Morbid: Episode 494: Jack Tupper Part 1

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

Hey weirdos, I'm Alina.

And I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid.

Morbid in the afternoon.

I am sick.

Me too.

So I apologize.

Same.

For my voice.

Alina got sick and then I got sick and then I mutated whatever she gave me and gave it

to her.

We're in this weird like cycle that I don't love that I'm going to stop immediately.

I'm worried though because school is starting again.

Yep.

So get ready.

We're just going to be sick all the time.

No we're not.

I'm not manifesting that.

No, I was going to say we're not going to be sick all the time.

That was the worst manifesting ever.

No one's getting sick.

Ever.

This is it.

The summer cold.

Summer sucks.

So I have a summer cold.

Summer does suck.

I'm ready for summer to be done.

Summer fucks.

Summer.

Done with summer.

We're getting like a heat wave next week, didn't you say though?

That's what John told me.

Tell John to stop giving you bad news.

I know.

Don't give me bad news.

Don't give me bad news of heat waves.

Don't do it.

In the September time.

September time.

In the September time.

That's a TikTok that we should share.

Zachariah.

Yes.

We are using the Zachariah voice.

Zachariah voice.

Go follow Zachariah.

I think everyone already follows Zachariah.

Zachariah, but if you don't.

This is not new.

We've been following him for like a billion years, but.

Zachariah forever.

Go follow him on TikTok.

Remember when he used to just go to like Savers or like whatever and buy.

Random shit.

Like defunct like cooking product things.

Yes.

And then he would make them work.

Yeah.

He was good at that.

Recently did you see that episode where he made, it was like a meatloaf cupcake with

like mashed potato frosting.

No, that sounds horrifying.

It was moderately upsetting, but then I said, I'm not opposed to trying that.

He said, maybe.

I like meatloaf.

Maybe.

I like mashed potatoes.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

I don't know about cupcake form, but you know, we're all, we're all in this together.

Eating meat cupcakes.

You know.

Eating meat cupcakes.

I don't know.

You know what guys?

This is really fucking random, but I really want you to go listen to the rewatcher.

So I just thought about it and said that if you watched Buffy by the way, you're really

missing out.

If you're not watching, listening to the rewatcher and if you haven't watched Buffy, it's a great

time to start the rewatcher because I had never seen Buffy before except like a couple

of fucking episodes.

I just really wanted to throw that in there because it's just, we just recorded an episode

and it's so fun.

Oh, I love it.

I just thought you guys would love it.

I love it so much.

Go check it out if you haven't checked it out yet.

Check it out.

We talk lots of shit about lots of people on Buffy.

Yeah.

Yay.

All right.

Well, yeah, let's get into morbid because that's the time and place that we're at right

now.

The bebe and the temporal fold.

Is that what that is?

Oh, there you go.

Is it a temporal fold?

I mean, that was in Buffy.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I have a love triangle this week.

Oh boy.

And it all starts off with some jackass named Buddy, you know, it always starts off with

some jackass named Buddy, you know, really his name was Harold, but they called him Buddy.

I don't really know why.

Those are always my favorite when the, when the nickname has literally nothing to fucking

do with the original name and somehow it's exactly as long or longer sometimes than the

original name.

Yeah.

You're saving one letter there.

Buddy.

Yeah.

That takes you the exact same amount of time to say.

Yeah.

Well, either way, Harold Buddy Jacobson, he was born on December 10th, 1930 in Brooklyn,

New York.

The thirties.

The thirties.

Yeah.

It wasn't a great time to be born in New York.

I was going to say not a great time.

And especially in New York.

To Florence and Joseph, also known as Sam Jacobson.

I don't know if that was just like his middle name.

You know what his name is, Joseph.

Let's call him Sam.

Yeah.

But Buddy was the youngest of their two kids.

He had an older sister and by most accounts, his early life was pretty unremarkable.

It was the beginning of the Great Depression, like I just said.

And like most families living through that, the Jacobson struggled to get by on a very

modest income, which was made even more modest by Sam Jacobson's fucking gamble in ways.

Oh no.

Come on.

It's the Great Depression.

Like what are you even gambling for at that point?

That's the thing.

What are you using to gamble?

What are you using to gamble?

What does anyone have to give you?

Like I don't understand.

It's just not a good idea.

It does not compute.

Now when Buddy was about 10 years old, his father left the family to live with his mistress.

And this asshole not only left his family to go move in with his mistress, but they

moved in a few doors down from his wife and kids.

That's unsettling.

Like talk about tension.

You got to be a real gross couple of humans to do that.

You're a real fucked up individual.

You're real gross.

You know what?

I have an insult generator up here somewhere.

Oh, you still have that up?

I keep it up.

Queen shirt.

I keep it up.

So keep it up for when I need it.

What a pompous Tain Town that guy is.

I don't like that one at all.

A pompous Tain Town.

I don't know about that.

Sounds right.

Pompous for sure.

Sounds correct.

Yeah.

Well, so it was very tension filled.

So do I'm just moving on right along from that.

Probably a good idea.

Yeah.

So to escape the stressful home.

I'm on cold medicine, everybody.

Are you?

Sure.

I haven't taken any because I don't react well to that and it makes my dreams all weird.

I react great to it, apparently.

I don't know about that.

Some might argue different.

I don't know about that.

You sure about that?

You sure about that?

Why are we just tick-tock?

But okay.

So it's stressful because you know, Buddy's dad just moved in with his new mommy down

the door.

So that's not good.

But to escape from that, Buddy spent most of his time playing in the street with the

neighborhood kids.

And this was where he developed a very, very fierce competitive streak.

I'm sure you can relate that he would carry with him for the rest of his life.

Yours is like a normal competitive streak for the most part.

His takes yours and sends it to the moon, Alice.

Oh no.

Well, now I feel competitive that his competitive streak is better than mine.

Oh my God.

I should have swallowed that coming.

So according to one childhood friend, Buddy was unstoppable.

They said Buddy was the yo-yo champ.

He was the handball champ.

He was the ping-pong champ.

Okay.

That's what they said is.

All right.

He was a fucking champ.

I don't know.

He didn't meet me.

Okay.

Well, other than his competitive streak, something else that stuck with Buddy for most of his

life going forward, obviously, was his father's abandonment of his family.

That shit sticks with you.

Yeah.

I imagine it would.

Yeah.

First-hand experience right here.

Now, as a teenager, he would tell very elaborate lies about his family and like where his family

came from.

He would tell his friends and his peers that he was Italian rather than Jewish.

He actually was Jewish.

And that he had been actually adopted by the Jacobsons as a baby.

And that his real father, his quote-unquote gangster father, had perished in a gory shootout

with the law.

I mean, that's a story.

I mean, who wouldn't tell that story?

I'm going to tell that story from now on.

Tell that story.

Yeah, I will.

The most intimate friends actually knew the truth about where Buddy really came from,

and they only knew it because it came out if he was very emotional or if his friends

pride the truth out of him after quite a few drinks to him.

That's usually when the truth comes out.

Truth.

So even though he'd probably rather not acknowledge his past, it was Buddy's family history that

actually led him to the horse track, which is where much of this beginning...

Oh, I forgot to mention.

This is going to be two parts.

Oh.

Tupada.

Tupada.

But the first part of this, we're going to talk a lot about the horse track.

It was when he was just 11 years old, Buddy began working for his uncle Gene Jacobs, which

it's funny that his uncle's last name is Jacobs and his is Jacobson.

And it makes me wonder if it got shortened, but then some people didn't recognize the

shortened version of it.

Perhaps.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I know what you're saying.

You know what I'm saying?

I smell what you're stepping on.

Talking about Ellis Island and all that shit.

Yeah.

You're talking about the infamous Ellis Island.

That one.

Yeah, I don't know.

But it's Uncle Gene Jacobson.

He started working for him.

And his job was basically walking the exercised horses, which were referred to as hots.

Oh.

Because they were like, oh, they're hot from the exercise.

The hots.

I just, that's my guess.

So he would walk them back to the stables.

He would clean up the stalls and just do, like, all the low stakes tasks that needed

to be done.

Now, after a while, Buddy actually saw more of a future in horses than he did in high

school.

So he ended up quitting school and he followed his uncle to Florida, where he kept working

as a stable boy for 25 bucks a week, which was, or in today's calculations, it would

be a little more than 300 bucks a week.

Oh.

So for high school, that's a pretty decent job.

Yeah.

That's really good.

Yeah.

And he worked his way up the ladder pretty quickly.

And soon he became foreman of the stables, which is a big fucking deal when it comes

to bosses.

Wow.

The boss.

Yeah.

Now, by 1952, he received his assistant trainer's license and getting that license actually

allowed him to break away from his uncle's business and strike out on his own in the

horse business.

Now, for the Jacobs and Jacobson families who had always been really close, Buddy's determination

to rise quickly in the profession wasn't really a surprise.

His uncle, Gene, said, I put him on when I didn't need him and he just made himself

needed.

He was a very hard worker, very devoted to the job.

Look at him.

So he spoke his praises.

So not long after gaining his license, Buddy started training two horses that his sister

Rita owned.

And once they were ready, he brought them to the races.

He was off to the races like Lana.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he brought them to the races in New York and he won with them.

Look at him.

So obviously he's pretty encouraged now.

So he took on, he took those horses to the more competitive tracks in Florida.

Oh, that's where you go.

Yeah.

Always go to Florida.

Never.

Buddy was a Florida fan.

Buddy was a Florida man.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Honestly.

That's not good.

When they came to Florida, they did great there.

He continued a streak of wins.

So more and more wins start stacking up for Buddy.

And soon he had made a pretty good name for himself as a horse trainer.

He was signing contracts with new clients to train their horses.

And more importantly, while the wins helped to build a reputation, they also included

a percentage of the purse, which was the cash prize awarded to the winning horse and

the jockey.

Yeah.

So that placed him in a high attacks bracket.

And it gave him a solidly upper middle class lifestyle.

Look at Buddy.

He was living that swanky life.

Oh, man.

So in the mid 1950s, he actually ended up meeting and marrying a woman named Joan Miller.

And pretty soon after they got married, they welcomed a son together, David.

That would be Buddy's only child.

And this new life that Buddy was living was a pretty far cry from how he'd grown up and

from what he was used to.

In some good ways, and then in his opinion, not in so many great ways, because maybe some

of this family life wasn't really for him.

Yeah.

He wasn't super interested in that domestic lifestyle, wasn't that interested in being

a husband or really a dad.

You know what, those are two things that you should have interest in if you become a husband

and a dad.

Yeah.

That's what most people say.

Those are the two key things.

It's in the handbook.

Yeah.

You know.

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But Buddy, he just really wanted to be the best, not the best father or the best husband,

but just the best overall.

Yeah, don't worry about those two things.

No, so he can slacken that.

No, no, no, don't worry about that.

So he found home life really stifling.

Now stability and harmony at home might have made him feel disconnected, I guess, when

it came to his family life.

But those were the two main things that drove him professionally, interestingly enough.

In 1958, he ended up getting hired by a Wall Street trader named Bill Frankel to train a

horse that Bill had recently bought.

And Buddy wasn't actually able to replicate his earlier success with the Frankels horse.

He won only one race in the first eight months.

But for some reason, Bill Frankel took an immediate liking to Buddy and he decided to

stick with him.

And Buddy later said to the Frankels, they never complained.

You don't find good sports like them every day.

Old sport.

Old sport.

That's weird that you sound that because I made a Gatsby reference in this later.

Of course you did.

You have to.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

So things started to turn around for Buddy a few years later and he was ranked second

on the list of leading New York trainers in 1960.

Damn.

Just behind his uncle, Gene Jacobs.

Oh.

He took away from the uncle, but you haven't beat him yet.

But two years later, Buddy did surpass Uncle Gene and took the top spot on the 1962 list

with 64 wins.

Wow.

But the success really didn't do much to endear Buddy to those around him.

Bill Frankel might have liked him, but really nobody else did.

His success really only kind of exacerbated that arrogance and overly competitive spirit

that people already knew was there.

So when he was announced as the top trainer in New York, a reporter asked Buddy what he

had learned from his uncle's experiences in the business.

And without hesitating, Buddy replied, they've taught me nothing.

They don't come near me at the track.

I'm about to beat him and they know it.

He literally was just like, fuck him.

Wow.

Just like a true good sport.

Like if his uncle hadn't taken him on, he wouldn't have learned anything.

Yeah.

He wouldn't have done any of this.

And he's like, I've learned nothing.

Like, damn.

All right.

So rude.

Wow.

Remembering where you come from.

Yeah, exactly.

It's just like a race at all.

I did it all.

Get out of here.

I'm like, I don't think so, sir.

You're not that self-made.

No, Buddy.

No.

His comments to reporters only spoke further to his fiercely competitive, petty and spiteful

character.

And people remembered Buddy being like that as a child and they would continue to remember

him the same way even after he died.

Oh, no.

But his winning streak did continue and it came with more and more money.

In 1963, he was named America's top horse trainer.

Damn.

I didn't even know this was a thing.

I didn't either.

But he had nearly twice as many wins to his name as compared to his uncle.

Wow.

No.

Not long after, he was living that big life.

So he decided to buy two apartment buildings in Queens and merge them together to create

one massive home for his family.

And he hired a live in maid.

Damn.

Yeah, he was living the big life.

I told you.

He was a swanky fellow.

The money, the property, and the other extravagances were a testament to his professional success.

But they really didn't do much to improve the rift that had started growing between

him and his wife, Joan, for quite some time at this point.

I was wondering where Joan was in all this.

She's not really in all of this when Buddy said at least.

Later Buddy's assistant, Frank Pajano, explained the strain to reporters saying, well, what

happened was she wanted to go out to a movie once in a while, just to a movie.

Nothing fancy.

But Buddy didn't care to.

He only loved the horses.

What an ass.

So you wouldn't even take her to a fucking movie.

Yeah, that's an asshole move.

That's a dick move.

You don't need a wife.

No, we don't.

You could have kept on living this bachelor life and stacking up the winds.

Marry a horse and you'll be fine.

Marry a horse.

Yeah.

Sounds like he wasn't even that, like, he didn't care about the horses that much.

He just, like, winning.

Yeah.

So now he's in his early 30s and his life is consumed by horses and his continuous drive

to be the best.

But like I was just saying, for all his interest in horses, they didn't really seem to make

him feel anything on a deeper level.

It wasn't the animal that he loved.

Like I just said, it was the winning and the superiority he held over the horses.

He told his assistant, you can't have an attachment to a horse and indicated that he was disgusted

by them in general.

Ew.

Yeah.

That's gross.

Like disgusted by the animal that made him as wealthy as he was in the first place.

And also horses are like the sweetest animals.

And they're so majestic.

How the fuck don't you like a horse?

Never look in a horse's eyes?

Not often.

I haven't.

I was like, I don't know where we're going with this.

I have not.

But I feel like you could get lost in them.

You could.

I do feel that way.

I don't have any evidence to back that up because I myself have never looked in a horse's

eyes, but it's just this innate feeling inside.

She just, she just pointed to her chest.

Yeah.

It's just innate feeling.

It's just inside.

I feel that.

Yeah.

I was a little bit afraid of horses for a while.

I'm still afraid of horses.

Yeah.

They just, they're so big.

So powerful.

So muscly.

They can throw you off in a second.

Yeah.

There's a lot happening there.

I'm terrified of them.

But they're beautiful.

Sure do love to look at them.

My mother-in-law loves horses.

There you go.

And Ma does too, actually.

Yeah.

She used to ride horses.

Horses.

Horses.

So it seemed to Buddy's assistant Frank there that all Buddy really cared about was the

acquisition of things, material things that he could hold up as evidence of his success.

And then by extension, at least as far as he was concerned, those things placed his value

as a person or like staked his value as a person.

Yeah.

That's not a good way to be.

And this is what I said.

It's giving Tom Buchanan from the Great Gatsby.

100% it is.

Thank you.

But the problem was when it came to Buddy, nothing was ever enough.

By the mid-1960s, he had become kind of a celebrity and he was making more money than

he had ever even made.

But he was spending it just as fast as it was coming in.

He's one of those stories.

Oh, yeah.

They made it.

They lost it.

Yeah.

He lost so much.

Oh, no.

His relationship with his wife had all but ended.

They continued to stay married on paper, but they were not married in life.

Joan managed the home.

She cared for their son and queens.

Of course she did.

While Buddy just started having one affair after the other.

He never really dated much before getting married.

And I think-

Breaking those generational cycles, you know?

Yeah, seriously.

Yeah, good job.

The fact that he never dated much before getting married was kind of detrimental in his case

because once he realized that there was women out there that didn't care that he was married,

it was like he needed to catch up on what he had missed out on or felt like he had missed

out on.

Author Anthony Hayden Guest wrote, it was as if he'd open the door with an enchanted

key.

That's a beautiful way of saying-

I know.

He started fucking women outside of marriage.

It's a beautiful way to say-

What a nice way of saying that.

He was a hoe.

Yeah.

When a time not long ago, he was a hoe.

There you go.

And soon he was married to Joan Jacobson, really in name only, that's about it.

He didn't really have a lot of trouble attracting women because like I said, he had become kind

of a celebrity in the wealthy New York circles.

But the women he was dating, not a lot of them stuck around for very long.

They were there for like a good time, not a long time.

And the ones who did stick around were really only staying as long as they did because he

was paying their bills.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Now either way, the endless stream of young, beautiful women convinced Buddy that he no

longer needed Joan.

So in the mid to late 1960s, he moved out of their apartment and just never looked back.

Again, they were still married, but he just ditched her.

Cool.

Mm-hmm.

Very cool.

Just like, you hated your dad for doing that to you, but then you did the exact same thing

to your, not only your wife, but your son.

Yeah.

Another cycle, like you're starting it right over.

Real shitty.

Real shitty.

Later after his eventual arrest, a reporter asked him whether he was getting any emotional

support from Joan and he replied, I haven't seen her for 10 to 15 years.

Yeah.

Fuck that.

Why would you don't give him any emotional support?

I'd be like, good luck.

Fuck off.

I think that reporter was just like, Hey, are you getting any support from the wife you

left?

Yeah.

Now, like most things in Buddy's life, which I'm sure you're catching onto a pattern here,

Joan was just another one of those things that validated his worth and that he could

hold up as evidence of his success.

So when she didn't serve either of those purposes anymore, he just left her.

Just cast her aside.

Mm-hmm.

And his ability to sever ties with things that didn't serve him was like insane, like

scary.

And I think it was another hallmark of his life going back as far as childhood.

And like most of his other personality traits, it only got worse when he became an adult.

Former horse owner, Sam Lafrax, excuse me, said about Buddy, as a personality, he was

a loner and he didn't like anybody telling him what to do.

I mean, yeah, sounds like it.

You're like relatable.

I was going to say, I don't want to say relatable because he sounds like a Nimrod, but he is

a Nimrod.

But, you know.

But you can relate to being a loner and not liking people telling you what to do.

Yeah.

I can absolutely relate to that.

I don't like how many similarities we have.

Yeah.

Many, many things that are different.

Yeah.

You're very different.

So many different things.

I don't like people telling me what to do either.

I wouldn't consider myself a loner though.

Yeah.

I would never consider myself a loner.

Really?

Fuck that.

But by the late 1960s, Buddy had actually been elected president of the New York Division

of the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.

Look at this guy.

He's killing it, kind of.

And almost immediately though, because he's not really killing it, his personality put

him at odds with the New York Racing Association.

Now, this is interesting.

The reason he was at odds with them was because he was demanding that a pension fund be established

for the stable hands.

And when the Racing Association refused, Buddy demanded a boycott.

It's very writer's strike.

What is?

And in April of 1969, the union ended up going on strike.

Wow.

So, this kind of sounds like it was a good deed on his end, but despite how it might

have looked, most people believed that the strike had a lot less to do with him supporting

low wage workers than it actually did with his insatiable need for power.

Absolutely.

And control over literally everything.

Sports writer Pete Ackthelm said, I don't think he cared about Puerto Rican stable hands.

I think he wanted to prove that he, Buddy Jacobson, could overturn the whole power structure.

Yeah.

That's what it seems like with him.

It does.

So, eventually, the Racing Association did cave and they agreed to the pension fund.

And this shows you what happened and what Buddy's real intentions were.

They put Buddy in control of the finances.

But unfortunately, his arrogance caught up with him just nine days after taking over

the pension fund.

Wow.

During an audit performed by the Racing Association, the accountants noticed several irregularities

and misrepresentations in the books.

Oh, shocking.

Yeah.

So, they removed Buddy from his post and they suspended him for 45 days.

But the blow to his ego was too big, so he just decided to leave Racing for good.

Wow.

That's...

They tried to suspend him for 45 days for essentially or allegedly stealing money.

That's a baby move.

And he said, I'm going to leave Racing for good.

That's a big baby move.

I literally said, guy is the definition of a petulant child.

Truly.

Like, that's such a big baby move.

Wee.

He's such...

I just won't do it.

Such a baby.

This guy's gross.

Ew.

So, now with considerably more free time than he had quite literally ever had, Buddy shifted

his focus back to his new interests in women and property.

He was spending more and more time at his, quote, unquote, bachelor apartment in a building

in Queens.

And one of his short-term girlfriends later remembered the building as being, quote, full

of stewardesses, all of whom seemed interested in Buddy.

She elaborated, Buddy had a Cadillac.

He would leave it out in the front for other girls to use.

The place was full of girls.

He could never go with the same girl more than once or twice.

He lost interest.

He would chase some girls, sending her flowers all the time.

But if he heard that she was going with somebody else, he just lost interest.

Wow.

So he's just like a playa-playa.

He's just a playa.

Now, all things may have been going well for Buddy in his personal life, I guess you could

say.

His professional life was taking hit after hit, because he just got suspended from this

racing business and then just decided to leave it all together and was just like, fuck it.

So in 1970, he made a very random move and just invested rather heavily in a ski resort

in Vermont.

That's what you do when you leave your profession, you know?

What?

Like where did that come from?

Invested in a ski resort in Vermont.

Obviously.

That's what, in my head, I was like, you know, what do you really should do next is head

to Vermont.

Ski resort.

Yeah.

Boom.

So I'm glad.

I'm glad that's how things are going.

And you would think that'd be a pretty good investment because like Vermont, skiing,

sure.

I mean, people love to ski.

Resorts are great.

Makes sense.

You know?

But, and I'm sure as this is going to come as a huge shock, it didn't take long before

his personality started to rub people the wrong way there.

Oh, buddy.

One of the other investors, I'm used to saying investigators.

One of the other investors said he wanted to show that he could run a ski lodge better

than people who had been running them all their lives.

Oh, see, that's a rookie move.

Going in there thinking you can tell people what to do when you haven't been in that business.

That's the worst kind of person when they come into your field and try to tell you how

to do your job that you've been doing for the longest fucking time.

And they think they can do it better than you.

It goes right up your ass.

Walk the other way.

Walk the other way.

Talks like a person.

Walk the other way.

Get all out of here.

That's what they said to Buddy.

And that's what I would say to somebody too.

That's what I would say.

You know?

I'd say, fuck off.

Fuck off.

With that, it sucks.

So when the resort didn't work out, Buddy shifted his attention back to New York, of

course, and he just bought an apartment building on East 84th Street, as one does.

Imagine just being like, I guess I'll just buy a building, I suppose.

I guess since my head didn't work out, it didn't turn out I'll buy a whole fucking

building in New York.

You know.

So he took over every role from operations to screening to rental applications in this

building.

Wow.

And it was there that he met Melanie Cain.

She was a transplant from Virginia who had just moved to New York in 1973, and her goal

was to pursue a modeling career with the Eileen Ford modeling agency.

Ooh.

Eileen Ford's husband, Jerry, who kind of sounds like a dick to me, recalled of Cain,

she was a very pleasant kid, but kind of naive.

She had a bit of a weight problem.

Good mouth, good teeth.

That was her husband?

That was her husband, Eileen Ford's husband, that said that about Melanie Cain.

Oh, OK.

Not about Eileen.

OK.

For a second, I mean, that's still what the fuck, but I was like, oh.

What a way to remember your wife.

Also, a bit of a weight problem.

Please look up a picture of Melanie Cain.

Yeah.

And I just thought that's like, eh.

Yeah.

She had good teeth.

Good mouth.

Good teeth.

Good mouth.

What does that even mean?

I got to go.

But she was way better than Jerry gave her credit for, because within less than a year

at the agency, Melanie's career was taking off.

And if you're looking at her right now, I'm sure you can see why.

Yeah.

In March of 1974, she actually appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

Oh.

Which used to be my personal favorite.

And her face was seemingly everywhere after that.

A writer from Seventeen wrote, everything about Melanie is refreshing.

She's the image of everything wholesome, like Kellogg's corn flakes.

Yeah.

Like not apple pie or anything.

Everything wholesome, like Kellogg's corn flakes.

What a way.

What a descriptor, the 70s, imagine being compared to corn flakes.

Yeah.

That would be strange, the way that I would feel about that.

I feel like I'm not really sure what that means.

Like is that an insult?

Because you think wholesome like apple pie, that's always like the initial, you know.

And no, that writer could have gone places with that because she lived in New York, big

apple pie.

That's the thing, big apple pie.

Not Kellogg's corn flakes.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I guess they are wholesome, I suppose.

I guess.

So remember, Melanie meets Buddy at this apartment building, and maybe it was her naivete, but

Melanie was almost immediately drawn to Buddy, not something that most people experienced

often.

Yeah, apparently.

He was almost 20 years older than she was, and he was nothing like the male models that

she had dated when she first arrived in New York.

To her, he seemed down to earth.

He didn't seem to care too much about his appearance, which I don't really know why

that's a good thing.

And he had a confidence, she said, she found irresistible.

All right.

With in a few months of Melanie appearing on the cover of 17, Buddy ended up talking her

into leaving Eileen Ford and starting a modeling agency with him, who had quite literally never

been in the business of modeling or running a modeling agency.

Wow, here he goes again.

But he did it with her.

Yeah.

And they named the modeling agency, My Fair Lady.

My Fair Lady.

Mm-hmm.

That kind of limits you, doesn't it?

It does.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And like an assortment of ways.

A myriad of ways.

Yeah.

But unlike his career in horse training, where he'd worked his way up from the bottom.

Buddy's foray into the modeling industry was a lot more like his experience with the

ski resort.

It was the product of overconfidence and spiteful determination.

You know, and that's the thing.

You can go into things being like the way that you just had to like move your drink

to the side.

I just put my drink down for this because you can go into that.

I'm all for having stupid confidence and spiteful determination.

And spiteful determination because I myself am fueled by spiteful determination and stupid

confidence.

I don't know that.

But I do have the spiteful part.

Like I assume I can do anything and that's the way it is.

And but you got to go and do in that, you know, like I can do this, but also learning

from people who know how to do that.

Exactly.

That's the whole point is you go in and you go, fuck, I can do this.

I can learn how to do this.

It's not I can go into this thing I don't know and just suddenly know how to do it.

Like how does that work?

The whole game here is you take lessons from other people and you learn and you grow and

you say, okay, well, once I have all this information, I can be the best at this.

Exactly.

That's okay.

Go in like that by all means.

This clown is going into places where he's never had any experience at all and he's not

going, okay, I can learn from people and I can really, I can really do well at this

and be the best and become the best.

Yeah.

He's just going and being like, no, I know how to do it better.

So yeah, he's going in thinking he's the best, not wanting to become the best and that's

the difference.

Exactly.

You have to have the drive to be the best.

That's what it is.

He doesn't have the drive.

He has the expectation and there's a difference.

Boom.

So have the drive, not the expectation.

He had no idea what he was doing.

One model author told Anthony Hayden guest of her experience with my fair lady.

They wanted young, fresh faces.

They told me they just threw a dart at the map and where it went.

But Buddy wasn't really doing anything for us.

Yeah.

I'm shocked.

Like they just had a magazine full of ladies or like a, a assortment of photos on the wall.

They threw a dart and said, yeah, that's what we'll do.

Ridiculous.

So the fact that my fair lady honestly managed to survive at all was due almost entirely to

Melanie Kane, who was still enough of a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend,

a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend, a friend,

enough of a draw to keep the business afloat because people wanted her pictures.

Hell yeah.

Now, while she did her best to keep the agency going, Buddy kind of abandoned the entire

thing and just switched his attention back to property development.

Seems to be what he's good at.

That's abandoning, I mean.

Honestly.

Oh, and he seems like he's all right at property development.

Yeah.

Like, you know, I don't, I don't know.

I don't know.

He seems fit for that.

So in the mid 1970s, he purchased the Park East, a former hospital near New York's upper

west side, and he planned to develop it into a $3 million co-op.

Damn.

Oh, yeah.

I don't really know how that went because things go awry.

So the relationship may have started as a business matter, but it didn't take long before

Melanie and Buddy were involved romantically.

I'm sure you saw that coming.

But unfortunately, as he had already proven with his marriage, women were just another

thing for Buddy to collect.

And just like things had unfolded with his wife, the first few years of Melanie and Buddy's

relationship were good, but after a while, he became very controlling and very overbearing.

Before long, Melanie was forbidden from having any male friends at all, and Buddy controlled

or at the very least heavily influenced how she spent her time when she was away from

him.

Oh, no.

Like he had control over everything.

That's bad.

Bad news bears.

Now he, on the other hand, had no interest in restraining his relationships with other

women.

Of course not.

And acquaintance said, it's tremendous, the power he felt.

He's sitting in Nicholas with four girls, nine girls, 13 girls.

And he's telling her you can't have male friends.

A single male friend, but I can sit at a table with 13 women.

It's so hard.

I feel so bad because obviously she was in a position where she just didn't see it.

And she's young and he's this older, like what she thinks is charming, their business

partners.

And she's probably signed to some kind of contract at this point.

And it's easy to see in hindsight how red flaggy he is, but it's not easy when you're

in it.

Exactly.

Now, so in just a few years of moving to New York to start her life, the things that had

been so exciting for Melanie started to feel like a burden.

After a few years, her relationship with Buddy was deteriorating rapidly.

And despite her success, modeling just wasn't really filling her cup anymore.

But still, when she walked into the all Ireland bar in the late 1970s, Melanie wasn't planning

to make any major life changes.

And then she met Jack Tupper.

And Melanie actually had met Jack a couple of times before, the year before, when an

acquaintance of Buddy's had brought him to a party at Queens, but she didn't really get

to know him like that well.

Okay.

Now, Jack had grown up in New York and a few years earlier, he had moved into a building

that Buddy owned in Queens near the all Ireland, which Jack was managing at the time.

Okay.

As far as Melanie could tell, Jack was everything that Buddy was not.

He was in good shape.

He dressed nicely.

He was friendly.

He was charming.

When he wasn't running the all Ireland, he volunteered at a sports program for underprivileged

youth in Queens.

Stop.

Yep.

He was a prize.

He sounds delightful.

Jack's dad later told reporters there was no, no disgrace on him.

He was a wonderful boy, a good boy.

Jack.

Jack forever.

Oh no.

It's like the Titanic.

And Melanie and Jack's relationship, it started innocently enough.

They made plans to go jogging together in the park.

They just wanted a friend.

But things changed pretty quickly after just a few days as jogging partners when Melanie

admitted that she had a crush on Jack.

I mean, who wouldn't?

He sounds delightful.

He's adorable.

And he's a great guy.

He's a good catch.

Yeah.

So eventually dates to go jogging started to include dinner afterwards and just little

reasons to stay and hang out longer than they needed to.

Oh my God.

I just, I'm like, cut that other asshole loose.

Snip.

Enjoy this.

Clip.

Remember when we went to Duranda's house?

Yeah.

That was crazy.

That was wild.

But Melanie, she still wasn't ready to enter a relationship with Buddy.

A friend of her said, apparently she'd been contemplating breaking up with Buddy, but

it was hard.

She'd been with him five years and they were in business together.

That's hard.

Five years is a long time.

It is.

It's easy to say from, you know, over here to be like, cut it below, Sonny.

And then I'm like, I stayed in a relationship far past its fucking expiration date.

And imagine if you had been rotten by the time I got out of there.

Okay.

I had been rotten.

It was like penicillin.

It was so moldy.

It was bad.

But, and then imagine being in business with that person and trying to leave them.

No.

I don't.

I just want to think of that.

That's not good.

Yeah.

No, it's hard.

So instead Melanie and Jack carried on in secret, hoping that Buddy would never question

why their jogging dates kept getting longer and longer and more frequent, but it's like

you want to be together, guys.

You can't be together like this.

Exactly.

Well, for a while it worked, but he was so self-absorbed that he didn't actually seem

to notice when Melanie wasn't around.

It's beneficial in that way.

Yeah.

And so he didn't notice when she wasn't around as often as she typically had been.

So soon these dates weren't just a few hours longer, but a few days longer.

And within weeks of making plans to go jogging for the very first time, Jack took Melanie

on a weekend trip to visit his sister and her husband, who was an FBI agent stationed

in Puerto Rico.

Days.

They just went to Puerto Rico for the weekend.

Whoa.

Look at these two.

I know.

I know.

I'm rooting for it.

I know that some might say it's wrong, but I'm rooting for it.

Some might say it's wrong, but it's right.

It's right.

No.

Well, you just know this.

It seems like it would be a better situation.

You just want it to.

I want it to work out.

Yeah.

And it's complex.

It's many layers.

It is.

So Buddy might not have noticed a few extra hours of Melanie's absence, but a long weekend

away was something entirely different.

So when Melanie didn't return on Friday night and was still absent the next morning, Buddy

knew that she was with Jack.

Yeah.

He called Melanie's mom, who confirmed that she went away for the weekend, but wouldn't

give Buddy any more information than that, like a good mama.

So Buddy then proceeded to call literally everyone he could think of that might have

the number for Jack's sister in Puerto Rico, which is where he correctly assumed the two

had gone.

Oh man.

Yeah.

So when Jack and Melanie got back from Puerto Rico, they hadn't even left the airport

before they learned that Buddy had been harassing their friends and family all weekend long.

Eek.

Yeah.

They were terrified of the consequences of having been found out.

So they booked a $90 suite at the Drake, which is an upscale hotel on Park Ave.

Damn.

They were like, we can not go back yet.

We can not do that.

Now when Melanie finally did call Buddy the next day, she was surprised to find that rather

than anger, he seemed apologetic genuinely and seemed like he wanted to talk.

Melanie told Anthony Hayden Guest, I realized I owed him something, yet all this time I

had wanted to talk to him and he had never had the time.

But now I figured, okay, let's settle up this whole business.

This feels suspicious to me.

It does.

So the next night, Melanie ended up meeting Buddy for a drink at Sign of the Dove, which

was one of his favorite restaurants in Queens.

And the apologetic appeasing tone that he had just a day earlier was gone.

He was back to his old, very offensive self.

He was accusing Melanie of being on drugs because that was the only excuse he could

think of that for her not returning home to him.

Yeah.

I could think of a few more.

I could too.

Such as he's an asshole.

Yeah.

Now, when it was clear that his attempts to bait her were not working, he came right

out and said, you can't leave me.

You're my wife.

She's not though.

She was not in fact his wife.

I was like, David, unless I missed a giant portion of this story, that is not true.

Incorrect.

So Melanie pushed back, telling Buddy that they weren't married, which is when Buddy's

voice took on a more desperate tone.

He told her, I'm going to get you back no matter what.

I'll beg for you or I'll wait for you.

I don't care.

But no matter what, I'm going to get you back.

That's terrifying and horrifying.

And I want to take her hand and just run away with her far, far away day.

Well, then he turned to Jack, who was actually in the restaurant monitoring the conversation

from his seat at the bar.

And he said, he looked at Jack and he said, you want a restaurant?

I'll buy you a restaurant.

Just give me Melanie back for 24 hours.

What the fuck 24 hours?

I'd immediately be like, we are leaving the country.

Like we are leaving like, and holy shit.

Insane.

That's terrifying.

Like 24 hours.

What the fuck does that mean?

Exactly.

My guy.

It's so bizarre.

So Jack told Buddy that it wasn't his decision to make.

It was Melanie's.

See, look at Jack.

A stand up guy.

Being like, she's her own woman.

Yeah.

She makes her own decisions.

I'm not saying anything.

Exactly.

And then he and Melanie got up to leave and before walking out of the restaurant, Melanie

looked at Buddy and said, let's be friends, Buddy.

I'll always be your friend.

Oh, and look at Melanie trying to be civil.

She's trying to de-escalate.

Yeah.

She's trying to de-escalate.

She's doing all the right things.

So a few days later, Melanie had moved her things out of Buddy's apartment and in a

move almost identical to the one that Buddy's father had made 40 years earlier, Melanie and

Jack took an apartment a few doors down from Buddy.

Oh, come on.

In his queen's apartment building.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

So away from Buddy, new opportunities did seem possible for Melanie.

And most importantly, she was finally with a man that appreciated her.

She talked about her relationship with Jack years later and said, it was a very loving

relationship.

We were going to spend a loving life together.

Oh, that hurts my heart.

Right.

So meanwhile, Buddy seemed to alternate between continuing to pursue Melanie and accepting

that their relationship had come to an end.

In the weeks that followed, he would spend days calling and harassing her and then sending

messages apologizing for the verbal abuse.

That's scary.

On July 29th, he wrote to her, Dear Melon, sorry for the past week and for the abuse

I've put you through for the past five years.

You always hurt the one you love.

Jack is a good guy and will love you and be honest with you.

You're right.

I would have, I would always be a bum.

I mean, that seems, yeah.

That seems self-aware.

That really seems self-aware.

But then he kept trying to buy off Jack Tupper with offers of cash and property.

Jesus.

Jack told Melanie one afternoon, this guy's such an asshole.

He offered me $100,000 to leave town and to buy a restaurant.

What the fuck?

Like what?

So by mid-summer, Buddy's erratic behavior and constant presence in the shared spaces

of the building had become a little too much for Melanie and Jack to bear.

And they decided it was time to find a new apartment far, far away from Buddy.

So Melanie spent the first week of August, 1978 looking at apartments and eventually

she found what she thought was the perfect one for them on 52nd Street.

Now, in the days leading up to the signing of the new lease, Buddy's pleas for Melanie

to come back to him grew way more desperate and way more unrealistic.

On July 31st, he confronted her in the hallway of the apartment and he made yet another attempt

to get her back.

He yelled to her, can't you see what you're leaving is doing to me?

And then he made this outrageous promise to marry her and start a family yelling to her,

I will get you pregnant so fast.

She will have six kids, six kids.

Isn't that proof?

I have very little to say about that.

I just said, insert GIF of the what lady here.

That's honestly how I feel right like with, I can't imagine somebody trying to get you

back and being like, I will get you pregnant so fast.

So fast.

And it's like six kids.

That's what?

Like six kids.

That's vaguely threatening.

Like I don't.

Yeah.

That's just a lot.

And to be like, I'll do it so fast, I will get you pregnant.

And it's like, what?

Okay.

What?

You make that sound scary.

And I don't want to do that and I'm sorry, but like six kids all at once is not a good

bargaining tool.

No.

I'd be like, that's a good way to not get me back.

Yeah.

I'm like, damn.

All right.

Wild.

What a bargaining chip he was using.

I mean, I guess throw all your cards on the table.

That's what you got.

He's scary.

So the more she resisted and politely rejected him, the more and more rambling and incoherent

buddy's attempts to bargain got clearly.

Melanie kept trying to politely rebuff him, like trying to spare his feelings.

But at this point, she broke and she shouted to him, I don't love you anymore.

And not only don't I love you anymore.

I don't even like you.

I don't like the way you lie and treat people.

I just don't respect you anymore.

Ooh.

Mic drop.

Yeah.

Because it's all true.

It is.

She's just telling him.

I don't like who you are as a person.

You're terrible.

And I think you need to hear.

Like, instead of yelling at me that you can get me pregnant at warp speed, like you need

to hear that I don't like you.

I don't like you.

I don't want to be pregnant with you.

I don't want to be near you.

I don't want this.

So this statement, this blunt statement did not seem to register with buddy.

And he just kept rambling and rambling and making outrageous declarations of love until

Melanie finally just walked away more certain than ever that the only way to move on would

be to get as far away from buddy as humanly possible.

Yeah, that's what it seems.

So later, when she went to get the last of her belongings from buddy, she learned the

true depth of his depression and his desperation to get her back.

He had cut out stickers with masking tape and written declarations of love on them and

then stuck all of them to all of her clothing and personal items.

She said, I would look at my underpants and there would be a sticker.

I love you.

I love you, Melanie.

Then I'd open my desk and there would be more stickers.

Oh, this is like really scary.

It's really escalating.

Lost it.

So on the morning of August 6th, Melanie got up early, kissed Jack goodbye and headed

over to the new apartment where she planned to meet the new landlord and sign the lease.

So thinking nothing really of it.

She went downstairs and she talked to some of the models in an apartment on the first

floor.

But when she came back up a short time later, Jack still hadn't returned.

And she was like, OK, that's kind of weird.

But she tried to busy herself with some chore.

She ran some errands.

But the longer Jack was away, the more concerned she became.

There wasn't really any evidence of anything bad having happened in their apartment.

But the more she looked around, the more she noticed things seemed a little off.

Jack wasn't home, but his boots and his running shoes were still on the floor in the bedroom.

His address book and his gold pen, which he took with him almost everywhere, was also

still on the table.

And that just was weird to her.

So she started calling around to Jack's friends, but none of them had seen or heard from him

that day.

So she's getting more and more concerned now.

So she walks down to the All Ireland, the bar that he manages, and no one there had seen

or heard from him either.

Oh, no.

So now she's desperate and she walks back up to the apartment building and to Buddy's

apartment and she goes in without even knocking.

And inside Buddy's apartment was a fucking wreck.

There were shattered pieces of mirror all over the floor.

The pillows from the bed in the sofa were strewn all about.

And most curious, the rug appeared to have been pulled up and removed.

Oh, no.

And there were people just milling about the apartment, who Melanie assumed were just some

workers from Buddy's buildings on the Upper West Side.

And then Buddy himself appeared in the doorway and screamed, get out.

I don't want to see you.

What?

Nearly chasing Melanie from the apartment and slamming the door.

What the fuck?

So like after he's been desperately trying to get back with her is like, get the fuck

out of here.

I don't want to see you.

All he wants is to see her and be near her.

And now he's like, get out.

Yeah.

No, this would terrify me.

So Melanie shaken.

So she calls one of Jack's friends and is like, can you come over and just help me

try to find Jack?

And now the man arrived and they went back to Buddy's apartment once he got there

and they knocked on the door.

And this time Buddy was completely collected and just said, oh, yeah, I haven't seen

Jack.

What the fuck?

He let them in.

He let them look around the apartment.

And now there didn't seem to be any outward signs of a struggle or a fight, but

it was clear that someone had gone to great lengths to clean the apartment.

And it even looked like somebody had washed the tile floor in the hallway of the

apartment building.

What?

So out of ideas and now thoroughly alarmed.

Melanie finally called the police a little after eight PM that night and an

officer was dispatched to the apartment.

Now, unbeknownst to Melanie, a few hours earlier, around four PM, somebody went

into a fire department in North Bronx to report a fire in the vacant, vacant

lawn across the street.

The person that reported the fire said they saw three men setting what appeared

to be a large wooden crate on fire.

And then they drove away in a large yellow Cadillac with the license plate

number 777 G H I.

OK.

So firefighters go to that scene and they find this oily black smoke pouring

from what they described as, quote, a trunk on a heap of garbage surrounded

by a mound of garbage.

Oh, no.

No.

Before they had even put the fire out, they could see a man's legs protruding

from the crate and after extinguishing the fire, they pride open the hinges on

the box and they discovered the badly brutalized body of Jack Tupper.

No.

A firefighter later told reporters the head was all matted, but you could see

you could see the bullet holes.

Oh, my God.

When you find out what happened to Jack Tupper, Buddy is not even a human.

He is.

Oh, no.

He's worse than a monster.

I don't even know the word to describe what he is.

Oh, God.

But he got his because firefighters reported the discovery to the nearest police

precinct and the information went out on the radio, including the license plate

number that had been provided by the resident who initially reported the fire.

Thank God that person thought of it.

Now listen to this.

The universe is a beautiful bitch.

So at the same time, Buddy Jacobson was stuck in a traffic jam on the

Triborough Bridge, and it just so happened that there was a patrol car

directly behind him.

Oh, shut up.

Yep.

So when the driver of the patrol car heard the report of the body come over

the radio, he happened to glance down at the license plate of the yellow

Cadillac in front of him.

Oh, my God, I love it.

And to his astonishment, he realized it was a match for the suspects

that set the fire to the crate containing the body.

Imagine being that patrol officer and being like, Jackpot.

How serendipitous is the universe, girl?

So Buddy Jacobson was immediately arrested and became the number one

suspect in the murder of Jack Tupper.

Oh, man.

And that.

Poor Jack.

I know is where we're going to end part one.

But we're going to cover a good amount in part two.

Things get a little crazy.

Some people go to prison.

Some people escape from prison.

Oh, some people get thrown back in prison.

Damn, it's wild.

All right, I'm here.

You here for it?

I'm here for it.

But it's really also very sad when you hear what happened to Jack and poor Melanie

and poor Melanie, because all she wanted to do is just spend the rest of her life

with him.

Yeah, she just wanted to start her life with a good guy.

And he, well, like his dad said, he was like a wonderful boy, a wonderful boy,

just like volunteering with underprivileged youth break my hat.

And then there's Buddy, who's just been an asshole, literally,

since he came out the womb with a terrible mustache that you can't trust.

His mustache.

You can't trust it.

Is one of the most upsetting things I have ever seen in my life.

Fuck that.

Most of you see a picture of Jack.

Yeah, he's adorable.

He's adorable and has the kindest eyes that I've ever seen.

So we hope that you keep listening for Pat, too.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But it's so weird as Buddy, because he, like I said, was an asshole

since he came out of the womb, and you really don't want to keep it that weird.

It's fine to be competitive, but don't be as competitive as Buddy.

And definitely don't stick stickers all over somebody's things

when they're trying to move out of your place.

Have drive, don't have expectation.

Boom.

You

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.