Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles Page #3

That was Railroad Joe.

Railroad Joe had lived in that

house into the late '80s

and he had worked

for the rail road.

His real name was

actually Julius Piroli.

We went to the address

that was listed on

the South American tile.

No one answered the door

and there's a bar

put through the door

with two padlocks on it.

Since no one

came to the door,

it's sort of a dead end,

except for the fact that

all around in

the surrounding blocks

are these sort of proto-tiles,

test tiles.

Sort of test materials

layered on top of each other.

Random letters.

Weird tiles,

a couple in Spanish.

The blocks around it

are a testing ground

for the tiles.

And so I thought

this person

lived at this address

at some point, for sure.

At some point, somebody

on the Internet

mentioned this

newspaper article.

It was such a weird thing that

just came out of nowhere.

Well, here we are at

the Philadelphia Public Library.

We're going to

the microfiche room.

We're gonna get on microfiche

the "inquirer" article from

March 13, 1983.

Wanna run

that one by me again?"

by Clark DeLeon.

Despite the fact

that the article

is just a couple of

sentences long,

it opens up

all these questions.

It's more information than

we ever had from a tile.

There was a time line put on

this stuff for the first time

where you're like, "Early '80s

was when whoever it was

first had this idea and

really started to promote it."

But now there was at least this

potential name of James Morasco

that was brought up

into the fold.

This person really

actually believed,

quote unquote, "dead molecules

would be put back together

on the planet Jupiter."

There was this group,

the Minority Association,

that existed.

This was something

nobody ever heard of before.

The way that I pictured it

in my mind

was probably that it was

just at somebody's house

in their front room,

in a living room or something.

The Minority Association,

at least according

to this article,

according to what James Morasco

is saying on the telephone,

had somebody

doing the typing.

So then you think, "My gosh,

"somebody doing the typing,

they had a newsletter?

They had a typist, so they

were typing stuff, right?"

I was in love with the idea

of discovering

whatever it was that was typed

because it must exist somewhere.

And...

I wanted to see it so bad.

Toynbee tiles first

appeared in the early 1980s,

around the same time

playwright David Mamet

published "Four A.M."

It's a one-act play

about a radio host

and a strange caller

who wants to talk about

his plan to, yes, resurrect

the dead on Jupiter.

Now, all the sudden,

we've got this play.

So David Mamet,

highly decorated playwright.

He had won a Pulitzer Prize,

nominated for an Oscar,

wrote this one-act play called

"Four A.M."

As you're going through

the play and you're reading

the transcript of the play

you think,

"Wow, this is uncanny.

"I mean, this guy is calling up

this talk show host guy

"and he's talking about,

okay, Arnold Toynbee.

"That's a little bit weird.

"Jeez, he's talking about in

the movie '2001,'

that's weird."

And then he says, "Yes, we want

to resurrect the dead,"

and you think,

"Whoa, that's crazy."

And then, "The planet Jupiter."

You're like, "All right, this is

no mere coincidence."

He's basically

reiterating a conversation

with the Toynbee tile guy

or a member of the Minority

Association or something.

And you just think,

"So-- so David Mamet had

something to do with it."

And it just makes your

head spin

where you're like, "What?"

But even more telling

is he mentions that phrase,

"dead molecules."

There had never been a tile

photographed or documented

or described by anyone

that mentions this phrase

"dead molecules."

The only time that

the term "molecules"

has ever connected,

is in, of course,

the Clark DeLeon

newspaper article.

You know, it's the same--

it's the same concept.

Mamet wrote that piece

but it was-- you know, it didn't

appear anywhere publicly.

And then DeLeon's

And then Mamet's play

was published.

It seems like they

were working independently

and that was the assumption

that we had

going into our detective work.

Mamet insists the play is

not based on a real caller.

People used to ask me

where I get my ideas

and I would always

say, "I think of them."

There was no call on the radio,

I made it up.

Severino Verna,

AKA Sevy.

He's the resident of

this address

that was found

on the tile in Chile.

I don't think

he's answering.

Yeah, I don't know

if he wants to talk to us.

We didn't really know what to do

other than try and talk to him.

So we talked to

some of the people

from his neighborhood, who were

very personable.

They think it's him

putting the tiles all over.

Like, South America had his

address on it.

Down here,

like, 7th Street,

I think...

Sevy don't go anywhere.

Sevy goes nowhere.

He just worries about

his birds.

Sevy's a very a guy--

a very hard guy to talk to.

I know.

Well, did you

knock on his door?

Yeah, I don't

think he's home.

See you, Frankie.

And he wouldn't answer?

Yeah, we've knocked on

his door a bunch of times,

I don't think

he'll answer the door

'cause he doesn't

know us, you know?

Yeah.

I'll walk down with you

and knock on his door.

Yeah?

Sevy?

Sevy?

Sevy's very intelligent.

Yeah, yeah,

he seems like it.

Very, very intelligent man.

You just talk about, like,

plants and stuff with him?

Anything, anything

he feels--

- Sevy's very quiet.

- Yeah, yeah.

Very quiet person.

After knocking on his

door and everything

we decided an obvious step

is to try to call this person

on the telephone.

Dude, my adrenaline is like--

I'm gonna say something stupid,

I just know it.

His phone has been

disconnected.

So we call, actually,

his mother.

And Justin...

has a conversation with her.

I'm trying to get in touch,

I think, with

a relative of yours?

Um, Severino, Sevy?

I'm doing some research

into an art project

that I think that

he might be involved in.

And I've been trying to get

a hold of him

but he's kind of

hard to get a hold of, so...

I don't know if you ever

heard of this thing,

Toynbee Idea.

It's, like,

it's in Philadelphia, New York,

it's all up and down

the east coast

and then it's

also in South America.

Like, do you know if he ever-

has he been to

South America or...

So somebody contacted him

before about it?

- huh.

She said he's never been to

South America.

And she said

we weren't the first person

to bring this up to her.

And she said that Sevy

had mentioned that somebody

had come to his door

asking about it.

And he told her he

didn't know anything about it.

So, I mean, you definitely don't

think that your son

has any involvement it in?

Like, he never talked about

Arnold Toynbee

or anything like that, like--

Yeah.

- huh.

Is he, like,

into history of anything, like--

No?

She said there's no way he has

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