December 20, 2023 • 18 mins
When a father and son go on a killing spree, the residents of Leonia, N,J., where everyone leaves their door unlocked, are the last people who expect a bloody home invasion. The unlikeliest hero emerges as a nurse named Maria Fasching places herself in harm’s way.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. At the
end of.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Murdering all the people on Earth, I was going to
murder my own family and then take my own life
and become God.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Do you ever feel violent?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I do. What do you feel like doing killing people?
Do you still feel like killing people? Yes? Do you
think it murder media book? Yes, that's gruesome. Job, that's horrible.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I guess it is.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
This is a father and son's story, it just might
not be the one you expect. On January eighth, nineteen
seventy five, forty five year old Joseph Kallinger and his
thirteen year old son Michael decided to go on a
road trip together. They took a bus from Philadelphia to
Fort Lee, New Jersey. The odd thing about this father
(00:51):
and son, besides the way they occasionally hold hands swinging
them through the air, is that they're wearing dark colored
business suits and they have a grete goal. They need
to kill every single human living on the face of
the earth. The problem is, Joseph Kalnger doesn't like the
vibe in Fort Lee, so they wander to the next town, Leonia.
(01:12):
Leonia in New Jersey has about nine thousand residents in
nineteen seventy five. It's the kind of place where residents
keep their doors unlocked. As they walk down Glenwood Avenue,
Michael reaches for his father's hand again, but Joseph's mood
had become more serious, and when Joseph's mood changes, he
can be very dangerous. Two wounds are still healing on
(01:34):
the back of his son's head from a few months
before when he almost beat him to death. Joseph can
switch between rolls instantly, from father to killer and back
to father again. When he starts having hallucinations, all bets
are off. This is Murder Holmes. I'm Matt Marinovitch. In
(02:09):
the first episode of this podcast, I talked about the
house that sparked my interest in stigmatized properties. When twenty
four Glenwood Avenue and Leonia, New Jersey, with the story
of Joseph Calenger and his son and the events that
took place there is even more disturbing than I initially believed.
A year before Joseph and Michael's arrival in Leonia, Ian
(02:31):
Michael had chased his older son, Joseph Junior, through a
vacant building in Philadelphia Joseph had picked up Joe Junior
from a reformatory in Philadelphia and then taken out a
fifteen thousand dollars life insurance policy on him. But in
order to cash it in, he had to get rid
(02:51):
of Joseph Jr. They chased him to the basement of
that vacant building and in a pool of water with
his own two head, Joseph Calenger, with Michael's help, drowned
his son when the insurance money ran out. He tried
the same thing with Michael, but his youngest had more
(03:11):
of a survival instinct and fought back. He also promised
he'd do whatever his father wanted him to do. By day,
he helped his father in his shoe shop, and once
a week he wore a thin paper crown and placed
a used birthday candle and a stale piece of cake.
Then he sang Happy Birthday to Joseph Calenger. They did
this every week so that his son would never forget
(03:33):
how special his father is. Late at night, Michael could
hear his father talking to a spirit he called Charlie.
Charlie appeared to Calenger as a disembodied head that floated
upward like a balloon. Until it met the ceiling. Charlie
smiled deviously from ear to ear and told him it
was time to kill again. Before they even set foot
(03:55):
in the pleasant suburb of Leonia, they would go on
a six week, three state crime spree, invading homes and
holding their owner's hostage. But for some reason, Calender stopped
shy murdering anyone. And now Charlie's voice had become even
more insistent, urging Calender to take the next step. How else,
Charlie told him, would he ever become a god. It
(04:20):
was nine fifty four am in Leonia. The well kept
long still frozen from the night before, when the temperature
had dropped to zero. Joseph Klender and his son were
all business now. The wisps of their breath could be
seen by a housewife as the strangers walked up the
steps to her home. Calender told his son to stop smiling.
They rang the doorbell. We're from John Hancock, Joseph said.
(04:47):
Michael O was standing behind him, nervously playing with his tie.
We'd like to tell you about a policy. Three times
in a row the door was closed in their face.
For starters. The young boy couldn't possibly be a say Elman.
The jacket he was wearing was much too big for
his thin frame, and there was something disconcerting about the
dark circles under Joseph Kalender's eyes, the way he tried
(05:09):
to take a quick step into the homes before he
was even invited in. Then they got lucky. They walked
down the narrow concrete path leading to one twenty four Glenwood,
a four bedroom single family with a tanned stucco exterior.
As soon as the door was opened, Joseph Kalender began
his spiel. We're from John Hancock, he said, But before
(05:30):
twenty eight year old d D Wiseman could tell him
that she wasn't interested, he shoved her inside and pointed
a chrome plated handgun at her head. Once inside the home,
Calendred forced Dede and her four year old son into
a vacant bedroom, bound them, and made them lie down
next to each other. Within half an hour, four other
people returned to the home, unaware that it had been invaded.
(05:53):
Edwen Na Wiseman, the grandmother Hudidi was looking after Randy
Wiseman's sister of Dede and Randy's boyfriend, Frank well Be.
Randy and Frank were bound and tied in the living room,
but the elderly grandmother wasn't because Kalenger told his son
she was too old to be a threat. There's one
more person who entered at one twenty four glen Wood
that afternoon, and it would turn out that she would
(06:16):
be the only one who would never leave again. Her
name was Maria Fashing, a beautiful twenty one year old
nurse at Hackensack Hospital. There are very few pictures that
remain of Maria Fashing, but in one she smiles slightly
wide eyed, her brunette hair cut in a bob. In another,
(06:39):
she's wearing her nurse's outfit and playfully pinching her fingers together,
smiling faintly. Besides a faded yearbook photo, these are the
only images you can find on the internet. Maria Fashing
was one of those people who was good to the core.
She was a firm believer in the women's liberation movement
that was picking up at the time, and she always
stuck up for anyone who she saw bullied, unafraid to
(07:02):
give anyone a piece of her mind, no matter how
bitit she was at five foot four. Friends weren't surprised
when they found a bird with a broken wing in
a shoe box that she was temporarily caring for, or
a stray cat that had been hit by a car
propped up on pillows in her small apartment. She never
walked away from anyone or anything in need. On January eighth,
(07:23):
she was due to work the fort to midnight shift
at Hackensack Hospital, but before she drove to work, she
decided to check on Eduena Wiseman and catch up with
her friend Randy. At two forty five pm, the sun
streamed through the windshield of her black Volkswagon as she
parked outside one twenty four Glenwood. She was wearing an
(07:44):
imitation fur coat of her nursing outfit. As she walked
toward the home. After a frigid night, the temperature had
slowly climbed to forty three degrees and the islands of
snow left in the neighbor's front yards were beginning to glisten.
She pocketed the car and rang the doorbell. The door
was violently pulled open, and it was Kallenger's mannic face
(08:06):
she saw. At knife point. She was herded into the
living room, where she saw Edwena and the others. Window
cord had been used to bind the victims, and Frank
had been gagged. Maria fashion kept her cool. She took
her place on the floor amongst the others, carefully observing Calenger.
He seemed obsessed with Frank, who he thought posed the
(08:27):
greatest threat to him, so he hogtied him and while
Michael Klenger nervously guarded the others, led him down to
the basement. Frank would later testify that Maria was taken
down to the basement. Next, with Michael's help, Callnger stood
Frank up. Charlie had given him precise instructions about what
would happen next. He unbuckled Frank's pants so that he
(08:50):
was naked from the waist down, and then he ordered
Maria to castrate Frank, not with the hunting knife he
was gripping, but with her teeth. Maria refused and became enraged.
It was never a question in her mind that she'd
save her own skin and put someone else at risk.
Calenger bound and gagged Frank again and kicked him to
the floor, and then he turned his attention to the
(09:12):
defiant Maria, tied up and now facing away from Maria,
Frank could only hear Calenger threatening her. She had destroyed
all of his plans, made a fool of him in
front of his son. And when Charlie's disembodied head started
appearing again, always floating upwards like some twisted party balloon,
Calender knew that he'd bet sneering even more. Frank could
(09:34):
hear Calender beginning to threaten Maria from his position on
the floor, and then he just heard white noise. The
furnace in the boiler had kicked in, and when it
fired up, he couldn't hear what Joseph Kalinger was saying
to her anymore. But behind that curtain of white noise,
(09:54):
he was certain he could suddenly hear a scream. The
boiler kicked off again, and it was only silence. Calender
would later vividly describe his killing of Maria, saying that
after he cut her throat, he watched her begin a
horrible dancing, blood arcing outwards through her fingers until she
(10:16):
fell to the floor. To me, maria fashing is the
most haunting part of what happened in Leonia on January eighth.
Her visit to the elderly Duena Wiseman was actually one
of too good deeds she had to choose from. That day,
before her long shift at the hospital, a friend of
a friend had died and she could have gone to
the wake, but instead she drove to the house on Glenwood.
(10:39):
If it weren't for Maria's death and the panic that
took hold of Calender afterwards, forcing him to flee with
his son, he could have taken more time, slaughtered them
one by one, and then continued on his mission to
kill every human on the face of the earth, his
abused thirteen year old son in tow. If it weren't
for Maria, he and Michael wouldn't have tried to escape
(11:00):
down a hill and nearby Sylvan Park, Calender panting, slip
and cursing, trying to get his breath as he tore
off his overcoat, then his shirt and tossed them on
the rotting leaves. Later, detectives would track him down by
identifying the laundry mark and manufacturer of the bloody mud
Streak shirt, and Calenger and Michael would be arrested in Philadelphia.
(11:24):
Edwena Wiseman would face Calenger as he stood in a
police lineup she would walk up to him and stand
just a foot away from his face. Then she would
ask the detectives to make all the men in the
lineup repeat the same words that were uttered when the
murderer stood at the door of one twenty four glen Wood.
A piece of paper was passed hand to hand and
they said, I'm a John Hancock salesman. Is there anyone
(11:47):
in the house? Were showing? And they'd go right on
down the line until it was Calenger's turn. I'm a
John Hancock salesman.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Is anyone in the house?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Are showing?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Edwina immediately wrecked ignized him. It's number five, the voice,
the face everything. Calender was convicted and sentenced to eighty
years in prison. After trying to set himself on fire.
He was sent to the Fairview Mental Hospital, where he
tried to cut his cell MAT's throat with a razor.
After suffering another hallucination, he was sedated with a wide
(12:21):
range of antipsychotic drugs and several psychiatrists diagnosed him as
a paranoid schizophrenic. He died at the age of fifty nine. Meanwhile,
his son Michael was considered quote salagable by prosecutors, and
murder charges were dismissed and returned for a guilty plea
on two counts of robbery. He was placed on probation
(12:41):
until his twenty fifth birthday and then placed in foster care.
His whereabouts today are unknown. There is no trace of
a Michael Kallenger on the internet. Most likely he changed
his name. He could be your next door neighbor living
in a house very much like one twenty four glen Wood.
Rake leaves into a pile on a Sunday. We'll be
(13:04):
back after a short break. We're back with murder homes.
When I called the real estate agent who recently sold
one twenty four Glenn Wood for five hundred and eighty
seven five hundred dollars in twenty twenty one, he told
me that he didn't even know a murderer had occurred there.
(13:27):
Or was he just saying that because in New Jersey
the law does not consider any death in the home
to be a quote material fact. Therefore it's not required
to be divulged. If a buyer asks and the seller knows,
then they should answer truthfully, but no legal action can
be brought against them for a failure to disclose. This
is why in certain states homeowners hold their breath and
(13:49):
pay a man like Roy Kandrey to do a little
research on that charming home they're about to make a
bid on. If you remember, Roy owns the website died
in Home, and in our first episod we talked to
him about how laws vary state by state. On Zilla,
where the home is now worth nearly a million dollars,
the layout is exactly the same as it was on
the morning of the murders. The stone fireplace is the same,
(14:13):
the wooden floors, the steam radiators, the stairs leading down
to the carpeted basement where Maria Fashion refused to mutilate
Frank Welby, though she must have known it would cost
her her life to be honest. It surprised me that
one twenty four Glen would sold close to the value
of the homes around it, and it surprised me even
more that the real estate agent hadn't even been aware
(14:34):
of the murder that had happened there. The New York
Post ran a splashy headline about the home being back
on the market that year, and the calendar serial killings
are still regarded as one of the Garden State's most
notorious crimes. I asked Roy Condrey if the passage of
time helps soften the edge of a murder home. Do
you think there's like a kind of like a time
decay or there's a kind of an expiration date where
(14:57):
people cease to care that stigmatized. If it's crime, or
it's a splashy crime, then you get the discount. But
if it's something that happened in nineteen sixty eight, does
it fade away? It just become a house, another house
at market value.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I do think it fades away. I still think that
bothers a lot of people, but I think more people
are open to buying that house for some reason. We
thought about that also find it pretty interesting. I still
think it bothers a lot of people, but yeah, I
think it bothers less people. The older the story is.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
But when it comes to one twenty four Glenwood, the
passage of time makes it stand out even more.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
To me.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The older murder story is, the more it tends to
get under my skin, especially if the home is a
physical reminder, unchanged taunting us as I stood there in
twenty sixteen taking pictures of it, as I held my
dog's leash. In the other hand, I felt the surge
of adrenaline, as if, in some small way that crime
would begin to feel more real to me. And it did.
(15:56):
I'm still haunted by Calenger, Maria and the rooms, and
that really actively small home filled with the bound bodies
of a family who had no idea of what was
in store for them that day. Our home is the
place the refuge we feel most in control, where the
tangled knots of a shitty day are straightened out. It's
not a place where we ever expect to encounter a
(16:18):
level of helplessness we will never recover from. But at
one twenty four Glenwood, that's exactly what happened in the
course of a single afternoon. It was all over, just
as the sun has started to set, and Kallenger tore
off his overcoat in the lengthening shadows of Sylvan Park.
Sure they moved the entrance door of the home a
few feet to one side, prune back the bush over
(16:39):
the picture window, but everything else remains the same, even
the very short distances to the two homes on either
side of it that were for some reason spared. I
really think there are two types of people in the world,
those who keep an eye on the past as if
it would catch up to them in some way, and
(17:00):
those who march straight into the blinding future, uninterested in
fading tragedies. Isn't there enough to worry about? But how
can you turn away from a father and son dressed
in dark business suits on a clear blue winter day,
set on annihilating the world. Or Maria Fashion walking up
the paving stones that led to the stucco home, her
(17:21):
bright white nurses outfit still visible under that imitation for
a coat just steps away now from ringing the bell.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I'm a patient person, got a good listing year, and
try to help people.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Your patient for a good ear. And you try to
help people, Yes, when you're not trying to murder them. Yes,
this is murder Holmes. I'm Matt Mrinovitch. Murder Holmes is
(18:05):
the production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. At the
end of.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Murdering all the people on Earth, I was going to
murder my own family and then take my own life
and become God.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Do you ever feel violent?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I do. What do you feel like doing killing people?
Do you still feel like killing people? Yes? Do you
think it murder media book? Yes, that's gruesome. Job, that's horrible.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I guess it is.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
This is a father and son's story, it just might
not be the one you expect. On January eighth, nineteen
seventy five, forty five year old Joseph Kallinger and his
thirteen year old son Michael decided to go on a
road trip together. They took a bus from Philadelphia to
Fort Lee, New Jersey. The odd thing about this father
(00:51):
and son, besides the way they occasionally hold hands swinging
them through the air, is that they're wearing dark colored
business suits and they have a grete goal. They need
to kill every single human living on the face of
the earth. The problem is, Joseph Kalnger doesn't like the
vibe in Fort Lee, so they wander to the next town, Leonia.
(01:12):
Leonia in New Jersey has about nine thousand residents in
nineteen seventy five. It's the kind of place where residents
keep their doors unlocked. As they walk down Glenwood Avenue,
Michael reaches for his father's hand again, but Joseph's mood
had become more serious, and when Joseph's mood changes, he
can be very dangerous. Two wounds are still healing on
(01:34):
the back of his son's head from a few months
before when he almost beat him to death. Joseph can
switch between rolls instantly, from father to killer and back
to father again. When he starts having hallucinations, all bets
are off. This is Murder Holmes. I'm Matt Marinovitch. In
(02:09):
the first episode of this podcast, I talked about the
house that sparked my interest in stigmatized properties. When twenty
four Glenwood Avenue and Leonia, New Jersey, with the story
of Joseph Calenger and his son and the events that
took place there is even more disturbing than I initially believed.
A year before Joseph and Michael's arrival in Leonia, Ian
(02:31):
Michael had chased his older son, Joseph Junior, through a
vacant building in Philadelphia Joseph had picked up Joe Junior
from a reformatory in Philadelphia and then taken out a
fifteen thousand dollars life insurance policy on him. But in
order to cash it in, he had to get rid
(02:51):
of Joseph Jr. They chased him to the basement of
that vacant building and in a pool of water with
his own two head, Joseph Calenger, with Michael's help, drowned
his son when the insurance money ran out. He tried
the same thing with Michael, but his youngest had more
(03:11):
of a survival instinct and fought back. He also promised
he'd do whatever his father wanted him to do. By day,
he helped his father in his shoe shop, and once
a week he wore a thin paper crown and placed
a used birthday candle and a stale piece of cake.
Then he sang Happy Birthday to Joseph Calenger. They did
this every week so that his son would never forget
(03:33):
how special his father is. Late at night, Michael could
hear his father talking to a spirit he called Charlie.
Charlie appeared to Calenger as a disembodied head that floated
upward like a balloon. Until it met the ceiling. Charlie
smiled deviously from ear to ear and told him it
was time to kill again. Before they even set foot
(03:55):
in the pleasant suburb of Leonia, they would go on
a six week, three state crime spree, invading homes and
holding their owner's hostage. But for some reason, Calender stopped
shy murdering anyone. And now Charlie's voice had become even
more insistent, urging Calender to take the next step. How else,
Charlie told him, would he ever become a god. It
(04:20):
was nine fifty four am in Leonia. The well kept
long still frozen from the night before, when the temperature
had dropped to zero. Joseph Klender and his son were
all business now. The wisps of their breath could be
seen by a housewife as the strangers walked up the
steps to her home. Calender told his son to stop smiling.
They rang the doorbell. We're from John Hancock, Joseph said.
(04:47):
Michael O was standing behind him, nervously playing with his tie.
We'd like to tell you about a policy. Three times
in a row the door was closed in their face.
For starters. The young boy couldn't possibly be a say Elman.
The jacket he was wearing was much too big for
his thin frame, and there was something disconcerting about the
dark circles under Joseph Kalender's eyes, the way he tried
(05:09):
to take a quick step into the homes before he
was even invited in. Then they got lucky. They walked
down the narrow concrete path leading to one twenty four Glenwood,
a four bedroom single family with a tanned stucco exterior.
As soon as the door was opened, Joseph Kalender began
his spiel. We're from John Hancock, he said, But before
(05:30):
twenty eight year old d D Wiseman could tell him
that she wasn't interested, he shoved her inside and pointed
a chrome plated handgun at her head. Once inside the home,
Calendred forced Dede and her four year old son into
a vacant bedroom, bound them, and made them lie down
next to each other. Within half an hour, four other
people returned to the home, unaware that it had been invaded.
(05:53):
Edwen Na Wiseman, the grandmother Hudidi was looking after Randy
Wiseman's sister of Dede and Randy's boyfriend, Frank well Be.
Randy and Frank were bound and tied in the living room,
but the elderly grandmother wasn't because Kalenger told his son
she was too old to be a threat. There's one
more person who entered at one twenty four glen Wood
that afternoon, and it would turn out that she would
(06:16):
be the only one who would never leave again. Her
name was Maria Fashing, a beautiful twenty one year old
nurse at Hackensack Hospital. There are very few pictures that
remain of Maria Fashing, but in one she smiles slightly
wide eyed, her brunette hair cut in a bob. In another,
(06:39):
she's wearing her nurse's outfit and playfully pinching her fingers together,
smiling faintly. Besides a faded yearbook photo, these are the
only images you can find on the internet. Maria Fashing
was one of those people who was good to the core.
She was a firm believer in the women's liberation movement
that was picking up at the time, and she always
stuck up for anyone who she saw bullied, unafraid to
(07:02):
give anyone a piece of her mind, no matter how
bitit she was at five foot four. Friends weren't surprised
when they found a bird with a broken wing in
a shoe box that she was temporarily caring for, or
a stray cat that had been hit by a car
propped up on pillows in her small apartment. She never
walked away from anyone or anything in need. On January eighth,
(07:23):
she was due to work the fort to midnight shift
at Hackensack Hospital, but before she drove to work, she
decided to check on Eduena Wiseman and catch up with
her friend Randy. At two forty five pm, the sun
streamed through the windshield of her black Volkswagon as she
parked outside one twenty four Glenwood. She was wearing an
(07:44):
imitation fur coat of her nursing outfit. As she walked
toward the home. After a frigid night, the temperature had
slowly climbed to forty three degrees and the islands of
snow left in the neighbor's front yards were beginning to glisten.
She pocketed the car and rang the doorbell. The door
was violently pulled open, and it was Kallenger's mannic face
(08:06):
she saw. At knife point. She was herded into the
living room, where she saw Edwena and the others. Window
cord had been used to bind the victims, and Frank
had been gagged. Maria fashion kept her cool. She took
her place on the floor amongst the others, carefully observing Calenger.
He seemed obsessed with Frank, who he thought posed the
(08:27):
greatest threat to him, so he hogtied him and while
Michael Klenger nervously guarded the others, led him down to
the basement. Frank would later testify that Maria was taken
down to the basement. Next, with Michael's help, Callnger stood
Frank up. Charlie had given him precise instructions about what
would happen next. He unbuckled Frank's pants so that he
(08:50):
was naked from the waist down, and then he ordered
Maria to castrate Frank, not with the hunting knife he
was gripping, but with her teeth. Maria refused and became enraged.
It was never a question in her mind that she'd
save her own skin and put someone else at risk.
Calenger bound and gagged Frank again and kicked him to
the floor, and then he turned his attention to the
(09:12):
defiant Maria, tied up and now facing away from Maria,
Frank could only hear Calenger threatening her. She had destroyed
all of his plans, made a fool of him in
front of his son. And when Charlie's disembodied head started
appearing again, always floating upwards like some twisted party balloon,
Calender knew that he'd bet sneering even more. Frank could
(09:34):
hear Calender beginning to threaten Maria from his position on
the floor, and then he just heard white noise. The
furnace in the boiler had kicked in, and when it
fired up, he couldn't hear what Joseph Kalinger was saying
to her anymore. But behind that curtain of white noise,
(09:54):
he was certain he could suddenly hear a scream. The
boiler kicked off again, and it was only silence. Calender
would later vividly describe his killing of Maria, saying that
after he cut her throat, he watched her begin a
horrible dancing, blood arcing outwards through her fingers until she
(10:16):
fell to the floor. To me, maria fashing is the
most haunting part of what happened in Leonia on January eighth.
Her visit to the elderly Duena Wiseman was actually one
of too good deeds she had to choose from. That day,
before her long shift at the hospital, a friend of
a friend had died and she could have gone to
the wake, but instead she drove to the house on Glenwood.
(10:39):
If it weren't for Maria's death and the panic that
took hold of Calender afterwards, forcing him to flee with
his son, he could have taken more time, slaughtered them
one by one, and then continued on his mission to
kill every human on the face of the earth, his
abused thirteen year old son in tow. If it weren't
for Maria, he and Michael wouldn't have tried to escape
(11:00):
down a hill and nearby Sylvan Park, Calender panting, slip
and cursing, trying to get his breath as he tore
off his overcoat, then his shirt and tossed them on
the rotting leaves. Later, detectives would track him down by
identifying the laundry mark and manufacturer of the bloody mud
Streak shirt, and Calenger and Michael would be arrested in Philadelphia.
(11:24):
Edwena Wiseman would face Calenger as he stood in a
police lineup she would walk up to him and stand
just a foot away from his face. Then she would
ask the detectives to make all the men in the
lineup repeat the same words that were uttered when the
murderer stood at the door of one twenty four glen Wood.
A piece of paper was passed hand to hand and
they said, I'm a John Hancock salesman. Is there anyone
(11:47):
in the house? Were showing? And they'd go right on
down the line until it was Calenger's turn. I'm a
John Hancock salesman.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Is anyone in the house?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Are showing?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Edwina immediately wrecked ignized him. It's number five, the voice,
the face everything. Calender was convicted and sentenced to eighty
years in prison. After trying to set himself on fire.
He was sent to the Fairview Mental Hospital, where he
tried to cut his cell MAT's throat with a razor.
After suffering another hallucination, he was sedated with a wide
(12:21):
range of antipsychotic drugs and several psychiatrists diagnosed him as
a paranoid schizophrenic. He died at the age of fifty nine. Meanwhile,
his son Michael was considered quote salagable by prosecutors, and
murder charges were dismissed and returned for a guilty plea
on two counts of robbery. He was placed on probation
(12:41):
until his twenty fifth birthday and then placed in foster care.
His whereabouts today are unknown. There is no trace of
a Michael Kallenger on the internet. Most likely he changed
his name. He could be your next door neighbor living
in a house very much like one twenty four glen Wood.
Rake leaves into a pile on a Sunday. We'll be
(13:04):
back after a short break. We're back with murder homes.
When I called the real estate agent who recently sold
one twenty four Glenn Wood for five hundred and eighty
seven five hundred dollars in twenty twenty one, he told
me that he didn't even know a murderer had occurred there.
(13:27):
Or was he just saying that because in New Jersey
the law does not consider any death in the home
to be a quote material fact. Therefore it's not required
to be divulged. If a buyer asks and the seller knows,
then they should answer truthfully, but no legal action can
be brought against them for a failure to disclose. This
is why in certain states homeowners hold their breath and
(13:49):
pay a man like Roy Kandrey to do a little
research on that charming home they're about to make a
bid on. If you remember, Roy owns the website died
in Home, and in our first episod we talked to
him about how laws vary state by state. On Zilla,
where the home is now worth nearly a million dollars,
the layout is exactly the same as it was on
the morning of the murders. The stone fireplace is the same,
(14:13):
the wooden floors, the steam radiators, the stairs leading down
to the carpeted basement where Maria Fashion refused to mutilate
Frank Welby, though she must have known it would cost
her her life to be honest. It surprised me that
one twenty four Glen would sold close to the value
of the homes around it, and it surprised me even
more that the real estate agent hadn't even been aware
(14:34):
of the murder that had happened there. The New York
Post ran a splashy headline about the home being back
on the market that year, and the calendar serial killings
are still regarded as one of the Garden State's most
notorious crimes. I asked Roy Condrey if the passage of
time helps soften the edge of a murder home. Do
you think there's like a kind of like a time
decay or there's a kind of an expiration date where
(14:57):
people cease to care that stigmatized. If it's crime, or
it's a splashy crime, then you get the discount. But
if it's something that happened in nineteen sixty eight, does
it fade away? It just become a house, another house
at market value.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I do think it fades away. I still think that
bothers a lot of people, but I think more people
are open to buying that house for some reason. We
thought about that also find it pretty interesting. I still
think it bothers a lot of people, but yeah, I
think it bothers less people. The older the story is.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
But when it comes to one twenty four Glenwood, the
passage of time makes it stand out even more.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
To me.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The older murder story is, the more it tends to
get under my skin, especially if the home is a
physical reminder, unchanged taunting us as I stood there in
twenty sixteen taking pictures of it, as I held my
dog's leash. In the other hand, I felt the surge
of adrenaline, as if, in some small way that crime
would begin to feel more real to me. And it did.
(15:56):
I'm still haunted by Calenger, Maria and the rooms, and
that really actively small home filled with the bound bodies
of a family who had no idea of what was
in store for them that day. Our home is the
place the refuge we feel most in control, where the
tangled knots of a shitty day are straightened out. It's
not a place where we ever expect to encounter a
(16:18):
level of helplessness we will never recover from. But at
one twenty four Glenwood, that's exactly what happened in the
course of a single afternoon. It was all over, just
as the sun has started to set, and Kallenger tore
off his overcoat in the lengthening shadows of Sylvan Park.
Sure they moved the entrance door of the home a
few feet to one side, prune back the bush over
(16:39):
the picture window, but everything else remains the same, even
the very short distances to the two homes on either
side of it that were for some reason spared. I
really think there are two types of people in the world,
those who keep an eye on the past as if
it would catch up to them in some way, and
(17:00):
those who march straight into the blinding future, uninterested in
fading tragedies. Isn't there enough to worry about? But how
can you turn away from a father and son dressed
in dark business suits on a clear blue winter day,
set on annihilating the world. Or Maria Fashion walking up
the paving stones that led to the stucco home, her
(17:21):
bright white nurses outfit still visible under that imitation for
a coat just steps away now from ringing the bell.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I'm a patient person, got a good listing year, and
try to help people.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Your patient for a good ear. And you try to
help people, Yes, when you're not trying to murder them. Yes,
this is murder Holmes. I'm Matt Mrinovitch. Murder Holmes is
(18:05):
the production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Matt Marinovich
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