Hey, Missing listeners, we wanted to bring you an episode that recently aired on our other podcast, Crawl Space. So for any listener who doesn't know, we do have two shows, and we always want to share episodes of Crawl Space on Missing when they're appropriate and relevant. So that's what you're getting here, and please make sure to like and subscribe and follow us on social media. Thanks a lot for listening. So this caretaker joins this group, and what they don't realize is that he is most likely an undiagnosed schizophrenic, and something sets him off, and he ultimately burns down the entire home and kills everybody inside with an axe.
to escape, including Mayma Borthwick and her two young children. On today's new episode, we are thrilled to be joined once again by author, investigative journalist, and documentarian Mr. Casey Sherman. Casey sits down with us to discuss his 20th book, The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright. The book opens up the little-known dark chapter of Frank Lloyd Wright's life, one that is marked by incredible tragedy and gut-wrenching horror. This remarkable book is due out on June 9th, and you can pick up a copy at your local bookseller or follow links in the show notes to pre-order your copy right now. You can also follow Casey on Instagram at Casey Sherman Writes. Links to his social is also in the show notes. And while you're at it, follow us on social at Crawl Space.
podcast or crawlspace pod we would love to hear from you about this episode so please leave us a comment on spotify or youtube we will be back with casey sherman after we take a quick break for our sponsors thanks for listening everyone and thank you to our sponsors back to the program welcome back to the podcast it's author casey sherman casey how are you today i'm good guys thanks for having me back yeah you're welcome to come back anytime and it just occurred to me right now that every time we have you on it's been about a year every time because you try to do a book a year so this almost like kicks off our crime season i feel like you like kick off the crime season for us with your new book, and then we just get into it for the rest of the year. And then you come up the next year with another great book. For those who don't know who you are, a lot of people already do, but could you give a little background about yourself and maybe a little bit about your work? Sure. You know, this is my 20th book, The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright. I'm a professional journalist, investigative reporter. I write books, magazine articles, newspaper. A lot of my work has been adapted into feature films, including Patriot's Day with Mark Wahlberg, The Finest Hours with Chris Pine and Casey Affleck. And now I'm really heavily invested in the documentary film space as well, which is, you know, kind of a pretty exciting route for me to take. I've got a new documentary that's airing on NBC Peacock right now.
chronicles my work on the Boston Strangler case, which we've covered in the past. Yes, riveting documentary. We definitely urge all of our listeners to check that out. And we spoke with you a few months ago about that as well. That is a shocking story. And it's a story that continues to evolve, guys. As I mentioned, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright is my 20th book. I've just finished my 21st, which is called American Ripper. And it's really a 30,000 foot view of the Strangler case. And what I learned as a 57 year old investigative journalist, there wasn't 11 to 13 women just killed in Boston. There were 67 women murdered across the United States. It's a shocking revisitation of this story. And I can't wait to come back and talk about that. When you came on to talk about...
the documentary on The Strangler. You had mentioned this book that we're going to be talking about. And I was so excited. And now you just did it again with your new book. So I love it how you just tee up the next one. It's so great. Appreciate it. I've had a lot of practice, as you can imagine. Yes, truly. I still think my favorite is Hunting Whitey, though. That I think might be my favorite book that you've written. Well, we're super excited and can't really share too much yet. But Dave Wedge, my co-author on that project, we have a documentary film series in development right now. We're in pre-production on that with a major network. So hopefully we'll come back and talk about that in 2027 when ultimately that series runs. But it's a great story about the 16 years that Whitey Bulger was on the run and all the fascinating.
you know, cat and mouse games that he played with the FBI while he was a fugitive. Wow, that sounds great. Yeah, I can't wait to watch that too. Your new book is called The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright, The True Story of Mass Murder in Paradise. Another riveting read. First, can you tell us why you chose to dive into this story? Sure. Maybe like many people in your audience, I didn't know really much about Frank Lloyd Wright other than the fact that he was, you know, America, if not the world's most prominent architect. I visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. I remember, you know, Falling Water, that beautiful home that he designed in Pennsylvania, but I didn't know much about it. I was in Hollywood about a year and a half ago having meetings with some Hollywood filmmakers.
And one particular group mentioned this story. I was pitching them the Nathan Carman book that I wrote last year. And I said, well, what are you guys working on? They said, well, we have this Frank Lloyd Wright true crime project, but we don't have a Casey Sherman that can dig under the roots and look under the hood to see if there's a bigger story there. So I said, well, guys, you might. You know, tell me what little you know about it. I'll go back to my true crime lab right here and I'll see if there's a story. And sure enough, there's an incredible story about the world's greatest architect and how he was involved in one of the most sensational crimes in true crime history in America. And a lot of people don't even know what happened. Right. You had mentioned that he is a...
one of the, if not the most prolific architects in arguably the world, definitely in this country. Most people associate him with his work. And it's not like this crime is like mild. It's not like, oh, a little scandal hit him. It's not like he had an affair. And, you know, it was just that. I mean, it was a brutal massacre that happened. Some people might not have even been able to come back from it. Oh, exactly. Which is, you know, and again, he was a young architect at the time, well before he really, you know, made his bones as the world's greatest architect. He had decades of design work ahead of him. You know, to sum up this book, guys, it's really Romeo and Juliet meets the shining. That's how I look at it, where, you know, you, Lance mentioned that, you know, Frank was a really unique.
interesting guy and I don't present flowers to him. Meaning I give you the raw Frank Lloyd Wright, a guy that was an outlier, brilliant, but had difficult relationships with just about everybody in his life, from his family to all of the people that he loved or maybe did not love. But the story really takes place from... 1910 to about 1914 and then, you know, a couple of years afterwards where Frank Lloyd Wright is married. He's got a, you know, a brood of children. He's living in Chicago and he falls in love with one of his client's wives. I mean, it reminds me of the Vrabel Diana Rossini story we're watching today. Now, remember, this is 1910. This is Edwardian society where divorce and scandal, that's not even talked about. But he falls in love with this woman. She falls in love with him. They don't love their, you know, respective spouses. So they decide to buck society and really join forces and it creates really America's first celebrity sex scandal because every newspaper covered this story at the time. When did it shift?
in your mind to change that narrative, I guess, in your storytelling where it was about this brutal murder, the brutal multiple murders that happened, to making it into more of a love story, because it really is. During my research of this case, I had to go back to all the original reporting that was happening in America in 1910 to 1914. And I was surprised to see how forthcoming Frank Lloyd Wright was about his relationship with Mayma Borthwick, the woman he ultimately fell in love with, and how forthright she was to declare her love for him. Now, she equaled him as an intellectual. And I think that's where he really leaned into this wonderful, beautiful, scandalous love affair. And it wasn't just a tryst. It wasn't just an affair. You know, Frank had dedicated his entire life to her. They actually went into exile to Europe together while all the heat was on them from the clergy in the United States, polite society, obviously the media at the time. And about a year after, you know, that scandal hit, he brings Mima Borthwick back to the United States. And everybody from the media to their respective families thought, OK, well, this was a moment in time. Frank is going to go back to his family. Mima is going to go back to hers.
They didn't do that. Frank ended up building her a monument to their love, a place that he called Taliesin in Wisconsin where Frank was born and raised. And this is where the story really takes that dark turn, right guys? Getting into that dark turn in a little bit, you did say that that's where he was born and raised and he had an interesting upbringing, especially with his mother. Can you just go into that a little bit? Sure. We've read this story a thousand times. You know, the person with a domineering mother and Frank Lloyd Wright certainly had that. You know, she basically anointed him an architect while he was in his crib as an infant. She was putting out pictures of beautiful cathedrals and she really laid out his future for him. She didn't appreciate anybody on the female side that, you know,
went into his life because she wanted to be the only woman in Frank's life. You know, we've seen that, whether it's real life or Anthony Perkins slash psycho part of, you know, the story as well. Yeah, very domineering woman. Frank, you know, didn't fall in love. Frank got married to an early age to a young woman where he knew that he was just basically following what the mores that society dictated. And it wasn't until Mayma Borthwick, this very bright graduate of the University of Michigan, fell into his lap, if you will, by happening to be the wife of one of his clients. And he couldn't go back from that. He had to fall in love and he had to follow his heart. And that led him to tragedy. What happened to this tragedy? Frank built this beautiful home in Wisconsin. It was part shelter and safe haven for...
their love affair, Frank and Mema, because Kitty Wright, Frank's wife wouldn't divorce him. You know, Frank wanted to marry Mema, but, you know, his first wife refused to divorce him. So they were living basically in sin, if you will, in Wisconsin. You know, the townspeople were up in arms. They were trying to drive them both out of town. Then this is where the shining part of the story happens. Frank hires a caretaker to handle the estate because it's not just a home. It's also going to be a school for aspiring architects. And Frank was going to have anywhere between eight to 15 aspiring architects living on campus throughout the year so that they could help him with his designs and he could teach them the new way of architecture.
United States. So this caretaker joins this group and what they don't realize is that he is most likely an undiagnosed schizophrenic and something sets him off and he ultimately burns down the entire home and kills everybody inside with an axe. as they're trying to escape, including Mayma Borthwick and her two young children. He locked the egresses. Correct. Or all of them in separate ones so that he could sort of channel them into one area and then killed them with a hatchet. With a hatchet, yes. As they were fleeing. It's so barbaric. The eyewitness accounts of what happened that day, and I had all the primary source documents to really use in my research, was just absolutely shocking and revolting. Frank wasn't on property during this massacre. He was actually working in Chicago on a project, and he got a call that said, you have to come to Wisconsin because Taliesin is on fire. And that was his first notification of what was really going on. He had no...
idea that the caretaker was literally murdering people as they were trying to escape. And as Frank boards a train from Chicago to Wisconsin at every stop, he's learning more and more about what is transpiring in real time in Wisconsin. And it's haunting. It really is. And it made me think about your experience as an investigative journalist covering a lot of crimes. Obviously, when you read about them, you're interpreting them in your own way. How do you then kind of structure your narrative and your breakdown of that chaos? How do you then say, what is most important for the reader to learn before I get to the carnage? Great, great question. I tried to map out potential motivations of the killer.
himself. And there isn't a lot of documentation about this gentleman in history. This was an African-American caretaker. So I was trying to figure out, OK, this guy came from Alabama, migrated north. What was going on in the United States at the time that might have given him outside influence to do what he did? And you do see, you know, a lot of the different, obviously, obstacles, challenges, horrific crimes that were happening against African-Americans at that time. So I tried to at least.
put the reader in the killer's mindset in terms of what could have been the triggering point, do what he did. Was there any reason that you ever were able to glean from the research that Carlton committed these acts? Obviously, there were a lot of rumors happening in real time after the murders because Carlton, the killer, was captured on property by a mob of townspeople. And he lived for a very short period of time because before he was captured, he took some poison. Before he ultimately went to trial and he never got that opportunity because he died while in custody, he left some cryptic language behind. Meaning if I die, you'll never know the real story about my motivation or what led me to do it. So there are rumors.
circulated, was he an instrument of the mob? You know, there was, you know, some credence to that because Frank Lloyd Wright was working on a project called Midway Gardens at the time in Chicago, but he was using non-union labor and he was getting pushback from the gangsters in town at the time. So that's, you know, one possible scenario. You know, was it, you know, members of the clergy who, you know, saw that Frank and Mamo were really thumbing their eye at the institution of marriage? You know, the steps that Carlton takes.
prior to the murder at Taliesin, are very curious. He disappeared for a short period of time and ended up in Chicago. Where was he? What was he doing at that time? And I was trying to piece together as many threads as I ultimately could. But at the end of the day, guys, I realized that he was a troubled individual who had expressed...
curious behavior with his wife, with his friends prior to what happened at Taliesin. So I think that, you know, there were certain mental situations that were happening within him that led him to commit this horrendous crime. So he died like seven days after, you said, and he had swallowed poison. While he was incarcerated, he refused to eat, though, too, right? And that contributed to the whole thing? Whether, you know, the poison, because the poison definitely, you know, strained and burned his esophagus and his vocal cords. But that certainly led to his very early...
death, if you will, after ingesting that poison. They wished, law enforcement wished they had spent more time with him to find out if there was a story behind his actions. And they never got that story. And I thought, okay, well, does my story end there? And I was shocked to learn that it doesn't. As devastated as Frank Lloyd Wright is at the murder of Mayma Borthwick and his architects and the children, you know, the next several years of Frank Lloyd Wright's life, rather, are explosive. You know, he falls in with another woman that causes great scandal in his life. And so I take the reader through some of those episodes and elements ultimately to where I felt Frank Lloyd Wright had some redemption.
his life, and that certainly takes place during a devastating earthquake of all places in Japan in the early 1920s. With the, I guess, conspiracy theories that you looked over from the media at that time, did you notice any similarities to today? Like, if this were to happen today, I'm sure social media would move very quickly in the conspiracy theories, probably even blaming him. I wonder what, looking back in time, if things have evolved and gotten hotter? or if it's really just more of the same. I think it's more of the same. You know, the reporting in 1914 is very similar to the reporting today. I mean, there was, you know, kind of a, I mean, they took the gloves off the reporters and went right after, they blamed Frank for what happened at Taliesin because of how he, you know, again, thumbed his nose at, you know, the mores of society and clergy members blamed Frank for the deaths at Taliesin. So here's a guy that is literally trying to rise up from the ashes of this incredible tragedy, but still being victimized by the press who covered this, you know, this great crime. And we'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors.
Thanks to our sponsors. And now we're back to the program. What was known about schizophrenia in 1914? Zara, I mean, in terms of just your layman modern parlance, you know, people weren't writing about it in major newspapers. That certainly wasn't reported heavily upon after the death of Julian Carlton, the killer. So I think that that was one of those things where I had to put on my 21st century journalist hat and say, okay, what are the common denominators that might have resulted in this man doing what he did? My question about that.
comes from the way he tried to kill himself by swallowing poison. There must have been several other ways that he could have had other options to end his own life, but that's such a painful, drawn-out way to kill yourself. And I was wondering if that, in your opinion, had something to do with voices that he was hearing, telling him that he didn't deserve to die quickly, that he needed to suffer. Well, you mentioned voices that he was hearing, so his wife did describe incidents where he was sleeping in bed with the hatchet, you know, on his chest. listening to the voices and shouting down the voices in his head. The mental health issues that he was experiencing were certainly very dramatic. The wife should have recorded this behavior, this odd behavior to, you know, the rights, her, you know, their employers at the time, but she didn't do that. And that may have been out of fear of her husband. Wow. Yeah. It's just tough to imagine what people thought of mental illness back then, hearing voices and things like that. Well, most people were sent away to asylums and, you know, there wasn't any medication.
you know, or very little medication that people dealing with these issues could have been put on. Carlton's murder was premeditated because he did buy, you know, the poison days before he committed this act. So it wasn't a spur of the moment crime. So this was something that he methodically plotted out. And you mentioned, you know, the way that Frank Lloyd Wright designed his buildings changed right after what happened in Taliesin. You look at all of Frank Lloyd Wright's work that we know and appreciate, you know, there are open spaces, there are ways to get out.
of every building that he designed. And that, I think, all went back to the tragedy of Taliesin in 1914. I do love that concept there, that idea that he was putting some symbolism in his architectural design based on the tragedy in his life. That made me think about the character of Uncle Cenk and how you had written about him and chose his perspective to sort of introduce to the reader the aftermath of this massacre. What was your impression of him? Why did you choose that character to perform that duty to the reader? The inner dichotomy of Uncle Cenk was very interesting to me. Here you have a Civil War hero who had seen battle.
you know, some of the bloodiest battles in American history and survived, you know, that ultimately resulted in him becoming a pacifist minister who put down his rifle and would never pick up arms again until the fire at Taliesin, where he had to grab that rifle and then go track down the killer or killers who had burned down that home and murdered everybody inside. So I thought he was an interesting character to explore, again, right at the top of the book to draw that reader in to the drama, you know, on the first few pages. You had mentioned the Mike Vrabel, Diane Rossini. affair at the beginning of this episode. And I didn't even really make that connection with your book and with Maima and Frank Lloyd Wright. I didn't make that connection until you mentioned that, especially the media's like ravenous appetite for it. How is Maima related to Diane Rossini and the way they're perceiving or the way they're depicting her? And because she was depicted as like a vampire, right?
Oh, absolutely. And that's exactly what Mima Borthwick was called by the press and obviously by Frank's wife at the time. So I think, you know, you look at Rossini, you look at Mima Borthwick, two professionals. Mima was translating Swedish feminist literature into English. So here wasn't just a domesticated housewife and mother. Here was somebody that was challenging Frank Lloyd Wright, as I mentioned, intellectually. I think if you made that correlation between Rossini and Mima, you know, they were both, I think, very smart. Clearly, Diana Rossini is very smart. And I would imagine that she probably challenged Vrabel on an intellectual level as well. But you do see that.
never-ending public appetite for this type of scandal, whether it's public condemnation for what was happening or some even support for what the couple, you know, was going through in 1914 and what Vrabel and Rossini are facing today. How do we, like, then figure out a way to know what is responsible and how we consume these things? You know, because history has showed us this over and over. Aside from the brutal massacre that happened, when does it become almost like scandal porn? Well, that's what it is.
Right. Perfect way to describe it. It's scandal porn. Everybody wants to look into everybody else's windows and see how they're living their lives. Obviously, in 1914, there was massive outcry to how Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamet Worthwick were living their lives. But there was probably some underlying respect as well.
you know, from people that were forced into marriages that, you know, they didn't necessarily agree to or belong to, and they were living vicariously through Frank Lloyd Wright in Maim and Borthwick, much like I think people are living vicariously through Vrabel and Rossini today. As far as the culture of architecture, how we talk about Wright's work after this moment changed, do you think this moment, this mass murder, actually impacted the rest of American architecture? I think 100% it did. You know, it's interesting, you know, I had to obviously consume every biography that was written about Frank Lloyd Wright, including Frank Lloyd Wright's autobiography, which he spends a little time discussing. Mema and Taliesin, but his biographers don't really even touch it. Mema is a footnote in his story, and I think that's because these writers don't want to look at that very dark chapter in Frank Lloyd Wright's life. And I look at it and I say, this is the chapter that changed his entire life, whether his personal life or his professional life. You can go back to this moment in time in 1914 where everything changed for Frank Lloyd Wright, which is why I wanted to expand on that story with the killer in Frank Lloyd Wright. And we'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. Thanks to our sponsors, and now we're back to the program.
So how does this one rank in all the work that you've done in the past? Whitey Bulger, Boston Strangler, just in the impact in society historically. How does this one rank for you? You know, I mean, I was pitched a story about true crime and murder, but what I found was a love story. So, you know, this story is a little different for me to write because I really invested heavily in the relationship between Mema and Frank. And I thought there's a lot of beauty there in the pages, as well as, you know, some very dark passages as well. So it was a challenge for me. You know, I didn't have Frank Lloyd Wright to interview and I didn't have Mema or any of the people that were alive at that time. So I had to go back and really dig through primary stories.
documents really rely heavily on the reporting of that day. And unlike today, all of the details. of that murder were written about ravenously by reporters. There is obviously today's journalism world, you have to hold back some information in some detail because it's so brutal. And law enforcement will do that as well. But in 1914, whatever reporters heard, whether it was firsthand, secondhand, or thirdhand, it ended up in the pages of their newspapers. What was Wright's life like afterwards? How did he deal with the aftermath emotionally? That's a great question. You know, I mean, he wanted to, and he writes about this in his autobiography. I mean, if there was an opportunity for him to crawl into that casket with Mema, who was buried on site at Taliesin, he certainly would have done so. I think this completely devastated him. I think he was on an island emotionally.
emotionally and psychologically. And I think he was very vulnerable. He fell victim to another woman in his life, the Madame Noelle. And, you know, that takes Frank to a different level of scandal that I write about in the story. But I wanted to see, was there a redemption story for Frank? And what I found out was this monument to love that he had built for MEMA in Wisconsin that ultimately became a monument to death.
I said, was there something else in his future that he could look to as a monument to life? And I found it in Tokyo when Frank was commissioned to build and design the Imperial Hotel for the royal family. The hotel was supposed to house foreign dignitaries. And when Frank set foot in Tokyo for the first time, he realized that, well, this is a geography where there's a lot of small earthquakes. But if the big one hits, how can my building withstand that type of damage? And what he created, guys, was the world's first earthquake-proof building, which his design has not only saved...
thousands of lives, but really millions of lives over the last century. Right. So he went from this domineering mother who I guess in a sense like that worked for him because he did become an amazing architect, like world-renowned architect. So that did work for him. And then he has a scandal and then the tragedy and he's still trying to make it a point to create work that represents life and actually saves lives. This is, you know, the way he did in Japan. I was trying to think like, who can I relate him to today? Is there anybody who you can relate him to today that has gone through this and then made it into something that can enhance lives and actually save lives? Well, you know, it's interesting. I'm not sure to that level, you know, somebody that's gone through that and used it as fuel, you know, in a positive way.
way, but I would say that, you know, Frank was an outlier, you know, much like your Walt Disney's or your Steve Jobs. They're not thinking at the same level that we are. So, you know, Frank was an asshole, you know, to everybody, but he was also a genius as well. And sometimes you have to let those people be who they are, you know, in their personal lives so that they can create great art or great literature or great films or great technology. So if I was going to equate Frank to, you know, another artist, I mean, those are, you go through history, whether it's...
Da Vinci or whether it's Steve Jobs, as I mentioned, or Walt Disney, who was somebody who was not necessarily a person you would walk into a room and say, well, I really love that guy. Because, you know, they were really prickly and they were really hard to get along. But I think Frank was the same way. John Lennon, for example, who I wrote about in the last days of John Lennon certainly was somebody that I thought, okay, there are some comparisons there that I see with Frank Lloyd Wright and John's relationship with Yoko and the scandal that allegedly brought down the Beatles. John wasn't going to let society dictate who he was and nor was Frank Lloyd Wright. I was kind of getting some like Roman Polanski type thoughts there too. Yeah, you know, and again, Roman Polanski, yeah. They thread that needle between genius and madness.
as so many artists do, right? And occasionally they'll dip their toe into that mad world. Polanski obviously did. Wright obviously did many times. So, you know, I mean, it was very interesting to get into Frank Lloyd Wright's head or at least attempt to. Did he go on living at that same property? He did rebuild there. And in fact, Taliesin also, you know, the second structure and house he built also caught on fire. So then he had to rebuild again. And then he ended up building a separate complex in Arizona called Taliesin II. And that complex is what he used.
to help really nurture and train the next generation of architects that really created an even bigger Frank Lloyd Wright world. How important was it for him to take his knowledge and his education and educate others with it? It was very important to him. And you would think that somebody like him would want to keep his genius to himself and think that, well, nobody else can do what I do, right? And we've seen some artists have that type of mindset. But he was an educator even early on in his own career. He was trying to get people to think in new ways to not necessarily build a structure that is going to not have a relationship with the natural world.
but have something that is symbiotic with the environment in which that building or that house has created. And I think Frank looked at that and changed the whole dynamic in terms of how people were thinking about architecture and design. What do you think he would think about the modern farmhouse style housing that's happening now? I think he would love it. That was something, you know, he was really the patriarch of the movement at the time because of, you know, going back, and I do go back into his childhood in Wisconsin. You know, he worked on a farm. You know, he lived amongst the trees and amongst the flowers and really wanted to create an environment structurally that would complement.
the natural beauty that he saw every day. I totally agree. Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many people who are designing, including family members of mine who are designing their homes like that. And I can't wait to tell my niece, you know, the house that you and your husband are building right now. Okay, go into Frank Lloyd Wright. Oh, by the way, check out this book. And you'll appreciate everything about your life and your relationship after reading the tragedy and how he rose from it. You know, it's amazing, guys. I mean, there are so many Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes across the United States and people think, well, they must be worth millions. You can buy a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home for I think $300,000, you know, in certain areas of the United States. They're not very expensive to literally own and live.
in a piece of American history. So they're very accessible. How would you know if your house is a Frank Lloyd Wright house? You have that certain chain of custody, if you will. If you're buying a Frank Lloyd Wright and you can go back to the original architectural plans, which they do maintain and understand that this is a Frank Lloyd Wright house, not a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired house. So, you know, you do have provenance there as well. So what happened to Kitty, his first wife? So Kitty finally ended up allowing Frank to get a divorce. And Kitty's a great character in the story because she's one who really manipulated the media in 1910 to 1914. She had all of the reporters literally eating out of her hands, you know, and villainizing Frank and villainizing Mema. She was the first person.
to call Maima a vampire. But ultimately, she realized that Frank didn't love her, even though he said that to her a thousand times, and gave him the ability to marry again, which he did. And, you know, he falls for a femme fatale. who had her own mental health issues, Mariam Noel, and the reader gets to go into that psychotic relationship. But Frank ultimately falls in love with a woman that he spent the rest of his life with, and he died in 1959 at the age of 91. Going back to the love affair that he had with Mema, in his will and testament, he asked to be buried with her, and he was. This is obviously a very historic story taking place in 1914, over 100 years ago, but you still are dealing with immense tragedy and very, very, very graphic depictions of how human beings were brutally murdered. You still have to balance that sensitivity.
with family members that might have some sort of connection to them still. How did you do that? It's so stark, right? So, you know, I mean, obviously there's some sensitivity there because two children, two children were amongst the victim, actually three children, Maima's son and daughter, and then the son of one of the workers who worked there. So, you know, you understand the sensitivity there. There were some details that I probably kept back from the reader. I didn't want it to be so graphic, especially when describing the murders of children. But, you know, I did try to track down whether or not there were any living relatives.
of the Cheneys that still exist that I couldn't find anybody, nor could I find anybody that, you know, had a direct connection to the Wright family. Certainly they're out there, but somebody, you know, nobody that learned those stories down from generation to generation. What about Carlton's wife and any other survivors from the massacre? Yeah, Carlton's wife disappeared, probably returned down south from wherever she came from. I did try to follow some of the family members and many of them actually, you know, the survivors went back to work for Frank Lloyd Wright and lived and worked at Taliesin too. So despite this incredible tragedy and where it happened, they were willing to follow this architect into the future.
I was very excited to ask this question. I just want to end it. This would be my final question is whether or not you think Frank Lloyd Wright would appreciate this book that you wrote about him. I think he would. He believed in honesty. Truth was the family motto for his family going all the way back to Wales. So I think, you know, I wanted to be absolutely honest in the retelling of his story. And I don't think, you know, a lot of his biographers were. And I think they used the Mayma Borthwick tragedy as a footnote to his story where I think it was the pinnacle of what...
made him Frank Lloyd Wright. And I lied. I said that was my last question, but the truth was his family motto. It's truth against the world, right? Truth against the world, yeah. What is that? That is living your life as truthfully as you can. And I think he was the epitome of that. He didn't lie to himself, you know, and I think that was the most important thing. You know, he recognized that he was an incredibly challenging, difficult genius. He recognized love when he saw her for the first time. And that was with Mema Bortwick. And he didn't lie to his family, didn't lie to his wife, didn't lie to his kids. He was brutally honest. And I think obviously that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Wow. Well, Casey, thank you so much for joining us here again and telling us all about this wild story and your new book out May 26th. Is there anywhere special or in particular that you'd like people to pick up a copy? Sure. I'd like people to support their local independent booksellers. The book is going to be everywhere across the United States, including airports and many countries in Europe as well. So wherever you can find the book, I hope you pick it up, read it, understand not only Frank Lloyd Wright in a different way, but also put some respect toward the name of Mayma Borthwood, who I fell in love with myself from an academic standpoint as I began to really realize.
who she was and what a courageous woman she was at that time.