Futility Closet

In 1947 actress Gay Gibson disappeared from her cabin on an ocean liner off the coast of West Africa. The deck steward, James Camb, admitted to pushing her body out a porthole, but insisted she had died of natural causes and not in a sexual assault. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the curious case of the porthole murder, which is still raising doubts today. We'll also explore another fraudulent utopia and puzzle over a pedestrian's victory. Intro: Soldiers in World War I described "shell sense" -- an uncanny foreknowledge of imminent shellfire. British artist Patrick Hughes creates three-dimensional paintings that reverse the traditional rules of perspective. Sources for our feature on the death of Gay Gibson: Geoffrey Clark, ed., Trial of James Camb, 1949. Colin Evans, The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World's Most Baffling Crimes, 2007. Robin Odell and Wilfred Gregg, Murderers' Row: An International Murderers' Who's Who, 2011. J.F. Northey,