April 2, 2025 • 37 mins
Gene Fleming and his pet goose Andy made headlines around the world. They brought out the best in the people of Hastings, Nebraska. But amid all this attention, Andy also brought out the worst. And three decades later, Andy's legacy is still reverberating around their hometown.
Note: This episode includes the murder of a beloved goose.
*
Very Special thanks to Jessica Korgie for sharing her family's story with us.
Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Sara Schleede and edited by Carmen Borca-Carrillo at Wonder Media Network
Produced by Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Josh Fisher
Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Fact-Checking by Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English
We'll see you back here next Wednesday.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Let's go back in time, No, not that far back.
Let's go back to October nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, to
the small town of Hastings, Nebraska.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Think back to the future town with the clock tower
and all that jazz that vibe.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
The leaves were the color of apple juice and Kraft
macaroni and cheese. The weather was brisk. A man began
a peaceful walk around Chautauqua Park, a nice green space
with a pavilion, playground and picnic tables.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
He was over there, metal detecting. I guess, I don't
know why, why would you meddle detect by I don't know,
change falling out of pockets.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Then, right near the base ball diamond, the man came
across something unusual, something disturbing. A dead goose, or at
least what was left of a dead goose.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's been plucked clean or skinned.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
I guess, no head, no wings, but the legs.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Were still on, with a pair of shoes on.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
The man had a sinking feeling. You see, Hastings had
a local celebrity, a sneaker wearing goose named Andy. It
was hard to believe another sneaker wearing goose could have
turned up dead in the park. The man in the
park decided he would call Andy's owner, Geene Fleming, just
(01:51):
to check in on the goose.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
This was back in the day before really everybody had
cell phones, and everybody used a phone book to get
in touch with people.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So the man headed home treasure hunting, put on paws
and grabbed the phone book. He ran his finger down
the page of f's until he found Gene Fleming. He
punched the buttons on his phone.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
There.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Gene just wanted to call and check in.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Is Andy okay?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Was Andy okay? What a question? As far as Jane knew,
Andy was safe and sound, why wouldn't he be. Gene
rushed to the enclosure where Andy and his mate Polly slept.
Where there should have been two peaceful geese with their
heads nuzzled close to their chests, there were just clumps
(02:46):
of hay bedding, and further off, two sets of footprints
in the dirt, not goose sized, human sized.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
So that's how they learned that that Andy had been
taken in the night.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
As improbable as it seemed at the time, Andy's death
and life would still be reverberating around Hastings three decades later.
Welcome back to very special episodes and I heart original podcast.
I'm your host Dana Schwartz and this is Andy the
(03:23):
sneaker wearing Goose.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English, joined
as always by Dana Schwartz and Zarreon Burnette. And I
love a good, weird, small town story, Dana or Zarin.
Is your hometown famous for anything super strange?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
No, I will say the one. It's not like an
urban legend. But I'm from the Chicago suburbs that are
very like John Hughes suburbs. So if you remember in
the in the movie Ferris Bueller, his friend Cameron has
like a really cool house that's like over a ravine
where you remember like a cargo story of the glass.
That house is in my town.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
What.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, that's pretty great. I love that house. I've always
loved that house. It's a cool house, like the dream house.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Oh my god, and I grew up in it.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Did you should drive past it?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Like?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Is that like a local thing to do?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
No, it's not even like out of the way. It's
like I would drive past it on my way to school.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
Oh, whoa, that's tough man. In my town, we had
nothing as cool as that. But we did have a
tunnel that was built under a road, and the tunnel
was specifically built for toads. It was called toad tunnel
and it costs fourteen grand. You look online, there's all
sorts of numbers, but it's actually fourteen grands. Some people
say thirty grand.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Whatever.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
But it made us, my town, hometown of Davis, into
such a laughing stock.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
We were on the Daily Show. It was like a
whole thing. Everybody I knew was laughing about it. Yes, okay,
so yes.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
Now there's even a children's book out of it, like
it really it's little miners.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Guys. That's good.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
I'm glad you both had good answers. I struggled here Denville,
New Jersey, where I grew up, we didn't have any
famous sneaker wearing animals. We did have a deer one
time get into our elementary school and raised a ton
of hell, But the deer was not celebrated. It didn't
happen on the town quite like Andy the sneaker wearing goose.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
This is not a true crime story. It's a story
about a life, and that life started in the spring
of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
He hatched on a bright sunny day.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I wasn't there for it, but rumors were it was
an exceptional hatching.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
That's Jessica Corgy. She says, there was something special about
this goose.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He hatched without webbed.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Feet, born without webbed feet, or without feet of any kind.
His legs ended with little stumps.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So he had a little bit of a challenge from
the beginning. And he lived on the farm for two
years and got around as best as he could in
his own way.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
He wasn't built like other geese were.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
He had to adapt on his own to try to
move and hit goose society as it were. It wasn't
until this person that came out of nowhere helped him
and improved his life. So one day, my grandpa had
went out to the farm to pick up some ducks
(06:24):
that he wanted to put on our pond out at
our place. When he went out to pick up these
ducks is when he had seen this goose trying to
haphazardly cross this gravel road. And my grandpa's nature is
he was an inventor and an entrepreneur, and at this time,
(06:46):
he was retired and didn't have a lot to do,
so he eventually gave into his curiosity and desire to
help the goose, and so this is where our story begins.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Geene Fleming was a man who wore many hats. After
welding on during World War Two, he moved to Hastings
where he welded on hayfeaters and moonlighted modeling clothes. After
that he became a cigarette salesman. Then he started tinkering
and inventing livestock equipment. He got his big break when
(07:24):
he invented the roll oil cattle oiler, a delightful name
for a triangular contraption that applies parasite fighting oil onto cows.
Jane was also a Shriner. That means he was part
of a global fraternity quote based on fun, fellowship and
the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief and truth. According
(07:47):
to Jessica, Jane really focused on the fun pillar. He
loved to soup up different cars and machines for Shriners
to ride on in local parades. By the time Andy
came into Jean's life, he was in the twilight of
his life, but his passion for inventing was as strong
as ever. He got to work devising away to help
(08:09):
Andy walk.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I think if you were to hear it from his mouth,
he had several ideas that ran through his mind and
several he said were a success and some that were not,
which includes a skateboard theory, riding a bike type deal.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
The most successful method was simply slipping a pair of
shoes onto Andy's legs.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
The shoes, you know, needed a bit of modification to
fit onto a goose.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
The size of this goose, it was a big, big goose.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
And so he put some foam and additional things inside
the shoe so they would fit a certain way, and
he put a pair of I think the first pair
was a size zero leather white patent leather baby shoe.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So that's what he started with.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Jean took Andy for a walk around the to get
used to his new kicks. At first, Andy kicked backwards
as if trying to flick some mud off his legs,
but soon he was sauntering around without a problem. Jean
also drilled holes in Andy's shoes so he could swim
as well as walk. In less than a month, Andy
(09:27):
wore his baby shoes to shreds, but Jeane, ever, the tinkerer,
just fixed him up a new pair.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
From there on he tried. I saw the goose and
many types of shoes. I saw him in cowboy boots
and converse.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
At this time, Jessica was living with her grandfather, her grandmother,
Jean's wife Nadine, and her mom, dad, and sister in
a converted World War Two naval ammunitions depot building.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
My life was never ever normal from day one, but
on this particular day, I had come home from a
brutal day of junior high.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
This was the day Jessica was going to meet her
grandfather's newest project, a goose wearing shoes.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Yeah. I was having a bit of a tiff with
my oldest friend Andrea, and I don't even know what
we are fighting about, because I mean, there's really in
junior high. The two things I was really interested in
were boys in popularity, so it was probably one of
those two things. But anyway, I was eating the pain
away in our kitchen, and our kitchen was halfway underground,
(10:39):
so the window looking out was eye level, so I
could see my grandpa outside with a red leash in
the hand, but I could not see what was at
the end of the leash, because there were plants obscuring it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
And so it was.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
That time when I went outside in this garden we
called it the Japanese garden, and there he was, with
this adorable gray goose, standing in white pat and leather
baby shoes.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Her grandfather introduced her to the goose. He had gray
feathers save for a patch of white on his stomach,
a bright orange beak, and glassy black eyes like a doll's.
At this point, his name was rock and Roll.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Rock and Roll was the way he got around, simply put.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
But Jeane wanted to give him a new name, so
he asked Jessica for some ideas.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
And I was thinking of my friend that I was
mad at, and it just came easy.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I said, how about we name Amandy? And it stuck.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Once Andy got acclimated to his new environment and his
new shoes, Jeane cooked up a plot to acquire Andy's mate.
He struck a deal with another member of the family,
two of Jean's geese for one female goose named Polly.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
It was kind of like, here, Billy, take these geese
off my hands because they're mean to Andy. But he
made it sound like more like, Oh, I'm gonna trade
you in kind, these two fine geese for this one goose.
But I think they were just mean to Andy so
that he got rid of them. He was he was
(12:19):
very much so a salesman's that was part of his nature.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
He was born a salesman.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Being the preteen that she was, Jessica wasn't too invested
in her family's antics. As far as she was concerned,
Andy was her grandfather's business, not hers. But she couldn't
help but notice Andy's peaceful nature.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
So Grandpa had this little work area with this work table.
He would put Andy's chest on the table and this
foam cutout that just kind of fit him snug as
a bug, and his little legs would just dangle off
the table and Grandpa would would fuss around and take
(13:02):
off shoes and put on different kinds of shoes, and
the goose would just sit there and just chill out
like he was enjoying it. I put him up on
the table to walk and see if those shoes would work,
and if they didn't work all, then back down onto
his little foam pad where he would lay and take
the shoes off. And it's so yeah, you know, it
(13:24):
was just I don't know. His personality is what stands
out the most with me overall, Like whether we were
at the mall or he was just tooling around in
our garden outside, he was just a chill, nice goose.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Jean and Andy brought people out of their shells and
brought out the best in the community. But amid all
this attention, Andy also brought out the worst. That chill,
(13:59):
nice goose soon caught the attention of locals. I mean,
what would you do if you were running errands one
day and saw a goose waddling around in infant sized
tennis shoes. So it's no surprise that Andy started to
gain a group of admirers. Andy was particularly popular among
(14:20):
children with disabilities, who looked up to Andy and how
he lived his life to the fullest despite the obstacles
he was born with.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Let's face it, everybody has ability needs and that's the
legacy that Andy really really championed was this notion of
I got dealt this stack of cards and by George,
I'm going to make the most of what comes via that.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Andy even got a write up in the press.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
The local paper did a little story on Andy and
it was very cute, and you know, we were excited
for him, and yay, he got into paper.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I learned a.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Little something that might nod to the fact that it
was my grandpa that potentially tipped off the paper. But
what we didn't anticipate was the next day opening up
a different paper and seeing a similar image of Andy
and a story about Grandpa and understanding, oh wow, this
(15:22):
had hit the Associated Press. And not only did it
go you know, national, from coast to coast, it went international.
And by day three after the article, we're getting calls,
letters are starting to come in, and it was an
immediate overnight, you know, rise to fame.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
How did preteen Jessica feel about it? Well, Jessica wanted
to be a famous singer one day, and as such,
she hoped to see her name in the paper alongside
Andy and her grandfathers.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I thought there was going to be potentially a mention.
There was not a mention, and so from that article on,
I was I was a little bit tuned out. I
was jealous. I suppose I was jealous. It was a
little embarrassing, and I had to go to some of
his appearances and be on like Goose poop patrol at
(16:23):
the mall and other places.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
You heard her, right, the mall. Andy the Goose had
his own kiosk at the mall so locals could meet
the famous foul. One even became a member of the
Andy Fan Club, complete with a certificate signed by Jean
and Nadine.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
My grandma was ever much so the business woman. She
had set up a gift shop area so they would
have visit Andy days at different places, and the mall
was one of them. I would be there wishing I
was at the other end of the mall, at the
arcade where the boys were, and it was horrifying for
(17:05):
somebody my age to be you know, he's this famous
person with this goose, and yeah, it's hard to play
back up to that.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Luckily for Jessica, Andy didn't ruin her social status too much.
She soon moved an hour and a half away from Hastings. Meanwhile,
Andy flew four hours away to Los Angeles. Andy and
Jean were guests on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
(17:38):
build alongside Isabella Rossellini and Martin Short. Jean told Andy's
origin story and showed off Andy's shoe collection, which included
a pair with flippers attached to help him swim, and
another pair with metal spikes to help him walk over
snow and ice. For the record, Martin Short came out
(18:01):
with a roast goose, also wearing shoes.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Because after he was on Carson, my thirteen year old
mind had exploded in embarrassment and I just did not
want to be associated with that at all.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Someone who did want to be associated with Andy. The
associates at Nike. They sent him a hefty supply of sneakers.
There was just something captivating about Andy.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
It's just instant joy to see him, and that is
like the mood that It's just an instant mood that
he would create, whether you're just reading about him in
a story, you see a picture of him.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
A goose with shoes is just innocent fun.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Jeane continued to parade Andy around town. The pair made
appearances at libraries, schools, county fairs and parades.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
He gladly would travel across the state and go to
wherever the request came to have Andy vis it people.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
He was loved it.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
It kept him like incredibly connected with himself and his
community and the world around him.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Andy was the conduit to the.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Last hurrah of a very very interesting, intriguing, and dare
I say, brilliant life. It was a match made in
heaven pretty much until you know, heaven came a little
early for one of them.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Which brings us back to the beginning, to that grisly
scene in the park. After Andy's murder was confirmed, news
spread through the family. Jessica learned about it via a
phone call from her sister.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
And she was crying, and she told me about what
had happened. And yeah, I at that first moment, I thought,
oh my god, he finally snapped. Or the next thing
was an animal got Andy and he pans annexed. And
then the next thing I thought was this shouldn't be funny.
I shouldn't be laughing. It gave me a case of
(20:14):
the giggles, because the way she put it was that
they found a leg with a shoe on it in
Chautauqua Park. And I couldn't help but have like this
Looney Tunes vision of a drumstick with a shoe on it,
you know, and this lush grass and taking this terrible
thing that happened and reducing it to a fit of
laughter was terrible on my part.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
But that is what happened.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
News outlets caught wind quickly.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
You love it footless goose.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
It's lain a murder, most foul. He was found decapitated
in skin near the town baseball diamond.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
He was my favorite goose because he had no feet.
Why'd they do it?
Speaker 6 (20:51):
It's frightening to think our community might be home to
someone who would do such a horrible deed.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Jean recovered Andy's body and buried him in the yard
not far from where Jessica first met him for year
years before, a local granite company donated a headstone. There
was no ceremony, but the Flemings received mountains of condolen
cards in the mail and hundreds of phone messages. People
(21:21):
wanted to pay their respects and recount their favorite memories
of Andy. This one goose had touched so many lives
his death sent shockwaves through town. Death doesn't make sense,
especially not when brought about by murder, especially not when
(21:42):
the victim is completely innocent, and especially not when the
victim is a goose. Looking for some sort of reason,
some information that could make this senseless act make sense.
The people of Hastings quickly turned to pointing fingers at
potential culprits. Even Jessica got caught up in the fervor.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
We had a company family manufacturing company, so like was
it a worker that got mad or was it the
big one at this time? So like in the eighties,
well early nineties, I guess at this point like Colts,
like everybody was going nutballs over Colts. It was kind
(22:25):
of all over the map of who could it be?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Remember how Gene lived in a converted World War Two
naval ammunitions depot. Andy's enclosure was among the maze like structure,
making it quite private that to Jessica was something of
a clue.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
There was a south end and a north end and
different levels, and in the sub basements there were entryways
into tunnels that snaked around the grounds out there. But
then there was also these covered walkway ramps that spider
legged off the side of the building. But anyway, one
(23:05):
of these amps, these covered ramps they outfitted for animals,
for chickens and whatnot. And so it was in one
of these ramps that came off of a room we
had in our building that we called the Spanish Room.
But you entered in through the Spanish Room, and the
goose was kept in this little room inside the ramp,
(23:29):
and then the ramp extended beyond that room. It would
have had to have been somebody with special knowledge of
where the goose was.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
The investigation was forgive me a wild goose Chase. The
Hastings Chamber of Commerce and the community banded together to
set up a reward fund of ten thousand dollars for
information on Andy's death, an impressive feet on its own,
but especially considering that the most they had previously been
(24:01):
able to raise for a reward was one hundred dollars.
As for Jan, well, his beloved pet was gone. The
bird he would travel around the country with, was gone.
The fluffy creature he'd hold in the crook of his arm,
a downy storm cloud with nikes dangling from orange legs gone.
(24:25):
Jean channeled his grief into commissioning a bronze statue of Andy.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
He's a tough nut to crack because he was part of.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
The silent generation.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
So for him to, you know, emote his own emotions
from deep within not gonna happen, okay. But I could
see just in his demeanor. And this was even before
Andy came in.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
There was a loss of light in the eyes, you know,
slowing down.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Even before getting Andy, Jean's health had been failing. Unbeknownst
to Jessica and her family, he had been in the
beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
I think Andy for that time was a tether for
my grandpa to reality. When Andy was killed, I think
that essentially snapped whatever cord was keeping him here.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Jean passed away on December thirty first, nineteen ninety nine.
He never found out who kidnapped and killed Andy, but
it turns out someone had already solved the mystery for
(25:44):
a long time. That was that the world kept turning.
In Hastings, the mall where Jessica was put on goosepoop
duty closed. The little school on the edge of town
that Jessica attended was literally put on the back of
a truck and driven away, leaving just an empty lot behind.
(26:06):
Hastings changed, and gradually the memory of Andy began to fade,
but not for the people who knew him best. Jessica
had always loved to write, so when she was a teen,
her family encouraged her to write a story about Andy.
She responded with her usual teenage enthusiasm.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, I'll get to it. Someday. I'll
get to it. Someday.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Time goes by, and then all of a sudden, you're
a person of a certain age, and you start thinking, oh, oh,
I don't have lots of time anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
But all of this time for me.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Has emotionally built me up to where I can handle
telling the story.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Now.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
I can see it from a lens of outside of
an emotional lens, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
More, from an adult perspective.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
After about twenty years had gone by, Jessica put on
her detective hat and reopened the case of Andy's murder.
She turned over every stone and peered behind every lamp
post in Hastings looking for clues. She even reached out
to a fortune teller to perform a sance searching for
(27:20):
answers beyond the veil. Luckily, her grandparents meticulously kept track
of any potentially important piece of paper, and all of
that paper ended up in Jessica's possession. She was pouring
over fan mail, crime scene photos, and her grandmother's notebooks
(27:40):
when she noticed a letter she hadn't seen before.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
This letter was too a bronze.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Sculpture artist that was in process of making this Andy sculpture,
and the letter was from my grandpa, and my grandpa
had said, when you finish, contact the Chamber president for
the money, because they had the reward fund.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And while that letter never got to the artist.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
The artist had asked Gene for some photos of Andy
to finish part of his model. But since the letter
never got back to the artist, he never got his photos,
never finished the project, and never picked up the money.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So I called the artist and I found out that
it's a project that just disappeared. It just vanished, and
he was nearly done with it and had to change
his policy, and so it stands out to him. And
so then I'm like, oh, well, that's bad. Well, I
wonder what happened to the money. So I called the
(28:42):
Hastings Chamber to find out what happened to the reward fund.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
It had been a while since Andy disappeared. The person
who answered the phone at the Chamber of Commerce had
no idea where the money was.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
And so directed me to several phone numbers, one of
which was the express that was in that returned letter.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The ex president of the Chamber of Commerce, Ougene, had
directed the bronze sculpture artist to contact for payment in
the letter that never reached him.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
I called the ex Press and yeah, almost immediately like,
of course, I sound like an idiot and stupid for
what I'm asking him about, you know, this goose and
murder and money. And he told me immediately that well,
the after they found who killed Andy, he was told,
you know, essentially they needed to sit on the money
(29:36):
until the statute of limitations ran out. And so at
that time I was floored and I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
How to react or what to say. So essentially I
just ended the call going they found the killer.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
It turns out the murder had been solved for ages.
Only two years after Andy's death, the Sheriff's department called
the Chamber of Commerce and said they'd found out who
did it, but they wouldn't release the name, and they
didn't want a news release about it. The department said
the perpetrator was someone deemed quote not responsible. That's the
(30:15):
term usually used when someone is a minor, mentally disabled
or otherwise not in control of their actions. Maybe they
didn't want the news to get out because they knew
how fervently the residents of Hastings cared for Andy the goose.
If they knew, maybe they'd pick up torches and pitchforks
(30:36):
searching for revenge. Jessica wasn't interested in any retribution like that.
Knowing the name of the killer was important to Jessica
for one reason. She got the closure her grandfather could
never get.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Does that mean that you already know?
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, of course I know.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Oh okay, And I'm guessing you don't want to share
it right now.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
No, I'm not going to share right now. I'm not
got to share right now.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
That's our producer, Sarah. She tried to probe Jessica for
the name, but Jessica is sitting on it for now.
She doesn't want to incite an angry mob. And besides,
the real story here isn't Andy's death, but his wild
and delightful life. Now Jessica is spreading that story far
(31:31):
and wide. While young Jessica wanted nothing to do with Andy,
adult Jessica feels called to ensure his legacy doesn't fade.
She has several projects in the pipeline.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Shall I count the ways?
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Let's do the documentary, Let's do kid's books, Let's do
you know, cartoons, Let's do yeah, all sorts of things.
So Andy it's gonna be Andy Overload in the future.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Jessica has compiled all of her memories of Andy and
armchair investigations into his murder into a one woman show
called Andy Interrupted. By day, Jessica works as a park ranger,
but at night she's up on stage, presenting evidence and
entertaining audiences.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
It just happened, and it was very natural. I had
a great time. I feel like it is a show
that is worth seeing. It's entertaining its history.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
It's true, it's been over thirty years since Andy was killed.
Jessica never expected he would have such a grip on
her life.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
I didn't realize my life path was crisscrossing his in
such a way that it almost seems predestined.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
That I'm stuck with Andy the ghost.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
But I'm finding joy in a place with this story
that I never saw myself heading towards.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And I could never.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Thank my grandfather enough for that moment of kindness of
him wanting to bring home a goose that.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Needed help walking.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
You know, who would have known, It's like the butterfly effects.
My grandpa was always afraid that people would forget about
the legacy of Andy, you know, and the irony is
is that it was him. He was the one that forgot.
And so that's another big push like that hurts my
(33:34):
heart so much. And sometimes I can really go to
pieces when I'm talking about them.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
And yet, thanks to people like Jessica, people who cared
about Andy, this Goose's story will live on.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
One thing that I would like to do that I
think would be an honor for my grandpa is to
finish this bronze statue. The original artist that he had
hired is still willing to make it if we can
pull the funds together, and so that'll take time, but
eventually we'll get there and get the statue made, and
(34:10):
hopefully people will then be inspired to ask why is
this cute little goose wearing high tops? And that message
of kindness and invention will be brought back into the light.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
All Right, we're back. I don't know if this one
needs to be a movie. We might just all need
to go see Jessica's one woman show about this totally.
But Saren, did you happen to cast this one anyway?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I did?
Speaker 6 (34:38):
Well, you know I'm gonna love a story that starts
with someone metal detecting and then they find a goose
who wears a pair of sneakers. So I was like,
really into this story. So I tried casting Jean and
his granddaughter in a way that would be kind of
sweet and kind to make for a nice movie, even
if it doesn't deserve one per se. So since Jean
was from the greatest generation, I picked the actor Richard Farnsworth,
who was the assistant coach from the Natural. He also
(34:59):
wrote his tractor in that Oscar nominated movie The Straight Story.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I'm sure if you remember this, it was I believe
it David Bench film.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
Yeah, the one that's like not weird, Yes, exactly. So
I thought that guy would be great as Gene. And
then for Jean's granddaughter, Jessica, I liked Ady Bryant from SNL.
It seemed like she could be from Nebraska and could
kill in that role where she and her grandpa tend
to a goose who wears sneakers, so she just has
like a sweetheart.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
And then also I.
Speaker 6 (35:22):
Did cast the Andy the Goose goes on Johnny Carson
bit so I cast that as Okay for the guest
Marge short that night, Dana Carvey, and it's Johnny Carson.
Also Dana Carvey, you got a special Dana Carvey interviews
Dana Carvey.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Mike Myers did that sort of thing all the time totally.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That was actually kind of where I got the.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Idea, Yeah, let Dana Carvey have a chance.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
I was like, you know, Dana is really amazing, and
we all think. To Mike Myers, I was like, you
know what, I think Dana Carvey gets this one. So yeah,
I'm glad you had the same thut. Do you guys
have any very special characters for this one? I mean
I picked Andy the goose obviously. I mean, you're gonna
be a goose with no feet wearing baby sized air
Jordan's every time I'm picking.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
You, it's only the goose for me. The goose is
the star of this episode. There is no other character
in this episode except the sneaker wearing goose.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
Really good golf cameos from Isabella Rossellini and Martin Shore,
but they weren't on screen enough though they Bringing out
a roast goose wearing sneakers is a killer bit. I've
thought about doing that for this episode, but I don't
know how to roast a goose.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
I also want to see Andy the Goose on Broadway.
There was mention of like if it was a Broadway
show picture like I don't know Richard Kind as Grandpa Jean,
and like Christy Channerwickans, Jessica and French Stewart is Andy
the Goose.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
You know what I'm in, I am in, I am in.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
Very special episodes. Is made by some very special people.
Very special thanks to Jessica for sharing her family's story
with us. Do you ever have a chance to check
out her one woman show, Andy Interrupted? You absolutely should.
Today's episode was written by Sarah Shlee and edited by
Carmen Borca Carreo from the Wonder Media Network. We've teamed
(36:59):
up with Wonder on a few of these episodes. If
you like this one, check out the Affair of the
Diamond Necklace from last May, and be on the lookout
for a couple more from Wonder later this spring. Our
show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett, and Jason English.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound designed by
Josh Fisher, Additional editing by Mary Doo, Mixing and mastering
(37:23):
by Beheath Fraser. Original music by Elise McCoy fact checking
by Austin Thompson. Show logo by Lucy Kintania. Our executive
producer is Jason English. If you'd like to email the show,
you can reach us at Very Special Episodes at gmail
dot com. If you are a rating giving kind of person,
(37:44):
go give us a good one on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or wherever you're listening. We will see you next Wednesday.
Very Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Let's go back in time, No, not that far back.
Let's go back to October nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, to
the small town of Hastings, Nebraska.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Think back to the future town with the clock tower
and all that jazz that vibe.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
The leaves were the color of apple juice and Kraft
macaroni and cheese. The weather was brisk. A man began
a peaceful walk around Chautauqua Park, a nice green space
with a pavilion, playground and picnic tables.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
He was over there, metal detecting. I guess, I don't
know why, why would you meddle detect by I don't know,
change falling out of pockets.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Then, right near the base ball diamond, the man came
across something unusual, something disturbing. A dead goose, or at
least what was left of a dead goose.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's been plucked clean or skinned.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
I guess, no head, no wings, but the legs.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Were still on, with a pair of shoes on.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
The man had a sinking feeling. You see, Hastings had
a local celebrity, a sneaker wearing goose named Andy. It
was hard to believe another sneaker wearing goose could have
turned up dead in the park. The man in the
park decided he would call Andy's owner, Geene Fleming, just
(01:51):
to check in on the goose.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
This was back in the day before really everybody had
cell phones, and everybody used a phone book to get
in touch with people.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So the man headed home treasure hunting, put on paws
and grabbed the phone book. He ran his finger down
the page of f's until he found Gene Fleming. He
punched the buttons on his phone.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
There.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Gene just wanted to call and check in.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Is Andy okay?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Was Andy okay? What a question? As far as Jane knew,
Andy was safe and sound, why wouldn't he be. Gene
rushed to the enclosure where Andy and his mate Polly slept.
Where there should have been two peaceful geese with their
heads nuzzled close to their chests, there were just clumps
(02:46):
of hay bedding, and further off, two sets of footprints
in the dirt, not goose sized, human sized.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
So that's how they learned that that Andy had been
taken in the night.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
As improbable as it seemed at the time, Andy's death
and life would still be reverberating around Hastings three decades later.
Welcome back to very special episodes and I heart original podcast.
I'm your host Dana Schwartz and this is Andy the
(03:23):
sneaker wearing Goose.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English, joined
as always by Dana Schwartz and Zarreon Burnette. And I
love a good, weird, small town story, Dana or Zarin.
Is your hometown famous for anything super strange?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
No, I will say the one. It's not like an
urban legend. But I'm from the Chicago suburbs that are
very like John Hughes suburbs. So if you remember in
the in the movie Ferris Bueller, his friend Cameron has
like a really cool house that's like over a ravine
where you remember like a cargo story of the glass.
That house is in my town.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
What.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, that's pretty great. I love that house. I've always
loved that house. It's a cool house, like the dream house.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Oh my god, and I grew up in it.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Did you should drive past it?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Like?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Is that like a local thing to do?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
No, it's not even like out of the way. It's
like I would drive past it on my way to school.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
Oh, whoa, that's tough man. In my town, we had
nothing as cool as that. But we did have a
tunnel that was built under a road, and the tunnel
was specifically built for toads. It was called toad tunnel
and it costs fourteen grand. You look online, there's all
sorts of numbers, but it's actually fourteen grands. Some people
say thirty grand.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Whatever.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
But it made us, my town, hometown of Davis, into
such a laughing stock.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
We were on the Daily Show. It was like a
whole thing. Everybody I knew was laughing about it. Yes, okay,
so yes.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
Now there's even a children's book out of it, like
it really it's little miners.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Guys. That's good.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
I'm glad you both had good answers. I struggled here Denville,
New Jersey, where I grew up, we didn't have any
famous sneaker wearing animals. We did have a deer one
time get into our elementary school and raised a ton
of hell, But the deer was not celebrated. It didn't
happen on the town quite like Andy the sneaker wearing goose.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
This is not a true crime story. It's a story
about a life, and that life started in the spring
of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
He hatched on a bright sunny day.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I wasn't there for it, but rumors were it was
an exceptional hatching.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
That's Jessica Corgy. She says, there was something special about
this goose.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He hatched without webbed.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Feet, born without webbed feet, or without feet of any kind.
His legs ended with little stumps.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So he had a little bit of a challenge from
the beginning. And he lived on the farm for two
years and got around as best as he could in
his own way.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
He wasn't built like other geese were.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
He had to adapt on his own to try to
move and hit goose society as it were. It wasn't
until this person that came out of nowhere helped him
and improved his life. So one day, my grandpa had
went out to the farm to pick up some ducks
(06:24):
that he wanted to put on our pond out at
our place. When he went out to pick up these
ducks is when he had seen this goose trying to
haphazardly cross this gravel road. And my grandpa's nature is
he was an inventor and an entrepreneur, and at this time,
(06:46):
he was retired and didn't have a lot to do,
so he eventually gave into his curiosity and desire to
help the goose, and so this is where our story begins.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Geene Fleming was a man who wore many hats. After
welding on during World War Two, he moved to Hastings
where he welded on hayfeaters and moonlighted modeling clothes. After
that he became a cigarette salesman. Then he started tinkering
and inventing livestock equipment. He got his big break when
(07:24):
he invented the roll oil cattle oiler, a delightful name
for a triangular contraption that applies parasite fighting oil onto cows.
Jane was also a Shriner. That means he was part
of a global fraternity quote based on fun, fellowship and
the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief and truth. According
(07:47):
to Jessica, Jane really focused on the fun pillar. He
loved to soup up different cars and machines for Shriners
to ride on in local parades. By the time Andy
came into Jean's life, he was in the twilight of
his life, but his passion for inventing was as strong
as ever. He got to work devising away to help
(08:09):
Andy walk.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I think if you were to hear it from his mouth,
he had several ideas that ran through his mind and
several he said were a success and some that were not,
which includes a skateboard theory, riding a bike type deal.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
The most successful method was simply slipping a pair of
shoes onto Andy's legs.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
The shoes, you know, needed a bit of modification to
fit onto a goose.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
The size of this goose, it was a big, big goose.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
And so he put some foam and additional things inside
the shoe so they would fit a certain way, and
he put a pair of I think the first pair
was a size zero leather white patent leather baby shoe.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So that's what he started with.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Jean took Andy for a walk around the to get
used to his new kicks. At first, Andy kicked backwards
as if trying to flick some mud off his legs,
but soon he was sauntering around without a problem. Jean
also drilled holes in Andy's shoes so he could swim
as well as walk. In less than a month, Andy
(09:27):
wore his baby shoes to shreds, but Jeane, ever, the tinkerer,
just fixed him up a new pair.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
From there on he tried. I saw the goose and
many types of shoes. I saw him in cowboy boots
and converse.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
At this time, Jessica was living with her grandfather, her grandmother,
Jean's wife Nadine, and her mom, dad, and sister in
a converted World War Two naval ammunitions depot building.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
My life was never ever normal from day one, but
on this particular day, I had come home from a
brutal day of junior high.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
This was the day Jessica was going to meet her
grandfather's newest project, a goose wearing shoes.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Yeah. I was having a bit of a tiff with
my oldest friend Andrea, and I don't even know what
we are fighting about, because I mean, there's really in
junior high. The two things I was really interested in
were boys in popularity, so it was probably one of
those two things. But anyway, I was eating the pain
away in our kitchen, and our kitchen was halfway underground,
(10:39):
so the window looking out was eye level, so I
could see my grandpa outside with a red leash in
the hand, but I could not see what was at
the end of the leash, because there were plants obscuring it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
And so it was.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
That time when I went outside in this garden we
called it the Japanese garden, and there he was, with
this adorable gray goose, standing in white pat and leather
baby shoes.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Her grandfather introduced her to the goose. He had gray
feathers save for a patch of white on his stomach,
a bright orange beak, and glassy black eyes like a doll's.
At this point, his name was rock and Roll.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Rock and Roll was the way he got around, simply put.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
But Jeane wanted to give him a new name, so
he asked Jessica for some ideas.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
And I was thinking of my friend that I was
mad at, and it just came easy.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I said, how about we name Amandy? And it stuck.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Once Andy got acclimated to his new environment and his
new shoes, Jeane cooked up a plot to acquire Andy's mate.
He struck a deal with another member of the family,
two of Jean's geese for one female goose named Polly.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
It was kind of like, here, Billy, take these geese
off my hands because they're mean to Andy. But he
made it sound like more like, Oh, I'm gonna trade
you in kind, these two fine geese for this one goose.
But I think they were just mean to Andy so
that he got rid of them. He was he was
(12:19):
very much so a salesman's that was part of his nature.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
He was born a salesman.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Being the preteen that she was, Jessica wasn't too invested
in her family's antics. As far as she was concerned,
Andy was her grandfather's business, not hers. But she couldn't
help but notice Andy's peaceful nature.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
So Grandpa had this little work area with this work table.
He would put Andy's chest on the table and this
foam cutout that just kind of fit him snug as
a bug, and his little legs would just dangle off
the table and Grandpa would would fuss around and take
(13:02):
off shoes and put on different kinds of shoes, and
the goose would just sit there and just chill out
like he was enjoying it. I put him up on
the table to walk and see if those shoes would work,
and if they didn't work all, then back down onto
his little foam pad where he would lay and take
the shoes off. And it's so yeah, you know, it
(13:24):
was just I don't know. His personality is what stands
out the most with me overall, Like whether we were
at the mall or he was just tooling around in
our garden outside, he was just a chill, nice goose.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Jean and Andy brought people out of their shells and
brought out the best in the community. But amid all
this attention, Andy also brought out the worst. That chill,
(13:59):
nice goose soon caught the attention of locals. I mean,
what would you do if you were running errands one
day and saw a goose waddling around in infant sized
tennis shoes. So it's no surprise that Andy started to
gain a group of admirers. Andy was particularly popular among
(14:20):
children with disabilities, who looked up to Andy and how
he lived his life to the fullest despite the obstacles
he was born with.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Let's face it, everybody has ability needs and that's the
legacy that Andy really really championed was this notion of
I got dealt this stack of cards and by George,
I'm going to make the most of what comes via that.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Andy even got a write up in the press.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
The local paper did a little story on Andy and
it was very cute, and you know, we were excited
for him, and yay, he got into paper.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I learned a.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Little something that might nod to the fact that it
was my grandpa that potentially tipped off the paper. But
what we didn't anticipate was the next day opening up
a different paper and seeing a similar image of Andy
and a story about Grandpa and understanding, oh wow, this
(15:22):
had hit the Associated Press. And not only did it
go you know, national, from coast to coast, it went international.
And by day three after the article, we're getting calls,
letters are starting to come in, and it was an
immediate overnight, you know, rise to fame.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
How did preteen Jessica feel about it? Well, Jessica wanted
to be a famous singer one day, and as such,
she hoped to see her name in the paper alongside
Andy and her grandfathers.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I thought there was going to be potentially a mention.
There was not a mention, and so from that article on,
I was I was a little bit tuned out. I
was jealous. I suppose I was jealous. It was a
little embarrassing, and I had to go to some of
his appearances and be on like Goose poop patrol at
(16:23):
the mall and other places.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
You heard her, right, the mall. Andy the Goose had
his own kiosk at the mall so locals could meet
the famous foul. One even became a member of the
Andy Fan Club, complete with a certificate signed by Jean
and Nadine.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
My grandma was ever much so the business woman. She
had set up a gift shop area so they would
have visit Andy days at different places, and the mall
was one of them. I would be there wishing I
was at the other end of the mall, at the
arcade where the boys were, and it was horrifying for
(17:05):
somebody my age to be you know, he's this famous
person with this goose, and yeah, it's hard to play
back up to that.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Luckily for Jessica, Andy didn't ruin her social status too much.
She soon moved an hour and a half away from Hastings. Meanwhile,
Andy flew four hours away to Los Angeles. Andy and
Jean were guests on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
(17:38):
build alongside Isabella Rossellini and Martin Short. Jean told Andy's
origin story and showed off Andy's shoe collection, which included
a pair with flippers attached to help him swim, and
another pair with metal spikes to help him walk over
snow and ice. For the record, Martin Short came out
(18:01):
with a roast goose, also wearing shoes.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Because after he was on Carson, my thirteen year old
mind had exploded in embarrassment and I just did not
want to be associated with that at all.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Someone who did want to be associated with Andy. The
associates at Nike. They sent him a hefty supply of sneakers.
There was just something captivating about Andy.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
It's just instant joy to see him, and that is
like the mood that It's just an instant mood that
he would create, whether you're just reading about him in
a story, you see a picture of him.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
A goose with shoes is just innocent fun.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Jeane continued to parade Andy around town. The pair made
appearances at libraries, schools, county fairs and parades.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
He gladly would travel across the state and go to
wherever the request came to have Andy vis it people.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
He was loved it.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
It kept him like incredibly connected with himself and his
community and the world around him.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Andy was the conduit to the.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Last hurrah of a very very interesting, intriguing, and dare
I say, brilliant life. It was a match made in
heaven pretty much until you know, heaven came a little
early for one of them.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Which brings us back to the beginning, to that grisly
scene in the park. After Andy's murder was confirmed, news
spread through the family. Jessica learned about it via a
phone call from her sister.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
And she was crying, and she told me about what
had happened. And yeah, I at that first moment, I thought,
oh my god, he finally snapped. Or the next thing
was an animal got Andy and he pans annexed. And
then the next thing I thought was this shouldn't be funny.
I shouldn't be laughing. It gave me a case of
(20:14):
the giggles, because the way she put it was that
they found a leg with a shoe on it in
Chautauqua Park. And I couldn't help but have like this
Looney Tunes vision of a drumstick with a shoe on it,
you know, and this lush grass and taking this terrible
thing that happened and reducing it to a fit of
laughter was terrible on my part.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
But that is what happened.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
News outlets caught wind quickly.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
You love it footless goose.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
It's lain a murder, most foul. He was found decapitated
in skin near the town baseball diamond.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
He was my favorite goose because he had no feet.
Why'd they do it?
Speaker 6 (20:51):
It's frightening to think our community might be home to
someone who would do such a horrible deed.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Jean recovered Andy's body and buried him in the yard
not far from where Jessica first met him for year
years before, a local granite company donated a headstone. There
was no ceremony, but the Flemings received mountains of condolen
cards in the mail and hundreds of phone messages. People
(21:21):
wanted to pay their respects and recount their favorite memories
of Andy. This one goose had touched so many lives
his death sent shockwaves through town. Death doesn't make sense,
especially not when brought about by murder, especially not when
(21:42):
the victim is completely innocent, and especially not when the
victim is a goose. Looking for some sort of reason,
some information that could make this senseless act make sense.
The people of Hastings quickly turned to pointing fingers at
potential culprits. Even Jessica got caught up in the fervor.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
We had a company family manufacturing company, so like was
it a worker that got mad or was it the
big one at this time? So like in the eighties,
well early nineties, I guess at this point like Colts,
like everybody was going nutballs over Colts. It was kind
(22:25):
of all over the map of who could it be?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Remember how Gene lived in a converted World War Two
naval ammunitions depot. Andy's enclosure was among the maze like structure,
making it quite private that to Jessica was something of
a clue.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
There was a south end and a north end and
different levels, and in the sub basements there were entryways
into tunnels that snaked around the grounds out there. But
then there was also these covered walkway ramps that spider
legged off the side of the building. But anyway, one
(23:05):
of these amps, these covered ramps they outfitted for animals,
for chickens and whatnot. And so it was in one
of these ramps that came off of a room we
had in our building that we called the Spanish Room.
But you entered in through the Spanish Room, and the
goose was kept in this little room inside the ramp,
(23:29):
and then the ramp extended beyond that room. It would
have had to have been somebody with special knowledge of
where the goose was.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
The investigation was forgive me a wild goose Chase. The
Hastings Chamber of Commerce and the community banded together to
set up a reward fund of ten thousand dollars for
information on Andy's death, an impressive feet on its own,
but especially considering that the most they had previously been
(24:01):
able to raise for a reward was one hundred dollars.
As for Jan, well, his beloved pet was gone. The
bird he would travel around the country with, was gone.
The fluffy creature he'd hold in the crook of his arm,
a downy storm cloud with nikes dangling from orange legs gone.
(24:25):
Jean channeled his grief into commissioning a bronze statue of Andy.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
He's a tough nut to crack because he was part of.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
The silent generation.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
So for him to, you know, emote his own emotions
from deep within not gonna happen, okay. But I could
see just in his demeanor. And this was even before
Andy came in.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
There was a loss of light in the eyes, you know,
slowing down.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Even before getting Andy, Jean's health had been failing. Unbeknownst
to Jessica and her family, he had been in the
beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
I think Andy for that time was a tether for
my grandpa to reality. When Andy was killed, I think
that essentially snapped whatever cord was keeping him here.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Jean passed away on December thirty first, nineteen ninety nine.
He never found out who kidnapped and killed Andy, but
it turns out someone had already solved the mystery for
(25:44):
a long time. That was that the world kept turning.
In Hastings, the mall where Jessica was put on goosepoop
duty closed. The little school on the edge of town
that Jessica attended was literally put on the back of
a truck and driven away, leaving just an empty lot behind.
(26:06):
Hastings changed, and gradually the memory of Andy began to fade,
but not for the people who knew him best. Jessica
had always loved to write, so when she was a teen,
her family encouraged her to write a story about Andy.
She responded with her usual teenage enthusiasm.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, I'll get to it. Someday. I'll
get to it. Someday.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Time goes by, and then all of a sudden, you're
a person of a certain age, and you start thinking, oh, oh,
I don't have lots of time anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
But all of this time for me.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Has emotionally built me up to where I can handle
telling the story.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Now.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
I can see it from a lens of outside of
an emotional lens, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
More, from an adult perspective.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
After about twenty years had gone by, Jessica put on
her detective hat and reopened the case of Andy's murder.
She turned over every stone and peered behind every lamp
post in Hastings looking for clues. She even reached out
to a fortune teller to perform a sance searching for
(27:20):
answers beyond the veil. Luckily, her grandparents meticulously kept track
of any potentially important piece of paper, and all of
that paper ended up in Jessica's possession. She was pouring
over fan mail, crime scene photos, and her grandmother's notebooks
(27:40):
when she noticed a letter she hadn't seen before.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
This letter was too a bronze.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Sculpture artist that was in process of making this Andy sculpture,
and the letter was from my grandpa, and my grandpa
had said, when you finish, contact the Chamber president for
the money, because they had the reward fund.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And while that letter never got to the artist.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
The artist had asked Gene for some photos of Andy
to finish part of his model. But since the letter
never got back to the artist, he never got his photos,
never finished the project, and never picked up the money.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So I called the artist and I found out that
it's a project that just disappeared. It just vanished, and
he was nearly done with it and had to change
his policy, and so it stands out to him. And
so then I'm like, oh, well, that's bad. Well, I
wonder what happened to the money. So I called the
(28:42):
Hastings Chamber to find out what happened to the reward fund.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
It had been a while since Andy disappeared. The person
who answered the phone at the Chamber of Commerce had
no idea where the money was.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
And so directed me to several phone numbers, one of
which was the express that was in that returned letter.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The ex president of the Chamber of Commerce, Ougene, had
directed the bronze sculpture artist to contact for payment in
the letter that never reached him.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
I called the ex Press and yeah, almost immediately like,
of course, I sound like an idiot and stupid for
what I'm asking him about, you know, this goose and
murder and money. And he told me immediately that well,
the after they found who killed Andy, he was told,
you know, essentially they needed to sit on the money
(29:36):
until the statute of limitations ran out. And so at
that time I was floored and I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
How to react or what to say. So essentially I
just ended the call going they found the killer.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
It turns out the murder had been solved for ages.
Only two years after Andy's death, the Sheriff's department called
the Chamber of Commerce and said they'd found out who
did it, but they wouldn't release the name, and they
didn't want a news release about it. The department said
the perpetrator was someone deemed quote not responsible. That's the
(30:15):
term usually used when someone is a minor, mentally disabled
or otherwise not in control of their actions. Maybe they
didn't want the news to get out because they knew
how fervently the residents of Hastings cared for Andy the goose.
If they knew, maybe they'd pick up torches and pitchforks
(30:36):
searching for revenge. Jessica wasn't interested in any retribution like that.
Knowing the name of the killer was important to Jessica
for one reason. She got the closure her grandfather could
never get.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Does that mean that you already know?
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, of course I know.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Oh okay, And I'm guessing you don't want to share
it right now.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
No, I'm not going to share right now. I'm not
got to share right now.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
That's our producer, Sarah. She tried to probe Jessica for
the name, but Jessica is sitting on it for now.
She doesn't want to incite an angry mob. And besides,
the real story here isn't Andy's death, but his wild
and delightful life. Now Jessica is spreading that story far
(31:31):
and wide. While young Jessica wanted nothing to do with Andy,
adult Jessica feels called to ensure his legacy doesn't fade.
She has several projects in the pipeline.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Shall I count the ways?
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Let's do the documentary, Let's do kid's books, Let's do
you know, cartoons, Let's do yeah, all sorts of things.
So Andy it's gonna be Andy Overload in the future.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Jessica has compiled all of her memories of Andy and
armchair investigations into his murder into a one woman show
called Andy Interrupted. By day, Jessica works as a park ranger,
but at night she's up on stage, presenting evidence and
entertaining audiences.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
It just happened, and it was very natural. I had
a great time. I feel like it is a show
that is worth seeing. It's entertaining its history.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
It's true, it's been over thirty years since Andy was killed.
Jessica never expected he would have such a grip on
her life.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
I didn't realize my life path was crisscrossing his in
such a way that it almost seems predestined.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
That I'm stuck with Andy the ghost.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
But I'm finding joy in a place with this story
that I never saw myself heading towards.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And I could never.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Thank my grandfather enough for that moment of kindness of
him wanting to bring home a goose that.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Needed help walking.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
You know, who would have known, It's like the butterfly effects.
My grandpa was always afraid that people would forget about
the legacy of Andy, you know, and the irony is
is that it was him. He was the one that forgot.
And so that's another big push like that hurts my
(33:34):
heart so much. And sometimes I can really go to
pieces when I'm talking about them.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
And yet, thanks to people like Jessica, people who cared
about Andy, this Goose's story will live on.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
One thing that I would like to do that I
think would be an honor for my grandpa is to
finish this bronze statue. The original artist that he had
hired is still willing to make it if we can
pull the funds together, and so that'll take time, but
eventually we'll get there and get the statue made, and
(34:10):
hopefully people will then be inspired to ask why is
this cute little goose wearing high tops? And that message
of kindness and invention will be brought back into the light.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
All Right, we're back. I don't know if this one
needs to be a movie. We might just all need
to go see Jessica's one woman show about this totally.
But Saren, did you happen to cast this one anyway?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I did?
Speaker 6 (34:38):
Well, you know I'm gonna love a story that starts
with someone metal detecting and then they find a goose
who wears a pair of sneakers. So I was like,
really into this story. So I tried casting Jean and
his granddaughter in a way that would be kind of
sweet and kind to make for a nice movie, even
if it doesn't deserve one per se. So since Jean
was from the greatest generation, I picked the actor Richard Farnsworth,
who was the assistant coach from the Natural. He also
(34:59):
wrote his tractor in that Oscar nominated movie The Straight Story.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I'm sure if you remember this, it was I believe
it David Bench film.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
Yeah, the one that's like not weird, Yes, exactly. So
I thought that guy would be great as Gene. And
then for Jean's granddaughter, Jessica, I liked Ady Bryant from SNL.
It seemed like she could be from Nebraska and could
kill in that role where she and her grandpa tend
to a goose who wears sneakers, so she just has
like a sweetheart.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
And then also I.
Speaker 6 (35:22):
Did cast the Andy the Goose goes on Johnny Carson
bit so I cast that as Okay for the guest
Marge short that night, Dana Carvey, and it's Johnny Carson.
Also Dana Carvey, you got a special Dana Carvey interviews
Dana Carvey.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Mike Myers did that sort of thing all the time totally.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That was actually kind of where I got the.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Idea, Yeah, let Dana Carvey have a chance.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
I was like, you know, Dana is really amazing, and
we all think. To Mike Myers, I was like, you
know what, I think Dana Carvey gets this one. So yeah,
I'm glad you had the same thut. Do you guys
have any very special characters for this one? I mean
I picked Andy the goose obviously. I mean, you're gonna
be a goose with no feet wearing baby sized air
Jordan's every time I'm picking.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
You, it's only the goose for me. The goose is
the star of this episode. There is no other character
in this episode except the sneaker wearing goose.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
Really good golf cameos from Isabella Rossellini and Martin Shore,
but they weren't on screen enough though they Bringing out
a roast goose wearing sneakers is a killer bit. I've
thought about doing that for this episode, but I don't
know how to roast a goose.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
I also want to see Andy the Goose on Broadway.
There was mention of like if it was a Broadway
show picture like I don't know Richard Kind as Grandpa Jean,
and like Christy Channerwickans, Jessica and French Stewart is Andy
the Goose.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
You know what I'm in, I am in, I am in.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
Very special episodes. Is made by some very special people.
Very special thanks to Jessica for sharing her family's story
with us. Do you ever have a chance to check
out her one woman show, Andy Interrupted? You absolutely should.
Today's episode was written by Sarah Shlee and edited by
Carmen Borca Carreo from the Wonder Media Network. We've teamed
(36:59):
up with Wonder on a few of these episodes. If
you like this one, check out the Affair of the
Diamond Necklace from last May, and be on the lookout
for a couple more from Wonder later this spring. Our
show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett, and Jason English.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound designed by
Josh Fisher, Additional editing by Mary Doo, Mixing and mastering
(37:23):
by Beheath Fraser. Original music by Elise McCoy fact checking
by Austin Thompson. Show logo by Lucy Kintania. Our executive
producer is Jason English. If you'd like to email the show,
you can reach us at Very Special Episodes at gmail
dot com. If you are a rating giving kind of person,
(37:44):
go give us a good one on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or wherever you're listening. We will see you next Wednesday.
Very Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Dana Schwartz
Jason English
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