February 6, 2024 • 56 mins
This is the second 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. A note this episode contains mature content and
description of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care and listening. This is episode two of
a two part mini series. If you haven't listened to
(00:28):
episode one of The Murder Factory, I'd recommend you press pause,
go listen to last week's episode, and then come on
back here because episode one is crucial for understanding this case.
But this finale is where we get to meet some
incredible characters and watch them bring a monster to justice.
(00:52):
Doctor Arthur Wolfe is performing an autopsy on a disinterred
cadaver that is two years old. It's a secret autopsy,
so the body has been exhumed and carried to a
tool shed where lanterns have been lit to guide his observations.
(01:13):
The first thing Arthur notices is the smell. There isn't one,
and there should be. Second, he notes the face is
turning brown and almost soapy looking. This sheen is what
Arthur calls gravewax, and it forms as a part of
(01:37):
decomposition on a body's forehead and neck. Arthur cuts open
the intact clothing with curved steel shears. Some decomposed flesh
clings to the fabric as he peels it back. There
are no boils or pock marks on the body's skin.
(02:00):
He moves through the examination, cutting through breastbone and ribs
with plierlike shears to view the abdominal organs. Everything looks
standard until he reaches the stomach. It's hugely distended, like
a blown up balloon. That might make sense in a
(02:23):
person who died days before and might still be holding
gas in their stomach, but in a two year old cadaver,
it's bizarre. The stomach is so inflated that as soon
as Arthur releases some of the surrounding pressure, it kind
(02:44):
of pops out of place. Something is preserving this organ
in particular. Arthur ties off the stomach to keep it distended,
and he puts it in a jar to as just
what chemical is preserving it. Even after testing, he'll keep
(03:09):
the stomach for evidence. Welcome to the greatest true crime
stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer
(03:29):
of true crime, which means I live inside the research wormhole.
I'm constantly reading about crime, and I'm always focused on
the people behind the headlines by looking at their experiences
I'm interested in what we can learn about all of us.
(03:50):
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, criminal,
or a combination of those roles. As you probably already know,
(04:10):
women can do anything. Today's episode is the conclusion of
our two part miniseries The Murder Factory. Last week, we
delved into the world of Archer House and the horrible
pattern of secrets and death that infected it. This week,
(04:32):
we close in on the culprit with the help of
an intrepid cast of determined investigators. Listen to how they
circled in after the break. Last episode, we were in Windsor, Connecticut,
(05:23):
and I introduced you to a woman named Amy Archer Gilligan.
She was the twice widowed matron and owner of the
Archer Home, the nursing home under suspicion. You might remember
that she was accused of killing some of her quote inmates.
(05:44):
I want to take a minute and remind ourselves that
what Amy offered was not hospice care. It was not
end of life care. What the Archer Home offered was
more like today's retirement community. Some of the her residents
were as young as their late fifties. One of her
(06:05):
residents was young enough for her, a woman in her
thirties or forties, to marry. And these were not sick people,
at least not before they arrived at the Archer Home.
What it was was a boarding house, mostly for people
who were still mobile and mentally cogent, but who had retired.
(06:25):
They maybe couldn't quite afford to live alone anymore, or
maybe they just didn't want to keep their own house anymore.
I mean, housework today can get out of control. Imagine
keeping a house before there were vacuums and dishwashers and
laundry machines. That's a hard pass, even for me, and
I'm a long way from retirement. Plus add that hand
(06:47):
done housework to some in laws who are always underfoot
and folding my shit the wrong way is frustrating just
thinking about it, even with modern appliances. I mean, how
could you throw every color in the machine on a
cold wash, normal setting and expect it to get clean?
Did you just put my bra in the dryer? How
dare you? I would have been lining up to go
to Amy's too. You pay a small fee and she
(07:09):
takes care of meals, laundry, housework, and doctor visits. You
mean I never have to argue a medical bill on
hold for forty minutes while this same lionel Richie Knockoff
music plays on Loop signed. My ass up. My point
is a lot was different one hundred and ten years ago,
but a lot is also the same, which brings me
(07:32):
to our most important point of similarity. Even in nineteen fourteen,
with pretty primitive medical science, the death rate at Amy's
house was too high. These were people looking down deaths
gaping maw. They had decades left to really drive home
(07:53):
this point. The death rate at the Archer home outnumbered
the rate of other comparative nursing homes in the state
six times over last week, I also introduced you to
(08:16):
a man named Franklin Andrews. Franklin was one of Amy's residents,
and he'd been there for just over a year when
we left him. He stayed with a roommate in the
only two bedroom at the Archer House, and he'd been
watching the health of his fellow residence as the death
toll grew. He never accused Amy of anything but According
(08:38):
to m William Phelps's book The Devil's Rooming House, he
noticed the frequent fast on set deaths, and he inferred
that Amy had something to do with him, especially after
Franklin lost a close friend at the home that was
the able bodied fifty seven year old Michael Gilligan. Michael
(08:58):
had also been married to Amy, despite being twenty years
older than she was. Michael had also signed his last
will and testament leaving everything to Amy, just thirty six
hours before he died. You might also remember how I
really emphasized how healthy Franklin was. Despite having a disability
(09:21):
that made him limp and being treated for rheumatism, he
didn't have any major illnesses. Most notably, Franklin did not
have heart disease, he did not have pneumonia, and he
did not have indigestion. Those were the three different causes
of death that Amy Archer Gilligan, and the doctor she
(09:45):
hired offered as causes of Michael's death. So Franklin's new
roommate Seth Ramsey, whom they called Ramsey, was surprised when
he woke early in the morning to Franklin's moans, his
complaints of burning in the pit of his stomach. Ramsey
(10:07):
was even more surprised when Franklin projectile vomited all over himself.
Ramsey ran straight to Amy and told her to call
the doctor. Ramsey himself couldn't stand the sight or smell
of his roommate's sickness and his Vomit was weird too,
(10:27):
It contained mucus and bile, and it had a coffee
ground appearance. Ramsey walked outside to get some fresh air.
He thought if he met the doctor outside when he arrived,
he could brief him on what was happening. That way,
when he got to their room, he could snap into
action right away. Ramsey waited and waited, but the doctor
(10:53):
never came. Ramsey watched as Franklin vomited and dry heaved
all day. It was tortuous. He couldn't keep down any
fluids or food. Doctor Howard King finally showed up in
the evening, half a day after Franklin got sick, at
(11:14):
which point Franklin was unconscious and clearly struggling to breathe.
Doctor King had never treated Franklin for anything before. He
had been on Amy's payroll for four years. Though, Doctor
King said Franklin suffered quote with what appeared to be
(11:36):
acute indigestion. He prescribed the same nausea tablet of bismuth
and cocaine that he had been prescribing at the Archer
home for some time, because Franklin was far from the
first one to complain about these exact symptoms. Then the
(11:58):
doctor left. At this point in the story, I was thinking,
either this doctor is extremely stupid, or he's been on
the payroll in more ways than one. That evening, Amy
(12:29):
called Franklin's sister, Nellie. She told her that Franklin was
sick and she wasn't sure he was going to get better.
Nelly was shocked. She'd spoken to Franklin less than twenty
four hours ago and he had been fine. He had
just painted offense and he was about to cut the
lawn and break some leaves. When she asked what was wrong,
(12:52):
Amy said the boils on his neck were troubling him.
Nellie said Franklin didn't have any boils his neck, but
when Amy insisted that he was very sick, Nellie said
she was coming up from Hartford tonight. Amy stopped her
she'd handle it. Nellie just told Amy to spare no
(13:17):
expense and she'd be up first thing in the morning.
Amy did call doctor King back, but by the time
he arrived around nine pm, he found Amy standing bedside
and he saw Franklin quote practically dead. He said later,
there was nothing I could do for him. Franklin drew
(13:44):
his last breath around an hour later. On May twenty ninth,
nineteen fourteen, Doctor King cited the primary cause of death
as gastric ulcers. According to this, after sixty years of
zero stomach problems, Franklin Andrews died of gastric ulcers. Amy
(14:12):
immediately moved Franklin's roommate Ramsey into another room. She started
preparing the double room for her new clients, a couple
named Lauren and Alice Goudi. Then she ordered Franklin's body
to be removed and embalmed immediately. When Nelly arrived the
(14:33):
next morning, as promised, her brother was gone. Franklin's sister,
(15:04):
Nellie Pierce, arrived in Windsor at seven o'clock the morning
after Franklin died. She rushed into the Archer house to
find Amy with doctor King and started shouting questions, how
long had he been sick, what was the cause? Of death.
How could this have happened? All Amy managed to do
(15:30):
in response was mumble that Franklin had been painting offense
the day before he got sick, and that was exactly
the point Nelly had been trying to make. Didn't that
mean he was fine? How had this happened? Amy finally
started talking. She said that it was all very shocking.
(15:54):
Franklin had been absolutely fine, as Nellie was saying. He
actually didn't say he felt any pain until about ten
minutes before he died. In fact, he said she shouldn't
even call Nellie because he thought he'd get better. He
didn't want to worry his sister. Now, as Nellie listened
(16:17):
to all of this, she felt enraged. This was all lies.
It had to be. It just didn't make any sense. Plus,
she'd been reading Franklin's letters, she knew that he was
suspicious of Amy. There was foul play here. Amy was involved,
and doctor King had to be too. Even if Amy
(16:39):
was pulling the strings, the doctor should have detected the
cause of death, and now he was just standing there
listening to this garbage. So she responded to Amy simply
and clearly, she wanted to see the body. Amy replied
that unfortunately, Franklin's body was at Smith and Son's funeral
(17:02):
home in Hartford. She never kept bodies in the house
after a death. That's when Nellie decided, if Franklin wasn't
here to hold Amy accountable, Nellie would do it her
damn self. In the following two days, Nellie made two
(17:22):
important trips. She went to see her brother's body, and
she went to the offices of the Hartford Current newspaper.
When she arrived, Nellie said she wanted to report a murder.
That's when she learned that the newspaper already had two
(17:43):
reporters investigating Amy Archer. Gilligan, Connecticut, had only just begun
(18:03):
a state run police department. It was in very early stages.
One fun example of the department's newness was that all
the police were playing clothes officers at the time because
they were a skeleton crew. The local police relied on
reporters to help with investigations by sharing their findings, and
of course, the police would reciprocate by giving those journalists
(18:25):
the scoop when it was time. If you were like
me wondering why Nellie went to the newspaper instead of
the police, it's because the newspaper basically was part of
the police force. To their credit, as Nellie discovered, Amy
had been on the radar of these local journalists for
(18:45):
a long time. In fact, they'd been keeping an eye
on her since the very first time she and James,
her first husband, were sued by a former resident and
their family. But by the time nell got to their office,
they were already ramping up from Amy's on our radar
to a serious investigation. They were just waiting on hard
(19:10):
evidence to break the news. Nelling must have had mixed
feelings when she realized this. Investigators had known something was
(19:33):
going on and they hadn't stopped it in time to
save Franklin's life, not to mention all these other lives. Still,
she wasn't about to let her grief and what ifs
stop her from helping bring down a killer. She started
looking for evidence herself. To speed things along. She and
(19:54):
her siblings combed through Franklin's things. They found a letter
to him from Amy. It was dated just days before
his death. In it, Amy asked Franklin for a loan,
Apparently Franklin had refused. To Nelly, this looked like as
good a motive as any, but she dug further, scouring
(20:16):
Franklin's financial records. That's when she saw that Franklin had
apparently already given Amy alone, and that an additional five
hundred dollars was missing from his bank account. That's around
fifteen thousand dollars in today's money. Nellie was livid Amy
(20:38):
had been using Franklin like a cash cow and then
killed him as soon as he resisted. Perhaps thinking about
the fact that investigators had so far failed to take
this woman down, Nellie had an idea. She would do
this her own way and make Amy pay for this somehow,
(21:00):
either pay for it literally, she lawyered up. Her attorney
threatened Amy with a lawsuit in addition to a quote
bitter and humiliating public scandal that would eventually follow, all
of which could be avoided if Amy paid back the
money she rightfully owed Franklin's family. It worked. Amy caved.
(21:21):
She agreed to pay up, but even then it still
took Nelly and her family forever to squeeze the money
out of her. In the meantime, Amy sent several long, hateful,
(21:41):
curse filled letters to the Andrews family. They're as trolling
as you can imagine, with curses as wild as this one.
I will pray this morning that Almighty God, who knows
how you and yours tried to destroy my home, may
the curse of God come down on each one of
you and punish you by doing for you what you
never had the slightest cause to try to do to us.
(22:06):
You know, the kind of desperate redirection a con artist
uses to divert attention. But in the meantime, while Nellie
pursued her own justice, the journalists hadn't given up on
getting Amy behind bars. The journalists understood Nellie's frustrations with
their timeline because they knew they had to get Amy
(22:29):
out of the game asap too, so they took all
their research on the case to the Superintendent of the
Connecticut State Police, Thomas Egan. Egan was baffled. He asked
the journalists, are you telling me that forty Archer inmates
have been murdered. They answered that it probably wasn't all
(22:50):
forty of them. If they went on probabilities and averages,
five of these people probably died of natural causes, But
that's still left thirty five murders. Egan was skeptical He
just couldn't wrap his mind around how this was possible,
but he listened as the journalists went through their research
(23:12):
piece by piece. It wasn't just the deaths. It was
the abruptness of the deaths, the spiriting away of the
bodies in the night, the complete ineptitude of the one
doctor Amy always called. Egan took it all in and
(23:33):
journalists waited, and then Egan nodded. This idea had legs.
He was going to pursue the lead. Egan enlisted the
help of Hugh Alcorn, the state's attorney, and Alcorn was
just hesitant. If they were accusing a woman of killing
(23:53):
forty people, they needed more evidence than what the journalists
had collected. They only had one shot to bring justice
to forty people. In fact, that number was low. In
the end, the tally would land at fifty three people
(24:13):
murdered in the Archer house. They had to find that evidence.
So the police superintendent and the state's attorney decided to
try to beat Amy Archer Gilligan at her own game.
This is when the state police called on one bad bitch,
Zola Bennett. I love that name. That should be in
(24:35):
baby books for twenty twenty three for sure. Zola was
in her late fifties or early sixties, and she had
been working for the Connecticut State Police as an undercover
private investigator for several years. The department sent Zola over
to Amy's to ask for a room to rent. Sola said,
I'm a wealthy, friendless widow. There's a bit on the
(24:58):
nose if you ask me. But Amy and her write in.
Sola then watched from the inside as Alice Goudi, one
of the couple who had taken Franklin's former room, died
the exact same way that he had. Sola also interviewed
other residents when Amy wasn't around, and she snooped through
documents like letters, diaries, and real estate papers. And she
(25:21):
forwarded everything she found back to the State Police. And
she was the one who told them to interview another
bad bitch. Doctor Emma Thompson Alice Goudi's primary doctor, because
Alice Goudi, unlike most of Amy's residents, didn't use doctor King.
(25:45):
Doctor Thompson noted that Alice Goudi had strange symptoms, including
coldness and rigidity in her extremities. She had a feeling
of constriction in the throat, it was difficult for her
to swallow. Then her stool became watery, it looked like
rice water. And finally there was the vomit, the liquid
(26:09):
mixture of mucus bile, and that coffee ground appearance. Doctor
Thompson knew that when acted upon by gastric fluid, blood
in the stomach almost always yields a coffee ground appearance.
It manifests in other symptoms as well, sometimes resembling a hemorrhage.
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A person can become weak, dizzy, pale, and shrunken, their
head hurts, they break out in a cold sweat. That's
what doctor Emma Thompson remembered when she saw Alice Goudy,
and she knew that the most likely cause of all
this was poison, specifically arsonal That's what doctor Thompson told
(27:03):
the state police, who noted that Alice's symptoms were very
similar to the ones noted in the other Archer Home residents.
It was time to get those bodies out of the ground.
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It was nearly two years after Franklin Andrew's death before
his body got the autopsy it deserved. Part of that
time was taken up with Zola Bennett's investigation at the
Archer House. Part of it was likely due to the
process of collecting the correct paperwork to exhume the body,
(27:57):
but by May nineteen sixteen, investigators were ready. They just
needed the right person to examine the two year old corpse.
The state's attorney, Hugh Alcorn, called doctor Arthur Wolfe. Doctor
Wolfe had a long list of credentials that included training
(28:18):
as a physician in Germany and France, in education at
Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York, and he had
worked at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford for twenty one years.
But doctor Wolfe's most important accolade was that he also
had thirty five years of courtroom experience. A lot of
(28:43):
the cases he testified in were murder cases, and a
lot of those cases were poisoning cases. He was the
guy to avoid any press leaks. State officials set doctor
wolf up to conduct the examination in a tool shed
(29:04):
under the cover of night. When he arrived, the stage
had been set for him, and he conducted the autopsy
with the formality it deserved, moving over the grave wax
of Franklin's face to observe that, as Nellie Pierce had said,
Franklin did not have any boils, if you remember, that's
(29:28):
what Amy told Nelly her brother had died. Of Of course,
Amy had mentioned several different causes of death, but doctor
Wolf ruled that one out easily when he cut open
the torso. Doctor Wolf did note the signs of Franklin's rheumatism.
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His lungs, although healthy, thereby ruling out pneumonia, adhered slightly
to the chest wall. So far, everything was normal. His
heart seemed normal too, normal size, no blockages, no tears,
no trauma. When doctor Wolf cut into it, though, a
(30:13):
quote peculiar and penetrating odor from the body diffused itself
through the room. It smelled pungent, vinegary unique. But doctor
Wolf knew that smell arsenic, and that wasn't the smoking
(30:37):
gun you'd think it would be. At the time, many
undertakers used an arsenic based embalming fluid. Some people speculated
that was one reason why Amy insisted the people who
died at the Archer home were immediately embalmed. Still, it
was odd that the arsenic odor was coming from inside
(31:01):
Franklin's heart. Meanwhile, Franklin's body didn't seem to be emitting
any sense of decomposition at all, which was very odd
for a two year old corpse, unless it had been
poisoned by arsenic. Doctor Wolf kept moving. It seemed like
(31:25):
all of Franklin's organs had been faultlessly preserved, as if
they'd been buried two days ago. Franklin's liver, intestines, and
fat were all in flawless condition. Then he arrived at
Franklin's stomach, and the condition he found it in was
(31:45):
really out of the ordinary. It was distended like a
balloon full of gas. Doctor Wolf removed the organ. This
was evidence because all of these perfectly preserved organs, and
especially that distended stomach confirmed for doctor Wolfe exactly what
(32:07):
doctor Thompson had suspected based on Alice Goudi's symptoms. This
was the work of Arsenic. The state ordered the exhumation
for four other potential victims in a matter of days.
The state police were sure of five murders, and they
(32:30):
had two suspects, doctor Arthur King and Amy Archer Gilligan.
While it was hard to believe either of them was
capable of such atrocities, the investigators went after doctor King first.
I mean, not only was he a man, but he
(32:52):
was a doctor, surely he was more likely to be
responsible for these murders. Once reporters got wind of this,
they stampeded the doctor's front porch looking for comment. Doctor
King said no, he shouted, there was nothing unusual about
(33:12):
Andrew's death. True, he appeared a well man, but he
had a history of ulcers. King also said that Franklin
likely severely overtaxed his stomach during dinner, which caused a
violent recurrence and put too great a strain on his heart. Basically,
(33:33):
doctor King said that Franklin andrews ate himself to death.
Even at the turn of the century. That diagnosis was preposterous.
An educated person would never buy it. A reporter fed
doctor King the next question, what about poison? Doctor King yelled, ridiculous,
(33:54):
I have noticed the symptoms. None of this made doctor
King sound particularly clever, but it didn't make him sound
particularly innocent either. Investigators were still suspicious of him, and
(34:17):
I am too. I'm actually going to ask em William
Phelps for his thoughts on it in our interview, which,
by the way, stick around for that. But the fact is,
as investigators started thinking about the motive, Amy had far
more motive to set this deadly plot in motion than
doctor King did, whether or not Doctor King participated, so
(34:37):
investigators ended up refocusing on Amy. Journalists checked out purchases
at the local drug store. They saw that although Amy
hadn't purchased much arsenic herself, she had sent her residence
to purchase it for her. That meant yes, she sent
her victims to buy their own murder weapon. All counted,
(35:03):
Amy's residents purchased a total of two pounds of arsenic.
That's enough to kill thousands of people. When Franklin andrews
Organs officially tested positive for arsenic, as expected, investigators had
their last bit of concrete evidence they needed to move in,
(35:24):
and they made Amy's purp walk a full spectacle for
the first time in the state. Automobiles aided the arrest.
Two large black pope cars waited outside the County building,
engines running to arrest Amy. Everyone turned out to see
(35:45):
what was going on. When investigators arrived at the Archer home,
Amy invited them in, and this quote's recorded in historical
documents Phelps found when researching the Devil's Rooming House. Amy
said to the cops, I know of the gossip about
(36:06):
me and of the home that has been going around Windsor,
and I am indeed glad you have come. Okay girl.
They told her that anything she said could be used
against her in court, and she said all right, before
proceeding to answer a bunch of questions. After an hour
(36:29):
of questioning, investigators told Amy she was charged with the
murder of Franklin Andrews by poisoning, and they took her
to the town hall. The motorcade that followed her there
was spectacular. While Amy was booked and further questioned, police
(36:53):
searched the Archer home for evidence. The search yielded several contracts,
despite Amy saying she did destroyed the contracts after her
tenant's deaths. They also found bottles of mislabeled fluids, letters, notebooks,
and bank records. A crowd watched while officials carried boxes
(37:13):
of evidence out the front door and into waiting cars.
Speaking of finding evidence, doctor Arthur Wolfe had also examined
Michael Gilligan's corpse. His stomach had enough arsenic in it
to kill five men his size. Amy was also accused
(37:36):
of killing her first husband, James Archer. His symptoms were
consistent with arsenic poisoning. Two while she awaited trial. The prosecution,
led by States Attorney Hugh Alcorn, brought offenses. In addition
to killing five residents and two husbands, Amy had violated
(38:00):
the law by removing a dead body from any home
without a permit. Transporting the body over state lines was
another offense Amy had committed both. Meanwhile, Amy spoke out
about her innocence, and doctor King rallied for her too.
(38:22):
While Amy waited in jail, King went off and he
looked stupid doing it. One theory he presented was that
Franklin Andrew's body quote could have been twice exhumed. He
claimed that someone could have already dug up the body
and planted the arsenic on the cadaver. A doctor said
(38:45):
that articles appeared in newspapers that noted King was not
only employed as the in house physician at the Archer home,
but he was the medical examiner for the town as well.
So the man who treated Amy's residence was also assigning
reasons for their deaths. In one later interview, King finally
(39:08):
questioned his own judgment, saying that maybe he should have
paid closer attention. He admitted that his diagnosis of Franklin
Andrew's death as the result of gastric ulcers could have
been incorrect, and the real cause could have been arsenic poisoning.
(39:29):
The symptoms might have looked similar. He told the interviewer, quote,
maybe I ought to have analyzed the contents of the stomach,
but I certainly did not suspect that there was anything wrong.
There was nothing suspicious to me about the death, and
no reason why I should have gone any further with
the examination. Did you ever hear of death by arsenic
(39:53):
being discovered as such immediately after death? I never did.
But neither doctor King's expres uses nor his regrets made
any difference for Amy. In September of nineteen sixteen, the
(40:15):
grand jury charged Amy Archer Gilligan with five counts of
first degree murder. These five victims, who were only a
small portion of the victims she actually killed, were Franklin, Andrews,
Alice Goudie, Michael Gilligan, Charles Smith, and maud Lynch. When
(40:38):
the trial commenced, the courtroom was standing room only. Many
witnesses testified against Amy. Frank Smith, undertaker at Amy's funeral
parlor of choice, testified that none of the Red Falcon
Brand embalming fluid he used ever contained arsenic, and he
(40:58):
said that he always had permits to remove a body
in the middle of the night, except for Franklin, Andrews,
and Alice Goudy. Doctor Wolf spent two full days explaining
his findings and how he reached his conclusions that all
five exhumed bodies had died by arsenic poisoning. Even Franklin's
(41:21):
banker took the stand. He entered all the bank account
records as evidence and verified the transactions. The all male jury,
because women could not sit on jurys in most states
until nineteen seventeen, soon reached a verdict. The judge said,
(41:43):
Amy Archer Gilligan is guilty of the crime of murder
in the first degree. She is remanded to the custody
of the Sheriff of Hartford County, and that she be
conveyed by him to the Connecticut State Prison at Weathersfield,
And that upon said sixth day of November nine, nineteen seventeen,
before the hour of sunrise, within the walls of said prison,
(42:05):
by warden of said prison, she be hung by the
neck until she is dead. Amy's lawyers tried to appeal
with an insanity plea. They claimed she was addicted to morphine.
That may well have been true after looking at the
records of her druggist, but the verdict was not overturned.
(42:25):
She was granted a different sentence. Rather than being executed
by hanging, she would live for fifty years in a
prison for the criminally insane. I always try to leave
these stories with a bit of reflection. For me, the
biggest takeaway from this case of multiple murders is the
(42:45):
importance of looking out for the vulnerable. Until this series
of horrific murders, private sector homes for the elderly had
no one watching them, not on a local level or
anything higher. Anyone not acting right really only got punished
if a resident's family member hired an attorney or made
(43:07):
a complaint. There was no watchful oversight. That meant it
had to be bad enough for a resident to snitch
out their primary caregiver. Think about how bad that would
have to be. It also required that the residents have
a family member to tell their problems to to advocate
for them, and that wasn't always the case. But thank
(43:32):
god for Nelly Peers Right. She was Franklin's sister and
she was just not having it. And thanks to the
journalists and to Zola Bennett and to doctor Emma Thompson,
a lot of badass people looked out for justice in
this case, and a lot of them were badass women.
So I think the takeaway here is twofold. One thankfully
(43:53):
private sector nursing homes are regulated now, and two, be
on the side of the badasses who fight for the truth,
whether that's as an investigator like so many people in
this story, or in whatever it is. That's your walk
of life, and that's how I think of the writer
m William Phelps, author of The Devil's Rooming House, who
(44:16):
uncovered so much truth while writing this book. I'm so
lucky to have the opportunity to ask him a few
more questions about this case. That's right after the break
stay with us, Oh, Matthew, I'm so happy to talk
(44:53):
to you about The Devil's Rooming House. Thank you so
much for coming to talk to me. I wanted to
ask you first what drew you to Amy Archer Gilligan
in particular.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Well, I had my eye on the Amy Archer Gilligan's
story for many years. I mean, I grew up as
a kid, maybe four miles from the house. It wasn't
a talked about story then. But what got me interested
in it was I was writing a lot of contemporary
true crime and I wanted to do an historical true
(45:26):
crime book. And the fact that the Amy Archer Gilligan's
story is the true basis for the famous play Arsenic
and Old Lace really drew me to it. The thing
that worried me was why hadn't a book been done
on it already? As a journalist, that always worries me.
So the first inclination is, oh, there's not enough research available.
(45:50):
So I began to look into that. So I started
to poke around, and I knew that the trial was
a huge spectacle in Hartford, Connecticut at the time, at
the turn of the century when it happened. So the
first thing I did was went to the Connecticut Historical
Society and they were like, we don't know, we don't
(46:12):
have much, you know, let's see. So that process started,
and I'll never forget it took some time, but they
poked around and in the library itself was a bunch
of books about Connecticut historical crimes, et cetera. But within
that were like these encyclopedia type of books that someone
(46:32):
had transcribed all of the trial transcripts and kind of
put it in a book form, but it wasn't printed.
It was like one book. So I was able to
get hold of that. But what else I found, which
I found very interesting, was in the basement in the vault,
they had more Amy Archer Gilligan research. It was in
(46:55):
a box and the boxes had all these scrolls in
them of paper, and around the paper was a charcoal.
There was a band of charcoal around the paper, which
I thought was odd, and there was charcoal bits all
in the box. Well, come to find out, old rubber
bands turned into charcoal after a period of time. So
(47:17):
what that told me was very significant. It told me
no one had looked at those documents, no one looked
at it, no one had looked at him. So yeah,
that fired me up. And then I, uh, just you know,
started the journey from there.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Well I love that story so much, not only because
it was successful, but also because you got to go
like down into the library, like the bowels of the library,
which sounds so cool, and it's like things are like
ossifying and stuff. Yeah on the form, So oh that's
so cool. Yeah. Wow, So you had a lot of
(47:55):
material to sift through.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, I mean within the trial document mints were forensic reports,
testimony from early forensic scientists, all the law enforcement, Amy Archer,
Gilligan herself. So I was able to bring that book
to life. I mean there it was the trial. The
whole story was right there. You know.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yeah, that's incredible. I'm sure that there were a lot
of surprises when you were reading that, But is there
one that kind of jumped out at us, like because
of the time period of it being bizarre and like
sticking with you, is there anything like that?
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I Mean what was striking in the transcripts were when
law enforcements was explaining how they would exhume bodies in
the middle of the night, bring the body to a
tool shed in the cemetery, open the body up, and
test it for arsenic right there. And it was a
simple test. I mean you could almost tell someone was
(48:51):
murdered by arsenic just by opening them up and seeing
their stomach kind of bloated. So, yeah, they did autopsies
right there on site. That was pretty bizarre, but I
understood it.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
That's such a great scene. I mean, I know, it's
not a scene scene. It's like it's it happened right,
but like it sticks with you. Yeah. On the topic
of writing somewhat narratives true crime and historical true crime,
I also love to write narrative true crime, and I
feel like what in historical as well? And I feel
(49:24):
like the question that I get asked so often is
like the dialogue, like how do you know they said that?
Or how do you what kind of artistic license went
into it? What's your approach to writing the dialogue?
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Well, I mean dialogue is dialogue that said. You know,
I'm not making it up. I'm just looking at court documents.
I'm looking at interviews people gave, and during interviews people
will say, well, when she approached me, she said dot
dot dot, So that's dialogue, you know. But a lot
of times dialogue are quotes from someone on the stand
(49:59):
who's given testimony, or something that's said in a police report.
You know. I walked up to the counter and I said, hey,
give me all your money, you know, so that turns
into dialogue. I don't use any artistic license at all.
I spend a tremendous amount of time looking digging.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
So speaking of the dialogue, and some of the characters
and the actual people in this book. Doctor King, the
one that was on the payroll at the Archer Home,
he seems so fishy to me the whole time. I
was like, he's in on it. He has to be
in on it.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Of course he was, and I just of.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Course he was right.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, he was being bought and paid for. I mean
he was the town corner. Yeah, yeah, he was the
town corner and the doctor in town. So Amy employed
him as the doctor for the residence of the Elderly Home.
So he would come over there and diagnose people, and
(50:58):
when somebody died, he would pronounce their death and sign
off on the death certificate. So she was paying him
already to come over right, So of course he knew
what was going on. He had to know what was
going on, and he turned a blind eye to it.
He should have been charged himself in some respects.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Okay, So switching gears a little bit. You've gone from
writing true crime to working in true crime audio as well,
and what has that been like the transition are do
you like the differences in the storytelling aspect? How do
you approach the research?
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Well, you know, I've kind of prepared for this in
the way that I've written books for twenty two years.
I've done television for twenty two years, written for television,
produced documentaries, So bringing the two together for podcasting, for me,
it was a challenge, but it was a good challenge.
It allows me to dig deeper into stories than I
(51:55):
would for television. It allows actual people, their voices to
be heard, right, and I love the investigative part of it.
It's just a new form for me to tell these
stories of victims and their families. And now I've really
gotten into missing people more, trying to offer new information
(52:16):
to cases and books. You can't really go down that road.
Book editors want a beginning, middle, and end. With podcasting,
certainly you can bring people along for the journey.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah. I like that. It seems like, not necessarily that
podcasting is more forgiving, but you can continue to add
to the story, right whereas right once it's in writing,
it's out there.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Like that's a great point. I can update my podcasts
than I have at any time. I can add another
bonus episode or add another episode to a narrative season,
So I like the format a lot. I just started
full time on a new season of Paper Ghosts. So
I'm looking forward to Paper Ghosts season four. I'm heading
out in a couple of week on a research trip.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Actually, were you headed? What are you going to do?
That was my next question is what are you going
to do next? Or can you tell me is a secret?
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I can say that I'm heading out to the Ozarks, okay,
and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Okay, it sounds good. My last question is what do
you want to leave us with? Like, what's our biggest
takeaway from talking about Amy Archer Gilligan. What do you
want your readers of this story, listeners of our podcast
to get from it.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Well, you're going to take away from this, I hope
you do, is that a cycle path one hundred years
ago is really no different than a cycle path today.
The mentality, the mindset, the psychology may have evolved, but
it's the same, right And I think in this country
(53:46):
we have this Hollywood cartoon version, if you will, of
the serial killer who wears a clown suit or drives
a Volkswagen or you know, a domer. That's not really
what serial killers are like, those are anomalies. There are
Amy Archer Gilligans out there today who are killing that
(54:07):
we just we haven't caught yet, right, you know, so
we have to keep our eyes and our ears always open.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Many thanks again to m William Phelps for coming to
talk to me. For more of his insights on the
Amy Archer Gilligan case, check out his book The Devil's
Rooming House, and for more of his voice and incredible
research and podcast form. I know I'll be eagerly awaiting
the results of his trip to the Ozarks in season
four of Paper Ghosts. Join me next week on the
(54:39):
Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told, where we tell the
story of love, greed and murder, the story of the
deadly gold digger Celeste Beard. In addition to im William Phelps' book,
The Devil's Rooming House, I like to shout out all
the court documents from the trial and the article from
(55:00):
the Vigilante Journalist mentioned in the episode itself. They were
all crucial in helping me tell this story. For more
information about this case and other cases we cover on
the show, visit Diversion Audio dot com, sign up for
Diversion's newsletter and be among the first to hear about
our special behind the scenes features with the hosts and
(55:22):
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. That's Diversion Audio dot com to sign up
for the newsletter. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer.
(55:45):
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 Dmouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music
by Tyler Cash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis, and
(56:05):
Scott Waxman. Diversion Audio
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
description of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care and listening. This is episode two of
a two part mini series. If you haven't listened to
(00:28):
episode one of The Murder Factory, I'd recommend you press pause,
go listen to last week's episode, and then come on
back here because episode one is crucial for understanding this case.
But this finale is where we get to meet some
incredible characters and watch them bring a monster to justice.
(00:52):
Doctor Arthur Wolfe is performing an autopsy on a disinterred
cadaver that is two years old. It's a secret autopsy,
so the body has been exhumed and carried to a
tool shed where lanterns have been lit to guide his observations.
(01:13):
The first thing Arthur notices is the smell. There isn't one,
and there should be. Second, he notes the face is
turning brown and almost soapy looking. This sheen is what
Arthur calls gravewax, and it forms as a part of
(01:37):
decomposition on a body's forehead and neck. Arthur cuts open
the intact clothing with curved steel shears. Some decomposed flesh
clings to the fabric as he peels it back. There
are no boils or pock marks on the body's skin.
(02:00):
He moves through the examination, cutting through breastbone and ribs
with plierlike shears to view the abdominal organs. Everything looks
standard until he reaches the stomach. It's hugely distended, like
a blown up balloon. That might make sense in a
(02:23):
person who died days before and might still be holding
gas in their stomach, but in a two year old cadaver,
it's bizarre. The stomach is so inflated that as soon
as Arthur releases some of the surrounding pressure, it kind
(02:44):
of pops out of place. Something is preserving this organ
in particular. Arthur ties off the stomach to keep it distended,
and he puts it in a jar to as just
what chemical is preserving it. Even after testing, he'll keep
(03:09):
the stomach for evidence. Welcome to the greatest true crime
stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer
(03:29):
of true crime, which means I live inside the research wormhole.
I'm constantly reading about crime, and I'm always focused on
the people behind the headlines by looking at their experiences
I'm interested in what we can learn about all of us.
(03:50):
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, criminal,
or a combination of those roles. As you probably already know,
(04:10):
women can do anything. Today's episode is the conclusion of
our two part miniseries The Murder Factory. Last week, we
delved into the world of Archer House and the horrible
pattern of secrets and death that infected it. This week,
(04:32):
we close in on the culprit with the help of
an intrepid cast of determined investigators. Listen to how they
circled in after the break. Last episode, we were in Windsor, Connecticut,
(05:23):
and I introduced you to a woman named Amy Archer Gilligan.
She was the twice widowed matron and owner of the
Archer Home, the nursing home under suspicion. You might remember
that she was accused of killing some of her quote inmates.
(05:44):
I want to take a minute and remind ourselves that
what Amy offered was not hospice care. It was not
end of life care. What the Archer Home offered was
more like today's retirement community. Some of the her residents
were as young as their late fifties. One of her
(06:05):
residents was young enough for her, a woman in her
thirties or forties, to marry. And these were not sick people,
at least not before they arrived at the Archer Home.
What it was was a boarding house, mostly for people
who were still mobile and mentally cogent, but who had retired.
(06:25):
They maybe couldn't quite afford to live alone anymore, or
maybe they just didn't want to keep their own house anymore.
I mean, housework today can get out of control. Imagine
keeping a house before there were vacuums and dishwashers and
laundry machines. That's a hard pass, even for me, and
I'm a long way from retirement. Plus add that hand
(06:47):
done housework to some in laws who are always underfoot
and folding my shit the wrong way is frustrating just
thinking about it, even with modern appliances. I mean, how
could you throw every color in the machine on a
cold wash, normal setting and expect it to get clean?
Did you just put my bra in the dryer? How
dare you? I would have been lining up to go
to Amy's too. You pay a small fee and she
(07:09):
takes care of meals, laundry, housework, and doctor visits. You
mean I never have to argue a medical bill on
hold for forty minutes while this same lionel Richie Knockoff
music plays on Loop signed. My ass up. My point
is a lot was different one hundred and ten years ago,
but a lot is also the same, which brings me
(07:32):
to our most important point of similarity. Even in nineteen fourteen,
with pretty primitive medical science, the death rate at Amy's
house was too high. These were people looking down deaths
gaping maw. They had decades left to really drive home
(07:53):
this point. The death rate at the Archer home outnumbered
the rate of other comparative nursing homes in the state
six times over last week, I also introduced you to
(08:16):
a man named Franklin Andrews. Franklin was one of Amy's residents,
and he'd been there for just over a year when
we left him. He stayed with a roommate in the
only two bedroom at the Archer House, and he'd been
watching the health of his fellow residence as the death
toll grew. He never accused Amy of anything but According
(08:38):
to m William Phelps's book The Devil's Rooming House, he
noticed the frequent fast on set deaths, and he inferred
that Amy had something to do with him, especially after
Franklin lost a close friend at the home that was
the able bodied fifty seven year old Michael Gilligan. Michael
(08:58):
had also been married to Amy, despite being twenty years
older than she was. Michael had also signed his last
will and testament leaving everything to Amy, just thirty six
hours before he died. You might also remember how I
really emphasized how healthy Franklin was. Despite having a disability
(09:21):
that made him limp and being treated for rheumatism, he
didn't have any major illnesses. Most notably, Franklin did not
have heart disease, he did not have pneumonia, and he
did not have indigestion. Those were the three different causes
of death that Amy Archer Gilligan, and the doctor she
(09:45):
hired offered as causes of Michael's death. So Franklin's new
roommate Seth Ramsey, whom they called Ramsey, was surprised when
he woke early in the morning to Franklin's moans, his
complaints of burning in the pit of his stomach. Ramsey
(10:07):
was even more surprised when Franklin projectile vomited all over himself.
Ramsey ran straight to Amy and told her to call
the doctor. Ramsey himself couldn't stand the sight or smell
of his roommate's sickness and his Vomit was weird too,
(10:27):
It contained mucus and bile, and it had a coffee
ground appearance. Ramsey walked outside to get some fresh air.
He thought if he met the doctor outside when he arrived,
he could brief him on what was happening. That way,
when he got to their room, he could snap into
action right away. Ramsey waited and waited, but the doctor
(10:53):
never came. Ramsey watched as Franklin vomited and dry heaved
all day. It was tortuous. He couldn't keep down any
fluids or food. Doctor Howard King finally showed up in
the evening, half a day after Franklin got sick, at
(11:14):
which point Franklin was unconscious and clearly struggling to breathe.
Doctor King had never treated Franklin for anything before. He
had been on Amy's payroll for four years. Though, Doctor
King said Franklin suffered quote with what appeared to be
(11:36):
acute indigestion. He prescribed the same nausea tablet of bismuth
and cocaine that he had been prescribing at the Archer
home for some time, because Franklin was far from the
first one to complain about these exact symptoms. Then the
(11:58):
doctor left. At this point in the story, I was thinking,
either this doctor is extremely stupid, or he's been on
the payroll in more ways than one. That evening, Amy
(12:29):
called Franklin's sister, Nellie. She told her that Franklin was
sick and she wasn't sure he was going to get better.
Nelly was shocked. She'd spoken to Franklin less than twenty
four hours ago and he had been fine. He had
just painted offense and he was about to cut the
lawn and break some leaves. When she asked what was wrong,
(12:52):
Amy said the boils on his neck were troubling him.
Nellie said Franklin didn't have any boils his neck, but
when Amy insisted that he was very sick, Nellie said
she was coming up from Hartford tonight. Amy stopped her
she'd handle it. Nellie just told Amy to spare no
(13:17):
expense and she'd be up first thing in the morning.
Amy did call doctor King back, but by the time
he arrived around nine pm, he found Amy standing bedside
and he saw Franklin quote practically dead. He said later,
there was nothing I could do for him. Franklin drew
(13:44):
his last breath around an hour later. On May twenty ninth,
nineteen fourteen, Doctor King cited the primary cause of death
as gastric ulcers. According to this, after sixty years of
zero stomach problems, Franklin Andrews died of gastric ulcers. Amy
(14:12):
immediately moved Franklin's roommate Ramsey into another room. She started
preparing the double room for her new clients, a couple
named Lauren and Alice Goudi. Then she ordered Franklin's body
to be removed and embalmed immediately. When Nelly arrived the
(14:33):
next morning, as promised, her brother was gone. Franklin's sister,
(15:04):
Nellie Pierce, arrived in Windsor at seven o'clock the morning
after Franklin died. She rushed into the Archer house to
find Amy with doctor King and started shouting questions, how
long had he been sick, what was the cause? Of death.
How could this have happened? All Amy managed to do
(15:30):
in response was mumble that Franklin had been painting offense
the day before he got sick, and that was exactly
the point Nelly had been trying to make. Didn't that
mean he was fine? How had this happened? Amy finally
started talking. She said that it was all very shocking.
(15:54):
Franklin had been absolutely fine, as Nellie was saying. He
actually didn't say he felt any pain until about ten
minutes before he died. In fact, he said she shouldn't
even call Nellie because he thought he'd get better. He
didn't want to worry his sister. Now, as Nellie listened
(16:17):
to all of this, she felt enraged. This was all lies.
It had to be. It just didn't make any sense. Plus,
she'd been reading Franklin's letters, she knew that he was
suspicious of Amy. There was foul play here. Amy was involved,
and doctor King had to be too. Even if Amy
(16:39):
was pulling the strings, the doctor should have detected the
cause of death, and now he was just standing there
listening to this garbage. So she responded to Amy simply
and clearly, she wanted to see the body. Amy replied
that unfortunately, Franklin's body was at Smith and Son's funeral
(17:02):
home in Hartford. She never kept bodies in the house
after a death. That's when Nellie decided, if Franklin wasn't
here to hold Amy accountable, Nellie would do it her
damn self. In the following two days, Nellie made two
(17:22):
important trips. She went to see her brother's body, and
she went to the offices of the Hartford Current newspaper.
When she arrived, Nellie said she wanted to report a murder.
That's when she learned that the newspaper already had two
(17:43):
reporters investigating Amy Archer. Gilligan, Connecticut, had only just begun
(18:03):
a state run police department. It was in very early stages.
One fun example of the department's newness was that all
the police were playing clothes officers at the time because
they were a skeleton crew. The local police relied on
reporters to help with investigations by sharing their findings, and
of course, the police would reciprocate by giving those journalists
(18:25):
the scoop when it was time. If you were like
me wondering why Nellie went to the newspaper instead of
the police, it's because the newspaper basically was part of
the police force. To their credit, as Nellie discovered, Amy
had been on the radar of these local journalists for
(18:45):
a long time. In fact, they'd been keeping an eye
on her since the very first time she and James,
her first husband, were sued by a former resident and
their family. But by the time nell got to their office,
they were already ramping up from Amy's on our radar
to a serious investigation. They were just waiting on hard
(19:10):
evidence to break the news. Nelling must have had mixed
feelings when she realized this. Investigators had known something was
(19:33):
going on and they hadn't stopped it in time to
save Franklin's life, not to mention all these other lives. Still,
she wasn't about to let her grief and what ifs
stop her from helping bring down a killer. She started
looking for evidence herself. To speed things along. She and
(19:54):
her siblings combed through Franklin's things. They found a letter
to him from Amy. It was dated just days before
his death. In it, Amy asked Franklin for a loan,
Apparently Franklin had refused. To Nelly, this looked like as
good a motive as any, but she dug further, scouring
(20:16):
Franklin's financial records. That's when she saw that Franklin had
apparently already given Amy alone, and that an additional five
hundred dollars was missing from his bank account. That's around
fifteen thousand dollars in today's money. Nellie was livid Amy
(20:38):
had been using Franklin like a cash cow and then
killed him as soon as he resisted. Perhaps thinking about
the fact that investigators had so far failed to take
this woman down, Nellie had an idea. She would do
this her own way and make Amy pay for this somehow,
(21:00):
either pay for it literally, she lawyered up. Her attorney
threatened Amy with a lawsuit in addition to a quote
bitter and humiliating public scandal that would eventually follow, all
of which could be avoided if Amy paid back the
money she rightfully owed Franklin's family. It worked. Amy caved.
(21:21):
She agreed to pay up, but even then it still
took Nelly and her family forever to squeeze the money
out of her. In the meantime, Amy sent several long, hateful,
(21:41):
curse filled letters to the Andrews family. They're as trolling
as you can imagine, with curses as wild as this one.
I will pray this morning that Almighty God, who knows
how you and yours tried to destroy my home, may
the curse of God come down on each one of
you and punish you by doing for you what you
never had the slightest cause to try to do to us.
(22:06):
You know, the kind of desperate redirection a con artist
uses to divert attention. But in the meantime, while Nellie
pursued her own justice, the journalists hadn't given up on
getting Amy behind bars. The journalists understood Nellie's frustrations with
their timeline because they knew they had to get Amy
(22:29):
out of the game asap too, so they took all
their research on the case to the Superintendent of the
Connecticut State Police, Thomas Egan. Egan was baffled. He asked
the journalists, are you telling me that forty Archer inmates
have been murdered. They answered that it probably wasn't all
(22:50):
forty of them. If they went on probabilities and averages,
five of these people probably died of natural causes, But
that's still left thirty five murders. Egan was skeptical He
just couldn't wrap his mind around how this was possible,
but he listened as the journalists went through their research
(23:12):
piece by piece. It wasn't just the deaths. It was
the abruptness of the deaths, the spiriting away of the
bodies in the night, the complete ineptitude of the one
doctor Amy always called. Egan took it all in and
(23:33):
journalists waited, and then Egan nodded. This idea had legs.
He was going to pursue the lead. Egan enlisted the
help of Hugh Alcorn, the state's attorney, and Alcorn was
just hesitant. If they were accusing a woman of killing
(23:53):
forty people, they needed more evidence than what the journalists
had collected. They only had one shot to bring justice
to forty people. In fact, that number was low. In
the end, the tally would land at fifty three people
(24:13):
murdered in the Archer house. They had to find that evidence.
So the police superintendent and the state's attorney decided to
try to beat Amy Archer Gilligan at her own game.
This is when the state police called on one bad bitch,
Zola Bennett. I love that name. That should be in
(24:35):
baby books for twenty twenty three for sure. Zola was
in her late fifties or early sixties, and she had
been working for the Connecticut State Police as an undercover
private investigator for several years. The department sent Zola over
to Amy's to ask for a room to rent. Sola said,
I'm a wealthy, friendless widow. There's a bit on the
(24:58):
nose if you ask me. But Amy and her write in.
Sola then watched from the inside as Alice Goudi, one
of the couple who had taken Franklin's former room, died
the exact same way that he had. Sola also interviewed
other residents when Amy wasn't around, and she snooped through
documents like letters, diaries, and real estate papers. And she
(25:21):
forwarded everything she found back to the State Police. And
she was the one who told them to interview another
bad bitch. Doctor Emma Thompson Alice Goudi's primary doctor, because
Alice Goudi, unlike most of Amy's residents, didn't use doctor King.
(25:45):
Doctor Thompson noted that Alice Goudi had strange symptoms, including
coldness and rigidity in her extremities. She had a feeling
of constriction in the throat, it was difficult for her
to swallow. Then her stool became watery, it looked like
rice water. And finally there was the vomit, the liquid
(26:09):
mixture of mucus bile, and that coffee ground appearance. Doctor
Thompson knew that when acted upon by gastric fluid, blood
in the stomach almost always yields a coffee ground appearance.
It manifests in other symptoms as well, sometimes resembling a hemorrhage.
(26:34):
A person can become weak, dizzy, pale, and shrunken, their
head hurts, they break out in a cold sweat. That's
what doctor Emma Thompson remembered when she saw Alice Goudy,
and she knew that the most likely cause of all
this was poison, specifically arsonal That's what doctor Thompson told
(27:03):
the state police, who noted that Alice's symptoms were very
similar to the ones noted in the other Archer Home residents.
It was time to get those bodies out of the ground.
(27:36):
It was nearly two years after Franklin Andrew's death before
his body got the autopsy it deserved. Part of that
time was taken up with Zola Bennett's investigation at the
Archer House. Part of it was likely due to the
process of collecting the correct paperwork to exhume the body,
(27:57):
but by May nineteen sixteen, investigators were ready. They just
needed the right person to examine the two year old corpse.
The state's attorney, Hugh Alcorn, called doctor Arthur Wolfe. Doctor
Wolfe had a long list of credentials that included training
(28:18):
as a physician in Germany and France, in education at
Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York, and he had
worked at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford for twenty one years.
But doctor Wolfe's most important accolade was that he also
had thirty five years of courtroom experience. A lot of
(28:43):
the cases he testified in were murder cases, and a
lot of those cases were poisoning cases. He was the
guy to avoid any press leaks. State officials set doctor
wolf up to conduct the examination in a tool shed
(29:04):
under the cover of night. When he arrived, the stage
had been set for him, and he conducted the autopsy
with the formality it deserved, moving over the grave wax
of Franklin's face to observe that, as Nellie Pierce had said,
Franklin did not have any boils, if you remember, that's
(29:28):
what Amy told Nelly her brother had died. Of Of course,
Amy had mentioned several different causes of death, but doctor
Wolf ruled that one out easily when he cut open
the torso. Doctor Wolf did note the signs of Franklin's rheumatism.
(29:48):
His lungs, although healthy, thereby ruling out pneumonia, adhered slightly
to the chest wall. So far, everything was normal. His
heart seemed normal too, normal size, no blockages, no tears,
no trauma. When doctor Wolf cut into it, though, a
(30:13):
quote peculiar and penetrating odor from the body diffused itself
through the room. It smelled pungent, vinegary unique. But doctor
Wolf knew that smell arsenic, and that wasn't the smoking
(30:37):
gun you'd think it would be. At the time, many
undertakers used an arsenic based embalming fluid. Some people speculated
that was one reason why Amy insisted the people who
died at the Archer home were immediately embalmed. Still, it
was odd that the arsenic odor was coming from inside
(31:01):
Franklin's heart. Meanwhile, Franklin's body didn't seem to be emitting
any sense of decomposition at all, which was very odd
for a two year old corpse, unless it had been
poisoned by arsenic. Doctor Wolf kept moving. It seemed like
(31:25):
all of Franklin's organs had been faultlessly preserved, as if
they'd been buried two days ago. Franklin's liver, intestines, and
fat were all in flawless condition. Then he arrived at
Franklin's stomach, and the condition he found it in was
(31:45):
really out of the ordinary. It was distended like a
balloon full of gas. Doctor Wolf removed the organ. This
was evidence because all of these perfectly preserved organs, and
especially that distended stomach confirmed for doctor Wolfe exactly what
(32:07):
doctor Thompson had suspected based on Alice Goudi's symptoms. This
was the work of Arsenic. The state ordered the exhumation
for four other potential victims in a matter of days.
The state police were sure of five murders, and they
(32:30):
had two suspects, doctor Arthur King and Amy Archer Gilligan.
While it was hard to believe either of them was
capable of such atrocities, the investigators went after doctor King first.
I mean, not only was he a man, but he
(32:52):
was a doctor, surely he was more likely to be
responsible for these murders. Once reporters got wind of this,
they stampeded the doctor's front porch looking for comment. Doctor
King said no, he shouted, there was nothing unusual about
(33:12):
Andrew's death. True, he appeared a well man, but he
had a history of ulcers. King also said that Franklin
likely severely overtaxed his stomach during dinner, which caused a
violent recurrence and put too great a strain on his heart. Basically,
(33:33):
doctor King said that Franklin andrews ate himself to death.
Even at the turn of the century. That diagnosis was preposterous.
An educated person would never buy it. A reporter fed
doctor King the next question, what about poison? Doctor King yelled, ridiculous,
(33:54):
I have noticed the symptoms. None of this made doctor
King sound particularly clever, but it didn't make him sound
particularly innocent either. Investigators were still suspicious of him, and
(34:17):
I am too. I'm actually going to ask em William
Phelps for his thoughts on it in our interview, which,
by the way, stick around for that. But the fact is,
as investigators started thinking about the motive, Amy had far
more motive to set this deadly plot in motion than
doctor King did, whether or not Doctor King participated, so
(34:37):
investigators ended up refocusing on Amy. Journalists checked out purchases
at the local drug store. They saw that although Amy
hadn't purchased much arsenic herself, she had sent her residence
to purchase it for her. That meant yes, she sent
her victims to buy their own murder weapon. All counted,
(35:03):
Amy's residents purchased a total of two pounds of arsenic.
That's enough to kill thousands of people. When Franklin andrews
Organs officially tested positive for arsenic, as expected, investigators had
their last bit of concrete evidence they needed to move in,
(35:24):
and they made Amy's purp walk a full spectacle for
the first time in the state. Automobiles aided the arrest.
Two large black pope cars waited outside the County building,
engines running to arrest Amy. Everyone turned out to see
(35:45):
what was going on. When investigators arrived at the Archer home,
Amy invited them in, and this quote's recorded in historical
documents Phelps found when researching the Devil's Rooming House. Amy
said to the cops, I know of the gossip about
(36:06):
me and of the home that has been going around Windsor,
and I am indeed glad you have come. Okay girl.
They told her that anything she said could be used
against her in court, and she said all right, before
proceeding to answer a bunch of questions. After an hour
(36:29):
of questioning, investigators told Amy she was charged with the
murder of Franklin Andrews by poisoning, and they took her
to the town hall. The motorcade that followed her there
was spectacular. While Amy was booked and further questioned, police
(36:53):
searched the Archer home for evidence. The search yielded several contracts,
despite Amy saying she did destroyed the contracts after her
tenant's deaths. They also found bottles of mislabeled fluids, letters, notebooks,
and bank records. A crowd watched while officials carried boxes
(37:13):
of evidence out the front door and into waiting cars.
Speaking of finding evidence, doctor Arthur Wolfe had also examined
Michael Gilligan's corpse. His stomach had enough arsenic in it
to kill five men his size. Amy was also accused
(37:36):
of killing her first husband, James Archer. His symptoms were
consistent with arsenic poisoning. Two while she awaited trial. The prosecution,
led by States Attorney Hugh Alcorn, brought offenses. In addition
to killing five residents and two husbands, Amy had violated
(38:00):
the law by removing a dead body from any home
without a permit. Transporting the body over state lines was
another offense Amy had committed both. Meanwhile, Amy spoke out
about her innocence, and doctor King rallied for her too.
(38:22):
While Amy waited in jail, King went off and he
looked stupid doing it. One theory he presented was that
Franklin Andrew's body quote could have been twice exhumed. He
claimed that someone could have already dug up the body
and planted the arsenic on the cadaver. A doctor said
(38:45):
that articles appeared in newspapers that noted King was not
only employed as the in house physician at the Archer home,
but he was the medical examiner for the town as well.
So the man who treated Amy's residence was also assigning
reasons for their deaths. In one later interview, King finally
(39:08):
questioned his own judgment, saying that maybe he should have
paid closer attention. He admitted that his diagnosis of Franklin
Andrew's death as the result of gastric ulcers could have
been incorrect, and the real cause could have been arsenic poisoning.
(39:29):
The symptoms might have looked similar. He told the interviewer, quote,
maybe I ought to have analyzed the contents of the stomach,
but I certainly did not suspect that there was anything wrong.
There was nothing suspicious to me about the death, and
no reason why I should have gone any further with
the examination. Did you ever hear of death by arsenic
(39:53):
being discovered as such immediately after death? I never did.
But neither doctor King's expres uses nor his regrets made
any difference for Amy. In September of nineteen sixteen, the
(40:15):
grand jury charged Amy Archer Gilligan with five counts of
first degree murder. These five victims, who were only a
small portion of the victims she actually killed, were Franklin, Andrews,
Alice Goudie, Michael Gilligan, Charles Smith, and maud Lynch. When
(40:38):
the trial commenced, the courtroom was standing room only. Many
witnesses testified against Amy. Frank Smith, undertaker at Amy's funeral
parlor of choice, testified that none of the Red Falcon
Brand embalming fluid he used ever contained arsenic, and he
(40:58):
said that he always had permits to remove a body
in the middle of the night, except for Franklin, Andrews,
and Alice Goudy. Doctor Wolf spent two full days explaining
his findings and how he reached his conclusions that all
five exhumed bodies had died by arsenic poisoning. Even Franklin's
(41:21):
banker took the stand. He entered all the bank account
records as evidence and verified the transactions. The all male jury,
because women could not sit on jurys in most states
until nineteen seventeen, soon reached a verdict. The judge said,
(41:43):
Amy Archer Gilligan is guilty of the crime of murder
in the first degree. She is remanded to the custody
of the Sheriff of Hartford County, and that she be
conveyed by him to the Connecticut State Prison at Weathersfield,
And that upon said sixth day of November nine, nineteen seventeen,
before the hour of sunrise, within the walls of said prison,
(42:05):
by warden of said prison, she be hung by the
neck until she is dead. Amy's lawyers tried to appeal
with an insanity plea. They claimed she was addicted to morphine.
That may well have been true after looking at the
records of her druggist, but the verdict was not overturned.
(42:25):
She was granted a different sentence. Rather than being executed
by hanging, she would live for fifty years in a
prison for the criminally insane. I always try to leave
these stories with a bit of reflection. For me, the
biggest takeaway from this case of multiple murders is the
(42:45):
importance of looking out for the vulnerable. Until this series
of horrific murders, private sector homes for the elderly had
no one watching them, not on a local level or
anything higher. Anyone not acting right really only got punished
if a resident's family member hired an attorney or made
(43:07):
a complaint. There was no watchful oversight. That meant it
had to be bad enough for a resident to snitch
out their primary caregiver. Think about how bad that would
have to be. It also required that the residents have
a family member to tell their problems to to advocate
for them, and that wasn't always the case. But thank
(43:32):
god for Nelly Peers Right. She was Franklin's sister and
she was just not having it. And thanks to the
journalists and to Zola Bennett and to doctor Emma Thompson,
a lot of badass people looked out for justice in
this case, and a lot of them were badass women.
So I think the takeaway here is twofold. One thankfully
(43:53):
private sector nursing homes are regulated now, and two, be
on the side of the badasses who fight for the truth,
whether that's as an investigator like so many people in
this story, or in whatever it is. That's your walk
of life, and that's how I think of the writer
m William Phelps, author of The Devil's Rooming House, who
(44:16):
uncovered so much truth while writing this book. I'm so
lucky to have the opportunity to ask him a few
more questions about this case. That's right after the break
stay with us, Oh, Matthew, I'm so happy to talk
(44:53):
to you about The Devil's Rooming House. Thank you so
much for coming to talk to me. I wanted to
ask you first what drew you to Amy Archer Gilligan
in particular.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Well, I had my eye on the Amy Archer Gilligan's
story for many years. I mean, I grew up as
a kid, maybe four miles from the house. It wasn't
a talked about story then. But what got me interested
in it was I was writing a lot of contemporary
true crime and I wanted to do an historical true
(45:26):
crime book. And the fact that the Amy Archer Gilligan's
story is the true basis for the famous play Arsenic
and Old Lace really drew me to it. The thing
that worried me was why hadn't a book been done
on it already? As a journalist, that always worries me.
So the first inclination is, oh, there's not enough research available.
(45:50):
So I began to look into that. So I started
to poke around, and I knew that the trial was
a huge spectacle in Hartford, Connecticut at the time, at
the turn of the century when it happened. So the
first thing I did was went to the Connecticut Historical
Society and they were like, we don't know, we don't
(46:12):
have much, you know, let's see. So that process started,
and I'll never forget it took some time, but they
poked around and in the library itself was a bunch
of books about Connecticut historical crimes, et cetera. But within
that were like these encyclopedia type of books that someone
(46:32):
had transcribed all of the trial transcripts and kind of
put it in a book form, but it wasn't printed.
It was like one book. So I was able to
get hold of that. But what else I found, which
I found very interesting, was in the basement in the vault,
they had more Amy Archer Gilligan research. It was in
(46:55):
a box and the boxes had all these scrolls in
them of paper, and around the paper was a charcoal.
There was a band of charcoal around the paper, which
I thought was odd, and there was charcoal bits all
in the box. Well, come to find out, old rubber
bands turned into charcoal after a period of time. So
(47:17):
what that told me was very significant. It told me
no one had looked at those documents, no one looked
at it, no one had looked at him. So yeah,
that fired me up. And then I, uh, just you know,
started the journey from there.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Well I love that story so much, not only because
it was successful, but also because you got to go
like down into the library, like the bowels of the library,
which sounds so cool, and it's like things are like
ossifying and stuff. Yeah on the form, So oh that's
so cool. Yeah. Wow, So you had a lot of
(47:55):
material to sift through.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, I mean within the trial document mints were forensic reports,
testimony from early forensic scientists, all the law enforcement, Amy Archer,
Gilligan herself. So I was able to bring that book
to life. I mean there it was the trial. The
whole story was right there. You know.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yeah, that's incredible. I'm sure that there were a lot
of surprises when you were reading that, But is there
one that kind of jumped out at us, like because
of the time period of it being bizarre and like
sticking with you, is there anything like that?
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I Mean what was striking in the transcripts were when
law enforcements was explaining how they would exhume bodies in
the middle of the night, bring the body to a
tool shed in the cemetery, open the body up, and
test it for arsenic right there. And it was a
simple test. I mean you could almost tell someone was
(48:51):
murdered by arsenic just by opening them up and seeing
their stomach kind of bloated. So, yeah, they did autopsies
right there on site. That was pretty bizarre, but I
understood it.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
That's such a great scene. I mean, I know, it's
not a scene scene. It's like it's it happened right,
but like it sticks with you. Yeah. On the topic
of writing somewhat narratives true crime and historical true crime,
I also love to write narrative true crime, and I
feel like what in historical as well? And I feel
(49:24):
like the question that I get asked so often is
like the dialogue, like how do you know they said that?
Or how do you what kind of artistic license went
into it? What's your approach to writing the dialogue?
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Well, I mean dialogue is dialogue that said. You know,
I'm not making it up. I'm just looking at court documents.
I'm looking at interviews people gave, and during interviews people
will say, well, when she approached me, she said dot
dot dot, So that's dialogue, you know. But a lot
of times dialogue are quotes from someone on the stand
(49:59):
who's given testimony, or something that's said in a police report.
You know. I walked up to the counter and I said, hey,
give me all your money, you know, so that turns
into dialogue. I don't use any artistic license at all.
I spend a tremendous amount of time looking digging.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
So speaking of the dialogue, and some of the characters
and the actual people in this book. Doctor King, the
one that was on the payroll at the Archer Home,
he seems so fishy to me the whole time. I
was like, he's in on it. He has to be
in on it.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Of course he was, and I just of.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Course he was right.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, he was being bought and paid for. I mean
he was the town corner. Yeah, yeah, he was the
town corner and the doctor in town. So Amy employed
him as the doctor for the residence of the Elderly Home.
So he would come over there and diagnose people, and
(50:58):
when somebody died, he would pronounce their death and sign
off on the death certificate. So she was paying him
already to come over right, So of course he knew
what was going on. He had to know what was
going on, and he turned a blind eye to it.
He should have been charged himself in some respects.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Okay, So switching gears a little bit. You've gone from
writing true crime to working in true crime audio as well,
and what has that been like the transition are do
you like the differences in the storytelling aspect? How do
you approach the research?
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Well, you know, I've kind of prepared for this in
the way that I've written books for twenty two years.
I've done television for twenty two years, written for television,
produced documentaries, So bringing the two together for podcasting, for me,
it was a challenge, but it was a good challenge.
It allows me to dig deeper into stories than I
(51:55):
would for television. It allows actual people, their voices to
be heard, right, and I love the investigative part of it.
It's just a new form for me to tell these
stories of victims and their families. And now I've really
gotten into missing people more, trying to offer new information
(52:16):
to cases and books. You can't really go down that road.
Book editors want a beginning, middle, and end. With podcasting,
certainly you can bring people along for the journey.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah. I like that. It seems like, not necessarily that
podcasting is more forgiving, but you can continue to add
to the story, right whereas right once it's in writing,
it's out there.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Like that's a great point. I can update my podcasts
than I have at any time. I can add another
bonus episode or add another episode to a narrative season,
So I like the format a lot. I just started
full time on a new season of Paper Ghosts. So
I'm looking forward to Paper Ghosts season four. I'm heading
out in a couple of week on a research trip.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Actually, were you headed? What are you going to do?
That was my next question is what are you going
to do next? Or can you tell me is a secret?
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I can say that I'm heading out to the Ozarks, okay,
and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Okay, it sounds good. My last question is what do
you want to leave us with? Like, what's our biggest
takeaway from talking about Amy Archer Gilligan. What do you
want your readers of this story, listeners of our podcast
to get from it.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Well, you're going to take away from this, I hope
you do, is that a cycle path one hundred years
ago is really no different than a cycle path today.
The mentality, the mindset, the psychology may have evolved, but
it's the same, right And I think in this country
(53:46):
we have this Hollywood cartoon version, if you will, of
the serial killer who wears a clown suit or drives
a Volkswagen or you know, a domer. That's not really
what serial killers are like, those are anomalies. There are
Amy Archer Gilligans out there today who are killing that
(54:07):
we just we haven't caught yet, right, you know, so
we have to keep our eyes and our ears always open.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Many thanks again to m William Phelps for coming to
talk to me. For more of his insights on the
Amy Archer Gilligan case, check out his book The Devil's
Rooming House, and for more of his voice and incredible
research and podcast form. I know I'll be eagerly awaiting
the results of his trip to the Ozarks in season
four of Paper Ghosts. Join me next week on the
(54:39):
Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told, where we tell the
story of love, greed and murder, the story of the
deadly gold digger Celeste Beard. In addition to im William Phelps' book,
The Devil's Rooming House, I like to shout out all
the court documents from the trial and the article from
(55:00):
the Vigilante Journalist mentioned in the episode itself. They were
all crucial in helping me tell this story. For more
information about this case and other cases we cover on
the show, visit Diversion Audio dot com, sign up for
Diversion's newsletter and be among the first to hear about
our special behind the scenes features with the hosts and
(55:22):
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. That's Diversion Audio dot com to sign up
for the newsletter. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer.
(55:45):
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 Dmouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music
by Tyler Cash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis, and
(56:05):
Scott Waxman. Diversion Audio
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