January 9, 2024 • 43 mins
We’re continuing our 3-part miniseries on “The First American Female Serial Killer.” It’s a nineteenth century American tale about how an orphan turned indentured servant bootstrapped herself into a mad scientist murderer. In fact, one of the most prolific murderers in history.
The Greatest True Crime Stories is a production of Diversion Audio.
• Follow Diversion Audio on Instagram
• Explore more: diversionaudio.com
This series is hosted by Mary Kay McBrayer. Check out more of her work at www.marykaymcbrayer.com.
This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
Editorial Direction by Nora Batelle
Developed by Scott Waxman, Emma DeMuth, and Jacob Bronstein
Produced, edited, and directed by Mark Francis
Theme Music by Tyler Cash
Executive Produced by Scott Waxman, Mark Francis, and Jacob Bronstein
Special thanks to:
- Mary Kay McBrayer, America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster
- Harold Schechter, Fatal
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care and listening. Today's episode is part two
(00:35):
of our three part mini series about the first American
female serial killer. If you miss part one, I highly
recommend that you pause me here, listen to that episode,
and then come back once you're caught up. You can
even listen to it on warp speed. But I promise
that backstory is integral to understanding Jane Toppin's criminal escalations,
(00:59):
which are going to get into in this episode. Missus
Amelia Finny was thirty six years old when her husband
finally convinced her to go to the hospital for her pain.
She was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital for a uterine ulcer.
(01:21):
In the operating theater, physicians rendered her unconscious with morphine
in front of an audience of nursing students. They demonstrated
to the students how to treat an ulcer by burning
it with silver nitrate. They closed Amelia's abdomen and returned
(01:45):
her to the recovery wing. Pain from the procedure woke
Amelia in the middle of the night into her relief,
she saw a nurse immediately by her side, asking her
how she was feeling. Amelia tried to explain that she
(02:05):
couldn't bear the pain, and she was relieved when the
nurse brought a cool glass of water to her lips,
but it tasted bitter. Her vision fogged and the nurse
blurred above her. She was surprised to feel the mattress
(02:27):
sag as the nurse sat on the bed beside her.
Then the nurse's arm was under her neck and her
other hand was smoothing her hair back from her face
like a lover would do. Amelia tried to say as much,
but she found herself paralyzed. The light from a lamp
(02:53):
flashed first in one eye as the nurse held back
the lid, and then the other. She brought the bitter
water back to Amelia's lips, and Amelia willed her jaw
to clamp shut, but she still couldn't move. She felt
the cup against her lips. At that moment, footsteps sounded
(03:19):
in the hallway and the nurse disappeared. Amelia would try
for years to remember that nightmare as only a dream,
but it wasn't a dream. Welcome to the greatest true
(03:51):
crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a
writer of true crime, which means I live inside their
research wormhole and I'm constantly reading about crime. But I'm
not necessarily interested in the attention grabbing elements like blood
and gore. I'm more interested in the people behind these
(04:13):
stories and what we can learn about society by looking
at their experiences. That's what I explore here every week
when I dig into crimes where a woman is not
just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer,
the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or a combination of
(04:35):
these roles. As you probably already know, women can do anything. Today,
we're continuing our three part mini series on the first
American female serial killer. It's a nineteenth century American tale
about how an orphan turned indentured servant bootstrapped herself into
(04:59):
a mad scientist murderer, one of the most prolific murderers
in history. I spent years researching her story for my book,
America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and the Making
of a Monster, so I'm excited to share her story
(05:20):
with you in this episode. Jane's extracurricular medical experiments start
to escalate, and what violent warp speed escalations. They were
more about those after the break. One thing that kept
(05:51):
anyone from suspecting Jane Toppin is that she really didn't
have a single victim profile. They were different ages, genders,
and abilities. When most serial murderers have a pretty specific type.
For example, Ted Bundy liked small white women with dark
(06:12):
hair parted down the middle. The ones who don't have
a type, like Richard Ramirez, the original Nightstalker, are much
harder to find. She did start off with a type,
they were her patients, but her patients didn't have much
in common on paper. In our last episode, we followed
(06:36):
Jane from the Boston Female Asylum basically an orphanage, to
indentured servitude with the Tappin family. When Auntie Toppin died
and failed to leave Jane anything in her will, Jane
was hurt and shocked, given she was all Jane knew
of her mother, and to add insult to injury, her
(06:58):
foster sister, Elizabeth Briga, told her that she could stay
on at their house for as long as she wanted
if she continued being her servant. Jane took all that
as a kind of challenge. She applied and got into
the most prestigious nursing school of the time at Cambridge Hospital.
(07:23):
All of this is pretty remarkable on its own. She's
setting herself up with main character energy. At the very least,
this has all the trappings of an underdog success story,
if only the work at the hospital was grueling and
(07:43):
Jane was awesome at it. She was a good bit
older than most of her fellow students at thirty one.
Her patients loved her. They often told other nurses they
preferred Jane's care, and that made the other girls jealous,
so they snitched on Jane for staying out past curfew
and drinking alcohol, two things that were unforgivable in the
(08:06):
administration's eyes. Granted, Jane did do those things. She also
swiped any cash left unguarded and spent it on whatever
she wanted, usually food or booze. When she heard that
the other nurses tattled on her, she went to the
head nurse herself and reported a few things that they'd done. Supposedly,
(08:31):
they were all untrue for some reason, maybe because Jane
was indispensable, or maybe because Jane was a very skilled liar.
The administration believed Jane, and they expelled the other nurses.
Jane watched and giggled from her upstairs window as her
(08:52):
enemies dragged out their belongings before she dressed for the
morning meal and prayers. With the snitches out of the way,
Jane was free to do as she pleased. Almost She
still had to actually do her job, but she was
great at that. Doctors adored Jane. She anticipated things they
(09:16):
never thought of, and having her at their elbow made
everything go so smoothly. And her patients loved her too,
at least most of them did, especially the ones whom
she liked. But occasionally the other nurses would hear that
a patient was scared of Jane. Still, now that these
(09:40):
nurses had seen everyone that tattled on Jane get fired,
they were reluctant to speak up, which was really useful
for Jane because the patient's concerns were warranted. Jane was
becoming scary. She hated how her favorite patients would leave
(10:02):
her without a second thought, abandoning her, so she started
doing a little research. Harold Scheckter, an incredible writer who
covered Jane's story in his book Fatal, describes how her
(10:24):
textbook started to naturally fall open to the page's detailing opiates.
She had cracked the spine there. That was how often
she studied these drugs, particularly morphine. By the way, I
get to interview Scheckter in the next episode of this
mini series, so be sure to follow the greatest true
(10:47):
crime stories ever told and make sure you come back
for that. But let me explain why Jane was obsessed
with morphine. But at the time, it was pretty popular
as a surgical anesthesia and painkiller, so there was plenty
of it around the hospital and it was easy for
(11:09):
Jane to access, and it did exactly what she needed
it to do. Administered at the right dose, it would
send a patient right into a coma, so Jane started
administering that dose. If her patients were in comas, they
(11:29):
certainly couldn't leave her. And the thing is, once Jane
started experimenting on her patients, she liked how it made
her feel. After administering the injection, she would stand by
(11:50):
their bedsides to observe the effects. She watched their pupils
contract heard their breathing become louder, and touch their skin
as they broke into a cold sweat. They would go
into a coma almost immediately. A few hours later, they
(12:17):
would die. But Jane found that didn't seem to bother
her at all. After all, her patients were already sick
in a hospital. Maybe death by her side was the
(12:37):
best way to go. In fact, the only thing about
this process that Jane didn't like was how straightforward it was.
Not to mention, she knew these overdose deaths were easily identifiable.
She had to improve her experiments, so she started adding
(13:01):
atropine to her morphine injections. This drug complicated and sometimes
even directly countered signs of a morphine overdose. For example,
it dilated the pupils while morphine turned them into pinpoints.
(13:23):
Doctors would see the patients having fits and diagnosed them
with epilepsy or stroke. The drugs Jane used in tandem
were a perfect combination for generating misdiagnosis and masking her crimes.
(13:46):
But there was more to Jane's choice in atropine. Atropinees
effects are extreme when victims are given in overdose, parched mouths,
loss of motor function, and the grotesque picking at non
(14:09):
existent things like a tick, and as it turned out,
Jane's favorite way to watch her patients die was not
peacefully in a coma, but rather with violent convulsions that
(14:30):
multiple overdoses rendered. She started playing with the timing of
the two drugs, first overdosing her patient with morphine and
then giving them atropine. Sometimes she would give morphine and
(14:51):
then dissolve atropine and water and let her patient drink it, immediately,
setting off all the side effects at once. Sometimes she
let all the morphine symptoms happen and then rolled her
patient over and administered the atropine via enema. It was
(15:17):
a totally different show. Jane liked to see how the
timing affected the symptoms. If experimenting on your patients isn't
(15:40):
macab enough, the most interesting, I mean fucked up thing
is that Jane wasn't always trying to kill them as
she experimented. Jane developed a death fetish. Not only was
she poisoning people to watch them suffer. As if that
(16:03):
wasn't enough, rescuing patients whom she had poisoned from the
brink of death became her thing. She liked the power
of controlling death, of torturing people who were already sick
(16:23):
of watching and feeling them spasm and suffocate and die
from in their beds. With them, she loved to overdose
them on morphine to the very brink of death and
see if she could nurse them back to health. It
(16:46):
sounds crazy, sloppy, but james coworkers actually overheard her saying
there was quote no point in keeping old people alive,
and if her coworkers heard her, so did her patience.
In fact, the complaints about Jane got so bad that
(17:09):
the doctors couldn't ignore them anymore, and they really tried
to ignore them. After all, to them, Jane was a godsend,
one of their all time best nurses. They really hated
to lose her. That's why, after four years of escalating violence,
(17:31):
they finally did let her go, and they let her
go with raving references. That's how she left the most
prestigious nursing school in disgrace, only to be immediately admitted
to the second most prestigious nursing school. The head nurse
(18:08):
fought against admitting Jane to Massachusetts General Hospital, but not
because of the rumors about her. She didn't want to
hire Jane because she was Irish. Author Harold Scheckter says
very eloquently that the head nurse was quote an unreconstructed
(18:28):
bigot who didn't want to admit Jane because of her
low origins. References from some of the most prestigious doctors
in Massachusetts, though, convinced even the head nurse that Jane
deserved a spot. In fact, Jane passed her probationary period
(18:49):
with such proficiency that when the same head nurse went
on leave the next year, Jane took her position. That's
where Jane experimented on Amelia Finnie, who we started this
episode with. And although missus Finny would never forget that
experience and another nurse, McCutcheon was sure that Jane had
(19:14):
done something untoward and she really tried to get the
story out of Amelia. Amelia didn't say anything until years later.
Keep in mind, these are the victorians. They don't talk
about things as bass as, like their own bodies and
experiences and I am being flipped, but really, Amelia relaying
(19:39):
that story would ruin her own reputation, even if it
was true, and even if she was an incapacitated victim.
As a culture, even now we have it quite moved
all the way past that mentality. So it wasn't that
gross misconduct with he her patient, Amelia Finny, that got
(20:02):
Jane in trouble. But Amelia wasn't Jane's only victim at
Massachusetts General Hospital. The habits that Jane started at her
previous hospital carried over into her new job almost immediately.
(20:22):
The other nurses suspected Jane of hurting her patients. They
didn't like her at all. She regularly disparaged their work
and took credit for their accomplishments. She tampered with their
fever charts and medical records, and she stole She also
administered medication with wild disregards her protocol, which is really
(20:48):
saying something. I mean, this is a time when you
could buy cocaine over the counter. You could buy chocolate
covered strych nine tablets at the drug store to treat
a stomach ache. And I know there's a sort of
bell curve with a lot of medicine where too little
does nothing, the right amount treats the issue, and too
much becomes an issue on its own. You have to
(21:08):
hit the sweet spot or almost any medicine becomes poison.
Absolutely true, But we know now that strychnine is overall
a very strong poison. I mean, treat your stomach ache
with strychnine candy and it could very possibly be your
last stomach ache. So Jane's flagrant disregard for protocol was
(21:30):
really extreme if it caught the attention of the other nurses,
and they suspected more than just that. They noticed how
Jane's patience often seemed to die in strange, difficult to
diagnose fits. The rumors facts really about Jane flew all
(21:53):
over Massachusetts General Hospital, but the thing that eventually got
her kicked out was something small. She just left the
ward without permission. It's not clear whether she was off
for the evening and forgot to tell someone she was
popping out, or if she was on duty and just
walked off the job. But the rumors about Jane were
(22:13):
no longer ignorable. It seems like this was the one
rule they could actually confirm Jane was breaking, so they
dismissed her. By this time, Jane had basically earned her
nursing degree twice, but she was nothing if not tenacious.
(22:35):
She worked as a private nurse for a year to
build her references, and then she reapplied and was readmitted
to Cambridge Hospital. Pretty unbelievable if you ask me, but
it's true. As they say, old habits die hard. So
(22:57):
back at Cambridge Hospital, when a nurse trainee ill, Jane
was assigned to take care of her. After that, the
trainee had two seizures back to back when she'd never
had them before and was overall in good health. Unlike
many of the elderly patients Jane worked with. Doctors weren't
(23:18):
sure what exactly had happened, but at that point they
couldn't ignore the rumors that Jane was not administering drugs correctly,
so they dismissed her again. You'd think that finally Jane
would have to stop killing, if not because she was
ruining her chance at a career by murdering people, at
(23:39):
the very least because she was simply out of options,
Except this is Jane Toppin, so she wasn't out of options.
She just found a different way. She said about being fired,
I didn't care because I had made up my mind
(24:01):
that I could make more money and have an easier
time by going out by the day in families. Jane
had made some connections in her years at Massachusetts' most
prestigious hospitals, and she decided it was time to use them,
she would go into private nursing where she could make
(24:23):
a lot more money. That's exactly what she did. While
the patient load of private nursing was lower, it was
still very demanding. A nurse kept round the clock bedside vigils,
(24:46):
and according to author Harold Scheckter, she was quote expected
to anticipate the patients every need, to obey the doctors
every direction, and to carry out the wishes of the
family without question. While performing her duties, she was required
to be a constant but unobtrusive presence, an unwaveringly cheerful disposition,
(25:10):
and a docile manner, never displaying the slightest trace of discourtesy, fatigue,
or irritation. Just reading that list makes me tired and earlier.
When I said Jane made more money in private nursing,
she made maybe six hundred dollars per year. That's about
twenty thousand dollars today, Still significantly more than she would
(25:34):
have made at the hospital. But it's not a lot,
especially given that fucking list. And as any freelancer will
tell you, it is either feast or famine. You either
have so much work you don't have time to breathe,
or you are hunting down jobs and pinching your pennies.
A lot of our world has changed since the eighteen nineties,
(25:54):
but not that that was the same for Jane as
it is for us. So, as you might know, you
have to get creative when it comes to making money.
For a lot of us, that means like opening a
high yield savings account and scheduling payments to our checking
so that we seldom feel the gap. Jane did not
(26:17):
go that route. It could have been a personality thing,
but honestly, she might not have been educated on how
to do that. Plus sometimes even her patients who could
afford it didn't pay what they'd agreed simply because they
didn't have to. Back then, there was no real way
(26:39):
for a normal person to take a freelance contract to
small claims court, you know. I mean, yeah, you could,
but who has time for that? Who wants to risk
their reputation? So Jane ran up some debt, and she
had the habit of borrowing money from her employers, not
a lot, or at least not a lot in one
(26:59):
place at one time, But she'd never pay it back.
I know that's dishonest, it is, but I'm also like shrug.
They might not have paid her at all. But as
I'm sure you've surmised, that's far from the worst thing
Jane did. After going into private practice, she was still experimenting. Actually,
(27:30):
I'm not sure we can call it experimenting anymore. Jane
knew exactly what she was doing. When she got tired
of nursing a patient, she'd offer them some mineral water.
Hunyati was her brand. It was Hungarian and it was
very popular, despite its bitter taste. She'd drop in the
(27:52):
combination of morphine and atropine and serve it to her patient.
Now she knew just what to expect, and yes, she
still had her mad scientist sexual fetish. Every time she could,
she got into bed with her victims and held them
close while they shuddered and spasmed and struggled to breathe. Later,
(28:20):
she recalled that thrill in disturbing descriptions voluptuous delight, delirious enjoyment,
greatest conceivable pleasure. After all that work, in the intense
(28:43):
release of her sick pleasure, Jane needed time to recuperate.
She liked to spend the summers at the Jacin House,
a boarding house outside Boston at a place they called
Buzzard's Bay. Jane spent her summers at a cottage on
(29:19):
the resort like property called the Jakin House in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts,
but it wasn't a complete vacation. She didn't give round
the clock care, but she bartered with the proprietors, the
Davis family. In exchange for being the sort of resident nurse,
she got a reduced rate. Jane was at this cottage
(29:43):
when she reached back out to her foster sister, Elizabeth.
Jane had kept in contact with Elizabeth and her husband Ramel.
What a wild name, right, But Jane and Elizabeth weren't
exactly close. The Brighams were glad to let Jane stay
in her old room in their house for a few
(30:04):
days whenever she was in town, which was nice enough.
There was a pretty big age gap between Elizabeth and Jane.
But aside from that, Elizabeth experienced all of the advantages
in life that Jane had not. She did not have
to work, she had a family, and she was able
(30:28):
to marry. At best, it was the relationship between a
well treated menial and her boss. Elizabeth May not have
recognized it that way, but Jane certainly did yet. In
the summer of eighteen ninety nine, after years of working
(30:51):
as a private nurse, Jane invited Elizabeth out to Buzzard's Bay.
When Elizabeth told about the invitation, he encouraged her to go.
She had recently experienced some melancholia, which is more or
less the old timey term for depression, and he thought
(31:12):
it would help. He sent her out from Lowell on
the train with a steamer trunk and fifty dollars on Saturday,
August twenty sixth, eighteen ninety nine. The day after Elizabeth arrived,
she and Jane had what sounds like a lovely day.
(31:34):
They dressed in white summer dresses and carried a picnic
of cold corn, beef and saltwater taffy down to the pier,
and they chatted in the sunshine for several hours before
Elizabeth turned in for bed. Later, Jane would admit to
what happened next. Jane said that this was her chance
(31:59):
to exact revenge on Elizabeth. She was the only victim
who quote I actually hated and poisoned with a vindictive purpose.
I let her die slowly with gripping torture. I fixed
mineral water so it would do that, and then I
(32:21):
added morphia to it. I held her in my arms
and watched with delight as she gasped out her life.
Sunday morning, Jane went to her landlords, Mattie and Alden Davis.
She said that her sister hadn't responded when Jane called
(32:43):
her down to breakfast. She was very sick. They should
call a doctor, and they did. Jane also sent a
telegraph to Aroml back in Lowell, saying that Elizabeth was
dangerously ill. By the time he could get out there.
The following morning, Elizabeth was in a coma. The physician
(33:06):
whom the Davises had summoned said that she had apoplexy
or what today we call a stroke. Ormel was at
her bedside all night until she died the following morning.
You might have noticed that the confession I quoted said
(33:27):
that Jane held Elizabeth while she died in the grotesque
sexual way that she had held her other victims. But
Ramel said he was there when Elizabeth died. To me,
that means something doesn't add up. I'm not saying Jane
didn't do it. She is for sure, beyond a shadow
(33:48):
of a doubt, a total monster, absolutely capable of the
story she gave. And I still don't think she actually
said everything her confession in the hers papers she said.
While I was researching, I was never quite able to
reconcile what she said with some of the facts, so
I'm looking forward to talking to author Harold Scheckter about it.
(34:12):
But back to the story, Ormel was crushed. He truly
loved his wife, and his overwhelming grief was probably the
reason that it took him a long time to realize
when he went through Elizabeth's possessions that there was money
missing from her purse, at least fifty dollars gone. Before
(34:37):
Ormel left. The following morning, Jane asked to talk to him.
Jane said that in one of her dying breaths, Elizabeth
had asked that he makes sure her gold watch went
to Jane if she died. Ormel gave it over right away,
(35:00):
Even in her last breath. He thought his wife was
so kind that she made sure to care for others,
and it lifted his heart, if only a little. He
wouldn't learn until much later, when the police were going
through receipts and documents that Jane had pawned that watch
(35:20):
right away. At the end of the summer, Jane didn't
settle up her tab at the Jacin House she hadn't
in years. Instead, she just left, moved back to Boston
and into an apartment, and started searching out new nursing gigs.
(35:43):
That's when Jane reconnected with her friend Myra Connors from Lowell.
Myra was a forty year old widow. The origins and
nature of their relationship are still unknown. What we do
know is that Myra fell ill with peritonidis and Jane
went home to Lowell to help her friend out. Within
(36:04):
a few months, Myra died of strychnine poisoning. Jane went
back to her standby private nursing. She took on several
private nursing clients, whom she helped and then when they
got to quote her to fussy, she murdered them. By
(36:26):
nineteen oh one, she was living in the Boston home
of her clients, Eliza and Edward Beadle. That's when Mattie Davis,
the landlady at the Jakin House, came down from Buzzard's
Bay to collect on Jane's debts from the previous summer.
(36:46):
Mattie was fed up. Yes, they had agreed over five
years ago that Jane would get a discounted rate in
exchange for being the sort of resident nurse at the property,
but discounted didn't mean free. Jane's bill kept climbing and
she never did anything about it. There was no payment
(37:06):
plan in place, so in June nineteen oh one, Maddie
got a train ticket to Boston. She climbed into her
seat on the train and stewed, Imagine for a second
that you own a bed and breakfast and you're balancing
your checkbook or okay, looking at your p and L
(37:27):
if you want to really update the situation. You realize
then that this woman who's been coming to stay there
for years on end hasn't paid you a cent. I
would be boiling. And because that's not how you do business,
taking people's word that they're good for their debts. You
know it was your husband who let it slide. So
(37:47):
now here you go in your best dress, because you're
not to be trifled with on this long ass, hot
ass train across the state to get your money. If
that was me, I would be really playing out the
(38:08):
possible situations, working up the decision tree of if she
says this, then I'll do this, just so she couldn't
catch me off guard, like I was going to face
off with a bully. I would stare out the window
and scheme. I can only imagine that's what Mattie Davis's
brain was doing the whole way to Boston. So imagine
(38:29):
Mattie's surprise when she arrives at the Beatles' home and
Jane answers the door, thrilled to see her. Still, Maddie
stood her ground. She said she was there to collect
what Jane owed them, and Jane said, sure, of course,
(38:50):
let's go to the bank and get your money. Mattie
had to have been shocked, and she probably looked shocked.
And then Jane said, why don't you come in for
a second and have a glass of water first, and
you may as well stay for lunch. So Mattie stayed
(39:12):
for the meal, talked with the Beatles for a while,
and then she and Jane set out on foot to
the bank, but they didn't get far before Mattie fainted.
Jane brought her back to the house and set her
up in bed. She hung ice sheets all around the
(39:32):
room to keep it cool, and she called Mattie's daughter
Genevieve to come stay while her mother recovered. But Mattie
didn't recover. Jane tortured her for a long time. She
was at the Beatles Home for seven days while Jane
(39:53):
alternated her doses of morphine and atropine. She even brought
Mattie into full state of lucidity before sending her back
into a coma and eventually killing her with a final
dose of morphine. She wanted to make it look like
Maddie had died of natural causes, and that's what the
(40:18):
doctor claimed. Jane attended the funeral at the Jakin House
on July fifth, and that's when she decided she was
ready for a new kind of challenge. She decided she
would wipe out the whole Davis family one by one. Actually,
(40:44):
she didn't want to just take out the family. She
wanted to burn their whole house to the ground. Join
(41:16):
me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told.
For the finale of our three part mini series on
Jane Tappin, you'll get to hear how Jane's crimes escalated
even more before the law finally caught up with her.
I also have a conversation with Harold Scheckter, author of
(41:37):
the book on Jane called Fatal. My research on this
story goes really deep, and a lot of my sources
were primary sources I looked at while writing my book,
America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Tappin and the Making
of a Monster. Those sources included interviews, news articles, and
(41:58):
documents from the trial I'll talk about in the upcoming finale.
For more of the details that I don't have the
space to include in this mini series, check out the
full book, and for more information about this case and
others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com.
(42:18):
Sign up for Diversion's newsletter and be among the first
to hear about special behind the scenes features with the
hosts and actors from Diversion's podcasts, more shows you'll love
from Diversion and our partners, and other exclusive tidbits you
can't get anywhere else. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever
(42:39):
Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbrair.
I wrote this episode and our editorial director is Nora Bateel.
Our show is produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our
development team is Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music
by Tyler Kash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and
(43:05):
Scott Waxman. Diversion Audio
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care and listening. Today's episode is part two
(00:35):
of our three part mini series about the first American
female serial killer. If you miss part one, I highly
recommend that you pause me here, listen to that episode,
and then come back once you're caught up. You can
even listen to it on warp speed. But I promise
that backstory is integral to understanding Jane Toppin's criminal escalations,
(00:59):
which are going to get into in this episode. Missus
Amelia Finny was thirty six years old when her husband
finally convinced her to go to the hospital for her pain.
She was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital for a uterine ulcer.
(01:21):
In the operating theater, physicians rendered her unconscious with morphine
in front of an audience of nursing students. They demonstrated
to the students how to treat an ulcer by burning
it with silver nitrate. They closed Amelia's abdomen and returned
(01:45):
her to the recovery wing. Pain from the procedure woke
Amelia in the middle of the night into her relief,
she saw a nurse immediately by her side, asking her
how she was feeling. Amelia tried to explain that she
(02:05):
couldn't bear the pain, and she was relieved when the
nurse brought a cool glass of water to her lips,
but it tasted bitter. Her vision fogged and the nurse
blurred above her. She was surprised to feel the mattress
(02:27):
sag as the nurse sat on the bed beside her.
Then the nurse's arm was under her neck and her
other hand was smoothing her hair back from her face
like a lover would do. Amelia tried to say as much,
but she found herself paralyzed. The light from a lamp
(02:53):
flashed first in one eye as the nurse held back
the lid, and then the other. She brought the bitter
water back to Amelia's lips, and Amelia willed her jaw
to clamp shut, but she still couldn't move. She felt
the cup against her lips. At that moment, footsteps sounded
(03:19):
in the hallway and the nurse disappeared. Amelia would try
for years to remember that nightmare as only a dream,
but it wasn't a dream. Welcome to the greatest true
(03:51):
crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a
writer of true crime, which means I live inside their
research wormhole and I'm constantly reading about crime. But I'm
not necessarily interested in the attention grabbing elements like blood
and gore. I'm more interested in the people behind these
(04:13):
stories and what we can learn about society by looking
at their experiences. That's what I explore here every week
when I dig into crimes where a woman is not
just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer,
the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or a combination of
(04:35):
these roles. As you probably already know, women can do anything. Today,
we're continuing our three part mini series on the first
American female serial killer. It's a nineteenth century American tale
about how an orphan turned indentured servant bootstrapped herself into
(04:59):
a mad scientist murderer, one of the most prolific murderers
in history. I spent years researching her story for my book,
America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and the Making
of a Monster, so I'm excited to share her story
(05:20):
with you in this episode. Jane's extracurricular medical experiments start
to escalate, and what violent warp speed escalations. They were
more about those after the break. One thing that kept
(05:51):
anyone from suspecting Jane Toppin is that she really didn't
have a single victim profile. They were different ages, genders,
and abilities. When most serial murderers have a pretty specific type.
For example, Ted Bundy liked small white women with dark
(06:12):
hair parted down the middle. The ones who don't have
a type, like Richard Ramirez, the original Nightstalker, are much
harder to find. She did start off with a type,
they were her patients, but her patients didn't have much
in common on paper. In our last episode, we followed
(06:36):
Jane from the Boston Female Asylum basically an orphanage, to
indentured servitude with the Tappin family. When Auntie Toppin died
and failed to leave Jane anything in her will, Jane
was hurt and shocked, given she was all Jane knew
of her mother, and to add insult to injury, her
(06:58):
foster sister, Elizabeth Briga, told her that she could stay
on at their house for as long as she wanted
if she continued being her servant. Jane took all that
as a kind of challenge. She applied and got into
the most prestigious nursing school of the time at Cambridge Hospital.
(07:23):
All of this is pretty remarkable on its own. She's
setting herself up with main character energy. At the very least,
this has all the trappings of an underdog success story,
if only the work at the hospital was grueling and
(07:43):
Jane was awesome at it. She was a good bit
older than most of her fellow students at thirty one.
Her patients loved her. They often told other nurses they
preferred Jane's care, and that made the other girls jealous,
so they snitched on Jane for staying out past curfew
and drinking alcohol, two things that were unforgivable in the
(08:06):
administration's eyes. Granted, Jane did do those things. She also
swiped any cash left unguarded and spent it on whatever
she wanted, usually food or booze. When she heard that
the other nurses tattled on her, she went to the
head nurse herself and reported a few things that they'd done. Supposedly,
(08:31):
they were all untrue for some reason, maybe because Jane
was indispensable, or maybe because Jane was a very skilled liar.
The administration believed Jane, and they expelled the other nurses.
Jane watched and giggled from her upstairs window as her
(08:52):
enemies dragged out their belongings before she dressed for the
morning meal and prayers. With the snitches out of the way,
Jane was free to do as she pleased. Almost She
still had to actually do her job, but she was
great at that. Doctors adored Jane. She anticipated things they
(09:16):
never thought of, and having her at their elbow made
everything go so smoothly. And her patients loved her too,
at least most of them did, especially the ones whom
she liked. But occasionally the other nurses would hear that
a patient was scared of Jane. Still, now that these
(09:40):
nurses had seen everyone that tattled on Jane get fired,
they were reluctant to speak up, which was really useful
for Jane because the patient's concerns were warranted. Jane was
becoming scary. She hated how her favorite patients would leave
(10:02):
her without a second thought, abandoning her, so she started
doing a little research. Harold Scheckter, an incredible writer who
covered Jane's story in his book Fatal, describes how her
(10:24):
textbook started to naturally fall open to the page's detailing opiates.
She had cracked the spine there. That was how often
she studied these drugs, particularly morphine. By the way, I
get to interview Scheckter in the next episode of this
mini series, so be sure to follow the greatest true
(10:47):
crime stories ever told and make sure you come back
for that. But let me explain why Jane was obsessed
with morphine. But at the time, it was pretty popular
as a surgical anesthesia and painkiller, so there was plenty
of it around the hospital and it was easy for
(11:09):
Jane to access, and it did exactly what she needed
it to do. Administered at the right dose, it would
send a patient right into a coma, so Jane started
administering that dose. If her patients were in comas, they
(11:29):
certainly couldn't leave her. And the thing is, once Jane
started experimenting on her patients, she liked how it made
her feel. After administering the injection, she would stand by
(11:50):
their bedsides to observe the effects. She watched their pupils
contract heard their breathing become louder, and touch their skin
as they broke into a cold sweat. They would go
into a coma almost immediately. A few hours later, they
(12:17):
would die. But Jane found that didn't seem to bother
her at all. After all, her patients were already sick
in a hospital. Maybe death by her side was the
(12:37):
best way to go. In fact, the only thing about
this process that Jane didn't like was how straightforward it was.
Not to mention, she knew these overdose deaths were easily identifiable.
She had to improve her experiments, so she started adding
(13:01):
atropine to her morphine injections. This drug complicated and sometimes
even directly countered signs of a morphine overdose. For example,
it dilated the pupils while morphine turned them into pinpoints.
(13:23):
Doctors would see the patients having fits and diagnosed them
with epilepsy or stroke. The drugs Jane used in tandem
were a perfect combination for generating misdiagnosis and masking her crimes.
(13:46):
But there was more to Jane's choice in atropine. Atropinees
effects are extreme when victims are given in overdose, parched mouths,
loss of motor function, and the grotesque picking at non
(14:09):
existent things like a tick, and as it turned out,
Jane's favorite way to watch her patients die was not
peacefully in a coma, but rather with violent convulsions that
(14:30):
multiple overdoses rendered. She started playing with the timing of
the two drugs, first overdosing her patient with morphine and
then giving them atropine. Sometimes she would give morphine and
(14:51):
then dissolve atropine and water and let her patient drink it, immediately,
setting off all the side effects at once. Sometimes she
let all the morphine symptoms happen and then rolled her
patient over and administered the atropine via enema. It was
(15:17):
a totally different show. Jane liked to see how the
timing affected the symptoms. If experimenting on your patients isn't
(15:40):
macab enough, the most interesting, I mean fucked up thing
is that Jane wasn't always trying to kill them as
she experimented. Jane developed a death fetish. Not only was
she poisoning people to watch them suffer. As if that
(16:03):
wasn't enough, rescuing patients whom she had poisoned from the
brink of death became her thing. She liked the power
of controlling death, of torturing people who were already sick
(16:23):
of watching and feeling them spasm and suffocate and die
from in their beds. With them, she loved to overdose
them on morphine to the very brink of death and
see if she could nurse them back to health. It
(16:46):
sounds crazy, sloppy, but james coworkers actually overheard her saying
there was quote no point in keeping old people alive,
and if her coworkers heard her, so did her patience.
In fact, the complaints about Jane got so bad that
(17:09):
the doctors couldn't ignore them anymore, and they really tried
to ignore them. After all, to them, Jane was a godsend,
one of their all time best nurses. They really hated
to lose her. That's why, after four years of escalating violence,
(17:31):
they finally did let her go, and they let her
go with raving references. That's how she left the most
prestigious nursing school in disgrace, only to be immediately admitted
to the second most prestigious nursing school. The head nurse
(18:08):
fought against admitting Jane to Massachusetts General Hospital, but not
because of the rumors about her. She didn't want to
hire Jane because she was Irish. Author Harold Scheckter says
very eloquently that the head nurse was quote an unreconstructed
(18:28):
bigot who didn't want to admit Jane because of her
low origins. References from some of the most prestigious doctors
in Massachusetts, though, convinced even the head nurse that Jane
deserved a spot. In fact, Jane passed her probationary period
(18:49):
with such proficiency that when the same head nurse went
on leave the next year, Jane took her position. That's
where Jane experimented on Amelia Finnie, who we started this
episode with. And although missus Finny would never forget that
experience and another nurse, McCutcheon was sure that Jane had
(19:14):
done something untoward and she really tried to get the
story out of Amelia. Amelia didn't say anything until years later.
Keep in mind, these are the victorians. They don't talk
about things as bass as, like their own bodies and
experiences and I am being flipped, but really, Amelia relaying
(19:39):
that story would ruin her own reputation, even if it
was true, and even if she was an incapacitated victim.
As a culture, even now we have it quite moved
all the way past that mentality. So it wasn't that
gross misconduct with he her patient, Amelia Finny, that got
(20:02):
Jane in trouble. But Amelia wasn't Jane's only victim at
Massachusetts General Hospital. The habits that Jane started at her
previous hospital carried over into her new job almost immediately.
(20:22):
The other nurses suspected Jane of hurting her patients. They
didn't like her at all. She regularly disparaged their work
and took credit for their accomplishments. She tampered with their
fever charts and medical records, and she stole She also
administered medication with wild disregards her protocol, which is really
(20:48):
saying something. I mean, this is a time when you
could buy cocaine over the counter. You could buy chocolate
covered strych nine tablets at the drug store to treat
a stomach ache. And I know there's a sort of
bell curve with a lot of medicine where too little
does nothing, the right amount treats the issue, and too
much becomes an issue on its own. You have to
(21:08):
hit the sweet spot or almost any medicine becomes poison.
Absolutely true, But we know now that strychnine is overall
a very strong poison. I mean, treat your stomach ache
with strychnine candy and it could very possibly be your
last stomach ache. So Jane's flagrant disregard for protocol was
(21:30):
really extreme if it caught the attention of the other nurses,
and they suspected more than just that. They noticed how
Jane's patience often seemed to die in strange, difficult to
diagnose fits. The rumors facts really about Jane flew all
(21:53):
over Massachusetts General Hospital, but the thing that eventually got
her kicked out was something small. She just left the
ward without permission. It's not clear whether she was off
for the evening and forgot to tell someone she was
popping out, or if she was on duty and just
walked off the job. But the rumors about Jane were
(22:13):
no longer ignorable. It seems like this was the one
rule they could actually confirm Jane was breaking, so they
dismissed her. By this time, Jane had basically earned her
nursing degree twice, but she was nothing if not tenacious.
(22:35):
She worked as a private nurse for a year to
build her references, and then she reapplied and was readmitted
to Cambridge Hospital. Pretty unbelievable if you ask me, but
it's true. As they say, old habits die hard. So
(22:57):
back at Cambridge Hospital, when a nurse trainee ill, Jane
was assigned to take care of her. After that, the
trainee had two seizures back to back when she'd never
had them before and was overall in good health. Unlike
many of the elderly patients Jane worked with. Doctors weren't
(23:18):
sure what exactly had happened, but at that point they
couldn't ignore the rumors that Jane was not administering drugs correctly,
so they dismissed her again. You'd think that finally Jane
would have to stop killing, if not because she was
ruining her chance at a career by murdering people, at
(23:39):
the very least because she was simply out of options,
Except this is Jane Toppin, so she wasn't out of options.
She just found a different way. She said about being fired,
I didn't care because I had made up my mind
(24:01):
that I could make more money and have an easier
time by going out by the day in families. Jane
had made some connections in her years at Massachusetts' most
prestigious hospitals, and she decided it was time to use them,
she would go into private nursing where she could make
(24:23):
a lot more money. That's exactly what she did. While
the patient load of private nursing was lower, it was
still very demanding. A nurse kept round the clock bedside vigils,
(24:46):
and according to author Harold Scheckter, she was quote expected
to anticipate the patients every need, to obey the doctors
every direction, and to carry out the wishes of the
family without question. While performing her duties, she was required
to be a constant but unobtrusive presence, an unwaveringly cheerful disposition,
(25:10):
and a docile manner, never displaying the slightest trace of discourtesy, fatigue,
or irritation. Just reading that list makes me tired and earlier.
When I said Jane made more money in private nursing,
she made maybe six hundred dollars per year. That's about
twenty thousand dollars today, Still significantly more than she would
(25:34):
have made at the hospital. But it's not a lot,
especially given that fucking list. And as any freelancer will
tell you, it is either feast or famine. You either
have so much work you don't have time to breathe,
or you are hunting down jobs and pinching your pennies.
A lot of our world has changed since the eighteen nineties,
(25:54):
but not that that was the same for Jane as
it is for us. So, as you might know, you
have to get creative when it comes to making money.
For a lot of us, that means like opening a
high yield savings account and scheduling payments to our checking
so that we seldom feel the gap. Jane did not
(26:17):
go that route. It could have been a personality thing,
but honestly, she might not have been educated on how
to do that. Plus sometimes even her patients who could
afford it didn't pay what they'd agreed simply because they
didn't have to. Back then, there was no real way
(26:39):
for a normal person to take a freelance contract to
small claims court, you know. I mean, yeah, you could,
but who has time for that? Who wants to risk
their reputation? So Jane ran up some debt, and she
had the habit of borrowing money from her employers, not
a lot, or at least not a lot in one
(26:59):
place at one time, But she'd never pay it back.
I know that's dishonest, it is, but I'm also like shrug.
They might not have paid her at all. But as
I'm sure you've surmised, that's far from the worst thing
Jane did. After going into private practice, she was still experimenting. Actually,
(27:30):
I'm not sure we can call it experimenting anymore. Jane
knew exactly what she was doing. When she got tired
of nursing a patient, she'd offer them some mineral water.
Hunyati was her brand. It was Hungarian and it was
very popular, despite its bitter taste. She'd drop in the
(27:52):
combination of morphine and atropine and serve it to her patient.
Now she knew just what to expect, and yes, she
still had her mad scientist sexual fetish. Every time she could,
she got into bed with her victims and held them
close while they shuddered and spasmed and struggled to breathe. Later,
(28:20):
she recalled that thrill in disturbing descriptions voluptuous delight, delirious enjoyment,
greatest conceivable pleasure. After all that work, in the intense
(28:43):
release of her sick pleasure, Jane needed time to recuperate.
She liked to spend the summers at the Jacin House,
a boarding house outside Boston at a place they called
Buzzard's Bay. Jane spent her summers at a cottage on
(29:19):
the resort like property called the Jakin House in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts,
but it wasn't a complete vacation. She didn't give round
the clock care, but she bartered with the proprietors, the
Davis family. In exchange for being the sort of resident nurse,
she got a reduced rate. Jane was at this cottage
(29:43):
when she reached back out to her foster sister, Elizabeth.
Jane had kept in contact with Elizabeth and her husband Ramel.
What a wild name, right, But Jane and Elizabeth weren't
exactly close. The Brighams were glad to let Jane stay
in her old room in their house for a few
(30:04):
days whenever she was in town, which was nice enough.
There was a pretty big age gap between Elizabeth and Jane.
But aside from that, Elizabeth experienced all of the advantages
in life that Jane had not. She did not have
to work, she had a family, and she was able
(30:28):
to marry. At best, it was the relationship between a
well treated menial and her boss. Elizabeth May not have
recognized it that way, but Jane certainly did yet. In
the summer of eighteen ninety nine, after years of working
(30:51):
as a private nurse, Jane invited Elizabeth out to Buzzard's Bay.
When Elizabeth told about the invitation, he encouraged her to go.
She had recently experienced some melancholia, which is more or
less the old timey term for depression, and he thought
(31:12):
it would help. He sent her out from Lowell on
the train with a steamer trunk and fifty dollars on Saturday,
August twenty sixth, eighteen ninety nine. The day after Elizabeth arrived,
she and Jane had what sounds like a lovely day.
(31:34):
They dressed in white summer dresses and carried a picnic
of cold corn, beef and saltwater taffy down to the pier,
and they chatted in the sunshine for several hours before
Elizabeth turned in for bed. Later, Jane would admit to
what happened next. Jane said that this was her chance
(31:59):
to exact revenge on Elizabeth. She was the only victim
who quote I actually hated and poisoned with a vindictive purpose.
I let her die slowly with gripping torture. I fixed
mineral water so it would do that, and then I
(32:21):
added morphia to it. I held her in my arms
and watched with delight as she gasped out her life.
Sunday morning, Jane went to her landlords, Mattie and Alden Davis.
She said that her sister hadn't responded when Jane called
(32:43):
her down to breakfast. She was very sick. They should
call a doctor, and they did. Jane also sent a
telegraph to Aroml back in Lowell, saying that Elizabeth was
dangerously ill. By the time he could get out there.
The following morning, Elizabeth was in a coma. The physician
(33:06):
whom the Davises had summoned said that she had apoplexy
or what today we call a stroke. Ormel was at
her bedside all night until she died the following morning.
You might have noticed that the confession I quoted said
(33:27):
that Jane held Elizabeth while she died in the grotesque
sexual way that she had held her other victims. But
Ramel said he was there when Elizabeth died. To me,
that means something doesn't add up. I'm not saying Jane
didn't do it. She is for sure, beyond a shadow
(33:48):
of a doubt, a total monster, absolutely capable of the
story she gave. And I still don't think she actually
said everything her confession in the hers papers she said.
While I was researching, I was never quite able to
reconcile what she said with some of the facts, so
I'm looking forward to talking to author Harold Scheckter about it.
(34:12):
But back to the story, Ormel was crushed. He truly
loved his wife, and his overwhelming grief was probably the
reason that it took him a long time to realize
when he went through Elizabeth's possessions that there was money
missing from her purse, at least fifty dollars gone. Before
(34:37):
Ormel left. The following morning, Jane asked to talk to him.
Jane said that in one of her dying breaths, Elizabeth
had asked that he makes sure her gold watch went
to Jane if she died. Ormel gave it over right away,
(35:00):
Even in her last breath. He thought his wife was
so kind that she made sure to care for others,
and it lifted his heart, if only a little. He
wouldn't learn until much later, when the police were going
through receipts and documents that Jane had pawned that watch
(35:20):
right away. At the end of the summer, Jane didn't
settle up her tab at the Jacin House she hadn't
in years. Instead, she just left, moved back to Boston
and into an apartment, and started searching out new nursing gigs.
(35:43):
That's when Jane reconnected with her friend Myra Connors from Lowell.
Myra was a forty year old widow. The origins and
nature of their relationship are still unknown. What we do
know is that Myra fell ill with peritonidis and Jane
went home to Lowell to help her friend out. Within
(36:04):
a few months, Myra died of strychnine poisoning. Jane went
back to her standby private nursing. She took on several
private nursing clients, whom she helped and then when they
got to quote her to fussy, she murdered them. By
(36:26):
nineteen oh one, she was living in the Boston home
of her clients, Eliza and Edward Beadle. That's when Mattie Davis,
the landlady at the Jakin House, came down from Buzzard's
Bay to collect on Jane's debts from the previous summer.
(36:46):
Mattie was fed up. Yes, they had agreed over five
years ago that Jane would get a discounted rate in
exchange for being the sort of resident nurse at the property,
but discounted didn't mean free. Jane's bill kept climbing and
she never did anything about it. There was no payment
(37:06):
plan in place, so in June nineteen oh one, Maddie
got a train ticket to Boston. She climbed into her
seat on the train and stewed, Imagine for a second
that you own a bed and breakfast and you're balancing
your checkbook or okay, looking at your p and L
(37:27):
if you want to really update the situation. You realize
then that this woman who's been coming to stay there
for years on end hasn't paid you a cent. I
would be boiling. And because that's not how you do business,
taking people's word that they're good for their debts. You
know it was your husband who let it slide. So
(37:47):
now here you go in your best dress, because you're
not to be trifled with on this long ass, hot
ass train across the state to get your money. If
that was me, I would be really playing out the
(38:08):
possible situations, working up the decision tree of if she
says this, then I'll do this, just so she couldn't
catch me off guard, like I was going to face
off with a bully. I would stare out the window
and scheme. I can only imagine that's what Mattie Davis's
brain was doing the whole way to Boston. So imagine
(38:29):
Mattie's surprise when she arrives at the Beatles' home and
Jane answers the door, thrilled to see her. Still, Maddie
stood her ground. She said she was there to collect
what Jane owed them, and Jane said, sure, of course,
(38:50):
let's go to the bank and get your money. Mattie
had to have been shocked, and she probably looked shocked.
And then Jane said, why don't you come in for
a second and have a glass of water first, and
you may as well stay for lunch. So Mattie stayed
(39:12):
for the meal, talked with the Beatles for a while,
and then she and Jane set out on foot to
the bank, but they didn't get far before Mattie fainted.
Jane brought her back to the house and set her
up in bed. She hung ice sheets all around the
(39:32):
room to keep it cool, and she called Mattie's daughter
Genevieve to come stay while her mother recovered. But Mattie
didn't recover. Jane tortured her for a long time. She
was at the Beatles Home for seven days while Jane
(39:53):
alternated her doses of morphine and atropine. She even brought
Mattie into full state of lucidity before sending her back
into a coma and eventually killing her with a final
dose of morphine. She wanted to make it look like
Maddie had died of natural causes, and that's what the
(40:18):
doctor claimed. Jane attended the funeral at the Jakin House
on July fifth, and that's when she decided she was
ready for a new kind of challenge. She decided she
would wipe out the whole Davis family one by one. Actually,
(40:44):
she didn't want to just take out the family. She
wanted to burn their whole house to the ground. Join
(41:16):
me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told.
For the finale of our three part mini series on
Jane Tappin, you'll get to hear how Jane's crimes escalated
even more before the law finally caught up with her.
I also have a conversation with Harold Scheckter, author of
(41:37):
the book on Jane called Fatal. My research on this
story goes really deep, and a lot of my sources
were primary sources I looked at while writing my book,
America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Tappin and the Making
of a Monster. Those sources included interviews, news articles, and
(41:58):
documents from the trial I'll talk about in the upcoming finale.
For more of the details that I don't have the
space to include in this mini series, check out the
full book, and for more information about this case and
others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com.
(42:18):
Sign up for Diversion's newsletter and be among the first
to hear about special behind the scenes features with the
hosts and actors from Diversion's podcasts, more shows you'll love
from Diversion and our partners, and other exclusive tidbits you
can't get anywhere else. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever
(42:39):
Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbrair.
I wrote this episode and our editorial director is Nora Bateel.
Our show is produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our
development team is Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music
by Tyler Kash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and
(43:05):
Scott Waxman. Diversion Audio
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.