Brotherhood

Published Aug 16, 2018, 9:05 AM

Some people just aren't who they appear to be. Some of them hide their past deep beneath a layer of deception, while others wear their duplicity in plain sight. Either way, they make for great additions to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

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Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. John Osborne lived a charmed life. Born in eighteen fifty eight to immigrant parents, he worked hard and built a reputation as a smart young man. He graduated in eighteen eighty from the University of Vermont with a degree in medicine and was quickly hired by the Union Pacific Railroad as a company surgeon, which ultimately lead him from the East coast to the western town of Rollins, Wyoming. He dabbled in other occupations and seemed to find success in all of them. He was a farmer, a banker, a chemist, and a enter and together with his day job as a physician, these careers all seemed to fill his coffers and bolster his reputation. By the age of twenty five, he was an elected official in Wyoming, kicking off a career that led him to the U s House of Representatives and even a two year term as the Governor of Wyoming. It said that Osborne could often be seen around town, smiling and waving to people he knew, all dressed up in his fine suit with his two tone leather shoes and matching leather medicine bag. He was normal, successful and the sort of man you'd want on your side if you were feeling ill or needed the advice of a kind doctor. That's John Osborne. But I want to tell you about another man as well, because if John Osborne had an exact opposite George Big Nose Warden, was it born around the same time, George hadn't managed to find the same path to success that John had. In fact, by eighteen seventy eight, Big Nose George was an outlaw running his own gang of criminals. That was the same year that George and his associates try to rob a train outside of Rollins, Wyoming, home to good old doctor John Osborne. But it turns out there were a couple of undercover sheriffs working alongside him. George ran and then when he had the lawmen in his sight, he killed them. He managed to live on the run for two years before making the mistake of telling someone about the murders. He was turned in, arrested, and then transported back to rollins for his trial. On March twenty eight, one before his trial could actually begin, George was pulled out of jail by an angry mob and dragged, kicking and screaming, to a nearby telegraph pole where a noose had been arranged. George was the opposite of John Osborne. John was popular, but the entire mob hated George, so when he managed to get his hands free from the rope that bound him and then wrap his arms around the pole to keep himself from hanging, the crowd just watched and waited. No one helped him, no one took him up on his request to shoot him and prevent the slow death by strangulation. They just mocked him and watched the clock. Before long, big nose, George's arms gave out and he dropped. He was dead a few minutes later, slowly choked by the noose around his neck. He was buried in a plain pine box. Legend says that George's nose was so big that the undertaker had to get helped to hold the lid down so that he could nail it shut. I've seen pictures of the guy, and honestly I can believe it. Big nose. George earned that nickname a short while after he was buried, though someone dug him up. Local physician wanted to do an autopsy and study the remains of the murderer to see what physical reasons there might be for George's deviant behavior, but he didn't find anything. He did, however, keep some souvenirs. The doctor took some skin from George's chest legs and had its hand. He made leather from the flesh of a dead human, and then he took that leather to a cobbler and had a pair of shoes made. Oh and a medicine bag naturally. So there you go, the story of two very different men, a convicted killer and the well respected local doctor who wanted to better understand him, which reminds me of an old saying. Sometimes in order to understand a person, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. If that's true, then one thing is certain. No one understood big nosed George Warden better than Dr John Osborne. Jimmy ran away to join the circus. I know it's a bit stereotypical, but I promise you it is the truth. He jumped on a train in Brooklyn, and let it take him all the way to Nebraska. Somewhere between those two locations, though, he tossed the circus idea out the window and decided to see what else life might have in store for him. When he arrived in Nebraska, he stepped off the train and began a new life with a clean slate. He even changed his name. From that moment on, he would be Richard Hart. He worked to get rid of his thick Brooklyn accent, made friends and built a career, and life was good. He spent time in the army and served as an officer in France during World War One, but eventually returned home because that's what Homer, Nebraska had become for him. It was home. In nineteen nineteen, a flash flood swept through town, Heart managed to save the local grocery store owner, and as a result, the grocer thought so highly of Heart that he allowed the man to date his daughter, a pair eventually married to. During the Prohibition, Heart served as an investigator, seeking out bootleggers and bringing them to justice. When he began wearing a pair of guns, one pistol on each hip, the locals started to call him two guns Heart. He was effective to making numerous arrests and shutting down dozens of operations, and all that success earned him a new job as the town marshal right there in Homer. But that's when the cracks started to show. Richard Hart, they said, was a wolf in sheep's clothing. He had a track record for being more than a little too violent with the Native Americans he encountered, and had been accused a number of times of petty theft while performing his duty as marshal. His true nature was catching up with him, it seemed. When he was removed from his post as marshal, he found himself unemployed and running out of money. So he reached out to the family he had abandoned years before, sending a letter to one of his brothers for help. In response, that brother sent a check. The following month, he sent another, and on and on it went, with the generosity of his family helping him stay afloat and pay the bills. That's the thing about family, when times are tough, they always seemed to be there. They rally around us, lift us up, and give us what we need. Richard Hart's own family seemed completely normal in that respect, except they weren't. They were so far from normal that it's no wonder Little Jimmy had left town two decades before and then changed his name. Because even though they were blood, they were dangerous. Don't believe me, then, I recommend doing a bit of light reading about Jimmy's brother Alphonse, because I guarantee it'll open your eyes. After all, there's a reason Jimmy's brother had a lot of money. He was a mobster. Perhaps the mobster who had built a career and fortune in the illegal bootlegging industry. Jimmy's brother Alfonse. You see, it was none other than the legendary crime boss himself, Al Capone. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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