October 27, 2020 • 42 mins
Hey, Piketon Massacre listeners, check out this iHeartRadio & Shondaland Audio podcast – Criminalia.
On Criminalia, hosts Holly Frey and Maria Trimarchi explroe the intersection of history and true crime. This season is all about lady poisoners. During the time that Chicago’s most visible criminal element was organized crime, Tillie Klimek was quietly becoming the city’s most prolific female serial killer. She allegedly killed between six and 20 people, all through arsenic poisoning.
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Ask Ally on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever
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aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay,
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We have a lot of fun along the way. You
have a lot of lesbian fans who love your femininity
and glamour and they just really really want I want
us to talk openly about the difficult things we all
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face as humans and as humans in America. Racist white
people in the United States will sign their own death certificates.
They will vote for policies that crush them, no safety nets,
no healthcare because they feel too much like entitlements. And
those are folks of color, right. Listen to The Laverne
Cox Show and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
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you get your podcast, make sure you subscribe and share. Hi.
This is Ali Wentworth, host of Go ask Alli Season two.
We'll be back soon with more new episodes. As always,
Go ask Alli is there for binging and catching up,
purpose and meaning in life or how you figure out
what life is all about, and that requires unhappiness. So
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here's the great paradox. To be happy, you also have
to be unhappy. Don't miss a single episode. Listen to
Go ask Alli on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts. Make sure you subscribe and share. Welcome
to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Hello,
(03:43):
and Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria trom Marquis and I'm
Holly Fry. We know that humans have always managed to
commit crimes, almost certainly before there was even recorded history,
so we decided that we would start looking at those
crimes and get our hands dirty. We wanted to dig
in and look at some of history's crimes criminals to
understand them better, and in doing so, we're curious if
(04:04):
we can find commonality with our modern world and our
modern problems, and whether these crimes look different a little
bit of distance on the timeline, and whether any of
these perpetrators emerge as more sympathetic characters. This first season
is going to be all about poisoners, specifically women poisoners.
Poison is often called a woman's weapon, despite the fact
(04:25):
that roughly two thirds of the poisonings committed throughout time
have been the work of men. So let's start looking
at these women and their motivations and see if any
patterns develop. This week, we're looking into the life and
crimes of Tilly Clinic, a Polish immigrant who killed at
least one and possibly as many as twenty people and
at least one dog between the years nineteen fourteen and
(04:45):
nineteen twenty two. I will confess that when you were
telling me about the research you were doing initially on
this and you mentioned the dog, I was like, well,
I hate her. Not that it wasn't terrible, it should
killed people, just you know, that was for me the
worst thing that she could have done as well. She
(05:15):
was born Tiafila Burick to Michaelina and Michael Burick on
October twenty second, eighteen seventy seven, and Tilly was probably
right around four years old when her family immigrated to
the United States. They moved from Poland to the Little
Poland neighborhood of Chicago, and of the seven children in
the family, oh Tilly, as she was called, was the eldest.
(05:37):
Chicago has a long history of Polish immigration, and Polish
Americans have lived in the area for well over a century.
In eighteen ninety, around the time Tilly was born, there
was a wave of immigration to the United States. At
that time, the number of Polish immigrants in the city
blossomed to more than twenty five thousand. By nineteen thirty,
a few years before she died, that number had grown
to one hundred and sixty five thousand. Most they lived
(05:59):
below the poverty line. Is the tale of immigration in
so many ways. So let's set the scene of the
actual situation we're talking about today. So this is Chicago
in the early twentieth century. You couldn't necessarily count on
(06:23):
your food and drinks to be clean. Upton Sinclair started
publishing the serialized version of his groundbreaking expose of the
meat industry in the US, The Jungle, in nineteen oh five,
and while that led to the creation of the Meat
Inspection Act in nineteen oh six, food safety legislation was
still in its infancy. But if you were at a
(06:44):
restaurant or a club or a hotel around the city,
there were other dangers when it came to what you
consumed at the table. In particular, wait staff were known
to target patrons who didn't tip well. Not like the
content of the chatter in fight club, although honestly maybe
a little of that. They usually poisons and various other
things you really don't want to be in your food,
(07:04):
so remember always tip well. But moreover, it turns out
that you couldn't really count on food safety at home either,
at least if you lived with a Tilly Climic. During
the time that Chicago's most visible criminal element was organized crime,
Tilly was quietly becoming the city's most prolific female serial killer.
(07:25):
She'd allegedly killed between six and twenty people. Like we said,
but that was all through arsenic poisoning. So we're going
to talk first just about what arsenic actually is. It
is a naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust and
in its raw state. As much as it has this
instant conjuring of poison, it's not actually harmful the way
it naturally exists. Arsenic only really becomes poisonous when it's
(07:48):
converted into arsenic trioxide, which is better known as white arsenic.
White arsenic not only is odorless, but it's tasteless, and
it's white or transparent informs, so it's easily confused with
sugar or flour. But it's highly toxic when it's inhaled
into your lungs or when you ingest it, and it
might surprise you that even white arsenic is actually fairly
benign in relatively small amounts, because it is very lethal
(08:12):
at higher doses. In fact, doctors have actually prescribed white
arsenic through the years in its low dosage as a
treatment for things like asthma, typhus, malaria, even menstrual cramps,
and it continues to be administered intravenously as a chemotherapy
for a specific type of leukemia. When arsenic is ingested, initially,
(08:32):
it causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea that's often
being accompanied by bleeding and vomiting. It's terrible. As the
dose gets more and more lethal in the body, though,
the symptoms also begin to include convulsions, cardiovascular problems, hair loss,
liver and kidney problems, and even organ damage. So not
a peaceful way to go. Definitely not sugar no, and
(08:57):
despite its potency, it has been used in the production
of semiconductors. It's been used as wood preservative, and it's
also sometimes found in pesticides. Manufacturers in the nineteenth century
started using it for its green pigment in products like
paint and wallpaper, fabrics, beauty products, and as food coloring.
(09:17):
The list goes on because green is very beautiful color,
so sometimes those products would actually make people sick, but
at the time, no one was suspecting that the arsenic
in them was the problem that was causing their ailments.
In the early twentieth century, when Tilly was busy murdering
people in her community, the average Americans medicine cabinet was
(09:37):
stocked with all sorts of toxic things like radioactive radium
for acne, and mercury as a topical antiseptic for cuts
and scrapes and burns. Morphine showed up in everyday products
and everything from teething medications to cures for heroin addiction.
From roughly the late eighteenth into the early twentieth century
is considered to be the golden age of poisoners, and
(10:01):
during that time, arsenic specifically caught the nickname the inheritance powder.
And you can probably imagine why the police really didn't
have any of the tools to test the corpse for poison.
Arsenic wasn't only easy to acquire, it was hard to
detect as a cause of death, which was win win
for the golden age of poisoners. It was common practice
(10:24):
for doctors to treat suspected poisoning with leeches bleeded out,
or try to identify the poison involved by sniffing the
contents of the person's stomach. Remember how we said arsenic
was odorless though, Yeah, so you just sniff those contents
for nothing. But it was also just unusual for a
doctor or a coroner to suspect arsenic as a cause
(10:45):
of death, mainly because the symptoms of arsenic poisoning that
Maria just talked about, diarrhea and vomiting and abdominal pain
are so similar to a lot of other disorders. It's
also really hard to place a poisoner at the scene
of the murder. Dying can typically take hours or longer
if you administered the poison gradually, such as with someone's meals,
(11:08):
so the perpetrator could easily have a seemingly airtight alibi
for their whereabouts because the window of time had such
fuzzy edges when it actually wouldn't be until the late
nineteenth century that a chemist named James marsh would come
up with a reliable chemical test for arsenic poisoning. Today,
arsenic poisoning is treated with chelatition therapy, which uses special
drugs that bind to metal ions in your blood. So
(11:34):
rough On Rats was the product that became popular in
the late eighteen hundreds. It was composed mainly of arsenic
and a little black coal for masking the poison, and
while i was advertised for use in killing rats, mice, bedbugs, flies, roaches,
it occasionally was used for the very off label purpose
of killing husbands. Believe it or not, the marketing slogan
(11:57):
for this poison rough On Rats was don't die in
the house, thinking, of course, being that the creature you
had poisoned would scurry away to die. It was also
really easily available at the local store, and Tillie actually
got her first bottle of rough On Rats from her
cousin Nellie Kulik, and Nellie, it would turn out, was
(12:20):
also a fellow poisoner murder and husbands. According to accounts
from her neighbors, Tillie was sent to have precognitive dreams,
meaning that she could predict the future in real life
through sort of a sixth sensish kind of way. She
began to predict the deaths of neighborhood dogs, and she
was surprisingly accurate, but it turns out she was just
(12:44):
scheduling their deaths. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves though,
in the progression of Tillie's activities with rough on rats.
So we're going to back up to eighteen ninety five. Hi,
It's Laverne Cox and on my podcast Verne Cox Show,
we're ripping the band aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet
culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay, I'm not gonna get explicit,
(13:09):
but just because you're cute, like I'm not going you're
gonna say yes, girl, and honey. We have a lot
of fun along the way. You have a lot of
lesbian fans who love your femininity and glamour and they
just really really want I want us to talk openly
about the difficult things we all face as humans and
(13:30):
as humans in America. Racist white people in the United
States will sign their own death certificates. They will vote
for policies that crush them, no safety nets, no healthcare
because they feel too much like entitlements. And those are
folks of color, right. Listen to The Laverne Cox Show
and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
(13:51):
your podcast make sure you subscribe and share. Hi. This
is Ali Wentworth, host of Go Ask Alli Season two.
We'll be back soon with more new episodes, but what
you can do is binge the first half of season
two or revisit our first spectacular season. Everyone has to
deal with money, and technically like people don't talk about it.
(14:12):
It's like this quiet thing that everyone wants to avoid.
But then everyone wants to live this life and doesn't
matter what how you define that life, but you need
money for it. Just a few of our fabulous guests
the season are former editor of People magazine Jess Cagel,
New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, and writer and
Oprah's favorite life coach Martha Beck. And people come to
(14:33):
me now and they will say negative things, and I think,
I respectfully do not give a crap what you think,
because I'm a crazy old bat now and you can't
stop me. That's great. Our guests have so much to say.
One liston isn't enough. Listen to Go ask Ali on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Make
(14:54):
sure you subscribe and share Hey, I'm Gabrielle Collins, period
drama nerd and you're behind the scenes guide to Bridgerton.
On Bridgerton the Official Podcast, we're learning how this fantasy
world dipped in history came to life. Daphanie, her costume
(15:14):
design really is about the elegance of simplicity. It's just
color and shape. We went old school and we got
two scene cartists in who painted the backings for us
by hand. These dukes are all like in their late
twenties early thirties. Almost all of them are unmarried, really
good looking, and none of them have syphilis. Can you
(15:37):
imagine when he looks into your eyes and then he
dips you. We just heard this sort of ripping sound. Yeah,
I think this has been a wardrobe malfunction. Listen to
Bridgerton the Official Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or anywhere you get your favorite shows. Welcome back to Criminalia.
(16:06):
By eighteen ninety five, Tillie was married to John mckawitz.
His name may have been Joseph not John. Records aren't
entirely consistent, but we're gonna go with John because that's
what the majority of records from the time referred to
him as that is one of the delights word I'm
using ironically of doing historical research, particularly when you are
(16:26):
talking about immigrants, because there was not a vested interest
always in the government in keeping accurate records about them,
So you often have these these people's stories that get
really muddy because their names do shift around in the
historical record. Anyway, by all accounts this couple, Tilly and John,
(16:48):
were well liked in their community, and their marriage appeared
by all accounts to be happy. Tilly made her life
as a housekeeper, but it was also during this time
that Tilly started telling neighbors about some visions that she
was having. She was, as we mentioned before the break,
an alleged psychic who was skilled specifically at predicting deaths.
(17:09):
This included predicting the death of her own husband, John,
who had left her a thousand dollars When he died
in nineteen fourteen. The coroner's report listed his death as
a result of heart trouble, nothing suspicious. There was no
reason at the time to suspect that John had been
poisoned by his wife. The nickname black widow, which is
often given to women who kill their lovers in order
(17:30):
to inherit. Their wealth would eventually be bestowed upon Tilly,
but not just yet. Here's a little more in detail
on John's sudden end. Okay. In the beginning of nineteen fourteen,
Tilly began telling friends and those in the community that
she dreamed that John was ill. She expected he would
be on his deathbed in just a few weeks, and
when he died in January thirteenth that year, the cause
(17:53):
of death was listed as heart trouble, and Tilly collected
a thousand dollars in life insurance. I guess after nineteen years,
she just didn't want to gun it to twenty. She's
like enough. After receiving that payout on John's life insurance policy,
Tilly actually remarried pretty quickly. See, now, that's the thing.
She remarried quickly often, And I have to I always
(18:14):
sort of wonder, like if she would follow in love
with someone new and be like, oh, I'll kill my
husband and we'll start out fresh with like this new
thousand dollars. It's just my own personal theory. Yeah, I
think there's merit to it. But her new husband, Joseph Raskowski,
died just three months after they got married. And he
happened to leave his widow twelve hundred dollars in cash
(18:36):
and seven hundred twenty two dollars in insurance money. Not
only did Tilly predict Joseph's death, she went on to
predict the deaths of her third husband, although they may
or may not have been married, it's a little sketchy.
And her fourth husband, as well as children, she cared
for a few neighbors and possibly some other family members.
(18:57):
And not only did she joke with neighbors that her
fourth husband, Frank, had quote two inches to live, which
is a really interesting, fascinating turn of phrase, she allegedly
taunted him on his deathbed and said things like it
won't be long now and you'll be dying soon, which
(19:21):
is hard in my own home. You got two inches
to live? I don't know, right, It's like callous on
a level that's hard to comprehend, right right. She also,
in an act of both cruel and creative, knitted herself
(19:43):
a morning hat as she sat by his bedside while
he was dying. She even so far as to purchase
a thirty dollars bargain coffin to keep in the basement
of her house. Waiting for his death. That storage areament
was a little unsettling request made of her landlord, who
began to be a little suspicious of Tilly after that
came in. Frank did die on April twentieth, nineteen twenty one,
(20:09):
and it is said that when it happened, Tillie played
dance music in the room. The coroner listed Frank's cause
of death as bronchial pneumonia. Tilly's poisonous predilections unnoticed. She
once again collected on his life insurance, this time in
the amount of six hundred seventy five dollars, nearly as
(20:30):
much as the last two. I know she's downgrading the
insurance situation with each one. They're going faster now, you know.
It's just not enough time to like build up to
the thousand. That's another theory I have. It's interesting and
grimly fun to note that frank An Tillie's home at
nine twenty four Winchester It's a house in East Dillige
in Chicago shows up on the Old Fourth Square social
(20:53):
networking site as Old Lady Tilly Clinics Haunted House. Even today,
Tilly was still not arrested, though that didn't happen until
after she botched an attempt at poisoning husband number five,
that was Joseph Clemack. She and Joseph had gotten married
in July of nineteen twenty one, again not long after
Frank's demise, and Clemack is said to have been a
(21:16):
relatively wealthy man, but Tilly did not like that. He
also apparently had a wandering eye, and by October of
nineteen twenty two, he was in the hospital experiencing arm numbness,
leg paralysis, and other symptoms consistent with severe arsenic poisoning.
So while he was in the hospital, Tilly's husband recalled
that his food had tasted strangely lately, and here's one
(21:39):
big red flag. He remembered the dog dying after eating
scraps of food till he had cooked. Her husband also
stated he'd planned to press charges against her and till
he kissed him. Such a strange dynamic at play, But
it was not poisoning Joseph that she went on trial for.
While Tilly was arrested initially for the attempted murder of
(22:00):
Joseph Klemick, who would survive her poison his hand. After
an investigation into the deaths of her previous husbands. The
crime Tilly was eventually tried for was the murder of Frank,
her third husband, but even as she was taken in,
she appeared completely indifferent to the whole situation. It is
said that she told the arresting officer, who was Lieutenant
(22:21):
William Malone, the next one I want to cook dinner
for is you? You made all my trouble. After eighteen
hours of interrogation, Tilly confessed to her crimes, admitting to
mixing rat poison into her victim's food and drink note plural.
It's interesting, right, Like eighteen hours of interrogation is considered extreme,
(22:41):
it is, and she just gives it all up. Then
there's that whole thing of like is this a coerced
confession at that point? But her later behavior makes it
seem like she's pretty down with this information being one
true and part of public records. Yeah, she's a badass.
Just two grains of arsenic is enough to kill almost anyone,
(23:04):
and as much as eight grains were found in Frank's organs,
so enough to kill four people. Authorities decided to exhume
Tillie's other husbands and found their stomachs each contained lethal
doses of arsenic, and although evidence existed to convict her
of as many as twenty murders by arsenic, only one
charge resulted in a conviction. Although she was not the
(23:27):
only woman and wife in her community to be arrested
for suspicion of poisoning, she was the only one of
them who was sentenced. Yeah. Remember how we mentioned her
cousin earlier. Yeah. Authorities went on to investigate a possible
poison ring in the Little Poland neighborhood, arresting other local
women in what the assistant state attorney at the time
(23:48):
that was, a man named William McLaughlin called quote the
most astonishing wholesale poisoning plot uncovered. He wanted the death
penalty for Tilly, but without better evidence, the other women
who had been rounded up just had to be released.
As Tillie's story unfurls, it becomes apparent that it wasn't
just husbands that she poisoned. She played fast and loose
(24:11):
with rough on rats, poisoning people who irritated her and
dogs who barked too much. In the neighborhood. Life was
especially risky if you were one of Tillie's cousins. In
nineteen twelve, Tillie's cousin Stanley Zaczuski died at the age
of sixteen. Tillie, who was in her mid thirties at
the time, tended on him while he was ill. Another cousin,
(24:31):
Stanley's sister, Stell, died in nineteen thirteen. She was twenty
three at the time, and again Tillie played the role
of caregiver. After her husband Frank's death, Tillie started seeing
a man named Joseph Grantkowski, like lovers before him. Joseph
died in nineteen fourteen after jilting her and back to cousins.
(24:52):
In nineteen fifteen, Tillie's cousin Helen died at age fifteen.
Another cousin, Nick Micko, became sick from arsenic poisoning, but
he was lucky enough to actually recover. In nineteen nineteen,
Tillie's cousin Rose died after attending Tillie and Frank's wedding party.
In nineteen eighteen, Tillie may have been involved in the
poisoning of Woejecks Drummer, who was the husband of her
(25:14):
cousin Nellie the same Nellie from she procured her rat poison.
It turns out that Tillie wasn't only cooking arsenic into meals,
she was also a confectioner. Twizzlers may make mouse happy,
but you definitely want to skip Tillie's streets. So Stella Guskowski,
sister of Tillie's former boyfriend Joseph, got sick after she
(25:37):
ate a candy that was given to her by Tillie
after the two women had an argument. Joseph died from
tainted candy as well. Rose Split had also stayed and
Tillie gave her arsenic confused candies after Joseph Klink talked
to her. So jealous, Tillie was willing to go after
innocent women who her husband even dared to converse with.
(25:57):
So let's keep going because we're only about halfway through
the body count. There was also a woman named Bessie
Kopzick's sister in law of Tilly's husband Frank, who fell
sick after eating Tillie's cooking, but Bessie recovered. Children, primarily relatives,
were also on Tillie's hit list. At least four children
in Tillie's sphere were poisoned between nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
(26:21):
Dorothy Spara died at age two. Twins Sophie and Ben's
Strummer also died. John Strummer was the only one to recover.
Lillian's drummer, who was in her early teens, lived at
Tillie's home for a year when she became deathly ill
from the food and suffered heart trouble. So skip ahead
just a few years to March nineteen twenty three and
a man named Myers goes missing. Suspicious. Maybe he might
(26:46):
have been one of Tillie's husband's, but he was more
likely just a boyfriend. Records from this time, as we've mentioned,
not always robust, and a lot of times people would
just claim to be spouses without going through the paperwork,
kind of like common law, but more like they were
just like, well, we lived together, and we live as
a married couple. Either way, the risk of dying was
obviously considerably high for any of Tilly's paramours, legally wed
(27:10):
or not. I don't think she cared about the paperwork,
just the life insurance. At her trial, Tillie wore the
black hat that she had made when her third husband,
Frank had been on his deathbed. She had also warned
it to his funeral as she had planned. Historically, in
Chicago in the early twentieth century, women who were brought
to trial for murder, which was usually murder of their husbands,
(27:32):
were almost always acquitted. If a woman was unlucky enough
to be convicted, she was generally going to be given
an amazingly light sentence in comparison to men who had
stood trial for murder, and it really helped your case.
If you were very feminine, weeping a bit and flirting
would always help. In the year's leading up to Tillie's trial,
(27:54):
twenty eight women had been charged with murder in Cook County,
where Chicago is located. Twenty four were acquitted. It is
probably no coincidence that all twenty four of those women
were considered conventionally attractive. Up to twenty eight, only four
were found guilty, Hilda Axeland, who was not considered a meaty,
Via Trepagnier, who was middle aged, Emma Simpson who was
(28:17):
determined to be insane, and Dora Waterman, who also was
not known for her looks. On the other hand, the
well dressed, well groomed Cora or Fuen, who shot her
boyfriend over his cheating, walked free. Tilly, though, did not
have these advantages. She was nothing like skylish Belva Gartner
and beautiful Beulah Annam, the killers who inspired the play Chicago.
(28:40):
According to Genevieve Forbes, a crime reporter who covered the
trial for the Chicago Tribune, Tilly was neither beautiful nor charming.
She was described as a middle aged woman forty five
who was squat quote unquoth, with a greasy complexion and
a lumpy figure. Her dull brown hair was pulled back
into a nod at the back of her head. Despite
having lived in Chicago since she was just a little kid,
(29:02):
she spoke only broken English, and it was reported that
she growled, I shudder to think what Genevieve for During
the proceedings, prosecutors read a list of twenty alleged victims
of Tilly, pausing after each name to ask her did
you kill this person? And each time she would reportedly shrug,
(29:25):
responding to each of the simple yeah, I wish I
could have bet. At this trial, the trial Jedge asked
for something called a psychopathic lab report. According to the
examining doctor, Tilly was a quote subnormal mentality with an
intellect and I quote again no higher than that of
an eleven year old child. As we just mentioned, she
didn't really speak English especially well, so let's take these
(29:47):
results with a grain of salt. And it was reported
she was afflicted with dementia precox, a diagnosis today that
would be schizophrenia. She was also described as a rattlesnake,
as a heartless woman and to do to the murders
around her. She got the nickname we mentioned earlier, Black Widow. Hi.
It's Ali Wentworth, a middle aged woman with a lot
(30:09):
of questions and a lot of answers I have pulled
out of my tush as host of Go Ask Alli,
my listeners want more, so we are digging in. It's real.
It's honest, open and unexpected and sometimes amusing. Can you
start with your infamous nineteen thousand dollars haircut? Yes, and
this is a great story I feel about mothers and
daughters with a dream and an empty bank account. Just
(30:32):
a few of our fabulous guests this season are New
York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, writer and Oprah's Favorite
life coach, Martha Beck and former editor of People Magazine
Jess Cagel. If we know intimate details about another person,
then that person is socially important to us. Okay, so
(30:52):
that's what you like to gossip about. Wait, what do
you gussip about? All new episodes of Go ask Alli
release every Thursday. Listen to Go Scalie on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, guys,
Katie Lowe's here. You might know me as Quinn Perkins
on Scandal. I am also the host of Katie's Crib.
(31:14):
It's a podcast about all things parenthood. Katie's Crib is
back with new episodes every Thursday. We have got an
amazing lineup of guests. We have got the amazing Katerina Scorsone,
who you might also know as doctor Amelia Shephard from
Grey's Anatomy. She is talking about her three children. We've
(31:34):
also got kat McPhee Foster. She just became a mom
like two seconds ago. We just have a great hang
sessh talking about all things new Mama. We are going
to be covering everything from discipline to mom ring. Tune
in as I bring on celebrities, experts, and even more
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(31:55):
step at a time. Listen to Katie's crib on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Because
of the evidence beyond the single murder, investigators obtained permission
to exoom the corpses of Tillie's dead husbands for arsenic
toxicity testing. Newspaper headlines covering the trial featured headlines like
three more bodies to be exhoomed in clemic case, and
(32:17):
bodies of other relatives will be exhumed. All those cousins,
all those cousins, all yeah, the children and dogs thing.
I just obviously killing anybody as bad. But Tillie, though,
stuck to a story that Frank had died of alcohol
poisoning and that she had absolutely not killed her spouses.
(32:37):
She said, quote, I loved them, they loved me. They
just died, same as other people. She continued, I'm not
responsible for that. I could not help if they wanted
to die. Contrary to her statement during the trial, the
coroner accusingly asserted, quote, there is no question that missus
clinic poisoned everyone. She wanted to get out of the way.
(32:58):
After the jury deliberated or just an hour and twenty minutes,
Tilly was found guilty of the murder of her third husband,
Frank Kopsick. In nineteen twenty three. Judge Marcus Kavanaugh sentenced
her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
That was the harshest sentence ever given to a woman
in Chicago at that time. Four jurors thought she should
(33:19):
be given the death penalty. At the time, no woman
had ever been sentenced to death in the state of Illinois.
The Chicago Tribune reporter Forbes called her gruesomely cruel and
went on to say that Tilly is a spectator in
her own drama. While on all accounts, Tilly is considered
to have been friendly to the other prisoners, once she
was incarcerated, she definitely did not want to talk about
(33:42):
the poisonings. It has said that she would yell, quote,
I didn't rob nobody, I didn't shoot nobody. I didn't
poison nobody. I didn't everybody picks on me. Everybody makes
eyes at me like they're going to eat me. Why
do they make eyes like that. I tell the truth.
Anything I did I did to myself, nobody else. She
(34:03):
was incarcerated at the Illinois State Penitentiary at Juliet, with
one stipulation. It said that while Tilly enjoyed the few
food served to her in prison, the judge declared that
she never be allowed to cook for her fellow inmates.
After thirteen years of incarceration, she died on November twentieth,
nineteen thirty six. So Tilly clearly does seem to have
had a certain detachment and a callousness about the crime
(34:26):
she was found guilty of, and that cannot have helped
her case. But we also can't disregard another significant influence
in the outcome of her trial, which we briefly touched on. Now,
you might hope something like physical appearance wouldn't matter today
in the courtroom as it clearly did in Tillie's day.
You might surprise to hear that the judge and jury
can still be swayed by a pretty face. What we
(34:48):
know from study upon study, is that most people, even
without being conscious of it, consider physically attractive adults to
be healthier, more intelligent, and to have better personalities than
those who we are not considered as esthetically pleasing. In fact,
in economics, there's a phenomenon known as the beauty premium,
and on the opposite side of the spectrum there's what's
(35:09):
called the ugliness penalty. But that's just not limited to economics,
it's just how humans work with each other. In recent years,
studies have also found that as humans, we generally consider
attractive people in our society to just be better people,
whether that's in the workplace, at school, in relationships, or
in the courtroom where you would hope and expect to
(35:31):
find impartiality. Studies in the last few decades have found
that juries tend to be biased in the favor of
good looking defendants. This can mean people considered to be
attractive or not only found guilty less often, but that
they also receive less severe sentences when they are found guilty.
Unattractive however you define it, defendants, on the other hand,
(35:51):
were more likely to be served with longer and harsher
sentences in average of twenty two months longer in prison,
and that's even today. So while Tilly we could never
paint as a good guy in any of this, she
definitely still was also a victim of this kind of
(36:11):
weird bias that people won't even acknowledge that they have. Right.
We feel that we're above it now, but we're not.
We're clearly not. No. And the thing is, it's one
of those things that's insidious, right like we all have it.
We all have these biases. So you can't presume that,
in recognizing that they exist, that you have overcome your
(36:32):
own because it's hardwired almost in some ways, it's not
really hardwired. You can relearn it, but it takes an
awful lot of conscious effort, absolutely, and a constant conscious
effort probably for the rest of your life. You're always
practicing it. Yes, But in less downer talk, Hey, Maria,
(36:56):
it's my favorite time of the show, cocktail hour. Yes, indeed,
what's your Poison? Our time where we'd come up with
a little something, something that will relate to the show
in a fun way. And since we've been talking about
Tillie and since she was a Polish immigrant, I wanted
to do something in honor of her Polish heritage. So
(37:17):
I squirreled around on the Internet for a while because
I couldn't come up with anything on my own, and
I discovered this recipe. It's called a few different things.
The name that I enjoy is Polish Kiss. And what
this is is Zubrowka vodka, which is a bison grass vodka.
(37:39):
Did you say bison grass vodka? I did. That's interesting. Yeah,
I don't know if it's the grass that bison prefer,
like fine bison everywhere. I don't swear by this grass.
It's just I don't know. It has a blade of
grass in the bottle. I also came across this drink
called a Frisky Bison aka the Polish Kiss. So clearly
(38:07):
so the Polish Kiss is The version that I found
was one point five ounces of this bice and grass
vodka and then five ounces of apple juice. And the
way it was touted when I read about it was
that it tastes just like apple pie. And does it?
(38:29):
It does not, at least not the version I made. Now,
let me back up the truck for a minute, because
I don't want to blame the recipe maker. I but
it's delicious, it's just not like apple pie. I think
probably if you are making it with normal apple juice
(38:49):
from the store, it probably does start to taste like
apple pie. But I bought organic, unsweetened hippie apple juice
to go with the vodka. I totally so what happened
is that it tastes like you have just picked a
fresh apple off of a tree and taken a bite
(39:10):
of it. Because that vodka has that grassy flavor that
makes it feel like a fresh plant based item. And
it's absolutely beautiful. It's very crisp, sounds delicious. It's like
it's a summer day cocktail. For sure. It was very delightful.
I could see that she would probably drink that while
(39:30):
she was waiting for her husband to die, like while
she was knitting her hat. She's like, Oh, I just
something refreshing to drink. While I will say this, I
will say this, that cocktail vibes to me a little
too fancy for her. I picture her as like a
bear drink. It does seem a little fancy. And remember
Chicago in the twenties, Probably not like I want fancy
imported vodka. I doubt I would like the imported bison
(39:53):
grass vodka from my homeland. Okay, probably didn't come up much,
I guess though, And I guess now that is this
week's What's Your Poison? And thank you for joining us
again on Criminalia. If you would like to subscribe to
the podcast, we would like you to do that. As well,
and you can do that on the iHeartRadio app, at
Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. Criminalia is
(40:22):
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aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay,
(02:13):
I'm not gonna get explicit, but just because you're cute,
like I'm not going you're gonna say yes, girl and honey.
We have a lot of fun along the way. You
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and glamour and they just really really want I want
us to talk openly about the difficult things we all
(02:34):
face as humans and as humans in America. Racist white
people in the United States will sign their own death certificates.
They will vote for policies that crush them, no safety nets,
no healthcare because they feel too much like entitlements. And
those are folks of color, right. Listen to The Laverne
Cox Show and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
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This is Ali Wentworth, host of Go ask Alli Season two.
We'll be back soon with more new episodes. As always,
Go ask Alli is there for binging and catching up,
purpose and meaning in life or how you figure out
what life is all about, and that requires unhappiness. So
(03:17):
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Go ask Alli on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts. Make sure you subscribe and share. Welcome
to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Hello,
(03:43):
and Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria trom Marquis and I'm
Holly Fry. We know that humans have always managed to
commit crimes, almost certainly before there was even recorded history,
so we decided that we would start looking at those
crimes and get our hands dirty. We wanted to dig
in and look at some of history's crimes criminals to
understand them better, and in doing so, we're curious if
(04:04):
we can find commonality with our modern world and our
modern problems, and whether these crimes look different a little
bit of distance on the timeline, and whether any of
these perpetrators emerge as more sympathetic characters. This first season
is going to be all about poisoners, specifically women poisoners.
Poison is often called a woman's weapon, despite the fact
(04:25):
that roughly two thirds of the poisonings committed throughout time
have been the work of men. So let's start looking
at these women and their motivations and see if any
patterns develop. This week, we're looking into the life and
crimes of Tilly Clinic, a Polish immigrant who killed at
least one and possibly as many as twenty people and
at least one dog between the years nineteen fourteen and
(04:45):
nineteen twenty two. I will confess that when you were
telling me about the research you were doing initially on
this and you mentioned the dog, I was like, well,
I hate her. Not that it wasn't terrible, it should
killed people, just you know, that was for me the
worst thing that she could have done as well. She
(05:15):
was born Tiafila Burick to Michaelina and Michael Burick on
October twenty second, eighteen seventy seven, and Tilly was probably
right around four years old when her family immigrated to
the United States. They moved from Poland to the Little
Poland neighborhood of Chicago, and of the seven children in
the family, oh Tilly, as she was called, was the eldest.
(05:37):
Chicago has a long history of Polish immigration, and Polish
Americans have lived in the area for well over a century.
In eighteen ninety, around the time Tilly was born, there
was a wave of immigration to the United States. At
that time, the number of Polish immigrants in the city
blossomed to more than twenty five thousand. By nineteen thirty,
a few years before she died, that number had grown
to one hundred and sixty five thousand. Most they lived
(05:59):
below the poverty line. Is the tale of immigration in
so many ways. So let's set the scene of the
actual situation we're talking about today. So this is Chicago
in the early twentieth century. You couldn't necessarily count on
(06:23):
your food and drinks to be clean. Upton Sinclair started
publishing the serialized version of his groundbreaking expose of the
meat industry in the US, The Jungle, in nineteen oh five,
and while that led to the creation of the Meat
Inspection Act in nineteen oh six, food safety legislation was
still in its infancy. But if you were at a
(06:44):
restaurant or a club or a hotel around the city,
there were other dangers when it came to what you
consumed at the table. In particular, wait staff were known
to target patrons who didn't tip well. Not like the
content of the chatter in fight club, although honestly maybe
a little of that. They usually poisons and various other
things you really don't want to be in your food,
(07:04):
so remember always tip well. But moreover, it turns out
that you couldn't really count on food safety at home either,
at least if you lived with a Tilly Climic. During
the time that Chicago's most visible criminal element was organized crime,
Tilly was quietly becoming the city's most prolific female serial killer.
(07:25):
She'd allegedly killed between six and twenty people. Like we said,
but that was all through arsenic poisoning. So we're going
to talk first just about what arsenic actually is. It
is a naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust and
in its raw state. As much as it has this
instant conjuring of poison, it's not actually harmful the way
it naturally exists. Arsenic only really becomes poisonous when it's
(07:48):
converted into arsenic trioxide, which is better known as white arsenic.
White arsenic not only is odorless, but it's tasteless, and
it's white or transparent informs, so it's easily confused with
sugar or flour. But it's highly toxic when it's inhaled
into your lungs or when you ingest it, and it
might surprise you that even white arsenic is actually fairly
benign in relatively small amounts, because it is very lethal
(08:12):
at higher doses. In fact, doctors have actually prescribed white
arsenic through the years in its low dosage as a
treatment for things like asthma, typhus, malaria, even menstrual cramps,
and it continues to be administered intravenously as a chemotherapy
for a specific type of leukemia. When arsenic is ingested, initially,
(08:32):
it causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea that's often
being accompanied by bleeding and vomiting. It's terrible. As the
dose gets more and more lethal in the body, though,
the symptoms also begin to include convulsions, cardiovascular problems, hair loss,
liver and kidney problems, and even organ damage. So not
a peaceful way to go. Definitely not sugar no, and
(08:57):
despite its potency, it has been used in the production
of semiconductors. It's been used as wood preservative, and it's
also sometimes found in pesticides. Manufacturers in the nineteenth century
started using it for its green pigment in products like
paint and wallpaper, fabrics, beauty products, and as food coloring.
(09:17):
The list goes on because green is very beautiful color,
so sometimes those products would actually make people sick, but
at the time, no one was suspecting that the arsenic
in them was the problem that was causing their ailments.
In the early twentieth century, when Tilly was busy murdering
people in her community, the average Americans medicine cabinet was
(09:37):
stocked with all sorts of toxic things like radioactive radium
for acne, and mercury as a topical antiseptic for cuts
and scrapes and burns. Morphine showed up in everyday products
and everything from teething medications to cures for heroin addiction.
From roughly the late eighteenth into the early twentieth century
is considered to be the golden age of poisoners, and
(10:01):
during that time, arsenic specifically caught the nickname the inheritance powder.
And you can probably imagine why the police really didn't
have any of the tools to test the corpse for poison.
Arsenic wasn't only easy to acquire, it was hard to
detect as a cause of death, which was win win
for the golden age of poisoners. It was common practice
(10:24):
for doctors to treat suspected poisoning with leeches bleeded out,
or try to identify the poison involved by sniffing the
contents of the person's stomach. Remember how we said arsenic
was odorless though, Yeah, so you just sniff those contents
for nothing. But it was also just unusual for a
doctor or a coroner to suspect arsenic as a cause
(10:45):
of death, mainly because the symptoms of arsenic poisoning that
Maria just talked about, diarrhea and vomiting and abdominal pain
are so similar to a lot of other disorders. It's
also really hard to place a poisoner at the scene
of the murder. Dying can typically take hours or longer
if you administered the poison gradually, such as with someone's meals,
(11:08):
so the perpetrator could easily have a seemingly airtight alibi
for their whereabouts because the window of time had such
fuzzy edges when it actually wouldn't be until the late
nineteenth century that a chemist named James marsh would come
up with a reliable chemical test for arsenic poisoning. Today,
arsenic poisoning is treated with chelatition therapy, which uses special
drugs that bind to metal ions in your blood. So
(11:34):
rough On Rats was the product that became popular in
the late eighteen hundreds. It was composed mainly of arsenic
and a little black coal for masking the poison, and
while i was advertised for use in killing rats, mice, bedbugs, flies, roaches,
it occasionally was used for the very off label purpose
of killing husbands. Believe it or not, the marketing slogan
(11:57):
for this poison rough On Rats was don't die in
the house, thinking, of course, being that the creature you
had poisoned would scurry away to die. It was also
really easily available at the local store, and Tillie actually
got her first bottle of rough On Rats from her
cousin Nellie Kulik, and Nellie, it would turn out, was
(12:20):
also a fellow poisoner murder and husbands. According to accounts
from her neighbors, Tillie was sent to have precognitive dreams,
meaning that she could predict the future in real life
through sort of a sixth sensish kind of way. She
began to predict the deaths of neighborhood dogs, and she
was surprisingly accurate, but it turns out she was just
(12:44):
scheduling their deaths. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves though,
in the progression of Tillie's activities with rough on rats.
So we're going to back up to eighteen ninety five. Hi,
It's Laverne Cox and on my podcast Verne Cox Show,
we're ripping the band aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet
culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay, I'm not gonna get explicit,
(13:09):
but just because you're cute, like I'm not going you're
gonna say yes, girl, and honey. We have a lot
of fun along the way. You have a lot of
lesbian fans who love your femininity and glamour and they
just really really want I want us to talk openly
about the difficult things we all face as humans and
(13:30):
as humans in America. Racist white people in the United
States will sign their own death certificates. They will vote
for policies that crush them, no safety nets, no healthcare
because they feel too much like entitlements. And those are
folks of color, right. Listen to The Laverne Cox Show
and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
(13:51):
your podcast make sure you subscribe and share. Hi. This
is Ali Wentworth, host of Go Ask Alli Season two.
We'll be back soon with more new episodes, but what
you can do is binge the first half of season
two or revisit our first spectacular season. Everyone has to
deal with money, and technically like people don't talk about it.
(14:12):
It's like this quiet thing that everyone wants to avoid.
But then everyone wants to live this life and doesn't
matter what how you define that life, but you need
money for it. Just a few of our fabulous guests
the season are former editor of People magazine Jess Cagel,
New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, and writer and
Oprah's favorite life coach Martha Beck. And people come to
(14:33):
me now and they will say negative things, and I think,
I respectfully do not give a crap what you think,
because I'm a crazy old bat now and you can't
stop me. That's great. Our guests have so much to say.
One liston isn't enough. Listen to Go ask Ali on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Make
(14:54):
sure you subscribe and share Hey, I'm Gabrielle Collins, period
drama nerd and you're behind the scenes guide to Bridgerton.
On Bridgerton the Official Podcast, we're learning how this fantasy
world dipped in history came to life. Daphanie, her costume
(15:14):
design really is about the elegance of simplicity. It's just
color and shape. We went old school and we got
two scene cartists in who painted the backings for us
by hand. These dukes are all like in their late
twenties early thirties. Almost all of them are unmarried, really
good looking, and none of them have syphilis. Can you
(15:37):
imagine when he looks into your eyes and then he
dips you. We just heard this sort of ripping sound. Yeah,
I think this has been a wardrobe malfunction. Listen to
Bridgerton the Official Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or anywhere you get your favorite shows. Welcome back to Criminalia.
(16:06):
By eighteen ninety five, Tillie was married to John mckawitz.
His name may have been Joseph not John. Records aren't
entirely consistent, but we're gonna go with John because that's
what the majority of records from the time referred to
him as that is one of the delights word I'm
using ironically of doing historical research, particularly when you are
(16:26):
talking about immigrants, because there was not a vested interest
always in the government in keeping accurate records about them,
So you often have these these people's stories that get
really muddy because their names do shift around in the
historical record. Anyway, by all accounts this couple, Tilly and John,
(16:48):
were well liked in their community, and their marriage appeared
by all accounts to be happy. Tilly made her life
as a housekeeper, but it was also during this time
that Tilly started telling neighbors about some visions that she
was having. She was, as we mentioned before the break,
an alleged psychic who was skilled specifically at predicting deaths.
(17:09):
This included predicting the death of her own husband, John,
who had left her a thousand dollars When he died
in nineteen fourteen. The coroner's report listed his death as
a result of heart trouble, nothing suspicious. There was no
reason at the time to suspect that John had been
poisoned by his wife. The nickname black widow, which is
often given to women who kill their lovers in order
(17:30):
to inherit. Their wealth would eventually be bestowed upon Tilly,
but not just yet. Here's a little more in detail
on John's sudden end. Okay. In the beginning of nineteen fourteen,
Tilly began telling friends and those in the community that
she dreamed that John was ill. She expected he would
be on his deathbed in just a few weeks, and
when he died in January thirteenth that year, the cause
(17:53):
of death was listed as heart trouble, and Tilly collected
a thousand dollars in life insurance. I guess after nineteen years,
she just didn't want to gun it to twenty. She's
like enough. After receiving that payout on John's life insurance policy,
Tilly actually remarried pretty quickly. See, now, that's the thing.
She remarried quickly often, And I have to I always
(18:14):
sort of wonder, like if she would follow in love
with someone new and be like, oh, I'll kill my
husband and we'll start out fresh with like this new
thousand dollars. It's just my own personal theory. Yeah, I
think there's merit to it. But her new husband, Joseph Raskowski,
died just three months after they got married. And he
happened to leave his widow twelve hundred dollars in cash
(18:36):
and seven hundred twenty two dollars in insurance money. Not
only did Tilly predict Joseph's death, she went on to
predict the deaths of her third husband, although they may
or may not have been married, it's a little sketchy.
And her fourth husband, as well as children, she cared
for a few neighbors and possibly some other family members.
(18:57):
And not only did she joke with neighbors that her
fourth husband, Frank, had quote two inches to live, which
is a really interesting, fascinating turn of phrase, she allegedly
taunted him on his deathbed and said things like it
won't be long now and you'll be dying soon, which
(19:21):
is hard in my own home. You got two inches
to live? I don't know, right, It's like callous on
a level that's hard to comprehend, right right. She also,
in an act of both cruel and creative, knitted herself
(19:43):
a morning hat as she sat by his bedside while
he was dying. She even so far as to purchase
a thirty dollars bargain coffin to keep in the basement
of her house. Waiting for his death. That storage areament
was a little unsettling request made of her landlord, who
began to be a little suspicious of Tilly after that
came in. Frank did die on April twentieth, nineteen twenty one,
(20:09):
and it is said that when it happened, Tillie played
dance music in the room. The coroner listed Frank's cause
of death as bronchial pneumonia. Tilly's poisonous predilections unnoticed. She
once again collected on his life insurance, this time in
the amount of six hundred seventy five dollars, nearly as
(20:30):
much as the last two. I know she's downgrading the
insurance situation with each one. They're going faster now, you know.
It's just not enough time to like build up to
the thousand. That's another theory I have. It's interesting and
grimly fun to note that frank An Tillie's home at
nine twenty four Winchester It's a house in East Dillige
in Chicago shows up on the Old Fourth Square social
(20:53):
networking site as Old Lady Tilly Clinics Haunted House. Even today,
Tilly was still not arrested, though that didn't happen until
after she botched an attempt at poisoning husband number five,
that was Joseph Clemack. She and Joseph had gotten married
in July of nineteen twenty one, again not long after
Frank's demise, and Clemack is said to have been a
(21:16):
relatively wealthy man, but Tilly did not like that. He
also apparently had a wandering eye, and by October of
nineteen twenty two, he was in the hospital experiencing arm numbness,
leg paralysis, and other symptoms consistent with severe arsenic poisoning.
So while he was in the hospital, Tilly's husband recalled
that his food had tasted strangely lately, and here's one
(21:39):
big red flag. He remembered the dog dying after eating
scraps of food till he had cooked. Her husband also
stated he'd planned to press charges against her and till
he kissed him. Such a strange dynamic at play, But
it was not poisoning Joseph that she went on trial for.
While Tilly was arrested initially for the attempted murder of
(22:00):
Joseph Klemick, who would survive her poison his hand. After
an investigation into the deaths of her previous husbands. The
crime Tilly was eventually tried for was the murder of Frank,
her third husband, but even as she was taken in,
she appeared completely indifferent to the whole situation. It is
said that she told the arresting officer, who was Lieutenant
(22:21):
William Malone, the next one I want to cook dinner
for is you? You made all my trouble. After eighteen
hours of interrogation, Tilly confessed to her crimes, admitting to
mixing rat poison into her victim's food and drink note plural.
It's interesting, right, Like eighteen hours of interrogation is considered extreme,
(22:41):
it is, and she just gives it all up. Then
there's that whole thing of like is this a coerced
confession at that point? But her later behavior makes it
seem like she's pretty down with this information being one
true and part of public records. Yeah, she's a badass.
Just two grains of arsenic is enough to kill almost anyone,
(23:04):
and as much as eight grains were found in Frank's organs,
so enough to kill four people. Authorities decided to exhume
Tillie's other husbands and found their stomachs each contained lethal
doses of arsenic, and although evidence existed to convict her
of as many as twenty murders by arsenic, only one
charge resulted in a conviction. Although she was not the
(23:27):
only woman and wife in her community to be arrested
for suspicion of poisoning, she was the only one of
them who was sentenced. Yeah. Remember how we mentioned her
cousin earlier. Yeah. Authorities went on to investigate a possible
poison ring in the Little Poland neighborhood, arresting other local
women in what the assistant state attorney at the time
(23:48):
that was, a man named William McLaughlin called quote the
most astonishing wholesale poisoning plot uncovered. He wanted the death
penalty for Tilly, but without better evidence, the other women
who had been rounded up just had to be released.
As Tillie's story unfurls, it becomes apparent that it wasn't
just husbands that she poisoned. She played fast and loose
(24:11):
with rough on rats, poisoning people who irritated her and
dogs who barked too much. In the neighborhood. Life was
especially risky if you were one of Tillie's cousins. In
nineteen twelve, Tillie's cousin Stanley Zaczuski died at the age
of sixteen. Tillie, who was in her mid thirties at
the time, tended on him while he was ill. Another cousin,
(24:31):
Stanley's sister, Stell, died in nineteen thirteen. She was twenty
three at the time, and again Tillie played the role
of caregiver. After her husband Frank's death, Tillie started seeing
a man named Joseph Grantkowski, like lovers before him. Joseph
died in nineteen fourteen after jilting her and back to cousins.
(24:52):
In nineteen fifteen, Tillie's cousin Helen died at age fifteen.
Another cousin, Nick Micko, became sick from arsenic poisoning, but
he was lucky enough to actually recover. In nineteen nineteen,
Tillie's cousin Rose died after attending Tillie and Frank's wedding party.
In nineteen eighteen, Tillie may have been involved in the
poisoning of Woejecks Drummer, who was the husband of her
(25:14):
cousin Nellie the same Nellie from she procured her rat poison.
It turns out that Tillie wasn't only cooking arsenic into meals,
she was also a confectioner. Twizzlers may make mouse happy,
but you definitely want to skip Tillie's streets. So Stella Guskowski,
sister of Tillie's former boyfriend Joseph, got sick after she
(25:37):
ate a candy that was given to her by Tillie
after the two women had an argument. Joseph died from
tainted candy as well. Rose Split had also stayed and
Tillie gave her arsenic confused candies after Joseph Klink talked
to her. So jealous, Tillie was willing to go after
innocent women who her husband even dared to converse with.
(25:57):
So let's keep going because we're only about halfway through
the body count. There was also a woman named Bessie
Kopzick's sister in law of Tilly's husband Frank, who fell
sick after eating Tillie's cooking, but Bessie recovered. Children, primarily relatives,
were also on Tillie's hit list. At least four children
in Tillie's sphere were poisoned between nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
(26:21):
Dorothy Spara died at age two. Twins Sophie and Ben's
Strummer also died. John Strummer was the only one to recover.
Lillian's drummer, who was in her early teens, lived at
Tillie's home for a year when she became deathly ill
from the food and suffered heart trouble. So skip ahead
just a few years to March nineteen twenty three and
a man named Myers goes missing. Suspicious. Maybe he might
(26:46):
have been one of Tillie's husband's, but he was more
likely just a boyfriend. Records from this time, as we've mentioned,
not always robust, and a lot of times people would
just claim to be spouses without going through the paperwork,
kind of like common law, but more like they were
just like, well, we lived together, and we live as
a married couple. Either way, the risk of dying was
obviously considerably high for any of Tilly's paramours, legally wed
(27:10):
or not. I don't think she cared about the paperwork,
just the life insurance. At her trial, Tillie wore the
black hat that she had made when her third husband,
Frank had been on his deathbed. She had also warned
it to his funeral as she had planned. Historically, in
Chicago in the early twentieth century, women who were brought
to trial for murder, which was usually murder of their husbands,
(27:32):
were almost always acquitted. If a woman was unlucky enough
to be convicted, she was generally going to be given
an amazingly light sentence in comparison to men who had
stood trial for murder, and it really helped your case.
If you were very feminine, weeping a bit and flirting
would always help. In the year's leading up to Tillie's trial,
(27:54):
twenty eight women had been charged with murder in Cook County,
where Chicago is located. Twenty four were acquitted. It is
probably no coincidence that all twenty four of those women
were considered conventionally attractive. Up to twenty eight, only four
were found guilty, Hilda Axeland, who was not considered a meaty,
Via Trepagnier, who was middle aged, Emma Simpson who was
(28:17):
determined to be insane, and Dora Waterman, who also was
not known for her looks. On the other hand, the
well dressed, well groomed Cora or Fuen, who shot her
boyfriend over his cheating, walked free. Tilly, though, did not
have these advantages. She was nothing like skylish Belva Gartner
and beautiful Beulah Annam, the killers who inspired the play Chicago.
(28:40):
According to Genevieve Forbes, a crime reporter who covered the
trial for the Chicago Tribune, Tilly was neither beautiful nor charming.
She was described as a middle aged woman forty five
who was squat quote unquoth, with a greasy complexion and
a lumpy figure. Her dull brown hair was pulled back
into a nod at the back of her head. Despite
having lived in Chicago since she was just a little kid,
(29:02):
she spoke only broken English, and it was reported that
she growled, I shudder to think what Genevieve for During
the proceedings, prosecutors read a list of twenty alleged victims
of Tilly, pausing after each name to ask her did
you kill this person? And each time she would reportedly shrug,
(29:25):
responding to each of the simple yeah, I wish I
could have bet. At this trial, the trial Jedge asked
for something called a psychopathic lab report. According to the
examining doctor, Tilly was a quote subnormal mentality with an
intellect and I quote again no higher than that of
an eleven year old child. As we just mentioned, she
didn't really speak English especially well, so let's take these
(29:47):
results with a grain of salt. And it was reported
she was afflicted with dementia precox, a diagnosis today that
would be schizophrenia. She was also described as a rattlesnake,
as a heartless woman and to do to the murders
around her. She got the nickname we mentioned earlier, Black Widow. Hi.
It's Ali Wentworth, a middle aged woman with a lot
(30:09):
of questions and a lot of answers I have pulled
out of my tush as host of Go Ask Alli,
my listeners want more, so we are digging in. It's real.
It's honest, open and unexpected and sometimes amusing. Can you
start with your infamous nineteen thousand dollars haircut? Yes, and
this is a great story I feel about mothers and
daughters with a dream and an empty bank account. Just
(30:32):
a few of our fabulous guests this season are New
York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, writer and Oprah's Favorite
life coach, Martha Beck and former editor of People Magazine
Jess Cagel. If we know intimate details about another person,
then that person is socially important to us. Okay, so
(30:52):
that's what you like to gossip about. Wait, what do
you gussip about? All new episodes of Go ask Alli
release every Thursday. Listen to Go Scalie on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, guys,
Katie Lowe's here. You might know me as Quinn Perkins
on Scandal. I am also the host of Katie's Crib.
(31:14):
It's a podcast about all things parenthood. Katie's Crib is
back with new episodes every Thursday. We have got an
amazing lineup of guests. We have got the amazing Katerina Scorsone,
who you might also know as doctor Amelia Shephard from
Grey's Anatomy. She is talking about her three children. We've
(31:34):
also got kat McPhee Foster. She just became a mom
like two seconds ago. We just have a great hang
sessh talking about all things new Mama. We are going
to be covering everything from discipline to mom ring. Tune
in as I bring on celebrities, experts, and even more
guests to continue to help you get through parenthood one
(31:55):
step at a time. Listen to Katie's crib on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Because
of the evidence beyond the single murder, investigators obtained permission
to exoom the corpses of Tillie's dead husbands for arsenic
toxicity testing. Newspaper headlines covering the trial featured headlines like
three more bodies to be exhoomed in clemic case, and
(32:17):
bodies of other relatives will be exhumed. All those cousins,
all those cousins, all yeah, the children and dogs thing.
I just obviously killing anybody as bad. But Tillie, though,
stuck to a story that Frank had died of alcohol
poisoning and that she had absolutely not killed her spouses.
(32:37):
She said, quote, I loved them, they loved me. They
just died, same as other people. She continued, I'm not
responsible for that. I could not help if they wanted
to die. Contrary to her statement during the trial, the
coroner accusingly asserted, quote, there is no question that missus
clinic poisoned everyone. She wanted to get out of the way.
(32:58):
After the jury deliberated or just an hour and twenty minutes,
Tilly was found guilty of the murder of her third husband,
Frank Kopsick. In nineteen twenty three. Judge Marcus Kavanaugh sentenced
her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
That was the harshest sentence ever given to a woman
in Chicago at that time. Four jurors thought she should
(33:19):
be given the death penalty. At the time, no woman
had ever been sentenced to death in the state of Illinois.
The Chicago Tribune reporter Forbes called her gruesomely cruel and
went on to say that Tilly is a spectator in
her own drama. While on all accounts, Tilly is considered
to have been friendly to the other prisoners, once she
was incarcerated, she definitely did not want to talk about
(33:42):
the poisonings. It has said that she would yell, quote,
I didn't rob nobody, I didn't shoot nobody. I didn't
poison nobody. I didn't everybody picks on me. Everybody makes
eyes at me like they're going to eat me. Why
do they make eyes like that. I tell the truth.
Anything I did I did to myself, nobody else. She
(34:03):
was incarcerated at the Illinois State Penitentiary at Juliet, with
one stipulation. It said that while Tilly enjoyed the few
food served to her in prison, the judge declared that
she never be allowed to cook for her fellow inmates.
After thirteen years of incarceration, she died on November twentieth,
nineteen thirty six. So Tilly clearly does seem to have
had a certain detachment and a callousness about the crime
(34:26):
she was found guilty of, and that cannot have helped
her case. But we also can't disregard another significant influence
in the outcome of her trial, which we briefly touched on. Now,
you might hope something like physical appearance wouldn't matter today
in the courtroom as it clearly did in Tillie's day.
You might surprise to hear that the judge and jury
can still be swayed by a pretty face. What we
(34:48):
know from study upon study, is that most people, even
without being conscious of it, consider physically attractive adults to
be healthier, more intelligent, and to have better personalities than
those who we are not considered as esthetically pleasing. In fact,
in economics, there's a phenomenon known as the beauty premium,
and on the opposite side of the spectrum there's what's
(35:09):
called the ugliness penalty. But that's just not limited to economics,
it's just how humans work with each other. In recent years,
studies have also found that as humans, we generally consider
attractive people in our society to just be better people,
whether that's in the workplace, at school, in relationships, or
in the courtroom where you would hope and expect to
(35:31):
find impartiality. Studies in the last few decades have found
that juries tend to be biased in the favor of
good looking defendants. This can mean people considered to be
attractive or not only found guilty less often, but that
they also receive less severe sentences when they are found guilty.
Unattractive however you define it, defendants, on the other hand,
(35:51):
were more likely to be served with longer and harsher
sentences in average of twenty two months longer in prison,
and that's even today. So while Tilly we could never
paint as a good guy in any of this, she
definitely still was also a victim of this kind of
(36:11):
weird bias that people won't even acknowledge that they have. Right.
We feel that we're above it now, but we're not.
We're clearly not. No. And the thing is, it's one
of those things that's insidious, right like we all have it.
We all have these biases. So you can't presume that,
in recognizing that they exist, that you have overcome your
(36:32):
own because it's hardwired almost in some ways, it's not
really hardwired. You can relearn it, but it takes an
awful lot of conscious effort, absolutely, and a constant conscious
effort probably for the rest of your life. You're always
practicing it. Yes, But in less downer talk, Hey, Maria,
(36:56):
it's my favorite time of the show, cocktail hour. Yes, indeed,
what's your Poison? Our time where we'd come up with
a little something, something that will relate to the show
in a fun way. And since we've been talking about
Tillie and since she was a Polish immigrant, I wanted
to do something in honor of her Polish heritage. So
(37:17):
I squirreled around on the Internet for a while because
I couldn't come up with anything on my own, and
I discovered this recipe. It's called a few different things.
The name that I enjoy is Polish Kiss. And what
this is is Zubrowka vodka, which is a bison grass vodka.
(37:39):
Did you say bison grass vodka? I did. That's interesting. Yeah,
I don't know if it's the grass that bison prefer,
like fine bison everywhere. I don't swear by this grass.
It's just I don't know. It has a blade of
grass in the bottle. I also came across this drink
called a Frisky Bison aka the Polish Kiss. So clearly
(38:07):
so the Polish Kiss is The version that I found
was one point five ounces of this bice and grass
vodka and then five ounces of apple juice. And the
way it was touted when I read about it was
that it tastes just like apple pie. And does it?
(38:29):
It does not, at least not the version I made. Now,
let me back up the truck for a minute, because
I don't want to blame the recipe maker. I but
it's delicious, it's just not like apple pie. I think
probably if you are making it with normal apple juice
(38:49):
from the store, it probably does start to taste like
apple pie. But I bought organic, unsweetened hippie apple juice
to go with the vodka. I totally so what happened
is that it tastes like you have just picked a
fresh apple off of a tree and taken a bite
(39:10):
of it. Because that vodka has that grassy flavor that
makes it feel like a fresh plant based item. And
it's absolutely beautiful. It's very crisp, sounds delicious. It's like
it's a summer day cocktail. For sure. It was very delightful.
I could see that she would probably drink that while
(39:30):
she was waiting for her husband to die, like while
she was knitting her hat. She's like, Oh, I just
something refreshing to drink. While I will say this, I
will say this, that cocktail vibes to me a little
too fancy for her. I picture her as like a
bear drink. It does seem a little fancy. And remember
Chicago in the twenties, Probably not like I want fancy
imported vodka. I doubt I would like the imported bison
(39:53):
grass vodka from my homeland. Okay, probably didn't come up much,
I guess though, And I guess now that is this
week's What's Your Poison? And thank you for joining us
again on Criminalia. If you would like to subscribe to
the podcast, we would like you to do that. As well,
and you can do that on the iHeartRadio app, at
Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. Criminalia is
(40:22):
a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Headed to Monterey Car Week celebrate cars, craft and community
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Since her role as White House correspondent, Caitlyn Collins has
never been afraid to dicti She's a reliable, deeply sourced
reporter and is always willing to hold the powerful accountable.
On her new CNN show The Source with Caitlyn Collins,
Caitlyn is bringing that tenacious spirit to primetime. She's chasing
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the facts, connecting with her rolodex of sources, and pulling
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