- What I want is everyone to understand
is what Mary Dyer fucking did to the Puritan dudes.
She freaked their dicks off, okay?
- There was two gentlemen dressed as police officers.
You're under arrest
for the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- He went by "Johnny Cool."
He burnt down over 200 houses.
My pronunciation is...
I'm sorry, my pronunciation is bad.
- It's fine.
- You can understand me? - I can understand you.
- You can understand? - Yeah.
- As I look back on it,
I'm so glad I'm from Boston.
Because the most badass...
We started this country.
Fuck you,
we're from England,
but also we have our own thing going on.
This is the real fucking shit...
you know, is Boston and people from there.
Here's the thing,
I'm not, like, standing really good,
but I'm gonna do a good job.
But I need people to understand
that I didn't drink all of this, 'cause I...
- No, we know. - Already had a bottle.
So why would I have two? - Yeah, exactly.
- Okay, wait, just let me get serious for a minute.
Hello.
Today, we're gonna talk about Mary Dyer.
Mary Dyer and her husband William
moved to Massachusetts from England,
and they were Quakers, which is more liberal Puritans.
So William and Mary are like,
this is fuckin' fun and great.
The Puritans are the people that settled New England
in the 1600s.
Puritans were like, the Bible is the word of God.
Like, literally, God dictated some notes to his secretary.
Mary was just like,
I've got a little bit of a different take on it.
Hey, you know, this thing the Holy Spirit
we keep hearing about?
That's within you.
Oh, my God, the Holy Spirit's right here?
Yeah, you can just talk to it.
Oh, my God, hey, Holy Spirit.
The thing is, what she's doing is illegal.
There is no separation of church and state.
So the guys that ran New England were like, no.
No, no, no.
Don't go just saying, "Oh, here's my interpretation of it,"
and have women over for tea.
No, you're undermining the whole thing.
Okay, so Mary was banished.
She's like, fine, no big deal.
Banish me. I'm going to Rhode Island.
And what I want is everyone to understand
is what Mary fucking did to the Puritan dudes.
She freaked their dicks off, okay?
- What? - Because you don't understand.
They're like, um, didn't we tell you to leave?
She's like, uh, yeah, you did,
but I'm not trying to be a dick,
but I'm coming back to ask you,
can you please just have...
You don't have to, like, be into it,
but can you please have religious tolerance?
And they're like, no.
You know, they said, we're gonna fucking kill you.
We're gonna strangle you, noose you.
What do you call that? Kill you.
Kill yourself. Murder you.
Gallows.
- She's gonna get hung.
- Mary was gonna get hung.
She's walking with a guy to the gallows.
And they literally... The noose is around her neck.
And they were like, Mary,
if you promise to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony
and never come back, you can go.
And she was like, okay.
And they were like, all right.
They take the rope off around her neck,
and they let her go.
Mary did an amazing thing.
Oh!
Do you think I should get up?
Mary Dyer comes back to Massachusetts and says,
I'm gonna deal with these laws to their bloody face.
I'm gonna bloody deal with these laws
in the face.
In other words,
I'm confronting this shit
head-fucking-on.
Honestly, laying on the floor like this
is one of the best times I've had in a long time.
- So Mary... she's visiting Quakers in prison.
They were like, thank you, Mary, for coming,
'cause we get that you get what we're going through.
She's like, totally.
So the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
was like, stop visiting prisoners.
Stop acting like it's okay.
We gotta fucking kill you.
So he walked her to the gallows
on Boston Common in 1660.
And they put the noose around her neck.
So she had the rope around her neck,
like, about to die.
She said, no ear can hear,
no tongue can taste,
no heart can understand...
the joy...
Something like, the joy...
Fuck. I don't fucking know.
The joy and the treasures of the blessings
and the refreshments.
I don't get what that is.
But the refreshments of God
that I have, starting right this fucking now.
And then they hung her.
Everyone's watching. They're like,
oh, my God. We're on the Boston Common.
We're on... Watching someone die.
That's your problem for being a sick fuck.
And then King Charles was like,
excuse me, what the fuck is everyone doing
over at Massachusetts?
I didn't say this shit should get so crazy.
Don't kill people.
That makes you look more like a pussy,
if you didn't know, by the way, dudes.
But she changed the world.
But you'll never hear about it anywhere but here.
- Well, now...
She's in an unmarked grave
on the Boston Common.
And you know whose grave is marked?
Fucking Jim Morrison.
People fly to Europe to see it.
And he wrote horrible music.
- So these guys steal,
like, hundreds and millions of dollars' worth of art.
They took a knife and just went like, fuck you!
Like, boom, boom, boom, boom!
- This is the outline of Massachusetts.
This is... this is... Cape Cod, right there.
- And then it's gonna go like...
- It has to be like the "hey!"
- Yeah. - So trace it out.
- Now, how did you learn this?
That that's all you had to do to figure out...
- Everyone from Massachusetts is like,
"Hey, which part of the cape are you from?"
that's a fucked-up-looking Massachusetts.
- Jesus!
What's your favorite Boston story?
- Uh, it's gotta be the Boston Tea Party, right?
I think that's what Boston's all about.
You know, rebelling what you believe in.
Boston Tea Party, you know? Ooh!
- Are you fucking out of your mind?
- All right, we got a little fight here.
Let's get this fight.
This is what... about... Believe in
what you believe in.
- There's a ton of history here.
You're gonna walk the Red Line,
the North End... - You're being boring.
- And see the historical stuff.
- So the day was... - Erin'll tell the story.
- Yeah, I'm good at that part, Michael.
- Are you guys married? - Yes.
We are. - Three years.
- No one can tell.
So at the, um, Isabel Gardner...
- The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum...
- Museum. - Okay.
- A few blocks away from where we are right now.
- Yeah, Isabella's a very eccentric woman.
She was sort of like, I'm gonna wear a headband
when no women wear headbands.
And she thought that, fuck life,
I'm going to do something awesome.
And so she built this museum.
I mean, she had, like, thousands of pieces of art
that were from these most "extrensive,"
like, places of... of world.
So do you want me to go to 1990? - Yes.
- The story "perleads"
that, uh, there was two gentlemen, um,
that were dressed as police officers
that went to the building of Isabella Stewart.
They rang the doorbell,
and they said, um,
there is a disturbance of teenagers
we heard around the building.
We just wanna make sure that everything's okay.
The security guard said,
well, I'm not really supposed to allow anyone in,
but I will, like, allow this because you're police officers.
Which is insane!
And he said, Mr. Ba-ba-ba-ba,
there's a warrant out for your arrest.
You're under arrest for the blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he was, like, so shitted
that he was like, okay, like...
something's happening.
So I gotta, like, kinda say, hey, what's going on?
So he moved.
And as soon as he moved, they...
Boom, boom, boom... tackled him.
What was so crazy was...
Okay, they, like, called the other guy on security.
They had him call on security and say,
you... you need to come down here. Something's happening, like...
So this guy came in.
So they taped him up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Duct taped their mouths.
They realized that Isabel was so smart in her time
that she, like, literally, like,
secured the art to the wall.
- They couldn't get...
- They panicked! They panicked! They panicked!
Oh, shit. We gotta get outta there.
So what was even crazier was,
they took a knife and just went like,
fuck you!
Like, boom, boom, boom, boom!
Crazy, you know?
Like, they were just like, fuck it.
They were like idiots.
They cut it out!
And were like, oh, let's roll it out
and sell it on, like, Canal Street in New York.
- Like, they took out razor blades?
- Yeah, so fucking, like...
- Cut the art off.
- Like... thug, like, nation.
So these guys go through.
They steal, like, hundreds and millions of dollars
worth of art.
So this FBI guy came in,
and people reported these guys were, like, around 35 years old,
like, 5'10".
Like, these policemen that got in this car...
It's insane, like, you know what I mean?
Like, it's crazy.
And he's like, I've seen Rembrandts appear
at these Chinese restaurants in the bathroom before.
Or, I've been in Paris,
where I've been in this underground tunnel,
and there's been a picture of Monet.
So what was even crazier
was every lead was dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
And he was just like,
I have never experienced something like this.
I have never...
like, ever in my life not been able to follow up.
'Cause he used to be... He worked for the FBI.
He worked in the art theft situation.
The art has never resurfaced, ever, in its time.
And which is so rare that, like...
- 22 years, with a $5 million reward.
- Somebody, somewhere, in some Southie place
is holding that Rembrandt up in some frame somewhere.
And that's what happening.
They were either idiots, they were con men,
they were just fucking stupid,
or they were brilliant,
but they never made it to the fourth floor.
Because that's where all the expensive art was.
- I understand how the Isabella Gardner Museum must feel.
- Why?
- I think I was, like, eight or nine,
and some kid took my whole, like...
At least $100 worth of Pokemon cards.
Holographic Charizard, which is rare.
Blastoise, the Professor Oak first edition.
That was when Pokemon was really big,
and, like, I... Thank you.
- They meet up with the guy.
The guy says,
I need you to burn this place to the fucking ground.
I owe a lot of money on it.
Stay tuned for across America, for Drunk History.
2004.
It doesn't get any better than this.
- Um, I was born
in... Boston.
Here's the thing that I love about Boston.
Here's the thing that I love about New England.
We were
in charge of our own destiny.
I want a fucking... I want a drink.
And I'm not gonna fucking stop until I can get, like...
Give me something...
- I'm gonna... You just suck this out of the straw.
- Okay.
- 'Cause I don't want you dropping it.
It's slippery.
Is there more Coke or Jack in that?
- Correct.
I'm ready to talk. I can talk still.
Hello.
My name's Chris Romano,
and we're gonna talk about Johnny Cool,
who happened to be the most famous arsonist
in the history of Massachusetts.
- Who was he... to you?
- He's my dad.
My mom said to me, when I was 14,
your dad's not who he said he was.
And I said, what do you mean?
Your father was an arsonist in the '70s.
I said, I don't really know what that is...
at all.
Anything that you could get for insurance,
you burn it down.
Because of that,
we were put in the witness protection program.
Now, I said, what?
And she said, you're in the witness protection program.
Your real last name's not Romano.
It's Shaheen.
You're not really Italian. You're Lebanese.
And I was like, aw, ma...
Aw, man.
My dad is known for burning down
the most amount of places
in the history of New England.
My dad's real name was John Shaheen.
He went by "Johnny Cool."
But the thing is,
they called my dad and his partner Georgie
the Gold Dust Twins.
My pronunciation's...
I'm sorry, my pronunciation's bad.
- That's fine. - You can understand me?
- I can understand you. - You can understand?
- Yeah.
- Georgie was like, I got this job.
We should go do it.
What do you need me to burn down?
One of the biggest hotel constructions
in New England.
This is perfect.
So they go to the hotel.
They meet up with the guy.
The guy who hired him says,
I need you to burn this place to the fucking ground.
I owe a lot of money on it.
I put too much money into the rooms.
I put too much money into the carpets.
I put too much money into the kitchens.
I put too much money into the...
Into the drapes!
And my dad says, no problem. I'm the best.
That's why you fuckin' had me come here.
So... so my dad burnt that...
hotel down.
And what was crazy about my dad was,
while the place was burning, he would stick around
and watch it burn down with the fire department
and everybody else,
and go, wow, that's a fire, huh?
And people would go, yeah, that's a fuckin'...
crazy-lookin' fire.
And he'd go, whoo!
Fucking thing is... looks hot.
Um...
- Where are you going? Oh!
Chris Romano.
- The investigator said, just tell who you work with,
and, you know, we can make this very, very easy for you.
- How much would it cost
to get you to set something on fire?
- Like, literally, I'll do it right now for free.
- Do you have any fireworks?
- I do, at my house.
- Why do you keep moving it? - I'm not trying to.
- In 1979,
my dad was arrested for counterfeit money.
And he said, counterfeit?
Um, that's nothing. Let's talk about arson.
The agent's like, okay.
I burnt down over 200 houses.
100 cars, 100 boats, hotels.
Liquor stores.
I'm, uh, fuck... I'm good at fuckin' burning shit down.
The agent was like, excuse me.
Um, this guy just is fucking telling...
He just broke open the biggest arson case
in the history of Massachusetts
that we've been trying to solve for ten years.
I'm not gonna be home for dinner or breakfast or lunch.
The investigator said,
you can go straight,
and we're going to give you that opportunity to go straight.
Just tell us who you work with,
and, you know, we can make this very, very easy for you.
He just found out that my mother was pregnant with me.
So he ratted on his best friend.
He ratted on everybody he ever burnt down a house for.
And that caused everybody to go, well, I wanna kill you...
because you have just told on me.
I didn't have... And I'm not like I fucking...
They move us to New Hampshire.
They gave us a new identity.
And they gave him the money.
And they said, you can't...
Like anybody else who's in the witness protection program,
you can't do what you normally did and...
When you weren't in the witness protection program.
Are you gonna do this, be able to go straight, Johnny?
And he said, I think so.
But you know me.
If all else fails,
all I wanna do is burn, burn, burn.
If people ever have the fact
that people think they know who people are,
they have no clue who...
real people... real people know who they are.
- I want this to be good for America.
But see, you got it.
- All right, well, thanks for meeting up with me, Chris.
- Hey. Hey, no problem, man.