October 28, 2025 • 42 mins
Carl Panzram traveled all around the world racking up a very impressive criminal history. He even spent a good amount of time right here in the Hudson Valley.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Linda Zimmerman, I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio
dot Com. Welcome everyone. How are we tonight? Brian? A
little under the weather in.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
There, A little under the weather, my turn. Everybody seems
to be getting its turn the season, So I will
keep the germs to myself. Since we're on zoom, it
should be easy to do and I.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Will hopefully hopefully Yeah, no viruses over the internet love
that kind Yeah, right, neither. All right, Well, if you
need to stop to cough, we uh, the audience will understand.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And they'll never know because I'll just chop it out later.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
All right. So you have what you described to me
as a grizzly episode nothing about.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
When I came across this one, I'm like, oh wow,
this is one of those cases that there is way
too much to cover in one episode of Murder in
the Hudson Valley, so I had to cherry pick what
we're going to talk about. But there are significant ties
to the Hudson Valley, so it fits the bill. So
I think you're gonna like this one.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
In my own.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yep, yep. So today we're talking about Carl Panzram. I
don't think you've heard of before one for you, Okay.
Like I said, it is so over the top that
we're just going to be cherry picking some of the
things that he did, which is boy just he is
suspected of killing over one hundred miles boys and men
(01:47):
in the United States and nobody knows how many more overseas.
So he got to travel the world. I'll give him
credit for that.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh, that's what we always say. The last thing you
want is a serial killer who travels. M hm.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Oh, he was around the world many times. We'll see that.
Like I said, there are significant ties to the Hudson Valley,
so stay with me on this one. A lot of
what we know comes from an autobiography that he wrote
during his last prison sentence, which we'll talk about more
later on. Some was corroborated, some wasn't, but we'll see
(02:22):
and we'll get we'll get your opinion as we go along,
so feel free to hop in, all right. So Carl
Panzram was born in eighteen ninety one in Polk County, Minnesota,
on a farm owned by his parents. Johan and Matilda,
two names that, for some reason just strike me as
perfect for goldfish. If you get two goldfish Johan and Matilda.
(02:44):
I don't know why that popped into my head, but.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
This, well, you are, you are ill?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yes, that could be. Maybe it's the fever. It could
very well be. His parents were immigrants from Prussia back
when Prussia existed, and like many many farmers, they were
struggling to keep their farm afloat. They had five other
boys and one daughter, all of whom seemed to have
grown up relatively normally. Couldn't find anything bad about any
(03:10):
of them. Couldn't find much about them at all. One
brother appears to have he died in a drowning accident.
He was a logger, so I'm guessing as they were
floating logs down the river he may have been. But
other than that, none of them seemed to get into trouble.
But all of the kids were made to work the
farm all day, every day up until these new laws
(03:33):
called truancy laws came into effect, where now these kids
were required to go to school. It's so normal for
us now. That was not always the case.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
You know, kids, Wow, that must have been tough. For
our families who relied on everyone day exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, So Johann and Matilda were not happy about it,
but they sent their kids to school like they were
required to do, and they just made their kids work
the farm at night after they got home from school,
and pretty much all night. Carl would later say that
he got about two hours of sleep per night, and
for a growing kid, a single digit age is just unconscionable.
(04:09):
I can't even imagine he would be punished if he
didn't do what he was expected to do by being
bound up in chains and denied food as a kid. Again,
we're taking his word for it, but there's no reason
to not believe him. As we'll see. So as a
(04:30):
young child, Carl got in. He wound up getting an
infection in the mastoid process, which is where the jaw
connects to the skull, you know, on the side of
the face. They did surgery at home. I don't know how.
I don't have to lay him on the kitchen table.
I don't know what they did. This is before antibiotics,
before before great anesthetic. They did have opioids at this
(04:54):
point on it, so I hope they gave it to him,
but Unfortunately, the surgery made it worse, and only then
was he taken to a hospital for real surgery. Now,
the infection may or may not have spread to his brain.
It may or may not have had something to do
with making him turn out the way he did. I
don't know. I have no.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Idea, but it's the abuse as a child.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And the abuse which you know, no small part. Obviously.
What we do know is that he was a mean
kid and the other kids didn't like him. He would
just steal stuff blatantly, he would just lie, misbehave. He
was just a bad kid all around. And when he
was seven, his father just gave up on the entire
family and abandoned everybody and he disappeared.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That makes it all better.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, so Carl is starting out behind the eight ball
from day one. Really. Carl Panzram's first arrest was in
eighteen ninety nine, at the ripe old age of eight.
He was charged in juvenile court for being drunk and
disorderly at age eight.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yes, wow, is this a record.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I don't remember anybody with those charges at that age
from any of the cases that we've talked about. We
have talked about younger, you know, alcoholic tendencies and all that,
but not eight. I don't remember anybody ate No, But
at age twelve, same thing, same charges again. He then
burglarized a neighbor's house and stole food and a revolver.
(06:28):
In nineteen oh three, his mother sent him to a
reform school, the Minnesota State Training School, where he claims
to have been beaten and sexually abused by school staff.
I have no reason to not take his word on
that one.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
That's the way they were. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, he hated the place so much that he decided
to burn it down, and he did in July of
nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Okay, can't blame him there.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, that's a tough one. By age fourteen, he already
had a lengthy raps burglaries and robberies. Remember, burglaries are
out of a building. Robberies are off of a person.
People sometimes confused those. Okay, So he was both breaking
into buildings and beating people up to take stuff off
of their person. And his rap sheet included the attempted
(07:17):
murder of a priest using another stolen revolver that he
got somewhere. Wow, Okay, Carl ran away to live on
the streets where he said he was gang raped by
a group of homeless men on a train. He would
hop on trains to travel basically wherever it took him
(07:38):
at this point, and it took him to a lot
of different places where he expanded his rap sheet quite
a bit. He was becoming a professional.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oh, I think he was probably a professional around age fifteen.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, easily, easily by nineteen oh seven, age sixteen seventeen.
In there, he got drunk in a saloon in Helena,
Montana and enlisted in the US Army. Oh no, drunken right,
how many drunk enlistments. And they took him, They took
(08:12):
how many? I can only imagine how many times that
happened in the past. Get somebody driven.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
When I was writing my Civil War book, there was
a letter from a man who had a great business,
great family, was an alcoholic, and he went down a
tear in uh Manhattan, and he goes and I had
no idea I had enlisted till we were on a
(08:37):
ship headed for the South doodle. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah. Well, so he showed up like he was supposed to,
and not surprisingly, Carl did not do well in the Army,
where you're expected to take orders and be disciplined, right,
No surprise there. Instead, he was convicted of stealing eighty
eight dollars worth of supplies, which would be about twenty
two hundred dollars worth. Now that's a felony in New York.
(09:04):
That's grand larceny. So he spent two years in Fort
Leavenworth in Kansas at the US Disciplinary Barracks.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Okay, that's some hard time.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's hard time, that is hard labor. Secretary of War
at the time, William Howard Taft personally approved his sentence,
which started in nineteen oh eight. So when Carl went
into Fort Leavenworth, Taft was Secretary of War. When he
got out with his dishonorable discharge, Taft was president. We
(09:35):
will be hearing Taft come up again later on in
the story.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Okay, so put that a little grudge.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Maybe he absolutely held a big grudge. Yes, So just
set that aside for a one second. His two years
of hard labor meant that he was now physically fit.
He was a big guy to begin with, and he
went right back to his criminal activities again all around
the country. He just made it much easier for him
(10:01):
to rob people because now he could just pick you
up and toss you. After all these years of breaking rocks,
it really put up the muscles, you know. So another
oak one. Right. So, on his trips around the country,
he did stints in sing sing in Westchester County near US.
He did a stint in the Clinton Correctional Facility upstate
(10:23):
New York, Deanamora when that was open, not far from us. Really,
he would fight with the correction officers back then they
were prison guards or jail guards. I just call them
correction officers out of habit. When he got out, he
would rob and rape men and then wind up back
in prison. That was just a revolving door for him.
The one stretch of his life where he was not
(10:45):
committing crimes was when he was hired to be a
strike strike breaker against union members who went on strike.
And if you're not familiar with strike breakers, they were
literally hired to go beat up union members. Yes, so
he still got to do the same activity as before,
but now now he was paid for it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Is it a lean job for him?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, exactly exactly. He didn't last too long doing that
either because he had to take orders and he didn't
like to take orders. So no matter what, he did.
He was not going to excel. Carl wound up in Mexico,
where he was able to join the Mexican Army Foreign Legion,
and he figured that he could travel around and just
(11:28):
rob everybody in Mexico while in uniform, right, because when
you wear a uniform, they have a little bit of authority.
But then he found out that that was kind of
the norm and every place he was going to go
rob and burglarized was already stripped clean other soldiers got
there exactly. So that didn't pay out for him, so
(11:50):
he quit. He didn't last too long there. At that point,
he traveled up the West coast to California and Oregon,
using the names Jefferson Davis believe it or not, and
Jack Allen. He headed out to Montana, committing crimes all
along the way. In April nineteen thirteen, Carl wound up
(12:11):
in the Montana State Prison and in November nineteen thirteen
he escaped. He got out. Oh okay, so he wasn't
there for very long. In nineteen fifteen, there's a two
year gap. He was busy in that two year gap. Again,
we're cherry picking what we're talking about today. In nineteen fifteen,
age twenty four, he was sentenced to seven years in
(12:33):
the Oregon State Penitentiary. The warden there his name was
Harry Minto, and Minto is known for openly believing in
very harsh treatments of prisoners. He just was okay with
beatings and mistreating and all that kind of stuff, and
Carl was just not gonna have it. So he helped
another inmate named Otto Hooker escape, and then when Otto
(12:57):
was on the run and he was about to be recaptured,
Hooker turned around and killed the warden. Okay, all right,
So this was the first murder that was connected to Carl.
Pansram as an accessory because he helped Otto put this
whole plant together and put it into effect. So this
is actually the first murder that was connected to Carl.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Carl himself escaped in nineteen seventeen. Two years later he
was recaptured, only to saw through the bars like they
did in the old Western. He sawed through the bars
and escaped again. In nineteen eighteen, he hopped the train
and headed east. He got hired to work on steamships,
(13:41):
which took him to London, Paris, Hamburg, Germany. Amongst other places,
so he got to see the world. He was not
behaving this whole time.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Rob his way through Europe.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Uh huh. He wound up back in the US by
around nineteen twenty, specifically in New Haven, Connecticut. More specifically
on September sixteenth, nineteen twenty, at the residence of one
now former President William Howard Taft.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Really uh huh.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Carl was still angry about his first sentence at Fort Leavenworth,
the Taft had approved years before. So Carl broke in,
stole a ton of jewelry, stole bonds, money, and Taft's
Colt M nineteen eleven forty five caliber handgun. Wow. Oh okay,
(14:34):
all right, and this is a good point to just
take a little break.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
What do you think sounds good?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
We are back and very interesting. This small town time
thug as prolific as he was now stepped up to
the big le leagues, robbing taff or, burglarizing tafts home.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Tafts home, the former president yep, and now had his
handgun with him too, So I almost want to hand
it to him. You're gonna love this. Carl used the
money from taft bonds that he stole to buy a
yacht called the Aquista. He went a yacht he bought at.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
What the hell did he know about yachting?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
He did work on steamships. I hope that he learns
something about sailing. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. We'll see.
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So he sailed his new yacht, the Aquista, down to
the Bronx, New York.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Okay, that's a lovely port.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
It's a little it was a little different back then.
It was a little more you know, right.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I don't think cruise ships stopped there today.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
No, and I don't think they did back then either.
It was a little more industrial, yes, yeah, but there
he lured drunk sailors onto his yacht, took them out sailing, sexually,
abused them, murdered them with Taff's pistol that he stole,
and then dumped their bodies into the Long Island Sound.
(16:28):
So he claimed to have murdered ten sailors this way,
and that streak only ended because he crashed the boat
in Atlantic City, and the last two victims he had
on the boat jumped and took off into history.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
We don't know what happened to those Okay, yeah, they
probably didn't want to talk about their experience.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I would not think, so, yeah, yeah, that's insane. So
next back to Connecticut jail, Philadelphia jail, Virginia. But in
Virginia he posted bail, got out early and took off
(17:06):
on another ship on what was then Portuguese Angola in
Southwest Africa. Now it's just Angola or the Republic of Angola.
He got a job on an oil rig, which he
didn't enjoy, so he burnt it down out of spite.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He bought, bought, paid for, bought two preteen girls, sexually
assaulted them, and then tried to return them to the
family to get his money back.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I don't I don't even believe this. I mean, it's
not funny, but.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
It's it is unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah. But when he then raped a boy who was
working as a waiter at a local place, apparently that
was too much and the locals went on a bit
of a lynching mob looking for him. Okay, so he
took off and he fled to the US console. The
console looked him up, learned of his recent activities, and
(18:08):
to their credit, told him to go scratch to help him. Yes,
you did it, You were on your own, and go away,
thank you very much. Carl then found out that he
got fired, you know, subsequent to setting his oil rig
on fires, probably dismissal, I would say, So, I don't
(18:30):
know which of those things he got fired for back then,
Probably just burning the oil rig the other things, Yeah,
but I don't really know that. So when he found
out he got fired, he beat up the boss, and then,
by his own admission, he said he was just sitting
around trying to figure out what to do next because
he had really nowhere to go, and a young boy
just happened to pass by. Very unfortunate for this young boy,
(18:54):
So he said he sexually assaulted this boy, beat the
boy to death to the point where his brains were
coming out his ears, and dumped him in a gravel
pit about a quarter mile away. Can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, and he keeps getting out to keep doing that.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah. Well, no internet, no telephone, even photography trying to
get pictures of him. How easy is it to change
your look? How easy is it to make an alias?
At this point and tell somebody or other, right, you know,
trying to put all these pieces together very very difficult.
He did find out that the American Console, now that
(19:31):
he brought attention to himself, had opened an investigation on him,
so he was forced to flee Angola. He again wound
up on a series of ships. He was just robbing
people all along the way. He claimed to have hired
this is his language. He claimed to have hired a
large canoe and six n words to paddle it. Okay,
(19:54):
And when he got near where he wanted to go,
he shot all of the n words his words again
and dumped them over and fed them to the crocodiles
so they.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Would for what reason, just for fun, for.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Fun, And he didn't pay them, I see, Okay. After
that he wound up back in New York around nineteen
twenty two. This is one gap I couldn't fill. I
don't know what he did in between there. Shortly after
that he claimed to have killed two small boys, one
in New Haven and one in Salem, Massachusetts. He made
(20:30):
his way to Yonkers, New York, Westchester County, not far
from US, where he worked as a night watchman. In
June of nineteen twenty three, he stole a yacht out
of Larchmont, New York, also in Westchester.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, Larchmont a lot of money, a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Of money even back then, a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And probably a lot of yachts.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, yeah, So he stole one and then he smashed
it on the rocks. So then he went back and
he stole another one out of New Rochelle, not far
from Larchmont. And that one happened to belong to the
chief of police.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Oh maybe that was a mistake.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Maybe maybe not. So after he stole that yacht, he
also picked up a fifteen year old boy named George
Wallason by offering a job on the boat. He introduced
himself as Captain John O'Leary and offered this kid a
job on the boat. Do you think he got a job?
What do you think happened to this kid?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Ah sexually abused and murdered.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
He was sexually abused, He was not murdered. But on
June twenty seventh, nineteen twenty three, they sailed up the
Hudson River to Kingston, New York, near in the Albany
area the Capitol District, where they picked up another man
whose name we don't know. Carl got suspicious of this
guy and thought that this guy was gonna rob him
instead of the other way around, which normally happened. So
(21:55):
instead he shot this guy using the thirty eight caliber
pistol that the chief of police was nice enough to
leave on his yacht. Okay, wow, now do we need
to do a tangent about firearm safety and safely storing them?
Maybe don't leave him on your yacht.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
No, you're the chief police. Yeah, when you're the chief
of police, you probably kind of think, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Maybe you should set a better example, yeah, for everybody else.
All right, So yeah, he used the chiefs police to
murder this anonymous guy and then dump the body overboard.
The next day, they were heading south. This is June
twenty eighth. They're heading south and near Newburgh, Lrange County, George.
The fifteen year old jumped overboard and swam to shore,
(22:45):
So I give him credit for that. Okay, he escaped.
He got back to Yonkers and reported to the Yonkers
police that he had been sexually assaulted and he witnessed
a murder committed by the man he knew as Captain
John O'Leary. Okay, oliy is course Carl right, and Carl
continued south. He was arrested the next day, June twenty ninth,
(23:06):
in Nyack, New York, which is near the south end
of Rockland. Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I know, yeah, my family was lived in Nyacks for many,
many decades.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, it's right on the Hudson River. There's I think
there's still boating clubs down there. Definitely boating activities going
on and all that, so riverfront property. So yeah, that's
where he was arrested for this. Now, Carl, still going
under the name O'Leary, which they thought was his real name,
was being held in the Rockland County Jail at the time,
(23:38):
in July nineteen twenty three. He tried to escape, didn't work,
so instead he conned his own lawyer by trading ownership
of a stolen boat. I don't know if they had
titles back then, like paper to prove that you owned,
had some kind of documentation. So he traded a stolen
boat to his lawyer for bail, money, posted bail, took
(24:03):
off skip bail, and then the boat was confiscated because
it was a stolen boat.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Oh well, too bad for that defense, served.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
The lawyer, right, I could not find the lawyer's name
because he deserves an honorable mention for what were you thinking? Yes, really,
you know, I don't know how nice of a boat
this was, but jeez, you know, maybe another lesson. So
in August that year, he was arrested in Larchmont. He
(24:33):
was back in Larchmont after breaking into the train station.
He was sentenced to five years in prison. But while
he was being held in the county jail, he confessed
to being wanted in Oregon for his part in the
murder of the warden that was killed.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And interesting that he'd confess.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
That he confessed to it because he then tried to
collect the five hundred dollars reward for information he gave
about himself.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Oh okay, this might be one of the stupidest things
I've ever heard.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Any Well, remember he was doing this under the name
John O'Leary, recording about Okay, Carl. Okay, he did not
get the five hundred dollars reward because cases of the
puzzle started coming together. Carl spent some time in sing sing.
He was then transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in
(25:28):
upstate dani Mora, which in more recent years came back
to like he tried to escape by climbing over the wall.
He fell. He broke both ankles and his spine. Ooh.
Clinton was known to be one of the harshest prison
prisons in America at the time. A New York prison
was known to be one of the harshest. So he
(25:50):
received no medical treatment for over a year. Nothing back
in the cell. There you go, two broken ankles and
a broken spine. He finally got surgery after a year
in the prison infirmary, and in the infirmary he raped
a fellow inmate and was put in solitary. Crazy, right,
(26:15):
absolutely crazy just after surgery. Boggles to mind. He was
released in July nineteen twenty eight after serving his full
five years. He actually this is one of the few
where someone actually served their whole sent Yeah, right, surprise,
which I think that five year stint was nothing for him.
So now, Carl Panzram made his way down to Maryland
(26:38):
and the Washington DC area, committing burglaries all along the
way and possibly additional murders. His final arrest came on
August thirtieth, nineteen twenty eight, in Washington, d C. He
was arrested along with three other men for committing a
burglary ten days before that where he stole jewelry and
a radio. Possession of the stolen radio did him in
(27:03):
believe it or not, of all the things that, Yeah,
sometimes it's just a break, you know, something small like that.
So during his interrogation, remember this is before the Miranda
rights came about in nineteen sixty six, during interrogation, he
confessed to killing three more boys that month, one in Connecticut,
(27:23):
one in Massachusetts, and one in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia murder
was confirmed, the Massachusetts one couldn't be proven, and I
couldn't find anything about the Connecticut one. So I don't know.
Obviously one is more than enough, right, But when they
asked him what was the point of killing children, Carl said,
I quote, I get a kick out of murdering people.
(27:46):
This is what he told his interrogators.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Okay, then, yeah, how can you argue with that?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I guess he was being honest, right, yeah. Yeah. So
at this point officials in Washington d C mad contact
with the other jurisdictions that he had confessed to and
did a little bit more digging, and finally they were
able to determine that they had a serial killer, serial
uh felon in custody.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
And what year was this?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Finally, this was in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Wow, that's a long time.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, he got away with a lot. Yeah, a very
long time around the world, but now in custody in Washington, DC.
And they realized the kind of person that they had
in their custody, which also means it's time for another
quick break. Oh hang it, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
This is Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Listen to Hudson River Radio dot Com at work. We
won't tell the boss.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
We are back. And I did start taking notes at
the beginning of this episode. I think I stopped around
fifty murders ago. This is an astonishing career.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
And I know I've said it before, but this is
cherry picking the stuff that he did. It absolutely insane
that he got away for this as long as he did,
but that's the way things were. So at this point,
he's in custody in Washington, d C. Given his ridiculous
criminal record that they were able to piece together, Carl
(29:31):
Panzram was sentenced to twenty five years to life in
federal prison. Remember he's in Washington, d C. Which is
federal jurisdiction. It's not in a state. A lot of
his crimes happened to interstate and all that, so they
had the jurisdiction for that. And while he was being
held in the Washington d c. Jail, Carl became unlikely
(29:52):
friends with a correction officer named Henry Henry Philip Lesser,
who actually felt bad after seeing Carl get beat up
and abused and knowing his history and knowing what he
went through as a kid, and he gave him a
couple of dollars to buy cigarettes and extra food, so
they actually.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, did he feel bad about all the people he
raped and murdered.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Well, we're going to talk more about Lesser because that
was my initial reaction too, So I'm going to ask
you to hit the pause button on that for just
a minute. Carl was just so taken back by the
kindness that Lesser showed him, which he had never been
shown before, that they hit it off. They became friendly,
(30:37):
you know, not like real close friends, but friendly. And
when Lesser asked him to document his life of crime
as an autobiography, he did it. Lesser gave him the
writing materials, paper, pens and all that, so Carl could
actually document his whole life, and he wrote a whole
autobiography of everything that he did. So can I read
(30:59):
you a pack for two?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Oh? I can't wait?
Speaker 2 (31:02):
All right, here we go. In my lifetime, I have
murdered twenty one human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons,
and last, but not least, I have committed sodomy on
more than one thousand male human beings. For all these things,
I am not in the least bit sorry. I have
(31:23):
no conscience, so that does not worry me. I don't
believe in man, God or devil. I hate the whole
damn human race, including myself. I have no desire whatever
to reform myself. My only desire is to reform other
people who try to reform me. And I believe the
only way to reform people is to kill him. My
(31:44):
motto is rob them all, rape them all, and kill
them all. I am very truly yours, signed Cooper John
the Second. Karl pansram. I don't know, Cooper John the Second.
I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
But Carl panzram, Wow, sincerely yours, I want to kill you.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Once again being honest, being honest, Yeah, what can I say?
So he was in federal custody. Carl was transferred to
the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, not far from Fort Leavenworth, where
he first served time a mere eighteen years ago. Eighteen
years prior. He was considered completely psychotic, which I think
(32:30):
is r Yeah, and he even told the warden there
that he would kill the first man that bothers me.
Another quote of his, I will kill the first man
that bothers me. So he was assigned to work alone
in the laundry under the foreman, who was another prisoner
named Robert Warrenkey. Warren Key was known to be kind
(32:51):
of a jerk to his fellow prisoners. I'm guessing a
little bit of you know, a little bit of authority
goes a long way in your heart, especially when you're
and closed in an environment like that. So he was
known to not be so nice to his fellow prisoners.
It pains me to say it, but I have to
give Carl a little bit of credit. He told warren
Key a number of times, knock it off, stop bothering me,
(33:15):
leave me alone, knock it off. And it just got
to the point where he beat Warrenkey to death with
an iron rod on June twentieth, nineteen twenty nine. I
hate to say it, he tried to tell the guy
to knock it off, right. Not a justification, but you
know so, for that, Carl was convicted and sentenced to death.
(33:38):
This is the only murder where he was convicted. All
the other ones he was a step or two ahead.
He was never arrested, he was never caught. It was
all in hindsight that things were put together, even the
warden the escape, you know, that was after he was
already gone. He was. He refused all the appeals that
(34:01):
he was entitled to. He didn't fall to any of them.
When opponents to the death penalty offered to intervene on
his behalf, he wrote to them another quote, You're gonna love.
The only thanks you and your kind will ever get
from me for your efforts on my behalf is that
I wish you all had one neck and that I
had my hands on it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
And these are the people trying to save his life.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
These are the people trying to at least okay.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Maybe they got the message. There are bad people who
don't deserve to be on this planet.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Maybe maybe I don't know, but in other words, he
declined their offer. Yes, suffice it to say, right. He
was scheduled to be hanged on September fifth, nineteen thirty.
When the guards tried to put the traditional hood over
his head, he spit in their faces. I don't know
(34:55):
how the guards kept it together, because that would have
been an even earlier death. I think if I was
standing there and he tried that. When he was asked
if he had any last words, he said, quote, yes,
hurry it up, you hoos, your bastards. I could kill
ten men while you're screwing around. Delightful, delightful fellow, right, yes, yeah.
(35:20):
So then they followed through. He was hanged, and when
his body went unclaimed, he was buried in the prison cemetery.
I don't know what happened to his siblings or his mother.
I'm assuming his father never turned up again. I don't
know if his siblings knew where he was or any
of that's gone on. Yeah, and they just didn't want
to be involved, or if they had no idea. I
(35:41):
couldn't find anything. I'm kind of curious about that, but
I'm guessing he had traveled around the world so many
times that they thought he was just long gone, you
know by that point, right, So he was buried in
the prison cemetery there. Now, let's go back the prison guard,
Henry Lesser, the one who gave him a couple bucks.
He kept all of Carl's letters and the autobiography he wrote. Remember,
(36:05):
Lesser was back in Washington, d C. He wasn't it Lovemore.
He spent about forty years trying to get them published.
In nineteen eighty. Lesser wound up donating all of the
material to San Diego State University, where they are still
available for research. You can go read these papers about yourself.
A friend of his was earning a master's degree in
(36:26):
their criminal justice program. That's how they were connected, and
he did allow authors to use them for research before
they were donated. I I had the same reaction that
you did. It's like, what is this guard doing giving
this guy money and being friends with him? So I
wanted to do a little more digging on Lesser, And
the more I found out about him, it kind of
(36:47):
changed my mind a little bit. So here's another tangent
we're going to go down. So Henry Lesser, he was
born in nineteen oh two in Massachusetts. He was eleven
years younger than Carl. He dropped out of high school
and moved to Washington, DC with his brothers. He got
a job in the clothing business. He was a men's
clothing salesperson, and he got fired because he tried to
(37:09):
help all the workers unionize, so he was let go
for that. He became interested in social reform off of
the union thing, realizing that there were some problems that
needed to be addressed, and he was interested in progressive
causes that kind of stuff. So Lesser got a job
as a hospital orderly for a little while, and then
(37:31):
he got hired as a guard in the Washington d c.
Jail in nineteen twenty eight. That's where he took an
interest in prison reform as part of his progressive idea.
He rose up through the ranks. He made it up
to junior Warden's assistant, and then he resigned in nineteen
thirty five out of frustration over the lack of improved
conditions for the prisoners that were being promised and scheduled
(37:53):
and all that and just never happened. He thought that
prison reform would actually improve things for everybody, but he quit,
So I'll give him credit for that. He put his
money where his mouth is, especially because it was in
the middle of the Great Depression, so he was unemployed.
He walked out with nothing.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
He ultimately down the road, went back to the garment business,
worked in a department store. And that's just a brief
overview of Lesser. He wanted that autobiography because it was
really a study of the mind of a serial killer.
It was one of the first to try to get
some details and what the story is and stuff that
(38:34):
people could actually research and look into.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I'm surprised they didn't Nobody published it because you know
all those pulp novels and sensational.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yes, I don't know what happened. So he wound up.
I mean, this is a whole You could do a
whole show just on this fine story. But he wound
up working with authors and researchers and another publisher down
the road. In nineteen seventy there was a book put
out based on all of this called Killer Poland a
Journal of Murder, which did not sell well, but it
(39:04):
started to grow in popularity as time went on, when
it became more of a research tool for people that
were you know, it was a whole new field, this
whole serial killer thing. It was now finally being studied,
you know, academically. I mean that hadn't been done before.
So there was ultimately a book put out based on
(39:24):
the manuscripts and all that kind of stuff. There was
a nineteen ninety five film put out under the same
title Killer, a Journal of Murder, where James Woods plays
Carl pans Ram.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
I never saw it, No, I didn't. I'll look for it.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, I might want to sit down and watch that one.
There was a documentary in twenty twelve put out titled
Carl pans Ram The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance. I
haven't seen that either. That might be worth a watch,
but it's pretty interesting. So just a side note, I
would give Lesser the prison guard a little bit of
credit because it was he wasn't trying to sell the
(39:59):
material to make money. He was actually okay together as
part of the whole prison reform.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
He wasn't sucking up to him just so he could profit.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Out of exactly because he had seen Carl getting beaten
up and mistreated in prison himself and knew the whole background,
knew the whole story so you know, I did a
one eighty. I was like, why is this guy having
you know, what is he going to do with this?
And I'm like, all right, all right, so I'll give
him a little credit for that. So there you go. Wow,
(40:29):
just a little cherry picking on Carl Pansraim.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah, that's he has to be up there as one
of the most prolific sick people we've ever dealt with.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, I mean literally around the world. And who knows
what he did and under what other aliases he used
and what he got away with that we don't even
know about.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, didn't didn't even try to be nice, no, no
what and was open about it. No excuses. I want
to kill you.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
That's it. Yep. So there you have it. I thought
you might enjoy that one. As far as.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Startling, yeah, that is startling. Well, you know, great, now
we're all going to have nightmare. But these people are
out there. It's you know, I'm sure he's not the
only Carl Pazram type person who's ever been on the planet.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Definitely not. You know, I think nowadays it's a little
harder to travel and get away with things than it
was back then. You know, Now just to get on
an airplane. Think of the nightmare you have to go through, yeah,
versus back then when you can just make up a
new name and you know that's your name now, right,
and you will go with it. So they stuff to
(41:49):
think about.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah, well, thanks for hanging in there being being sick
and all and good job, all right, so we will
be back for another episode of Murder in the Hudson Valley.
If you don't meet somebody like Carl Panzram
This is Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Linda Zimmerman, I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio
dot Com. Welcome everyone. How are we tonight? Brian? A
little under the weather in.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
There, A little under the weather, my turn. Everybody seems
to be getting its turn the season, So I will
keep the germs to myself. Since we're on zoom, it
should be easy to do and I.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Will hopefully hopefully Yeah, no viruses over the internet love
that kind Yeah, right, neither. All right, Well, if you
need to stop to cough, we uh, the audience will understand.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And they'll never know because I'll just chop it out later.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
All right. So you have what you described to me
as a grizzly episode nothing about.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
When I came across this one, I'm like, oh wow,
this is one of those cases that there is way
too much to cover in one episode of Murder in
the Hudson Valley, so I had to cherry pick what
we're going to talk about. But there are significant ties
to the Hudson Valley, so it fits the bill. So
I think you're gonna like this one.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
In my own.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yep, yep. So today we're talking about Carl Panzram. I
don't think you've heard of before one for you, Okay.
Like I said, it is so over the top that
we're just going to be cherry picking some of the
things that he did, which is boy just he is
suspected of killing over one hundred miles boys and men
(01:47):
in the United States and nobody knows how many more overseas.
So he got to travel the world. I'll give him
credit for that.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh, that's what we always say. The last thing you
want is a serial killer who travels. M hm.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Oh, he was around the world many times. We'll see that.
Like I said, there are significant ties to the Hudson Valley,
so stay with me on this one. A lot of
what we know comes from an autobiography that he wrote
during his last prison sentence, which we'll talk about more
later on. Some was corroborated, some wasn't, but we'll see
(02:22):
and we'll get we'll get your opinion as we go along,
so feel free to hop in, all right. So Carl
Panzram was born in eighteen ninety one in Polk County, Minnesota,
on a farm owned by his parents. Johan and Matilda,
two names that, for some reason just strike me as
perfect for goldfish. If you get two goldfish Johan and Matilda.
(02:44):
I don't know why that popped into my head, but.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
This, well, you are, you are ill?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yes, that could be. Maybe it's the fever. It could
very well be. His parents were immigrants from Prussia back
when Prussia existed, and like many many farmers, they were
struggling to keep their farm afloat. They had five other
boys and one daughter, all of whom seemed to have
grown up relatively normally. Couldn't find anything bad about any
(03:10):
of them. Couldn't find much about them at all. One
brother appears to have he died in a drowning accident.
He was a logger, so I'm guessing as they were
floating logs down the river he may have been. But
other than that, none of them seemed to get into trouble.
But all of the kids were made to work the
farm all day, every day up until these new laws
(03:33):
called truancy laws came into effect, where now these kids
were required to go to school. It's so normal for
us now. That was not always the case.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
You know, kids, Wow, that must have been tough. For
our families who relied on everyone day exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, So Johann and Matilda were not happy about it,
but they sent their kids to school like they were
required to do, and they just made their kids work
the farm at night after they got home from school,
and pretty much all night. Carl would later say that
he got about two hours of sleep per night, and
for a growing kid, a single digit age is just unconscionable.
(04:09):
I can't even imagine he would be punished if he
didn't do what he was expected to do by being
bound up in chains and denied food as a kid. Again,
we're taking his word for it, but there's no reason
to not believe him. As we'll see. So as a
(04:30):
young child, Carl got in. He wound up getting an
infection in the mastoid process, which is where the jaw
connects to the skull, you know, on the side of
the face. They did surgery at home. I don't know how.
I don't have to lay him on the kitchen table.
I don't know what they did. This is before antibiotics,
before before great anesthetic. They did have opioids at this
(04:54):
point on it, so I hope they gave it to him,
but Unfortunately, the surgery made it worse, and only then
was he taken to a hospital for real surgery. Now,
the infection may or may not have spread to his brain.
It may or may not have had something to do
with making him turn out the way he did. I
don't know. I have no.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Idea, but it's the abuse as a child.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And the abuse which you know, no small part. Obviously.
What we do know is that he was a mean
kid and the other kids didn't like him. He would
just steal stuff blatantly, he would just lie, misbehave. He
was just a bad kid all around. And when he
was seven, his father just gave up on the entire
family and abandoned everybody and he disappeared.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That makes it all better.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, so Carl is starting out behind the eight ball
from day one. Really. Carl Panzram's first arrest was in
eighteen ninety nine, at the ripe old age of eight.
He was charged in juvenile court for being drunk and
disorderly at age eight.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yes, wow, is this a record.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I don't remember anybody with those charges at that age
from any of the cases that we've talked about. We
have talked about younger, you know, alcoholic tendencies and all that,
but not eight. I don't remember anybody ate No, But
at age twelve, same thing, same charges again. He then
burglarized a neighbor's house and stole food and a revolver.
(06:28):
In nineteen oh three, his mother sent him to a
reform school, the Minnesota State Training School, where he claims
to have been beaten and sexually abused by school staff.
I have no reason to not take his word on
that one.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
That's the way they were. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, he hated the place so much that he decided
to burn it down, and he did in July of
nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Okay, can't blame him there.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, that's a tough one. By age fourteen, he already
had a lengthy raps burglaries and robberies. Remember, burglaries are
out of a building. Robberies are off of a person.
People sometimes confused those. Okay, So he was both breaking
into buildings and beating people up to take stuff off
of their person. And his rap sheet included the attempted
(07:17):
murder of a priest using another stolen revolver that he
got somewhere. Wow, Okay, Carl ran away to live on
the streets where he said he was gang raped by
a group of homeless men on a train. He would
hop on trains to travel basically wherever it took him
(07:38):
at this point, and it took him to a lot
of different places where he expanded his rap sheet quite
a bit. He was becoming a professional.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oh, I think he was probably a professional around age fifteen.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, easily, easily by nineteen oh seven, age sixteen seventeen.
In there, he got drunk in a saloon in Helena,
Montana and enlisted in the US Army. Oh no, drunken right,
how many drunk enlistments. And they took him, They took
(08:12):
how many? I can only imagine how many times that
happened in the past. Get somebody driven.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
When I was writing my Civil War book, there was
a letter from a man who had a great business,
great family, was an alcoholic, and he went down a
tear in uh Manhattan, and he goes and I had
no idea I had enlisted till we were on a
(08:37):
ship headed for the South doodle. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah. Well, so he showed up like he was supposed to,
and not surprisingly, Carl did not do well in the Army,
where you're expected to take orders and be disciplined, right,
No surprise there. Instead, he was convicted of stealing eighty
eight dollars worth of supplies, which would be about twenty
two hundred dollars worth. Now that's a felony in New York.
(09:04):
That's grand larceny. So he spent two years in Fort
Leavenworth in Kansas at the US Disciplinary Barracks.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Okay, that's some hard time.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's hard time, that is hard labor. Secretary of War
at the time, William Howard Taft personally approved his sentence,
which started in nineteen oh eight. So when Carl went
into Fort Leavenworth, Taft was Secretary of War. When he
got out with his dishonorable discharge, Taft was president. We
(09:35):
will be hearing Taft come up again later on in
the story.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Okay, so put that a little grudge.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Maybe he absolutely held a big grudge. Yes, So just
set that aside for a one second. His two years
of hard labor meant that he was now physically fit.
He was a big guy to begin with, and he
went right back to his criminal activities again all around
the country. He just made it much easier for him
(10:01):
to rob people because now he could just pick you
up and toss you. After all these years of breaking rocks,
it really put up the muscles, you know. So another
oak one. Right. So, on his trips around the country,
he did stints in sing sing in Westchester County near US.
He did a stint in the Clinton Correctional Facility upstate
(10:23):
New York, Deanamora when that was open, not far from us. Really,
he would fight with the correction officers back then they
were prison guards or jail guards. I just call them
correction officers out of habit. When he got out, he
would rob and rape men and then wind up back
in prison. That was just a revolving door for him.
The one stretch of his life where he was not
(10:45):
committing crimes was when he was hired to be a
strike strike breaker against union members who went on strike.
And if you're not familiar with strike breakers, they were
literally hired to go beat up union members. Yes, so
he still got to do the same activity as before,
but now now he was paid for it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Is it a lean job for him?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, exactly exactly. He didn't last too long doing that
either because he had to take orders and he didn't
like to take orders. So no matter what, he did.
He was not going to excel. Carl wound up in Mexico,
where he was able to join the Mexican Army Foreign Legion,
and he figured that he could travel around and just
(11:28):
rob everybody in Mexico while in uniform, right, because when
you wear a uniform, they have a little bit of authority.
But then he found out that that was kind of
the norm and every place he was going to go
rob and burglarized was already stripped clean other soldiers got
there exactly. So that didn't pay out for him, so
(11:50):
he quit. He didn't last too long there. At that point,
he traveled up the West coast to California and Oregon,
using the names Jefferson Davis believe it or not, and
Jack Allen. He headed out to Montana, committing crimes all
along the way. In April nineteen thirteen, Carl wound up
(12:11):
in the Montana State Prison and in November nineteen thirteen
he escaped. He got out. Oh okay, so he wasn't
there for very long. In nineteen fifteen, there's a two
year gap. He was busy in that two year gap. Again,
we're cherry picking what we're talking about today. In nineteen fifteen,
age twenty four, he was sentenced to seven years in
(12:33):
the Oregon State Penitentiary. The warden there his name was
Harry Minto, and Minto is known for openly believing in
very harsh treatments of prisoners. He just was okay with
beatings and mistreating and all that kind of stuff, and
Carl was just not gonna have it. So he helped
another inmate named Otto Hooker escape, and then when Otto
(12:57):
was on the run and he was about to be recaptured,
Hooker turned around and killed the warden. Okay, all right,
So this was the first murder that was connected to Carl.
Pansram as an accessory because he helped Otto put this
whole plant together and put it into effect. So this
is actually the first murder that was connected to Carl.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Carl himself escaped in nineteen seventeen. Two years later he
was recaptured, only to saw through the bars like they
did in the old Western. He sawed through the bars
and escaped again. In nineteen eighteen, he hopped the train
and headed east. He got hired to work on steamships,
(13:41):
which took him to London, Paris, Hamburg, Germany. Amongst other places,
so he got to see the world. He was not
behaving this whole time.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Rob his way through Europe.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Uh huh. He wound up back in the US by
around nineteen twenty, specifically in New Haven, Connecticut. More specifically
on September sixteenth, nineteen twenty, at the residence of one
now former President William Howard Taft.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Really uh huh.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Carl was still angry about his first sentence at Fort Leavenworth,
the Taft had approved years before. So Carl broke in,
stole a ton of jewelry, stole bonds, money, and Taft's
Colt M nineteen eleven forty five caliber handgun. Wow. Oh okay,
(14:34):
all right, and this is a good point to just
take a little break.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
What do you think sounds good?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
We are back and very interesting. This small town time
thug as prolific as he was now stepped up to
the big le leagues, robbing taff or, burglarizing tafts home.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Tafts home, the former president yep, and now had his
handgun with him too, So I almost want to hand
it to him. You're gonna love this. Carl used the
money from taft bonds that he stole to buy a
yacht called the Aquista. He went a yacht he bought at.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
What the hell did he know about yachting?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
He did work on steamships. I hope that he learns
something about sailing. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. We'll see.
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So he sailed his new yacht, the Aquista, down to
the Bronx, New York.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Okay, that's a lovely port.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
It's a little it was a little different back then.
It was a little more you know, right.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I don't think cruise ships stopped there today.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
No, and I don't think they did back then either.
It was a little more industrial, yes, yeah, but there
he lured drunk sailors onto his yacht, took them out sailing, sexually,
abused them, murdered them with Taff's pistol that he stole,
and then dumped their bodies into the Long Island Sound.
(16:28):
So he claimed to have murdered ten sailors this way,
and that streak only ended because he crashed the boat
in Atlantic City, and the last two victims he had
on the boat jumped and took off into history.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
We don't know what happened to those Okay, yeah, they
probably didn't want to talk about their experience.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I would not think, so, yeah, yeah, that's insane. So
next back to Connecticut jail, Philadelphia jail, Virginia. But in
Virginia he posted bail, got out early and took off
(17:06):
on another ship on what was then Portuguese Angola in
Southwest Africa. Now it's just Angola or the Republic of Angola.
He got a job on an oil rig, which he
didn't enjoy, so he burnt it down out of spite.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He bought, bought, paid for, bought two preteen girls, sexually
assaulted them, and then tried to return them to the
family to get his money back.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I don't I don't even believe this. I mean, it's
not funny, but.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
It's it is unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah. But when he then raped a boy who was
working as a waiter at a local place, apparently that
was too much and the locals went on a bit
of a lynching mob looking for him. Okay, so he
took off and he fled to the US console. The
console looked him up, learned of his recent activities, and
(18:08):
to their credit, told him to go scratch to help him. Yes,
you did it, You were on your own, and go away,
thank you very much. Carl then found out that he
got fired, you know, subsequent to setting his oil rig
on fires, probably dismissal, I would say, So, I don't
(18:30):
know which of those things he got fired for back then,
Probably just burning the oil rig the other things, Yeah,
but I don't really know that. So when he found
out he got fired, he beat up the boss, and then,
by his own admission, he said he was just sitting
around trying to figure out what to do next because
he had really nowhere to go, and a young boy
just happened to pass by. Very unfortunate for this young boy,
(18:54):
So he said he sexually assaulted this boy, beat the
boy to death to the point where his brains were
coming out his ears, and dumped him in a gravel
pit about a quarter mile away. Can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, and he keeps getting out to keep doing that.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah. Well, no internet, no telephone, even photography trying to
get pictures of him. How easy is it to change
your look? How easy is it to make an alias?
At this point and tell somebody or other, right, you know,
trying to put all these pieces together very very difficult.
He did find out that the American Console, now that
(19:31):
he brought attention to himself, had opened an investigation on him,
so he was forced to flee Angola. He again wound
up on a series of ships. He was just robbing
people all along the way. He claimed to have hired
this is his language. He claimed to have hired a
large canoe and six n words to paddle it. Okay,
(19:54):
And when he got near where he wanted to go,
he shot all of the n words his words again
and dumped them over and fed them to the crocodiles
so they.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Would for what reason, just for fun, for.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Fun, And he didn't pay them, I see, Okay. After
that he wound up back in New York around nineteen
twenty two. This is one gap I couldn't fill. I
don't know what he did in between there. Shortly after
that he claimed to have killed two small boys, one
in New Haven and one in Salem, Massachusetts. He made
(20:30):
his way to Yonkers, New York, Westchester County, not far
from US, where he worked as a night watchman. In
June of nineteen twenty three, he stole a yacht out
of Larchmont, New York, also in Westchester.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, Larchmont a lot of money, a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Of money even back then, a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And probably a lot of yachts.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, yeah, So he stole one and then he smashed
it on the rocks. So then he went back and
he stole another one out of New Rochelle, not far
from Larchmont. And that one happened to belong to the
chief of police.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Oh maybe that was a mistake.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Maybe maybe not. So after he stole that yacht, he
also picked up a fifteen year old boy named George
Wallason by offering a job on the boat. He introduced
himself as Captain John O'Leary and offered this kid a
job on the boat. Do you think he got a job?
What do you think happened to this kid?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Ah sexually abused and murdered.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
He was sexually abused, He was not murdered. But on
June twenty seventh, nineteen twenty three, they sailed up the
Hudson River to Kingston, New York, near in the Albany
area the Capitol District, where they picked up another man
whose name we don't know. Carl got suspicious of this
guy and thought that this guy was gonna rob him
instead of the other way around, which normally happened. So
(21:55):
instead he shot this guy using the thirty eight caliber
pistol that the chief of police was nice enough to
leave on his yacht. Okay, wow, now do we need
to do a tangent about firearm safety and safely storing them?
Maybe don't leave him on your yacht.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
No, you're the chief police. Yeah, when you're the chief
of police, you probably kind of think, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Maybe you should set a better example, yeah, for everybody else.
All right, So yeah, he used the chiefs police to
murder this anonymous guy and then dump the body overboard.
The next day, they were heading south. This is June
twenty eighth. They're heading south and near Newburgh, Lrange County, George.
The fifteen year old jumped overboard and swam to shore,
(22:45):
So I give him credit for that. Okay, he escaped.
He got back to Yonkers and reported to the Yonkers
police that he had been sexually assaulted and he witnessed
a murder committed by the man he knew as Captain
John O'Leary. Okay, oliy is course Carl right, and Carl
continued south. He was arrested the next day, June twenty ninth,
(23:06):
in Nyack, New York, which is near the south end
of Rockland. Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I know, yeah, my family was lived in Nyacks for many,
many decades.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, it's right on the Hudson River. There's I think
there's still boating clubs down there. Definitely boating activities going
on and all that, so riverfront property. So yeah, that's
where he was arrested for this. Now, Carl, still going
under the name O'Leary, which they thought was his real name,
was being held in the Rockland County Jail at the time,
(23:38):
in July nineteen twenty three. He tried to escape, didn't work,
so instead he conned his own lawyer by trading ownership
of a stolen boat. I don't know if they had
titles back then, like paper to prove that you owned,
had some kind of documentation. So he traded a stolen
boat to his lawyer for bail, money, posted bail, took
(24:03):
off skip bail, and then the boat was confiscated because
it was a stolen boat.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Oh well, too bad for that defense, served.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
The lawyer, right, I could not find the lawyer's name
because he deserves an honorable mention for what were you thinking? Yes, really,
you know, I don't know how nice of a boat
this was, but jeez, you know, maybe another lesson. So
in August that year, he was arrested in Larchmont. He
(24:33):
was back in Larchmont after breaking into the train station.
He was sentenced to five years in prison. But while
he was being held in the county jail, he confessed
to being wanted in Oregon for his part in the
murder of the warden that was killed.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And interesting that he'd confess.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
That he confessed to it because he then tried to
collect the five hundred dollars reward for information he gave
about himself.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Oh okay, this might be one of the stupidest things
I've ever heard.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Any Well, remember he was doing this under the name
John O'Leary, recording about Okay, Carl. Okay, he did not
get the five hundred dollars reward because cases of the
puzzle started coming together. Carl spent some time in sing sing.
He was then transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in
(25:28):
upstate dani Mora, which in more recent years came back
to like he tried to escape by climbing over the wall.
He fell. He broke both ankles and his spine. Ooh.
Clinton was known to be one of the harshest prison
prisons in America at the time. A New York prison
was known to be one of the harshest. So he
(25:50):
received no medical treatment for over a year. Nothing back
in the cell. There you go, two broken ankles and
a broken spine. He finally got surgery after a year
in the prison infirmary, and in the infirmary he raped
a fellow inmate and was put in solitary. Crazy, right,
(26:15):
absolutely crazy just after surgery. Boggles to mind. He was
released in July nineteen twenty eight after serving his full
five years. He actually this is one of the few
where someone actually served their whole sent Yeah, right, surprise,
which I think that five year stint was nothing for him.
So now, Carl Panzram made his way down to Maryland
(26:38):
and the Washington DC area, committing burglaries all along the
way and possibly additional murders. His final arrest came on
August thirtieth, nineteen twenty eight, in Washington, d C. He
was arrested along with three other men for committing a
burglary ten days before that where he stole jewelry and
a radio. Possession of the stolen radio did him in
(27:03):
believe it or not, of all the things that, Yeah,
sometimes it's just a break, you know, something small like that.
So during his interrogation, remember this is before the Miranda
rights came about in nineteen sixty six, during interrogation, he
confessed to killing three more boys that month, one in Connecticut,
(27:23):
one in Massachusetts, and one in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia murder
was confirmed, the Massachusetts one couldn't be proven, and I
couldn't find anything about the Connecticut one. So I don't know.
Obviously one is more than enough, right, But when they
asked him what was the point of killing children, Carl said,
I quote, I get a kick out of murdering people.
(27:46):
This is what he told his interrogators.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Okay, then, yeah, how can you argue with that?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I guess he was being honest, right, yeah. Yeah. So
at this point officials in Washington d C mad contact
with the other jurisdictions that he had confessed to and
did a little bit more digging, and finally they were
able to determine that they had a serial killer, serial
uh felon in custody.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
And what year was this?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Finally, this was in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Wow, that's a long time.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, he got away with a lot. Yeah, a very
long time around the world, but now in custody in Washington, DC.
And they realized the kind of person that they had
in their custody, which also means it's time for another
quick break. Oh hang it, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
This is Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Listen to Hudson River Radio dot Com at work. We
won't tell the boss.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
We are back. And I did start taking notes at
the beginning of this episode. I think I stopped around
fifty murders ago. This is an astonishing career.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
And I know I've said it before, but this is
cherry picking the stuff that he did. It absolutely insane
that he got away for this as long as he did,
but that's the way things were. So at this point,
he's in custody in Washington, d C. Given his ridiculous
criminal record that they were able to piece together, Carl
(29:31):
Panzram was sentenced to twenty five years to life in
federal prison. Remember he's in Washington, d C. Which is
federal jurisdiction. It's not in a state. A lot of
his crimes happened to interstate and all that, so they
had the jurisdiction for that. And while he was being
held in the Washington d c. Jail, Carl became unlikely
(29:52):
friends with a correction officer named Henry Henry Philip Lesser,
who actually felt bad after seeing Carl get beat up
and abused and knowing his history and knowing what he
went through as a kid, and he gave him a
couple of dollars to buy cigarettes and extra food, so
they actually.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, did he feel bad about all the people he
raped and murdered.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Well, we're going to talk more about Lesser because that
was my initial reaction too, So I'm going to ask
you to hit the pause button on that for just
a minute. Carl was just so taken back by the
kindness that Lesser showed him, which he had never been
shown before, that they hit it off. They became friendly,
(30:37):
you know, not like real close friends, but friendly. And
when Lesser asked him to document his life of crime
as an autobiography, he did it. Lesser gave him the
writing materials, paper, pens and all that, so Carl could
actually document his whole life, and he wrote a whole
autobiography of everything that he did. So can I read
(30:59):
you a pack for two?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Oh? I can't wait?
Speaker 2 (31:02):
All right, here we go. In my lifetime, I have
murdered twenty one human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons,
and last, but not least, I have committed sodomy on
more than one thousand male human beings. For all these things,
I am not in the least bit sorry. I have
(31:23):
no conscience, so that does not worry me. I don't
believe in man, God or devil. I hate the whole
damn human race, including myself. I have no desire whatever
to reform myself. My only desire is to reform other
people who try to reform me. And I believe the
only way to reform people is to kill him. My
(31:44):
motto is rob them all, rape them all, and kill
them all. I am very truly yours, signed Cooper John
the Second. Karl pansram. I don't know, Cooper John the Second.
I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
But Carl panzram, Wow, sincerely yours, I want to kill you.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Once again being honest, being honest, Yeah, what can I say?
So he was in federal custody. Carl was transferred to
the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, not far from Fort Leavenworth, where
he first served time a mere eighteen years ago. Eighteen
years prior. He was considered completely psychotic, which I think
(32:30):
is r Yeah, and he even told the warden there
that he would kill the first man that bothers me.
Another quote of his, I will kill the first man
that bothers me. So he was assigned to work alone
in the laundry under the foreman, who was another prisoner
named Robert Warrenkey. Warren Key was known to be kind
(32:51):
of a jerk to his fellow prisoners. I'm guessing a
little bit of you know, a little bit of authority
goes a long way in your heart, especially when you're
and closed in an environment like that. So he was
known to not be so nice to his fellow prisoners.
It pains me to say it, but I have to
give Carl a little bit of credit. He told warren
Key a number of times, knock it off, stop bothering me,
(33:15):
leave me alone, knock it off. And it just got
to the point where he beat Warrenkey to death with
an iron rod on June twentieth, nineteen twenty nine. I
hate to say it, he tried to tell the guy
to knock it off, right. Not a justification, but you
know so, for that, Carl was convicted and sentenced to death.
(33:38):
This is the only murder where he was convicted. All
the other ones he was a step or two ahead.
He was never arrested, he was never caught. It was
all in hindsight that things were put together, even the
warden the escape, you know, that was after he was
already gone. He was. He refused all the appeals that
(34:01):
he was entitled to. He didn't fall to any of them.
When opponents to the death penalty offered to intervene on
his behalf, he wrote to them another quote, You're gonna love.
The only thanks you and your kind will ever get
from me for your efforts on my behalf is that
I wish you all had one neck and that I
had my hands on it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
And these are the people trying to save his life.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
These are the people trying to at least okay.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Maybe they got the message. There are bad people who
don't deserve to be on this planet.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Maybe maybe I don't know, but in other words, he
declined their offer. Yes, suffice it to say, right. He
was scheduled to be hanged on September fifth, nineteen thirty.
When the guards tried to put the traditional hood over
his head, he spit in their faces. I don't know
(34:55):
how the guards kept it together, because that would have
been an even earlier death. I think if I was
standing there and he tried that. When he was asked
if he had any last words, he said, quote, yes,
hurry it up, you hoos, your bastards. I could kill
ten men while you're screwing around. Delightful, delightful fellow, right, yes, yeah.
(35:20):
So then they followed through. He was hanged, and when
his body went unclaimed, he was buried in the prison cemetery.
I don't know what happened to his siblings or his mother.
I'm assuming his father never turned up again. I don't
know if his siblings knew where he was or any
of that's gone on. Yeah, and they just didn't want
to be involved, or if they had no idea. I
(35:41):
couldn't find anything. I'm kind of curious about that, but
I'm guessing he had traveled around the world so many
times that they thought he was just long gone, you
know by that point, right, So he was buried in
the prison cemetery there. Now, let's go back the prison guard,
Henry Lesser, the one who gave him a couple bucks.
He kept all of Carl's letters and the autobiography he wrote. Remember,
(36:05):
Lesser was back in Washington, d C. He wasn't it Lovemore.
He spent about forty years trying to get them published.
In nineteen eighty. Lesser wound up donating all of the
material to San Diego State University, where they are still
available for research. You can go read these papers about yourself.
A friend of his was earning a master's degree in
(36:26):
their criminal justice program. That's how they were connected, and
he did allow authors to use them for research before
they were donated. I I had the same reaction that
you did. It's like, what is this guard doing giving
this guy money and being friends with him? So I
wanted to do a little more digging on Lesser, And
the more I found out about him, it kind of
(36:47):
changed my mind a little bit. So here's another tangent
we're going to go down. So Henry Lesser, he was
born in nineteen oh two in Massachusetts. He was eleven
years younger than Carl. He dropped out of high school
and moved to Washington, DC with his brothers. He got
a job in the clothing business. He was a men's
clothing salesperson, and he got fired because he tried to
(37:09):
help all the workers unionize, so he was let go
for that. He became interested in social reform off of
the union thing, realizing that there were some problems that
needed to be addressed, and he was interested in progressive
causes that kind of stuff. So Lesser got a job
as a hospital orderly for a little while, and then
(37:31):
he got hired as a guard in the Washington d c.
Jail in nineteen twenty eight. That's where he took an
interest in prison reform as part of his progressive idea.
He rose up through the ranks. He made it up
to junior Warden's assistant, and then he resigned in nineteen
thirty five out of frustration over the lack of improved
conditions for the prisoners that were being promised and scheduled
(37:53):
and all that and just never happened. He thought that
prison reform would actually improve things for everybody, but he quit,
So I'll give him credit for that. He put his
money where his mouth is, especially because it was in
the middle of the Great Depression, so he was unemployed.
He walked out with nothing.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
He ultimately down the road, went back to the garment business,
worked in a department store. And that's just a brief
overview of Lesser. He wanted that autobiography because it was
really a study of the mind of a serial killer.
It was one of the first to try to get
some details and what the story is and stuff that
(38:34):
people could actually research and look into.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I'm surprised they didn't Nobody published it because you know
all those pulp novels and sensational.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yes, I don't know what happened. So he wound up.
I mean, this is a whole You could do a
whole show just on this fine story. But he wound
up working with authors and researchers and another publisher down
the road. In nineteen seventy there was a book put
out based on all of this called Killer Poland a
Journal of Murder, which did not sell well, but it
(39:04):
started to grow in popularity as time went on, when
it became more of a research tool for people that
were you know, it was a whole new field, this
whole serial killer thing. It was now finally being studied,
you know, academically. I mean that hadn't been done before.
So there was ultimately a book put out based on
(39:24):
the manuscripts and all that kind of stuff. There was
a nineteen ninety five film put out under the same
title Killer, a Journal of Murder, where James Woods plays
Carl pans Ram.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
I never saw it, No, I didn't. I'll look for it.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, I might want to sit down and watch that one.
There was a documentary in twenty twelve put out titled
Carl pans Ram The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance. I
haven't seen that either. That might be worth a watch,
but it's pretty interesting. So just a side note, I
would give Lesser the prison guard a little bit of
credit because it was he wasn't trying to sell the
(39:59):
material to make money. He was actually okay together as
part of the whole prison reform.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
He wasn't sucking up to him just so he could profit.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Out of exactly because he had seen Carl getting beaten
up and mistreated in prison himself and knew the whole background,
knew the whole story so you know, I did a
one eighty. I was like, why is this guy having
you know, what is he going to do with this?
And I'm like, all right, all right, so I'll give
him a little credit for that. So there you go. Wow,
(40:29):
just a little cherry picking on Carl Pansraim.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah, that's he has to be up there as one
of the most prolific sick people we've ever dealt with.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, I mean literally around the world. And who knows
what he did and under what other aliases he used
and what he got away with that we don't even
know about.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, didn't didn't even try to be nice, no, no
what and was open about it. No excuses. I want
to kill you.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
That's it. Yep. So there you have it. I thought
you might enjoy that one. As far as.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Startling, yeah, that is startling. Well, you know, great, now
we're all going to have nightmare. But these people are
out there. It's you know, I'm sure he's not the
only Carl Pazram type person who's ever been on the planet.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Definitely not. You know, I think nowadays it's a little
harder to travel and get away with things than it
was back then. You know, Now just to get on
an airplane. Think of the nightmare you have to go through, yeah,
versus back then when you can just make up a
new name and you know that's your name now, right,
and you will go with it. So they stuff to
(41:49):
think about.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah, well, thanks for hanging in there being being sick
and all and good job, all right, so we will
be back for another episode of Murder in the Hudson Valley.
If you don't meet somebody like Carl Panzram
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