expectation that they would just come home and settle back into domestic life.

Yeah, just get back into your lives.

As though their realities hadn't been dramatically and horrifically interrupted.

Just like, oh, come on, business as usual.

Let's go, boys. Yeah, and we kind of still do that.

Yeah, we do, absolutely.

We're just like, get back to work.

like i said only recently are we starting to talk about it and giving resources yeah right but for billy that meant returning to a life of partying and you know partying to excess because of the society life that he lived and it also must be strange like i've i'm not i haven't been in the military nor have i ever been in the military but it's so regulated and routine yeah and you know like strict that i feel like going back to a life where it's just loosey -goosey and you can do what you want whatever you want to do would almost would be so jarring it's almost how like when people get out of prison after spending

a long time in prison how like they can't be in these big spaces yeah and like it's just your you become used to and comforted by that yeah you have trouble realize it adjusting to a new environment so different I feel like that must have been tough yeah definitely even though it's like you're going back to partying and like luxury and shit like it sounds great yeah but I feel like psychologically I can't can't imagine what that feels and then i'm sure all he was thinking was like wow i get to return to this like well these 550 men yeah i died and what most people think is like this incredible

life but like he was probably looking at it all from the outside and just i from the sounds of it just drowning his sorrow yeah psychologically it must have been horrific that's the thing so after that disaster he returned to the u .s and spent the remainder of the war years working as as an aide to Admiral Patrick Bellinger in Norfolk, Virginia.

I can't speak. Norfolk, Virginia.

Norfolk, Virginia Naval Office.

The new position also meant a change of pace for Anne, who moved from their house in Tacoma to the home of Woodward family friend, Joe Hartford Douglas.

Joe had known Billy almost all her life and had always been incredibly fond of him, but she found Anne to be cold at times and at times also an unfriendly presence in the house.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. I think this is when Anne really starts to go through it too, because they're both going through it in their marriage, and then they're both going through these big personal things of like doubting who they are and where they come from and, you know, all of it.

And it didn't take long for Anne and Billy to fall back into their routine of arguments that ranged from petty sniping to full -on shouting matches in somebody else's home, which it's like, come on, guys.

In many cases, the arguments were brought on intentionally by Billy, who always seemed to be trying to get a rise out of Anne for one reason or another, which inevitably led to a major disruption in the Douglas household.

In later years, the tumult of their relationship would be mostly pinned on Anne.

But Jo remained sympathetic when it came to Anne, which I do feel like speaks volumes when she's like, yeah, she wasn't the warmest person and like - She was kind of unfriendly.

She was kind of unfriendly, but like, I did feel bad for her.

Yeah. She told friends years after Anne's death, she was a little girl who had not many opportunities in life.

She was not the kind of calculating woman we've all seen around New York.

She was obviously crazy about Billy Woodward and dying to break into his world.

Wow. That's just somebody, like, looking from the outside in, too.

And who really has the whole picture to a T.

Yeah. And that's just tragic.

That's all sad. So despite the constant arguing between Billy and Anne, on July 27, 1944, Anne gave birth to their first son, William Woodward III.

Billy was stationed in Philadelphia at the time, so Anne moved into Billy's parents' house.

in Manhattan, where a staff of maids and domestic workers helped tend to the baby.

Now that he was out of the Navy, William Woodward Sr. started urging his son to take a position with the bank, but Billy had little interest in working, and he really didn't have to.

He's a trust fund kid.

Yeah. Even though he had experienced significant trauma just a few years earlier and had all the intense responsibilities of becoming a new parent, he seemed intent on recapturing the fun and excitement that he had had when he was young.

You gotta grow up, dude.

not billy he stayed up late drinking and carrying on with friends and then would sleep until about 11 a .m most days and it's like dude you're a new father what are you doing and this was all while ann spent her days caring for their son and tending to her duties as a society wife he just spent his days getting drunk with his lifelong best friend uh grenville bean barker who was probably the only person in billy's life who did understand the traumas of world war ii combat about so that is a very specific trauma kind of trauma and I think they were very much trauma bonded yeah and of course I understand that Billy

was not getting help for the PTSD that he was suffering but at the same time it's like you have to try to help your wife if you can yeah at least try you know and it doesn't sound like he was really making any effort so from time to time Anne would try to join them for lunch or a drink but she would always be told sorry men only and also gross like like i can understand he's going through ptsd and all that i can't i don't know what that's like i can't even fathom it so i will never speak on that and it's like but and i can even understand that like becoming a new father during that is probably

a whole different oh my god thing but like the men only thing and like before that before the disaster he was even being a dick to ann and like kind of making fun of her and like like being this little boy right you know it's like grow up right like that's he's he's sounding very peter pan here and it's like the sorry men only thing i'm like sorry no no i can't i can give you a lot here but that's men only grow up that's stupid so although billy refused to take up a formal position at his father's bank he did find other ways to occupy his time other than just day drinking with bean barker a baker

he sat on the board of directors for two large companies blues, Turner Halsey, which was a textiles company, and United Shoe Machinery.

And he also started taking an interest in the breeding of racehorses, which was a passion that he and his father shared together.

And also one that would bring Billy a certain amount of fame for the number of highly successful racehorses bred by the family owned stables.

Wow. And most ominously, he took an interest in guns and sport shooting.

Very high society. Yes.

While Billy carried on, you know pretty much a bachelor lifestyle and focused on raising her son and keeping up with the expectations of society women like any dedicated student she studied the latest fashions from paris and milan she took elocution lessons she continued her fruitless attempts to impress elsie woodward she's still trying all of it she's really trying billy and ann continued to be seen in public together at salons and parties thrown by all their equally wealthy friends, but behind the scenes, their marriage was slowly crumbling.

Ann perhaps sensing that her husband was slipping away, Ann found a renewed interest in keeping her husband entertained.

But by the end of 1946, his eye had begun to wander, seemingly searching for literally anybody other than Ann.

Oh my God, nobody can just be content.

No. Why bother getting married, everybody?

buddy yeah so in january 1947 ann gave birth to the couple's second son james amongst all this but the birth of a second child did nothing to heal the rift between ann and billy it usually doesn't yeah by then he had taken the position uh as the president of hanover bank which occupied his days and in the evenings he would drink with bean or find another activity away from the house and away from ann more often than not and he would spend his weekends away from his entire family usually with his mistress oh boy princess marina torlon torlonia i believe is it how you say it uh she is brook shield's

grandmother oh damn yeah and she's a straight -up princess a whole ass princess a whole ass princess princess wow yeah he started having an affair with her more than a year earlier she was an italian socialite and uh billy had met her at a party and just just immediately was infatuated by her.

Like Ann, in her younger years, Marina was bold, exciting, and most importantly to Billy, she was a woman of his class.

Okay, so you literally like basically teased those traits out of her.

Yup. And shamed them out of her.

Yup. And now you're like, this woman has what you used to have. And it's like, bitch, she had those still, but you shamed her out of them.

Because she was never going to belong.

No. Oh, because she didn't have a title.

She's from class. Right.

Oof. Yeah. That's sad.

It's really sad. Like I told you, this whole story is just fucking tragic.

And also Princess Marina, you know he's married.

Yeah, that's not cool.

Like they've been around all over the place.

They got two kids. That's the thing.

It's high society. Everybody knows everybody's fucking business.

Yeah, come on Princess Marina.

So Billy's affair with Marina was hardly a secret and only made Anne try harder to please her husband.

How humiliating. Oh my God.

I can't imagine. in.

One evening late in 1946, they went to a party at Joe Hartford Douglas' house, where they used to live.

As the evening started winding down, Anne asked Billy to take her home, which he did begrudgingly, as he wanted to stay at the party.

So he dropped her back at the hotel where they were staying, and she tried to entice him to stay, but he had every intention of returning back to the party.

And when she tried to stop him at the door, allegedly, Billy raised his hand in a threatening manner and anne screamed at him go ahead hit me but billy dropped his hand sighed heavily and just went back to the douglas's house wow a violent scene was avoided that night but the same could not be said for subsequent and usually drunken fights where violence from one or the other would eventually become a common feature they started getting violent with each other and you have two kids yeah and it's just like even if you don't like yeah i mean like That's never the answer.

Obviously, that's never okay anyways, but it's like, my goodness.

Get divorced. I think it's a lot less embarrassing than hitting each other.

Anne and Billy's marriage continued, as we know, to deteriorate in the years that followed. When he wasn't at the stables or on a weekend getaway with Princess Marina, he retreated to his work or spent evenings, you guessed it, drinking with Bean.

Jeez, Bean. Bean is something.

But Anne, meanwhile, recommitted herself to keeping up appearances and meeting the expectations of a New York socialite.

I mean, it's not worth it.

She was trying basically up until her dying day.

Shortly after James was born, Anne found a large five -story townhouse on East 73rd Street in Manhattan, and she convinced Billy to buy it.

She filled the home with antique furniture, silk tapestries, crystals.

She hoped that the house would be the perfect opportunity to show Elsie, like, look, I can do it.

Yeah, like, look at this beautiful house I've put together.

And I decorated it like you would have. Yeah.

But Elsie found Anne's taste more gauche than classic.

sick and was like, did it wrong.

Good thing you don't have to live there.

Exactly. So lost in all the chaos of the extramarital affairs, society expectations, and drunken fights were young William, aka Woody, and James, who were usually left in the care of tutors, maids, and other domestic workers while their parents' marriage just continued to spiral downwards.

Oh, this is so gross.

It's awful. To the public at large, Anne and Billy lived a charm -typical life of the the nation's wealthiest families but everybody in their inner circle knew that their marriage was in shambles and people were worried by 1955 after years of lies and drunken abuse to each other they mostly seemed to hate each other and they really made no secret of it in public they sniped at each other with billy mocking anne's desperate attempts to fit in with his friends and family and anne frequently now accusing him of having more interest in men than women And in private, their fights, like I mentioned before,

continued to escalate to violence.

By summer of 1955, they started sleeping in separate bedrooms. And Anne was now requiring several drinks and a couple of seconal or thorazine pills to get to sleep every night.

Oh, boy. Which were basically just like tranquilizers.

Several of the staff in the house also started to notice a dark turn in her personality.

They thought that she had become erratic and at times paranoid.

annoyed but nobody dared say anything to her or billy because that was a good way to lose your job but things were starting to get really really bad that fall when the children's governess which is like a nanny uh in jobord sorenson had implied that something might be wrong and fired her immediately and had the maid take uh take over the care of the children it's like meanwhile this lady just like cares about your family yeah like something's awry here exactly later that same That same nanny would tell the police she thought Anne was either, quote, sick or mentally ill because of the way that she

was starting to treat Billy.

Oh, boy. Which I think she was at this point.

Yeah, it sounds like this is just a fucking mess.

And now it's unclear to me whether the pills that she was taking to go to sleep were prescribed or not, but one, you're taking those interchangeably, and then you're drinking on them, and it's like this is just a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, this is reckless all the way around.

And for like a mental break.

Yeah. So for the previous several years, the family had been splitting their time between the townhouse on East 73rd Street and their vacation home in Oyster Bay, which is my favorite wine, and also a small town on the eastern edge of Long Island, very popular with New York's elite, kind of like the Hamptons.

In the fall of 1955, yeah, I love when you say that, yeah.

Or like West Egg. Yeah, oh, I love it.

In the fall of 1955, though, a rash of break -ins and petty burglaries in Oyster Bay had put the wealthy residents on edge, particularly Ann Woodward, whose alcohol and drug abuse had already caused her to become more paranoid and impulsive.

In response, she began sleeping with a loaded 12 -gauge double -barrel shotgun beside her bed.

Okay. Okay. Like I said, they had an interest in shooting games and stuff like that.

So they had guns that were intense like this.

Damn. And the years since their marriage, both Ann and Billy, like I said, had taken an interest in big game hunting, and they'd gone to India several times where they hunted large cats, which is absolutely horrible.

Yeah, that's gross.

And as a result of their interest in hunting, both became very proficient with small and large guns.

So Ann was confident that she could protect herself should anybody break into the home with this wild -ass gun.

If you can shoot a giant wild animal who is just minding their own business, then you're probably pretty good shooting anything.

Mm -hmm. So gross. I hate that stuff.

I hate that stuff so much. On the evening of October 28th, police were actually searching Oyster Bay after getting another call about a suspected prowler when they were tipped off by the night watchman at the Cinerama, which was actually on the Woodward's property, that the man on the grounds was supposedly carrying a shotgun.

After a search of the property, police actually found no evidence of the prowler but the suggestion alone was enough to convince Anne that there was real danger yeah that would scare the crap out of me yeah and you know you have two kids and just in general you're going to want to protect your home and also by the way with the hunting thing I was talking about those big game hunters who go to like these countries and like shoot a giraffe it's like fuck you it's wild Babbel Language Learning App helps crack the case of confusing foreign conversations.

Every unsolved mystery starts with a miscommunication.

But with Babbel's expert -designed 10 -minute lessons, you'll be fluent in the facts faster than you can say person of interest. Over 200 language experts have crafted these lessons using real -world conversations, making sure you're ready to communicate anywhere your investigation takes you.

And this isn't just hearsay.

Studies from Yale and Michigan State University prove that 15 hours with Babbel equals an entire college semester of language learning.

Right now, decode a new language for 60 % off when you visit babbel .com slash truecrime.

That's B -A -B -B -E -L dot com slash truecrime.

Rules and restrictions apply.

So two nights later, Billy and Anne attended a dinner party at the home of Wallace Simpson and Edward the, hold on, 5, 6, 7, the 8th, yes.

I was counting the 111s there.

Me too, I was like 5, 6.

And if you'll remember, they were in the Marguerite Alley Bear story.

Oh, shit. Yes. Oh, okay.

Or case, I should say, not story.

So that's where they were.

That's where they were.

Just hanging out with royalty, essentially.

Of course. And all anybody was talking about that night was the neighborhood prowler because, yeah, it's fucking intense.

So throughout the evening, Billy made sure that everybody knew he was ready should the prowler show up.

And he flashed a pistol that had been holstered beneath his jacket.

Ann also told several guests about the gun that she was keeping beside her bed.

To several of the couples at the party, Ann and Billy specifically seemed obsessed with the prowler.

Everybody was worried about it and just like talking generally.

Yeah. But they seemed to bring it up in every single conversation that they could.

Oh, damn. And Anne, they thought, seemed more paranoid than anything.

And people viewed Billy as eager to prove his manlyhood.

So that's nice. That's nice.

But the party wound down a little after midnight.

And Anne and Billy, both sufficiently drunk at that point, said their goodbyes and began the drive back home, where they retreated to their respective bedrooms. bedrooms. According to Anne, she hadn't been asleep long when she was awoken by the sound of footsteps on the roof above her bedroom, followed shortly by a crash in the upstairs hallway, then the barking of the family dog.

She had taken a sleeping pill as soon as they got home that night.

So she was groggy as she got out of bed and reached for the shotgun in the chair nearby.

She walked slowly to the door and when she opened it, she saw the shadow of a man in the hallway.

And with the door half open, she raised the shotgun and fired into the dark, knocking the intruder to the floor she slowly approached the body on the floor and was immediately horrified to find that it was not a prowler it was the naked body of her husband in a moment of panic and impulsive action she had shot and killed billy woodward oh boy so the investigation into the death of billy woodward was surprisingly short for someone of his wealth and status but anne's version of events was pretty much exactly what i described she told the police in her initial interview and this is a quote it was all

done in one movement it was so quick I heard the noise open the door and I fired as far as the police at the scene could tell Anne fired the shotgun from her bedroom doorway the first shot had missed and struck the wall but the second shot quote ricocheted off his bedroom door and hit Billy making superficial wounds on the right side of his face and neck oh man and then another piece of buckshot struck him in the head sending a small pellet into his brain Holy shit.

That blast knocked him backwards into the bedroom where he landed on his stomach and bled to death within 10 minutes.

Oh my god, that's brutal.

It was a brutal way to go.

Once she realized what she had done, Anne claimed that she ran downstairs and threw the remaining ammunition into the back cabinet, quote, fearing that if she had any ammunition at all, she would shoot herself because she was so upset and distraught at this point.

As Nassau County Sheriff's deputies surveyed the scene at the Woodward House, there was little to contradict Anne's story.

Nothing was missing.

There was no sign of a break -in.

There was no sign of a struggle.

In a press conference held later that morning, Nassau County Chief of Detectives, Stuvescent Pinnell, I believe is the name.

Wow, what a name. Quite a name.

Told investigators that the Sheriff's Office would continue their investigation, but he expected the case was, quote, more likely to be accidental than homicide.

Wow. While police updated the press on the events in the Woodward house, the children had been taken to Manhattan to stay with William and Elsie.

while Anne, who was supposedly in a state of severe shock and hysteria, was taken to a doctor's hospital on Park Avenue where she was sedated.

Days later, Elsie Woodward hired Ingeborg Sorensen, whom Anne had recently fired, to watch the boys.

Wow. Yeah, a big fuck you.

It was a big fuck you, but it was also like, the boys are used to this woman.

That's the thing. And they're going through like a shit ton of trauma right now.

and it was honestly stupid of Anne to fire this woman just for being like I'm concerned about your family like you could have just told her mind your business like you didn't need to fire her and it's like your boys, you gotta think of your kids your kids are comfortable with her if you kept her on she must be good with your children and it's like so Elsie's probably being like I'm just gonna put you know there was shade involved but you know that part of it was like they know this woman and this woman knows them that's the thing why hire a stranger while they're going through this right and like

you said they know her so yeah they're going to be comfortable but despite their own shock over the death of their only son elsey and william sprang into action taking control of the story and instructing those within their circle as to how they should respond the day after the shooting the story was the headline in most metropolitan papers but the story was surprisingly light on the details some articles focus more on billy's ownership of the celebrated horse nashua than they did on the fact that his wife had shot him to death yeah that's pretty big other outlets meanwhile printed a carefully

crafted and highly suspect story about the woodward story book romance oh yeah the la times claimed no one in top level society had more fun than ann oh like i think many people did according to the la times article elsie woodward was quote unable to go to tacoma when Bill and Ann were married there, but she did everything after they arrived in New York to launch Ann socially, and she cherished her two little, their two little sons, which I believe part of that, but she definitely didn't try to launch Ann socially.

The report goes on to say, having interviewed all the guests at the party that evening, as well as the Woodward's family and friends, police found no evidence of discord between the Woodward's and that they were in love.

Oh, you sure about that?

You sure about that?

I'm like, everybody else after, like, Like, not talking to the LA Times, but talking amongst each other was like, wow, they fucking hated each other in the end.

Yeah, like, I don't know about that.

Now, while some news outlets were content to accept the obviously fabricated stories of a happy marriage and domestic bliss, others dug deeper into the story.

On November 1st, the Buffalo Evening News included among their reporting a brief news note on Anne's father, Jesse Crowell, whom she claimed was dead.

dead. After he was shown a photo of his daughter, he told the paper it could very well be her.

I used to hear about her sometimes in a roundabout way.

I thought she married, I thought she was married to somebody out in California.

Wow. It's like, yikes.

Wow. But they're just embarrassing her at this point, like, publicly.

Yeah. I mean, she claimed he was dead.

Yeah. So, I guess, like, they're all kind of just sniping at each other at this point.

Yeah, exactly. Other reports of of odd or unsavory behavior soon followed, including quotes from the recently fired governess, Ingeborg Sorensen there, who told reporters, Miss Woodward would sometimes get up in the middle of the night and pound on his door, screaming for him to open up.

She was a very suspicious woman.

Oh, man. Like I said, I think in the end, they both just lost it.

I mean, with all the stress.

And drinking. And drinking, and drugs, and all everything, I think she had a mental break.

I definitely think so.

It sounds like it. That's what it sounds like.

And despite the Woodward family's best efforts to control the story, rumors about Ann and Billy managed to find their way into the news.

Of course. While papers in and around New York City stuck with Elsie's version of the story, because they knew what was good for them, the press in other parts of the country published way more salacious details.

details the san francisco examiner wrote for the last six years the married life of bill and anne woodward was marked with quarrels threats of divorce long separation and sudden reconciliation and even worse the papers were digging more and more into anne's background in early life in kansas threatening to expose everything she had worked to cover up into her adulthood this is so bizarre it's just such a bizarre way to exist it really is it really is as the press continued to to spend the story every which way they could, Anne remained in a private room at the doctor's hospital, supposedly being

treated for shock, but also to avoid uncomfortable questions from the press and police.

While Anne convalesced, Elsie dispatched a team of lawyers and private investigators to clean up the mess.

First and foremost, she wanted to know if there was any proof of Anne's guilt, and if so, wanted to know could she be convicted if there were to be a trial.

Elsie was mourning the loss of her son, but she was still a member of the New York's old guard aristocracy and as such her primary directive in the wake of the killing was to control this story and protect the reputation of her family yeah i mean that's that's what they're built to do literally they're built to protect reputation that's all it is so a week after billy's death 22 year old paul worths an occasional bricklayer and known felon was arrested on prowling and burglary charges in oyster bay so he was the guy that was there really was a prowler the arrest Arrest cast Anne's claims in a new

light, causing many to wonder whether the arrest of an actual prowler exonerated her of any wrongdoing.

And in a suspicious and conveniently timed confession, Wirth's admitted to being on the Woodward's property at the time of the shooting, which gave credence to Anne's story of shooting Billy only after she heard the sounds of a prowler.

Yeah. He told the detectives of hearing the shotgun blast that killed Billy, I slammed the door and ran like hell.

So he was saying I really was there that night.

Now, given the influence of old money and high society power on the political systems of small towns like Oyster Bay, it really shouldn't come as any surprise that Paul Wirth seemed to have all the answers and details that would allow the detectives to wrap up that case neatly and very quickly.

he actually only came forward to confess after he was visited by a detective who quote urged him to shed any light he could on the shooting of William Woodward Jr only after that visit he was prodded by his conscience into changing his story oh you don't say he had told a different story at first now two weeks after his confession a grand jury convened in Nassau County and a Nassau County courthouse to determine whether Ann was at fault for her husband's death in total 31 31 witnesses were called to testify, including nearly all the attendees of Wallace Simpson's party, those in the house at the time

of the shooting, and of course, Paul Wirth's.

Among the more significant witnesses called was Dr. Jane Alden, a psychiatrist who evaluated and just right after the shooting occurred.

This doctor told the jury that, quote, the shooting was an accident based on and unconscious impulse and had no center.

She only leave to please Billy.

I don't buy her shooting him as a conscious decision.

I can see that. I see it.

Yeah. During the hearing, the assistant district attorney, Edward Robinson, was careful to remind the jury that the question before them was simple.

Is there evidence of a homicide that is criminal homicide?

And the answer was no. Yeah.

He said. After listening to the testimony, the jury unanimously agreed with Robinson, and they found no evidence of a crime having been committed by Ann.

They did, however, find Paul Wirth guilty of burglary.

Yeah. And three months later, a judge sentenced him to 10 to 20 years in prison, after which his lawyer announced they would, quote, seek a pardon in Albany so that Wirth can be deported without having his sentence having without serving the sentence.

So that was all a big mess.

Yeah. But although she'd been cleared of the murder of her husband in court, to say that Anne never paid a price for Billy's death would be wildly inaccurate.

I can imagine. She sequestered herself in that private room in a doctor's hospital in Manhattan, while Elsie Woodward was pulling every string and leveraging every single connection she had, not only to force Anne out of the family, but to ensure that she took nothing with her when she left, including her two children.

Oh, damn. Yeah. Within days of their father's death, both Woodward boys were assigned a special guardian, Manhattan lawyer Harold Corbin.

According to the family spokesperson, Williams Collins, Corbin was assigned as the boys' special guardian to protect their, quote, large financial interest in the estates of their father and grandfather.

In reality, that guardian was really put in place to keep the kids away from Anne, while Elsie came up with a more long -term strategy to deal with her unwanted daughter -in -law.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Just days before the grand jury was to convene, Elsie called Ann to the Woodward house to discuss Billy's will.

It seemed that he had made a handful of changes in 1948 during the height of his affair with Marina.

Oh, no. That affected Ann's inheritance.

And it was important that the details be imparted to her before the trial, Elsie thought.

Among the changes, Ann was now to receive $2 ,500 in cash and, quote, a lifetime income of one third of billy's estate which was far less than she had been expecting oh boy the remaining two thirds would go to the children but then elsie made an a hideous proposition the woodwards would not challenge her inheritance and they would forgive the hundred thousand dollar loan that they made to anne for some additional property in oyster bay and in exchange she would not object to her boys being sent to the lee rosie a boarding school in Switzerland whoa so they're like we're not going to challenge your

inheritance and we'll let that loan go and we'll let that loan go but in turn you're going to really not have sent away your children are being sent away and you're not really getting any of the that you're entitled to wow in hindsight and would obviously regret accepting Elsie's proposition but at the time she felt like she didn't really have a choice she was still young but she had had no practical marketable skills to speak of at this point and so without the inheritance from billy's estate she would be destitute she would at least challenge it if she didn't accept if she didn't accept it it's

true that she would have still had her children but they wouldn't have been able to access the money from their father's estate for many years meaning that not only she but the boys would have been destitute yeah so she was trying so she did the best thing yeah she did the best thing for her kids and faced with those two terrible choices she did what she thought was best she believed that they would at least be taken care of materially if not emotionally but making matters worse elsie also also suggested that anne quote would be better off for at least four years if she made her home abroad so she

was like get the fuck out of here oh yeah damn anne had little choice but agreed to the terms and by the end of the year the boys were shipped off to switzerland and she relocated to europe elsie is powerful she is very powerful damn she's is very...

I don't see this coming for Elsie, especially with a name like Elsie.

I love the name Elsie.

I think it's adorable.

But that's what I think it is.

I think it's adorable.

I don't see Elsie sitting there, like, just straight up just being like, you're going to move to Europe and your boys are going to Switzerland and we're not going to challenge the little amount that my son left you and his will to hide now.

Exactly. I don't see that of an Elsie.

But I think she was like, you killed my son.

And I believe you did it on purpose.

I think she's looking from the the beginning and she's going I'm pretty sure you had an affair with my husband yep and then that all set it all off not saying it's right at all absolutely but I'm saying but that's why Elsie's being so ruthless exactly seeing this as as validation and at the end of the day even had all of that not happened she killed her son yeah you know just whether intentional or not she did So she's...

So Elsie is... Elsie is out for blood.

Yeah, exactly. Which is wild.

Now, initially, Anne planned to resist Elsie's suggestion that she relocate herself and instead continue her life in Manhattan as Mrs. William Woodward Jr. But she underestimated Elsie's influence in New York.

I think we all did.

So she tried to stay in New York, and it seemed that everywhere she went people were sympathetic to her situation situation but were unable to accommodate or unwilling to socialize with her particularly her former friend charlie knickerbocker who had reported the details of ann's parenting failures to the new york times oh no everyone turned on her by 1956 she saw no reason to remain in new york and she did leave the country in the years and eventually decades that followed billy's death and floated around europe and the united states becoming increasingly dependent on the fleeting, and this is a quote,

the fleeting kindness of Lotharios, Gigolos, Good Samaritans, Oddballs, and conmen.

Oh, boy, this is very sad.

It's awful. Her life was a shadow of what it once was, and most among New York society had forgotten all about Anne, but not Trubin Capote, and he had an axe to grind.

Oh, no. Yeah, and you don't want to be on his axe that's getting ground.

I was just gonna say, I don't want him having any axes to grind with me.

No. So, the following is all All alleged and based on an account of Roseanne Montillo.

She recalled that Capote had run into Ann Woodward in 1956 while she was out dining at a restaurant in St. Moritz with her companion for the evening, a man named Claus Van Bulow.

His name might sound familiar because he tried to poison his wife, allegedly.

Oh, that guy. Yeah, you know.

But Capote glared at Ann from his table, finding her being in the presence of a man so soon after her husband's death to be in very poor taste.

Eventually, Capote wandered over to the table and made a crude remark, to which Anne responded by calling Capote a little F -slur.

The exchange was very nasty, but brief, and hardly an unfamiliar insult to Capote, but it was one that he would hold onto for three decades before getting some kind of payback.

Damn. At the time of their unpleasant exchange in St. Moritz, Anne was an exiled socialite and Truman Capote was a promising young writer.

In the years that followed, Anne's celebrity continued to decline while Capote's rose.

Yeah, that's not great.

Primarily through the publication of wildly popular novels like In Cold Blood, which we've talked about, and his widely covered society parties like the notorious Black and White Ball.

By the mid -1970s, though, he had been in a years -long slump.

and the novel that he had been promising to his publisher, Answered Prayers, amounted to not really much more than a few chapters of high society gossip.

In fact, Truman surprised nearly everybody when, without permission from his editor, he actually published one of the stories from a forthcoming manuscript in the November issue of Esquire.

Oh, shit. Yes. You gonna get in trouble for that.

So the short story, La Cote Basque, I think is how you say it.

It sounds really bad if you're American.

It's French. It focuses on a gossipy conversation between two New York socialites over lunch, during which they trade rumors and secrets about other ladies in their social circle, until they eventually get around to one of the more scandalous stories, that of Anne Hopkins, quote -unquote, a once -poor social climber who sleeps and schemes her way into New York society before ultimately shooting her husband to death.

Oh, shit. Quote -unquote, claiming that she mistook him for an intruder.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Yeah. He just was like, boom.

He was like, I'm not talking about you.

The characters in this story were thinly disguised portrayals of actual society women at the time, including Gloria Vanderbilt, Babe Paley, I think it is.

Paley? Babe Paley. And, of course, Ann Woodward. Oh, no. Yeah.

Yet, while many of the women in the story are portrayed in a somewhat unflattering light, the real target of his cutting wit was Ann Woodward. While the other women in the story are gossipy and unkind, quote unquote, Ann Hopkins is portrayed as a gold digging, sexually promiscuous social climber and murderer, which effectively reignited the rumors and slander surrounding Billy Woodward's death.

death shit now perhaps it was coincidence or maybe she somehow received an advanced reader's copy of capote's story but on october 10th 1975 just days before the story was published in esquire and took her own life by ingesting cyanide i had no idea that's how this ended yeah holy shit when the news of her death hit the papers elsie woodward is reported as have as having said well that's it she shot my son and truman murdered her which obviously truman did not murder her that's what else he said but else he said that well that's that yeah she shot my son and truman capote murdered her to say truman capote

is responsible for the death of anne and many people have said it would be wrong and unfair but it's not unreasonable to assume that after decades of heartbreak mistreatment and disappointment the news of the book coming out was the final disappointment that did probably send Dan over the edge.

Whether or not it was the main thing that contributed to her suicide or not is unknown, but the story was met with very hostile criticism for its cruelty and vulgarity and it not only ended Capote's writing career, but also many of his close relationships with the women unflatteringly portrayed in the story.

And I think that's what that new show is about.

Exactly, which now I want to watch that.

Yeah, I'm very intrigued.

I'm like, wow. Yeah.

Now, the book that the story was to be included in, Answered Prayers, was actually never published.

And in the years that followed, Capote's alcoholism and drug abuse worsened until he finally died of liver disease and drug intoxication on August 25th, 1984.

Wow. Yeah. Unfortunately, though, the tragedy of the Woodward family did not end with the death of Anne Woodward. In 1976, after years of struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues, Ann and Billy's youngest son, James, also died by suicide when he threw himself from his hotel window.

Oh, geez. Both boys had struggled considerably in the wake of their father's death, but William Woody Woodward III managed to succeed.

In the decades after his parents' deaths, he became a successful journalist. He ran for political office.

He actually even served as New York State's deputy superintendent of the banks.

And then he just left the public eye to live a quiet life.

Good for him. By all accounts, he managed to avoid the effects of generational trauma that ended the lives of his three immediate family members.

But then something went entirely wrong.

No. On May 2nd, 1999, he too threw himself out the kitchen window.

window of his 14th floor New York apartment dying, obviously, as soon as he hit the ground.

What the fuck? Isn't that so dark?

Like both of their children died the same way.

By throwing themselves from a building?

Like that's really horrifying.

Oh, I feel that's really sad.

Yeah. No, they didn't ask.

No, they did not ask.

In the midst of all this bullshit.

At all. And they should have just been left alone.

Yeah. After all this.

Now, obviously, we'll never know whether the death of Billy Woodward truly was an accident or something more nefarious.

But Roseanne Montillo's 2022 book, Deliberate Cruelty, suggests that there was some truth to the rumors that Anne murdered Billy.

According to Montillo, shortly before his death, Billy had traveled to Pittsburgh, Kansas, to buy a small prop plane from a private seller.

And he ran into somebody who recognized him as Anne's husband.

that individual through that individual and a number of others billy learned that anne's entire history as she had explained it to him was a lie and he was eager to return to new york to confront his wife now the revelation that she'd been so deeply untruthful would have been grounds not only to divorce ann but also to obtain sole custody of the kids and leave her with no financial resources so simply put according to this story he was going to undo everything that ann had worked so hard to achieve and deliver her back to the thing that she feared more than anything a life of poverty and insignificance

so some people wonder is that what happened is that why she shot him yeah but we won't know but when you strip away all the money the jewelry and the privilege what Anne really wanted was security and to be accepted and valued by those around her and she never really got that no and she really had no idea that the lengths she was willing to go to to achieve those things would have very wide and long repercussions that would end the lives of every single member of her immediate family I am speechless at how horrifyingly that all ended up what a tragic everyone in that tragic tale and three out

of four by suicide and one from murder possible murder but like unintentional or intentional is right wow how fucked up that's really and it's so sad like that whole you and it's not all that glitters as gold no that shows you you look at it's the same thing as looking at like social media or something we've seen it happen again and again everything looks hunky -dory the grass is not always greener you don't know what's happening behind closed doors it's like damn isn't that so sad when you live your life for you know material things and everybody else's opinions and everybody else's you know judgment

of you yep then oh man that's just like really sad all the way around the most tragic story sad bad in this story i know from beginning to end that's the thing i want to look up when that um that truman capote show is coming out yeah holy shit that's a wild wild story a wild story and one i'd heard the names before but i'd never heard the whole story i just that's the thing to it i had heard the like you just said i'd heard the names before yeah but then i was like wait i want to look more into this and dave was like oh i know this story dave was like girl so dave Dave obviously helped like so much

with like the research on this and especially putting like the context contextual things into yeah exactly certain parts of it and actually Dave was the one to tell us about the show that's coming out it's called Feud Capote vs. The Swans I'm trying to see when it comes out if it hasn't already oh I want to watch this shit I know because I'm like damn let's sit down and start watching this seriously it looks because I think Demi Moore is playing yeah Ann Woodward let me see I think you're right And I think Molly Ringwald is in it.

She's playing one. It's a lot of heavy hitters.

Yeah, Tom Hollander is playing Truman Capote.

Naomi Watts is playing Barbara Paley.

Diane Lane is playing Slim Keith.

Oh, Chloe Savini is going to be in it.

Damn. I don't see anything about Demi, but I think you're right.

Yeah, I think she's playing in Woodward. January 31st. January 31st. Oh, the day after the Vanderpump Rules.

Wow. Oh, man. What a week.

I just sounded really old there.

After the Vanderpump Rules.

After my programs are on.

Wow. I'm excited. So January 31st. It's only going to be eight episodes on Wednesdays.

I love that. I love a miniseries.

I do too. And especially one as scandaloso as this one.

Yeah. And there's going to be even more scandaloso because there's a bunch of other women.

Damn Capote. For real.

Wow. Thank you for telling such a compelling and horrifying story.

You're welcome so much. And thanks today for helping me with it.

and uh we hope that you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that all of this happens because oh my god that's so tragic just love people and accept them for who they are even if they don't uh come from your society worry about your own shit yeah the grass not always greener bye If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad -free on Amazon Music.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.

Hear that? That's the sound of cinnamon toast crunch telling us it's crunch time as we gear up for another year of cereal training camp.

Last year, a dynamic brother duo competed and won the right to make their very own cereal.

They named it the Kelsey Mix.

This summer, the energy is being brought straight from the end zone to the breakfast aisle with three cereal -loving wide receivers, Justin Jefferson, Amon Ra St. Brown, and Jamar Chase.

You can find these football stars on limited -edition cereal boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Reese's Puffs cereal starting in August. And don't miss out on Justin Jefferson's Jetta's Mix, a fruity fusion of Frosted Lemon Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch strawberry for a limited time only.

Be sure to score them all.

Where every bite tastes like a touchdown.

[The Tragic Rise and Fall of Ann Woodward: A High Society Scandal]-[Episode 529: Ann & Billy Woodward]

📋 Summary

The Ambition of Ann Woodward

A Twisted High Society Scheme

Trauma, Paranoia, and Tragedy

The Final Destruction

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript