January 30, 2024 • 45 mins
This is the first episode of a two-episode mini series about the Archer House. It was supposed to be a place where older folks could find comfort, community, and somewhere to call home.
Instead, it was a murder factory.
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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, Directed and Edited by Mark Francis
Theme Music by Tyler Cash
Executive Produced by Scott Waxman, Mark Francis, and Jacob Bronstein
Special Thanks:
Devil's Rooming House: The True Story of America's Deadliest Female Serial Killer by M William Phelps
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care and listening. Seth Ramsay and Franklin Andrews were roommates
(00:36):
in the Archer Home for the elderly infirm at the
turn of the twentieth century. The large Federal style house
was a nursing home, but not in the way we
think of them now. The type of care we associate
with nursing homes now would have been in what was
called a residential hospital then.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
This was not that.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
The Archer Home was basically a boarding house for people
in the empty nester stage of life. The residents still
had social engagements and active lifestyles. Seth Ramsey was a
widower in his sixties and Franklin Andrews was a bachelor
in his late fifties. Both of them were in good health,
(01:24):
but neither of them wanted to keep a full house
just for himself, so they'd each booked a bed here
at the Archer Home.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
They'd gotten lucky. They had the best.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Room in the place. It was the only two bedroom,
no extra residents squeezed into two little space. It was
also just off the veranda, and it had a great
view of the town Windsor, Connecticut. But best of all,
Ramsey and Franklin got along well despite not having known
each other all that long. After dinner, around nine pm,
(02:00):
the residents turned in, chatting about the day before they
knotted off. They wouldn't wake up until it was time
for communal breakfast downstairs, except one morning, when Ramsey was
startled awake around five am he heard strange noises coming
from Franklin's side of the room. It took a moment
(02:22):
for his eyes to adjust in the twilight, but when
they did, he saw Franklin sitting bolt upright in bed,
projectile vomiting and covered in his own fluids. And it
wasn't normal vomit. It had a weird coffee ground appearance.
(02:44):
Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm
Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer of true crime, which
means I live inside the research wormhole. I'm constantly reading
about crime, but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline
grabbing elements like blood and vomit. I'm more interested in
(03:08):
the people behind these stories and what we can learn
about all of us. 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,
(03:29):
the criminal, or any combination.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Of those roles.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
As you probably already know, women can do anything. Today's
story we're calling the Murder Factory, the name the press
dubbed the case back in the early twentieth century when
it was ushered in by a massive heat wave. This
one is a real saga, and it's really linked to
(03:59):
the time period.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
In which it happened.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Because it's an historical crime, I want to take a
little more space to really get in there and make
sure i'm going through some of the context that's crucial
to understanding the case. Plus, there's a lot of fascinating
people who make their way into the story and a
lot of strange, weird details that I have to include.
(04:27):
So this is the first episode of a two episode
mini series about the Archer House. It was supposed to
be a place where older folks could find comfort, community in,
somewhere to call home. Instead, it was a murder factory.
I'll tell you all about it after the break. My
(05:06):
favorite class in college was intro to Psychology. It explained
so much to me about why we think the way
that we think, and without going so far in depth
as to sound like actual science. It was, but it
didn't feel like it, if that makes sense anyway. My
(05:28):
favorite lesson was about functional fixedness. It's a term for
the phenomenon that we can't see past the intended use
of things. For example, the coconut oil in your kitchen
cabinet is the same thing as the coconut oil in
your bathroom cabinet, but most of us would never grab
(05:49):
the coconut oil from the bathroom to throw in our
frying pan. Or how when you look at tennis shoes,
you don't often see how they could be tied together
and used to weigh something down, or how chewing gum
can be used as a weapon that kind of thing.
And my favorite example of functional fixedness involves the mentor
(06:15):
of my Intro To Psychology teacher. He was an elderly
professor close to retirement, and every day on his lunch break,
he'd go into the back stairwell and smoke a joint.
And this was during the early two thousands in Georgia,
back when you had to pick out your own seeds
and stems and grind it up yourself and roll it
on your sister's coffee table and make sure you got
(06:37):
all the crumbs out of the cracks before her shift
was over. High stakes, is what I'm saying. So after
the stairwell filled with smoke, someone inevitably called campus security,
and that elderly professor would wait until the moment they
showed up, step on his roach and swatting at the
(06:59):
cla around him, he would say, damn kids, and campus
police ran past him every time. They never suspected him
for a second, even though he was there every time
they got a call, even though there was smoke all
(07:20):
around him, because this burnout they were looking for couldn't
possibly be a professional, respectable academic. He couldn't possibly be old.
(07:42):
Let's go back in time one hundred and twenty odd years.
It's the turn of the century, nineteen oh one. President
McKinley has just died of an assassination attempt. I say
attempt because he survived the initial bullet he took in
the gut during a speech. He died of gangreen a
(08:03):
few days after a surgery. So that's where we are
in terms of medical science. The president just died of
gangreen after surgery. Keep that in your back pocket. I
have a point, I promise. Also in nineteen oh one,
in Connecticut, Amy Archer and her husband James Archer were
(08:26):
hired to care for an elderly widower, John Seymour. When
he died three years later, John Seymour's descendants converted his
home into a boarding house for the elderly. It was
actually a pretty smart economical move. This was fifty years
before Medicare began and thirty five before Social Security started
(08:50):
in the United States, so the elderly had even less
support than a lot of middle class people saved for
their retirement. But private nurses are expensive, so even if
they were able to pay for their room and board
without a huge strain, it left a lot of elderly
people still feeling like a burden on their families. And
(09:15):
that's those who had families to burden. Not to mention,
I mean, people have a hard enough time now with
resigning their loved ones to elder care.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Back then, there were no real options.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And definitely no good options for families who couldn't physically care.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
For their elders.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
So when the Seymours saw that hole in the market,
they capitalized on it and they kept Amy and John
Archer on as caretakers for years, which both subsidized the
Archer's rent, paid them a fee, and gave them a
lot of experience. After a few years, though, the Seymour
(10:00):
heirs sold the house and the Archers used their savings
to buy their own house in Windsor, Connecticut. In nineteen
oh seven, they converted it into a business, the Archer
Home for the Elderly and Infirm. The Archer business plan
(10:23):
had two options for the residents, or as they were
called then, the inmates.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
In M.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
William Phelps's book The Devil's Ruining House, which is the
book on the Amy Archer Gilligan case, he says that
inmate was quote a socially acceptable term used at that
time to describe residents of psychiatric hospitals, institutions, insane asylums, prisons,
(10:49):
or nursing homes, similar to Amy's. We're going to hear
from Phelps himself later on in part two of this episode,
so stay tuned for that. People at the time didn't
see anything weird about calling them inmates like you or
I might. But back to the Archer's business plan. In
(11:11):
exchange for shelter, food, and medical care for the rest
of their life, residents at the Archer Home had two options.
Option one, they could pay a weekly rate of between
seven and twenty five dollars, according to one advertisement. The
other option was to pay a one time flat fee
(11:34):
of one thousand dollars, which Amy called her contract for
life's Care. Now, I'm not a business expert, but some
quick calculations tell me that one thousand dollars would pay
for around a year of care at that time. That's
(11:55):
less than three years at the weekly rate max. And
that's the gross, not their net. And yes, of course
it's disgusting to put a monetary timeline on someone's life.
But if you're running a business like the Archers, then
you have to think about these things, right. Plus, the
(12:15):
Archer Home was not end of life's care. It wasn't
a hospice situation. It was a boarding house. Most people
who stayed at the Archer Home weren't in bad health.
There were hospitals for the infirm. The people at the
Archer Home were mostly just old. That meant there was
(12:36):
a good chance that they lived longer than three years,
so from a business perspective, after a while, each resident
would start costing the Archer's money. Amy and James didn't
seem to realize that, though the Archers seemed less concerned
(12:58):
with the accounting and more concerned with the really important
work they were doing for their community. And it was
important work everyone in town thought so. Windsor's residents really
respected the archers resolve and dedication. They especially revered Amy
(13:20):
after James died in nineteen ten, three years after the
Archer House opened. James's official cause of death was the
sudden onset of kidney disease, which most people in those
days usually suffered from for years before slowly dying, and
(13:42):
it was rarely fatal even to an elderly person unless
they had pre existing conditions. James wasn't elderly. He and
Amy were both in their late thirties or early forties,
so it was shocking to the town when he died,
and it inspired people to respect Amy even more. She
(14:06):
worked so hard to keep their business afloat all on
her own with a little help from James's life insurance payout.
After all, the people of windsor could see the hard work.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Amy looked so worn down.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Because while Amy wasn't elderly, she definitely didn't look like
she was in her thirties. To a degree, every photo
of someone from a historical period makes them look old,
you know, just based on the styles alone. Like Amy
wore the high collared dresses and puff sleeves of the
Gilded Age.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Her hair is the best way I.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Can describe it is by the Martha Washington thing we
used to do in the swimming pool, where we let
it drip forward and then fold it back and pose
like we were in a Guerra type.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So, yeah, the.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Styles have aged her, but she actually looks like she
could just as well be in her sixties, from her
thin lipped, clinched jaw to her furrowed brow. The people
in town, especially the socialites, the ones who decided what
everyone else should think, called her sister Amy. They rarely
(15:22):
saw her without a Bible in hand, and she definitely
looked like someone who would clutch her bible all the time,
like as a weapon. They watched her dedication to the elderly,
some of whom I'm sure they assumed probably nagged and
bothered her constantly, and she had a little girl whose
father had just died too. I mean, that does sound
(15:45):
pretty tough. That is, it would be tough if that
was true. As I mentioned before, while the residents at
Amy's were older, they could take care of themselves, they
mostly just couldn't take care of a full house and themselves,
so they wanted the extra help. But to the town
(16:08):
who didn't know any different, Amy seemed close to saintly
not everyone in the home was as convinced that the
Archer House was a place of God, though, because they
had a problem on their hands.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
People kept dying.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Remember, and I've said it a few times, the residents
weren't sick most of the time, so these frequent deaths
were weird. They seemed to hit out of nowhere, and
they were happening to healthy people. Then Amy would have
their bodies moved out of the house in the middle
(16:51):
of the night so no one really saw them. Amy
said she thought it would be disturbing the other residents
woke to find their friends dead, and fair enough, that
definitely would be disturbing. I mean, imagine you were running
Archer House. I don't think i'd move the bodies like
(17:14):
that it definitely comes off as sort of brushing death
under the rug, if not something actually sinister.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
But anyone who has.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Worked in direct care will tell you you can never
do enough. You can never be fast enough, caring enough,
sweet enough, smart enough, good enough. You have to make
some tough calls, calls that just can't please everyone. It's
(17:46):
not really surprising that some of those calls ended up iffy.
And when it comes to death, dying, and grieving, no
one can do anything perfectly. By the way, we are
now squarely in the Victorian era, when there was a
whole fashion element to grief and grieving correctly. At this
(18:10):
point in time, no one could do anything regarding death
well enough. It's also no surprise that there were deaths,
even though the people at Archer House were in good
health for the most part. They were elderly and well,
you heard what kind of medical care the president got,
(18:32):
and he was the president. Still, residents insisted there were
far too many people dying. Something was very wrong at
Archer House. Someone they said, was killing them. The town
(19:02):
socialites were having none of that. They rallied behind Amy's
pristine reputation, scandalized that anyone could suggest something untoward about
an organization run by a saint. Not only was it impossible,
but the audacity to them. Amy was basically doing charity work,
(19:26):
but for money. Sometimes she even set up funeral arrangements
and sent bouquets to grieving family members. Of course, she
was contractually obligated to do that, but most people didn't
realize that. They also didn't realize that although she claimed
she had taken it upon herself to pay for her
(19:48):
residence funerals when they couldn't afford to, that was a
straight up lie. So while the townspeople might have been
obsessed with Amy and totally convinced that her organization was
a flawless reflection of God's love on earth, the people
closest to her physically her residence refused to be gas
(20:09):
lit out of their suspicions, and as more and more
Archer residents died, those suspicions.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Only grew.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Until one resident, Franklin Andrews, became convinced he knew exactly
what was causing all this death, or rather who. At
(20:52):
this point in his life, Franklin Andrews was in good health,
but he hadn't always been. When he was a boy
in the early eighteen fifties, Franklin had a severe hip
pain that prevented him from walking. It was likely what
(21:12):
we now know as congenital dislocation of the hip. Over
the course of months, that condition caused his leg to shorten.
As a result, he always walked with a pronounced limp.
Even his friends would say he was quote lame. It
(21:33):
was the medical diagnosis at the time. Most people don't
realize that it's an ablest slur when they say it
nowadays that lame actually meant disabled, not boring or silly,
just you know, food for thought in your own language,
going forward in case you didn't know. But back to Franklin.
Franklin had always been self sufficient. He offended for himself
(21:56):
from an early age, and he had worked as both
of farmer and a factory worker. He also took a
routine constitutional walk every morning, a walk of about five
or six miles. I don't actually know anyone who does
that nowadays, even with all our pedometers and fitbits and
(22:18):
Apple watches. It wasn't until he was fifty seven years
old that Franklin started to feel his age. The effects
of years of hard physical work showed up in his bones,
and joints. He got treatment for rheumatism and his shoulders
and legs for months. The condition prevented him from tending
(22:40):
to his family's farm. But let me explain, at fifty
seven Franklin couldn't do hard labor anymore. He had been
doing it though, that's why it was taking its toll. Again,
(23:04):
this is nineteen eleven. There were very few desk jobs
and very few people really changed careers, especially not in
middle age. Although I guess back then fifty seven wouldn't
have been middle age as we see it now. Still,
Franklin was a lifelong bachelor, so he didn't have children
(23:24):
or a wife to lean on for personal care or
even social interaction. It seems like he got most of
his interactions from either his walks or his work. So
when he stopped working, it seems like he got kind
of lonesome. He sold his farm and he went back
and forth between the homes of his two local sisters
(23:46):
in Wallingford and Yalesville, Connecticut. But they were his elder sisters.
They were much more frail than Franklin was. Neither of
them had extravagant means, and Franklin didn't want to burden them.
To their credit, neither sister nor his in laws ever
told Franklin to get lost. In fact, his brother in law,
(24:08):
Warren Andrews, said that Franklin quote was perfectly healthy and
well with the exception of his lameness. But Franklin started
to consider where else he could go for a while.
That was the house of a friend who said Franklin
could stay as long as he wanted. He was no
trouble at all, never complained. But still Franklin didn't crash
(24:33):
for long. It just wasn't in his nature to freeload,
even when his friends and family told him that wasn't
what this was. He bounced around between his family members
and eventually ended up with his third sister, Nellie Pierce.
She had room for him and was happy to have him,
but he didn't want to burden her either. That's just
(24:57):
the type of man he was, you know, the type
who never overstays is welcome, the type who's such a
good house guest that he leaves your house better than
when he arrived. He's the type who would see something
that needed fixing, and before you know it, he's fixed
it without you asking him to. Franklin Andrews had pinballed
(25:31):
from place to place too long for his liking, so
when he saw an advertisement for the Archer Home in
the newspaper, he decided he was in. His sister Nelly
didn't want him to go. Even though Franklin had money
enough to stay at Amy Archer's. Nelly was worried about him,
(25:51):
and like everyone else, she wanted him around. But Franklin
was going period, and once Nelly realized she wasn't going
to talk him out of it, she took the trolley
from Hartford to Windsor and walked the two minutes to
the Archer Home to meet Amy. For herself, Nellie was
(26:12):
not impressed. By this time, September of nineteen twelve, the
Archer Home was deteriorating. There were the baseline issues of
her business model to start with. For new revenue to
come in, she needed more beds, so she kept adding
(26:34):
more beds. At one point there were an estimated twenty
beds in the home, not ten double occupancy bedrooms either
beds in the common areas. The hallways squeezed together to
fit as many people as possible. In addition, James Archer's
(26:54):
death left behind a pile of undone chores, things like painting, weeding, cleaning,
and now they had a severe bedbug problem. Amy had
sent one of her residents down to the wh Mason
drug store to purchase some arsenic. She was handling it.
(27:25):
Amy and Nellie discussed the going rate, either one thousand
dollars up front or seven dollars per week. Nellie looked
around the house and asked, basically, what's the deal with
this place? Why does this house look like a dump.
That's when Amy put the hard cell on her. Her
husband had died a few years ago and he was
(27:48):
her handyman. Nellie didn't bite. Instead, she said, what if
Franklin doesn't like it? Here Amy had an answer for
that as well. She would charge Franklin the one thousand
dollars up front, and if he wanted to leave, she'd
refund him a pro rated amount based on how long
(28:11):
he stayed. Now, I find this a little odd. We
don't have the contract, or at least I couldn't find
a record of it. So the question I'm about to
ask might have been answered in that. But my question is,
how would you pro rate it if it's one thousand
(28:32):
dollars for the rest of his life. Well, Amy, how
do you know how long that would be? Do you
have an amortization timeline in your top desk drawer like
one of those life insurance adjusters. But Nellie either had
the information she needed or she just didn't think Franklin
would want to leave. Despite the crumbling building and crowded halls,
(28:54):
the place was full of people his age who seemed
to be in high spirits. Nellie suspect that this was
exactly what Franklin wanted. She decided to stop making a
fuss about the arrangement and let her brother move into
the Archer House. When Franklin arrived, he paid Amy twenty
(29:18):
five hundred dollars up front. You probably noticed that's a
different sum than what she and Nelly discussed, but Franklin
didn't mind. In fact, he took to Amy right away
and he started fixing the Archer House up too. As usual,
he was being his sweet helpful self, wanting to give
(29:40):
more than he took. Shortly after Franklin arrived, he made
a new friend, and Michael Gilligan. Michael was a child
of Irish immigrants, a divorced father of three sons and
two daughters, all now adults. He was fifty seven to
Franklin's now fifty, and while he'd been a fireman in town,
(30:02):
he had also worked farms. When he arrived, he helped
shoulder the handyman load too. Michael was in great health
like Franklin. The two of them were among the youngest
and healthiest of their residents at the Archer Home, and
Michael got along with Amy just as well as Franklin,
(30:23):
or actually even better. Within a few weeks, Michael and
Amy were involved in a romantic relationship. In November of
nineteen thirteen, Amy married Michael Gilligan, despite his being twenty
years her senior, and the town of Windsor was really
(30:45):
genuinely happy for them. Not only was it great to
see Amy finding love again, but marrying Michael would really
help her in more practical ways. On their marriage license,
Michael listed his assets. Although Michael came across as a
pretty rough guy in appearance, he had a net worth
(31:06):
of about five thousand dollars, which would be today about
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just enough money to
get Amy out of the debt that had accrued in
James's absence. Amy always paid attention to the bank accounts
of her residents. Sometimes she even demanded to see their
(31:29):
bank records before letting them move in. But she didn't
actually learn about Franklin's savings until January of nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That's when there was.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
An odd moment. She wrote him the following letter. I
am writing to ask you, as I consider you my
dearest friend in need, as you have proved so thus far,
could you, or rather, will you please let me take
a few hundred dollars as near to a thousand as
(32:05):
you can for a few months until I can get
money I have loaned. I have but little cash, and
our bills are just now very heavy. She went on,
really working his guilt. I will pay you six percent
in advance. As you know, it is safer than any bank.
(32:27):
I thought, as a friend, you would accommodate me. I
would rather you would please not speak of this to anyone.
I appreciate your confidence, or I would not ask you,
as I have friends whom I know would lend it,
but I would rather not ask them. Please let me
know if you could get it tomorrow morning. I could
use it in the afternoon, And I assure you on
(32:50):
my honor you won't be sorry. I will give you
my note so there can be no possible way for
you to lose. Essentially, despite the fact that her new
(33:11):
husband had just paid off most of her debts, Amy
had just asked Franklin to lend her a bunch more money,
and even though Franklin and Michael were friends, Amy wanted
Franklin to keep it a secret. You might have noticed
a bit of a trend in the cases we've covered
(33:32):
on the greatest true crime stories ever told. The trend
is secret secrets are no fun. Secret secrets hurt someone. Unfortunately,
there's no written record of how Franklin responded to Amy's
request for the loan, but we know that his initial
appreciation for Amy and archer House was starting to waver
(33:54):
by this point. Around this time, he wrote a letter
to his brother Wesley's, saying, there have been some deaths
here lately. Have been eighteen died. There are fifteen here now,
and Amy expects some more before long. They come and
(34:14):
go one after another. There's a hint of wariness in
that report, and Amy's request for money may have triggered
even more of it. Then came February nineteenth, Amy called
her husband Michael downstairs. She had laid a document on
(34:38):
the kitchen table for him. It was his last will
and testament. He signed it, then he laid down. He
wasn't feeling too good. In fact, he was feeling bad.
(35:10):
Michael started vomiting the evening of February nineteenth, nineteen fourteen,
the same day he signed his last will and testament.
He seemed to recover briefly. His friends say he felt
fine when they saw him on February twentieth, But then
on February twenty first, at two in the morning, Amy
(35:33):
called Ralph Frost. Ralph was the manager of the Windsor
hotel where Michael often drank. Ralph also moonlighted as an undertaker.
Ralph was surprised to hear Amy say, come over to
the house right away. It's Michael. He's very sick. He'd
(35:54):
just seen Michael in the bar the night before. Was
Amy calling Ralph as a friend or as an undertaker?
When Ralph arrived, Michael was in and out of consciousness,
but he did recognize Ralph. He definitely wasn't dead. He
(36:15):
didn't need an undertaker, He needed a doctor. Ralph was
livid that Amy hadn't called one. Why didn't she call
someone who might have actually helped. It was after three
o'clock when doctor King arrived. He immediately asked Amy, why
didn't you call me sooner? It was then that Ralph
(36:36):
learned doctor King had already been at the Archer home
to tend to Michael the night before. He left specific
instructions with Amy about how to treat her husband. He
had also given Michael pills for indigestion. Y'all are not
going to believe what was in these stomach pills. I'll
give you a hint. It was a mixture of bismuth,
(36:59):
the main ingredient in peptobismal, and cocaine. That was the
doctor's order. Actually pretty standard for upset stomach at the time.
But by the time Ralph was there and doctor King
returned for the second time, it was clear that the
treatment hadn't worked.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
The doctor should.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Have been called back earlier, and now it was too late.
By sunrise the morning of February twenty second, nineteen fourteen,
Michael Gilligan was dead. Franklin woke during the middle of
the commotion. He was shocked that Michael had died just
(37:42):
a day before. They'd been palling around as usual. Then
his shock turned into horror. Despite how odd this death was,
doctor King didn't conduct an autopsy. He also didn't consult
(38:03):
a coroner. Instead, he made the medical assessment that Michael
died of indigestion, and for some reason, he listed heart
disease among Michael's ailments too. Franklin knew that wasn't true.
(38:24):
Doctor King had only sporadically treated Michael in the past,
but he should have known there was no indication that
Michael had heart disease. What he did have in those
two days between signing his will and dying was a
burning sensation in the pit of his stomach and some
(38:44):
burning in his throat too. Franklin wrote an ominous, upsetting
letter to his family. That makes twenty one that's died
since I came here. Don't know who will be next.
There are eighteen here now and she expects more soon.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Franklin had only been at the Archer House seventeen months.
Twenty one deaths since he arrived in a group of
elderly but mainly healthy people. That's more than one death
per month. That is not normal, and Franklin knew it.
(39:32):
He mentioned Michael's death in every letter he wrote after
Michael died, and he would total up the number of
people who had died since he'd arrived. There was also
stranger shit in the offing. Michael Gilligan's body was embalmed
under the cover of night as usual, and Amy told
(39:53):
her friend that Michael had died of pneumonia, which was
different from the likewise bizarre cause of death given by
doctor King, a brand new diagnosis that came from her
own imagination. For Franklin, all the signs were pointing towards
(40:13):
one thing. Amy Archer Gilligan was the one behind these deaths.
She was killing her residence, and she'd killed Michael. There
was a ton of circumstantial evidence at this point. All
(40:36):
the deaths of apparently healthy people were a sign that
some foul play was at hand. Spiriting the bodies away
at night made Amy look suspicious. But the fact that
Michael died thirty six hours after signing over all his
property to Amy, and then she was making up stories
(40:57):
about the cause of his death, there was one small
satisfying irony in all of this. If Franklin's suspicions were
right about Amy's scheme, even though Amy had control of
Michael Gilligan's property and assets because of the will she
made him sign thirty six hours before his death, she
(41:19):
had to extend a grace period. That meant she had
to publish a notice so any potential creditors could come
make a claim, So his money was still a little
tied up. It's not much justice, but I do love
a dramatic irony like that, especially when it happens in
real life. But what this also meant was Amy's situation
(41:44):
remained somewhat the same financially because they had been married.
Michael's death didn't open up another bed. She had no
new revenue streams, so she started squeezing her current patients,
asking them to withdraw their savings, asking them for loans,
(42:06):
and all the while patients were still dying. Then, true
to form, when a resident died, Amy demanded that the
body immediately be taken away and embalmed. But Amy still
wasn't satisfied financially satisfied, that is, until a couple named
(42:30):
the Goudys got in touch. They were in a situation
like Franklin, had been bouncing between relatives, houses and sick
of feeling like a burden. When they came by to
tour of the Archer home, Amy showed them a double room,
the only one in the place. Amy said, this will
(42:51):
be vacant very soon. That's when Franklin started to get sick.
(43:13):
Join me next week on the Greatest true crime Stories
Ever told for the second episode of our two part
mini series on Amy Archer Gilligan, a tale of greed, violence,
and the consequences of an insatiable appetite for more. We'll
also be talking to m William Phelps, who wrote The
(43:34):
Devil's Rooming House. Phelps' book is full of incredible research
on this case, and it helped make it possible for
me to tell this story. I'm very excited to bring
you even more of his really sharp insights. For more
information about this case and others we cover on the show,
(43:54):
visit diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for Diversion's newsletter
and among the first to hear about special behind the
scenes features with hosts and actors from Diversion's podcasts, more
shows you'll love from Diversion in our partners, and other
exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's Diversionaudio dot Com.
(44:16):
To sign up for the newsletter. The Greatest True Crime
Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm
Mary Kay McBrayer. I wrote this episode and our editorial
director is Nora Battel. Our show is produced and directed
by Mark Francis. Our development team is Emma Dumouth and
(44:38):
Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein,
Mark Francis, and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Diversion Audio
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care and listening. Seth Ramsay and Franklin Andrews were roommates
(00:36):
in the Archer Home for the elderly infirm at the
turn of the twentieth century. The large Federal style house
was a nursing home, but not in the way we
think of them now. The type of care we associate
with nursing homes now would have been in what was
called a residential hospital then.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
This was not that.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
The Archer Home was basically a boarding house for people
in the empty nester stage of life. The residents still
had social engagements and active lifestyles. Seth Ramsey was a
widower in his sixties and Franklin Andrews was a bachelor
in his late fifties. Both of them were in good health,
(01:24):
but neither of them wanted to keep a full house
just for himself, so they'd each booked a bed here
at the Archer Home.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
They'd gotten lucky. They had the best.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Room in the place. It was the only two bedroom,
no extra residents squeezed into two little space. It was
also just off the veranda, and it had a great
view of the town Windsor, Connecticut. But best of all,
Ramsey and Franklin got along well despite not having known
each other all that long. After dinner, around nine pm,
(02:00):
the residents turned in, chatting about the day before they
knotted off. They wouldn't wake up until it was time
for communal breakfast downstairs, except one morning, when Ramsey was
startled awake around five am he heard strange noises coming
from Franklin's side of the room. It took a moment
(02:22):
for his eyes to adjust in the twilight, but when
they did, he saw Franklin sitting bolt upright in bed,
projectile vomiting and covered in his own fluids. And it
wasn't normal vomit. It had a weird coffee ground appearance.
(02:44):
Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm
Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer of true crime, which
means I live inside the research wormhole. I'm constantly reading
about crime, but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline
grabbing elements like blood and vomit. I'm more interested in
(03:08):
the people behind these stories and what we can learn
about all of us. 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,
(03:29):
the criminal, or any combination.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Of those roles.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
As you probably already know, women can do anything. Today's
story we're calling the Murder Factory, the name the press
dubbed the case back in the early twentieth century when
it was ushered in by a massive heat wave. This
one is a real saga, and it's really linked to
(03:59):
the time period.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
In which it happened.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Because it's an historical crime, I want to take a
little more space to really get in there and make
sure i'm going through some of the context that's crucial
to understanding the case. Plus, there's a lot of fascinating
people who make their way into the story and a
lot of strange, weird details that I have to include.
(04:27):
So this is the first episode of a two episode
mini series about the Archer House. It was supposed to
be a place where older folks could find comfort, community in,
somewhere to call home. Instead, it was a murder factory.
I'll tell you all about it after the break. My
(05:06):
favorite class in college was intro to Psychology. It explained
so much to me about why we think the way
that we think, and without going so far in depth
as to sound like actual science. It was, but it
didn't feel like it, if that makes sense anyway. My
(05:28):
favorite lesson was about functional fixedness. It's a term for
the phenomenon that we can't see past the intended use
of things. For example, the coconut oil in your kitchen
cabinet is the same thing as the coconut oil in
your bathroom cabinet, but most of us would never grab
(05:49):
the coconut oil from the bathroom to throw in our
frying pan. Or how when you look at tennis shoes,
you don't often see how they could be tied together
and used to weigh something down, or how chewing gum
can be used as a weapon that kind of thing.
And my favorite example of functional fixedness involves the mentor
(06:15):
of my Intro To Psychology teacher. He was an elderly
professor close to retirement, and every day on his lunch break,
he'd go into the back stairwell and smoke a joint.
And this was during the early two thousands in Georgia,
back when you had to pick out your own seeds
and stems and grind it up yourself and roll it
on your sister's coffee table and make sure you got
(06:37):
all the crumbs out of the cracks before her shift
was over. High stakes, is what I'm saying. So after
the stairwell filled with smoke, someone inevitably called campus security,
and that elderly professor would wait until the moment they
showed up, step on his roach and swatting at the
(06:59):
cla around him, he would say, damn kids, and campus
police ran past him every time. They never suspected him
for a second, even though he was there every time
they got a call, even though there was smoke all
(07:20):
around him, because this burnout they were looking for couldn't
possibly be a professional, respectable academic. He couldn't possibly be old.
(07:42):
Let's go back in time one hundred and twenty odd years.
It's the turn of the century, nineteen oh one. President
McKinley has just died of an assassination attempt. I say
attempt because he survived the initial bullet he took in
the gut during a speech. He died of gangreen a
(08:03):
few days after a surgery. So that's where we are
in terms of medical science. The president just died of
gangreen after surgery. Keep that in your back pocket. I
have a point, I promise. Also in nineteen oh one,
in Connecticut, Amy Archer and her husband James Archer were
(08:26):
hired to care for an elderly widower, John Seymour. When
he died three years later, John Seymour's descendants converted his
home into a boarding house for the elderly. It was
actually a pretty smart economical move. This was fifty years
before Medicare began and thirty five before Social Security started
(08:50):
in the United States, so the elderly had even less
support than a lot of middle class people saved for
their retirement. But private nurses are expensive, so even if
they were able to pay for their room and board
without a huge strain, it left a lot of elderly
people still feeling like a burden on their families. And
(09:15):
that's those who had families to burden. Not to mention,
I mean, people have a hard enough time now with
resigning their loved ones to elder care.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Back then, there were no real options.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And definitely no good options for families who couldn't physically care.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
For their elders.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
So when the Seymours saw that hole in the market,
they capitalized on it and they kept Amy and John
Archer on as caretakers for years, which both subsidized the
Archer's rent, paid them a fee, and gave them a
lot of experience. After a few years, though, the Seymour
(10:00):
heirs sold the house and the Archers used their savings
to buy their own house in Windsor, Connecticut. In nineteen
oh seven, they converted it into a business, the Archer
Home for the Elderly and Infirm. The Archer business plan
(10:23):
had two options for the residents, or as they were
called then, the inmates.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
In M.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
William Phelps's book The Devil's Ruining House, which is the
book on the Amy Archer Gilligan case, he says that
inmate was quote a socially acceptable term used at that
time to describe residents of psychiatric hospitals, institutions, insane asylums, prisons,
(10:49):
or nursing homes, similar to Amy's. We're going to hear
from Phelps himself later on in part two of this episode,
so stay tuned for that. People at the time didn't
see anything weird about calling them inmates like you or
I might. But back to the Archer's business plan. In
(11:11):
exchange for shelter, food, and medical care for the rest
of their life, residents at the Archer Home had two options.
Option one, they could pay a weekly rate of between
seven and twenty five dollars, according to one advertisement. The
other option was to pay a one time flat fee
(11:34):
of one thousand dollars, which Amy called her contract for
life's Care. Now, I'm not a business expert, but some
quick calculations tell me that one thousand dollars would pay
for around a year of care at that time. That's
(11:55):
less than three years at the weekly rate max. And
that's the gross, not their net. And yes, of course
it's disgusting to put a monetary timeline on someone's life.
But if you're running a business like the Archers, then
you have to think about these things, right. Plus, the
(12:15):
Archer Home was not end of life's care. It wasn't
a hospice situation. It was a boarding house. Most people
who stayed at the Archer Home weren't in bad health.
There were hospitals for the infirm. The people at the
Archer Home were mostly just old. That meant there was
(12:36):
a good chance that they lived longer than three years,
so from a business perspective, after a while, each resident
would start costing the Archer's money. Amy and James didn't
seem to realize that, though the Archers seemed less concerned
(12:58):
with the accounting and more concerned with the really important
work they were doing for their community. And it was
important work everyone in town thought so. Windsor's residents really
respected the archers resolve and dedication. They especially revered Amy
(13:20):
after James died in nineteen ten, three years after the
Archer House opened. James's official cause of death was the
sudden onset of kidney disease, which most people in those
days usually suffered from for years before slowly dying, and
(13:42):
it was rarely fatal even to an elderly person unless
they had pre existing conditions. James wasn't elderly. He and
Amy were both in their late thirties or early forties,
so it was shocking to the town when he died,
and it inspired people to respect Amy even more. She
(14:06):
worked so hard to keep their business afloat all on
her own with a little help from James's life insurance payout.
After all, the people of windsor could see the hard work.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Amy looked so worn down.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Because while Amy wasn't elderly, she definitely didn't look like
she was in her thirties. To a degree, every photo
of someone from a historical period makes them look old,
you know, just based on the styles alone. Like Amy
wore the high collared dresses and puff sleeves of the
Gilded Age.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Her hair is the best way I.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Can describe it is by the Martha Washington thing we
used to do in the swimming pool, where we let
it drip forward and then fold it back and pose
like we were in a Guerra type.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So, yeah, the.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Styles have aged her, but she actually looks like she
could just as well be in her sixties, from her
thin lipped, clinched jaw to her furrowed brow. The people
in town, especially the socialites, the ones who decided what
everyone else should think, called her sister Amy. They rarely
(15:22):
saw her without a Bible in hand, and she definitely
looked like someone who would clutch her bible all the time,
like as a weapon. They watched her dedication to the elderly,
some of whom I'm sure they assumed probably nagged and
bothered her constantly, and she had a little girl whose
father had just died too. I mean, that does sound
(15:45):
pretty tough. That is, it would be tough if that
was true. As I mentioned before, while the residents at
Amy's were older, they could take care of themselves, they
mostly just couldn't take care of a full house and themselves,
so they wanted the extra help. But to the town
(16:08):
who didn't know any different, Amy seemed close to saintly
not everyone in the home was as convinced that the
Archer House was a place of God, though, because they
had a problem on their hands.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
People kept dying.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Remember, and I've said it a few times, the residents
weren't sick most of the time, so these frequent deaths
were weird. They seemed to hit out of nowhere, and
they were happening to healthy people. Then Amy would have
their bodies moved out of the house in the middle
(16:51):
of the night so no one really saw them. Amy
said she thought it would be disturbing the other residents
woke to find their friends dead, and fair enough, that
definitely would be disturbing. I mean, imagine you were running
Archer House. I don't think i'd move the bodies like
(17:14):
that it definitely comes off as sort of brushing death
under the rug, if not something actually sinister.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
But anyone who has.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Worked in direct care will tell you you can never
do enough. You can never be fast enough, caring enough,
sweet enough, smart enough, good enough. You have to make
some tough calls, calls that just can't please everyone. It's
(17:46):
not really surprising that some of those calls ended up iffy.
And when it comes to death, dying, and grieving, no
one can do anything perfectly. By the way, we are
now squarely in the Victorian era, when there was a
whole fashion element to grief and grieving correctly. At this
(18:10):
point in time, no one could do anything regarding death
well enough. It's also no surprise that there were deaths,
even though the people at Archer House were in good
health for the most part. They were elderly and well,
you heard what kind of medical care the president got,
(18:32):
and he was the president. Still, residents insisted there were
far too many people dying. Something was very wrong at
Archer House. Someone they said, was killing them. The town
(19:02):
socialites were having none of that. They rallied behind Amy's
pristine reputation, scandalized that anyone could suggest something untoward about
an organization run by a saint. Not only was it impossible,
but the audacity to them. Amy was basically doing charity work,
(19:26):
but for money. Sometimes she even set up funeral arrangements
and sent bouquets to grieving family members. Of course, she
was contractually obligated to do that, but most people didn't
realize that. They also didn't realize that although she claimed
she had taken it upon herself to pay for her
(19:48):
residence funerals when they couldn't afford to, that was a
straight up lie. So while the townspeople might have been
obsessed with Amy and totally convinced that her organization was
a flawless reflection of God's love on earth, the people
closest to her physically her residence refused to be gas
(20:09):
lit out of their suspicions, and as more and more
Archer residents died, those suspicions.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Only grew.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Until one resident, Franklin Andrews, became convinced he knew exactly
what was causing all this death, or rather who. At
(20:52):
this point in his life, Franklin Andrews was in good health,
but he hadn't always been. When he was a boy
in the early eighteen fifties, Franklin had a severe hip
pain that prevented him from walking. It was likely what
(21:12):
we now know as congenital dislocation of the hip. Over
the course of months, that condition caused his leg to shorten.
As a result, he always walked with a pronounced limp.
Even his friends would say he was quote lame. It
(21:33):
was the medical diagnosis at the time. Most people don't
realize that it's an ablest slur when they say it
nowadays that lame actually meant disabled, not boring or silly,
just you know, food for thought in your own language,
going forward in case you didn't know. But back to Franklin.
Franklin had always been self sufficient. He offended for himself
(21:56):
from an early age, and he had worked as both
of farmer and a factory worker. He also took a
routine constitutional walk every morning, a walk of about five
or six miles. I don't actually know anyone who does
that nowadays, even with all our pedometers and fitbits and
(22:18):
Apple watches. It wasn't until he was fifty seven years
old that Franklin started to feel his age. The effects
of years of hard physical work showed up in his bones,
and joints. He got treatment for rheumatism and his shoulders
and legs for months. The condition prevented him from tending
(22:40):
to his family's farm. But let me explain, at fifty
seven Franklin couldn't do hard labor anymore. He had been
doing it though, that's why it was taking its toll. Again,
(23:04):
this is nineteen eleven. There were very few desk jobs
and very few people really changed careers, especially not in
middle age. Although I guess back then fifty seven wouldn't
have been middle age as we see it now. Still,
Franklin was a lifelong bachelor, so he didn't have children
(23:24):
or a wife to lean on for personal care or
even social interaction. It seems like he got most of
his interactions from either his walks or his work. So
when he stopped working, it seems like he got kind
of lonesome. He sold his farm and he went back
and forth between the homes of his two local sisters
(23:46):
in Wallingford and Yalesville, Connecticut. But they were his elder sisters.
They were much more frail than Franklin was. Neither of
them had extravagant means, and Franklin didn't want to burden them.
To their credit, neither sister nor his in laws ever
told Franklin to get lost. In fact, his brother in law,
(24:08):
Warren Andrews, said that Franklin quote was perfectly healthy and
well with the exception of his lameness. But Franklin started
to consider where else he could go for a while.
That was the house of a friend who said Franklin
could stay as long as he wanted. He was no
trouble at all, never complained. But still Franklin didn't crash
(24:33):
for long. It just wasn't in his nature to freeload,
even when his friends and family told him that wasn't
what this was. He bounced around between his family members
and eventually ended up with his third sister, Nellie Pierce.
She had room for him and was happy to have him,
but he didn't want to burden her either. That's just
(24:57):
the type of man he was, you know, the type
who never overstays is welcome, the type who's such a
good house guest that he leaves your house better than
when he arrived. He's the type who would see something
that needed fixing, and before you know it, he's fixed
it without you asking him to. Franklin Andrews had pinballed
(25:31):
from place to place too long for his liking, so
when he saw an advertisement for the Archer Home in
the newspaper, he decided he was in. His sister Nelly
didn't want him to go. Even though Franklin had money
enough to stay at Amy Archer's. Nelly was worried about him,
(25:51):
and like everyone else, she wanted him around. But Franklin
was going period, and once Nelly realized she wasn't going
to talk him out of it, she took the trolley
from Hartford to Windsor and walked the two minutes to
the Archer Home to meet Amy. For herself, Nellie was
(26:12):
not impressed. By this time, September of nineteen twelve, the
Archer Home was deteriorating. There were the baseline issues of
her business model to start with. For new revenue to
come in, she needed more beds, so she kept adding
(26:34):
more beds. At one point there were an estimated twenty
beds in the home, not ten double occupancy bedrooms either
beds in the common areas. The hallways squeezed together to
fit as many people as possible. In addition, James Archer's
(26:54):
death left behind a pile of undone chores, things like painting, weeding, cleaning,
and now they had a severe bedbug problem. Amy had
sent one of her residents down to the wh Mason
drug store to purchase some arsenic. She was handling it.
(27:25):
Amy and Nellie discussed the going rate, either one thousand
dollars up front or seven dollars per week. Nellie looked
around the house and asked, basically, what's the deal with
this place? Why does this house look like a dump.
That's when Amy put the hard cell on her. Her
husband had died a few years ago and he was
(27:48):
her handyman. Nellie didn't bite. Instead, she said, what if
Franklin doesn't like it? Here Amy had an answer for
that as well. She would charge Franklin the one thousand
dollars up front, and if he wanted to leave, she'd
refund him a pro rated amount based on how long
(28:11):
he stayed. Now, I find this a little odd. We
don't have the contract, or at least I couldn't find
a record of it. So the question I'm about to
ask might have been answered in that. But my question is,
how would you pro rate it if it's one thousand
(28:32):
dollars for the rest of his life. Well, Amy, how
do you know how long that would be? Do you
have an amortization timeline in your top desk drawer like
one of those life insurance adjusters. But Nellie either had
the information she needed or she just didn't think Franklin
would want to leave. Despite the crumbling building and crowded halls,
(28:54):
the place was full of people his age who seemed
to be in high spirits. Nellie suspect that this was
exactly what Franklin wanted. She decided to stop making a
fuss about the arrangement and let her brother move into
the Archer House. When Franklin arrived, he paid Amy twenty
(29:18):
five hundred dollars up front. You probably noticed that's a
different sum than what she and Nelly discussed, but Franklin
didn't mind. In fact, he took to Amy right away
and he started fixing the Archer House up too. As usual,
he was being his sweet helpful self, wanting to give
(29:40):
more than he took. Shortly after Franklin arrived, he made
a new friend, and Michael Gilligan. Michael was a child
of Irish immigrants, a divorced father of three sons and
two daughters, all now adults. He was fifty seven to
Franklin's now fifty, and while he'd been a fireman in town,
(30:02):
he had also worked farms. When he arrived, he helped
shoulder the handyman load too. Michael was in great health
like Franklin. The two of them were among the youngest
and healthiest of their residents at the Archer Home, and
Michael got along with Amy just as well as Franklin,
(30:23):
or actually even better. Within a few weeks, Michael and
Amy were involved in a romantic relationship. In November of
nineteen thirteen, Amy married Michael Gilligan, despite his being twenty
years her senior, and the town of Windsor was really
(30:45):
genuinely happy for them. Not only was it great to
see Amy finding love again, but marrying Michael would really
help her in more practical ways. On their marriage license,
Michael listed his assets. Although Michael came across as a
pretty rough guy in appearance, he had a net worth
(31:06):
of about five thousand dollars, which would be today about
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just enough money to
get Amy out of the debt that had accrued in
James's absence. Amy always paid attention to the bank accounts
of her residents. Sometimes she even demanded to see their
(31:29):
bank records before letting them move in. But she didn't
actually learn about Franklin's savings until January of nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That's when there was.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
An odd moment. She wrote him the following letter. I
am writing to ask you, as I consider you my
dearest friend in need, as you have proved so thus far,
could you, or rather, will you please let me take
a few hundred dollars as near to a thousand as
(32:05):
you can for a few months until I can get
money I have loaned. I have but little cash, and
our bills are just now very heavy. She went on,
really working his guilt. I will pay you six percent
in advance. As you know, it is safer than any bank.
(32:27):
I thought, as a friend, you would accommodate me. I
would rather you would please not speak of this to anyone.
I appreciate your confidence, or I would not ask you,
as I have friends whom I know would lend it,
but I would rather not ask them. Please let me
know if you could get it tomorrow morning. I could
use it in the afternoon, And I assure you on
(32:50):
my honor you won't be sorry. I will give you
my note so there can be no possible way for
you to lose. Essentially, despite the fact that her new
(33:11):
husband had just paid off most of her debts, Amy
had just asked Franklin to lend her a bunch more money,
and even though Franklin and Michael were friends, Amy wanted
Franklin to keep it a secret. You might have noticed
a bit of a trend in the cases we've covered
(33:32):
on the greatest true crime stories ever told. The trend
is secret secrets are no fun. Secret secrets hurt someone. Unfortunately,
there's no written record of how Franklin responded to Amy's
request for the loan, but we know that his initial
appreciation for Amy and archer House was starting to waver
(33:54):
by this point. Around this time, he wrote a letter
to his brother Wesley's, saying, there have been some deaths
here lately. Have been eighteen died. There are fifteen here now,
and Amy expects some more before long. They come and
(34:14):
go one after another. There's a hint of wariness in
that report, and Amy's request for money may have triggered
even more of it. Then came February nineteenth, Amy called
her husband Michael downstairs. She had laid a document on
(34:38):
the kitchen table for him. It was his last will
and testament. He signed it, then he laid down. He
wasn't feeling too good. In fact, he was feeling bad.
(35:10):
Michael started vomiting the evening of February nineteenth, nineteen fourteen,
the same day he signed his last will and testament.
He seemed to recover briefly. His friends say he felt
fine when they saw him on February twentieth, But then
on February twenty first, at two in the morning, Amy
(35:33):
called Ralph Frost. Ralph was the manager of the Windsor
hotel where Michael often drank. Ralph also moonlighted as an undertaker.
Ralph was surprised to hear Amy say, come over to
the house right away. It's Michael. He's very sick. He'd
(35:54):
just seen Michael in the bar the night before. Was
Amy calling Ralph as a friend or as an undertaker?
When Ralph arrived, Michael was in and out of consciousness,
but he did recognize Ralph. He definitely wasn't dead. He
(36:15):
didn't need an undertaker, He needed a doctor. Ralph was
livid that Amy hadn't called one. Why didn't she call
someone who might have actually helped. It was after three
o'clock when doctor King arrived. He immediately asked Amy, why
didn't you call me sooner? It was then that Ralph
(36:36):
learned doctor King had already been at the Archer home
to tend to Michael the night before. He left specific
instructions with Amy about how to treat her husband. He
had also given Michael pills for indigestion. Y'all are not
going to believe what was in these stomach pills. I'll
give you a hint. It was a mixture of bismuth,
(36:59):
the main ingredient in peptobismal, and cocaine. That was the
doctor's order. Actually pretty standard for upset stomach at the time.
But by the time Ralph was there and doctor King
returned for the second time, it was clear that the
treatment hadn't worked.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
The doctor should.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Have been called back earlier, and now it was too late.
By sunrise the morning of February twenty second, nineteen fourteen,
Michael Gilligan was dead. Franklin woke during the middle of
the commotion. He was shocked that Michael had died just
(37:42):
a day before. They'd been palling around as usual. Then
his shock turned into horror. Despite how odd this death was,
doctor King didn't conduct an autopsy. He also didn't consult
(38:03):
a coroner. Instead, he made the medical assessment that Michael
died of indigestion, and for some reason, he listed heart
disease among Michael's ailments too. Franklin knew that wasn't true.
(38:24):
Doctor King had only sporadically treated Michael in the past,
but he should have known there was no indication that
Michael had heart disease. What he did have in those
two days between signing his will and dying was a
burning sensation in the pit of his stomach and some
(38:44):
burning in his throat too. Franklin wrote an ominous, upsetting
letter to his family. That makes twenty one that's died
since I came here. Don't know who will be next.
There are eighteen here now and she expects more soon.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Franklin had only been at the Archer House seventeen months.
Twenty one deaths since he arrived in a group of
elderly but mainly healthy people. That's more than one death
per month. That is not normal, and Franklin knew it.
(39:32):
He mentioned Michael's death in every letter he wrote after
Michael died, and he would total up the number of
people who had died since he'd arrived. There was also
stranger shit in the offing. Michael Gilligan's body was embalmed
under the cover of night as usual, and Amy told
(39:53):
her friend that Michael had died of pneumonia, which was
different from the likewise bizarre cause of death given by
doctor King, a brand new diagnosis that came from her
own imagination. For Franklin, all the signs were pointing towards
(40:13):
one thing. Amy Archer Gilligan was the one behind these deaths.
She was killing her residence, and she'd killed Michael. There
was a ton of circumstantial evidence at this point. All
(40:36):
the deaths of apparently healthy people were a sign that
some foul play was at hand. Spiriting the bodies away
at night made Amy look suspicious. But the fact that
Michael died thirty six hours after signing over all his
property to Amy, and then she was making up stories
(40:57):
about the cause of his death, there was one small
satisfying irony in all of this. If Franklin's suspicions were
right about Amy's scheme, even though Amy had control of
Michael Gilligan's property and assets because of the will she
made him sign thirty six hours before his death, she
(41:19):
had to extend a grace period. That meant she had
to publish a notice so any potential creditors could come
make a claim, So his money was still a little
tied up. It's not much justice, but I do love
a dramatic irony like that, especially when it happens in
real life. But what this also meant was Amy's situation
(41:44):
remained somewhat the same financially because they had been married.
Michael's death didn't open up another bed. She had no
new revenue streams, so she started squeezing her current patients,
asking them to withdraw their savings, asking them for loans,
(42:06):
and all the while patients were still dying. Then, true
to form, when a resident died, Amy demanded that the
body immediately be taken away and embalmed. But Amy still
wasn't satisfied financially satisfied, that is, until a couple named
(42:30):
the Goudys got in touch. They were in a situation
like Franklin, had been bouncing between relatives, houses and sick
of feeling like a burden. When they came by to
tour of the Archer home, Amy showed them a double room,
the only one in the place. Amy said, this will
(42:51):
be vacant very soon. That's when Franklin started to get sick.
(43:13):
Join me next week on the Greatest true crime Stories
Ever told for the second episode of our two part
mini series on Amy Archer Gilligan, a tale of greed, violence,
and the consequences of an insatiable appetite for more. We'll
also be talking to m William Phelps, who wrote The
(43:34):
Devil's Rooming House. Phelps' book is full of incredible research
on this case, and it helped make it possible for
me to tell this story. I'm very excited to bring
you even more of his really sharp insights. For more
information about this case and others we cover on the show,
(43:54):
visit diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for Diversion's newsletter
and among the first to hear about special behind the
scenes features with hosts and actors from Diversion's podcasts, more
shows you'll love from Diversion in our partners, and other
exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's Diversionaudio dot Com.
(44:16):
To sign up for the newsletter. The Greatest True Crime
Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm
Mary Kay McBrayer. I wrote this episode and our editorial
director is Nora Battel. Our show is produced and directed
by Mark Francis. Our development team is Emma Dumouth and
(44:38):
Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein,
Mark Francis, and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Diversion Audio
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