HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on, Kissel.
BEN KISSEL
What we talking about, friend?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who are we talking about, friend?
MARCUS PARKS
I wanna talk about Dr. Pepper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna talk about Dr. Pepper. Who are we talking about, friend?
BEN KISSEL
Dr. Pepper, not a doctor at all. Get away from my wife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I realized last episode? Are we recording? You know what I realized last episode is that when Gilles de Rais-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Would do his performance before killing all the children, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like his grisly, his macabre play that he would put on where he'd danced around and hang them up. It's not good, right.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I just realize upon finishing the Jared Fogle documentary-
BEN KISSEL
You've been a real Foglehead lately. This guy's a Foglehead.
MARCUS PARKS
He really is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
You really savored it.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean I devoured that thing in a night just to get it over with but...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Every five minutes me and Nat would just sit in silence and go mmm, let it steep. Mmm.
BEN KISSEL
I can hear hear Harry screaming at the TV, how is that a crime!?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How is this a crime!?
BEN KISSEL
How is that a crime!?
MARCUS PARKS
No, I understand you want to savor every pound.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every pound.
BEN KISSEL
I liked fat Jared.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We all did.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that was before the crimes.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I realize him showing the pants, that was his Gilles de Rais fucking show. That was his show that got all the kids just being like whoa, look at them pants. And you think about that.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was just big ass pants.
BEN KISSEL
Big ass pants.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'm watching this this whole time. This is it, this is the whole spell. Gilles de Rais had a private army, flagons of land.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Flagons.
MARCUS PARKS
Flagons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
8 castles.
BEN KISSEL
How many miles are flagons, by the way?
MARCUS PARKS
A flagon is a cup.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A flagon is how long it takes a fat man to walk across the valley. I don't know the math, all right. I'm not in medieval math world, right. But that's the idea, getting all the kids all frothed up because they're looking at how big them pants.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're like man, that man used to fit in them pants?
MARCUS PARKS
I could play in them pants.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you end up playing in them.
BEN KISSEL
Jared from Subway certainly got the kids all frothed up. Great assessment there. Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus. Today we're onto part three and the final gosh darn part of Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Excellent. Take a look at these big old pants.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, look at those pants.
MARCUS PARKS
So when we last left Gilles de Rais, his career as a mass child murderer was in full swing and these murders had gone on completely-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, full swing, bro. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It was only the 1400s, okay. Too soon.
MARCUS PARKS
And these murders had gone on completely unfettered due to the enormous wealth and power he both inherited from Jean de Craon and what he'd earned during his time at Joan of Arc's side during the Hundred Years' War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is really why I have been siding with Gwyneth Paltrow's nemesis that she's been fighting.
BEN KISSEL
You are siding with, what is it, Sanderson?
MARCUS PARKS
Sanderson.
BEN KISSEL
Mr. Sanderson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Terry Sanderson.
BEN KISSEL
He's a horrible person!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he said he needed to take down all of these celebrities on these ski slopes because if we don't check these celebrities, they go to their islands and start molesting children. And that's when I knew the truth got too much and Gwyneth Paltrow had to shut it all the way down with her fixers, her snow-based fixers.
BEN KISSEL
Give Gwyneth her dollar.
MARCUS PARKS
And just so everyone knows, that man, Henry is not joking, that man did go onto the stand and say that he had to put a stop to all of this pedophile island business.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is why he attacked her with his skis.
BEN KISSEL
Well and of course that is not where pedophile is. Pedophiles like warm weather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really do.
BEN KISSEL
They do. They're a lazy bunch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a cabana shirt crowd.
BEN KISSEL
Yes it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the castles in which Gilles committed these crimes looked appropriately evil from the outside, Dracula-like fortresses made of gray stone, constantly surrounded by lightning flashes and thunderbolts. Wolves howling in the night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah, the children of the night. What a beautiful music they make. Ah! I am coming! I am coming!
BEN KISSEL
Oink oink. Oink oink.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why is there a pig there?
BEN KISSEL
Oink oink. Oh yeah, you're doing all this by the pigs. Oink oink.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just a man dressed as a pig.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But inside, Gilles de Rais had created a sort of never by way of Citizen Kane. Now if you've ever seen the footage from inside Michael Jackson's Neverland, remember they took the cameras in there, it was shown in the Leaving Neverland documentary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It was very Martin Bashir who was a very controversial figure, let's be honest about that.
MARCUS PARKS
We can be. But if you've seen that, you know that his house was filled to the brim with these terrifying childish artifacts. He had all these gumball machines, all those animatronic clowns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's a temple to molestation.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay well hold on now. Gumball machines are not indicative of molestation. Don't malign a gumball machine. You tell me.
MARCUS PARKS
20?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
20. One gumball machine in a rumpus room is fun.
BEN KISSEL
That's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
20 is a systematic grooming mechanism.
BEN KISSEL
What if the person loves gumballs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause then it's everywhere you go. You'd be like oh don't worry, hee-hee, you want to gum? Oh, you have a gum there. Have a little gummy bear. You got distracted. Hee-hoo.
BEN KISSEL
Gumballs are still representative of innocent childhood memories.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
And let's not ruin that, shall we?
MARCUS PARKS
But the weird thing about the house, I don't know if y'all noticed this, but the fixtures and the wallpaper inside Michael Jackson's house, it was very suburban.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It was like old lady gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It kind of makes you feel like, to be honest, like you're at a nana's house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, exactly. And Gilles de Rais' castles were much the same way, except he had decidedly more adult taste because he was after all, he was trying to impress fellow nobles. He was not trying to seduce children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he didn't do any of the pant stuff for the kids.
BEN KISSEL
Seduction.
MARCUS PARKS
Each room was hung with gold cloths that cost 80 coins each.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
80 gold coins.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
That's a lot.
BEN KISSEL
We gotta give a dragon 80 gold coins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's like the Witcher III, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We gotta go rescue a princess. And then next thing you know you got curtains, I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
You don't give any gold coins to any dragons in Witcher III.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry.
BEN KISSEL
You shouldn't have brought up the fucking Witcher, bro. You know that's his world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm so sorry. No, I'm playing Persona 5 Royal, it's all in yen.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the villagers give me gold coins.
BEN KISSEL
He has a finite amount of breath.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these rooms were all filled with fine furniture, paintings, statues, books, and precious manuscripts. And Gilles kept a near constant employment of jugglers, singers, and actors to keep him entertained.
BEN KISSEL
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this is the issue, right? This is where we get to the Harvey Weinstein part of our story. Last week obviously, we're segueing, we're going from a Fogle to a Weinstein.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Fogle to Weinstein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where we see how... But this is to me the seeds he's dropping, that shows that he's guilty. This shows that what he is creating-
BEN KISSEL
Why, because he has jugglers around?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's the 15th century equivalent of having a TV in every room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna see that it doesn't stop there, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course.
BEN KISSEL
I do like the idea of throwing a shoe at a juggler so it changes channel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that would be fun.
BEN KISSEL
Chainsaws!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Do the chainsaw channel!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's the idea of surrounding yourself with an entertainment mechanism that makes you look far more fun and engaging and interesting than you should be.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the fact that you are offering... But you'll see as it escalates.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. I'm gonna need some evidence like the Gwyneth Paltrow trial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll bring up an animation. It costs 50 grand to make one of those.
BEN KISSEL
Because I think you're right. I feel like Peacock is an actor, Hulu, that's a juggler, Netflix, that's gonna be your, what was the other thing? Singer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of these are poor, poor replacements for the juggler and the singer.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know. But I'm just saying you have three different channels to work with.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles also kept an open house to nobles and commoners alike at whichever of his 24 residences where he happened to be residing, where anyone could partake of good food or wine. This was seemingly a Christian principle that he learned from his time with Joan of Arc but it also helped with local morale. It was a bribe basically.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But as we said again and again during episode 2, one of the few things that Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais actually shared was a love of the theatrical, although Gilles' theatrical impulses weren't confined to the battlefield like they were with Joan or to his later career in the theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Now is when the show begins.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Almost. Before we get to the show, we have to get to the pedophile church.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't want that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is to me the ultimate example of why he is guilty.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to perhaps give himself a bit more of a Joan of Arc sheen, Gilles de Rais founded his own extraordinarily swanky church. It was however also a cover, another funnel for innocent victims. So Gilles cheekily named it the Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
BEN KISSEL
I don't like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now to place this in time, remember that they've fought all the wars. Technically Gilles de Rais should be a hero amongst his countrymen. Joan of Arc though we know is currently being buried, she was executed at the trial.
BEN KISSEL
They don't like her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They wanted to keep a fucking tight lid on this Joan of Arc story because they're trying to basically separate themselves from this mythos, this idea that we owe things to this heavenly woman that may or may not be an agent of god, blah, blah, blah. But Gilles de Rais at that time probably should have been viewed as somebody who fucking you wanna be around. But we now know that he has been utterly kind of kicked out all these spaces. They kind of gave him a perfunctory little position on some board somewhere but mostly he's just kind of like being kept away from these important stories. But the thing is he starts this Church of the Innocents. Everybody knows that he's this weird dude, he's already starting to hemorrhage money.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not his, it's his family's money which is kind of a complicated thing at the time period.
MARCUS PARKS
It's complicated, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's his but it's not his.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like your chunk of a country and so you spending money on stupid shit-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is emptying the coffers of a gigantic system, metropolitan system.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so he's already doing that.
MARCUS PARKS
Honestly I would say the system is more agrarian.
BEN KISSEL
Agrarian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that means when you tie your shoes professionally?
BEN KISSEL
That's equestrian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good. We're great here. But then he started the Church of the Holy Innocents and he wanted it to be an official church. But the thing is the Vatican does not lightly give that because mostly you need a priest to do that. You need somebody who's actually connected someway to the church infrastructure.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had none of that. And he started this Church of the Holy Innocents and everyone's like why are you doing this? Why are you making this? And it was freaking people out.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is the reason why.
MARCUS PARKS
Well with this chapel, Gilles would both recruit beautiful young boys as was his want and he would also simultaneously satisfy his love of ecclesiastical music. Specifically Gilles loved the hot pipes of yore.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
To the extent where he had a portable organ made which took only six people to carry.
BEN KISSEL
That's not bad. Portable!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is Marcus's dream.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
I would love to have someone who carried, like six guys who carried an organ.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
If I could have an organ on tour and then a man who could just play organ for me.
BEN KISSEL
At all times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(organ playing) You want that?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is your life? (organ playing)
MARCUS PARKS
All the time.
BEN KISSEL
That's be fun. It would make him happy, let him have it. Let him have a big organ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want one pair of innocent big pants.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, you have a bunch!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Al Roker's mean.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
You did have pairs of innocent big pants but you burned all of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Torched them.
BEN KISSEL
You torched your big pants?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they burned for days.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sure they did.
MARCUS PARKS
Well out of the 30 people who ran the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, most had been collected by Gilles during his travels and many had been recruited because of their combined abilities of keeping their mouth shut and their willingness to do anything for money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just a group of criminals.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Each one was dressed in the finest clothing, trailing robes of scarlet lined with squirrel fur. Which at the time was quite fancy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh yeah. It's like Kevin Spacey.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, that's incredible. Ooh wow, are you wearing possum today?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, how do you know? Playing dead.
MARCUS PARKS
I think at the time squirrels are not quite the rats of the park that they are now.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! They're not rats now! You're anti squirrel.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm not anti squirrel.
BEN KISSEL
You've been anti squirrel since day one. Anti pigeon, anti squirrel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, Marcus. Honestly i know that again, precious breaths today.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Precious breaths. Squirrels are adorable, squirrels are not rats.
MARCUS PARKS
Squirrels are adorable but squirrels are also very aggressive when you're in the park.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Squirrels are the baseball players of the small animal world where they get a lot of ass and they're always on the road.
BEN KISSEL
They really. They really do.
MARCUS PARKS
I love it when I see a squirrel in my backyard.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
But I do remember the Central Park squirrels could be quite aggressive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they'll nibble at ya. They'll fuck your wife.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, especially during COVID. Jesus, those squirrels were mean.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like maybe it's an indictment on your weakness because they're squirrels and you're a man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A squirrel can really destabilize all.
MARCUS PARKS
Well additionally the services were held in the most opulent church then in existence, which is saying quite a bit when we're talking about the Catholic church in the 15th century.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wasn't this like kind of peak, almost peak Catholic? I mean they were running the damn world, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Powerful times for the Catholic Church.
MARCUS PARKS
And this is peak waste for the Catholic Church as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is to me, this is like the equivalent in modern America, if I went and like opened up my own rogue at McDonald's and I did all the same signage.
MARCUS PARKS
McDowell's!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like McDowell's.
BEN KISSEL
McDowell's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If I opened my own McDowell's but then the main function of my McDonald's was to funnel children for me to have sex with.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It would be like that where like the church is like hey, listen, we don't care if you're fucking these kids, right, because we all do it.
MARCUS PARKS
They really didn't.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But hey, you didn't get a permit for this kid fucking shack.
BEN KISSEL
It's about licensing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
That really was the whole thing. Nobody cared that he was killing children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
What they cared about was that he hadn't consulted Catholic authorities and the Pope was double pissed because Gilles had appointed himself as bishop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really weird.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the thing is so it's really weird at the time period. That's like the key here is that it's one of those where everyone's just like hey, bro, hey, hey, hey. You know like with Michael Jackson. We thought you'd be putting out like an electronica album, why are you outfitting this teddy bear room?
BEN KISSEL
Well but what did he do, get himself a big hat? How do you make yourself bishop?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just go, I'm bishop!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's all you gotta do.
MARCUS PARKS
That's all you gotta do.
BEN KISSEL
I trust him just as much as Bishop Dolan, that motherfucker is always at the Met Gala, he's covered in gold chains.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh leave Timothy alone.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck him! Fuck him.
BEN KISSEL
He's demonic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you call yourself a bishop, I think you're legally allowed to call yourself a bishop if you say amen when you come on the back of a child.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness, Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fine, right? We can use that, that's fine.
BEN KISSEL
No, that is bad, really bad.
MARCUS PARKS
And with that, Gilles moved himself from the realm of nuisance to real problem and he made the first enemy that actually had the power to help bring him down, the church.
BEN KISSEL
Big enemy to have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's more like why? Why you do this though? Why are you doing this?
MARCUS PARKS
The word hubris applies quite a bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Hubris.
MARCUS PARKS
But of course Gilles de Rais wasn't satisfied with the pageantry of the Catholic Church to satisfy his theatrical needs. Gilles was about to enter the world of entertainment, using his relationship with Joan of Arc as the bridge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me entertain you.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me make you smile.
BEN KISSEL
It's okay honey, he's an actor, you can trust him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, here, come on my wet knees.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause it's flop sweat.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But like any worth their salt, Gilles actually forced one of his servants to act as his body double.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it's my dream!
BEN KISSEL
Oh, intriguing. You wanna be a body double or have a body double?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool to have a body double that goes out and does shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Discarding the servant's old name, whatever it may have been, Gilles began calling his double Rais l'Autre.
BEN KISSEL
What does that mean?
MARCUS PARKS
I think it might mean...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Little Rais.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it means Little Rais. I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Little Rais?
MARCUS PARKS
I have no idea what it means.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, where's my boy, Little Rais?
MARCUS PARKS
Where's my Little Rais?
BEN KISSEL
Gilles 2.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was before they understood the power of the sequel.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then all of a sudden, once you get to Quantumania, it starts to burn out.
BEN KISSEL
I agree with that.
MARCUS PARKS
And he dressed him in appropriately splendid clothing when de Rais needed a substitute. This gave Gilles a fun game to play because when Rais l'Autre played Gilles in public, Gilles could be both actor and spectator.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh. Do you remember Michael Jackson's halftime show where there was three Michael Jacksons, it was one of the best halftime shows of all time? He shows up on the megatrons, he comes out of nowhere out of the smoke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It actually weirdly sent a chill up my spine because it's actually very similar.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. That halftime show was amazing.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Say what you want but that halftime show was good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He kept trying to blame the man in the mirror but it was the man in the bedroom.
BEN KISSEL
Leave him alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's really scary because in my mind I'm seeing like a psychological, like this is like Talented Mr. Ripley shit.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where it's like he's gone so far into his world of his own fucking fantasies, he's a bishop, he's a leader of an army, he's a multi multi millionaire, and now he's a producer. And just the idea of sitting back and puffing on something and watching yourself perform as yourself, like do weird type of things.
BEN KISSEL
That's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool but it feels like a David Cronenberg movie.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I mean it's scary. And I would be like ugh, shouldn't have done that up there, other me. Yikes, other me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You suck!
BEN KISSEL
Hey other me, you're really fucking blowing it!
MARCUS PARKS
But even though most of his life was fun, games, and child murder at this point, every once in a while Gilles would have to attend to his military duties as Marshal of France, which had sort of lost its luster since he discovered that his real taste for blood could only be satisfied by a younger vintage.
BEN KISSEL
Oh lord.
MARCUS PARKS
I gotta have a cryptkeeper moment every once in a while.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(evil laughter)
BEN KISSEL
Only every once in a while, Marcus. In no way is it constantly your life. No, every now and again I gotta be a little weird. Okay, Marcus. You can be a little weird once in a while.
MARCUS PARKS
See when Gilles was asked by-
BEN KISSEL
We had to do a fucking mandate on the stream without him. It was Marcus' videos, we just had to live in your brain for an hour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just crawling around in that soup for a while.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god, it's just a woman covered in honey for some reason.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fine though.
BEN KISSEL
It was good.
MARCUS PARKS
It was amazing. And that was like you're lucky I didn't show the one where she covered herself in Nutella.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I would have seen it.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that would have been amazing.
MARCUS PARKS
See when Gilles was asked by his cousin Georges de la Trémoille to help with a siege by the Burgundian armies, Gilles for the first time Simply told Georges de la Trémoille that he didn't have the liquid assets on hand to raise an army. Usually Gilles' up and at 'em.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh of course because that was his favoring thing on the face of the planet was to go to war.
BEN KISSEL
Not anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now he's got hot pipes he's organizing, he's got a fucking... You know, not to be anything, grooming kids takes time.
MARCUS PARKS
He's not really grooming anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's the thing.
BEN KISSEL
Well he's also doing other things. Basically he's happy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And I feel like that doesn't make-
MARCUS PARKS
I mean objectively he is happy.
BEN KISSEL
He is. That does not make for the best general or warrior. You have to be kind of miserable.
MARCUS PARKS
Little bit. You have to be somewhat unsatisfied.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the issue, he's too satisfied.
BEN KISSEL
He's too happy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That is very much an issue.
BEN KISSEL
He's got everything, a juggler, an actor, a comedian at his whim.
MARCUS PARKS
Well finally, Georges de la Trémoille, he said fuck it, I'll pay for it. Just send your men, I'll pay your men.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But Gilles, he took the money and he sent his brother René in his place. Because I mean this guy did want Gilles because Gilles was a brilliant military commander. But Gilles just went home. Then the Burgundians wiped the floor with his brother René because René was a shitty commander. He wasn't anywhere near as good as Gilles.
BEN KISSEL
So they killed him.
MARCUS PARKS
He wasn't killed.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He lost.
MARCUS PARKS
He lost a lot of men. He lost, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They bonked him on the head.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You're a loser.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Get outta here, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do the thing in Crusader Kings III where the two groups go ah! And they attack each other. Ah! And the numbers go slowly down.
BEN KISSEL
Man, it's almost like you were in Vietnam.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel it everyday, man.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But to Gilles de Rais, none of this mattered at all.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
MARCUS PARKS
See by this point, military life had become boring and noble life had become double boring.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
All Gilles wanted to do was murder children, run his fake church, and of course produce incredibly lavish theatrical plays whose costs would have dwarfed even the largest of modern Hollywood budgets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Except for Avatar 2.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Actually I would put it on par with Avatar 2.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
MARCUS PARKS
I really would.
BEN KISSEL
People liked that movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, sure, sure.
BEN KISSEL
I haven't watched the Avatar.
MARCUS PARKS
I've never watched any of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's definitely a great way to pass time in hospice.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I mean honestly, that's what I plan on doing, watching all of these things when I'm dying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That'll be great. If he just didn't murder the kids, everything else is fine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, sure.
BEN KISSEL
I mean the fixtures. Russell Brand right now, if he could start a church, would.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
And it would be full of some the dumbest attractive people that's ever lived.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is just going past eccentric.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's the thing, they understood for a while, like the idea of him opening his house and having a never ending store of food and entertainment and booze. They're all like Gilles' crazy, he's crazy. But then after a while when he built this church that they're all like again, just straight up like you know you're ruining it for all the rest of us and truly institutionally given in pedophiles, right? Like this thing that you're doing is like blowing this up to a level that none of us want. Like this is really gross and this is for 1400s, their version of this is really gross.
BEN KISSEL
The Catholic Church in the 1400s.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you gotta be pretty gross to make them think you're doing something gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think a part of the Gilles de Rais is innocent crowd, I think part of the reason why they want him to be innocent because if he's not a child murderer, then he's a fantastic historical character.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh he's hilarious.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a hilarious eccentric, he's Joan of Arc's fun best friend. Like (French accent) Joan, let's go party!
BEN KISSEL
I mean is anyone getting like a divorce over this? Like do people be like no, I'm a Gilleshead. Are people like ending relationships?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are people-
BEN KISSEL
Who gives a fuck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, well there are people that have dedicated their entire lives to this very subject.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And then they wake up one day and they realize they're 90 years old and what have they done? Absolutely nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
I personally, I have respect for those people but we'll get to that later on. I have respect for someone who-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do too!
BEN KISSEL
I love the stories.
MARCUS PARKS
Who devotes their life to history and knowledge.
BEN KISSEL
Yes but not just this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you know what I love? The reason why we get into our historical topics, you know what I love? It's all about perspectives.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's because you can say more offensive things because it happened 500 years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a bonus. It's a picker.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Gilles' medium of theatrical expression was the mystery play.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I love a good-
MARCUS PARKS
It's not what you think.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, it's not?
MARCUS PARKS
It's not fun mystery, no.
BEN KISSEL
Who did it?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no.
BEN KISSEL
You know what I like to do is be like you did it! Like right when it starts.
MARCUS PARKS
Right when it starts.
BEN KISSEL
You did it! And then I ruin it for everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's great.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, back then the word mystery and miracle were more or less interchangeable.
BEN KISSEL
Makes sense, I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
So these were stories taken from the Bible.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They were also taken from secular history just so long as that history involved a miracle from god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because that was like the zhuzh.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what put butts in seats.
BEN KISSEL
I mean that's a lot of great stories. So they work well on the stage, I suppose.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well grandiose spectacles with enormous stages full of color and great movement, mystery plays had scripts that reach beyond 500 pages and they often took a week to perform. These were the summer blockbusters of the 15th century.
BEN KISSEL
That's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Specifically these were like the Avengers movies, they were like 3.5 hours long and pretty cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And people would arrive for days.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone comes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they would play for days.
BEN KISSEL
Specifically it's like WrestleMania that I'm going to this weekend, Saturday and Sunday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
That's a whole event. And tonight, Friday there's an event, but I'm not gonna go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. If we want to be classy about it, it's sort of like Wagner's Wagner's Ring Cycle.
BEN KISSEL
Classy?
MARCUS PARKS
Where it takes like three days.
BEN KISSEL
WrestleMania is the performance in front of the gods.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah so was technically-
BEN KISSEL
You don't think WrestleMania is classy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just move on.
BEN KISSEL
You don't think WrestleMania is classy.
MARCUS PARKS
Classy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the man.
BEN KISSEL
Muhammad Ali performed at WrestleMania.
MARCUS PARKS
Performed?
BEN KISSEL
Cindy Lauper. Yeah, he shook which is a performance. Cindy Lauper.
MARCUS PARKS
Was at a WrestleMania.
BEN KISSEL
She performed at WrestleMania.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember Lou Albano was there.
BEN KISSEL
He was also at one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember Undertaker.
BEN KISSEL
Mike Tyson.
MARCUS PARKS
Let me ask you this, was Val Venis ever at a WrestleMania?
BEN KISSEL
Val Venis is now paralyzed, okay? Can you please...
MARCUS PARKS
Was The Godfather?
BEN KISSEL
The Godfather, he actually runs a strip club.
MARCUS PARKS
Were the words pimpin' ain't easy said at a WrestleMania?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, I didn't know I was dealing with such a fucking elitist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. He's only got a few precious breaths.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Oh my god, with that new Hillary Rodham Clinton tattoo you have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was gonna say when he came in with his pussy hat on, I was like that's fine. He can be like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's got Maddowhead tattooed on his lower back.
MARCUS PARKS
I do, I did. And I got it all done this week. I've changed. This is what's changed.
BEN KISSEL
Great. WrestleMania is a classy event for the record.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anything ending in mania is always extremely classy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, all right, let's move on.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at the time, the most famous mystery plays had been the Mystery of Adam about the creation of the universe and the Mystery of the Passion, which is of course about Jesus' crucifixion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those are the big ones.
MARCUS PARKS
The big things.
BEN KISSEL
Man, the Stations of the Cross, if you want just a good cerebral horror movie, just the Stations of the Cross is the best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, Passion of the Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Passion of the Christ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fantastic horror movie.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean these mystery plays Mystery of Adam, Mystery of the Passion, it's like Jaws and Star Wars.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. The best.
MARCUS PARKS
But Gilles' grand theatrical production of which he oversaw every aspect from the costumes to the sets, was Le mystère du siège d'Orléans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Perfect.
BEN KISSEL
The Mister Who Shits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mister Who Shits! It's that man right over there.
BEN KISSEL
I did it.
MARCUS PARKS
The Mystery of the Siege of Orleans.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He wrote a whole play about him and Joan of Arc taking Orléans.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you look into it, I found a really cool doctorate thesis on the origins of Le mystère du siège d'Orléans, right. And what they say is very, very interesting is that they're like well of all the other mysteries, there's documentation about who wrote it because they're so huge and they also get added to over like 100 years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And when he was producing this play, it was during a time period when Joan of Arc was, as we said before, they were trying to be like shush, let's not.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, she sucked, she was a witch, we burned her.
MARCUS PARKS
Well not necessarily. This was the side that was pro Joan of Arc.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They just wanted her to go away.
BEN KISSEL
Cool off.
MARCUS PARKS
Cool off, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just didn't want to make it such a big deal over this. I mean we got a king, we don't need a child prophet in the mix here.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Focus on the king, don't focus on Joan of Arc. The king, he's the one with divine connections.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's doing it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's doing it.
BEN KISSEL
What about her laptop?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we do need to look in Joan of Arc's laptop.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, folks. What about her laptop from hell, folks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the truth we're not hearing. So he was putting this out there during a time period where everyone's being like okay, this is weird, right. But they were like looking into the origins
where this play came from. They have a really hard time. They're like well we have like one version of it but the one thing that really stood out was that Gilles de Rais was kind of cut out of any sort.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's receipts that show that he paid for shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But all of these people at the time kind of like struck his name from the record. He was just for some reason not really included in this time period, especially because they know that in the 10 years after the Battle of Orléans, that started to become a little like a semi unofficial holiday that people would kind of do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this play started showing up with Gilles de Rais attached to it and it was just this weird thing where everyone kind of like pushed him away. He got Kevin Spacey'd is what I'm trying to say.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my theory is that they all knew-
MARCUS PARKS
It's like season 5 of House of Cards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Well that one was the different one, that was weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the idea is that they knew that he was so gross that they were already trying to erase him from history at the time period.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they didn't want him involved because it was also this weird touchy thing. Because Le mystère du siège d'Orléans didn't become official until after she was exonerated in the 1450s.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this play, it naturally featured Joan of Arc in the lead but playing the supporting role was a highly fictionalized version of Gilles de Rais who appeared as a faithful and devoted servant to Joan of Arc and her godly motivations. Now since mystery plays were so incredibly expensive by their very nature, the investment costs were usually covered by city governments, clergy, or wealthy private citizens like Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That is the upfront cost, that's the investment, that's your foreign investors. And like today's productions, these costs were usually offset by the price of admission. It's more about breaking even than it is about turning profit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Love theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it is about theater's sake and it's about you and promoting your name.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Admission however was charged on a sliding scale. For the poor it cost one franc to be a groundling.
BEN KISSEL
Not bad. I got a couple of francs in my closet right now. Pull them out, have them tell a couple of jokes, they'll walk right in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are those your dead sex slave zombies like you're Jeff Dahmer?
MARCUS PARKS
You've got Frank Caliendo in your closet?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
BEN KISSEL
I'm John Madden.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, he's everybody!
BEN KISSEL
I'm Bill Clinton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that good?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is good.
BEN KISSEL
I was thinking Frank from Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
MARCUS PARKS
That's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure, that's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's much more fun than Frank Caliendo.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Frank Caliendo. I'm John Madden. He's very talented.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
MARCUS PARKS
He is. But with Gilles de Rais, who seemed intent on showing off in every aspect of the production of his own mystery play, he paid for everything and charged nothing for admission. In addition, he gave everyone access to a full buffet of venison, succulent fish, mead, and wine.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
For every single performance for 5 months.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everyone's just like okay, cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Free meals, you got to do this. And then Gilles de Rais said it's just about performance, it's about what we're trying to do.
MARCUS PARKS
It's about community.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about community.
BEN KISSEL
It is, it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Movies are a community that I come around.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like it was a better time to be poor back then. You got all this free food.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe it was a better week to be poor.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, there you go!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One day might've been nice.
BEN KISSEL
That's kinda fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's still all hot, old succulent fish.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah but-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're still hanging out outside.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but venison, I mean that's a real good cut. That's a good meat there.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a good meat, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. If you hit a deer in Wisconsin, you can eat it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah?
BEN KISSEL
You can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless you pop it's fucking shit bag inside of it, then you contaminate all the meat.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Oh well that's true. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in order to raise the cash to pay for all this, Gilles maxed out his credit using his land, castles, art, furniture, and books as collateral. Gilles also paid 2-3 times the actual price for everything he bought, although it's not clear if he paid high prices as a show of wealth, through impatience, or because he just had no idea how much anything cost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I think it was, what was it, the mom from Arrested Development?
MARCUS PARKS
What's a banana cost, $10?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as the actual cost of production went, Gilles paid 140 actors with speaking parts while 500-600 people were paid as extras. Every single performance.
BEN KISSEL
Damn, that's a lot of people. How big was the stage?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Huge.
MARCUS PARKS
It was massive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Huge!
MARCUS PARKS
Massive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they said they had to build it regularly to look like they would make it... In the Mystery of the Passion you'd have like Christ there and they'd put all the angels and all the people and you'd have a guy playing god and you got a bunch of people sucking on his feet, washing his feet, for some reason they're all obsessed with washing his feet.
BEN KISSEL
Right. It's metaphorical, I think.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was big enough where they were actually able to convincingly show movement of armies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's cool.
BEN KISSEL
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
From one scene to another.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I would love to have seen one of these. It sounds incredible.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of like what they do at the opera.
BEN KISSEL
A little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well every single person, every single actor had to be dressed in the most authentic costumes possible. And everything had to be made from the finest cloth, even if the costume was torn into rags to represent someone who was to represent a peasant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. He would do like what Balenciaga does.
MARCUS PARKS
Balenciaga?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where you take a thing, you look like a homeless person but the whole outfit costs like $15,000.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They're controversial, Balenciaga.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are.
BEN KISSEL
Balenciaga.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's actually why it's appropriate because Gilles de Rais is the Balenciaga of this story.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But perhaps what was most incredible about these costumes was the fact that Gilles made a rule where every actor only wore their costume once.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, then what happened to it?
MARCUS PARKS
They would throw it away and make a new one for every single performance.
BEN KISSEL
That's wasting a lot of money.
MARCUS PARKS
700 new costumes for every single performance.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Now after months of preparation, Gilles made his debut on May 8th, 1435, just four years after the death of Joan of Arc, when her rise as a hero of the French and her fall as a supposed heretic was still a fresh memory. In fact, one could say that Gilles de Rais was the first person that recognized Joan of Arc as a martyr.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh he definitely put it on the map.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Did you know in the NFL, NFL players have to buy their jerseys?
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that crazy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you mean?
BEN KISSEL
Also the president, you know if he goes to the kitchen or she goes to the kitchen, they gotta pay for it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
They have to pay for the sandwiches.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you even talking about?
MARCUS PARKS
They have to pay for the sandwiches.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What? Where does this come from?
BEN KISSEL
I'm talking about the 700 wardrobe changes that they had every single show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, of course he had to pay for it, it was his production.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was a producer.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just saying the NFL doesn't even do that. And if you're the leader of the free world, you also have to pay for your sandwiches.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta pay for everything in some aspect.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, in the kitchen.
MARCUS PARKS
Where did you hear that the president has to pay for sandwiches?
BEN KISSEL
That's a fact, that was from the White House chef.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you talking about? The only man who ever did that was probably Jimmy Carter.
BEN KISSEL
Nope. That was the White House chef who worked for Bill Clinton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just a simple peanut farmer.
BEN KISSEL
That's Bob Dylan. That's not even close to Jimmy Carter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A little bit, a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
It's more Randy Newman.
BEN KISSEL
Not a president.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it Jimmy Carter?
BEN KISSEL
You're about to do Welcome Back, Kotter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I put an IOU in the jar.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the reviews for the Siege of Orléans, fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
All right!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, it was a big play.
MARCUS PARKS
It was an absolute hit. As far as the story went, Joan of Arc was portrayed as a saint of the highest order while Gilles was portrayed in a fully glamorized version of himself as her faithful servant, because that's how he wanted the public to see him.
BEN KISSEL
It is interesting. He made himself kind of the second fiddle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was only one little character in one chunk of it.
BEN KISSEL
That's interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was because he wanted to watch himself.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but he didn't make himself the most grandiose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he would be sitting on like an elevated chair amongst the audience like watching his own play, just going like ha ha ha! Like how we watch old YouTube clips of ourselves on our television and go you're the best comedian I've ever seen!
BEN KISSEL
I don't know about that. We have different nights.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for him it wasn't about being glorified on stage, for him it was about showing the decadence that he could put on this play.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact, it was a bit more of a plus for him to not be portrayed as one of the main characters because it's like (French accent) oh look at this, I can put on this entire play. It is not about me, it is about Jeanne.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeanne.
MARCUS PARKS
I just want to make sure that everybody sees how good Jeanne is.
BEN KISSEL
No, I think there's something to that because-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Harvey Weinstein being like I just want people to know that Gwyneth Paltrow has got the nice, she's just got a nice couples, right.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think that is what he said, that's not even what he sounds like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we gotta slam 'em up there, we got the sensitive guy with his little mustache and we got Romeo and Juliet. But then she's got the badoongas coming out, now that a movie right there. That's a fucking movie.
BEN KISSEL
That's ruining the movie. It was more like when we watched Page 7 and WizBru perform in Brooklyn and we didn't have to do anything and we ate all the cheese in the green room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's how we're like Gilles de Rais, great.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. We're like this is even better than performing. Remember?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But we did have to pay for the food that we ate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's what a rider is.
MARCUS PARKS
We always do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that makes sense.
BEN KISSEL
It all makes sense.
MARCUS PARKS
It took me years to make the two of you understand that that shit we get in the rider, we have to pay for that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It took one year.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, we knew that.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think you did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At first I didn't but then I immediately knew it.
BEN KISSEL
I knew it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well let's hear an example of some lines that Gilles' character said in the play.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
This is him pledging his service to Joan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lady, have no doubt of me-
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, it's not Ray Liotta.
BEN KISSEL
What is this? What are these accents?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Harvey Weinstein.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is me doing a Harvey Weinstein.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want it to be Harvey Weinstein.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I don't wanna do a Harvey Weinstein. Give it more of a French romantic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lady-
BEN KISSEL
Why are you going Italian?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lady-
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Just let him do whatever he wants.
MARCUS PARKS
No, if he must do a horrible man, then do Gérard Depardieu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) "Lady, have no doubt of me. I wish but to do your will. My friends and underlings know why I did it."
BEN KISSEL
Just do it the way you were doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) "I shall come and we shall do your will in everything." Oh, I've got to pee. I've got to pee.
BEN KISSEL
In a lab! Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But later on in the play when the other commanders are questioning the wisdom of Joan's tactics, Gilles is shown as her greatest defender, basically showing everyone that if it weren't for Gilles, there would be no Joan. Which is actually true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) "We should refuse her or nothing and have no doubt of victory since she is at the head." Ah! Like great Gilles, great stuff, Gilles.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And so with this scintillating dialogue, Le mystère du siège d'Orléans ran daily for 5 months, every day for 5 months.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Billy Joel at MSG.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Dude, that's kinda fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. Glorifying both Joan and Gilles while conveniently leaving out that Gilles stayed silent and did nothing during the 6 months of the trial that was sure to lead to Joan's execution.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It probably actually helped her get caught.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Gilles was producing Le mystère du siège d'Orléans, I get better every time I say it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You do.
MARCUS PARKS
And during its entire 5 month run, it's important to remember that he was also still luring children into castles and murdering them slowly and horrifically. That never stopped.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, Gilles de Rais' place in the French theatrical world is exactly what QAnon followers believe modern Hollywood to be, a cesspool of pedophilic child murderers ultimately run by the so-called elite.
BEN KISSEL
I mean... It's like the seed but then they grow into a dumb tree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's the dumb tree that grows out of like one seed.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the dumb tree, yes. Yeah, we do know that there are pedophiles in Hollywood, we absolutely know that. We know that there are sexual predators in Hollywood, we absolutely know that.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But ritualistic child murder on the part of Tom Hanks and Oprah might be a bridge too far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just because their schedules are so packed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so hard to get them together in one place.
BEN KISSEL
Together, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine getting Oprah, Tom Hanks, and Bill Clinton in one room? That takes 6 months to orchestrate.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it does.
BEN KISSEL
I think they're all the same person.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But while the similarities are interesting, Gilles was more of a QAnon unto himself. But there was also never any supposed hero working behind the scenes to bring him to justice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, as a matter of fact-
MARCUS PARKS
There was no storm coming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Everybody that was around him was somebody who he slowly but surely either positioned to be close to him because they were cool with it or they owed him a bunch of money.
BEN KISSEL
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or just straight up evil.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or they had a stake in Gilles de Rais staying in power.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean in reality, nobody around Gilles de Rais gave a fuck about anything he was doing just so long as it didn't mess with anyone else's power and privilege. And really there wasn't much of a point to Gilles de Rais' successes, decadent and depraved just for the point of being decadent and depraved. Besides, Gilles never worried about the expenditures during the production of his mystery play because he believed that all of his money troubles would soon be solved by black magic and alchemy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh sweet!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly he's not wrong.
BEN KISSEL
I mean okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean he turned out to be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Gilles de Rais' dabblings in the magical world actually began north of the Satanic realm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jersey.
BEN KISSEL
Oh very nice.
MARCUS PARKS
When it came to mysticism, Gilles was introduced to magic by Joan of Arc, who had seemingly used divine powers to defeat the English even if those same powers didn't translate to battles against the Burgundians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, even we know god ain't at 100%.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No and the Burundians are always going to be in god's favor.
MARCUS PARKS
That's part of the magic of it is that it was said that just so long as Joan paid fealty to god and listened to the voices, then she always won, she always had somebody to save her. But the moment she started going off on her own and not listening to the voices, then that's when she was captured and killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that was the problem, you're looking at all these voices and the only thing they want to say to you is like hey, Joan, show me the titties.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're like hey, I got a job.
MARCUS PARKS
I got a job.
BEN KISSEL
You got a job to do, Joan.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Gilles was seemingly seeing god's intervention in the real world which showed him that the supernatural was indeed real, he encountered a knight in possession of a grimoire.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the book certainly contained information about summoning demons but to Gilles, the most important entries had to do with the practice of alchemy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now remember this is fucking real practical for Gilles.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, this is all...
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Magic is a practical thing for these people.
BEN KISSEL
It's gonna work out great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting because it's like he's... I was trying to figure out the proper connection to modern times.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I couldn't quite figure it out either. It's something that like it's frowned upon. I don't know, like short selling stock?
BEN KISSEL
Oh, it's like people who do the crossing over stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that, it's also political candidates that obviously probably are child molesters that also join the evangelical groups to kind of get their support.
BEN KISSEL
Could be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's something about him joining forces with straight up con people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's another part of his mania.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well let's get briefly into alchemy. For those of you who don't know, alchemy was a sort of middle ages front runner of chemistry that also combined occultism, philosophy, magic, and astrology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lifestyle, baby.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now alchemy certainly had other uses but its most famous application was the transmuting of baser substances like lead into pure gold.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also there is a constant debate about whether or not, is that an allegorical meaning.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then a lot of them say well the thing is yes, it's allegorical but also-
BEN KISSEL
Only because it didn't fucking work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
They tried.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Well that was allegorical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is all about symbolism.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know, I drank too much to have sex with you. But it's all just about the fact that it's about symbolism.
BEN KISSEL
Our Catholic priest, Father Steve, used to talk all the time about how he saw the bread turn into body and flesh, I swear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh of course.
BEN KISSEL
But I don't think that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's not.
BEN KISSEL
I think they bought a rib eye and threw it in with the crackers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We just covered the fucking story of the woman who lost the toes who got shot by her husband and then they made the toes grow back and then they're not showing us the goddamn toes!
BEN KISSEL
Showusthetoes.com.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This would be huge! Show us the fucking toes!
BEN KISSEL
Show us the toes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now medieval alchemists failed again and again in their attempt at such a miracle because I mean even if it was an allegory for some, it definitely wasn't an allegory for Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But instead of concluding that such a thing was impossible, alchemists decided that they must be missing some unknown ingredient.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamnit Barry, did you piss in it? Yeah. Did you spit in it? Yeah. Did you fuck a virgin last night? No. Let's redo the whole thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly, all those things I was doing anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
And they ended up referring to this secret sauce as the philosopher's stone. Then seemingly for the hell of it, they also decided that the philosopher's stone could be used to make a tea or wine that produced an elixir of immortality.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
Which is where alchemist Nicholas Flamel enters the picture. Now supposedly Nicholas Flamel, who was a real guy, he actually existed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He had discovered the philosopher's stone. And while for us Flamel is a centuries old figure, for Gilles de Rais, Nicholas Flamel died when Gilles was 14 years old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He was right there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They invented alchemy during his lifetime.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Therefore Flamel and the philosopher's stone were within living memory. And Flamel had been French to boot, local guy. Nicholas had made his wealth speculating in real estate which gave him the appearance of bottomless pockets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that has been around since time, since buildings can be sold.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Since land.
BEN KISSEL
Real estate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They'd be like I'm not really liquid right now.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Real estate, a tale as old as time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And since Flamel also dabbled in alchemy, a rumor started that he had found the philosopher's stone, that's why he had bottomless pockets.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is like when you see someone just being like why are they always on a boat on Instagram? Like why are they always on a boat?
BEN KISSEL
Sometimes they photoshop themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And sometimes they're yachting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I know, I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this is highly interesting to Gilles de Rais because he wanted to live life the way he'd been living it in every aspect. So he needed Nicholas Flamel's magic rock that created gold.
BEN KISSEL
Of course he did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you've now built a probably $100 million church to molest people in. Then you've also put on a play.
BEN KISSEL
For theater! What about the theater?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, he put on a play which is technically very positive.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's very positive. He put on the play, hundreds of millions of dollars went into this. You are hemorrhaging money and you are an unrepentant child molesting psychopath that's also not good at work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so you're sitting there being like ugh, this is not gonna continue. You literally must have a magical rock.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And I know that the philosopher's stone is not necessarily a magical rock, it's a word for a substance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Or it's an allegory. But for our purposes, it's a fucking magic rock.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It might as well be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See the thing about Gilles de Rais that's often misunderstood when people call him a satanic pedophile child killer is that the satanic part is somewhat of an exaggeration.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, let's leave the Satanists alone.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it definitely makes him sound more ghoulish and interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's not his main gig.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Put another way, he did not get into black magic and Satan because it was evil and rad like other occult murder torture killers like Richard Ramirez and Bob Berdella. Instead, Gilles de Rais got in the game for money. That's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the only reason why, for money.
BEN KISSEL
There's so much money in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he didn't know. He was just like well I've tried being an army for hire but then I have to travel.
BEN KISSEL
It's a lot of work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I try to do all of this but I just spend money. I'm not making any money and I don't know why.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Start charging money for the theater, the tickets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nah. But then everyone won't think I'm the greatest guy in the world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because remember how Bernie Madoff said that was his ultimate flaw was that he just wanted to be a good guy to everybody.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he just didn't know. And they wanted me to be the go-to guy, so I needed to be the go-to guy for them.
MARCUS PARKS
He cared too much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He cared too much, he worked too hard.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
See what Gilles needed more than anything was cash to spend so he could maintain his fantasy of unlimited privilege, the whole thing of him trying to recreate his childhood. So he pawned properties, he pawned castles, sometimes he sold entire towns at fire sale prices in order to get cash as fast as possible to buy more stuff and to pay for more theatrical productions.
BEN KISSEL
That'd be a fun Pawn Stars episode.
MARCUS PARKS
A town?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna need to call in my expert and it's Barbara.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Barbara Corcoran. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
From Shark Tank. She's horny. She's so... Fuck you right now, dude. She is so horny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just want to be left alone by her.
BEN KISSEL
She's in real estate.
MARCUS PARKS
But speaking of Gilles' productions, it seems as if he already understood some pretty heavy magical principles even while he was producing Le mystère du siège d'Orléans, or at least he was trying to figure out some magical principles. See it's been theorized that Gilles was attempting to magically invoke the spirit of Joan of Arc through the mystery play. I don't know why, it's just been speculated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because what we know about tulpas? You know what I mean? That is the thing that is the very old concept. But also with just the maybe kind of a hope.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean he might just miss his friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those were his best times, those were his best years.
MARCUS PARKS
They really were his best years. His time with Joan, that was the peak of his life. And a lot of serial killers too, they also say like oh, I need someone to stop me, why won't somebody stop me?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And I think maybe he thinks that if Joan of Arc comes back then he will stop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And he'll be a better person, he won't fucking murder children anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's been theorized that he of course was trying to invoke the spirit of Joan of Arc. And through his studies he had learned that a requirement for magic was that every material used in a magical ritual had to be quote unquote "virgin", never used before.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But what these people did not know, if this is true that they were all part of some super ritual, like some big old thing, is that's technically also against magical ritual principles as it is.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna go do your well technically, Gilles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna go do that with Gilles de Rais?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what he needed! He needed somebody like me.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna pull a technical, you're gonna pull a Reddit card?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It didn't work, did it?
MARCUS PARKS
I'm gonna pull a technical card. Well technically this is 15th century magic, you're talking more 18th century magic, 19th century magic. You're talking Order of the Golden Dawn magic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These hermetic teachings came from somewhere, didn't they?
BEN KISSEL
You know guys, we'll discuss it later over a drink.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this is why Gilles insisted that the costumes be made anew for every performance because to use any object secondhand or to use anything that had been used in non magical endeavors was to court failure if not outright disaster. But Gilles, he didn't care about spending insane amounts of money because by the time his spending habits had reached their heights, he had already come to believe that he was just a hair away from discovering the secret to unlimited wealth through alchemy and black magic.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what this is, man? This is Jeffrey Epstein dumping his money into Harvard scientists trying to live forever, like trying to isolate his cock into moving to space.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like it's that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is. Yeah, yeah. And this by the way, this is old magic. This is grimoire magic. This is Merlin magic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
This is not Aleister Crowley and his fucking poncy friends having imaginary spell spats in overpriced London flats.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Less butt plugs, maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh these guys thought they had god on tap.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And the devil on tap, more importantly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, on draught. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing is that these grimoires that were being written, like this is a grimoire that was written like last week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
These were transcribed grimoires. This is before the printing press. So only the most wealthy could afford these.
BEN KISSEL
Right. And so you would say then, maybe admit that writing those grimoires might be more difficult than dictating them then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, writing them-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't you fall into his little fucking trap. The person who writes it is the person who thinks of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the person who thinks of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The person that just fucking writes it is basically a typewriter.
MARCUS PARKS
There is a word for that, it's called a scribe.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. And indeed, a scribe, without a scribe, who gives a fuck what you're saying? Because they had to write it all down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's you!
MARCUS PARKS
That's you. That is your entire life.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Is just talking and no one writing it down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's what we do. That's what you and I do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, people write down my words in their mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you're saying they're doing the hard work of writing down the words in their mind while you're just-
BEN KISSEL
They hear my words like Frodo saw the ring. Memorized, they put it in their brains because of the way I've learned how to speak.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've lost your... This is it. This is the moment.
BEN KISSEL
No! No, anyway. It is difficult to write. You know.
MARCUS PARKS
I know.
BEN KISSEL
You know.
MARCUS PARKS
I know. Now sometime around 1436, Gilles was told of a goldsmith who claimed to know the secrets of alchemy. So Gilles found the man, gave him a single silver piece, and told him to transmute it to gold.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead the goldsmith took the piece, locked himself in a room, got drunk, passed out, woke up, and absconded with the silver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically that's a consultation.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
BEN KISSEL
It's hilarious. I just like that that happened. That will happen now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I love this again, it's the same brains, they had the same brains that we have.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So just surrounded by con men.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. And this was only the first of many, many men to hoodwink Gilles de Rais under the guise of teaching him one sort of magic or another. But even though his first foray was a bust, Gilles was tantalized by the possibility of transmutation. So he got two of his priests at the Chapel of Holy Innocents who usually found them boys, they said put that on hold.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
I got other people to get me boys, I want you guys on finding me magicians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what that meant? That's a decision that came from a fresh ejaculate.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's a clear headed idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Clear headed decision, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the first priest was Eustache Blanchet and the second was Father Andre Boucher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bobby Boucher.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He'd recently brought Gilles a 9 year old boy to rape and murder in exchange for a really nice horse.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big pants. That's the big pants of that time period.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's that. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
And so through Blanchet, Boucher, and Gilles' cousin Gilles de Sillé, de Rais... God.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of French.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of French, a lot of French.
MARCUS PARKS
And it all rhymes. He began interviewing potential magicians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god.
BEN KISSEL
That must have been fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What a terrible lobby.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
One known only as Trompette later claimed that he had instructed Gilles on how to sign a pact with the devil using his own blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
First thing you do is you gotta pop open the skin, right, then you just sign your John Hancock right on this slip of paper. John Hancock's not gonna be around for another century.
BEN KISSEL
No, he's not. And it's Herbie Hancock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Funny old bit.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. So these guys are just killing a bunch of rabbits in front of him and doing a bunch of tricks with doves and cards and stuff?
MARCUS PARKS
They probably got some of that fun powder that you throw into a fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Poof!
BEN KISSEL
Poof. Are you afraid of the dark?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But Gilles, he later insisted during his trial that he never sold his soul to the devil for power or for riches?
BEN KISSEL
I mean that's really not even... Why are we talking about that?
MARCUS PARKS
Because.
BEN KISSEL
Because there's so many other things, like there's tangible things that he did that were really wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting because it's how they frame it, it's how they frame what he did. Meanwhile he's just straight up being like no, no, no, no, no, we never fucking conjured up the devil. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get him on the phone? We gotta talk to other people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Waste of time here, let's just get to the charges, shall we?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that later. But yeah, his whole thing was that from his perspective, god was definitely real. He didn't want to go to hell. He did fear for his immortal soul. So he figured that he did the same thing his grandfather Jean de Craon did, is that at the end of my life, I'll just say give me a mulligan.
BEN KISSEL
A mulligan!
MARCUS PARKS
Fucking forgive me, god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's built in.
MARCUS PARKS
I repent, forgive me god. And he'll go straight to heaven and then in a few 100 years he'll welcome Adolf Hitler and say how are you doing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly they're all hanging out right now.
MARCUS PARKS
They're all hanging out right now.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that fun to think about?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as far as the no magic rule went, Gilles figured that he could find a back door to the powers of sorcery and alchemy without selling his soul like a common peasant.
BEN KISSEL
He's trying to cheat this? The whole thing is a cheat. He's trying to do a life cheat and he's trying to hack the life cheat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. When it comes down to it, it's about negotiations. You gotta get in there.
BEN KISSEL
I still don't know who this impression is of.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Harvey Weinstein.
BEN KISSEL
I don't even think it sounds like him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at him! Watch his interviews!
BEN KISSEL
I've seen the ugly man that he is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I went, I made sure. This morning I boiled two hard boiled eggs to know what his dick looked like.
MARCUS PARKS
You know, it's incredible how many men in this city look like him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called a producer's body.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is like every time I drive out to my doctor, I have to drive through Beverly Hills.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I always see a weird fat man in his front yard talking to somebody and he always looks like Harvey Weinstein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's becoming me! I'm going to eventually turn do that but be a good one. But that's the problem is when I drive with my top down in the car, it's never women that check it out, it's always some other fat man that's just like nice.
MARCUS PARKS
With a beard.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well sometimes it's just 5 o'clock shadow.
BEN KISSEL
All right, let's not expound on it too much further.
MARCUS PARKS
But with each magician Gilles met, the interview usually came with some sort of demonstration of power or the appearance of power. And while most of these magicians were allegedly and technically successful in showing, they made show, they did make a little bit of show-
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's magic.
MARCUS PARKS
They also weren't what Gilles wanted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
One magician who came to Tiffauges attempted an invocation that scared Gilles so much that he locked himself in a room, sat himself down in a magical circle of protection, and refused to leave.
BEN KISSEL
It's like when I took acid at Seena's bachelor party.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very similar.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man, it was scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Something was going on. I don't know if it's a Madame Blavatsky style like they had helpers, like people coming in and out. But Gilles de Rais was extremely superstitious.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And as he went through these processes of finding these magicians, each one of them scared the shirt out of him.
BEN KISSEL
So weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because there's a tension of him understanding that I am gonna have to go all the way to the top to become innocent at the end of my life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well with another magician, Gilles de Sillé, Gilles de Rais' cousin, he was so scared that he jumped out of a window.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These are good shows.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's like Mike Birbiglia.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Later it was also said that whatever that magician had summoned, it beat him severely and wounded his face for bothering him.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was just some guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it really could have been.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was the least of the unfortunate incidents to befall some of the magicians that came into Gilles' employ. One, he drowned before he even got to the castle, he drowned on the way to the castle.
BEN KISSEL
As in Gilles drowned him or he just happened to drown?
MARCUS PARKS
No, he just happened to drown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
It was a different time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, rivers were different then.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Another one died immediately and almost cartoonishly as soon as he walked into the castle. It's one of those things where like they opened the door and he just fucking boom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(groaning)
BEN KISSEL
(groaning) It's the big one!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then meanwhile Gilles de Rais is just like there's no way this is symbolic.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The closest it seems that any of these early magicians came to summoning something was when a man named Jean de La Rivière was instructed to summon the devil, presumably as a test.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Camera test.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And supposedly after the magician went into the forest and fussed around for a bit-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles heard a clang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is there some kind of foley going on over there? Is there a foley artist?
BEN KISSEL
Wow, a clang.
MARCUS PARKS
Clang!
BEN KISSEL
Clang! Clang! What was that then?
MARCUS PARKS
Well the magician then entered and said that he'd seen a demon in the shape of a leopard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No shit. No fucking shit.
MARCUS PARKS
No shit, dude.
BEN KISSEL
He saw a leopard.
MARCUS PARKS
No shit. Saw a leopard but-
BEN KISSEL
A leper or a leopard?
MARCUS PARKS
Leopard. Problem is, it didn't want to talk to me.
BEN KISSEL
It's a cat.
MARCUS PARKS
It just walked on by.
BEN KISSEL
They saw a cat, called it a demon, said he did his job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Leopards are stuck up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure they are.
MARCUS PARKS
He knew that it was a demon because it gave him a disdainful look.
BEN KISSEL
It's a cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's what cats do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's most of their life. It's the equivalent of eye rolls.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, big cats, if they were allowed near our nuclear facilities, they would knock all the nukes off the shelf. They'd be horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
They would. But that's the thing is that Gilles was like okay, okay, fine, fine. So they went back to the castle and got drunk and the next day the magician was like hey Gilles, give me 20 gold coins.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
I just need 20 gold coins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You told me you saw a leopard and we got hammered and you didn't do anything.
MARCUS PARKS
I just need 20 gold coins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm good for it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I'm good for it.
BEN KISSEL
Here's fucking 20 silver coins, you make it gold.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? The thing is I need some gold as an example so I can show the silver what it needs to be.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah. And so Gilles said fine, here, take it. And the guy just fucking left. You never saw him again.
BEN KISSEL
Fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, you know what it feels? The way David Spade describes his home. Because he got robbed several times and he's just like all I do is I let these strange women in my house, I don't know who's in my house. And it just feels like that where he just lets people in and out of his home.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta be careful.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now that guy had obviously been a scam artist and it's almost positive that every single one of the magicians who came to milk money out of Gilles de Rais were in one way or another a charlatan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Pretty much if you could get Gilles to even halfheartedly say wow-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Then you were guaranteed at least a couple of gold coins.
BEN KISSEL
All right. I can make him say wow.
MARCUS PARKS
How are you gonna make Gilles de Rais say wow?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's just gonna fucking gape his asshole.
BEN KISSEL
I'll figure something out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Take a look at that hole!
BEN KISSEL
Take a look at that, yeah. I'll do something like that.
MARCUS PARKS
But while magicians slid in and out of Gilles' life for at most a few days at a time, a magician named François Prelati settled in for the long game.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Vivid, brilliant, beautiful, and charming, Prelati had first studied to be a priest but claimed to have mastered black magic and alchemy instead by the age of 20, meaning he knew the rules of both sides.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He could appeal to every part of Gilles' spiritual journey.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
By the time he met Gilles, Prelati claimed to be an accomplished necromancer who had called Satan into his service many times over the course of his career.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me more.
MARCUS PARKS
But these days Prelati claimed to be working exclusively with one demon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I got a contract.
BEN KISSEL
Just one guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Just on guy.
BEN KISSEL
One.
MARCUS PARKS
Prelati claimed that with the help of a French doctor named Jean de Fontaine, he had summoned a demon who appeared as a handsome man in his mid 20s wearing a red cloak named Barron.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
There he is.
MARCUS PARKS
Supposedly for the paltry price of a chicken, a dove, or a pigeon-
BEN KISSEL
You trying to make a joke there? Poultry price?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. A pigeon-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he said paltry. If he said poultry-
BEN KISSEL
Poultry price.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he said paltry.
BEN KISSEL
Paltry price, not poultry.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I wasn't trying to make a pun there.
BEN KISSEL
I thought you were making a pun.
MARCUS PARKS
I wasn't, thank you for thinking of me though.
BEN KISSEL
No problem. The poultry price of a chicken.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would have walked away.
MARCUS PARKS
The paltry poultry price. The paltry price of poultry.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
That would have been better, yeah. Dammit. A pigeon's not necessarily poultry, a pigeon is squab.
BEN KISSEL
Think about what I would write when you write.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm hungry. I like Bud Light. Boobies!
MARCUS PARKS
Well for just a bird, Barron could be summoned at Prelati's will, which was a claim that both baffled and impressed Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just say I love birds.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay? Call me a nest.
MARCUS PARKS
See Gilles had come to believe that he'd just had bad luck summoning demons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But Prelati told him that the demons were actually ignoring him because de Rais had a bad reputation amongst the damned as a man who promised much to the pit but never delivered.
BEN KISSEL
Wait. So the demons-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like when you're trying to talk to somebody who's on like farmerdate.com and you'd be like listen, you need to put the hunting pics up top.
BEN KISSEL
Oh sure, for a farmer date.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm looking at your whole summoning demon pretender bullshitting.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need to put a couple of these bird pics up top because demons love these fucking birds.
BEN KISSEL
Up top.
MARCUS PARKS
They love birds.
BEN KISSEL
Demons are mad that he's not doing enough bad stuff?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not giving enough.
BEN KISSEL
What do they want?
MARCUS PARKS
Not even that he's giving enough, it's that he supposedly told them that he would give them something and that he never followed through with his promise.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but what does the demon want?
MARCUS PARKS
It could have been a bird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A bird.
MARCUS PARKS
It really seriously could have been nothing more than a pigeon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about the thought.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what is going on? Why are these demons like this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about the thought.
BEN KISSEL
Is there like a demon Valentine's Day that I'm fucking missing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You do sort of need to... You have to court these demons. If you want them in there, you gotta give out gifts, you have to do these things.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to give any gifts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See this is the issue. This is what we all have to talk about.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just a little demon, I didn't get any gifts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel, it's about stopping and thinking for just a moment for someone outside of yourself.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, why do I have to buy-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know who'd love this magnet? Barron.
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to Oklahoma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When you're in the airport and you see the Best Demon Supplicant Award.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even just that, you're thinking of him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's it.
BEN KISSEL
That's just a little thing, little reminder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just a little thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Just a little thing.
BEN KISSEL
All right, fine.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think what Prelati was trying to say was all these other magicians you've been working with, they've been doing it wrong.
BEN KISSEL
They've been doing it wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
And because they've been doing it wrong, you've got a bad reputation. So now you're talking to me, bud. You're talking to a guy who's got a demon on tap.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I fixed James Franco with the demons.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm working on Tom Sizemore, he's dead.
BEN KISSEL
He's dead. He might be a demon now actually.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Prelati had always kept his promises to demonkind, so he stayed at the low, low price of a bird. He never had to get more than a bird.
BEN KISSEL
Just one bird.
MARCUS PARKS
But Prelati told Gilles that since he'd broken his promises in the past, whether it was his fault or not, he had to make up for it with something far more important, a little boy. Now it's unknown how much Prelati knew about Gilles de Rais' proclivities when he made this suggestion but he might as well have asked Gilles to pick up a fucking gallon of milk on the way home from work for all the effort it took him to sacrifice a child to the devil.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like no shit! What? Oh that's it?
BEN KISSEL
Actually it's probably more difficult in that time period to get a gallon of milk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is kind of one of those things where I think that Prelati definitely knew what was up. And we'll get into a little bit more about their relationship about whether or not it was one of those where you give a little sucky sucky to the big guy, right. And you go like I'm just a little guy, I'm just a little boy. You know he did the thing to get him going, right.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he just asked, he's like but for this we'll just need some children's parts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the way he said it, he said it kind of like, wink.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean fucking Gilles showed up to the next session with a hand, a heart, the eyes, and the blood of a little boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At 3 PM.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll get you a heart by 3 PM.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Prelati didn't question where Gilles had sourced any of these ingredients.
BEN KISSEL
God forbid.
MARCUS PARKS
And instead began the summoning. Still nothing happened.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing happened. He brought you the heart, the eyes, the hand.
MARCUS PARKS
The hand.
BEN KISSEL
Come on, what else do you need?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like at least they're doing something with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Prelati could however apparently invoke Barron, which considering how Barron appeared as a 25 year old man suggests to me that Barron the demon might have just been some guy who hid in the corner and jumped out when he was summoned.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You think that or what's the other option?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That he was a demon.
BEN KISSEL
That he was a demon. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that it's all made up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The other option is that it's all made up, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The other option is that Prelati just made it up in order to kind of save his own ass during the trial because he was a practicing black magician which was punishable by death at the time.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it does seem that those types of scams, to question them would actually mean you're questioning the very nature of god itself which is in and of itself heretical to do at the time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I think a lot of times these scams are played out loud and you're kind of forced by societal implications to act like this is real because if I don't-
BEN KISSEL
And Gilles would not want to do anything taboo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
No, nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because technically his actions at this point were more just frowned upon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It is weird, that game Taboo. I bought it at Target and I opened it up, it's just a bunch of little underwear. I was like what the hell?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta return that.
BEN KISSEL
This is indeed taboo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You kept it? Why do you still have it?
BEN KISSEL
What is happening?
MARCUS PARKS
Why are you pulling it out of your pocket right now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, please just keep it. Why did you bring it to the studio?
MARCUS PARKS
Keep it in your giant wallet.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Now during these summoning sessions, Prelati would draw magic circles, burn aloe and myrrh, and recite incantations such as this:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I conjure you, Barron, Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, by the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, by the Virgin Mary-"
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"And all the saints to appear in person so that you may speak to us and fulfill our desires."
BEN KISSEL
It's me, Barron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, Barron!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, what a mysterious occurrence.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Gilles bought all of this completely. He even began writing letters to Satan for Prelati to deliver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dear Satan, all I want for Christmas is a sled.
BEN KISSEL
Wrong entity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I was right.
BEN KISSEL
You're thinking of Santa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I want the sled to be made out of child's foreskins.
BEN KISSEL
That's also Santa.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these letters said that Gilles would give Satan everything he wanted except for his soul or the shortening of Gilles' life. I think he was hinting that he'd offer up the souls of children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Like if you want me to kill children, I'll do that all day long. Just don't ask my soul, just don't ask for my life to be shorter.
BEN KISSEL
Very Freddy Krueger.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. However I will say that it actually took a while for Barron to appear in front of Gilles. At first there was no Barron at all and Prelati said that he only appeared when Gilles wasn't in the room. Like when you're gone, he comes whenever I want.
BEN KISSEL
That is crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's here, he's hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
He's here but...
BEN KISSEL
That's not the way that works.
MARCUS PARKS
But since you got a bad reputation, so we gotta rehabilitate your reputation, then he'll come.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And eventually Barron did appear with Gilles present. It was probably after Gilles began to hint that if it didn't work soon, if he didn't see something soon-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Then Prelati could get the fuck out.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also I think that at that point, Father Prelati, if he was asked to get the fuck out, he would probably be murdered.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe. But I don't see Gilles as like... He doesn't murder men.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he doesn't like them.
MARCUS PARKS
In battle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because straight up it's because the kids are easier.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, kids are easier. But once Barron appeared, Gilles was finally after all this time able to ask a demon for gold.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! That's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's just first of all he needs to be talking to a leprechaun. He doesn't even have the right entity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No because you have to deceive a leprechaun and then they just constantly come.
BEN KISSEL
No, you don't always have to deceive a leprechaun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm currently burning through Leprechaun, the entire lexicon of Leprechaun right now.
BEN KISSEL
That's the movie series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's canon.
BEN KISSEL
It is canon, I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is literally the Bible for leprechauns.
BEN KISSEL
No, I understand.
MARCUS PARKS
Honestly, Leprechaun the movie series is just as valid as Irish folklore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's an entire museum in Dublin.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. I mean I'm not gonna go against, Warwick Davis is my boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it is the same because they get really mad.
BEN KISSEL
I agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's a whole thing, you're supposed to get their gold if you find it. But you didn't ask the leprechaun really.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But you know there are some deaths that the leprechaun granted those people, like when the guy walked into that fan with his face and got it all chopped up, right. He thought it was a big set of titties. So for him, I mean...
MARCUS PARKS
He got deceived.
BEN KISSEL
He got to see but it was like if you're gonna die, it's not that bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He needs his gold.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Leprechaun is awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay. So when you're in hospice, I'll make sure as you're dying to just have a thing a fucking-
BEN KISSEL
Just a big thing with nipples on it.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm just gonna put fucking titties up on a projector. On the ceiling, on the ceiling.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that'd be fun. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
So you can just look straight up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Please.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
That'll be the last thing you see.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, I'm fine with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's incredible. Yes, I want some.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, it's all good.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well supposedly Barron gave Prelati a vision of a room full of gold but told him not allowed to touch the gold just yet.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's for Scrooge McDuck.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Gilles asked if he could see too. So Prelati led him to the room where the gold was supposed to be. But when Gilles entered the room-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah? It was full of gold?
MARCUS PARKS
No, he saw a big snake the size of a dog with wings.
BEN KISSEL
It ain't all the gold!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like this was built up to something else.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know whether or not this is...
BEN KISSEL
A snake the size of a dog?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he said it was strong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It this a Jim Henson production? I don't know what this was.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Gilles got scared and ran away.
BEN KISSEL
Gilles is a bitch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's scared of magic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's scared of a lot of stuff other than killing children apparently.
MARCUS PARKS
Well oddly though the room was filled with something that appeared to be colored gold but it turned out that it was just some other substance covered in a tawny-colored powder.
BEN KISSEL
It was probably pollen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean Prelati must have been working with Gilles' people too I think at some point.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're all trying to benefit from this thing.
BEN KISSEL
Just spray paint a bunch of fucking rocks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he's so outside of reality.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is something to that. Prelati knows what he's doing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes he does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And all of the crew around him knows what he's doing. And Gilles de Rais, at this point, is like a slobbering maniac.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And they know what they're doing because they're starting to fight amongst one another.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Prelati, he supposedly received a beating from some demon just like the previous magician had.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it turned out, this beating was handed out by Father Andre Blancher, the priest who had first been tasked with finding magicians. Blancher had gotten jealous because he'd been excluded from all magical operations, he wanted to be in the room.
BEN KISSEL
Priest fight.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Prelati had told Gilles that Blancher was not to be trusted. And as it turned out Prelati was right. Because I would imagine Prelati is a very good judge of human nature. Blancher was the first to betray Gilles at his trial. But even so, Prelati and Gilles continued working together until Gilles' capture, although it was all of course in vain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's just like you're just surrounded by villains.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't think they're all not gonna consume each other and then eventually consume you?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yes. Now when the alchemy didn't work out for Gilles de Rais, his financial fortunes only got worse and the other nobles who wanted his lands, castles, and assets, began making moves. Chief among them was Jean V, the Duke of Brittany, who wanted Gilles' lands because they were important strategically, supremely so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the hook here about Gilles de Rais.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is he innocent or not? What are the motives?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who benefits from Gilles de Rais going down? They want his lands.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they know he's hemorrhaging money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is. And this is where I feel like the true transgression amongst his peers is, is that as a landed noble, there's a certain sense of, seems to be, maybe I'm incorrect, this is my opinion, but from what I read. So I might be incorrect but who knows? But it seems that the idea is that because we are above society and we are the ones that are literally holding the structure of countries together, we're supposed to operate a certain way, right. And this concept of you taking what has been in generations put together tracts of land that we have been a part of, that we have been also using and part of this kind of global community of nobles that have been working together, are watching you flush everything down a toilet, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this shit which is extremely sensitive areas for you, you're watching this guy start to really mess shit up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's breaking all these unspoken rules. What do we do with this guy? Because again, he's a landed noble.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is very difficult to move against the landed noble.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you need a bunch of reasons. You need, what is it, casus belli, whatever the term is.
BEN KISSEL
What if he's killing and raping a bunch of kids?
MARCUS PARKS
Meh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing.
BEN KISSEL
That's not good enough?
MARCUS PARKS
Meh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Only if it's a part of the whole. It's like a part of it, that's like one thing they can use.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That a little piece.
MARCUS PARKS
Well catch him and once you arrest him, that can be the main thrust of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's tax evasion. It's their version of getting somebody on tax evasion for bigger crimes.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah. It's messing with people's money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He is. And that's the thing is that yeah, these people did want his lands but that does not necessarily mean that Gilles de Rais was not a child murderer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Like those two things are not mutually exclusive.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They can want his lands and he can be a child murderer. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You can be anything you wanna be.
MARCUS PARKS
You can be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what this is all about.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what this whole story is about.
MARCUS PARKS
At the same time, one of Gilles' long term servants left his service and soon after the local peasantry began whispering about the terrible crimes that have been committed on Gilles de Rais' many estates.
BEN KISSEL
How did they do that without social media?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bards.
BEN KISSEL
Oh they would talk?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they would talk, they would whisper.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
(whispering)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Suck! Suck the sounds of suck! The hills are filled with the sounds of suck.
BEN KISSEL
(whispering) This song is actually very political. It's a political satire.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the first real threat to Gilles however came when he made the church truly angry.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
In May of 1436, Gilles kidnapped his old tutor, a priest named Michel de Fontaine, for publishing a royal edict against Gilles presumably for the trouble he'd made in creating the Church of the Holy Innocents. Father Fontaine was thrown in a dungeon for his troubles and was only released when the local bishop demanded his release.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Amen.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles of course gave in without anyone really knowing what Gilles' actual plan may have been. There seemed to be no plan, it was just an impulse because he gained nothing from this entire episode except the further animosity of the church.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing, he keeps pressing these buttons.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everyone's again being like stop.
BEN KISSEL
Pissing the church off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're being extra, none of us know why you're being like this.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Especially his family. All of his family is saying like fucking stop it.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And they're hearing. Jean V is moving against de Rais to take control of his strategically important lands. Gilles however was either unaware or unruffled because he still believed that he was going to discover the secret of the philosopher's stone that would give him unlimited wealth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna get us all out of this, boys!
BEN KISSEL
Well it's big if true. If he did, it would be fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, big if true. It really would be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they're all saying.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's Elizabeth Holmes.
MARCUS PARKS
But as such, he abandoned all interest in his estates and signed over power of attorney to his cousin Robert de Briqueville, who had been one of the family members who had sourced children for Gilles. And interestingly, two people testified in Gilles' trial that five years before Gilles' arrest, they'd lodged a complaint with Robert de Briqueville because they discovered a pipe full of dead children at the castle Champtocé, not knowing that Robert was one of the men who'd provided Gilles with these children.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Now concerning those bodies, it was said in the trial that when Gilles lost control of his castle at Machecoul to Jean V, he panicked and ordered his servants to dispose of the bones of about 40 children from a tower near the lower halls of the castle. Allegedly, two noble ladies watched the removal and showed nor felt any horror or disgust at what they saw beyond the normal human reaction to decomposing flesh. They were far more concerned, it was said, that Gilles had lost the control of the castle to Jean V.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because it was their home and it was where they worked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was their entire lives. And so the more people he was fucking over with what he was doing, the more people started...
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But still, you know as a helping class in this time period, I can't stick myself in the middle of these situations or I'm gonna end up in that fucking pipe too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like we're all just decomposing flesh to this guy. This is again saying if all of this is real.
MARCUS PARKS
If all of this is real. And I also don't think that Gilles de Rais would have, I don't know if he was a murderer of men and women.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I'm saying you could see how-
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, you'd think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd think this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There's the bodies of 40 children being taken out from the walls of this castle, this guy might be dangerous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
He definitely slayed in the theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Serving, much?
BEN KISSEL
Yep. I clapped back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this happened several times.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, is this real or is it not? I don't know. There's a lot of people saying that he'd sell a castle, freak out.
MARCUS PARKS
It's hundreds of people saying it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Freak out, they'd go run, they'd clean it out of bodies and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what else would you do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was scurrying around trying to figure out what to do. And that costs money too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
This is like human part of... Yeah, you gotta clean it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And once the bodies were taken away, they were burned in a huge pyre in the presence of Gilles, his cousin, his two man servants, and his two priests. And what ashes were left from this pyre, they were tossed into the water pipes at the castle Champtocé. Now you may say that there was no way that these bodies could have been burned to nothing but ash without leaving something behind.
BEN KISSEL
There's no way these bodies could have been burned to ash without leaving something behind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. And if you said that just like Ben said it, then you'd be on the side of the movement defending Gilles de Rais' innocence.
BEN KISSEL
Motherfucker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look what you've done!
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know what I was saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You apologist!
BEN KISSEL
I was under duress!
MARCUS PARKS
See no bones or clothes or anything was found at any of Gilles' properties by authorities as far as we know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not a matter of record. Concerning the many, many disappearances, it is the defender's contention that there is no more evidence that more children went missing around Gilles de Rais than in any other area during that time period because it was after all an age of death, it was full of plagues and wars. It was also the little ice age, famine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes, you got famine and the Hundred Years' War just ripped its way through the entire country. Then that was 116 years over three distinct periods.
BEN KISSEL
Periods. Three distinct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so yes, there was a lot of destabilization in the area.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that also for me provides another smokescreen of why he was able to then hide everything because he had the time and the resources.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And let's not forget one of the most popular pastimes was the hunger games. And then my god, these kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you know how many stock pots you can fill with bones to make as much soup as possible?
BEN KISSEL
Probably a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Grind his bones to make my bread.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Probably a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Soak his bones to make my soup.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Bone broth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm hungry.
MARCUS PARKS
And therefore according to the defenders, 40 children going missing over the course of 8 years would not have been an alarming or unusual number.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Which I will admit is a compelling if difficult to prove argument.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, I think it's as difficult as to prove as the other side.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And indeed many more children than 40 may have gone missing because peasants and especially peasant children were seen by the nobility as lower beings who weren't even supposed to have emotions. It was however said that two of Gilles de Rais' family members found child skeletons after the supposed cleanup of the crime scenes. But they did little more than lightly question two of Gilles' servants before dropping the matter entirely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because to be honest, do you want to be the one to tell everybody, look what I found!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When you have a man that is... So both sides for me hold water. Where it's like I could see why you'd think why it doesn't make sense why there wouldn't be evidence. But I could also see that there's a heavy motivation for someone who finds evidence to not bring it forward.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See to Gilles' family, their duty was to the property and it was no more their duty to protect the peasants than it would be to tend to the pigs and horses. In fact, the horses were probably held in higher esteem than the peasants.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But this castle at Machecoul was not the only place where Gilles was murdering children. There was also the aforementioned castle Champtocé. See Gilles had also sold Champtocé to Jean V, the Duke of Brittany. And he therefore again had to remove all evidence of his crimes before handing the keys over to the duke.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles' servant, Henriet Griart, said that they had only two days to clean up the mess and since there wasn't enough time to burn the bodies of dozens of children hidden in one of the towers, three of Gilles' servants stuffed the dead children into chests, tossed them on a boat, and floated them down the river to parts unknown.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Supply chains.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a way to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now once Jean V had control over the castle Champtocé, he had no use for Gilles. So it was time to get rid of him for good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you can get those last little pieces left.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like suck up everything else he's got.
MARCUS PARKS
Jean V joined forces with the bishop who was pissed at Gilles for kidnapping the priest and a guy who was still mad at Gilles about some shit that happened over a decade earlier during the Hundred Years' War.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Jean V and the others didn't particularly care that Gilles was murdering peasant children any more than they would have cared if he was fucking and murdering sheep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they don't care.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't give an H.
BEN KISSEL
They probably would have cared more if he was fucking sheep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly if he was fucking the sheep, you'd be like we need the sheep for mutton.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now it's all full of come?
BEN KISSEL
That's not good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna have to scrape all this...
BEN KISSEL
Well you wanna shear it, you wanna shear it for the clothes.
MARCUS PARKS
But this triumvirate knew that if they could brand him as a criminal, then they could confiscate all of his remaining lands and assets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And they were like okay, what do we know about Gilles? And I do believe that that's where there's a part of this where you're like all right, it's time to pull the pedophile button.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're all done with it. We all know what he does, right. We're all sick of it, right.
BEN KISSEL
We've all done it with him! Wait, what was that? Yeah, we've all been there. I mean probably most of them have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Jean V ordered a discrete investigation into Gilles de Rais' sex life and Gilles did not disappoint. Over the next couple of months, Gilles raped and murdered a teenager at a hotel in Nantes, then raped and murdered another in a convent in Bordeaux.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is all from witness testimony and people talking about kids basically going into a room with him and not coming out.
MARCUS PARKS
But on the other hand, this is also witness testimony by people hired by Jean V.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
So that in itself makes it somewhat suspect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
Was there a glove that did or did not fit on his hand?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean he had a gauntlet.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But days later, Gilles made a big show of saying that he was going to change his sinful ways and he was gonna make a pilgrimage to the holy land, he's gonna cleanse himself.
BEN KISSEL
So he admitted it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at least to his crew.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the thing is that is real. So there are interior things that Gilles de Rais is doing to also show that whatever it is that he feels guilty about, he's gonna try and fix.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's telling everybody, he's like I'm going to rehab!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's doing the rehab thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's doing the thing. I'm addicted to sex. He's doing what David Duchovny did, remember when he had to beg for all of our forgiveness?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Let's not bring him into this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying.
BEN KISSEL
Sexual dynamo from what I've heard.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I've heard that too. It's more like again, Kevin Spacey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, oh very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's again like Kevin Spacey. But instead of going to the holy land, he raped and killed a 13 year old boy. And he killed these two young brothers that he just found in a separate incident.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We didn't know that was code. Going to the holy land was code for him doing that.
BEN KISSEL
That's bad. Yeah, right.
MARCUS PARKS
But at the same time, Gilles had returned to raiding the countryside in direct opposition to what King Charles VII wanted from his nobles. See remember before where I said that going into the Hundred Years' War, the third phase of the Hundred Years' War-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Third phase.
MARCUS PARKS
That the all of the French Kingdoms were many different kingdoms. It was not one unified front, it was a bunch of different nobles with their own little villages, their own little castles, and so and so forth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And apparently I was right when I said that it's similar to Italy.
MARCUS PARKS
Very good.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice.
BEN KISSEL
Good job, Henry.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what? I didn't tell you you were wrong. I just said I didn't know if you were right.
BEN KISSEL
But isn't that something? Someone told him he was right. That's good. That's very good.
MARCUS PARKS
That is very good.
BEN KISSEL
I'm happy for you. You did good.
MARCUS PARKS
You do have that good boy look on your face right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! You got this!
BEN KISSEL
You got it, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by this time, the king was trying to end all that. He was trying to legitimize his role by forming a standing royal army instead of having to rely on private armies paid for by nobles like Gilles de Rais. He didn't want to depend on people like him anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's realizing these liabilities that I have to deal with are actually piling up.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And we're not gonna say that Gilles de Rais was the impetus for this decision.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
But he was certainly the largest example of what was wrong with the system. In other words, European feudalism was coming to an end. And this of course is one of the other things that lays at the heart of the conspiracy theory surrounding Gilles. In addition to Jean V doing his damnedest to snatch Gilles de Rais' lands and castles, King Charles VII I think needed to make an example of someone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And a worthless troublemaker would have made the perfect target to show the rest of the nobles that if they didn't fall in line with what King Charles wanted to do with France, then their more nefarious habits might come to light as well.
BEN KISSEL
Well Mr. King Charles, you think you've got me against the wall, don't you? Barron attack!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Barron?
BEN KISSEL
Barron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Barron?
BEN KISSEL
That was a man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's on lunch.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. I think that was a man, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though Gilles had lost control of the Machecoul, he still asked to stay there.
BEN KISSEL
That's sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was just thinking about this, my stuff's here. You won't even know I'm there! All right? It's a big castle.
BEN KISSEL
It's like Kato asking OJ if he can stay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Come on, it's still a nice room.
MARCUS PARKS
Well perhaps there had been a flurry of activity, rumors were quickly spreading amongst the local populace that Gilles was a child murderer who openly practiced magic, which he was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey! I'm a successful child murderer, I am unsuccessful in practicing magic.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But to them, he wasn't killing children for pleasure. That's not what they thought he was doing. That to them was beyond. They believed that he was writing a book using the blood of the children he killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well now we're saying like once you're past the lip of we think he's killing kids, everything else you can kind of see why the imagination leads its way to...
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It runs wild.
BEN KISSEL
Was there an ink shortage or something?
MARCUS PARKS
No, you had to write the book in the blood of children so you could get the attention of the devil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The book of shadows!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And when you get the attention of the devil, if he was able to complete the book, then he would have the power to take any castle he wanted because he would be invulnerable, fueled by the power of Satan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(evil laughter) Yes! Hail Satan! Yes!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Everyone knows that the devil only reads, I'm trying to think as a Courier, maybe just think about a funny joke if you're out there and you know fonts.
MARCUS PARKS
Fonts. Courier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, Courier. Sure, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
He doesn't real Arial, he only reads Times New Roman.
BEN KISSEL
Times New Roman. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't even get him started on Comic Sans.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Or Papyrus.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly most satanists I know are into like car repair. They're really into the right to repair movement.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because we're all our own kingdoms and our own gods and we need to handle our own territory.
BEN KISSEL
Has that been taken away, the right to repair your own car?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've seen it, John Deere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The farmers just fought for that and they finally got it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It is actually a very big deal. And I'm on the side of the Satanists when it comes to right to repair because I'm also on the side of the farmers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See?
BEN KISSEL
I'm on the side, I am as well, the right to repair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See the fear in his eyes. I saw the fear of the farmer in his eyes.
MARCUS PARKS
I saw it, I saw it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's afraid of Willie Nelson's vengeance.
BEN KISSEL
I am.
MARCUS PARKS
And yet, even though Gilles was under investigation, he continued killing children. Or at least it was a funny little coincidence that children seemed to be going missing wherever he happened to go.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
However it wasn't child murder that got Gilles arrested. Rather the downfall of Gilles de Rais had to involve something that could be proven, some grand event, something that the nobility could get behind, something that could take away all of Gilles' money and power. And that occurred when Gilles engaged in banditry for the last time in 1439.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of my big arguments is that they didn't even need the child murdering charge.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't even need it. They already had something on him to fucking fully bust him up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What is banditry, when your stepdad joins a Steely Dan cover band named Steely Tom or some other thing? It's been a longer series than I expected. It's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Well acting on the advice of the demon Barron, who again may or may not-
BEN KISSEL
He's still there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's just a guy. Now he's hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Prelati is still there.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Gilles is like what do I do? What do I do here?
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because now honestly I've hired Barron.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's hanging out.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just hanging out being like is this your cereal? Like he's that dude. We had that in our apartment in Tallahassee, I remember when we let our buddy Palin, let his weird friends start to like... It started like they just want to sleep on the couch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Let the boy sleep in your bed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But eventually they're just hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're eating your stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
There all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're taking the mirrors off the bathroom to do Adderall on it.
BEN KISSEL
I can imagine Henry must have been so angry when he saw them eating all of his food.
MARCUS PARKS
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was broke.
MARCUS PARKS
That's all the ice cream that I can afford this month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're making fun of the poor.
MARCUS PARKS
This is the month that I was able to get Häagen-Dazs instead of Turkey Hill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I had nothing! I had nothing! And the man that was supposed to be the first age manager for Murderfist, he had deceit and malice tattooed on his arms and then he stole my last package of baloney. That is real. And then disappeared in the night. It was real. That is a problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Well again, acting on the advice of the demon Barron, Gilles decided to gather 70 men and retake the castle at Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
From Jean V's treasurer after Gilles had sold it to him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of like he was like, you know what, man? I used to be fucking hardcore, ma.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like I used to do this shit, man. Why am I playing with money? Money's fake, bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I should just go fucking get my shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But he sold all of his rights to everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But he wanted to retake it. Nah, it's fucking mine, bro.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh, it's so stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
It's one of those things where it's like no, you cheated me, you cheated me. I sold it to you but you cheated me. So now I have the right to take it back. And he burst into the church riding a horse with a double edged battle ax.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Fuck yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he allegedly shouted, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"You thieving scoundrels! You have beaten my men and extorted money from them! Come outside the church or I'll lay you out dead!"
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, bold statement.
MARCUS PARKS
Very bold. He then captured the brother of Jean V's treasurer and he captured a priest and he threw both of them into a dungeon before taking control of the castle himself, thereby committing three transgressions that together were enough to bring Gilles de Rais down.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
By marching into the church, he'd violated ecclesiastical property. By imprisoning the priest, he'd offended church law. By dispossessing the owner, he'd attacked a member of Jean V's household. And when you combined all that into one, Gilles' enemies had all they needed to move against him.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. And he hit somebody when he was skiing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the worst part.
BEN KISSEL
That was the worst.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And his skis went between her legs. I heard the groan.
MARCUS PARKS
The groan.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, so this out of all the horrible things this man has done, it's trespassing and false imprisonment of a douchebag.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Trespassing, false imprisonment, and a little bit of assault.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Jean V levied a fine that Gilles couldn't pay. So all of his property and everything he gained through battle or by inheritance, gone in an instant.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Then an official inquiry was set in motion to collect evidence from people who had lost children wherever Gilles de Rais had hung his hat. Gilles meanwhile knew nothing of the child murder investigation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean my hobbies are a crime?
BEN KISSEL
How is that a crime?
MARCUS PARKS
So after a meeting with Jean V that went particularly badly, Gilles indulged himself by having his man servant Henriet take three children into a field outside of town so he could kill them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know, I'm just so stressed out. Could you just get three of those choir boys out there? I gotta see some blood. Ay ay ay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe releasing their blood will release my blood.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles then spent a short time in the country at the estate of a man named le Mois where Gilles met with his priest Andre Boucher. Boucher soon sourced a 10 year old boy for Gilles to rape and murder. And when Gilles had done so, he figured probably not a good idea to burn it on this guy's property, it's not my house. So the corpse was tied to its own belt and lowered into the house's cesspool. The body however did not sink all the way under. So man servant Poitou had to be lowered into the shit pit to shove the corpse under with his hands and feet.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh. I thought you were gonna say rescue the boy.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he's already dead.
MARCUS PARKS
He's already dead, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I know but get the evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no. And that made one of Gilles' last murders particularly degrading. That's his second to last murder. Finally on July 29th, 1440, an edict was published against Gilles de Rais proclaiming that he with certain accomplices had slaughtered, murdered, and massacred in the most odious fashion several young boys and had oftentimes taken pleasure against nature and practiced the vice of sodomy against them. It was also proclaimed that he oftentimes made pacts with the devil through child sacrifice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a very casual way of saying it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Although that was sort of incidental because Gilles did the vast majority of his murder outside of his black magic practices.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine that? Having to yell at everybody being like no, listen, my black magic had nothing to do with the kids!
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was trying to make movies!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I think it all kind of goes together at this point.
MARCUS PARKS
But once this edict was published, Gilles thought to hell with it, let's do one more. And he assaulted, murdered, and incinerated a young boy who'd just entered into his service after Gilles had his servant buy the boy a new doublet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And these are the ones that hold the most water.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These last ones are the ones-
BEN KISSEL
So all the eyes are on him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, all the yes are on him. And these are the ones that he is doing and now his crew knows we're all being investigated.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they're all kind of just locked in. It was different. I don't know how to put it because it's not like nowadays with the FBI, you'll see the car out front and stuff. That's how you know if you're being tracked, if a fucking wifi signal shows up that you don't recognize outside of your own home, it's a good way to know if somebody is looking for you.
BEN KISSEL
All right, well that's not necessarily true about the wifi network.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a good way to actually. If you just really fucking think about who's looking for you-
BEN KISSEL
Are you the CEO of TikTok right now?
MARCUS PARKS
What if your neighbor just gets a new router?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a fucking FBI tap, bro. Go over there and ask them what's going on. Give me the password, dude! Let me send you a fax, then! Right?
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Well let's not scare the audience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they don't know that they're fully investigating, maybe that's part of it. Or maybe they're just, I don't know, Gilles is gonna figure us out, he's gonna get us out.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by this time he doesn't have castles to hide behind anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
So everywhere that Gilles goes, he goes to a town, someone gets murdered. A young boy gets murdered. He goes to another town, young boy gets murdered. Everywhere he's going, a young boy gets murdered.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
The only other explanation is that one of Jean V's men is following Gilles de Rais and murdering young boys wherever Gilles is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To frame him
MARCUS PARKS
To frame him. Which is honestly which one of these is more likely?
BEN KISSEL
As his defense attorney, let's talk about the word coinkadunk. It could be a coinkadunk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I may just be a small country lawyer.
BEN KISSEL
What's a coinkadunk?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A coinkadunk. Circumstances point to a coinkadunk.
BEN KISSEL
And then he can be like look at the shrubbery, it's longer than it was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My mama is 475 pounds thin. But yeah, just because she eats a Hungry Jack meal 4, 5, 6, 7 times a day, that's a coinkadunk.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a coinkadunk.
BEN KISSEL
How can I find him guilty? His lawyer is so fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after that, Gilles was finally arrested on September 15, 1440. Because all the rest of the stuff, that just took away all of his money.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Which is important.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, which is big.
BEN KISSEL
To start the process I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
He could just be kicked to the curb. But yeah, they finally, it was like okay, he's been murdering a lot of children, it's pretty obvious now.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
His two cousins, they disappeared soon after.
BEN KISSEL
It's probably for the best.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually quite a few others. They said there were 16 accomplices, I think they ended up catching like 5 or 6.
BEN KISSEL
I think I'm actually getting the flu, I better go. I'm just gonna go now. Yikes.
MARCUS PARKS
But the priest Blancher, the magician Prelati, and the man servants Poitou and Henriet were captured, as was the roaming witch known as The Terror.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, yeah. She's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ghislaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles' public trial began within a month and a formal indictment of 49 paragraphs was read, 34 of which enumerating Gilles' murderous crimes in great detail while also outlining all of the sacrilegious dealings he'd had with various sorcerers and heretics.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because now they're just piling on too.
BEN KISSEL
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do see that that's where you can have a little bit of suspicion because they are, they're stuffing it to try to get him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're trying to finally-
BEN KISSEL
Trying to get him on something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And they're making it sound as horrible as they possibly can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
I mean it sounds pretty horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They're exaggerating even what's already horrible, they're exaggerating even that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's how they got to the exaggerations.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was that there was something for it to grow from. But this points, to a lot of people, that's where the exaggerating part, my thing is that again-
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But truly, Epstein bought an island to have sex on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? There is a precedent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Tom Hanks collects typewriters. There's a difference.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
There's a difference.
BEN KISSEL
Take it to Twitter, boys.
MARCUS PARKS
You can look at the things that men do and you can extrapolate from the things that men do into what possibly they may do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yeah, what humans may do.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the innocent side claims that the main focus of the plot against Gilles de Rais was the legal land snatch. But there were also political reasons.
BEN KISSEL
That's my wife!
MARCUS PARKS
But there were also political reasons for smearing Gilles as a pedophilic child murderer. See the Hundred Years' War wasn't over just yet by the time Gilles went on trial. And the Duke of Brittany had close ties with the English throne. Duke of Brittany of course was Jean V. Gilles de Rais was of course still closely linked with Joan of Arc, as this was before he was eradicated from her history. Joan meanwhile was still considered a heretic by some and even some in France, particularly Burgundians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, them Burgundians, balls over dick.
BEN KISSEL
She beat the hell out of them, didn't she?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Charles VII had been crowned king but he was still a little wobbly. Therefore if Gilles were to be found guilty, then it could be said or at least whispered that King Charles VII owed his throne to the heretic Joan of Arc and the black magician child murderer Gilles de Rais. And as it was, Gilles did refuse to even reply to the charges when he was first brought before the court.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Saying that the judges had no authority over him. But after Gilles was quote "put to the question", which was the medieval term for legal torture, Gilles changed his mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. When the inquisition showed up, that is fun because it's kind of like if you dropped John Wayne Gacy into Guantanamo Bay, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He wouldn't do well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you know what I mean? Like you have this guy that is, if this is real, because this is my take is that if he is this kind of like psychopath warrior child murderer, but then you just be like okay, we'll talk to a couple of members from the inquisition. And then you can hear him go like wait, let's just think about this for a second.
BEN KISSEL
Let's think about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This is of course another point taken by the innocent side, that Gilles was coerced into a false confession by torture. But on the other hand, I don't know if this necessarily washes because Gilles was after all a seasoned battlefield veteran, he was an absolute demon by all accounts who could take pain. So it seems weird that he couldn't survive torture for longer than a day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well in the transcript-
BEN KISSEL
I mean he was tired.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where the issue is. It's stuff where it is both a highly detailed transcript of the trials but there are also parts that are left out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And what we do know about the way things are transcribed, because there was no stenographer.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are written from memory after the fact. So you hear kind of a base and you riff it. So there is a pause in the coverage, the inquisition shows up, there's like a day where it's never said implicitly that he was tortured, we are inferring that he was tortured. But there's some people, there's the other side that they think that he wasn't tortured at all and this is a negotiation tactic of if you give us a win for the church, basically plead guilty, we will not desecrate your corpse when you die.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you can legally tell everyone you're going to heaven, if you flip.
MARCUS PARKS
Basically we will allow you to die as a Christian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. We'll allow you to die. And so there's this moment of time being like so was he coerced by actual physical punishment or is it just appealing to this weird inner spiritual thing that he has said before that I'm trying to fight for my immortal soul? I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
And it could also be that Gilles just finally realized that the game was up, there's no point in prolonging the inevitable. Why am I gonna go through days and days and days of torture when I know what's gonna happen at the end?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's already done.
MARCUS PARKS
It's done, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, the torture is bad. I wouldn't want to be tortured. One day is a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, one day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's old school, dog.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I've seen the museums.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's the pear, it's the rat, it's the wheels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you kind of think for a while, like that's the other thing is that I kind of weirdly think he'd like it.
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't think so.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
BEN KISSEL
The pear is very scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The pear is scary.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they're all pretty scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to that point, during the trial Gilles agreed that he had killed children but had only done so for 8 years, not the 14 that he'd been accused of. But on the other hand, Gilles might have also said this to save the reputation of Joan of Arc. Because if he admitted to all 14 years, then that meant that he was murdering children while he was at the side of a saint.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
8 is enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
8 is enough.
MARCUS PARKS
8 is enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, I think that there was something about preserving that time period too for himself.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Gilles also denied sacrificing children to the devil and said that he committed his crimes quote "in accordance with his own imagination and thought, following no man's counsel but his own, solely for his pleasure and carnal delight, and with no other end in view." And to me, that is a fucking classic serial killer confession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Being like this is all me.
MARCUS PARKS
It's well put.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very well put. But you hear those confessions in modern times.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
That was BTK's confession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then dispassionately talking about all of the details.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And one by one, Gilles' accomplices, when they could be found, they gave their confessions and they were condemned to death, chief among them Poitou and Henriet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my one thing is that they all knew they were going to death.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So what's the point?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's no point to... I know that you're trying to save yourself in one way, shape, or form, you're trying to save yourself. But still, you all know you're going to death. Why throw everybody under the bus for no reason?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well you want to have fun, it's fun to bring people with you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard because you're also getting people who are just screaming at you. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not a fun process, the trial.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Poitou and Henriet along with Gilles de Rais, they were sentenced to be hanged and burned on October 26th, 1440. Gilles however asked that he be hanged and burned first, quote "so that he might set a good example."
BEN KISSEL
Are you hung then burned or burned then hung?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hung then burned. Hanged?
MARCUS PARKS
I thought it was burned then hanged.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe it is hanged then body is burned.
MARCUS PARKS
Body is burned. Because one of the things that I read so that his body was lit on fire and then they hung him. But that also tells you the rope's probably gonna burn too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's possible.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm on your side, Henry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Yep, it's possible.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he also wanted his men to know that he wasn't going to try and escape their shared fates.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And then again, who's the star here, baby?
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But Gilles was hanged, Gilles was burned, and after he died his body was removed and laid out by four noble ladies of the town who pampered his dead body as it had been pampered in life. He still died a noble.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And that was his plea deal.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as the other accomplices went, the magician Prelati was condemned to life in prison because magic was very much illegal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean it was publicly, people used it and talked about it but it was still like illegal. It's like weed smoking then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I'd probably just want to be killed anyway. Life in prison probably sounds horrible there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, it was bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, real bad. But he did manage to escape. But he was later hanged for unrelated crimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never stop never stopping, dog.
BEN KISSEL
He did get to escape though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Here's an interesting one. The priest Blancher, he was simply fined and banished from France. And finally, La Meffraye, The Terror, hanged herself in her cell like a nazi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. It's also Epsteiny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Very Epsteiny. And as it went, Gilles de Rais lived on as a French boogeyman for centuries, the original Bluebeard as it were. And his castles became dark tourist destinations in the Breton region. As such, in 1992 the Breton Tourist Board commissioned author Gilbert Prouteau to write a biography on Gilles de Rais to drum up more business.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, come on. We need more pedophile visitors!
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But much to the tourist board's surprise when Prouteau published his book, he instead made the case that Gilles de Rais was innocent.
BEN KISSEL
That's French for tourism.
MARCUS PARKS
He was the first one to come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Prouteau is also a famous, how do you put it? He's a mischief maker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, a provocateur.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a provocateur.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they handed him this thing expecting him to write a little tourist hit, literally like where we can see all the points of interest of Gilles de Rais. And he was just like I'm gonna kind of hijack this for myself and I'm gonna prove he's innocent and I'm gonna write a book and I'm gonna sell it across the world.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Apparently the defense testimonies weren't found in the minutes of the trial. The page containing Gilles' confessions weren't signed by the presiding judge and the victim count varied too wildly, from 80-800. But as far as that last point goes, there's a reason behind that. It was said to be 80 because his accomplices testified that they had removed 40 bodies from one castle and 40 from another. But it was extrapolated to 800 because of the way the indictment had been written. The indictment said that he had more or less for 14 years, every month, every day, every night, took, killed, and cut the throats of children.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was busier than that.
MARCUS PARKS
He was.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wasn't entirely devoted to that. He had to pick tapestries, he was running choreography.
BEN KISSEL
He was doing the plays, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was doing a lot of shit at that time period.
MARCUS PARKS
But perhaps the most important fact brought up by Prouteau was that King Charles VII himself had asked in vain for Gilles' judgment to be revised, just three years after the death of Gilles de Rais. On that last point however, I think it may have been more about rehabilitating Joan of
Arc than it was about exonerating Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know we dug deep into this. So Charles VII did do that but it was really, it was in and out. They fully exonerated Joan of Arc in 1450, it was like in the early 1450s.
MARCUS PARKS
Once France was more unified.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So to be honest, this is my major kickback is that I feel like they also would have went really far to exonerate anybody that was remotely attached to Joan of Arc.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But instead they did the opposite where they truly, a real version of canceled someone, which is made sure that they were basically erased from history for a period of time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just cut him out because they couldn't do it. Because when they went and made Joan of Arc a saint in the 1920s, they also tried to exonerate Gilles de Rais then and that only lasted for a couple of days.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because still like 95% of medieval historians, the idea of him being innocent is thought about because of these flaws, because these holes in the trial and the coverage of the trial. But 95% of medieval historians still think that he's guilty because essentially it's the Church of the Holy Innocents.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Once you make a public molestation university-
MARCUS PARKS
He didn't necessarily, he didn't tell everyone hey, I'm bringing in kids here and molesting them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was obvious. It was very obvious.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because somebody would have legitimized it. I really do believe that he was too important, he had too much money, more people would have showed up being like let's make this church legit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he could have just given the church, like here's 1000 francs if I can do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, here you go, boom. Here's your vig.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, here's your vig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you can have it, you're a part of it.
MARCUS PARKS
But the Catholic church at this time was not what you'd call fucking ethical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They've never been. But at that time, at that point, at least the ethics were straightforward and you could just buy shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? Instead of pretending like you needed to worry about your soul or whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Well soon after publishing his book, Prouteau hosted a tongue in cheek retrial of Gilles de Rais at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. This is about 1992. And it ultimately acquitted the world's most notorious child murderer as not guilty.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not guilty.
MARCUS PARKS
Not guilty.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
MARCUS PARKS
But while we do certainly respect the people who believe de Rais is innocent in their passion and in their research, we ultimately believe that there was just too much blood pooling around the feet of Gilles de Rais to say that he was nothing more than a victim of political circumstance. He definitely didn't murder 800 children. But considering the number of kids who went missing in his presence, especially at the end, it doesn't seem worth it to rehabilitate the image of a child murderer, whether the number is 1 or 100.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because even if you murder one, everybody gets on your fucking case.
BEN KISSEL
Well absolutely. Gilles de Rais, there it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a lot.
BEN KISSEL
The tale of noblemen gone wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I will say that is again, it's what I love about history, especially this time period.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do love that it's about when you're a historian, you're a storyteller.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And what you gotta do is you gotta look all these different perspectives in the face and wonder and ask yourself, because is objective knowledge of this time period even-
BEN KISSEL
Got to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are we even able? Can we get it? I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Did the time period even exist?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did it ever exist? There is a whole series of thought saying that we're 300 years earlier than we're supposed to be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? Read into it. Like I'm fascinated by the pushback because I read it, we talked about it as we went through the research of like there is points here but who knows? You just never know what someone is capable of with no sense of decorum and nothing but resources.
BEN KISSEL
Well I think it's important we trust the legal system.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And he is guilty. He is a murderer and at least he is guilty of wasting during a theatrical production.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Which comes out of the actor's pocket.
MARCUS PARKS
It does.
BEN KISSEL
And it's unfortunate and he's a horrible person and he's French. So there we go. So that's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a horrible and he's French. We're fine with France.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I love French.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, French is cool. We went to France this year, it was cool.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Honestly though I barely remember, we were only there for like three days.
MARCUS PARKS
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I felt like I was in the National Lampoon's European Vacation.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where like I ran to the Louvre being like, that's the Louvre! Ran over to the Eiffel Tower, that's the Eiffel Tower!
BEN KISSEL
Isn't it tiny?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's tiny, isn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
It did feel like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Louvre is huge.
BEN KISSEL
Oh the Louvre is different.
MARCUS PARKS
The Louvre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Louvre is fucking huge.
MARCUS PARKS
It's so fucking massive.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, thank you all so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So good.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you for the great comments. Gilles de Rais, that is it. 9 hours of French history.
MARCUS PARKS
Thanks everyone came out to WonderCon too.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
We had so much fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So much fun.
BEN KISSEL
It was awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
It was so cool to go to a fucking con that's like truly nerd-based.
BEN KISSEL
It was so fun. Great costumes.
MARCUS PARKS
That's not about celebrities and it's not about stupid bullshit. It's just about having fun and talking about nerdy shit with other nerdy people without feeling embarrassed about it.
BEN KISSEL
It was fun. It was really great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so cool.
BEN KISSEL
So cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It felt like a legit con, you know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It felt like it was so cool to meet everybody.
BEN KISSEL
You know what I liked? Less police barricades. San Diego, there's just so many barricades.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There really is, yeah. It's just so scary. You go through and I'm like scared at Comic-Con half the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this is nice. It was really, really fun.
MARCUS PARKS
It's so nice.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, so thank you all so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go to getitmade.la/disasterman to see Kissel and I do a Side Stories live in support of a little project I'm working on.
BEN KISSEL
That's April 8th?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's April 8th. If you want to buy alcohol for the show, pay attention to my stupid ass social media. I'm gonna put it up on the stories.
BEN KISSEL
How complicated is this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just gonna put the link
BEN KISSEL
This is the most complicated thing we've talked about in this whole series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes it is. Just know it's not always gonna be like this.
MARCUS PARKS
I will admit, one of the most surprising things about moving to California, I've been here for about four or five months now, is just how fucking incredibly complicated everything is. Nothing is easy here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean New York is very similar besides the fucking... Just don't go to Universal.
BEN KISSEL
Getting copious amount of weed is easier.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's much easier. But yeah, I guess I just got used to the rules of New York City. But yeah, here, this is a baffling town sometimes.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not necessarily true though because here you can get wine, liquor, and beer in the same store which is very nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
And scratchers. Ooh, scratchers!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Scratchers!
BEN KISSEL
That's next show. Can we do a whole episode on scratchers?
MARCUS PARKS
And then the California healthcare is a labyrinth and nightmare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh that's different, healthcare is something else entirely. You're talking about something serious. I just get burgers.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, thank you so much for listening. Hope you're doing well out there. Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations. The times are tough but honestly I would rather live now than then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh hail me, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I don't want to fucking go back.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't wanna go to 1400s me, man.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no. Thank y'all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bye!
BEN KISSEL
Bye!
MARCUS PARKS
Bye!