145: The Kidnapping of Shannon Matthews & Eliza Jumel's Divorce

Let's Go To Court!

It was a cold February day, and mother of the year Karen Matthews was in a panic. Her nine-year-old daughter, Shannon Matthews, hadn’t come home from school that day. Immediately, the tightknit community of Dewsbury, England, came together to find the missing child. Investigators searched 3,000 homes. They stopped 1,500 drivers. But the days crept on. Shannon was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Karen acted like a big weirdo.

Then Brandi returns from her battle with COVID to tell us about an old timey divorce.

Eliza Jumel was, too put it mildly, rich. When her husband died, Eliza became the richest woman in New York. By that point, Eliza had discovered that money could buy her a lot of things -- the former home of the American Revolution, for example -- but it couldn’t buy her acceptance from the upper crust of New York City society. For that, she needed to marry the right dude. So she set her sights on Aaron Burr.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:

An episode of Casefile titled, “Shannon Matthews”

The documentary tv series, “Tears Lies and Videotape”

“The Kidnapping of Shannon Matthews,” wikipedia

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:

“Invention” podcast episode, Lore by Aaron Mehnke

“Long After Alexander Hamilton's Death, His Son and Rival Aaron Burr Dueled in Divorce Court” by Kirstin Fawcett, Mental Floss

“The Life of Eliza Jumel” newyorkcityhistory.org

“Burr’s Role In Adultery: Is It Opera?” by Dena Kleiman, The New York Times

“Eliza Jumel” wikipedia.org