Gone

0:00Bloomington, Indiana has always been a town of lifelong learners. Lectures that run long. Dinner table debates that run longer. We're always studying something. But this year, the syllabus changed. We learned about blitzes and blocks, pick sixes and play action. And what the inside of that outside stadium looks like on a sunny Saturday afternoon. We may not always understand the whole thing, but man, if it isn't fun to learn. Visit Bloomington. Learn something new. Support for this show comes from BetterHelp. Summer can feel like a sprint. Kids home, trips to plan, routines flipped upside down.

0:39It's easy to slip into survival mode just trying to get through it. Then suddenly it's over and you're wishing you enjoyed the days just a little bit more. Therapy can help you slow down and actually be present for the moments that matter. With BetterHelp, you can connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere on your schedule. Don't just survive this summer, thrive. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Vox Pods.

1:05We go walking in the dark. We go walking all that night. Where were you when you first heard Connie's music? I was at a holiday party minding my own business, and a song came up on the house mix that sounded like something I'd known all my life and also like something I knew I was hearing for the first time. As the melodies and lyrics were unfolding, it just started to remind me of some of my favorite art songs. And I was so struck by her. I just couldn't quite place it. You know, like, what is this? It just was completely original, you know, and sort of from another, I don't want to say another planet, but just sort of not placeable in the voice, of course.

2:00It's an unusual voice. It doesn't sound like anybody else. She had a tremendously direct way of delivering songs, and there's a simplicity to her language. She was just being herself, you know, and you can really hear that in her music. I could shine, I could shine like the morning sun, like the sun.

2:37I asked the host of the party who we were listening to, and he said, oh, this is Connie Converse. She made these recordings in the 1950s in her apartment in Greenwich Village. As he told me that, I realized, okay, well, I don't know who Connie Converse is. This is Howard Fishman. He's a writer and musician. Given the quality of the music, I absolutely should know who Connie Converse is. At the party that night, his friend told him the story he'd heard about her. That one day in 1974, Connie Converse drove away and disappeared. Her friends and family never heard from her again. No body was ever found.

3:18My first thought was that it was a hoax, and that there could be no such person as Connie Converse. The name seemed too fantastic. The story seemed too fantastic. So I thought it was a hoax. I thought it was somebody who had created a fictional character, but who was making this music today. That was my first thought. But then I soon realized this is actually a true story, and this woman actually existed. and I quickly realized that there was very little in the way of information about her life available anywhere. But people haven't stopped thinking about her. In 2009, musician Robert Forster called Connie Converse Life a drama so sprawling with a denouement so unexpected that Hollywood can only gaze in wonder.

4:09And in 2022, writer Haneef Abdurakib wrote, that he was fascinated by Connie Converse because, quote, I have found myself newly sensitive to the art of disappearance and how it is not, or at least not always, aligned with death. Sometimes a desire to be gone is simply a desire to be gone. This year is the 50th anniversary of Connie Converse's disappearance. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

4:52After Howard Fishman heard Connie Converse's music, he tried to find out everything he could about her. He's been researching her for more than 10 years. And he became friends with her brother, Phil Converse, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. Her brother invited Howard to come visit him in Ann Arbor, and look at the papers Connie had left behind. And when Howard got there, he realized it wasn't just a handful of letters. It was a little bit of an out-of-body experience just because of the quantity and depth of what she'd left behind and the intentionality of the way that she left it.

5:35Very well organized, with a nine-page table of contents, including where everything was in every folder in every drawer. And it seemed clear to me that this archive had been assembled for the intention of being found one day. There were diaries, hundreds of letters, organized by recipient, tape recordings, and poetry she'd written throughout her life. Some of the earliest writings included her correspondence with her best friend, Franny Flint. They grew up together in New Hampshire. When Franny was 16, she was sent away to boarding school. She told Connie, I only wish you could be in my place, for you could go out and show the world something wonderful, which is you.

6:27Howard Fishman says that even before her friend moved away, Connie was an overachiever. And after Franny left, he writes, she became even more so. In his words, almost pathologically so. She was editor of the yearbook. She worked on the school newspaper, was a member of the debate club, sang in the choir, and played violin in the orchestra. She was also the valedictorian of her high school class. She and Franny wrote often. Franny sent Connie a mysterious telegram right before graduation. All it said was, May there be no weeds between your mansion and antiquity tonight. The letters are really quite beautiful and quite unusual in their precociousness and their sort of forward thinking and introspection.

7:22It seems pretty clear that they were thinking about some pretty deep things. Franny called Connie prof in her letters, and she once wrote, What is life? I see there is less in it all the time. I am grown and done. Anything after now is just repetition. The summer after she graduated from high school, Connie worked as a waitress at a local hotel. She was going to Mount Holyoke for college that fall, just like her mother and grandmother. Franny would be going to Vassar. By all accounts, Connie did well at Mount Holyoke. She wrote in one of the school's magazines, Am I disloyal to high New Hampshire peaks when I love a Massachusetts mountain?

8:09She took classes in French and philosophy and wrote for the school's literary magazines. She was one of eight college students in the country nominated for a prize in poetry. One of the poems she submitted was called Reduction to Absurdity. It reads, I think that I shall just regress from middle youth to childishness, from cover fields of infancy to restless prenatality, and then arrive where good souls go, a cold and tired embryo. And then, one day in 1944, after finishing her sophomore year, she abruptly told the college that she wasn't coming back. Connie's brother Phil said their parents were devastated Phil never knew why Connie left school Phil told me that they'd never had a conversation about it and that he just assumed that if Connie thought it was what was best then it must be what was best and he left it at that Phil says Connie didn't move home after she dropped out Howard couldn't find any letters or diary entries from the time.

9:22I mean, I spent, you know, about a dozen years researching this woman's story. I could never pin her to any location in the nine months following her dropping out of Mount Holyoke and then popping up in New York for the first time in February of 1945. So she seems to have pulled her first disappearing act at that time, at age 20. In 1945, Connie got a job in New York City at a think tank called the American Council of the Institute for Pacific Relations. First as an editorial assistant, but soon she was writing articles about American policies in Asia. Connie Converse, without an undergraduate degree, somehow found her way not only into this organization, but within a couple of years, writing for them, writing very scholarly articles about these topics and being published and also editing other people's writings about these topics.

10:21So that was the milieu that she was in for the first five years or so that she was in New York. She was unbelievably intelligent and always trying to figure things out. I think that was a sort of a prevailing theme of her life. How can I figure this thing out? How can I make this thing better? Connie started making friends in New York. Howard describes them as a crowd of artists and musicians who often had late-night parties. He interviewed some of Connie's friends from that time. One remembered that Connie would often be at the typewriter, as though oblivious to what the group was doing. In her diary, Connie wrote, I suppose that if I were a more ardent and competent conversationalist, I should not feel impelled to type up my arguments, metaphors, insights, and analogies.

11:14Many of the people I talked with said, you know, I really didn't know her that well. She was hard to know. She seemed reserved, complete within herself, but not easy to get to know. At another party in an apartment on the third or fourth floor, one of her friends remembered Connie suddenly stood up, opened the window, and climbed outside. And there was nothing out there but a very thin ledge, no fire escape, no landing, and she would be out there for hours. A little while later, she reappeared, coming out of another room in the apartment. She seemed to have climbed back in through a different window.

12:03Connie's best friend from high school, Franny Flint, moved to New York after she graduated from Vassar. And for a very brief window of time, the two best friends were living in New York at the same time, getting their start on life. And it's an image that is poignant and fun to think about. but within just a few months Frannie Flint's father had a series of heart attacks she was called back home to Concord, New Hampshire and after her father died rather than returning to New York Frannie Flint then went with her mother to Boston to enroll in graduate school at Radcliffe and her mother got a job at Radcliffe as well Franny Flint's brother was studying at Harvard.

12:58And within a year or so, Franny Flint sank into a pretty bad depression and was found dead in the woods in Wayland, Massachusetts, around Thanksgiving of 1947. How did Connie react? All we know is what Phil remembered. He said to me on many occasions, because he would bring up Franny Flint a lot, Connie was upset about the community's reaction to Franny Flint's death, which was ruled a suicide. And the community felt that having had her father recently die, how could she do this to her brother and mother? How could she take this kind of selfish action? Phil Converse said that he remembers his sister saying that everyone has a right to do away with themselves if they want.

13:59And she was incredibly angry at the community and at their response, according to him. Connie Converse was 23 years old. Two years later, she started to record her own music.

14:16We'll be right back.

14:24Hi, it's Phoebe. If you're someone who enjoys listening to the stories we tell on Criminal, I want to tell you about another show you might like, My Favorite Murder, hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstork on the Exactly Right Network. In each episode, they tell each other stories, some that are well-known from true crime history, like the Golden State Killer and the Heaven's Gate Cult, and others that you might not have even heard about before. They're very funny, and Karen does a very good impression of me. I've been on the show a couple of times, talking about stories that I've come across that I think are really interesting, like the disappearance of the Sauter children on Christmas Eve in 1945 and the plane that crashed on Riker's Island in 1957.

15:03Look out for brand new episodes on the show every Thursday. Listen and follow My Favorite Murder wherever you listen to podcasts. It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with MidiHealth, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Midi understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Midi can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms.

15:44Midi clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA-approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91 % of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's joinmidi.com. support for the show comes from shopify every worthwhile journey starts with a handful of what-ifs but one day you'll be able to look back and realize that all those what-ifs were small steps towards turning your dream into a thriving business shopify can help you get there shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 of all e-commerce in the u.s join them and turn those what-ifs into With Shopify today.

16:41Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash voxbusiness. Go to shopify.com slash voxbusiness. That's shopify.com slash voxbusiness.

16:55In 1949, Connie Converse was 25 years old, and the think tank where she worked was being investigated by the House on American Activities Committee. The committee's goal was to investigate anyone suspected of having communist ties. Senator Joseph McCarthy had accused Connie's editor of being the top Soviet agent in North America. Connie lost her job. And that begins the next period of her life where she is really focused on trying to make it as a musician and a songwriter. In 1949, the best-selling songs in the country were by artists like the Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, and Bing Crosby. At that time, the pop music of America was pretty bland stuff.

17:47Benny Goodman and jazz and swing and big band music and Tin Pan Alley. There was no such thing, really, as singer-songwriters at that time. And there was a folk scene, for sure. But folk music in 1949, 1950, 1954, these years that Connie Converse is writing music, folk music at that time was music that was traditional music. It wasn't written by anybody. It was handed down and passed around orally. So I think people sometimes inaccurately today describe Connie Converse as a folk singer, which is just entirely inaccurate. because at the time that she was writing these songs, if you were a folk singer, you were singing traditional songs that had no known composer, no known lyricist.

18:49I knew a man once very long ago They say that he was born in Buffalo But I don't believe it Buffalo was never sufficiently gilded and pruned Connie taught herself to play guitar. She wrote, I used to think a guitar was a vulgar and unpleasing instrument. But if treated properly, it rises above the realm of the musical cliché. And with a good song, even clichés sound good. For the next few years, she wrote a lot of songs. Connie wrote in her diary, a good song must imply its own harmony. To test, whistle it acapella. Here she is, recording herself. Hello. Hello. Now I have the microphone on, I have the volume on five, and I have the microphone in input one, and I'm getting a reading of up as far as...

19:58She sent copies of her music to her brother Phil and his wife Jean. They called it her Song of the Month Club. And then as she finished a song, she would pack it up in an envelope and mail it to Phil and Jean in Ann Arbor so that they could hear it and also so that Phil and Jean could play the songs themselves. Phil played guitar and Jean sang and I think they did a lot of playing Connie Converse's songs at home. For money, Connie worked at a temp agency and did some freelance writing. She eventually found a permanent job at a print shop and publisher. But she wrote to her brother, I am furtively exploring the concrete commercial alleys of the songwriting racket, just in case there might be a buck in it for me.

20:46One Thanksgiving, Connie's parents visited her in New York, and she played them some of her music for the first time. She recorded the performance. On the tape, you can hear her mother say, Oh, I really like that one. One of the songs Connie played for her family was called Talking Like You. See that bird sitting on my windowsill Well, he's saying whippoorwill all the night through See that brook running by my kitchen door And it couldn't talk no more If it was you Of that tree, that sort of a squirrel thing This is a version recorded later at the home of a man named Gene Deitch. Gene Deitch was an illustrator, an animator.

21:36He directed Popeye and Tom and Jerry cartoons. But he was also an audio enthusiast and a lover of jazz and blues and folk music. Gene often hosted parties with his friend Bill Bernal at his home. They would invite some singer, usually a folk artist or a blues artist, and they would give a house concert, and Gene Deitch would record them, and that was a hobby of his. Connie played at one of these parties in 1954. Bill's wife remembered feeling confused by Connie and said she was, quote, boring to look at. She described her as strange. She said, incredibly talented, obviously, a genius, and yet so baffling in the way she presented herself.

22:25She described her as dowdy, looking like she'd just come in from milking the cows, and seemed aloof and arrogant. Later, Gene Deitch's son, Kim, wrote about that night. He said, no one paid any particular attention to her at first. But at some point, whoever had brought Connie along urged her to sing something, and with seeming reluctance, she did. Well, it was one of those moments you often hear about but seldom witness. From that point on, the party was all about Connie. People say a roving woman Is likely not to be better than she ought to be so When I stray away from where I've got to be Someone always takes me home She played more than a dozen songs that night.

23:24In the middle of one, Gene Deitch's cat started screaming. Connie said, that makes the perfect background. Are people telling her, Connie, you're really good? This stuff is great. I mean, did she have any sort of a following? She had a following of people who heard her at these house concerts and thought she was absolutely out of this world, unlike anything they had ever heard before. So those people, yes, were telling her, you've got what it takes, you're going to be huge. Gene Deitch made copies of his recordings from the party for his friends, who would then play them for their friends. And then Connie got an invitation to play on the morning show on CBS Jean tried to help her prepare to be on TV He asked her practice questions There isn't any surviving footage of her performance on CBS In photos, she isn't wearing her glasses She's wearing makeup Jean's son remembers watching her on TV and thinking We'll all be bragging We knew her when, pretty soon But after her television appearance, nothing happened.

24:40No record deal, no invitations to perform on other shows. The feedback that she was getting from the music industry was, we don't know what to do with your music. In any of her papers, did she write ever about feeling disillusioned about the fact that, yes, she was getting some recognition, but it wasn't enough, or she really did want to make it big, but she feared she wouldn't? I think unlike somebody like Bob Dylan, Connie Combers didn't play the game. She wanted to be discovered. She didn't want to go to them. She wanted them to come to her. And so I think that her main focus was composing, songwriting, performing, and then showing up for whatever opportunities presented themselves, but not going after them per se.

25:30Sometimes musicians and singers reached out to Connie, asking to play her music. She gave one singer the exclusive right to sing one of her songs for a year, in exchange for$50. Connie wrote to her brother, Every few months my guitar stuff hits some new periphery of the entertainment world. She was still writing music. She started working on an opera. In 1960, a friend of Connie's in advertising asked if she wanted to record any of her music in the studio where his company did jingles. She recorded for just a few hours, a total of 11 songs. Connie's friend told Howard that they did just a few takes of each song because she had her way of doing them pretty set.

26:19Not long after, Connie started talking about leaving New York. She told her friends in New York that she was going on sabbatical and that she would be back. Whether or not that was true or whether that was subterfuge is unknown. The year she left, Bob Dylan came to New York and started playing in coffee houses in Connie's old neighborhood, Greenwich Village. Howard Fishman says the two effectively swapped places. Bob Dylan would become famous a few years later. Before she left New York, she wrote to a friend, I am still a printer, an aunt, and a struggling, middle-aged artist. No news on those fronts.

27:07We'll be right back.

27:20We're all feeling it, getting pulled in a million directions. In a world full of distractions, focus is increasingly hard to find. And when you're needing to reset and refocus, you'll want something revitalizing. Pure Leaf Mental Focus is a new line of sparkling real brewed iced teas made with naturally occurring caffeine from black tea and added L-theanine to help support attention and focus without the sugar or calories. And it's available in two delicious flavors, peach and raspberry. Time for a tea break. Time for a Pure Leaf. Try it yourself. Check out the product locator at pureleaf.com slash find dash us.

28:03When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if Fatween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico.

28:34In 1961, Connie Converse moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her brother Phil lived. She saw him often. She gave music lessons to one of her nephews. Friends of hers told Howard that if they went by Connie's house at night, they would find her playing the guitar and smoking. Her friends said they were worried about her. She was depressed. She moved into her brother's attic for a while. She protested against the Vietnam War, and she became an editor for the Journal of Conflict Resolution until 1972, when the journal shut down. Connie Converse was turning 50 in August of 1974. On August 10, 1974, she dropped notes and letters into the mailbox to family and friends, each of which said different things.

29:29But several of them said, I'm going back to New York. I'm hoping to get my old job back, get in my old union, and get started again. She told her nephew, just like Bilbo Baggins, I have to go away. She wrote to her mother, it may be some time before I can get settled somewhere and get back in touch. In any event, it would be pointless for you to worry. And there was a long letter to no one in particular. In all caps, it's addressed, quote, to anyone who ever asks if I'm long unheard from. Her brother found it in her papers later. Near the end of the letter, she writes, Human society fascinates me and awes me and fills me with grief and joy.

30:20I just can't find my place to plug into it. So let me go, please. And please accept my thanks for those happy times that each of you has given me over the years. And please know that I would have preferred to give you more than I ever did or could. I am in everyone's debt. Connie Converse was never seen or heard from again. Her car, a Volkswagen, was never found. Did her family and friends, did they try to find her? What did they do? They did nothing. They did not report her missing. They did at one point talk to a private detective to see what would be involved in engaging a detective services to go looking for her, and were told that every person has the legal right to disappear.