393 - It's Not a Meeting

This week, Georgia tells the story of Louise and William Thoresen III and Karen covers the bogeyman of Victorian England, Spring-Heeled Jack.

For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, Hello, and welcome my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstart,
that's Karen Kilgarriff.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Here we are again.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
That's right, again and again times seven and a half years.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I mean, what's the last thing you did for seven
and a half?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, are truly nothing. We were such babies when we
started this, weren't we. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I mean it feels like four lifetimes.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah. I was thirty five, is that right? Thirty six?
That's a child.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I was underwater on my mortgage and nothing was helping.
Yeah until this put Yeah, until you were like, let's
do merch and I was like, if you set it up,
I'll participate with you.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh bad life. It's so weird to see fortyish most
powerful people in podcasting. Can I brag about that for
a second? Sure, Hollywood Reporter in their like list and
we're on it. And I'm like, are those two girls
who started a podcast in my like Thie Town apartment.

(01:30):
And then someone commented like to me, like on Instagram
you should listen to like minisod something like thirty and
see how far you've come. And I was like, I
wonder what they mean. And I listened to it and
it's a minisoda. The hometown is the Swiss cheese pervert.
Oh yeah, and I'm like, oh my god, children. At

(01:52):
the time, it was so different.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
That was one of our first like people sending us
material where we're just like, this is the funniest We
couldn't have asked for better than that email and the
person that sent it to us.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, and then Nick Terry turning into a fucking video.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Now are you back in the comment section.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Oh that's a great question, well, she added me, I
wasn't in our comment section. I was reading people who
had commented directly towards.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Me, So technically, yes, look, that was not an accusation.
We are permanently in the comment section. I had Josh Minkowitz,
the great Dateline anchor Josh Mankowitz text me the other
day and he was like, what's going on? And I'm like,
what do you mean? I've no idea what you mean.
He's like this thing on TikTok and I was just like, oh, no, no,

(02:38):
don't worry about it. That happens all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Oh. He was surprised by it.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's just like, oh, you don't you've never followed it. Okay, Yeah, no,
this is the way it.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh, you must not be a woman on social media
because you're surprised that this thing is happening right now.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
You can't live in that shit waiting for this meeting
to start. I was like sitting down with it for once.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Can I tell you that it's sad that you call
this a meeting and not us.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Sorry, that is.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I know you've had meetings all fucking day, and that's
why you're saying that in that exact spot on your couch,
are sitting in talking to a zoom just like you
are right now. That this is not a meaning.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
This is the reason the meetings happen exactly Like the
idea that I'm calling this a meeting is I've completely
lost my way.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
That's hilarious, folks. It's Friday. It's Friday night right now.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Folks, It's Friday. The week has been long, the week
has been taxing. Here's the thing, Ultimately, I love this life.
I love the life this podcast has given us. It's
so delightful. The people that talk to us and like us,
love us, and it's so nice, and that is a
very lucky thing. And the fact that there's a back

(03:53):
end of like detractors or whatever is like, that's that's
the price you pay. You don't get the glory without
the back end that slaps you in the face a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
That's just how it is.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
And it's a good ego check and it's a good
reminder of like, hey, there are other people who have
opinions and might have something to teach you and might
have something to tell you, and so fucking fine.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, there's fucking taxes to pay sometimes, right, Yeah, death
and taxes. That's what this s That's what this podcast
experience has been about.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Literally, I mean to your point and to that person
who is telling you that, I honestly believe there has
been real evolution and I'm very proud of it. And
I think one of the biggest pieces of that evolution
is learning to learn from what is maybe the kind
of thing that often we don't like to even listen to,

(04:45):
which is criticism. And it can be really hard, and
you can take it all kinds of ways, and you
can have all kinds of defenses about it, but ultimately
we're all here on this fucking dumb planet to learn
to evolve.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I think we've evolved. I think we've definitely evolved, and
I'm proud of that about us, And I think it
just means you know that we're evolving, We're always going
to be evolving as human beings. And if you don't,
then you're fucking stuck in stagnant and you're gonna get
black mold and it's going to just get rusty and gross.
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Respiratory diseases, legionnaires, be careful, spiritual. Legionnaire's disease is one
of the worst things that you can get.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Is that what you're covering this week? Yep?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
It let's go right into my story that Actually, as
we were saying that, because I said, this fucking dumb
planet reminded me because I was the Queen. I just
really in the late nineties loved like a what do
you call it, just you know, one of them little
T shirts that everyone wore with a funny thing on
the front. Just a T shirt, you mean, just a
T shirt like a Wringer shirt or what a graphic.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Tea like a Silent Sells coffee shop or whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Like a exact yah. And I had one, a green
shirt that just said I hate the environment on the.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Front, Bring it back.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
I think it's time. I think it's time that we
stop fighting for the environment. It's trying to kill it.
Can we be honest for one second with ourselves? Her
a quake? If there is any lesson in the world,
then the earth wants us out of here. It's the
her aquake.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
And see, this is what women in podcasting aren't allowed
to do, is be completely sarcastic about not liking the
environment and taking it down. We are kidding. Why, why,
after all this time you've gotten to know us, would
you not know the sarcasm meter of this podcast.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's because the ones who don't know don't know us.
That's all.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
That's true, that's all. We don't get it. That's fine.
I mean you can go sit at a different table
for real. No, for real, you got anything to share
with the group?

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well I do? Hold on, I always do this, or
I don't know how to do it. You X out
of it, right? Yeah, no, no, don't leave the meeting.
Don't leave the meeting.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
It's not seating.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Zoom thinks it's a meeting too. Zoom started it.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
How dare you call our child a meaning, our baby.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Our blessed, blessed baby. She truly is.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
As a miracle. It's true.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
So I covered in Let's talk about It way back
in episode one thirty three who entitled Mate of Crystals,
I covered the cold case story.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Of the Lady and the Dunes.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
The victim was identified as Ruth Marie Terry about a
year ago, and then through the use of DNA and genealogy,
they basically figured out that it was her husband.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Who did Yeah didn't he did? He just get convicted.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
I think they just identified him. He died in two
thousand and two. So it's one of those things where
the DNA reports that that's what happened. Yeah, Yeah, it's
so old. Her body was found in nineteen seventy four,
unidentified til a year ago.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
And that's why it's so important to identify these victims,
these victims without a name. It is because you know,
half the time going to lead back to someone they
knew who can't be tried and convicted because there's no body,
no proof of murder, you know. It's why these cold
cases are.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
So well and also just I feel like so often
you don't get that feeling, you don't get that satisfaction,
and then like this one, which was like a complete mystery,
like yeah, and that there was that connection to the
movie Jaws and all those like there's so much mystery
around it and so much like almost almost, but it's like,

(08:50):
but they just cannot figure out who this person is.
They do, whether it's citizens, sluice or investigators that don't
give up, like the the idea that that message coming
through finally, after so much messaging of so much injustice,
that every once in a while there is a little
bit of justice or at least a little bit of

(09:12):
potential closure. I don't know, in all these horrible things
we talk about, it is nice to be able to
say that every once in.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
A while, totally should we do exactly right corner? Let's
do it's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Aaron Brown, who writes our exactly right corner, who assembles
this for us, goes I got a little scorely on
this one this week, or it was something like that,
and then I'm just about to read. Now that we're
done with our casual banter, it's time to get some
very exciting.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
I think we should see how far she can push
it will that will still read it? You know what
I mean? Like, how creative can she get and tell
it will go I'm not fucking saying that.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
That's a great idea, and I think, no matter what,
we should do Ron Burgundy and just read it like
we mean it.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Let's give her more work because she's so yeah, exactly,
she's not doing anything.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
She's not busy at all with every other part of
our company. Now that we're done with our casual banter,
it's time to get to some very exciting news. The
weight is finally over, unless you're listening one week early,
and then the weight is almost over. This is like
the longest paragraph of all time. Episodes one and two
of Infamous International The Pink Panther Story are available everywhere

(10:22):
you listen to podcasts on September fourteenth. That's our brand new,
first true crime limited series, So please go give it
a listen, and don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe
to the show while you are on its feed.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
We appreciate you guys supporting us and supporting Infamous International.
It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
In other true crime news, this week, on Buried Bones,
Kate Winkler, Dawson and Paul Holds undertake the first in
a two part series about the Little Field murders in
nineteen thirty's Rule Main.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
And now switching gears. Our very own Banana Boys Kurt
Broneller and Scottie landis haunt Roz this week on Ghosted
by ros Hernandez Yay.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Lastly, the MFM store is featuring some very fun posters
with sayings and artwork that you know and love. So
go to my favorite murder dot com to get your poster.
Hang it in your you know, in your bedroom at home,
or in your office wherever you like to hang posters.
Hang it in your toll booth, your toll booth, your locker,
you know. Yeah, your lighthouse, your emotional lighthouse.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Are you first?

Speaker 1 (11:26):
I'm first this week? Yes, okay, I'm first. As you
just said, I'm going to do a cold open for once.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Oh okay, sit back and relax. I won't ask you five.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Questions right at the top, save them for like one minute, literally, okay.
In December of nineteen sixty six, Karen, a beautiful, dark
haired woman looking to be in her early thirties, approaches
the United Airlines Lost and Found counter at the JFA
K International Airport. That's where we're starting, here, we are,

(12:04):
She asks the attendant there if she can leave four
small crates there. She flashes her husband's United Airlines VIP
card to show she's legit. She's just like, I want
to leave these here. You could do shit like that
back in the fucking sixties. You could just leave things everywhere.
There was no see something, say something back then.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
No there was not. Instead it was everybody has the
benefit of the death.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
That's right if you're white, So that's right. The clerk
behind the counter agrees to hold the crates overnight. The
next day, the woman doesn't show up. Whatever, we trust everyone.
A few days later, an airline employee is moving packages
around and I bet he was looking through packages just
to be curiously.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Tell yeah, looking through Lost and found where you're just
like in thirty Days.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
This is a Dibbs sure dives on this, except when
he picks up one of the crates quote unquote yeah right,
outfalls a Luger automatic pistol. Oh, and he finds that
they're guns and different kinds of uh what do you
call them? Ammunition wet the ammunition style weapons in all
the crates, And so the employee calls the port authority

(13:10):
police and then they decide to stake out the counter
to see who this woman is when she comes back,
So she doesn't show up for a couple of days.
But it's one in the morning when she does, and
she's carrying four more crates and she tells the clerk
that she'd like to ship all the eight crates to Chicago,
and then she's promptly arrested. Wow, all eight packages contained
tons of pistols and ammunition. Upon searching her rented car,

(13:34):
police also find three riot guns, a fucking flame thrower, oh,
another pistol, machine gun, parts, shells for eight bazooka and
thousands of thirty and fifty caliber shells. So a whole
cash of ammunition issues.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Now, could she have been the prop person for the
musical Chicago? She wasn't saying it to Chicago, So thmosid
stuck in my head.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
The woman who briefly goes to jail before being bailed
out is Luis Thorson, and she turns out to be
the wife of the violent Ne'er Dowell, son of a
Chicago steel tycoon. So it fucking sounds like a play already.
And if this traveling arsenal seems shocking, it's relatively tame
compared with the dark twist and turns in the life

(14:22):
of her husband, William Thorson the third. And that's what
I'm going to tell you about today.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Great start, wonderful kickoff.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Thank you to my researcher Ali for doing that for me.
My manin sworts for the story are two books by
the author named Glenn Wall and he's like the expert
in this story. He has extensively searched William Thorsen's life
and the other sources can be found in the show notes.
So this guy, William Thorson the Third, is born in
nineteen thirty seven. He grows up in Kenilworth, Illinois, which

(14:55):
is just outside of Chicago. It's a small, leafy, very
wealthy hamlet. It in Chicago's northern suburbs. If you've ever
seen a John Hughes movie, you've basically seen Kenilworth and
it's similar surrounding towns, so think fucking sixteen candles and shit. Also,
the house at the end of Planes, Trains and Automobiles

(15:15):
where Steve Martin lives, that's in Kenilworth as well. So
like big rich mansions got it. Thorson's father is William
Thorsen the second William and his younger brother, Richard and
their mother. Kay, I'll call the dad Bill Senior. Bill
Senior is the owner of the Great Western Steel Company.
The family is very wealthy.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
It's steel money, baby.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
I don't even know what the steel company does, so yeah,
I bet it's wealthy.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
They do fucking everything, because what doesn't have steel in it,
especially back then. Rich people that are in steel have
their own rich people name, which is Steel Magnate.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Oh yeah, and you name your kid after yourself, the second,
the third, all that stuff because Bill Junior, Bill, the
third Billy Bill. But William will later tell people that
he was raised mostly by Nanni's of course, and spent
short stints at various boarding schools, so that they're that
kind of rich. Yeah. The Thors and boys are the
local menaces of Kenilworth, though, so you can't buy your

(16:14):
kid's behavior. They will rebel no matter what.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
It's almost the inverse of the more money the worst behave.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Totally or mo money more problems, is what you're trying
to say. Sure, yeah, they get into all sorts of
like Dennis and mena style. Trouble in their neighborhood is adolescents.
As William gets older, though, the incidents get darker, and
by the time he's in his late teens, William has
been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. On one occasion, he
escapes from the hospital and goes back to his family home,

(16:43):
where he barricades himself in his room and tells his
father and two household workers that he has a shotgun
and will kill anyone who tries to enter. And he
does have guns at this point, so wow. Yeah. A
few months later, he steals one of the family cars
well armed with a forty five automatic handgun. All this
is going on, Richard, the younger brother, seems to be
cleaning up his act. He has far fewer run ins

(17:05):
and they decline as he gets older. But William is
just kind of declining and just becoming more and more
of a menace. When he turns eighteen, he's just made
to learn that he will not be getting any kind
of payout from his father. Oh uh huh. In the
summer of nineteen fifty seven, when William is nineteen, a
young woman goes to the Kenilworth Police with a scary story.

(17:28):
She says that William and another man who goes by
the name Frog, had given her and her friend a ride,
and when they were in the car, William and Frog
were talking about cutting off heads and steel barrels. And
a week later, the decapitated body of a missing fifteen
year old named Judith may Anderson. Parts of her body,

(17:48):
including her decapitated head, are found in a fifty five
gallon steel barrel. Oh, she had been shot in the
head four times with a thirty two caliber revolver. Wow,
so there's like a weird connection there, And William had
also been involved in a car chase near where her
body had been found. He's questioned in the investigation of
her murder, but he's never charged, and Judas case is

(18:11):
never solved, and it's this guy Glenn Wall. The researcher
says that the steel drums contain traces of chemicals used
in the production of steel, so like they were steel
fucking drums, and Juda's case to this day isn't solved.
So in nineteen fifty eight, William meets a teaching student
name Louise Banich. She's the one from earlier in the

(18:32):
story when she dropped off crates of guns at the thing.
They're bout twenty one. When they meet, William is like
a very handsome man. You wouldn't suspect him to be
this nefarious person. He's very like clean cut in all
his photos, you know, very nineteen sixties like you know,
bond looking cottage. Yeah, hot, prins, got that hot.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
He's got that hot privilege of you never think he
has a forty five in his pocket.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
If you told me he was Dbee Cooper, like, I
would buy it. He's got that look, you know.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah. OK.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
So they meet each other and they, I guess fall
in love. William doesn't really change much after meeting her.
He still goes out with other girls, He gets into fights. Still.
They get married in January of nineteen sixty, when they're
about twenty three. About three weeks after that, William's mother
files a malicious mischief report against her own son. While

(19:25):
William's relationship with his parents is tumultuous, they do still
support him. Then, they don't give him lump sons of
money to manage himself because they don't trust him, but
they essentially provide like everything he needs to live his life.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Do we know was he cut off because of his behavior?
You know how? Sometimes they're like the money skips a
generation type of thing.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
No, they definitely had the money. I think that he
was just such a troublemaker from a young age that
they cut him off, you know, or didn't trust him. Yeah.
A few months after their wedding, William and Louise go
on a trip to Maine, where they both spend a
little time in jail for stealing two canoes some posters,
which is like, Oh, this just sounds like a fun
night out with your husband, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Let's go steal posters and then go on the and
go on the lake and just paddle around with our
new posters.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, I love you surely. After this incident, they moved
to Tucson, Arizona, and Louise spends more time there, while
William's police record shows that he just kind of is
a free spirit and bounces around a lot, mostly between Arizona, California,
and Chicago, and in the early sixties, several charges are
filed against him and ultimately dropped because his parents basically

(20:32):
throw money at the problem. In the summer of nineteen
sixty two, William is convicted of assaulting a woman in
Santa Monica, California, while his wife is back in Tucson.
Those charges are pled down from original charges of rape,
William is able to hire expensive lawyers. He sentenced to
six months in prison and ultimately serves only a few weeks.

(20:57):
That same summer, William and Louise have sonw I know.
In his travels. When he's not terrorizing strangers or his family,
William collects military weapons, which is becoming a hobby of his.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Hobby's one word for it.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
In nineteen sixty four, William's now twenty seven years old,
and he and another man are both arrested for setting
off bombs near Tucson radio station. It causes minor damage
to the radio station, wakes up the whole neighborhood, but
no one's hurt, and William is basically let go because
police don't have enough evidence to charge him.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So he's just fucking doing Mayhew, I mean everywhere. It's
like stealing posters is one thing. Setting off bombs, what
the fuck are you doing?

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Throughout his life, he has countless runs with the law
for violent assaults, theets, and reckless driving. He serves virtually
no jail time for any of them because of those
expensive lawyers he's able to hire. In nineteen sixty five,
while Luis is still living in Tucson with their young son.
William runs an apartment in San Francisco and begins experimenting

(21:58):
with the drug that makes everyone out LSD. Kidding, it
doesn't do that.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
It's always those people that are like, I'm already obsessed
with like guns and bombs, and now I'm going to
fuck with the interior structure of my brain.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Hey, let's go a little more perserker and fucking just
start dosing myself. He also spends a lot of time
at home in Chicago, home his little brother, Richard, who's
now twenty three, and he had gone on the straight
and narrow. He's living in an apartment in Chicago, and
when his brother's back in town, you know, as you do,
he gets sucked back into his brother's misdeeds. Over the

(22:40):
course of the summer of sixty five, the Kenilworth Police
compile a thick file full of times they've been called
out to the Thoresen house. Often the boys get into screaming,
somewhat violent conflicts with their parents. It almost sounds like
the Menanda's brothers in a way. It doesn't know, like
just these troublemakers. They break things, they vandalize the house,
they take china and vases in furniture or from the

(23:00):
attic and hurled them down the stairs. They stand on
the roof and yell obscenites down to their parents in
their rich ass neighborhood. This culminates in William stealing more
than half a million dollars worth of securities from his parents' basement,
which is worth how much today? Half a million, half
a million in sixty five three million, six million?

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Fuck?

Speaker 1 (23:23):
So, like why do you have them in your basement?
My god?

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Also, what does securities look like to steal? Like, I
don't know, is it pre arranged? They come in their
own briefcase that like made of metal with its own.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Handcuff, or like they come in a steel barrel, it's
down by the washroom machine, Like yeah, don't put the
securities in the laundry basket. He also convinces his little
brother Richard to write a will left turn making William
the sole heir to any wealth he may have already accumulated,

(23:56):
which is like how does that come up in it?
Like you know, we're hanging out having fun, smash and shit,
and it's like, you know would be fun, Sure ida
will giving everything to me?

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Also if it's your brother. You know what a creep
your brother is because you've seen him be the creepiest,
So why go along with that Unless he's a super
psychopath that's like very good at keeping it under wraps.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
I think he must be. And you know, you want
your big brother's approval in love, and I think he's
truly like a narcissistic psychopath for sure. William.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
In September of nineteen sixty five, this little brother, Richard,
dies in a rented car in Lake Forest, Illinois. He
dies of a gunshot wound to the right side of
his head. The gun is a three seventy five magnum
It's found on the passenger seat next to him, so
police are like, well, this must be suicide. But Richard
was left handed and would have had to use his

(24:50):
right hand if he had shot himself that way. There's
no note. William is out of town at the time
of his brother's death, although he and his wife had
been in town the days prior, so it's just kind
of this mystery. A week after Richard's death, William moves
his family into a mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood
of San Francisco. And I've seen the photo that it's

(25:11):
like this creepy, haunted looking mansion. William jumps right into
a massive renovation, but quickly falls out with the architect
and the contractor, so I'm sure he's easy to work with.
So the family winds up living in a gutted shell
of a mansion. This doesn't stop Lamb from throwing frequent
acid fueled parties. So he's kind of friends with the
riff raff in San Francisco at the time, in the

(25:33):
mid sixties, which you now are like fucking nefarious.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
There's a lot of them out there.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
It's around this time that William kicks his hobby of
collecting weapons into high gear. He and Luis travel the
country buying a military surplus, so much of it that
there's seven thousand square foot San Francisco mansion but comes
packed to the gills with crates of weaponry. What the fuck?
And they have a child too, by the way, this
is like what the kid is growing up?

Speaker 2 (25:58):
That's right, that's horrible.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, like what the fuck. Indeed, seven thousand pounds when
she's busted at the airport, like we talked about earlier
on Desummer nineteen sixty six. Louis is initially suspected of
being a terrorist, but it turns out she's just gotten
sucked into William's hobby. Quote. There's an obsessive quality to
this collecting. Even after Louise is arrested, William keeps buying

(26:22):
the weapons. William and Louise spend about two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars on their collection, which today would mean
that they spent about two million dollars on their collection
of weaponry.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
And he doesn't have his parents' money.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
I think he must be getting some of the money somehow, yeah,
you know.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Because at first I was like, oh, well, you know,
he's rich and he can kind of do whatever he wants.
But then it's like, if he's cut off, then that's
every time he has to buy more guns, he's got
to go ask Bill Senior.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
I don't think he's cut off as much as he's
like watched, but I think he's still able to accrue
a shit ton of money for yeah, that way, you know,
securities and such, securities and such. And I think he's
really manipulative too, So I'm sure his parents also are,
you know, and wanting to take care of their grandson
and their daughter in law. In April nineteen sixty seven,

(27:13):
when Luis's New York case is still pending in the courts,
agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm ray
the San Franciscoll mansion. They find an anti tank cannon,
a mortar, machine guns, rifles, pistols, grenades, and ammunition. Also
in the house is the couple's five year old son,
who is wearing a cowboy outfit complete with fake pistols.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
In the end, seventy seven tons of weaponry are confiscated
from the mansion. Three army trucks from the nearby Presidio
Military Base are needed to cart them away, but Thorson's
lawyer tells reporters, quote, Thorisen is a screwball in some ways.
He just likes to collect old weapons.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
No, no, but also like if you collect old weapons,
then you would have like displays and whatever.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
I heard you describe it as that there were crates
full of that, which is like that's how warlords keep
their weapons, you know, I mean there in great for
future use, as opposed to a collector that's like, here's
my beautiful cabinet with my five guns. From the Civil War.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Right, it's militia. It's militia level. Shit.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, what was this guy's deal? Did he have a plan?

Speaker 1 (28:26):
There is some speculation in a bit Okay, you'll like so.
Because he's a convicted felon from that rape that he,
you know, went to prison for, he's not actually allowed
to own any guns. So in the aftermath of losing
his very expensive collection and while racking up even more
legal fees, William spirals into an even darker place than

(28:47):
he's been so far. He doesn't stop buying guns. Even
with their weapons cases progressing, William keeps sending Luis out
to buy more. One month after the rage, she's caught
with a German submachine gun. That Summerlliam is arrested and
charged in Las Vegas for beating a woman and breaking
her nose. His lawyers once again get him off with
no jail time. Jesus Christ I now, dude. William has

(29:11):
always used Luis in his crimes, having her go out
and buy weapons or try to ship them across state lines,
or as an alibi during times when he's committed other crimes,
but over the next year the relationship becomes more and
more dysfunctional, and William becomes more and more abusive. He's violent.
He routinely threatens to kill her. She leaves him a

(29:31):
few times, but returns, as is often the case. In
the spring of nineteen sixty nine, the family moves to
a small house in Fresno as part of an effort
to get their weapons trial moved out of San Francisco.
By nineteen seventy, William has managed to fill that house
with twenty thousand dollars worth of machine guns and grenades,
which is one hundred and fifty thousand in today's money. Like,

(29:53):
what are you going to do with those?

Speaker 2 (29:55):
It's an obsession. It sounds like a true obsession.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, good lord. Then on June ninth, nineteen seventy, William
forces Louise to write a suicide note. He threatens to
throw her off the Golden Gate Bridge. He beats her,
He fractures her ribs, keeping her a hairline fracture in
her skull, and breaking an ear drum. In the middle
of this her abuse, he confesses to Luis that he

(30:20):
had his brother Richard killed to get his money.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Oh no.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
He also says he later regretted it and killed the
acquaintance he hired to do the job because remember he
was out of town when the other side. Yeah, he
says he killed the hit man and their San Francisco
mansioned by bludgeoning him with a hammer. That's how he
killed the hitman.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Decide thing is wrong with this rich man? Definitely, but
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
He also admits to killing an additional male acquaintance. On
top of all of this, he says he once attempted
to murder his parents and the family housekeeper. The next day,
after their son goes to school, William makes several remarks
to Louise about how he can't let her leave the
house and that he'll have to kill her. Louise takes
a pistol off the mantelpiece and shoots him five times,

(31:07):
killing him.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh shit.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Glenn Wall, the author of the two books about William
and who has researched his life extensively, believes he didn't
contest all of his murders to Luis the night before
she killed him. There's Judith may Anderson I talked about
at the beginning with the steel barrels. Of course, then
there's another case from just a few blocks from where
William grew up. In September nineteen sixty six, a girl

(31:31):
named Valerie Percy who is twenty one years old and
the daughter of a prominent Kenilworth businessman and future US Senator.
She's stabbed to death in her bedroom. Her murder is
never solved, but in twenty fourteen, unsealed FBI records revealed
that William was thought to be a potential suspect. And
we of course know that he was violent towards women,

(31:51):
known to break into houses because that's what he did
when he was a kid. He's like mischief shit and
was in the Kenilworth area repeatedly during that time period.
And near the home the crime scene, a bayonet was
found and it was like a vintage bayonet, and he
was obsessed with collecting stuff like that. Right, Glen Wall
goes even further, and this is his pet theory about William.

(32:15):
He lived in San Francisco between nineteen sixty five and
nineteen seventy.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Who could he also be the Zodiac killer?

Speaker 1 (32:22):
That's what Glen Wall thinks.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well, the Valerie Percy theory has some backing from law enforcement.
This one doesn't.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Sorry, this just made me think of it when you
said he kind of looks like D. B. Cooper. That's
what that Zodiac police illustration looks like.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
He side by side definitely looks like him. I guess
the body description in some of them doesn't sound the same,
but you know you can mask that certain way, right
and gain weight, yeah, right, or like big jacket and
stuff and both. In the Valerie Percy killing I just
told you about, and one of the Zodiac killings, the
autopsies found that the victims may have been stabbed with

(32:58):
military bayonet's, which William did have in his collection, which
I find very interesting. There's there's not a ton of like,
oh my god, that's amazing Zodiac connections, but the fact
that he was hanging out with nefarious people in San
Francisco and had this huge amount of guns he was
buying up from random people, Like maybe he crossed paths

(33:20):
with him at some point, Like I wouldn't be surprised
if that was, like he was in his world somehow.
And the shooting of the cab driver by the Zodiac
killer also was like twelve blocks away from his mansion.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Oh wow, Wow, that's that isn't a big oh wow connection.
I just at this point process David Fincher's Zodiac movie
as the facts of the Zodiac case. So I'm like, no,
he lived in Santa Rosa. It's just like, no, no, no,
that was just that's a that's one suspect or whatever.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
I mean. I'm started to think that there were multiple
Zodiac killers. It wasn't just all one person.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
So many crimes are similar, Like how many crimes have
we talked about where there's military weapons involved, or there's
somebody who is obsessed with violence and with weaponry who
collects it starts as an acceptable thing of I'm going
to collect this certain type of gun or knife or
blah blah blah, and then that obsession grows because really

(34:22):
what's underneath that obsession is thinking about what you're going
to do with that weapon. It's not just the weapon
itself and how it.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Works or whatever. Right, it's power and weird like that. Yeah,
The other interesting thing I found with the Zodiac is
that so there were letters written to the police and
to newspapers after William was killed by his wife, So
that's weird. But the one thing that did change about
those letters from the ones before he was killed is
that the envelopes are addressed and stamped completely differently, so

(34:53):
that did change if he was a Zodiac. Let's you know,
let's say he had maybe already written the letters and
then someone else put them in an envelope and sent them.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Oh, you're saying a co conspirator.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Right, right? I mean maybe, yeah, Zodiac being two people
makes complete sense to me, multiple people on their own
or two people.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
But yeah, copycat, that's very believable. But you mean you're
saying copycat, You're saying people working in tandem.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
I think copycat makes a lot of sense. I think
the main Zodiac suspect of the main confirmed same person
Zodiac killings. Maybe yeah, maybe it's co conspirators.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
That's the thing in these cold cases. I know anything's possible,
that's right.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So in late nineteen seventy, Louise has tried for the
murder of her husband. Two witnesses, both of whom are
in prison, testify that William tried to hire them to
kill Louise. Three of William's former attorneys testify on Luis's behalf,
one saying that he once walked in on William attempting
to throw Louise off the balcony of a twentieth floor

(36:02):
hotel room in New York. Holy so ether, one's like
defending the shit out of this poor woman. Good. Louise
proves that she acted in self defense and thankfully is acquitted.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Oh good.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Also, if this was nineteen sixty seven, like the women
couldn't have bank accounts, there's such it was still that era,
and it's so recent. It's so weird, But there was
up until very recently women were locked into the relationship
they committed themselves to when they were twenty years old
or whatever. It's horrifying.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Yeah. In nineteen seventy four, Louise publishes a book about
her life with William. It's called It Gave Everybody Something
to do, just to tell you what the fuck what
it was like back then for women. The nineteen seventy
four headline of the New York Times article about the
book is titled the way she tells the story, It's
a man hater's dream.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Oh perfect. Yeah, No, she doesn't have a perspective or
an experience.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
No, No, she's a man hater. That's why she killed him.
Oh my god. Anyway, I think the zodiac ang is
really fucking interesting. And like there are some little details
here and there, and especially the old cold cases and
Kenilworth should be looked into based on his evidence. But
that is the story of a William and Luis Thorsen.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Wow, I've never heard of that.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
I had neither. That's wild wild Yeah, great job, thank you,
thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
All Right, you know what we're gonna do.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Now, left turn, left turn.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Put on your blinker because we're going to go ahead
and take a left turn now. I don't know if
you remember back when I covered the boy Edward Jones,
who was who was the Queen Stalker? Yeah, back in
the day? Who was it? Queen Victoria?

Speaker 1 (37:49):
Queen Victoria?

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Thank you. And in that story when we were talking
about it, I mentioned that there was a thing going
on at the time that people thought that the boy
Edward Jones could have been this other person that was
terrorizing London.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Oh, we're talking about suspects. I love this episode.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
We're talking about suspects, we're talking about theories and people
trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
And it also all takes place in my favorite place
and time in the world, Victorian England, specifically London in
the eighteen thirties. So according to professor named doctor Emily Zarka,

(38:30):
London is quote the largest urban environment in the world
at the time, which I didn't know that. That's amazing.
So Victorian England obviously a gigantic world power. London itself
is like the biggest city in the world.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
The smells, the smells that must have been emanating.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
The smells, the pollution, the just constant coal smoke, it
is blowing directly into your face. The city is grind
it's gloomy. It has a spooky feel to it, and
that is during the day at night by the sporadic
gas powered street lamps or by people's own handheld lanterns

(39:11):
that they would walk around with because it.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Was so foggy, coally dark, it just looked like a
ghost everywhere you go.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yes, it's because there were constantly shadows being cast onto
every wall and there were so many dark alleyways. Maren
showed me an illustration of Victorian England and it was
like it was like a bunch of front yards and
everything was bricked up, so you're always going around a
corner going into like a weird yard that was then

(39:40):
connected to a doorway that would go upstairs like it
was all interconnected and super spooky, and then at night
it got even spookier. And of course it was easy
to get work in Victorian London, but it was extremely
rare to find good work with decent pay and humane conditions,
especially if you were a member of working class. So

(40:02):
a lot of Victorian Brits are hungry, exhausted and miserable
from living in extreme abject poverty. A huge class difede
separates the richest from the poorest Londoners at this time,
and it shows in the city streets. It's dirty, the
slums are overcrowded, the crime rates are sky high. There's
an atmosphere of fear, claustrophobia and chaos that permeates the city.

(40:26):
And if all of that isn't scary enough, in January
of eighteen twenty six, eyewitnesses begin to report a high, jumping,
fire breathing, shape shifting monster that is terrorizing the public
of England as a whole. It starts in little towns
and villages outside of London, and then it slowly moves

(40:47):
into the city center. I shall now regale you with
one of Victorian England's most bizarre menaces spring hailed JACKO.
So the main sources being used today are researched by
a British writer and historian named Mike Dash. A twenty
twenty episode of the PBS series Monstroum entitled the Original

(41:11):
urban Legend springhil Jack. A twenty twenty two BuzzFeed video
called springhil Jack the Demon of London. And I personally
first heard about spring hail Jack on the podcast Last
Podcast on the Left, research by the great Marcus Parks
and his team of researchers. Go listen to the spring
heil Jack episode of Last Podcast on the Left. If

(41:32):
you've never heard it, it's Henry Zebrowski is so insane
and hilarious during that episode, it is like the funniest
thing of all time.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
That's so good.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
The rest of the sources are in our show notes,
And actually I added a Wikipedia article and there was
another part that's from the podcast Unresolved. So it actually
begins north of London, in a town called Northampton, and
the first mention of springhil Jack appears in the local
newspaper there, the Northampton Mercury and January of eighteen twenty six,

(42:02):
they run a somewhat skeptical report that reads quote a
shopkeeper in the area described seeing a man with spring
boots which enable him to vault over a ten foot wall.
We have not confirmed this sighting with anyone else in
the area.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
He was shit faced.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
And you know how steampunk is like based on that
kind of Victorian England and like when people machinery and
trains and big.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Clocks and cyancy weird shit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
The idea that someone could have gotten their hands on
two large springs and started fucking around with them and
then ended up putting them on the bottom of shoes
and then they bounce around is I can see that
so easily. Delightful, delightful, right, And so this is just
one of those reports in a local paper of like,
we're pretty sure we saw a guy with springs on
his shoes jump over a wall, but it's more gossip

(42:53):
than it is fact, so we're just telling everybody. So
then it takes about ten more years. Then, in September
of eighteen thirty seven, in the village of Barnes, rumors
spread that what people refer to as either a ghost,
imp or devil has been harassing local women. Within weeks,

(43:13):
these encounters are documented in more than twenty villages outside
of London proper. The description varies from witness to witness.
Some see a malevolent bull like creature, others see a
ghostly bear with blazing red eyes. One person even reports
an encounter with a big night like figure dressed in armor.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Sounds like a different guy. That guy sounds different.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
I mean a bear, a bowl or a night It's
like what Gieramo del Toro movie are we watching right now? Okay,
But the most common description is that of a ghoulish
man who from Afar looks aristocratic and gentlemanly. He wears
a long black cloak over tight white clothing. He's very ugly.

(43:58):
He breathes fire, he has long metallic clause where his
fingers should be, and he can jump extremely high. For
whatever reason, these ghules, the bear, the bull, the knight,
and the aristocrat are not seen as separate entities, but
as one shape shifting monster. So either that's a bunch

(44:18):
of different people seeing different things yea, or the urban
legend blends itself into it's one guy that's all these things,
or its shaped shifter or whatever.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
The thing that's important to note is that these witnesses
are mostly working class women. They're targeted walking alone in
public or, in the case of servants housemaids that are
answering their employer's front doors. In some instances, the creature
simply scares them. In others, he actually tears their clothing
to shreds with his sharp metallic claws. So it is

(44:52):
an assault. But back then, because it was Victorian society,
which was renowned for being very repressed and very prudish,
at least publicly, spring heeled jack attacks are rarely reported
as sexual assaults. They didn't really speak in those terms
at all back then, but we can assume that the
women who did come forward to claim it had been

(45:14):
assaulted and it was sexual violence. I mean, that was
what was happening. So when this creature finally makes it
to London, it basically makes its debut by bouncing over
the walls of Kensington Palace at midnight and quote unquote
dancing on the wooded lawn. So from there, rumors spread

(45:34):
like wildfire across London and the British press starts to
cover the growing city wide panic over this creature. It's
not just the tabloids that are keeping tabs the rumors
become so rampant and are so mysterious that respected British
publications start paying attention to it too. The Times even
reports a claim that the creature quote so terrified the

(45:56):
residents of Stockwell, Brixton, Camberwell and Vauxhall that several of
them had died in terror end quote. Soon Victorian journalists
give this monster a name, in a nod to his
incredible jumping skills, they start calling him spring Hailed Jack.
But already the line between fact and fiction is hazy.

(46:16):
For example, there is no evidence that anyone can find
to back up the claim that any Londoners died in
fear because of spring Hailed Jack. It's unclear how and
why that actually made it into The Times like unchecked.
And then a handful of specific rumors are debunked or
deemed like miscommunications, so historian Mike Dash points out quote

(46:39):
the few rumors that could be tracked down to their
source turned out to bear little relation to what had
actually occurred. One reported ghost turned out to be a
police inspector on a white horse, another a white faced heifer,
and the report that Jack had danced on the Kensington
Palace lawn turned out to be an exaggerated recounting of
an unrelated incident that had occurred around eighteen twenty two.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
And what happened that event?

Speaker 2 (47:05):
I mean it could have been like the gossip, because
you know, there was like the country cousins that somehow
ended up talking to the city cousins. So it was
ten years so maybe some like things were witnessed and
the outside of town and like slowly the story made
it into town. That's my personal theory. And I am
this is going to shock you not a historian. Wait

(47:26):
what so what is true about this is that there
are women experiencing violent attacks and harassment at the hands
of strange men, and countless more are terrified that they
might be next. But these fears are mostly ignored by
the men in power, who could be meaningfully responding in
some way and just aren't. In early eighteen thirty eight,

(47:48):
for example, someone identified only as quote a resident of
Peckham in South London, sends a letter to the city's
Lord Mayor, John Cowan, and that letter includes shocking stories
about women being severely traumatized by their encounters with a
quote supernatural attacker. This says, in part, in quote, the

(48:08):
poor girl has never from that moment been in her sense,
but on seeing any man, she screams out most violently
take him away. There are two ladies which your Lordship
will regret to hear, who have husbands and children, and
who are not expected to recover, but likely to become
a burden on their families. End quote Jesus. So these

(48:29):
are women that are being so traumatized by what they're experiencing,
whatever it might be, that it's really actually having a
profound effect. But it's clear that the writer who believes
these rumors feels unsafe in their community and is basically
terrified in trying to report it to the mayor. Unfortunately,
Mayor Cowan can't seem to get past that supernatural aspect

(48:51):
of these claims of spring hail Jack. It's understandable that
he might feel skeptical towards a ghost who jumps over
walls and onto buildings, But in a public statement he
addresses this letter and assumes the writer's a woman and
mocks her, saying she's experiencing quote hysteria, and he states
his theory that sprank heeled Jack is probably some burglar

(49:14):
that wears a weird costume and that is the extent
of the investigation.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
But it's happening.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
You can't be like something's happening, but it's.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Actually something is happening, So you can't just say it
didn't happen, you know, Oh my god, yeah, yikes.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
And then he basically goes on to say this is
all out of my jurisdiction anyway, fuck you. So that
settles it. I guess then everything's fine, it's not your problem.
But just a few weeks later, in mid February of
eighteen thirty eight, around nine pm, it's a dark night
and an eighteen year old girl is named Jane. Also

(49:49):
here's ringing at the front gate of her family home
in old Ford, London, So she ventures out to see
who's at the gate. And so there's like little space
between the front door and the front gate, and as
she approaches she can see a man standing there in
a cloak. Before she can get too close, he calls
out that he's a policeman and that he's just captured

(50:11):
spring Hailed Jack and he needs her help. So, like
any Londoner, Jane would know who spring Hail Jack is,
and it's safe to imagine that she would feel a
mix of relief and respect for the fact that this
cop has just finally caught him. The man tells Jane
to run inside and get a candle, and Jane does it,
and when she comes back, she walks down to the gate,

(50:32):
opens it hands the officer of the candle. When the
man takes the candle, he holds it close to his chest,
and to Jane's horror, it reveals a horrifying face that
might not even be human. This is the quote from
the Times of report on that incident. Quote. He threw
off his outer garment and vomited forth a quantity of

(50:52):
blue and white flames from his mouth, and his eyes
resembled red balls of fire. Jane observed that he wore
a large helmet, and his dress, which appeared to fit
him very tight, seemed to her to resemble white.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Oil skin and quo creepy.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Yeah. So the front door of Jane's house is just
behind her, like a short walk away, But before she
has time to turn around and run back inside, the
man bursts through the open gate, grabs her neck, puts
her in a headlock. Then he uses his metal claws
to tear her clothing and her skin, and he pulls

(51:29):
out clumps of her hair.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
She fights like hell, and she's finally able to break
away and she runs up to the front door, but
just before she can grab the doorknob, he catches up
to her and pulls her down onto the front steps,
and the attack continues. So Jane is finally able to
start screaming for help, and finally her older sister Sarah
opens the door, sees Jane, whose clothes are now in tatters,

(51:56):
and she's able to run out, grab Jane by her
arms and pull her inside and together they slam the
door shut. Then the creature starts banging on their door,
and so they run to the windows. They throw them
open and start screaming for the police, and when they
do that, Spring Hailed Jack scurries away. So up until
this point, sightings are attacks around London that are linked

(52:19):
to Spring Hailed Jack, are treated with skepticism, and when
they're mentioned in newspapers, all the details are very slim
and finding information about specific victims and their testimonies is
really tough. That is not the case with Jane Alsop.
Her assault is taken very seriously. It's immediately treated as
credible and it has detailed reporting behind it. Clearly the

(52:42):
powers that be immediately believe Jane's story because she comes
from a wealthy, well respected family. She is not the
usual target, which is a woman from the working class.
She's a rich girl. So they have just created the
Metropolitan Police, which I think you talked about when you
were talking about the mister Witcher thing. So it's very

(53:02):
strange to imagine, but there was kind of no police
department at all until like a couple years before this,
I think. So they kick off an investigation. The day
after this attack, a detective named James Lee issues a
report which notes that Jane's attack fits a pattern. For
the past month, several women in the neighborhood and even

(53:23):
some men have reported being harassed by an unidentified perpetrator.
Detective Lee says, quote, a person answering precisely his size
and figure, had been frequently observed walking about the lanes
and lonely places, enveloped in a large Spanish cloak, and
was sometimes in the habit of carrying a small lantern
about with him.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
So spooky, But like the Lord.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Mayor, Detective Lee is also skeptical. He thinks this is
the work of a belligerent, thrill seeking man. And he
actually goes so far as to suggest that Jane had
quote much mistake in the appearance of her assailant, and
that the whole affair was merely the result of a
drunken frolic and not the act of spring hail, Jack
and Buck. You a drunken frolic. Frolic for who, motherfucker?

(54:12):
Why are you speaking for the monster?

Speaker 1 (54:15):
So condescending?

Speaker 2 (54:16):
So Over the course of their investigation, the Metropolitan Police
question a handful of male suspects based on tips from
the public. None of these men are ever charged for
the attack. And this next incident is actually I was
looking up something and I came to the Unresolved podcast.
They have a website that's like a blog and host.

(54:39):
This is the host. There's a couple of different Unresolved podcasts.
This is the one that's hosted by Michael Wheelan, and
this is his blog. So this is a quote from
his blog about this case. It says, quote, less than
a week after the assault on Jane Alsop, on the
twenty fifth of February, Jack allegedly knocked on the door
of two Turner Street, not far away from bear Binder Lane,

(55:00):
which is where the Alsops lived. Mister Ashworth was the
owner of the house and his servant answered the door.
Like with Jane, the man pulled away a large cloak
and revealed what was described as a most hideous appearance.
The servant screamed and Jack ran away. The servant did
note that there was an embroidered coat of arms with
a W on the cloak, but it's unclear if the

(55:23):
police did anything with this information. So then, just a
few days later, on February twenty eighth, at around eight thirty,
two sisters are walking home in the East London neighborhood
of Limehouse. One of the sisters, Lucy Scales, spots a
man standing in the dark ahead of them, so as
a precaution, she steps out in front of her sister

(55:44):
as they walk. I mean, can you imagine you're like,
you worked at the matchtick factory all day long and
now it's eight thirty at night, you haven't eating dinner,
you're trying to get home, and you're just like, well,
we have to go down three more like creepy corners
and blind OU's and whatever, and though, okay, here's this guy.
As the girls pass this man, he emerges from the shadows,

(56:07):
gets right up in Lucy's face, and as he does,
a hot, bluish flame shoots out of his mouth. Lucy
falls to the ground, screaming she's temporarily blinded. The man
runs away, then Lucy starts convulsing. Luckily, she makes a
full recovery, and when she files a report with the
local magistrate, she describes her attacker as wearing a cloak

(56:31):
and having quote a tall, thin, gentlemanly appearance. Lucy also
says that the man carried a small lantern which was
held up to his face before she was showered with
his fiery breath. So this encounter also gets written up
in British newspapers, probably because it's right after Jane's attack,

(56:51):
it doesn't make as much of a splash, probably because
Lucy's family isn't prominent like Jane's. But Detective Lee is
again on the scene, and he starts his investigation by
visiting the spot where the attack happened, and when he's there,
he notes quote no place could be better adopted for
such an act, as persons could be seen at considerable

(57:12):
distance approaching it on both sides end quote. But even
as a few men are questioned in connection with this assault.
They're all eventually released and no one's ever charged. So
now a new wave of terror hits London, and before
long it seems like everyone has a story about encountering
spring heel Jack. Later that year, in eighteen thirty eight,

(57:34):
a melodrama called spring heel Jack is staged at the
Royal Pavilion Theater, which is a theater that caters to
the working class crowd. So it's basically like, here's this
thing you guys are all dealing with things scared shitless of.
Now we can go have a Catharsis in the theater
about it. Between eighteen forty and eighteen sixty nine, spring

(57:55):
heil Jack is seen in the Midlands. In eighteen sixty three,
he's spotted in Middlesex. Later he's seen in Sheffield, Lincolnshire,
Liverpool and even in some foreign countries, but the line
between hard facts and imagination remains hazy. In eighteen seventy seven,
for example, a creature fitting that spring hailed Jack's description

(58:18):
terrorizes soldiers at an army barracks near Aldershot, which is
forty miles southwest of London, and an American tabloid reported
on that saying that the creature slapped, wrestled, and out
ran sentries before ultimately vanishing into thin air, although the
local British military newspaper It reports a little more cautiously, saying,

(58:40):
quote someone or other appears to have made up his
mind to play some rather questionable pranks with the sentries
at this camp while on night duty.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
End quote like everyone was drinking and here's what happened.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, exactly. Enough time has passed that people aren't going
straight to the Spring Hailed Jack theory, so their aspects
of the Spring Hailed Jack legend that are based in truth.
Multiple women were victims of real assaults. Some of these
attacks were explicitly committed by a human or a humanlike
creature dressed in a cape, wearing tight clothing with the

(59:13):
appearance of an aristocrat. But other than that, we don't
know exactly who or what Spring Hailed Jack is. But
there are many theories so plenty. People of the time
fully believed that this fire breathing, high jumping creature was
a demon, the devil, or a ghost. In more recent years,

(59:34):
some people have suggested it could have been an alien.
One of the most popular theories is that a very
wealthy man known as the Maquis of Waterford his actual
name is Henry Beresford, is the mastermind behind spring hail Jack.
He was a big character. He was a fixture of
the Victorian society gossip mill. He came from a wealthy

(59:57):
Irish family and he inherited his own fortune when he
was very, very young, and then he became notorious for
using that fortune to bankroll his party, party lifestyle. Everybody
in London knew that this guy loved to get drunk
and get into trouble, and according to doctor Emily Zarka,
his exploits involved a slew of pranks, like streaking. He

(01:00:22):
would pay people to fight him. He actually he was
charged once for throwing meat out of a butcher's shop.
He also tried to pay some city officials to run
two trains at each other and force them to crash,
just so everyone could watch it, like for the fun
of it. So fuck, it's a parallel to your story
is like rich guy Mayhem. So in the late eighteen thirties,

(01:00:46):
when spring hail Jack first pops up in the London area,
Henry's hijinks are at their absolute peak. So Legend has
it that in eighteen thirty seven, Henry and his gang
of equally rich, always drunk friends they basically went on
like a wilding where they were super drunk. They had

(01:01:06):
to stop at a toll booth and when the tollbooth
operator basically were like, you have to pay to go
through this gate. There was some construction kind of supplies nearby,
and they found a can of red paint and they
just started painting. They painted the toll booth operator red,
They painted the toll booth read. They started going and

(01:01:29):
just putting red paint on doors everywhere and windows. It
was just pointless drunken vandalism. And it's where the phrase
paint the town red comes from. Shut your face, yep.
Here's a quote about Henry from Wikipedia. It says. Quote
that Lord Waterford had some role has been accepted by

(01:01:50):
several modern authors, who suggest that a humiliating experience with
a woman and a police officer could have given him
the idea of creating the character as a way of
getting even with police and women in general. They speculate
that he could have designed with the help of friends
who were experts in applied mechanics. Some of the apparatus

(01:02:12):
for special spring heeled boots, and that he may have
practiced fire spitting techniques in order to increase the unnatural
appearance of his character. They also note that the embroidered
coat of arms with the W letter that was observed
by the servant during the Ashworth incident was his last

(01:02:34):
name starts with W. He's the Lord Waterford. Yes, And
so that's the one piece that actually hooks him up
with circumstantial evidence. But it's pretty fascinating because like when
you look at it that way of like what if
a rich guy was just like wild and just wanted
to only fuck with people all the time and just

(01:02:56):
had money to burn, What would he do and how would.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
He do it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
And if you was drunk or that was like a
part of it. The idea that it would just escalate
makes perfect sense over time. Where it starts out he's
spooking people and scaring people, then he's really starting to
like it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
I think he did it. I don't care, I don't
want to even hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Just at the end, goodbye, Stay sexy. The idea that
he could have been spring hail Jack doesn't seem out
of the question. He was repeatedly described as looking gentlemanly.
But even if the Marquis, Marquis and his friends were
involved will never know for sure, and they couldn't be

(01:03:36):
responsible for all of the sightings of spring hail Jack
because they actually continued on past the time of his death.
The fact is, the initial panic around spring Hail Jack
spawned decades worth of impostors. Over the years, multiple spring
Hailed Jack copycats all men were questioned, arrested, or fined

(01:03:57):
for the stunts that they pulled while dressed up as
the fame boogeyman, including a quote genteellly dressed man that
showed up to a London pub announced that he was
spring Hailed Jack, pulled out a club and began swinging
it at the landlady.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Yeah so. Some researchers have also tried to explain Jack's
supernatural features. They argue that his jumping skills were likely
exaggerations by traumatized witnesses, that his claws could have been
specially adapted gloves, and when it comes to spitting fire,
historian Mike Dash makes a valid point. He says, quote

(01:04:35):
Jack needed a naked flame to affect his trick In
the Awlsop case, he specifically requested a candle, postponing his
attack and increasing the risk of detection by doing so.
When one was brought, he held it at chess level,
then began to breathe his blue and white flames. And similarly,
he lifted a lantern to the same height just before

(01:04:55):
attacking Lucy Scales. This behavior is highly reminiscent of that
of a carnival fire breather, So someone somewhere along the
line could have taught the rich guy who loved to
do crazy shit how to do that, for sure. Another
theory is that the uptick of spring Hailed Jack sightings
and encounters in the eighteen thirties is an example of

(01:05:17):
a collective delusion or hallucination. Sociologist Robert Bartholomew says, quote
Collective delusions can involve exaggerated feelings of danger within communities
at large, where members of an affected population are concerned
over what they believe is an immediate personal threat end quote.

(01:05:37):
So Victorian England, as I said, was a scary place.
That's especially true for poor and working class women who
were considered second class citizens and whose concern around the
violence that they basically had to endure every day could
just easily be dismissed, even by the Mayor of London
as hysteria. Historians have wondered if spring hailed Jack became

(01:06:01):
a more relatable, accessible way to talk about their baseline fear,
this instability, and this anxiety that Victorian women felt every day.
It suspected that some victims of assault could have misidentified
their male attackers as spring hail Jack, because it's easier
to blame a monster for the violence than to accuse

(01:06:22):
a man that they knew totally total. Historians also point
out that spring hail Jack seemed to give women of
the time a coded way to talk about sexual violence.
In eighteen forty five, for example, a new and terrifying
story spread like wildfire amongst London's poorest women. It said
that a sex worker named Maria Davis was attacked by

(01:06:43):
spring hailed Jack in broad daylight, that he spit flames
into her face, forced her over a bridge, She fell
into an open sewer and drowned. And this would be
the first instance of spring hail jack actually murdering someone,
but it's not in any way backed up by historical record,
and that makes some historians believe that it's an urban

(01:07:07):
legend that was passed around as a cautionary tale on
the risks of interacting with strange men. So, in an
interesting twist, Victorian Brits will eventually reverse the legend of
spring Hail Jack and transform him from a monster into
a scrappy superhero. In the early eighteen sixties, Spring Heil

(01:07:29):
Jack becomes the protagonist in a series of Penny Dreadfuls,
which were the pulpy and salacious booklets that pulled their
inspiration from real life crimes and headlines. And in these
Penny Dreadfuls, Spring Hailed Jack is still a spooky prankster,
but now he's also a vigilante who looks out for
London's most disenfranchised residents. And this Spring Heil Jack is

(01:07:52):
written to be a hero for women, diligently protecting them
from danger. So whether or not this catharsis closed the
chapter on spring Hailed Jack and his legend. A little
more than a decade later, in eighteen eighty eight, the
city will suffer another rash of attacks. This time they're very,
very real, and they are far grizzlier, and a new

(01:08:14):
faceless monster will terrorize the streets of London, and once
again the victims will be working class women. The Whitechapel
murders are committed by a serial killer that is nicknamed
Jack the Ripper, and just like spring Hailed Jack before him,
his identity remains a mystery to this day. And if

(01:08:35):
we're just going to be this way about it, which
I always love to be, if we're going to theorize
the potential of a collective delusion or a collective hallucination,
I want to push it even further and entertain the
theory that it was a collective premonition that the women

(01:08:55):
of London knew that Jack the Ripper was coming, and
that's what was happening with Spring Hail Jack.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Scary, that's scary, and that's I mean, But the fact
is it's like it was happening. People were getting women
were getting assaulted.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
It was real. And also the premonition idea is it's
just kind of my corny ending. But it also could
go in the other way, which is if just say
a rich, drunken, irish prankster was responsible for Spring Hailed Jack.
But he basically started off as like I love pranks,
and then it went into I want to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
Hurt people totally. I can get away with whatever I
want in this costume. I'm gonna just push it further.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
And in these neighborhoods and in these dark alleys that
someone else picked up on that and learned that and went,
I'm going to push it further. So that's the real
Jack the Ripper was inspired by spring Hail Jack, I
know for sure. Yeah, we'll never know, but that is
the story of Victorian England's aristocratic fire breathing boogeyman spring

(01:09:56):
Hailed Jack.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Wow. I mean, the fact that they're both named Jack
is very eerie, you know, yep, wow, great job. Thank
you Karen's specialty right there. Oh all of my favorite
things breathing fire housemaids, you know. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
All right, well that's another one. We finished another one
for you, dear listener.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
We sure he did. Thank you guys for listening and
being a part of this little cult that we've all
created over the past seven and a half years.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
Yeah, thanks for sticking around, and you know, stay sexy
and don't get murdered.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Good Bye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
This episode was mixed by Leona scualach.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my Fave Murder. Byebye,