Okay, if everyone is ready (do pour yourself a martini for this one) we are going to be discussing the murder of Josslyn Hay, the 22nd Earl or Erroll. No spoilers, no Google. Shoot me a like or a GIF so I know I'm not talking to the void. 1/

He was found shot through the head in his own Buick at an intersection outside Nairobi, Kenya, on January 24, 1941. Basically everyone he knew was a suspect. 2/

Some context, briefly. From the 20s to the 40s, the Wanjohi Valley in Kenya and Uganda was hugely popular with British aristocrats, first as a hunting ground and then as a place to live. They were known as the Happy Valley Set, and they were living full-on hedonistic lives. 3/

We're talking orgies, swinging, drugs, alcohol, and I'm assuming just rampant pillaging of local resources in extraordinarily problematic ways. By 1939, Kenya had a white population of 21k. 4/

So let's meet our main character. I don't use the word "cad" a lot but I'm about to whip it out. My dude was was a cad. 5/

His title was Scottish, but he was born in Westminster. Attended the coronation of George V, got expelled from Eton for some kind of misadventure. 6/

So at this point being an earl was actually not that lucrative, and he was supposed to make an actual living. He got some random government posts that he didn't deserve, and then when he was 22 he found something much better. And here we meet Lady Idina Sackville. 7/

She was older and married and rich and WILD. (And yes, some kind of cousin of Vita SackvilleWest.) 8/

She was eight years older, and when she divorced her husband for Joss, it was actually her second divorce. Major scandal, so of course the only thing to be done is to leave the entire continent. 9/

They get to Kenya in 1924, on her money, and buy a bungalow in the hills. In 1928, he inherits his father's titles. I very much almost typed "titties" there, you're welcome. 10/

She quickly realizes that he's absolutely scamming her out of her money, and they divorce. She'll go on to have FIVE divorces, which is pretty impressive. She's not a suspect in Joss's death tho, so we'll leave her here looking spectacular. 11/

Joss marries a second time to a woman named Molly Ramsay-Hill. They move to the shores of Lake Naivasha in Kenya and she gets really involved in the drugs/sex/drinking scene. 12/

He had already been having an affair with her (she was married) when he and Idina divorced. When her husband found out, he chased Joss down and horsewhipped him in public at the Nairobi train station, as one does. 13/

But they marry and he lives off her money for a while, until one night in 1939 she decides to mix up some alcohol, morphine and heroin, and ends up very dead. 14/

But meanwhile: In 1934 Joss went home to England for a bit, and while he was there he became a fascist. Like, literally joined the British Union of Fascists, which was actually calling itself that. 15/

So in 1939, obv war is breaking out, and he becomes
a captain in the Kenya Regiment and then Military Secretary for East Africa in 1940. He's not a fascist anymore officially, but I kind of feel like fascism is something that sticks to you? 16/

Wait, before we move on, I have to get back to Idina for a sec, because I never told you why I called her wild. She would throw sex parties where she would blow a white feather in the air, and whatever man's feet it landed by, she'd take him into the next room and fuck him. 17/

(Also makes a great ice breaker game at baby showers, btw) 18/

So, after the '29 crash, not a ton of new spoiled white people were moving to Kenya, which meant new arrivals made a splash. And thus we meet... Diana, Lady Broughton, the wife of Sir Jock Delves Broughton. 19/

Apparently her eyes were VERY blue, which after all is especially appealing to fascists. 20/

At this point, we have a guy named Joss and a guy named Jock, and I apologize for that. If this were fiction, I'd do better for you. Joss is our dead guy, Jock is an old rich guy. Here are Jock and Lady Diana. 21/

As you can see in the picture above, she's not that into him. They had only been married 2 months when they arrived. He was 58 and RICH and she was 26, and apparently when they married he told her he wouldn't begrudge her an affair with someone her own age. 22/

Joss and Diana met at a country club and began a torrid affair. Even within this set, although everyone was having affairs, they were usually quiet; this one was flagrant. 23/

The war, by the way, is going full force in Europe, but these people are still having parties every night. 24/

Oh, also -- when they married, Jock told Diana that if she left him for someone younger, he'd give her 5k pounds per year to live on. (This was a huge amount of money.) Essentially it sounds like he knew she wasn't into him and bought her. 25/

On January 23, 1941, there's a dinner out: Joss, Lady Di, her husband Jock, and another friend. During the meal, Jock makes a toast wishing Joss and Diana the best for their future. Joss and Di go off dancing at a nightclub, and Joss promises to drive her home later. 26/

Let's take a moment now to admire his car. 27/

(Or one kind of like his, idk, thanks internet.) 28/

At 2:30 am, he drops Diana off and home. At 3 am, just two miles from the Broughtons' house, two dairy workers see a car stopped at a crossroads. They look inside and find Josslyn Hay dead, kneeling in the footwell of the front passenger seat. 29/

There's a cigarette in the car, and Joss doesn't smoke. And there are white scuff marks in the back seat. 30/

(Oh, he was shot in the head. I think I said that before, but -- lest you think he died of secondhand smoke or something.) 31/

The police make a complete mess of the scene. They remove the body before they examine it, they drive a lot of cars over any tire tracks (or tyre tracks, if we're feeling fancy) and they touch the car so much that dusting for prints is a farce. 32/

They have two pieces of evidence, sort of. The first is the cigarette, and the fact that Sir Jock WAS a smoker. I'm going to assume he was not the only smoker in Nairobi, so this seems a tad flimsy. 33/

They also have the bullet, and they believe they've matched it to a .32 colt found in Sir Jock's home. In the days before the murder, Jock had reported several guns stolen, which to me is actually the most damning thing -- seems like pregaming. Here's Jock again. 34/

Jock is arrested in March and put on trial. At the trial, ballistics experts actually say that the bullet could not have come from the Colt. 35/

They essentially had no case; the jury acquitted him in three hours. 36/

I'm not quite sure how the British judicial system worked in Kenya, but I'm kind of guessing that the jury was other white guys from England? In any case, half the jury knew Jock and the foreman was his barber. 37/

Lady Diana has claimed he's innocent, but also divorced him during the trial, and started living with the man who would become her next husband. After the trial, she began saying he was guilty. 38/

The entire Happy Valley set has turned against Sir Jock, and after he's acquitted he heads back to England. Several days after his return in 1942, he was found dead of a morphine overdose in the Britannia Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. 39/

This seemed wildly incriminating to some people, but on the other hand this guy has just lost his wife, reputation, social standing, friends, etc. and now he's back in Europe in the middle of a war... 40/

So the case remains unsolved. But we actually have a LOT of suspects, some of whom you have not met yet. 41/

Aside from Sir Jock, we of course have Lady Di as a possibility. Maybe she wanted him to marry her and he refused. I don't know who saw her come home at 2:30. Maybe no one did, or maybe someone covered for her. 42/

But let's meet someone new. This is Countess Alice de Janzé. She and Joss had been sleeping together for years. There's some evidence that he took it lightly and she did not. 43/

She was not the only jealous ex (Joss was a cad, after all) but Alice had <checks notes> oh yes, previously attempted murder. 44/

Back in 1927, she'd had a lover named Raymond de Trafford, and they'd agreed that if she left her husband, he'd marry her. But he was Catholic and had qualms about the divorce thing and backed out. 45/

Alice bought a gun and planned to kill herself (she says). They were saying goodbye at a train station in Paris, and she decided a better plan would be to kill him too so they could spend eternity together. 46/

(Alice, by the way, was an American socialite; she'd grown up in Chicago.) She shot him in the stomach and then did the same to herself. They both survived. 47/

She only gets a 6-month suspended sentence, because I guess the French courts believe in amour. Raymond actually MARRIES HER after all that, and then very soon after they get divorced. (Probably a good move, Ray.) 48/

So there is a rumor (sounds apocryphal to me) that when Alice visited Joss in the morgue, she kissed his corpse on the lips and said "Now you are mine forever." 49/

Then in September of '41, just nine months after Joss's murder, she takes her own life. 50/

But here's another theory: SPIES. 51/

This was the middle of the war, and we have a guy who's alternately been a fascist and a British officer, one who very well might have been a spy himself. Maybe he knew too much, or maybe he had something someone wanted, or whatever kind of spy shenanigans people get up to. 52/

Joss could NOT keep a secret, and he drank and blabbed all the time, and he might have been a huge liability. In any case, there are a lot of rumors that this was a hit by the British Secret Service. 53/

A small rabbit hole here: There are papers of dubious origin claiming that two agents, a man and a woman, were given the task of murdering Joss. 54/

The woman seduced Joss in order to get info (or maybe just for fun? this part isn't clear)... Then the night of the murder, they pretended to be a couple with a broken down car. 55/

When Joss offered to help, the man asked him to give his wife a ride back to the hotel. Once they were alone in the car, she shot him. 56/

But these papers are pretty sketchy, so idk. 57/

Years later, someone claimed to solve the case when they got a tape recording of an old man whose parents were friends with a Bulgarian doctor who claimed he was paid by Jock to come pick him up at the scene of the crime. 58/

This person said that the white scuff marks in the backseat came from the white plimsolls that Jock was wearing, and that he'd sneaked into the back of the car while Joss and Diana were saying goodbye. Diana got out, Joss started to drive away, and Jock killed him. 59/

Then the Bulgarian friend came to pick him up. But they'd have had to plan ahead of time the exact time and place for the pickup, which seems odd, but apparently Jock had made Joss promise to have Diana home by 3 am, which gave a tight timeframe. 60/

Before we end, let's talk about the rest of Lady Diana's life. 61/

The guy she left Jock for was named Gilbert Colvile, and he was one of the richest land developers (exploiters) in Kenya, and became insanely wealthy. 62/

Later she married the 4th Baron Delamere, and in the 60's and '70s the two of them lived with Diana's lesbian lover, Lady Patricia Fairweather. 63/

Jumping back in time here, but here were Joss and Diana together. His pants are so roomy. 64/

Lady Patricia Fairweather is adorable, btw. 65/

Diana died in 1987, and by then she was alarmingly called "The White Queen of Africa." She was the wealthiest and most powerful white woman on the continent. 66/

Anyway -- the murder is unsolved, and I so love that we could DNA the hell out of that cigarette today and catch the killer in like two days. But it was totally chill to just leave your slobbery cigarette behind at the murder scene back then. 67/

The Happy Valley Set is endlessly lurid and disturbing to read about. 68/

One footnote to all of it: In 2005, a guy named Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley shot and killed a game ranger on his ranch. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted, and a year later shot and killed a poacher. Here he is in his anemic glory. 69/

He was the eldest son of the 5th Baron Delamere, so the grandson of Lady Di's last husband. There was this whole moment in the news of people remembering the Happy Valley Set and going "oh my god they still live there and they're still just shooting people." 70/

So what do we think? Alternate theories?

I have neither seen the movie White Mischief nor read the book it's based on, but they're both about the Happy Valley Set and in part about this case.

Every time I hear "White Mischief" I think of Titus Andromedon.

Honestly if I were making my own movie it would end with Titus coming through on that line, and then FIN.

Anyway, that's all. I'll let Titus take us out.