September 5, 2025 • 25 mins
WELCOME TO SEASON THREE!
In 1921, the United Press put out an article about a child murder with a hilariously awful spell-check error.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans filth heads. I'm back, You're back, We're
all back. I hope you've had a good summer. Has
anything bad happened since I've been gone anything? Ah, If
(00:29):
something bad has happened, I have returned to cheer your
eardrums on Fridays with a distasteful tale of your and
this verse tale who It is a doozy because this
story isn't filthy fun. What it does instead is it
exposes the importance of checking your work before you publish it,
(00:53):
because if you don't spell check or fact check your
news article, it might result in a truly terrible error,
one that a morally dubious and lazy historian like myself
might see one hundred years later and uncontrollably laugh at
despite the horribleness of the content.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
But I get it.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Surprisingly, I am not perfect, and I have indeed published
incorrect work.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Gasp.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I've mispronounced words, I've gotten things out of order, accidentally
said that Thomas Jefferson became president in nineteen oh one
instead of eighteen oh one.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
But the biggest.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Mistake I've ever made in my quasi journalistic career was
on a true crime show. I was a producer, and
I accidentally reported that someone was dead who was in
fact not dead at all. Turns out, in small town Arkansas,
some people have the same name, and one can be
(01:59):
dead and one can be alive. I'm just saying, if
you're gonna look at obituaries, make sure it's the right
obituary for the right person. But guys, if I'm gonna
be truly honest, did that dead man and the alive
man have the exact same name?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
No, but it was close. Anyway. Let's head to Chicago.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
In the gloomy winter of nineteen twenty one when there's
a grisly murder, a murder that the newspaper the Kansas
City Cans and reported on with a spelling error that
made me laugh when I saw it, even though the
story is absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Cue the theme song. This is American Filth and I'm
Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
This week's episode, a nineteen twenty one newspaper accidentally makes
child murder haleaneus.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I didn't really hide that time.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
President Trump, our dumbass in chief, recently put the National
Guard on the ground of Washington, DC, and now he
wants to do that in Chicago. He says these places
are riddled with crime, when in fact crime is at
a record low. But when fascism is the fashion.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Of the day, facts are out.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
But if mister Trump wanted to go back in time
to when America was allegedly great, he might find all
the crime he's looking for. In the early twentieth century,
Chicago had a large number of homicides.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
In general violence.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Why well, they were crazier by no.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
With prohibition passed in nineteen twenty, the underground alcohol trade boomed,
and the trade was run by powerful gangs with famous
people like al Capone.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
A question about al Capone.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
If he was Italian, really his last name should be Capone.
But again that's neither hither nor thither. The gangs of
Chicago vied for power and control over alcohol. The period
from nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty three was dubbed the
Beer Wars, and hundreds of gangsters were trying to become
(04:42):
the number one bootlegger. What a serious war, a beer war.
These gangs were dangerous because they had all these new
weapons that had come out of World War One. They
had the Tommy gun, which is a semi machine gun
that can shoot off fifty rounds at a time. Also,
gangs started using bombs. They'd go and just bomb the
(05:06):
supply of their competitors storefronts. It was a bomb's bonanza.
And during Prohibition homicides of Chicago increased by twenty one percent,
So I think it's fair to say it was a
stressful time. Even if you weren't in the gangs. You're
just surrounded by bombs and guns and violence. And now
(05:31):
you're like, what does this have to do with that
terrible spellcheck error? Well, I'm getting there, have patience. I
was just trying to explain what was happening in Chicago
around December nineteen twenty one, because that's when newspapers started
reporting on a child who had brutally died, and the
spellcheck error was in the newspaper, the Kansas City, Kansas,
(05:54):
and it came out on December one, nineteen twenty one.
The story was issued by the United Press, which was
kind of like the Associated Press today, where they create
new stories that different newspapers can print in their papers.
But it didn't feature byline, so you don't know who
actually reported and wrote it, and now I think I've
(06:15):
built it up enough. Let me just read you the article.
I think you will quickly identify what they misspelled que
creepy true crime music. The body of Margaret Coughlin, three
years old, kidnapped Wednesday, was found today, dismembered and partly
(06:38):
burned in the basement of a neighbor's home. The body
of the neighbor, Missus Penis, fifty two years old, was
found in her bedroom with her throat cut from ear
to ear and a bloody butcher knife in her hand.
Police believe missus Penis had killed the child and then
(07:00):
committed suicide. Missus Penis was fond of children, according to neighbors,
and often expressed a desire to have babies.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Of her own.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Parents of the baby said Missus Penis frequently asked them
to allow the child to come over for a while.
Police believe missus Penis had Margaret in her home since
the girl disappeared. An all night search was led by
Margaret's father, Edward Coughlin.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
A policeman.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Efforts of the police to gain admittance to the Penis
home failed, they smashed the door. The search on the
second floor revealed the body of Missus Penis in the basement.
Parts of Margaret's body were found strewn about. The body
had been hacked into several pieces, and some parts wrapped
in bundles.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Some parts of the body, a.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Leg and an arm, were found charred in a copper boiler.
The fire under the boiler was out. The basement was
splattered with blood and with shredded garments of Margaret. Okay,
let's just let's pause for a second. First of all,
(08:18):
this article and the murder it describes are absolutely horrific.
A child died and was dismembered, and then the likely
perpetrator committed suicide, slitting her own throat with a knife.
Truly a terrible thing happened. But also, you guys, understand
what the spelling error was. The newspaper reported the perpetrator's
(08:41):
name was Missus Penis. Missus Penis, no first name, simply
Missus Penis of the Penis household. When I first read
this article, I thought I was being bamboozled by the universe.
I was like, is that someone's real name? It certainly
can't be. And then I was wondering, like, was Penis
(09:03):
a common surname back in the day? I hope not,
because penis that's been used to describe male genital since
the like seventeenth century. That'd be so silly to have
a last named penis. So to see if there were
(09:24):
more penises out there, penis people, I went to newspapers
dot com and searched the word penis from the years
eighteen ninety to nineteen forty, just to see if this
was a common name, you know, and I hardly found
anybody with the last named Penis. There are a lot
of approximants, like I found an obituary for a woman
(09:44):
who had the last name Poenix with an ex at
the end. There's a lot of pennies, a penis stin,
a penis, sten penis, penry, penal, piniata.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
The only other penis I.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Found was a twenty one year old man named Dennis
Penis who died in a car crash in Hawaii in
the nineteen sixties. So only one penis and that similar
timeframe in which missus Penis would have been alive. I
also looked at some census data on ancestry dot com.
Apparently there was a Lowess Penis in nineteen thirty and
(10:20):
Andrew Penis in eighteen twenty, and the website said the
most penis families were found in the USA in eighteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I do such important work for this show, but I
wasn't the only person asking these questions about penis. A
reporter for Pacific Standard went on the hunt for people
named penis after he saw that baby names dot Com
had indicated that about a dozen children had been named
penis in twenty ten. By the results, that actually wasn't true.
(10:56):
The reporter couldn't find a single penis in the wild.
And here's another historically rigorous question. When this article appeared
in the Kansas City Cans and would the name penis
be considered humorous? Now, as I said, the word's been
around for a while, but I contend that it probably
(11:18):
was a little silly.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It probably was pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Because in the nineteen twenties, that was the time of flappers.
People were being more promiscuous in general with their petting
parties and drinking illegal booze, and people back then in
general seem to be more okay with dirty jokes. So
if someone read this article in December nineteen twenty one,
(11:42):
they might have left they might have thought it was
a terrible, horrible, shocking name for such a terrible crime.
By me, I'm it probably depended on the person, you know,
which I mean, that's a really astute historical observation. I'm like, Wow,
people are different. People aren't a monolith. Incredible, But I
(12:07):
quickly discovered that Penis was a very unfortunate spell check error.
This child was not murdered by someone named missus Penis.
And also some people think the toddler wasn't even.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Murdered at all.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Be right back after these soothing advertisements. Four days after
the article came out about a Missus Penis who murdered
a child and then killed herself, the United Press circulated
another article, but the alleged murderer she was no longer
missus Penis. Instead, it appears that someone did some actual
(12:48):
journalism and identified her with her actual name, missus Rachel Pences.
That's pe n Ses. Honestly, that's not even that close
to Penis. Like, there's those other people I listed pnix
Penal Penal Pences. Ah. They mis hear that the article
(13:16):
clarified some details around the alleged kidnap and murder and
what happened afterwards.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
The day before.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Margaret's dismembered body was found, she had gone over to
the Pence's home to play, but her parents became alarmed
later in the day when she never returned home. Remember,
her father was a police officer, so a search of
the neighborhood began really quickly. The Coughlin parents questioned Missus
(13:47):
Pences about Margaret's whereabouts, and Missus Pences said that Margaret
had felt sick while playing at her house and had
gone home The next morning. It was Margaret's dad, the policeman,
who saw a thin wisp of smoke coming from the
Pence's home.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Which was odd for the time of day. He crashed
down the door.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
After Margaret Coughlin and Rachel Pence's were found dead, Missus
Pence's husband and two preteen daughters were taken into custody.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
They all said they.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, and the
two daughters even asserted that their mother was very fond
of Margaret and would not have killed her. And this
is when it gets intriguing because the article proposes a
theory that maybe Missus Pence's didn't kill the kid on purpose,
(14:41):
but it was an accident, it reads. The theory was
that missus Pence's had given the Coughlin baby poison, which
she had mistaken for medicine, and then had become frightened
and attempted to conceal the child. This theory was supported
by mister Pencs' statements that his wife had told him
the Coughlin baby had become ill when at the Pence's
(15:02):
home on Wednesday, So if that theory was true, that
would have meant that missus Rachel Pence's, not Penis, had
accidentally poisoned the child on Wednesday, and instead of reporting
it to anyone, she decided to conceal the body and
lie to her family and to the Coughlins. And then
the next morning, after her husband and daughters had left
(15:25):
for the day, she tried to destroy the body by
burning it after she dismembered part of it, but once
she knew she was found out, she killed herself by
slicing her throat with a butcher knife. So yeah, this
theory says maybe it was an accidental death, but I
think we can also say that missus Pence's was not
acting like a normal person at all, and that's when
(15:50):
the article dropped another huge reveal about Missus Pence's not Penis.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
It reads, Missus.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Rachel Pensis, who kidnapped and brutally murdered three year old
Margaret Coughlin, was demented according to criminal three months ago,
the woman was declared a moron after examination by attendance
at the psychopathic laboratory of the city. So yeah, the
(16:20):
family of Missus Pences not Penis claimed that she was insane,
and so maybe Rachel Pencis didn't kill Margaret by accident,
but because she was having a psychotic episode. Penises are crazy.
On December second, nineteen twenty one, the Chicago Tribune wrote
(16:43):
a longer article about the Pences not Penis family and
about Rachel Pinsis's alleged struggles. The article is titled woman fanatic,
slew child and self police say, Scientists hold she had
religious mania. So in the article, her family claimed that
Rachel Pensis was a quote religious lunatic, take to the
(17:06):
point of mania and obeyed the commands of a.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Mysterious voice end quote.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
They said that her religious mania made her quote nervous, irritable,
accustomed to outbursts of violent anger over petty trifles. She
would magnify small incidents occurring about the house into the
wildest of imaginary tales. Damn, I think I might have
religious mania too, because I'd be accustomed to outbursts of
(17:36):
violent anger over petty trifles all the time. But anyway,
then it said missus Pences had been obsessed with the
three year old Margaret. She always wanted to hold her
and take care of her, now Rachel Pensis, she had
two daughters of her own, but according to the article,
she also had three other children who died in infancy.
(17:59):
So the article suggested she killed young Margaret as.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Some sort of trauma response.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
They quoted some physicians in the article that basically said
women are crazy. They were like, yeah, moms have been
known to go insane and kill their offspring.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
That's what women do.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Women be shopping, women be killing babies.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's just how it is.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Now, let's get to this voice that missus Pence's might
have heard. Physicians hypothesized that Missus Pences heard a voice
in her head and that was what made her kill
the girl. Like, oh, she heard this voice. She thinks
it's the voice of God. So this is why the
Chicago Tribune proposed they're like, well, Margaret Coughlin is over
(18:48):
at the Pence's house playing with missus Pencis's eleven year
old daughter, Josephine, and then that's when she heard a
voice in her head that said kill the girl. So
she sent her daughter on an errand that took about
an hour, and that's what missus Pence's did the deed,
and then.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Hid Margaret's body.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
When her daughter Josephine returned, she told her that Margaret
had gone home. And doctor suggested that missus Pences had
been induced into a mannicked state, which continued throughout the
night and into the next day. That made her seem
normal to everyone, even though she had done something truly horrific.
(19:28):
One doctor who has quoted in the article said very ominously,
and if she had succeeded in this crime, it would
have only been a space of time until it would
have been repeated, probably with her own family as the victims.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Dun Dun Dunn.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Missus Pence's daughters and husband were eventually released from jail,
but not before the Chicago Tribune made a brutal assessment
about the husband.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
The article said, quote.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
He too is slightly he mentally disordered. His glib speech,
his vacuous smile as he tells of the actions on
the night before in the early morning of yesterday are
plainly indicative. I think this quote is nasty. They're like
reading him for filth. But he's just been through a lot,
Like his wife killed a child and then killed herself
(20:28):
by slitting her own throat. Also, he's been dealing with
years of her having this religious mania, Like I can't.
I don't think he's in a good place, you know.
I think he's probably pretty stressed. Like instead of saying
he's mentally disordered, why don't you get.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Him a fucking therapist.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Chicago Tribune, Fuck you, guys. I'm gonna send them an email.
It's like, more than one hundred years ago, you were
mean to this man.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
The article ends dramatically at the Coughlin home, a red
eyed man and sits with the eighteen months old brother
of little Margaret in a creaky rocking chair, talking in
a low tone of his dead baby's charms. And in
the next room, the mother lies in a coma on
(21:20):
a bed, the coma of hysteria. A doctor watches. The
case is very serious, Okay, clearly this murder was horrific,
leaving two families in absolute shambles. So that's why it's
(21:42):
so crazy, so cuckoo bananas that the first article about
this had the error of penis buddy boy. Let's get
a fact checker, Let's get a freaking editor in there.
I need to send them an email to complaining. There's
so many complaints I have. But unfortunately, here's the thing.
The United Press, from where this article came. I was
(22:05):
bought by the AP, the Associated Press in nineteen ninety nine,
and honestly I would feel pretty silly sending them an email.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I would I can't.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I don't know if I should besmirch my reputation with
the AP by sending an email asking do you know
who wrote this article that said missus Penis killed a baby?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Do you know who wrote it?
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So I can spit on their grave? No, guys, I've
made I mean, I told you guys about how I
said a guy was dead when he wasn't dead. You
should also spit on my grave. Also, here's another spooky thing.
I looked at the house where this took place in Chicago,
(22:47):
and it's still there, and I was looking through like
I think Zillow had some photos and they're really creepy
because there's some people in the house, but there are
faces where blurred. I was like, are those ghosts? Is
this house filled with ghosts? So maybe I'll email them
and be like, hey, do you guys know that a
child died in your house?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Actually?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Won't that's so that would be so rude, be like, hey,
do you know your house is like haunted as hell?
Or maybe they already know.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Anyway, I'm not going to email anyone. Actually, I've decided now.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I think you might be wondering. You're probably like, Gabby,
how did you find this incredible story? It's so specific.
I don't think anyone's ever reported on this before. Well,
what I did is I was on newspapers dot com
looking for stories and I typed in the word penis
to see what would come up, and this would came up.
(23:43):
You gotta take the Internet away from me having too
much fun. So every episode of American Filth we learn
a lesson, and obviously the moral to this one is
spell check, fact check your work, especially if you're reporting
on a brutal child murder. Anyway, we'll be back next
week with some more hot filthy content.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
We got, But next week, no what we got. We
got a man cheating on his wife.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Can you believe it? There's even more of them que
the credits. American Filth is a production of School of
Humans and My Heart Podcast. It's hosting written by Me,
Gabby Watts, Jesse and I has longer than our beautiful
theme song. Our executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Virginia Prescott,
(24:29):
and Brandon Barr and you can follow along with the
show on Instagram at American Filth Pod. I'm also this
season trying to make American Filth chart above the Joe
Rogan experience. So please share this episode with your friends
and families, and especially your enemies. Let's take down the
Joe Rogan experience and call her daddy and every other
(24:51):
single show talk at you, guys next time.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
School of Humans
School of Humans filth heads. I'm back, You're back, We're
all back. I hope you've had a good summer. Has
anything bad happened since I've been gone anything? Ah, If
(00:29):
something bad has happened, I have returned to cheer your
eardrums on Fridays with a distasteful tale of your and
this verse tale who It is a doozy because this
story isn't filthy fun. What it does instead is it
exposes the importance of checking your work before you publish it,
(00:53):
because if you don't spell check or fact check your
news article, it might result in a truly terrible error,
one that a morally dubious and lazy historian like myself
might see one hundred years later and uncontrollably laugh at
despite the horribleness of the content.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
But I get it.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Surprisingly, I am not perfect, and I have indeed published
incorrect work.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Gasp.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I've mispronounced words, I've gotten things out of order, accidentally
said that Thomas Jefferson became president in nineteen oh one
instead of eighteen oh one.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
But the biggest.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Mistake I've ever made in my quasi journalistic career was
on a true crime show. I was a producer, and
I accidentally reported that someone was dead who was in
fact not dead at all. Turns out, in small town Arkansas,
some people have the same name, and one can be
(01:59):
dead and one can be alive. I'm just saying, if
you're gonna look at obituaries, make sure it's the right
obituary for the right person. But guys, if I'm gonna
be truly honest, did that dead man and the alive
man have the exact same name?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
No, but it was close. Anyway. Let's head to Chicago.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
In the gloomy winter of nineteen twenty one when there's
a grisly murder, a murder that the newspaper the Kansas
City Cans and reported on with a spelling error that
made me laugh when I saw it, even though the
story is absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Cue the theme song. This is American Filth and I'm
Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
This week's episode, a nineteen twenty one newspaper accidentally makes
child murder haleaneus.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I didn't really hide that time.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
President Trump, our dumbass in chief, recently put the National
Guard on the ground of Washington, DC, and now he
wants to do that in Chicago. He says these places
are riddled with crime, when in fact crime is at
a record low. But when fascism is the fashion.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Of the day, facts are out.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
But if mister Trump wanted to go back in time
to when America was allegedly great, he might find all
the crime he's looking for. In the early twentieth century,
Chicago had a large number of homicides.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
In general violence.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Why well, they were crazier by no.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
With prohibition passed in nineteen twenty, the underground alcohol trade boomed,
and the trade was run by powerful gangs with famous
people like al Capone.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
A question about al Capone.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
If he was Italian, really his last name should be Capone.
But again that's neither hither nor thither. The gangs of
Chicago vied for power and control over alcohol. The period
from nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty three was dubbed the
Beer Wars, and hundreds of gangsters were trying to become
(04:42):
the number one bootlegger. What a serious war, a beer war.
These gangs were dangerous because they had all these new
weapons that had come out of World War One. They
had the Tommy gun, which is a semi machine gun
that can shoot off fifty rounds at a time. Also,
gangs started using bombs. They'd go and just bomb the
(05:06):
supply of their competitors storefronts. It was a bomb's bonanza.
And during Prohibition homicides of Chicago increased by twenty one percent,
So I think it's fair to say it was a
stressful time. Even if you weren't in the gangs. You're
just surrounded by bombs and guns and violence. And now
(05:31):
you're like, what does this have to do with that
terrible spellcheck error? Well, I'm getting there, have patience. I
was just trying to explain what was happening in Chicago
around December nineteen twenty one, because that's when newspapers started
reporting on a child who had brutally died, and the
spellcheck error was in the newspaper, the Kansas City, Kansas,
(05:54):
and it came out on December one, nineteen twenty one.
The story was issued by the United Press, which was
kind of like the Associated Press today, where they create
new stories that different newspapers can print in their papers.
But it didn't feature byline, so you don't know who
actually reported and wrote it, and now I think I've
(06:15):
built it up enough. Let me just read you the article.
I think you will quickly identify what they misspelled que
creepy true crime music. The body of Margaret Coughlin, three
years old, kidnapped Wednesday, was found today, dismembered and partly
(06:38):
burned in the basement of a neighbor's home. The body
of the neighbor, Missus Penis, fifty two years old, was
found in her bedroom with her throat cut from ear
to ear and a bloody butcher knife in her hand.
Police believe missus Penis had killed the child and then
(07:00):
committed suicide. Missus Penis was fond of children, according to neighbors,
and often expressed a desire to have babies.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Of her own.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Parents of the baby said Missus Penis frequently asked them
to allow the child to come over for a while.
Police believe missus Penis had Margaret in her home since
the girl disappeared. An all night search was led by
Margaret's father, Edward Coughlin.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
A policeman.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Efforts of the police to gain admittance to the Penis
home failed, they smashed the door. The search on the
second floor revealed the body of Missus Penis in the basement.
Parts of Margaret's body were found strewn about. The body
had been hacked into several pieces, and some parts wrapped
in bundles.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Some parts of the body, a.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Leg and an arm, were found charred in a copper boiler.
The fire under the boiler was out. The basement was
splattered with blood and with shredded garments of Margaret. Okay,
let's just let's pause for a second. First of all,
(08:18):
this article and the murder it describes are absolutely horrific.
A child died and was dismembered, and then the likely
perpetrator committed suicide, slitting her own throat with a knife.
Truly a terrible thing happened. But also, you guys, understand
what the spelling error was. The newspaper reported the perpetrator's
(08:41):
name was Missus Penis. Missus Penis, no first name, simply
Missus Penis of the Penis household. When I first read
this article, I thought I was being bamboozled by the universe.
I was like, is that someone's real name? It certainly
can't be. And then I was wondering, like, was Penis
(09:03):
a common surname back in the day? I hope not,
because penis that's been used to describe male genital since
the like seventeenth century. That'd be so silly to have
a last named penis. So to see if there were
(09:24):
more penises out there, penis people, I went to newspapers
dot com and searched the word penis from the years
eighteen ninety to nineteen forty, just to see if this
was a common name, you know, and I hardly found
anybody with the last named Penis. There are a lot
of approximants, like I found an obituary for a woman
(09:44):
who had the last name Poenix with an ex at
the end. There's a lot of pennies, a penis stin,
a penis, sten penis, penry, penal, piniata.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
The only other penis I.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Found was a twenty one year old man named Dennis
Penis who died in a car crash in Hawaii in
the nineteen sixties. So only one penis and that similar
timeframe in which missus Penis would have been alive. I
also looked at some census data on ancestry dot com.
Apparently there was a Lowess Penis in nineteen thirty and
(10:20):
Andrew Penis in eighteen twenty, and the website said the
most penis families were found in the USA in eighteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I do such important work for this show, but I
wasn't the only person asking these questions about penis. A
reporter for Pacific Standard went on the hunt for people
named penis after he saw that baby names dot Com
had indicated that about a dozen children had been named
penis in twenty ten. By the results, that actually wasn't true.
(10:56):
The reporter couldn't find a single penis in the wild.
And here's another historically rigorous question. When this article appeared
in the Kansas City Cans and would the name penis
be considered humorous? Now, as I said, the word's been
around for a while, but I contend that it probably
(11:18):
was a little silly.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It probably was pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Because in the nineteen twenties, that was the time of flappers.
People were being more promiscuous in general with their petting
parties and drinking illegal booze, and people back then in
general seem to be more okay with dirty jokes. So
if someone read this article in December nineteen twenty one,
(11:42):
they might have left they might have thought it was
a terrible, horrible, shocking name for such a terrible crime.
By me, I'm it probably depended on the person, you know,
which I mean, that's a really astute historical observation. I'm like, Wow,
people are different. People aren't a monolith. Incredible, But I
(12:07):
quickly discovered that Penis was a very unfortunate spell check error.
This child was not murdered by someone named missus Penis.
And also some people think the toddler wasn't even.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Murdered at all.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Be right back after these soothing advertisements. Four days after
the article came out about a Missus Penis who murdered
a child and then killed herself, the United Press circulated
another article, but the alleged murderer she was no longer
missus Penis. Instead, it appears that someone did some actual
(12:48):
journalism and identified her with her actual name, missus Rachel Pences.
That's pe n Ses. Honestly, that's not even that close
to Penis. Like, there's those other people I listed pnix
Penal Penal Pences. Ah. They mis hear that the article
(13:16):
clarified some details around the alleged kidnap and murder and
what happened afterwards.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
The day before.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Margaret's dismembered body was found, she had gone over to
the Pence's home to play, but her parents became alarmed
later in the day when she never returned home. Remember,
her father was a police officer, so a search of
the neighborhood began really quickly. The Coughlin parents questioned Missus
(13:47):
Pences about Margaret's whereabouts, and Missus Pences said that Margaret
had felt sick while playing at her house and had
gone home The next morning. It was Margaret's dad, the policeman,
who saw a thin wisp of smoke coming from the
Pence's home.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Which was odd for the time of day. He crashed
down the door.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
After Margaret Coughlin and Rachel Pence's were found dead, Missus
Pence's husband and two preteen daughters were taken into custody.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
They all said they.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, and the
two daughters even asserted that their mother was very fond
of Margaret and would not have killed her. And this
is when it gets intriguing because the article proposes a
theory that maybe Missus Pence's didn't kill the kid on purpose,
(14:41):
but it was an accident, it reads. The theory was
that missus Pence's had given the Coughlin baby poison, which
she had mistaken for medicine, and then had become frightened
and attempted to conceal the child. This theory was supported
by mister Pencs' statements that his wife had told him
the Coughlin baby had become ill when at the Pence's
(15:02):
home on Wednesday, So if that theory was true, that
would have meant that missus Rachel Pence's, not Penis, had
accidentally poisoned the child on Wednesday, and instead of reporting
it to anyone, she decided to conceal the body and
lie to her family and to the Coughlins. And then
the next morning, after her husband and daughters had left
(15:25):
for the day, she tried to destroy the body by
burning it after she dismembered part of it, but once
she knew she was found out, she killed herself by
slicing her throat with a butcher knife. So yeah, this
theory says maybe it was an accidental death, but I
think we can also say that missus Pence's was not
acting like a normal person at all, and that's when
(15:50):
the article dropped another huge reveal about Missus Pence's not Penis.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
It reads, Missus.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Rachel Pensis, who kidnapped and brutally murdered three year old
Margaret Coughlin, was demented according to criminal three months ago,
the woman was declared a moron after examination by attendance
at the psychopathic laboratory of the city. So yeah, the
(16:20):
family of Missus Pences not Penis claimed that she was insane,
and so maybe Rachel Pencis didn't kill Margaret by accident,
but because she was having a psychotic episode. Penises are crazy.
On December second, nineteen twenty one, the Chicago Tribune wrote
(16:43):
a longer article about the Pences not Penis family and
about Rachel Pinsis's alleged struggles. The article is titled woman fanatic,
slew child and self police say, Scientists hold she had
religious mania. So in the article, her family claimed that
Rachel Pensis was a quote religious lunatic, take to the
(17:06):
point of mania and obeyed the commands of a.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Mysterious voice end quote.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
They said that her religious mania made her quote nervous, irritable,
accustomed to outbursts of violent anger over petty trifles. She
would magnify small incidents occurring about the house into the
wildest of imaginary tales. Damn, I think I might have
religious mania too, because I'd be accustomed to outbursts of
(17:36):
violent anger over petty trifles all the time. But anyway,
then it said missus Pences had been obsessed with the
three year old Margaret. She always wanted to hold her
and take care of her, now Rachel Pensis, she had
two daughters of her own, but according to the article,
she also had three other children who died in infancy.
(17:59):
So the article suggested she killed young Margaret as.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Some sort of trauma response.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
They quoted some physicians in the article that basically said
women are crazy. They were like, yeah, moms have been
known to go insane and kill their offspring.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
That's what women do.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Women be shopping, women be killing babies.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's just how it is.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Now, let's get to this voice that missus Pence's might
have heard. Physicians hypothesized that Missus Pences heard a voice
in her head and that was what made her kill
the girl. Like, oh, she heard this voice. She thinks
it's the voice of God. So this is why the
Chicago Tribune proposed they're like, well, Margaret Coughlin is over
(18:48):
at the Pence's house playing with missus Pencis's eleven year
old daughter, Josephine, and then that's when she heard a
voice in her head that said kill the girl. So
she sent her daughter on an errand that took about
an hour, and that's what missus Pence's did the deed,
and then.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Hid Margaret's body.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
When her daughter Josephine returned, she told her that Margaret
had gone home. And doctor suggested that missus Pences had
been induced into a mannicked state, which continued throughout the
night and into the next day. That made her seem
normal to everyone, even though she had done something truly horrific.
(19:28):
One doctor who has quoted in the article said very ominously,
and if she had succeeded in this crime, it would
have only been a space of time until it would
have been repeated, probably with her own family as the victims.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Dun Dun Dunn.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Missus Pence's daughters and husband were eventually released from jail,
but not before the Chicago Tribune made a brutal assessment
about the husband.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
The article said, quote.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
He too is slightly he mentally disordered. His glib speech,
his vacuous smile as he tells of the actions on
the night before in the early morning of yesterday are
plainly indicative. I think this quote is nasty. They're like
reading him for filth. But he's just been through a lot,
Like his wife killed a child and then killed herself
(20:28):
by slitting her own throat. Also, he's been dealing with
years of her having this religious mania, Like I can't.
I don't think he's in a good place, you know.
I think he's probably pretty stressed. Like instead of saying
he's mentally disordered, why don't you get.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Him a fucking therapist.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Chicago Tribune, Fuck you, guys. I'm gonna send them an email.
It's like, more than one hundred years ago, you were
mean to this man.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
The article ends dramatically at the Coughlin home, a red
eyed man and sits with the eighteen months old brother
of little Margaret in a creaky rocking chair, talking in
a low tone of his dead baby's charms. And in
the next room, the mother lies in a coma on
(21:20):
a bed, the coma of hysteria. A doctor watches. The
case is very serious, Okay, clearly this murder was horrific,
leaving two families in absolute shambles. So that's why it's
(21:42):
so crazy, so cuckoo bananas that the first article about
this had the error of penis buddy boy. Let's get
a fact checker, Let's get a freaking editor in there.
I need to send them an email to complaining. There's
so many complaints I have. But unfortunately, here's the thing.
The United Press, from where this article came. I was
(22:05):
bought by the AP, the Associated Press in nineteen ninety nine,
and honestly I would feel pretty silly sending them an email.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I would I can't.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I don't know if I should besmirch my reputation with
the AP by sending an email asking do you know
who wrote this article that said missus Penis killed a baby?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Do you know who wrote it?
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So I can spit on their grave? No, guys, I've
made I mean, I told you guys about how I
said a guy was dead when he wasn't dead. You
should also spit on my grave. Also, here's another spooky thing.
I looked at the house where this took place in Chicago,
(22:47):
and it's still there, and I was looking through like
I think Zillow had some photos and they're really creepy
because there's some people in the house, but there are
faces where blurred. I was like, are those ghosts? Is
this house filled with ghosts? So maybe I'll email them
and be like, hey, do you guys know that a
child died in your house?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Actually?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Won't that's so that would be so rude, be like, hey,
do you know your house is like haunted as hell?
Or maybe they already know.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Anyway, I'm not going to email anyone. Actually, I've decided now.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I think you might be wondering. You're probably like, Gabby,
how did you find this incredible story? It's so specific.
I don't think anyone's ever reported on this before. Well,
what I did is I was on newspapers dot com
looking for stories and I typed in the word penis
to see what would come up, and this would came up.
(23:43):
You gotta take the Internet away from me having too
much fun. So every episode of American Filth we learn
a lesson, and obviously the moral to this one is
spell check, fact check your work, especially if you're reporting
on a brutal child murder. Anyway, we'll be back next
week with some more hot filthy content.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
We got, But next week, no what we got. We
got a man cheating on his wife.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Can you believe it? There's even more of them que
the credits. American Filth is a production of School of
Humans and My Heart Podcast. It's hosting written by Me,
Gabby Watts, Jesse and I has longer than our beautiful
theme song. Our executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Virginia Prescott,
(24:29):
and Brandon Barr and you can follow along with the
show on Instagram at American Filth Pod. I'm also this
season trying to make American Filth chart above the Joe
Rogan experience. So please share this episode with your friends
and families, and especially your enemies. Let's take down the
Joe Rogan experience and call her daddy and every other
(24:51):
single show talk at you, guys next time.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
School of Humans
Host
Gabbie Watts
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