Ranking just above baseball,
incest is one of America's most popular pastimes
Like in Europe,
certain families were at one time notorious for practicing it
some did so believing their bloodline was special and needed to be kept pure
while others did so to ensure their fortune remained within the family
either way it always led to disastrous consequences
to the point it was almost synonymous with tragedy
such was the case for one of America's most rich and powerful families
this is the story of that family. And of their self imposed curse
with an estimated fortune of 14.3 billion dollars
the du Pont family are among the most wealthy in North America
for centuries they have wielded political influence,
playing a role in historic events like the Louisiana purchase
but the duPonts have always been secretive, existing only in a bubble of extreme wealth
and over the years strange rumors emerged of their involvement in Satanism, incest, and even murder
Now, my audience is far from normal.
So you might not think those things are strange. But they just are
The du Pont dynasty began with a man called Pierre
He was a minor government official who fled France during the revolution with his two sons
In America they established a gunpowder plant. Supplying powder to the US army
With few competitors the company grew quickly and by the mid 1800s they were rich
In time several DuPont's would become senators and even governor of the state of Delaware
because politics is what rich people do for fun
They were seen as equal to the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt families,
and by the 1920s were America's richest dynasty
But behind their success was a dark secret: incest
Patriach pierre Du Pont openly encouraged it
He once told his family:
And so duPont family members were raised to believe it was not only accepted, but right
It would turn out to be a big part of his legacy,
with cousin marriage common within the family for an entire century
Going into the 1900s, they put the incest to one side,
because that kind of thing went out of fashion quickly
But many would claim their past mistakes would have a long lasting,
terrible impact on the Du Pont family
According to a local legend in Delaware, the years of incest gradually distorted their minds
Locked away in their grand estates, they turned to Satanism,
performing human sacrifice on skull shaped altars
Being part of a cult with other rich and powerful families,
their ultimate goal was to summon the devil and make a pact with him
It is said they would kidnap poor children from nearby villages, to serve as an offering to satan
and that many of the DuPont estates were eventually gifted to the cult,
most of which now lie abandoned
There is no actual evidence to support
any of these claims. But for generations the legend has persisted
Also let's face it, evidence is boring
Cult or no cult, the Du Pont family have long been plagued by tragedy
The most famous of which being the murder of Dave Schultz
John duPont was born in November of 1938
Socially and physically inept, he grew up to be a very strange man
He always suffered bursts of paranoia, accusing his wife of being a Russian spy
The marriage didn't last and John took comfort in his lifelong obsession with wrestling
Despite having zero experience, he gave millions to an American university
but on the condition he could be head coach of their wrestling program
That's for sure the kind of thing I would do in his position. It's a fun idea
But before long they realized he was just a crazy person and shut down the whole program
So he decided to convert his mansion into a training center for wrestlers
Throwing money into this the way only a crazy person would
many amateur wrestlers were attracted to the center
Among them was Dave Schultz, a seven time world and Olympic gold medalist
For a while all went well. But in time John du Pont's crazy ways got the better of him
He claimed the mansion was haunted and that ghosts hated him personally
He would walk around carrying a handgun ranting about time travel
He would get drunk and drive his car into the building
Then in 1996, he murdered Dave Schultz, shooting him 3 times
His motive has never been clear but he was obviously a deeply disturbed man
his psychological demons could easily be attributed to the generations of inbreeding
In almost all species of animal,
inbreeding is known to cause a build up of negative recessive genes
The type of genes that result in serious mental disorders
In humans these genes are especially recessive, and often reveal themselves only later in life
This could in theory explain the madness of John duPont,
despite being born decades after the inbreeding was put to an end
Even with long term inbreeding,
dangerous genes are so recessive that only a minority suffer their consequences
This was proven by royal families in Europe
for most of history, Europe was ruled by absolute monarchies - from Russia to Iceland
Seeing themselves as special there was a tendency for royals to only marry other royals
but there was only a certain number of royal families out there
with such a small gene pool, inbreeding was inevitable
by the 1800s, it was said every royal in Europe was mentally ill
Still, while all royals carried dangerous genes, most were born relatively healthy
it was only now and then that somebody was born sick
But when dangerous dangerous conditions revealed themselves, they were bad
often resulting in bursts of hysteria, blindness, constant pain, and even blue urine