31 MURDERS-—Alvin A.J. Esau

Many decades before Ted Bundy roamed the country there was serial killer Earle Nelson. During the 1920s, this geographically mobile killer went from city to city. His modus operandi involved getting into a house by pretending to be a person looking for a room to rent or inspecting a house that was for sale, and then strangling the landlady, often followed by having sex with the dead body. Robbery was frequently a secondary motive.
After Nelson was captured in Canada in 1927, it was commonly reported that he had killed 21 women and a baby during the 1926-27 period. But were these the only cases linked to him? The author examines an additional nine unsolved murders of landladies, two of which have never been dealt with in previous literature. Based on decades of archival research, the author examines all 31 murders, relying on primary sources when available and a wide variety of secondary sources. For each murder, the book provides biographical sketches of the victim, outlines the police investigation and the various suspects, and covers any subsequent attempts to link Nelson to the crime by identification evidence of witnesses or by fingerprints. 31 MURDERS: Following the Trail of Serial Sex Killer Earle Nelson-Alvin A.J. Esau










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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them. Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your

(00:25):
host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Good Evening. Many decades before Ted Bundy roamed the country,
there was serial killer Earl Nelson during the nineteen twenties.
This geographically mobile serial killer went from city to city.
His modus operandi involved getting into a house by pretending

(00:55):
to be a person looking for a room to rent
or inspecting a house that was for sale, then strangling
the landlady, followed by having sex with the dead body.
Robbery was frequently a secondary motive. After Nelson was captured
in Canada in nineteen twenty seven, it was commonly reported

(01:17):
that he had killed twenty one women and a baby
during the nineteen twenty six nineteen twenty seven period, But
were these the only cases linked to Nelson. The author
examines an additional nine unsolved murders of landladies, two of
which have never been dealt with in previous literature. Based

(01:39):
on decades of archival research. The author examines all thirty
one murders, relying on primary sources when available, and a
wide variety of secondary sources. For each murder. The book
provides biographical sketches of the victim, outlines the police investigation
and the various suspect, and covers any subsequent attempts to

(02:03):
link Nelson to the crime by identification, evidence of witnesses
or by fingerprints. The book that we're featuring this evening
is thirty one Murders Following the Trail of serial sex
killer Earl Nelson, with my special guest, law professor and author,

(02:24):
Alvin aj Esau. Welcome to the program, and thank you
very much for this interview. Alvin aj Esau.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Nice to be here. Thank you Dan for having me.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Thank you so much. You right that this book not
only deals with the thirty one murders that you think
were committed by serial killer Earl Leonard Nelson in nineteen
twenty five to nineteen twenty seven, but the book itself
took more than thirty one years to research and write.
You were in nineteen eighty nine the head of the

(02:58):
University of Manitoba Legal Research Institute and the Dean of
the law faculty tell us about the genesis of this book.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
The law faculty way back then was trying to have
a seventy fifth anniversary celebration, and I was asked by
the dean to identify famous Manitoba trials, and I identified
nine of them and did a huge amount of research
on all nine. Three of them were criminal cases and
murder cases, and over the years I kind of got

(03:32):
interested in this case, which was a sensational case in
Manitoba in terms of the trial. I did a lot
of work in ninety five and presented the story of
the case to the bar and bench in Manitoba, and
then I put her aside For many years. I worked
on all kinds of other stuff, but every once in

(03:53):
a while I'd pick it up and I'd continue and
I'd go visit all of the various sites in the
United States where I thought he had murdered people. Over time,
I started to develop the book, and then in my retirement,
I decided to write it. Now. Part of the reason
that I'm writing it is that a lot of the

(04:13):
literature that you find on him, he's kind of an
obscure serial killer. There's not a lot written about him,
but when you look at stuff that is written about him,
a lot of the blogs and so on, but we're
just riddled with all kinds of mythology. And that's one
of the reasons I continue is that I thought, well,
you know, the record is terrible. There's a couple of

(04:35):
books that are okay. Harold Checkter wrote a book and
I sent a lot of material to him, and that's
why there's quite a bit of accuracy to it, but
a lot of the background material is also riddled with
myth that he included. What I discovered is that, for example,
a lot of the myths arise from a guy Nash

(04:58):
who wrote a book called Blood Letters and Badman and
is just full of all kinds of material that has
absolutely no basis in fact. And a lot of the
blogs continue to carry this material which is completely mythological.
And that's part of the reason that I took the

(05:20):
time to sort of say, I want to set the
record straight now, if you don't mind me saying that
I wrote the book called the Gorilla Man Strangler Case,
and in that book I deal with the Winnipeg murders,
the manhunt, and his escape from jail and so on,
and the trial and legal officials, and that book was

(05:40):
so large and detailed that I didn't have room to
deal with the American murders that I think he committed
before he came to Winnipeg. And so that's where I
thirty one Murders is a book that I written, wrote
last year, so that would be added to the record.
So I don't know if that answers your question or not,

(06:01):
but that's kind of what's what happened.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
You write that in addition to the two Winnipeg murders
and the twenty American murders that are on the official
list from Detective Archie Leonard of Portland, you have added
nine American murders, bringing the count to thirty one. To
explain the title of the book, thirty one murders.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Right, Well, it's kind of interesting that Archie Leonard, who
was a detective in Portland, and in Portland, there's very
little doubt that Earl Nelson murdered four landladies, but the
first three Land Ladies were treated by the police as

(06:46):
not murders at all, even though the jewels there were
jewels missing. There were sexual elements to all of the
bodies as they were found. The Portland people, both the
coroner and the police, a thought that the first two
cases were perhaps suicide and the last case was just

(07:09):
a heart attack. And the Portland police, where I would argue,
very inept in understanding that these cases should be linked
to the dark strangler who was killing landladies all the
way across the West Coast. And so it's ironic that
Archie Leonard, the Portland detective, was ultimately the one who

(07:30):
put together a list of twenty two cases and that
became the official list, and most of the people who
write about the serial killer Earl Nelson argue that that's
his body count. Well, in fact, there's good reason, as
I try to argue, that there are a whole lot
of other cases, some of which are perhaps suspicious, and

(07:55):
perhaps we haven't got any definitive argument that he was
the one who did but there's a good arguments to
be made that he probably was the one who murdered
these women across the United States. And so I've expanded
the list, and I'm not arguing per se that every

(08:15):
one of these murders was committed by him. I'm saying
that there's a probable cause to argue that he did
these murders. But he might have committed more than thirty one,
you know, and maybe even on the official list, there
may be some cases where he didn't actually commit the murder.

(08:36):
But I think that there's enough circumstantial evidence to argue
that he is the culprit in these cases.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Let's get to this most fascinating case, this most fascinating
murderer as well. You're right that there were five landladies
murdered in nineteen twenty five, and the list of official
murders doesn't start till nineteen twenty six, so you say
that starting in August twenty fourth, nineteen twenty five, a

(09:10):
widow named Elizabeth Jones was seventy two years old. And
again this is important, but because this is the mo
in terms of a man searching for a room or
a home for sale and older elderly women. So Elizabeth
Jones was showing apartments and there was someone next door

(09:33):
who saw the person that she was showing the room.
To tell us about this story and what the police
determined after the crime scene is identified, well, this.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Was again a case where you have to remember that
Earl Nelson in terms of the time frame. His last
escape we can talk about that later from the Mental
Institute for the Asylum was in November nineteen twenty three.
So when we look at cases, we can say from

(10:06):
nineteen twenty three on, you know when did he start killing,
because you know, there's all of nineteen twenty four, in
nineteen twenty five and twenty six and twenty seven, so
you know when did he actually begin And what makes
this case interested in San Francisco, the Jones case is
you had an elderly lady who was found with pearls

(10:29):
wrapped around her neck. There was allegedly finger marks on
her neck, and she was having a room advertised for sale,
which became the modus operandim a room for rent, which
became his modus operandi. He would go to houses for
sale or for rooms to rent and present himself as

(10:52):
a potential person to rent the room, and when the
landlady was alone, he would probably strangle her and most
often have sex with the dead body. And later on
there was also a lot of robbery as a secondary motive,
so that he supported himself by stealing jewelry and clothing

(11:15):
and going to pawn shops and so on. Now this
case because it was never really looked at very carefully because,
as you know, doctor Shelby Strange was the person who
did the autops heat simply said, well, she didn't die
of strangulation. She died of a heart attack or something,

(11:36):
or she had you know, the flu or pneumonia. She
was an elderly lady, and so they closed the case, right,
So they never had a proper police investigation of saying, what,
you know, who was walking around of the apartment building
looking for rooms to rant or whatever. So we don't

(11:56):
really know. Now what's significant is that the next case
was also treated that way. This was a case where
a much younger lady who wasn't didn't appear to be
sick at all, was found in the room to rent,
and she was completely naked lying on the bed. There
was all kinds of initial reports saying that she had

(12:19):
been sexually attacked. The clothing was in the order of
somebody who took the clothing off, as opposed to somebody
like herself who might have, you know, undressed herself in
a delirium or something. And doctor Shelby Strange said again, well,
and there was money missing and jewelry missing, and he said, well,

(12:39):
this is again a case of where she died of
bronchitis or whatever, right, and she, you know, she took
her clothes off in a delirium and then the case
was closed again. And so it was doctor Leland who
was the coroner ultimately presented these cases. These two cases
from nineteen twenty five when Rol Nelson was undoubtedly killing

(13:03):
women in San Francisco. I mean, they didn't know who
the guy was, but they called him the Dark Strangler.
He was killing other land ladies in San Francisco area,
and the last San Francisco murder of Edmunds was murdered
in the radio room with the house for sale. He
put those two cases of Jones and Anderson to the

(13:27):
inquest jury, and the inquest jury at that time said,
these were two other cases that could be attributed to
the Dark Strangler. So they're very suspicious in these two
cases because they involved access to a landlady with a
room for rent, and suspicious circumstances as to strangulation and

(13:52):
bodies that might have been sexually attacked, but that was
never tested for. Although in Anderson at least Shelby did
send away for a d vaginal smear. I have all
of the reports of the coroner, but I don't have
the results of any test. There's nothing on there saying
what that result might have been.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
there are other murders in nineteen twenty five that you include.
You say that the Dark Strangler moves, so tell us
where his next murders are.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Well, in nineteen twenty five, there are three murders in
October and November in Philadelphia. And here is sort of
more of a weak leak. They're not sure whether these
murders should be attributed to him or not. We know
that he travels across the country, you know, nineteen twenty seven,

(14:55):
the first part of the years, he's in America, all
over the place, Philadelphi, Buffalo, he sends postcards from the East.
Was he already in the East already then? And it's
quite possible that he was. What makes these cases interesting
is that all of them, all three of these cases

(15:15):
in Philadelphia, in the same kind of neighborhood, were all
land ladies. Okay, now that's a big clue, but we
don't have evidence. And by the way, all of Philadelphia
police reports are destroyed. According to the letter said to me,
we don't have evidence that these were for sale or

(15:38):
for rent in the sense that there was a sign
on the door saying room for rent. But all three
of the ladies were had rumors, and so they were
land ladies. All three of the ladies were strangled on
the main floor and taken up to a bedroom on
the upper floor. And of course when you take a
body upstairs, there's a strong sense that maybe you're dealing

(16:02):
with necrophilia, right, because why would you do that. Why
would you carry a body upstairs? You know, if you
just wanted to kill them and steal, then you would
sort of escape. The third case in Philadelphia of Lena
Wine or a younger woman, that the person who killed

(16:22):
her also stole a whole suitcase full of clothing from
a room. And this is again a very typical part
of his motus operandi. He was kind of a clothing
fetish guy. Constantly was stealing clothing and then taking it
to the pawn shop and trying to get some money

(16:44):
for the clothing. And so again that's a kind of
a circumstance that makes it look suspicious, right, And the
pawnshop operator was found who bought all this clothing, and
he described the man as dark skinned and swarthy, and
of course that's typical of the fact that he was

(17:06):
called his dark skin and his sort of they called
him an Italian looking person with all of type skin.
But the pawn shop operator thought that he was a
light skinned Negro, and so everything got off the rails.
At this stage is the police were arresting tons of

(17:26):
black people, charging them with the offense, and ultimately nothing
ever came of that. But they were looking for the
wrong kind of person. Instead of a dark skinned white person,
they were looking for a lighter skinned, lighter skin dark person.
In the end, none of those murders, those three were solved.

(17:48):
But when a lady leader in nineteen twenty seven in
Philadelphia was murdered and was clearly linked to the dark
Strangler or at that time what they called the Gorilla
man strangler, these other three cases were introduced to inquest
juries and the police, and ultimately the police we were

(18:09):
told it's kind of ambiguous. Some of the police never
believed that these three should have been included in the
list right, and others thought it should be. Some of
the newspapers suggested that the police concluded, finally in the
end that these three murders were also part of the
murderous trail of the Dark Strangler.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Let's talk about nineteen twenty six and the official beginning
of the Dark Stranglers murders. February twentieth, nineteen twenty six.
You talk about Clara Newman, a sixty year old on
February twentieth, nineteen twenty six, body found in a vacant
apartment on the third floor, and her nephew Mertin Newman,

(18:54):
said he had witnessed this person in the presence of
his act tell us this.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
This is where the Dark Strangler moniker begins. And of
course the murder itself has all the classic elements, you know,
going to the door, asking for whom, being shown her room,
killing the land lady, having sex with the dead body,
and so on. And he didn't steal anything at this stage.

(19:22):
But as he's walking out of the house, the nephew
sees him and it's sort of a fleeting glance. It's
not like a major kind of confrontation. The guy says, Oh,
go tell the landlady, I'll be back in an hour
to rent the room and then all of a sudden,
he's waiting for the land for his aunt to come down,
as she never does. And of course they finally go

(19:43):
to this locked apartment upstairs and find her lying in
the kitchen, strangled and dead. And he described this person
fairly decently in terms of height, I mean, Earl Nelson
turned out to be five foot six about, and he
described the dark skin and you know, the sworthy nature

(20:04):
of the guy. And subsequently, as more and more murders happened,
this fellow Merton Newman was taken by the police to
look at all kinds of suspects, you know, you're there
and everywhere, and of course his mind became totally befuddled
by post event information because he just looked at a
whole bunch of different people, you know, so he probably

(20:27):
can't really distinguish between what he originally saw on who
all the other people he saw. But he eliminated a
lot of the suspects by saying, no, that's not the man,
you know. And very shortly after that, these murders in
California started to accumulate, and the police right away linked
them all together like it wasn't as if in today's

(20:48):
world we talk about, you know, how you know there's
so many serial killers at one stage, and police officers
in one jurisdiction don't know what happened in another jurisdiction.
Back then, this kind of killing was kind of rare,
and so police officers all up and down the coast
knew about the fact that some guy was killing landladies

(21:13):
under the guise of taking a room, and so these
cases were linked always together, very very quickly, which might
not have happened in today's world, even when it was
outside of San Francisco and San Jose or Stockton or wherever.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Right, you're right that the murders continued. March second, nineteen
twenty six, Laura Bale, a sixty four year old, again
a landlady, showed a man in an apartment. June tenth,
nineteen twenty six, lilyan Saint Mary, sixty three year old
in San Francisco, again renting rooms. This case with Lily

(21:50):
and Saint Mary where her chest was crushed. Tell us
a little about the details of this and where the
gorilla like murderer came from.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean, that was the beginning of the possibility
of not just calling him the Dark Strangler, calling him
the Gorilla Man, because of the fact that she was
found on the bed, fully clothed, ready to go out
for her afternoon shop. She had, of course a room
for rent. She was probably strangled and crushed on the

(22:25):
floor and then lifted onto the bed. And in this
case she was so frail that her ribs were broken
on both sides. There's more on one side than the other.
And so the newspapers, you know, sort of called him
a very powerful man who could crush the ribs of
the victim and called him a gorilla But that moniker

(22:47):
gorilla Man didn't really take off until nineteen twenty seven,
when he was already on the East coast, and that's
when the newspaper started to call him gorilla Man as
opposed to the dark Strangler. And when he came to Winnipeg,
he was called the gorilla Man, and all the newspapers

(23:07):
you know, called him that the moniker. Gorilla Man itself
is kind of an adavist moniker, you know, the idea
that back in the day, in the nineteen twenties, he
still had kind of a physiological idea that criminals had
sloped foreheads, large hands, long arms, you know, they could.
They physically showed that they were kind of a throwback

(23:29):
of the evolutionary chain. Of course, their moral degeneracy showed
how terrible they were. They weren't really human beings. They
were somebody other than us. You know, there was a
I think I mentioned in one of my books that
there was, you know, a person who worked with gorillas
who thought that the use of the word gorilla man
was kind of a defamation of gorillas who were actually

(23:51):
gentle folks, who were vegetarians and didn't really do anything
unless they were disturbed.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah. Very interesting you say that part of the gorilla
thing was that they reported early on that he had
gorilla like hands. Yeah, and also that there was a
you include a profile that was done early on by
four experts, and one was very very interesting, mister Chauncey

(24:17):
McGovern and he had the most interesting What did he
have to say in terms of conclusion of the profile
of this killer.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Well, I think the profiles were actually quite insightful in
the sense that, you know, they were talking about somebody
who today we would call a psychopath, somebody without conscience,
somebody who never had regrets, lied through their teeth. I mean,
he had a million aliases constantly lying probably a fairly

(24:54):
high hubris in the sense of narcissism. Also in terms
of mode, we'd have to talk about Earld Nelson's background
to talk about motive, you know, the idea of perhaps
displaced anger at not being accepted in society, or taking
out anger at his grandmother or his dead mother, and

(25:18):
so a lot of this insight was pretty dead on,
you know, and this is way back when he had
only supposed to be killed two or three people.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Let's talk about just briefly about some of that background.
You had mentioned that he had escape from a mental
institution insane asylum in nineteen twenty three, but also you've
just mentioned the talk of his mother dying when he
was very very young, and then his father died when
he was very young, and then he went into the

(25:49):
custody of relatives. Tell us also about the gonorrhea and
syphilists that plagued this man.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, well, thank you. Earl Nelson was born in eighteen
ninety seven, and he was born in his paternal grandparents' house.
His mother and father were married, you know, when they
were like she was seventeen and I was nineteen when
he was a baby. His mother died when he was

(26:17):
about ten months old, and his father died a little
bit later than that. We have no evidence that at
the time that he was born the parents who were
living together. Father was actually a shipped seaman, was out
in the Panama Coaster or whatever, and he came down
with Panama fever and he ultimately was blind and he died.

(26:42):
And the obet doesn't even mention his wife and child.
We think that they were probably estranged from each other.
Now at trial, we have evidence that she died of
syphilis allegedly got from that she received from her husband.
It may be that husband received it from her. We

(27:02):
don't know any of the facts like that. But he
lost both his parents as an infant, and of course
throughout his life he talks about syphilis being a curse
in the blood, as if he was born with it
or whatever, which I'm not sure about it at all,
because as a young teenager after puberty he was he
had gone around syphilis himself and and and there's evidence

(27:27):
in the record of the Insane Asylum that he was
sexually active, both homosexually and peterosexually at that time and
had syphilis then and varia. But anyway, the trauma of
losing one's parents is important. Now. He was brought up
in the Nelson household, household of his mother, and unlike

(27:51):
all the mythology that says she that the grandma was
a widow, he was brought up in a house that
included the grandfather, the grandmother, and included three older men
who were still sons living at home, unmarried, and a
sister called Lillian was like when he was born was sixteen,

(28:13):
and we get this from all the census data. So
it's a myth to say that some widow grandma grew
him up with no men around. But what happened is
that the trauma of losing parents was increased when his
grandfather died when he was seven and a half, and
then his grandmother died when he was ten, and so

(28:36):
that would be an added trauma. And of course I
say that the trauma of the great San Francisco fire
that came right up to the house where they lived
was another trauma. And he illustrated very early that he
had tendencies of irresponsibility. He failed schooling, he started to

(28:59):
wander off as a young boy away from home, and
Uncle Willis took over the house one of the brothers,
and he was supposedly living there, but he was gone
most of the time. And we have an astonishing amount
of criminality at a very early age. For example, when
he was barely fourteen, he was picked up by the

(29:19):
police along with a younger boy after they had been
robbing all sorts of stores along the Mission Avenue area,
and they were caught with all kinds of tools and
money and so on, and they claimed that they were
trying to get enough money to leave town and hold
up trains. You know. This is at age fourteen, right right.
And then at you know, when he was barely eighteen,

(29:41):
he and another young man in Plumas County held up
a train station house and they robbed that house, and
then somebody came along to try to arrest him. They
beat up the guy and then they were ultimately arrested
diacon to Quincy, and after pete and guilty, they were

(30:02):
put in jail for two years at San Quentin. At
Earl Nelson at this young age of eighteen, went to
San Quentin. He was released after fourteen months or something.
Because the war was on, probably joined the army for
a bit, but he deserted and then of course he
joined the Navy. And what's interesting is I have the

(30:23):
complete Navy reports on him because I received all the documents.
He was using the name Earl Ferrell, his birth name,
which was the name of his father. You know. He
was trained in Mayor Island in San Francisco, but he
went on leave. But he never came back after leave,

(30:45):
you know, I mean he was away for four months.
He was actually in jail and stalked him for stealing
a bike. And then he comes back to the Army stage,
to the Navy station with his Navy uniform. Lottie does
as if nothing happened. Well, of course, he was tried
for desertion by court martial and he was sentenced to

(31:05):
jail for two years in the army jail. Well, in
the army jail, he started to act really crazy, you know,
he refused to work. He was talking really religious stuff
about being the Antichrist or maybe the Kaiser, and he
stared off into space. And the Navy official said, some's

(31:28):
wrong with this guy, and they sent him to the hospital.
And at the hospital he was diagnosed as a constitutional
psychopath and was sent for the first time to the
NAPA Institute for the Insane. At the NAPA Institute for
the Insane, he claimed that he wasn't insane. He was

(31:50):
tested for syphilis, and of course he had syphilis, and
he was started to get syphilis treatments, but he hated
it and he escaped. And he wasn't there very long.
He just one day. The second attempt to escape, he
escaped and nobody knew where he was, and he ended
up being in Los Angeles. And in Los Angeles he

(32:11):
was living with somebody and he went and stole all
the clothes in a suitcase, and he stole some guns
and he sold the guns, you know, typical stealing stuff.
And the guy who he was living with actually saw
him on a car and Earl Nelson, he didn't use
that word Pharaoh jumped off the car and a police

(32:32):
officer ended up tackling him and he was arrested for robery.
But the authorities, instead of you know, dealing with him
and putting him in jail in Los Angeles, sent him
back to the Navy because he was a deserter. And
so again the Navy authorities examined him and said, this
guy is insane and put him back in the NAPA Institute,

(32:56):
and in the NAPA Institute this time he was there
for about I can't remember two years. He was given
treatment for syphilis. He tried to make several escapes, but
then in the end he was quite cooperative. Restraints were
taken off of him, and he ended up in his
first year being the reports were quite positive that he

(33:19):
was doing well. But then suddenly it shifted. In the
second year that he was there, he was constantly trying
to make escapes, and ultimately he escaped. As I said,
I've got the sequence a bit wrong because I've failed
to mention that after they put him back an the asylum,
he escaped the next day from the Los Angeles arrest.

(33:43):
And of course what's really important here is that in
nineteen nineteen, as an escapee, this is before anything else happened,
he got married. And he got married to a woman
that was working in a hospital with him, and she
was at that stage twenty seven years older than he was.

(34:03):
So he was twenty two and she was forty nine.
And of course, you know, he used all kinds of lies,
and so I'm saying that he was thirty seven. She
was attracted to him because of his religiosity, and then
of course they were married for six months. I mean
they were together for six months, and the marriage was
a disaster. We have all kinds of evidence about what

(34:25):
happened about bizarre behavior and moral irresponsibility and so on.
But what's important is that they ultimately moved to Alto,
to Palelto Palo Alto, where Stanford is, and got a
job in a school where they lived. And he was
incessantly jealous of his wife, threatening her she talked to

(34:47):
people or whatever. He was threatening her all the flirting
with people or whatever, and he ultimately left in the
early nineteen twenty. He left, and he ultimately came back
several times tired get her back together, threatening her life.
But that's an important point, is that in nineteen nineteen,
maybe the beginning of nineteen twenty, she was married to

(35:10):
this woman, and she continued to be married to her.
She was a strict Catholic and wouldn't get a divorce.
But they never lived together after that, although they saw
each other quite often.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Let's stop to hear these messages. Now you talk about
the background. You've introduced Mary Fuller, his wife. He used
an alias. She found out the lies that he had
told her to get married in the first place. Let's
talk about let's pick up back again, the Dark Strangler

(35:42):
and the murders that ensue. You say he travels in
the US, So other than San Francisco, where does he go?
We haven't we mentioned the Portland murders. So let's talk
about the hunt for this Dark Strangler. There are many
people that have witnessed this person, so there is a
general description early on, and then a continued description that

(36:07):
the police are using when finally all of these crimes
are linked and the manhunt that ensues.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Probably the biggest. You know, all of these murders taking
place in the West Coast. I mean, they don't really
know who the guy is. But before he goes, before
he goes to the east, things get very hot. In
the end of nineteen twenty six. The reason for that
is that he allegedly murders a woman in Seattle. This

(36:42):
is Monks, and he steals a bunch of jewelry from her. Now,
the big breakthrough is that immediately after murdering her, he
goes back to Portland and he calls himself Adrian Harris,
and he goes to a beaten down room house where
there are three ladies living there. And he spends a

(37:04):
whole lot of time with these three ladies, okay, and
he might have even a bit of a romantic interest
in one of them. He buys them groceries as a big,
huge Thanksgiving dinner with them. He spends the next day
or two talking to them, and he gives jewelry to
one of the ladies, and he gives jewelry to another

(37:26):
of the ladies. And then one day these two ladies
discover allegedly that one of them got more jewelry than
the other. And he wakes up and he hears them arguing.
He comes into the kitchen and he says, oh, you
guys are arguing. I got to get out of here.
You're going to call the police. I'm going to go
off to Vancouver, you know, Washington. And of course, that

(37:51):
very day after he gets his suitcase, there's another murder
in Portland of Myers, and there is a long story there,
but the police leave without a doubt that the guy
left the rooming house and went to the Meyers rooming
house and then killed her. Now, after Nelson was arrested,

(38:12):
the pictures of him were sent presented to one of
the ladies who he presented jewelry too, and she said,
without a doubt, this is the guy we dealt. She
had three days to deal with him. It's not like
in a fleeting image or whatever. This is Adrian Harris,
as he called himself. And in addition to that, even

(38:35):
without that that id later on they could describe what
the guy talked about, They could describe exactly what he
looked like, his mannerisms and so on. So the police
had a lot of information there and what you know,
the description of the guy because they were pretty sure
that this was the murder, because the jewelry turned out
to be, without a doubt, the jewelry that was taken

(38:59):
from Missus Monks in the murder in Seattle. Right, So
there's no question the guy Adrian Harris murdered Missus Monks.
He had, he had the jewelry, and probably by circumstances,
is very likely that he would have been the murder
of Myers. So what happened is that now the police
in Portland had the best description they'd ever have of

(39:20):
this guy, and they sent out bulletins all over the
place describing him and also putting out a huge reward
for his capture. So things were so hot then in
the Portland area and the West Coast generally that after
that he disappears. He's now traveling at the end of

(39:41):
the year, he's going east. So he murders a woman
in Council Bluff and then he's on his way to
the East coast, and you know, before he knows that
he's murdering people in Kansas City, and then he's you know,
murdering people in Buffalo. He's murdering higand lady in Buffalo
and so on, and so there's an example of heat

(40:05):
heat that he's a cross country traveler.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
How big is this story in the US itself? Once
he is identified, surprisingly not.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
You know, nobody knew who this guy was until he
was captured in Winnipeg and identified with his real name.
You know, people talked about Adrian Harris, they talked about,
you know, trying to catch the guy, but the Americans
never caught him. The urban environment of America was easy

(40:47):
for him to just disappear, change his identity, call himself
something else, change jobs.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Let's talk about this manhunt. Once he's recognized, you say
that it takes quite a while for all of the
jurisdictions to realize that it's the same person, all they
have is a description of various aliases, including Harris Woodcote.
So there are various people you talk about that he
finally ends up in Chicago. Tell us about this border

(41:16):
crossing into Canada.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
It's a bit weird to say, like why did he
come to Canada, Like, we have no evidence he ever
left the United States in the past. My own theory
might be that there he was given a ride, perhaps
from Chicago, you know, in Minnesota somewhere he was picked
up by Chandler, a man from Winnipeg. And it may

(41:40):
be that because the man was from Winnipeg, maybe he thought, well,
maybe I'll visit Winnipeg. You know. I don't think he
woke up in the morning saying, oh, I'm going to
go to Canada, you know, because he was an impulsive
kind of guy, you know, whatever, if he had ten
dollars in the morning, he had nothing at night, right
wander at all. And so it may be that that's

(42:03):
what happened. Now Chandler took him to the border, but
he jumped out of the car because he didn't cross
at the border. Crossing and have officials check your passport.
He crossed the border, sneaked across the border and went
north by walking, or maybe he jumped on the train
a bit, and then he was picked up north of
the border by some more people from Winnipeg. The Hannah

(42:25):
family took him into Winnipeg. And in Winnipeg, he you know,
he arrived with pretty nice clothes, and he took his
clothes to a second hand dealer and he sold his
clothes for a dollar because he didn't have any money,
so he sold his clothes for a dollar and put
on shabby clothes that the guy gave him. He went

(42:46):
to a rooming house on Smith Street very close by
with a room to rent sign and he talked to
the land lady and he rented a room for three
dollars a week, but he gave her a dollar deposit,
saying he'd have the money then next day. We don't
really know what he did the next day very much.
During the day, I guess he didn't get a job,
because he talked again to the landlady. Later's thing, I

(43:08):
don't have two dollars. Then he went out and surprisingly
the next morning the landlady went to his room and
found that the bed was made and everything looked fine.
But the real tragedy of is that that evening, which
was the Thursday night, a girl, a twelve year old

(43:28):
Lola Collen, almost twelve, She was out selling artificial flowers
in the neighborhood and you know, made by her sister,
and she never came home at night. You can imagine
the trauma of a family waiting for the kid to
come home and she doesn't come home at night, and
the next day she didn't come home, and so nobody

(43:50):
knew what happened. But on the Friday morning after this
I'm not coming home, Nelson went to another house, Patterson
House in Elmwood, and he murdered a twenty seven year
old housewife. And it had all the typical signs, you know,
she strangled hidden under the bed, she was knocked on

(44:13):
the head, strangled, hidden under the bed, sexually assaulted, and
then he went after that, he made his way out
of town, as it was typical. But in this case
of Patterson, what he did is he left as ugly
closed on the scene, at the scene of the crime,
and he took one of mister Patterson's suits, not very

(44:33):
nice one and put it on at the scene of
the crime. Now, I don't think in any of the
other thirty cases I've dealt with did Nelson ever change clothes.
He always stole clothes off, but he never changed clothes. Well,
here he actually left his clothing there and took another
suit and put it on, and he made his way

(44:54):
down to Main Street to it. He also opened a
box at the Patterson house a suitcase and found a
whole bunch of six or seven crisp ten dollar bills
that the family savings, and he took that. He took
the ring off the victim's finger, and he went to
this shop on Main Street and he bought a whole

(45:17):
new suit of clothes, I mean, you know, from underwear
to socks, to top coat to whatever, sweater, suit, hat,
and he paid for it for with thirty crisp ten
dollar bills. Then he wanted to shave, and the guy
took him across the street and Nick, the barber, you know,
shaved him and he got ten dollar ten dollar mill.

(45:39):
And then as he was making his way out of town,
he actually found a really another hat shop and he
found that one of a kind hat that he wanted.
He bought that with the ten CHRISP dollar mill and
the old hat was put in a box for him
Waldman Hat you call. And he was making his way
out of town. He ran into a hutter rag couple
on the bus and had a long converse with them,

(46:00):
and ultimately, to make a long story short, he gave
this earlier hat that he bought at Waldman's store to
the hunter at the couple. He made his way out
of town and he ended up the next day overnight.
He maybe took a train for a part of the way.
He ended up overnight in Regina. So before the body,

(46:21):
you know, while the bodies are being while the body
is being discovered of missus Patterson, he's in Regina. Mister
Patterson comes home from work. And this is a truth story.
It's not myth. He's, you know, obviously anxious, like crazy,
where's my wife? Where's my wife? It's his kids to bed,
where's my wife? Well, at midnight he actually yeels down
beside the bed and praise to God to help him

(46:44):
find his wife. And providentially, he puts his hand on
the floor, touches the sleeve of something under the bed.
He looks under the bed, there's his dead wife. And
so you know, in Regina, as the police are investigating
this murder in Winnipeg and Regina, he stays at a
rooming house Laurence Street rooming house, and there's a whole

(47:07):
bunch of close calls. I mean, he talks to the
landlady lost. There's a lot of people at the rooming house.
He doesn't have an opportunity to kill her, I guess,
but he takes his ten year old daughter of this
rooming house lady out for ice cream without her permission.
And he's talking to this girl, and he asked her
to come to the movies, you know, and wow, and

(47:27):
the girl says there's no movies on Sunday here in
Regina or whatever. And ultimately, you know, the landleader looks
for them and finds them, but she continues to talk
to the guy all day. Basic So on Sunday night
back in Winnipeg, all of a sudden, after being you know,
the room being empty for two or three days, the
original rooming house on Smith Street, the body of Lola

(47:51):
Collen that the fourteen year old girl is found. She's
completely nude under the band and you know, there's all
kinds of myths here. You know, other books say that
she was mutilated and all this. Well, I have a
picture of her, and there's no question there's indignity on
she was raped, you know, there's no questions indignity on

(48:12):
her lower parts. But she wasn't cut up or raped.
I mean some of them people talk about her being
cut up pieces and and but but you know, the
panic in Winnipeg really started at this stage. Two women
were murdered in Winnipeg. Where is the guy and maybe
he's still in Winnipeg and people are buying walks and

(48:32):
it's just huge panic, you know. To make a long
story short, the police here in Winnipeg were very lucky
to have a lot of citizen call operation because the
guy who sold that suit, you know, who did the
complete change, next day contacts the police. The police go
to the shop and they find the clothes from mister

(48:54):
Patterson in the shop and other items that had been
left there by the murderer. You know, the shop keeper
can give a full description of what the guy looks
like and what he's now wearing. And on top of that,
the barber can give a full description of what the
guy's wearing and what he's like, and so the police
have a good lead, but they don't know at this

(49:15):
stage that he's in Regina. Then the next day or whatever,
the hunter right couple comes with their hat. Then they
you know, look at the hatter's a slip there for
this other fancy hat, and the the right couple says,
this guy was asking about going to Regina. And so
before you know it, in Regina Monday morning, Earl Nelson

(49:38):
buys a newspaper and he sees a full description in
Regina of what he's wearing and that he's committed two
orders and it's full, you know, the description of his
of him, and he says, Holy Dina, I guess I
better get out of here. And he goes in the
morning and he goes and sells Missus Patterson's wedding ring

(49:58):
for three point fifty and then he goes and exchanges
his clothes. He goes and buys blue bib overwalls in
a kaki shirt and working clothes, and he leaves all
his fancy clothes that he bought and with a pen
in his apartment and he leaves. He just sticks off.
He's picked up by several drivers in Saskatchewan and then
ultimately he's picked up by a junk dealer and he

(50:21):
spends the next two days trap pacing through the country
picking up lead and stuff at farmers' houses for the
junk eater. And he stays overnight in Marcola, Saskatchewan one night,
and he stays in Dela Raine in Manitoba another right,
so instead of heading straight south for the borrier to escape,
he's on the prairie going back kind of in Winnipeg direction.

(50:44):
And then he leaves the junk dealer on a Wednesday
morning and he makes his way to the border. He's
walking and there's a lot of story here that I'm
not going to be able to cover, but he's ultimately
arrested about three miles from the American barrier. The reason
he's arrested again is because of the fact that he's
on a prairie. The police have issued lots of bulletins

(51:07):
and mister Morgan and the little town of Walkupol a
merchant sold the guy, you know, some cheese and cigarettes
and right away recognized him as the guy who is
the wanted man, and a bunch of the people in
that town followed him until the provincial police could come
But then things get even more dramatic because he's taken
to Killarney, which is the hometown of the provincial police

(51:32):
in that area, and he's locked in jail with a
double lock. And before you know it, five minutes later
when they leave the guy, he has escaped from jail.
He's picked both the locks and he's out of leaving
the town. And so you can imagine the trauma of
that town overnight. It's an escaped serial killer, probably the
worst criminal in North America that stage loose in the town.

(51:55):
Hundreds of people looked for him. The town was geared
to action. And then I talk about how you know
the next morning he comes up to a man and
asks for the making of a cigarette, and he's a
dressed suspiciously and the man thinks he's the guy and
he fallows in. To make a long story short, in Winnipeg,

(52:17):
when they found out that he escaped from jail, the
roads are impassable and the police chartered a special train
to go to Chloriny bloodhounds and officers to find a guy.
He was actually arrested by the provincial police before that
train ever arrived. But there's a lot of mythology about
how he hid under the train station and then he

(52:39):
ran to the train to escape, only to find the
train was there for him. So that's how he was
arrested and brought back to Winnipeg.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
So now he's arrested, You right at some point in
this book too, that he's arrested in Winnipeg and the
trial is rushed. He has a appointed lawyer eventually or

(53:11):
soon enough, and that person postpones the trial till for
a couple months to prepare. Why you explained that there
was little interest in this story even though there was
this huge manhunt in America. And why the American press

(53:33):
lost interest in this story, It's.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Curious to me. I mean, here you've got an American
citizen who is alleged to have killed you know, lots
of people in the States. If the trial had been
held in America, I think it would have been country
to country coverage of something like this. But because it
was Canada, for some reason, the story just didn't matter.

(54:03):
You know. I say that here in Winnipeg, in Manitoba,
it was a sensation. I mean, they had him put
into the death cell. Before the trial they had him.
The official legal officials were searching for the way that

(54:24):
they would hang him even before he was ever found guilty.
They had some idea that the reward could be paid
before he was even tried, And of course the newspapers
were just absolutely chock full that this was the American strangler.
Every time there was some kind of an identification made
in the States, they'd say yeah, and then you know,

(54:44):
they'd have stories about how he killed twenty women in
the States, you know, the conventional list, And so he
had all kinds of pre trial publicity. And while the
trial itself was relatively fair in the sense that it
was postpone to a later date, you could at least say,
look at the evidence, and even if there is the

(55:06):
jury's even contaminated by all of this, there's still all
of this evidence of clothing, money, scratches on the head,
people who identify him and had periods of time to
so he's put into the story, and the circumstances all
pretty strongly indicate that he in fact is the guy
who killed Missus Patterson. But when you know, even when

(55:29):
he was hanged in Manitoba and January thirteenth. Most of
the American jurisdictions didn't even talk about this guy being
hanged because it was the big story. There was jud
Gray right, the sort of double indemnity murder because they
were put in the electric chair the same day January
thirteenth that this guy was hong Here in Winnipeg.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
You write about a very interesting man who had some
questions for Earl Nelson just before his execution, and he
went to the jail to get those answers. Potentially twice
tell us who this was. It's a very dramatic, I think,
scene in this book with this person wanting answers to

(56:12):
his questions.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Back in April, one of the murders in the East
Coast was in Philadelphia and Missus McConnell was strangled in
her upstairs bedroom. She had her house for sale and
her daughter and steps her daughter and son in law

(56:37):
came home and couldn't find her, and after searching the house,
they found her. On a believer it was under the bed,
strangled and he was a coffee salesman. He wasn't home
at the time. But that was pretty much right away
attributed to the Gorilla man because of the modus operandi.

(56:57):
But when Earl Nelson was in jail along death row,
mister McConnell was given permission by the police to go
into the cell with Earl Nelson and actually talk to him,
which is kind of unusual because a lot of the
American detectives weren't allowed to go in, certainly not till

(57:20):
after the trial. And Earl Nelson would simply deny everything anyway,
and of course the same with mister McConnell. Earl Nelson
denied that he had ever been to Philadelphia, and of
course we have proof that he was in Philadelphia. He
sent coastal cards to his cousin Evan from various places
in the East Coast, including Philadelphia. So he was lying

(57:40):
through his teeth saying, oh, I've got nothing to do
with this. Of course, mister McConnell didn't believe it. And
then mister McCall came back the day before the hanging
and actually talked to him again. And mister McConnell pulled
out a watch because at the original murder scene, again
jewelry was stolen. That watch was very distinctive with the

(58:02):
initials of his daughter in the back of it was
taken to a pawn shop in New York, and the
pawn shop owner had been given a picture of Earl Nelson,
had had an id to Earl Nelson as the guy
who had in fact upon that watch. And when he
pulled out the watch, Earl Nelson denied that he had

(58:23):
anything to do with the watch. He'd never seen it before.
And of course when he pulled out the postal codes,
you know that he had postal writing that he had
written from Philadelphia, he denied that it was his handwriting.
I can tell you I've looked at the handwriting of
Earl Nelson. It's very distinctive, big loopy handwriting. There's no question.
I find it very very doubtful that you could ever

(58:44):
deny the handwriting of biscuit. And so anyway, he attempted
to get a confession out of Earl Nelson. Ron Nelson
never confessed. Typical psychopathic, you know whatever. You always blame
everybody house, and you were reframed, and you were at
dizzy spells or you were you know whatever, never took responsibility.

(59:08):
He went to his hanging as an innocent man, acting
like a martyr.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Yes, I want to thank you so much for coming
on and talking about your extraordinary book, thirty one Murders
Following the Trail of serial Killer Earl Nelson. For those
people that might want to find out more about this
book and your previous book about the Gorilla Man Strangler,
can you tell us about your website and if you
do any social media.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Yes, my website is simple. It's Alvin Esau ALVII n ESA.
There's no gap between the first and last name dot com,
and information about my books would be on there, including
about ten murders that were suspicious that were sometimes attributed

(59:57):
to him that I haven't included in my book. Further
ten murders, many of which I've concluded weren't done by him,
but some of them are suspicious, and they're also on
the web page. They're under the tab murders. I do
have a Facebook page, Alvin Esau, but I don't do
any other social media at this stage. So thanks for

(01:00:18):
having me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Thank you so much, Alvin Ajau thirty one Murders Following
the Trail of serial Killer Earl Nelson. Thank you so
much for this interview, and you have a great evening
and good night, good day, night,