August 26, 2025 • 19 mins
Aurora Rodriguez Carballeira considered her daughter, Hildegart, to be a science project in eugenics. One that she felt was a failure.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hudson River Radio dot Com. It beats listening to nothing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Linda Zimmerman, I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this is Murder
in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Welcome back to Murder in the Hudson Valley. We've had
quite a brutal string of some very disturbing murders lately.
(00:26):
And are you are you going to keep the string
alive here?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I am, but are you implying that there are not brutal,
not disturbing murders.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, you have to admit we've had there are murders,
and then there are some really messed up things we've
we've been on a streak of really messed really messed up.
So what do you have for us?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm gonna say it's really messed up, all right, all right,
And we're going to go somewhere I don't think we've
been before on the show. We're going to Spain. Have
you been to Spain? I have not been to.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I have not personally been to Spain, nor do I
want to. Never never had a desire. I've been to
a lot of Yeah, just never interested me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I okay, like I feel that way about Paris.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And it's oh I love France. I love France.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I haven't been. I've just heard horrible stories for people
who have.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh really, Oh I've gone several times and I absolutely
adore Paris.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
You know, as everybody's got their thing, like I definitely
need want to do around the UK and a lot
of the music history.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Can love England, yes, oh yeah, the music tours.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I wouldn't say no to anything really.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
But yeah, sorry, Spain. I don't know. I think I
still have a hold a grudge is what Spain did
to the New World, and you know they were against
the English. You know, they hold our Mada thing, and
just historically I hold grudges.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Okay, well there's nobody left that participated, but you know
I get it.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Oh that doesn't mean I still can't hold a grudge, true, Yeah,
that is true.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
All right, So we're gonna go there today and this
will probably not make you want to go anymore than
you already don't. We are going to be talking about
Aurora Rodriguez Caballerra, who was born in eighteen seventy nine
to an upper class family. When she was sixteen, her
(02:33):
older sister Josepha had a son named Pepito. Josepha was
apparently unwed, which was you know, oh boy.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Oh and I strongly Catholic Spain. Yeah, must have been.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah. So she left Pepito in the care of her
sister Aurora, and Aurora actually did a wonderful job of
educating him to the point where he became a musical prodigy.
Josepha came back and took Pipita when he was a
little bit older, and they moved from the city of
(03:06):
I hope I'm saying it right, Federal, rolling my tongues
to Madrid, where he became a successful musician. Okay, so
far so son with sister sister Educate's son, Monteke's sonback
son does very well in the musical world. Okay, all
things considered, not too bad.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Do you know, may I ask what? Did he have
a particular instrument? He was so good at everything.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I don't okay, I don't know. But Pepito's not the
center of the story. Oh okay, we're gonna we're gonna
take a sharp turn here. So boy, all right, if
the story only ended there, we wouldn't be talking about
it on this show. Aurora the aunt held liberal views
on religion, on women's rights. She felt that Spain should
(03:56):
be a secular republic. It was a constitutional monarchy at
the time the king. She also believed in eugenics, which
is nonsense. The idea is that you're going to breed
out the bad genes and breed in the good ones. Well,
genetics is all about diversity and survival and all that,
(04:16):
So eugenics doesn't work. It's nonsense. Don't believe it, all right,
you know, even you know all we were taught about.
You know, if your mom and dad have blue eyes,
your kids are going to have blue eyes. That's not
even true. You can they can have kids with brown eyes.
It doesn't mean anybody did something they shouldn't be, all right,
(04:37):
So forget eugenics doesn't work that way. Urra, being pretty
smart in many aspects and not so smart in others,
decided she was going to do a scientific eugenic project
of her own. She was going to have a child
and prove that eugenics was a thing and that she
could make the perfect human. She wanted the child's father
(05:01):
to be somebody who could never lay claim to paternity,
so he would never interfere with this project. So what
group of men do you think that might include?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Priests? Yep, they go, wow, do I win a prize?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You do, we'll come up with that later. A used cooler.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
From our previous previous Yeah, and ah, oh, you know
that kind of worries me that I thought like her.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It doesn't surprise me, though, because we've been doing this
long enough.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult.
But let's meet.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
You're good at what you do.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
So Aurora chose a brilliant Roman Catholic priest and military
chaplain named Alberto Payas, and she labeled him her psychological collaborator,
not I'm sorry, physiological collaboration, Yes, physiological collaborator, not the father.
All right. Once she was certain she was pregnant, she moved,
(06:13):
like her sister, from Ferrol to Madrid to start her project.
And this is where we're going to take our first
break and leave you in suspense for just a moment.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
All right. This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
We are back, and I have so many questions. This
Roman Catholic priest, his vows, those all just went out
the window for the sake of science or what.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I don't science or opportunity or both. I don't yes, okay,
I don't know. So at this point of it was
pregnant and moved to Madrid to start her project. Project
in air quotes, she even set a clock to wake
up every hour to change positions so the blood would
flow evenly to the fetus. This is how much thought
(07:14):
she's putting into her problem.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Wow, of course it's not healthy to wake up every hour.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
But h no, but I'm not talking about somebody who's
right in the mind. Yeah, because you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
That that causes a psychosis. In intensive care, they wake
you up so much it causes an Unfortunately I have
that personal experience with someone and intensive care. It's called
intensive care psychosis because they keep waking you up to
(07:47):
draw your blood to do this too.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Write. I would imagine it's so easy to lose track
of time because you're even if you're lucky enough to
see out the window, you know, you don't process what
time of day it is. You're off your rhythms all that. Yeah,
I can imagine. That's so that's rough. All right, Well,
Urora didn't make anything better, So what can I say.
(08:11):
She gave birth to her project on December ninth, nineteen fourteen,
and named her Hildegard with a T at the end. Okay,
she claimed it meant garden of wisdom in German, which
it does not. It's an alternate spelling to the more
(08:31):
common name Hilda Gard with a D at the end.
Who knows, even though.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Why she chose a German name.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
No, no, I mean, the only explanation I found was
she said it was a garden of wisdom and she incorrect.
Go she spelled it wrong. So poor Hildegards was born.
She will never find a keychain in a gift shop
with her name on it. Right. All that, so we're
already starting off behind the april. Aurora was an atheist,
(09:05):
but she still had Hildegard baptized and registered with the government,
which is something that she did not believe in. But
she did it anyway. Okay, I don't know why education
wise she did that, rite we will give her credit
like she did with Pepito. Hildegarde could read by age two,
which is good. She was writing letters to other people
(09:26):
at age three. She could type proficiently at age four.
Remember this we're talking early nineteen hundred, so typewriters were it,
you know, being able to type quickly was a skill.
By age ten, she spoke not only her native Spanish,
she spoke English, French and German fluently, which is good,
(09:47):
okay yep. Age eleven she was teaching classes on feminism.
The whole time, Hildegard was forbidden to do anything non academic,
forbidden to do anything that would distract her from her work.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Not having fun.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
It's not having fun, no, and teenagers love that, right,
It's great?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, perfect, yep.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Nothing could go wrong there. In nineteen twenty eight, she
was thirteen years old, Hildegart enrolled in the School of
Law at Complutense University in Madrid. She earned her law
degree at seventeen. She then taught courses at that university.
She became friends with a lot of smarty celebrities at
(10:32):
the time, in particular H. G. Wells, the author of
World Oh Wow, Yes, and a bunch of other smart,
high level celebrities. He asked her to move to London
to be his secretary, which she declined okay because she
wanted to live her own life. But they may or
may not have had a relationship which is going to
come back into play later on. Okay, Hildegart was like
(10:56):
her mom, liberal in politics, advocating for social reform, for
women's rights, for sexual liberation. That was a big, big
thing with her. She spent a lot of time on that.
But believe it or not, she did not think that
women were ready to be able to vote. She didn't
think they could handle it quite yet.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Everything else was okay, but voting, Yeah, women aren't quite
ready for that.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah. By this time, Aurora was suffering from a condition
known as persecutory delusion. Aurora the mom went back to
the mom, now right. Persecutory delusion is where they feel
like they're going to be targeted or harmed by somebody,
but without any evidence to back it up. You know,
it's a type of paranoia. So remember, Hildegart was Aurora's project,
(11:44):
not her daughter. As Hildegart developed her own ideas and
establishing her own life and you know, forging her own way,
Aurora felt that she was losing control. Her project was
not turning out exactly the way she wanted. And it
turned out that HG. Wells made that job offer to
Hildegard because he saw what was going on and was
(12:06):
actually trying to get Hildegart away from her.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Mind, okay, save her.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, yeah he tried, so give him credit for that.
Aurora threatened to commit suicide if Hildegart left, presumably because
she wouldn't have complete control if she did, so it
was manipulation to get her to stay. And ultimately Aurora
considered Hildegart to be a failed project. So guess what happened?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Paul degree at age seventeen, and then she's a failed project.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Failed project. So you can probably see what's coming next.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
But we're going to take a break and leave your hand. Ah,
so we'll be right ya.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
We are back to a mommy dearest situation of the
Spanish eugenics for Ryan.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So at this point, the mom Aurora,
her paranoia was just maxed out, no connection with reality. Really.
At this point she considered her project to be a failure,
not perfect enough, a quote that she gave in an
interview the sculptor. After discovering the most minimal imperfection in
(13:29):
her work destroys Ita mm HM. On the morning of
June ninth, nineteen thirty three, she asked the maid to
walk the dog outside so the maid would leave the house.
Aurora then went into Hildegarde's bedroom, where she was still asleep,
and shot her once in the stomach and three times
(13:52):
in the face.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah. She then went straight to her lawyer's office, as
one does, and confessed to her crime, just ready to
turn herself in. No fight, no argument, no okay. So
Aurora was arrested. She was tried for murder in Madrid,
where her paranoia her condition was front and center. She
(14:17):
claimed that there was an international conspiracy to take her
daughter away to be in the intelligence services in England.
That would be HG.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Wells trying to.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Invite her back to Ribling where he was from. Sanity, insanity,
doctors testifying, up, down and sideways, conditions, all this other
stuff she understood, she didn't understood. Back and forth, back
and forth. You can imagine all the stuff that you love.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
She was ultimately convicted, held responsible, found sane enough to
be responsible. She was sentenced to twenty six years in prison,
which she was happy about. In her mind, she got
twenty six years of life outside of being sent to
an asylum, So she.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Was okay, only twenty six years for shooting your daughter
to death for no reason, well premeditated.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, yep. She started her sentence in nineteen thirty three,
and she looked she still had the liberal mindset, the
activist mindset. She was still looking forward to advocating for
prison reform and keeping up with her politics. Okay. Two
years later, nineteen thirty five, she was transferred to the
(15:35):
asylum that she dreaded my best pronunciation cmpol cimpo Zuelos
mental asylum. I hope I said that close. I got
straight in Spanish thirty years ago, so it's been a while.
She was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia on top of the
paranoia condition, so she was transferred to the asylum. From there,
(15:59):
this mental facil was run by nuns, and Aurora actually
wound up having a good relationship with them, even though
she didn't believe in it. She agreed to attend religious
services as an observer quote unquote, that's how she agreed
to go. She advocated for the nuns to get vacation
time away from work, which apparently was not a thing.
They never got time off. So she advocated for better
(16:22):
working conditions, the nuns working in an asylum, which actually
seems quite reasonable to me. Yes, she wound up having
her own room, which was a little bit bigger than
the standard room, so she got a little bit preferential treatment,
and she was allowed to have a cat. She could
have a pet in the room. Wow, which I think
is good. That's actually you know, pets, and you know,
(16:43):
prisoners to take care of animals and all that actually benefit.
So all right, I'll give her that. In nineteen forty one,
after six years of being incarcerated, she stopped cooperating with
the psychiatrist. She stopped speaking with them. She wrote a
letter to the Mother Superior in nineteen forty eight, now
seven years later, that she had been incarcerated for long
(17:06):
enough and that she deserved a pardon.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
On what grounds she was in there long enough? According
to her, right, I've had enough.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
I'm ready to go. Well, instead of a pardon, you're
probably gonna love this. Instead of a pardon, she got cancer.
That's like the second choice. Aurora died in nineteen fifty
five from cancer. She refused treatment, so she just wrote
it out. She died in nineteen I don't know what
type of cancer either, so I know that's the next question.
(17:39):
I could not find anywhere. She died in nineteen fifty
five and was buried in a communal grave in the
city where the asylum was. She never expressed regret over
murdering Hildegards and repeatedly said she would do it again.
But she deserved a pardon because she'd been But she.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Deserved a pardon even she had no remorse and would
kill her next project if she had the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Wow, that is a seriously messed up person. That's like
real modern messed up and even back.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Then progressive thinker, all that kind of you know, yeah,
the seventy over here I can respect, and then no
the rest.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So yeah, what a shame. I mean, she had a
remarkable daughter. Yeah, and uh too bad she didn't take,
uh take the opportunity to go to England. She probably
could have had a remarkable life.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, yeah, it's what what could have been because the
daughter herself was was such a reformer, had the reformers
mindset that could have done such good work too.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
And obviously was brilliant yeah, yeah, you know, to do
what she did. Wow, what a shame. Well I'm completely
depressed now, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Good. So that's that means we're going to end the
show happy thoughts like that. Would you like to take
us out of Spain?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Oh? Gladly, let us leave the country of the Inquisition
and we will see you back, hopefully not in Spain.
Next episode of Murder in the Hudson Valley. If you
not are not an experiment in eugenics. This is Hudson
(19:35):
River Radio dot com.
Hudson River Radio dot Com. It beats listening to nothing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Linda Zimmerman, I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this is Murder
in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Welcome back to Murder in the Hudson Valley. We've had
quite a brutal string of some very disturbing murders lately.
(00:26):
And are you are you going to keep the string
alive here?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I am, but are you implying that there are not brutal,
not disturbing murders.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, you have to admit we've had there are murders,
and then there are some really messed up things we've
we've been on a streak of really messed really messed up.
So what do you have for us?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm gonna say it's really messed up, all right, all right,
And we're going to go somewhere I don't think we've
been before on the show. We're going to Spain. Have
you been to Spain? I have not been to.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I have not personally been to Spain, nor do I
want to. Never never had a desire. I've been to
a lot of Yeah, just never interested me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I okay, like I feel that way about Paris.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And it's oh I love France. I love France.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I haven't been. I've just heard horrible stories for people
who have.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh really, Oh I've gone several times and I absolutely
adore Paris.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
You know, as everybody's got their thing, like I definitely
need want to do around the UK and a lot
of the music history.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Can love England, yes, oh yeah, the music tours.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I wouldn't say no to anything really.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
But yeah, sorry, Spain. I don't know. I think I
still have a hold a grudge is what Spain did
to the New World, and you know they were against
the English. You know, they hold our Mada thing, and
just historically I hold grudges.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Okay, well there's nobody left that participated, but you know
I get it.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Oh that doesn't mean I still can't hold a grudge, true, Yeah,
that is true.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
All right, So we're gonna go there today and this
will probably not make you want to go anymore than
you already don't. We are going to be talking about
Aurora Rodriguez Caballerra, who was born in eighteen seventy nine
to an upper class family. When she was sixteen, her
(02:33):
older sister Josepha had a son named Pepito. Josepha was
apparently unwed, which was you know, oh boy.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Oh and I strongly Catholic Spain. Yeah, must have been.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah. So she left Pepito in the care of her
sister Aurora, and Aurora actually did a wonderful job of
educating him to the point where he became a musical prodigy.
Josepha came back and took Pipita when he was a
little bit older, and they moved from the city of
(03:06):
I hope I'm saying it right, Federal, rolling my tongues
to Madrid, where he became a successful musician. Okay, so
far so son with sister sister Educate's son, Monteke's sonback
son does very well in the musical world. Okay, all
things considered, not too bad.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Do you know, may I ask what? Did he have
a particular instrument? He was so good at everything.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I don't okay, I don't know. But Pepito's not the
center of the story. Oh okay, we're gonna we're gonna
take a sharp turn here. So boy, all right, if
the story only ended there, we wouldn't be talking about
it on this show. Aurora the aunt held liberal views
on religion, on women's rights. She felt that Spain should
(03:56):
be a secular republic. It was a constitutional monarchy at
the time the king. She also believed in eugenics, which
is nonsense. The idea is that you're going to breed
out the bad genes and breed in the good ones. Well,
genetics is all about diversity and survival and all that,
(04:16):
So eugenics doesn't work. It's nonsense. Don't believe it, all right,
you know, even you know all we were taught about.
You know, if your mom and dad have blue eyes,
your kids are going to have blue eyes. That's not
even true. You can they can have kids with brown eyes.
It doesn't mean anybody did something they shouldn't be, all right,
(04:37):
So forget eugenics doesn't work that way. Urra, being pretty
smart in many aspects and not so smart in others,
decided she was going to do a scientific eugenic project
of her own. She was going to have a child
and prove that eugenics was a thing and that she
could make the perfect human. She wanted the child's father
(05:01):
to be somebody who could never lay claim to paternity,
so he would never interfere with this project. So what
group of men do you think that might include?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Priests? Yep, they go, wow, do I win a prize?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You do, we'll come up with that later. A used cooler.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
From our previous previous Yeah, and ah, oh, you know
that kind of worries me that I thought like her.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It doesn't surprise me, though, because we've been doing this
long enough.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult.
But let's meet.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
You're good at what you do.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
So Aurora chose a brilliant Roman Catholic priest and military
chaplain named Alberto Payas, and she labeled him her psychological collaborator,
not I'm sorry, physiological collaboration, Yes, physiological collaborator, not the father.
All right. Once she was certain she was pregnant, she moved,
(06:13):
like her sister, from Ferrol to Madrid to start her project.
And this is where we're going to take our first
break and leave you in suspense for just a moment.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
All right. This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
We are back, and I have so many questions. This
Roman Catholic priest, his vows, those all just went out
the window for the sake of science or what.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I don't science or opportunity or both. I don't yes, okay,
I don't know. So at this point of it was
pregnant and moved to Madrid to start her project. Project
in air quotes, she even set a clock to wake
up every hour to change positions so the blood would
flow evenly to the fetus. This is how much thought
(07:14):
she's putting into her problem.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Wow, of course it's not healthy to wake up every hour.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
But h no, but I'm not talking about somebody who's
right in the mind. Yeah, because you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
That that causes a psychosis. In intensive care, they wake
you up so much it causes an Unfortunately I have
that personal experience with someone and intensive care. It's called
intensive care psychosis because they keep waking you up to
(07:47):
draw your blood to do this too.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Write. I would imagine it's so easy to lose track
of time because you're even if you're lucky enough to
see out the window, you know, you don't process what
time of day it is. You're off your rhythms all that. Yeah,
I can imagine. That's so that's rough. All right, Well,
Urora didn't make anything better, So what can I say.
(08:11):
She gave birth to her project on December ninth, nineteen fourteen,
and named her Hildegard with a T at the end. Okay,
she claimed it meant garden of wisdom in German, which
it does not. It's an alternate spelling to the more
(08:31):
common name Hilda Gard with a D at the end.
Who knows, even though.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Why she chose a German name.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
No, no, I mean, the only explanation I found was
she said it was a garden of wisdom and she incorrect.
Go she spelled it wrong. So poor Hildegards was born.
She will never find a keychain in a gift shop
with her name on it. Right. All that, so we're
already starting off behind the april. Aurora was an atheist,
(09:05):
but she still had Hildegard baptized and registered with the government,
which is something that she did not believe in. But
she did it anyway. Okay, I don't know why education
wise she did that, rite we will give her credit
like she did with Pepito. Hildegarde could read by age two,
which is good. She was writing letters to other people
(09:26):
at age three. She could type proficiently at age four.
Remember this we're talking early nineteen hundred, so typewriters were it,
you know, being able to type quickly was a skill.
By age ten, she spoke not only her native Spanish,
she spoke English, French and German fluently, which is good,
(09:47):
okay yep. Age eleven she was teaching classes on feminism.
The whole time, Hildegard was forbidden to do anything non academic,
forbidden to do anything that would distract her from her work.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Not having fun.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
It's not having fun, no, and teenagers love that, right,
It's great?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, perfect, yep.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Nothing could go wrong there. In nineteen twenty eight, she
was thirteen years old, Hildegart enrolled in the School of
Law at Complutense University in Madrid. She earned her law
degree at seventeen. She then taught courses at that university.
She became friends with a lot of smarty celebrities at
(10:32):
the time, in particular H. G. Wells, the author of
World Oh Wow, Yes, and a bunch of other smart,
high level celebrities. He asked her to move to London
to be his secretary, which she declined okay because she
wanted to live her own life. But they may or
may not have had a relationship which is going to
come back into play later on. Okay, Hildegart was like
(10:56):
her mom, liberal in politics, advocating for social reform, for
women's rights, for sexual liberation. That was a big, big
thing with her. She spent a lot of time on that.
But believe it or not, she did not think that
women were ready to be able to vote. She didn't
think they could handle it quite yet.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Everything else was okay, but voting, Yeah, women aren't quite
ready for that.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah. By this time, Aurora was suffering from a condition
known as persecutory delusion. Aurora the mom went back to
the mom, now right. Persecutory delusion is where they feel
like they're going to be targeted or harmed by somebody,
but without any evidence to back it up. You know,
it's a type of paranoia. So remember, Hildegart was Aurora's project,
(11:44):
not her daughter. As Hildegart developed her own ideas and
establishing her own life and you know, forging her own way,
Aurora felt that she was losing control. Her project was
not turning out exactly the way she wanted. And it
turned out that HG. Wells made that job offer to
Hildegard because he saw what was going on and was
(12:06):
actually trying to get Hildegart away from her.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Mind, okay, save her.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, yeah he tried, so give him credit for that.
Aurora threatened to commit suicide if Hildegart left, presumably because
she wouldn't have complete control if she did, so it
was manipulation to get her to stay. And ultimately Aurora
considered Hildegart to be a failed project. So guess what happened?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Paul degree at age seventeen, and then she's a failed project.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Failed project. So you can probably see what's coming next.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
But we're going to take a break and leave your hand. Ah,
so we'll be right ya.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
We are back to a mommy dearest situation of the
Spanish eugenics for Ryan.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So at this point, the mom Aurora,
her paranoia was just maxed out, no connection with reality. Really.
At this point she considered her project to be a failure,
not perfect enough, a quote that she gave in an
interview the sculptor. After discovering the most minimal imperfection in
(13:29):
her work destroys Ita mm HM. On the morning of
June ninth, nineteen thirty three, she asked the maid to
walk the dog outside so the maid would leave the house.
Aurora then went into Hildegarde's bedroom, where she was still asleep,
and shot her once in the stomach and three times
(13:52):
in the face.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah. She then went straight to her lawyer's office, as
one does, and confessed to her crime, just ready to
turn herself in. No fight, no argument, no okay. So
Aurora was arrested. She was tried for murder in Madrid,
where her paranoia her condition was front and center. She
(14:17):
claimed that there was an international conspiracy to take her
daughter away to be in the intelligence services in England.
That would be HG.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Wells trying to.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Invite her back to Ribling where he was from. Sanity, insanity,
doctors testifying, up, down and sideways, conditions, all this other
stuff she understood, she didn't understood. Back and forth, back
and forth. You can imagine all the stuff that you love.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
She was ultimately convicted, held responsible, found sane enough to
be responsible. She was sentenced to twenty six years in prison,
which she was happy about. In her mind, she got
twenty six years of life outside of being sent to
an asylum, So she.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Was okay, only twenty six years for shooting your daughter
to death for no reason, well premeditated.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, yep. She started her sentence in nineteen thirty three,
and she looked she still had the liberal mindset, the
activist mindset. She was still looking forward to advocating for
prison reform and keeping up with her politics. Okay. Two
years later, nineteen thirty five, she was transferred to the
(15:35):
asylum that she dreaded my best pronunciation cmpol cimpo Zuelos
mental asylum. I hope I said that close. I got
straight in Spanish thirty years ago, so it's been a while.
She was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia on top of the
paranoia condition, so she was transferred to the asylum. From there,
(15:59):
this mental facil was run by nuns, and Aurora actually
wound up having a good relationship with them, even though
she didn't believe in it. She agreed to attend religious
services as an observer quote unquote, that's how she agreed
to go. She advocated for the nuns to get vacation
time away from work, which apparently was not a thing.
They never got time off. So she advocated for better
(16:22):
working conditions, the nuns working in an asylum, which actually
seems quite reasonable to me. Yes, she wound up having
her own room, which was a little bit bigger than
the standard room, so she got a little bit preferential treatment,
and she was allowed to have a cat. She could
have a pet in the room. Wow, which I think
is good. That's actually you know, pets, and you know,
(16:43):
prisoners to take care of animals and all that actually benefit.
So all right, I'll give her that. In nineteen forty one,
after six years of being incarcerated, she stopped cooperating with
the psychiatrist. She stopped speaking with them. She wrote a
letter to the Mother Superior in nineteen forty eight, now
seven years later, that she had been incarcerated for long
(17:06):
enough and that she deserved a pardon.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
On what grounds she was in there long enough? According
to her, right, I've had enough.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
I'm ready to go. Well, instead of a pardon, you're
probably gonna love this. Instead of a pardon, she got cancer.
That's like the second choice. Aurora died in nineteen fifty
five from cancer. She refused treatment, so she just wrote
it out. She died in nineteen I don't know what
type of cancer either, so I know that's the next question.
(17:39):
I could not find anywhere. She died in nineteen fifty
five and was buried in a communal grave in the
city where the asylum was. She never expressed regret over
murdering Hildegards and repeatedly said she would do it again.
But she deserved a pardon because she'd been But she.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Deserved a pardon even she had no remorse and would
kill her next project if she had the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Wow, that is a seriously messed up person. That's like
real modern messed up and even back.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Then progressive thinker, all that kind of you know, yeah,
the seventy over here I can respect, and then no
the rest.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So yeah, what a shame. I mean, she had a
remarkable daughter. Yeah, and uh too bad she didn't take,
uh take the opportunity to go to England. She probably
could have had a remarkable life.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, yeah, it's what what could have been because the
daughter herself was was such a reformer, had the reformers
mindset that could have done such good work too.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
And obviously was brilliant yeah, yeah, you know, to do
what she did. Wow, what a shame. Well I'm completely
depressed now, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Good. So that's that means we're going to end the
show happy thoughts like that. Would you like to take
us out of Spain?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Oh? Gladly, let us leave the country of the Inquisition
and we will see you back, hopefully not in Spain.
Next episode of Murder in the Hudson Valley. If you
not are not an experiment in eugenics. This is Hudson
(19:35):
River Radio dot com.
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