addie-mystery-transcripts

[addie-mystery-transcripts]

Addie Mysteries Episode 311: Kate Reed Disappearance Part 1

-intro-

Addie Merchant: Hello, and welcome to Addie Mysteries. I’m Addie Merchant.

Tabitha Wilder: And I’m Tabby Wilder. How are we doing today Addie?

-I removed the 30-minute cold open because they only talked about Real Housewives of Beverly Hills-

-musical tone indicating the end of an ad break for BetterHelp-

Addie: On January 8th, 2000, Kate Reed disappeared from her home in the borough of Tower Hamlets in London, England. Kate isn’t someone who’s unknown to our listening audience. 

She’s been an accomplished journalist for well over a hundred years.

Tabitha: Vamprisim, it does wonders for the career, doesn’t it? Have you ever thought about taking a dip and going full viper, Addie?

-Addie laughs-

Addie: Never. I fucked around with Drac when I was coming up in the Orange County scene, there’s no way I’d go all in and turn. Gave myself third-degree burns after trying to walk around in the sun afterward. 

Tabitha: You’re right, sorry I completely derailed us.

Addie: Don’t fret, anyways. Kate Reed was born in Ireland to an Irish Republican father, no doubt her more left-leaning views came from him.

-Tabitha makes a snort laugh-

Tabitha: Only good republican, huh?

Addie: Growing up though, she was childhood friends with a lot of well-to-do English ladies. (she puts on a fake cockney accent, indicated by italics) A real proper high society lot. Many you’ve heard of if you’ve read Stoker’s Dracula. Wilhelmina Murray and Lucy Westenra. But the word is she was close with Penelope Churchwood.

Tabitha: Gross.

Addie: You just hate to see a social climber win.

Tabitha: I hate to see someone who pals around with dictators win. But continue dear.

-Addie laughs-

Addie: Anyways, Reed was heavily involved with the whole affair surrounding the Van Helsing group right before Dracula’s rise to power. However many portions of Stoker’s book misattributed letters and diary entries to Westenra or Murray. Granted, this is a piece of wishful alternate history text half written by a man in a concentration camp, so I think we can forgive him for making a few boo-boos. Then everyone knows the story, things go tits up for the Van Helsing group, Lucy Westenra dies at their hands, and Dracula escapes to seize the throne of England. A few years down the line, Reed gets bitten by her boss at a newspaper and she turns a vampire too. Now she’s missing. Missing and presumed destroyed.

-Five-minute Squarespace advertisement where Tabitha pretends to not know how websites work-

Tabitha: Kate Reed also embodied this idea of “The New Woman”. She was cool, she was a woman who embodied the idea of independence in the Victorian era. She was a bicyclist, she had multiple partners and she was driven by appetites not just for blood and sex, but also the capital T truth. I’ve also been doing my research into Reed via her diaries. I want to connect how she thought and behaved to make a bigger point about her. In this episode, I’ll focus on Abjection, and in the next, we’ll cover The New Woman in depth.

Addie: You. You’ll cover it. I tried to veto this listener, but I was overwhelmed. 

Tabitha: I want you to humor me for a second. Just like give me five minutes of your time.  I think that Reed was a constant victim of her vampirism mixing with her catholic guilt and it resulted in abjection of herself.

Addie: What the fuck are you talking about?

Tabitha: You don’t believe me? Let’s look at her diary entry about how she felt during the Crimson Executioner investigation.

-There is a sound of paper rustling as Tabitha brings up her notes-

Tabitha: “Had I flown off to heaven or elsewhere, leaving behind a shell that could deceive itself into pretending to live out my life?”¹ This is exactly what Kristeva was talking about. She made herself an object that can be flatly rejected. She has rejected herself and rendered what she thinks of as remaining here on earth as something disgusting.

Addie: Catholic guilt feels like a bit of a stretch here. We’re getting ahead of us by talking about Italy, we haven’t even left her time in London or hell we haven’t even gotten to World War I. I had planned for Italy to be the primary focus of part two, but you’ve completely bungled it.

-Addie Makes a hiss sound-

-Outro Music + Patreon shoutouts read by Addie-