19th Century Serial Killers

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The term serial killer wasn't commonuntil the 1970s, and serial
killings reached a peak in the lastthree decades of the 20th century.
This has led to a misunderstandingof the history of serial killers.
As today, many put blame on urbanizationor moral
failings of Western societyor liberal upbringing.

(00:21):
Conservative upbringing.
Blame has been thrown aroundevery direction you can imagine.
But the truth isthat humans haven't changed.
Our psychological makeupdidn't change in the 20th century.
Psychosis in mental illness isn't new.
We just understand it a little bit better.
And we have access to recordsand mass media.

(00:42):
That's why serial killersare not an invention of the 20th century.
Evil isn't new.
There have always been killerslurking in the shadows.
On this episode, we look at some notoriousserial murders of the 19th century
and ask, Is there anything we can continueto learn from these terrible cases?

(01:07):
This is a study
of strange.

(01:29):
Yeah, let's do it.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
So welcome to the show,everyone. I'm Michael May.
And joining me is my my friendBridget Weitzel and Bridget.
Thank you,first of all, for for coming on the show.
And I've wanted to have you'reone of the people where I'm like,
okay, if I do a show like this,I got to have Bridget on.
It's nice.

(01:49):
Why is that, Michael?
Well, it'sbecause I know that you have an interest
in kind of, like, true crime stuff, and.
Yeah, yeah.
And we've we haven't talked about it
a lot over the years,but I definitely know that that is true.
But what yeah.
What are you interestedin in terms of like the true crime type
stories or programsor shows or documentaries.

(02:10):
Yeah.
What fascinatesyou about that genre of content?
I think there's two aspects to itthat get me.
The first is what in the world
can make somebody go off the railsso hard, right?
Like, yeah, it's just such a foreignconcept to me to be that upset
or to just be that dark that you dosome of the things that people do.

(02:33):
But then the other aspect of itthat I find super interesting,
because I'm a documentary person,I read the true crime nonfiction books
and I watch the documentaries.
And the other aspect is the detectivework, right?
How do they get caught?
Where where's the science behind this?
You know, the stories that there's so manylayers, the stories that people tell

(02:54):
to protect the bad guys versus,you know, who's going to give them up.
And the way that police and detectivesand forensic scientists,
the way that their brains have to workto put these bizarre bits
and pieces of non logical things togetheris also fascinating.
Yeah, it's all fascinating.

(03:15):
And people, because there are some peoplethat kind of deride fans of true crime,
they think we're all like, we're terriblepeople that are interested in these dark,
likable things.
And it's like, no, there isthere is a fascination with the for me
anyway, that the psychological elementof what would make
somebody do these type of thingsbut there's also the mystery fan in me
just loves the detective worklike how are people solving these things?

(03:38):
So what you saidis actually perfect for today.
So I'm even more excited nowto have you on because this episode
is going to be a little different.I'm going to do it.
This is like a Cliff Notesversion of Love.
It, right? Okay.
So it's six different
serial killer cases, all from the 1800s.
Okay.

(03:58):
And and part of that is just a lot of thekind of true crime I get more interested
in is older stuff because I'm always like,Oh, that happened back then.
But how did how did they even goabout investigating that?
It just intrigues me.
And the other thing that was likea big inspiration for this show
specifically is I do like the storiesthat kind of get overlooked.

(04:18):
There are popular, popular,
true crime stories that get told overand over and over and over again.
And look, that's fine becauseI still consume all those things do.
But it's like there are there are thesekind of stories that get overlooked.
So today, yeah, we're looking at sixdifferent serial killer cases
from the 1800s.
Three of them have been solved.
Three of them have not.

(04:40):
So it's a nice comparison to sayings.
And yeah, so I think they'll hit allthe things that you like in in true crime.
And you may have even heardof some of these.
They're not all completely likeunknown stories they are, or
they're just not as popular as other ones.
And also this kind of came aboutbecause I am researching an episode
about the bloody benders.Do you know who they are?

(05:01):
No. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's a good present.
It totally, totally is a punk band name.
They were in 1862, 72.
I forget the year right now,
but they're a familyor they may not have actually been
blood related,but they call them a family.
They lived in a cabin in Kansasand they would take in travelers

(05:21):
who would, you know,stay the night or get food.
And essentially someone in the familywould sneak up behind them,
hit them on the head, stealtheir stuff, kill them, and they escaped.
And and it is there's been documentaries.
I think there's even been like scriptedmovies, you know, where
people try to tell the story of thesethis crazy family.
But yeah, I'm researching thatthat episode,
and it's going to take me a whilebecause there's a lot to go into.

(05:43):
But I kept coming across these otherstories of serial killers in the 1800s.
I was like, Oh, I just want toI just want to share these.
Even if it is a CliffsNotes version.
That's awesome.
Yeah, that is what we're doing today.
So before we dove in real quick,if everybody's enjoying the show,
pleasemake sure to subscribe, rate and review.
And also on Patreon, I have a couple ofnew stuff coming out in December.

(06:05):
It's nowit's the week of Thanksgiving right now.
So in a week or two, there will be somesome new content on Patriots.
And please, everybody,check that out through our website.
A study of strange com.
Yeah.
All right. Where am I? Inmy will is now Bridget.
I've already started taking notes, Mikey.
I've already written downbloody benders. I need to.
Know. Oh, nice.

(06:26):
Oh, you'll love it.
It is. It is very fascinating.
Yeah, I'll just dove in.
I have all these other little,like, things that I wrote down in my notes
of, like, a mentionhow Jack the Ripper is famous.
But like, all these other peoplethat are just as crazy aren't.
But that's the gist of it.
So I can just skip over that.
Jack the Ripper, by the way, will come uplike three or four times today
because a couple of.

(06:47):
The he's not.
You can't not in the 19th century.
And there's peoplewe love to tell stories, people.
So we a lot of people connectserial killers from back then
and they just assume, oh, that's Jackthe Ripper to those killings over there.
That's also Jack the Ripper.
So I have a number of people today.
They're like, there are theoriesthat some of these folks are also Jack

(07:09):
the Ripper.
I do not believe that.
But we'll get to that when I get there.
Awesome. Yeah.
So I'mgoing to start with the solved cases
and these are not inany chronological order.
Okay. It's just in the orderI wrote them down.
And so we're going to start withthe Kelly family and the Kelly family.
This took place in 1887.

(07:29):
And what when you read about it, peoplealways call it Kansas.
And this is very similarto the bloody Bender story as well.
In fact, I think the Kelly family learnedabout the bloody benders and copied them.
Oh, that is my own personal theory.
So it's full of serial killing school.
A serial killing.
So the Kelly family's 1887,when you always read it

(07:50):
and they always say Kansasand it's actually not true.
This is, you know, prepre a lot of states out west.
And it was an area called No Man's Land.
They may still call it that, but it's whattoday is the Oklahoma Panhandle.
And back then there was talk of itbecoming part of Kansas.
But at the time it was just public land.

(08:10):
It was just sort of unnamed,no man's land like they called it.
And this family, they moved infrom Pennsylvania, or so they say.
And everybody in this area of the countryat that time,
there's a lot of the homesteaders,there's a lot of people,
even when there wasn't an areawhere people could homestead,
they would still cultivate the land, buildsomething in hopes that one day

(08:30):
the government would be like,okay, that's yours.
And so you have a lot of people trying toland, grab and also people moving west.
So after this is after the Civil War,a lot of people are migrating west
and you have to go throughMissouri and Kansas and Oklahoma.
You have to go that way.
So there's a lot of travelersand in a way, it's
kind of like the perfect placefor serial killers because track is good.

(08:52):
Yeah. Travelers, they need help.
No one knows they're there.
No one has cell phones.
So, you know, you can't contact anybody.
And people would go missing.
Lots of people would go missing
all the time from probably a lot of timesjust natural reasons.
They get lost, you know, fallill and, you know, long travels
or killed from Native Americanslike all this kind of stuff was very real.

(09:16):
And so anyway, the CatholicKelly family moved to this area
and it was near a town called Oak City.
And this is about 25 miles away
from present day Beaver, Oklahoma.
The family had four people in it.
There was William Kelly,sort of the patriarch of the family.
He was around 55.
He had his wife, Kate, son, Bill,sometimes called Billy,

(09:38):
who was around20, and their daughter Kate, who is 18.
I've also read 19 and sometimes 17.
So somewhere around that age. Yeah.
And the family put down roots.
They built like a little cabin.
And this, all this, their whole story,by the way, happens
in like the last 3 to 4 months of 1887and happens very quickly.

(09:59):
So they build this cabin,they try to get into the cattle business,
but then they focus more on turningtheir cabin into a bit of like a tavern
so travelers could get a place to eat,stay the night again.
A lot of people are moving west,
so it's nice to be able to offer that,make some money.
It's very smart,good, good business people.
Definitely.
However, by like December ish,

(10:21):
a lot of locals and Oak Cityand the surrounding area
start to notice that, wait,
there's a lot of people that are goingmissing, like a lot more than normal.
They don't suspect the Kelley familyof anything, by the way.
They're totally finewith the Kelley family.
Until one day a guy named SteveGregg came by the property.
He was a traveler.

(10:41):
He had stayed there beforeand gotten some warm food and,
you know, may have even stayed the night.
So he was going to stop in again.
And when he showed up, no one was there.
The Kelley family was gone.
And he kind of stumbled acrosssomething terrible.
Oh, and we're going to jump rightinto our first scene.
Bridgette So yeah, yeah. Okay.
So, yeah, it's it's all one documentI sent you, so it's just the first page.

(11:04):
And what I'll do is I'll read.
There's not a lot of dialog in this,
so I'm going to readlike all the description e type stuff.
So you're going to be Gregg T Greggand yeah, let's, let's do it.
It'll be a it's a short scene. It'sgoing to go pretty quick.
All right.
You ready?
Yeah, I'm ready. All right.
So this is the Kelley family cabinduring the day, and a man approaches

(11:26):
the cabin on horseback.
It's cold and the wind howlsacross the small valley.
And the man, as t Greg holds his jackettightly closed as he nears the Kelley
home. There we go. I can talk.
He heads off.
He hops off of his horse and looks aroundthe property and it's quiet.
No one is working.No sounds are coming from the barn.
No cooking or talking,coming from inside the cabin.

(11:49):
Hello, Mrs.
Kelley.
He gets no answer.
Greg hitches his horse to a postnear the barn and walks towards the cabin.
He knocks on the doorand it swings open with a loud creak.
He peeks inside. But it's dark. Too dark.
It's Mr.
Greg, hoping to catch a warm meal.

(12:10):
Nothing. Just the sounds of the wind.
And then Greg hit gets hit with a strong,terrible smell.
Oh, Lord.
He covers his face and stammersback away from the door.
But Greg knows all toowell what that smell must mean.
Yeah. Don't.
And so what's really interesting isI've been researching

(12:33):
all these murder mysteriesin serial killers of the 19th century.
Death was so common backthen, especially in the West.
Like people are just surrounded by death.
People in their family die all the time.
Also, a lot of veterans of the Civil War.
And so every book I'm reading
and like article, a little thingI read about all these different stories.

(12:54):
Whenever there'sthe smell of death, people are just like,
No, there's the smell of death.
Just like.
Another one.
They just know it so well.
So, yeah.
So this city, Greg,I just knew immediately there's death.
Like there's dead.
There's a dead body somewhere.
So what he does is he actually startslooking through the cabin
and it's got to be dark and creepyand obviously smells bad.

(13:16):
He found a little doorthat opens that goes into like a cellar.
He goes into the cellar and he.
Never go down to the never, never.
In the cellar.
And he
finds what he thinks are like three bodies
so wisely, because there is nothere's no CSI back then.
People don't know the right wayto behave around
crime scenes,but wisely, he just immediately leaves.

(13:37):
He doesn't touch anything.
It is a try to, you know, save anything.
He just goes and he gets authorities.
They rain.They round up like a search party.
They go to the Kelly cabinand there's more bodies
besides just the three in the basement,in the barn, they basically look wherever
there's loose dirt and they stick sticksdown in it to see if something's in there.

(13:57):
And so, yeah,all around the barn and the property,
they find what is estimatedto be 11 total people and it could.
Be more it's a lot.
Yeah and
and again I'm going to assume if they find11 there's probably some more like.
There's no way they got them here. Yes.
And so from what I've read, it'snormally said
that they could only identify one body.
But I did find a few sourcesthat say that I identified three.

(14:20):
One of them is a guy named Jim Coven,who was a cattleman from Texas, J.T.
Taylor, who was a salesman from Chicago,
and then another businessman from Texas,a guy named Johnson.
They did find a rusty ax,which may have had some,
like, human flesh and blood on it.
So they suspect that that was the usual.
Yeah, that's it's definitely a good guessfor a murder weapon

(14:42):
and word spread fast.
And they. Said that. Yeah.
So again, no, no Twitter or phonesbut still like it spreads fast.
And so the town nearby, Oak Creek
owner excuse me, in town Beaver, Oklahoma,
word gets to the peoplethat are searching for the Kelleys now

(15:03):
that people in Beaver were like,Oh, the Kellys.
Well, they just they just passedthrough here like two days ago.
So theythey caught a whiff of the Kelly family
as a matter speaking,and they had that direction.
And they end upbecause it's the old West days,
they get a posse together and the posseis going to go hunt down the Kellys.
And sure enough, they they keep on uplike they're able to track them.

(15:25):
And they found evidence of them at PaloDuro Creek in Texas,
which you can actually it's still there.
Powder Creek,still the same name still around
you can go visit and yeah,they gave trail chase.
They ended up finding the family outand out in the wild
and they actually chased themfor like two or 3 hours,
like on a horses, carriagesgoing after them.
So you can imagine the hoots and hollersand guns shooting in the air

(15:48):
and everything else.It probably is. Going to rain.
Kate fell off her
horse during the chase and actually,like broke her back.
And they eventually catch upand they catch the son.
Billy and the daughter kept.
And William,the patriarch, skedaddled away, of course.
And they start interrogating

(16:10):
Billy and Kit and essentially
Kid is like, she's playing the nurseand she's I'm just the daughter.
I didn't do it like I look, I have nothingto do with what my family does.
Right.
And her her brother then goes,What are you talking about?
You were part of this, too.
We all were part of killing everybody.
Don't you go sayingyou didn't have anything to do with it?
Oh, he crumbled under pressure. Yeah.

(16:32):
And so it's sort of Texasand Western justice.
They just bring out some ropesand they hang them
just like right thenand there. They do not arrest them.
They do not send them back.
They the whole just kills them.
And then they keep hightailing itafter William.
So they chase William for a while longer.
They eventually catch him
and they catch him by likeI think holding guns and shooting at him.

(16:52):
And finallyhe just kind of like raised his hands.
I was like, okay,I'm not going to get away from all this.
And what they do with him when theythey stop him
is they essentially say,like, confess to your sins.
We know you did it. You're your son.Your daughter talked about it.
We know you killed all these people.
And William was like, No, I'm not talking.
So they hang him, but then they drop him
before he passes outand they're like, Yeah.

(17:16):
And then they're like, confess.
Or We're going towe're really going to hang. Yeah.
And so he confessesand he says that it sure enough,
the whole family was involvedand he tells them where to find some like
stolen money and valuablesand tells them where all the bodies are.
And that's how we gotmost of the information
about how they would kill people is fromthis interrogation not the right word.

(17:38):
This is in a legal culture.
Yeah.
And look, you can't trust everything
someone says under that type of duress,but likely not.
But at the same time,what does he have to gain at that point?
Right. Exactly.
And they also have enough evidencefrom what other people have said
and the bodies and the cabinthat like he's probably telling the truth

(18:00):
for the most part, right? Yeah. So, yeah.
So he confesses and says that they killednine men and two women.
So 11 people total.
I don't know if I believe that number.
It may be more like I said,
he was stripped of all his
belongings and eventuallyjust killed right then and there.
What people say in termsof how the Kelley family killed their

(18:21):
their victims
is that they would have somebody sitat the dining room table
and they would be feeding him or herand they would put the person's chair
in like a trap door to the basement,the cellar.
And then at some pointsomeone would give a signal,
they would open the trap door,
they would fall in and hopethat like they'd break a bone or get hurt.
So they're stuck down there
and then someone would go downand finish them off with an ax

(18:43):
as as dramatic and like movie
like as that is,they built this cabin super fast.
I mean, this is just laying planks downand putting a roof over it, right?
I don't think there's a trap doorin the sense of like there's a mechanism
with a button or a leverthat like opens it.
I think there was definitely,you know, a hole in the ground

(19:07):
that you could lift up a little doorand put people in.
So I don't think they like usedthe trap door quite the way they say.
This is just my own theorizing.
Yeah, I think yeah,I think they probably did more.
What the Benders were supposedly did,which is sneak up behind the guest
and just whack them on the headand then send them back to the basement.
So that's just my own thinking aboutit was
and the interesting thing about thisKelly story is, again,

(19:30):
it gets overlooked because the bendersget a lot of attention.
But what I found fascinating is
this is ten yearsafter the bloody benders that I mentioned.
So a lot of people,because the benders escaped,
assume that the Kelly family isthe Bender family and changed their name.
I do not. Oh, I know.
It's really cool. It's fascinating.
But the descriptionsand the ages don't match.

(19:51):
And I was going to askabout the ages for the
the kids would be significantly differentif it's ten years later as.
The kids I think were older than thesetwo kids back ten years
prior in terms of the Bender family.
So I do not think this isalso the Bender family.
They the the two older benderscouldn't really speak English very well.

(20:11):
And these people definitely could.
They were they were seemedlike they were from America and yeah.
So it's I don't think that matchesbut I do think the Bender family
gets so much national pressand there's articles especially when
they're they're moving to Kansaswhere people are still talking about it.
And the newspapers areprobably still writing
articles like clickbait articlesfor the time

(20:34):
that I think the Kelly family was like,Oh, that's a good idea.
No one's going to catch us doing this.
Like, let's, let's go for it.
Let's look.
It's fascinating to think thatthat they're motivated potentially
by that,but motivated in such presumably the
the mom or the dad were the, you know,the ringleaders of the whole thing.
Right.
So how twisted must you be to be like,let's make this a family affair?

(20:57):
Yeah. What's your kids? How to do this?
Get our kids to do this. Let's do this.
And I think, great.
And so, yeah,
you got to think aboutthe motivation of it is
I do wonder if it was purelylike an economical thing,
like this is a waywe're going to make money.
Yeah, it's like we livein a really hard place to live.
So let's this is the best wayto make some money and get some things

(21:19):
is to to steal it.
But also that's so many people so quick.
A lot of people that like this,I mean, really thrilled.
It has to. Yeah. There has to be.
And I think we have to resist the urgethat this is what I do.
I look at things sometimes I'm like,that makes no sense.
There's no logic behind it.Well, let's be honest.
There's no logic behind this at allanyway. Yeah.

(21:40):
Yeah.
So saying, you know,why would they do that so quickly?
You know,you know, you're going to get caught.
Well, because they're not thinkingthe same way that we do, obviously.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is that's a really good point.
And that's why it's so important thatthere are criminal psychologists now or
didn't exist, people that can study this
because that's the best wayto help help ourselves and help others

(22:03):
is to actually understandand what goes into this.
And you have to wonder if they camewherever they came from to that area,
were they doing things like that.
Before they came.
Home? Said yes, before they came.
We have no idea. But no, we don't.
There's no way to track it becausethey could have changed their name.
They could have lied aboutwhere they were from.
There's no way to really check back then.

(22:24):
So dark. Yeah, it's super dark.
It is very dark.
And yet fascinating and fascinating.
So now we're going towe're going to turn it ourselves
and go across the Atlantic Oceanto to England,
because there's all you got to haveif you're talking about 19th century,
you know, serial killers, you got to havesomething in Victorian England

(22:46):
because it is absolutely such a crazy,dark,
interesting time and place.
So I, I basically just picked onewhat they call Black Widow Killers
because there were
a lot of women in the 19th centurythat just poisoned everybody they could.
Bitches were fed up, man.
Yeah, they were.

(23:08):
And so I basically, like, closed my eyesand pointed a finger at a list.
I was like, okay, I'll.
I'll tell this one that there are so many.
But back then,the reason I think poisoning was,
I guess,
prevalent in a lot of these casesis because you could get away with it.
There weren't always autopsies.
You could buy a lot of these poisonsjust off the counter

(23:29):
and no one would think anything of it.
So you had medicinal usesif you in a different way.
So exactly.
You're down to your little,
little general store and be like,oh, I'd like some arsenic, please.
Exactly. Nice about it. Exactly.
And also the
the birth rate is just especiallyin Victorian England, it's just terrible.

(23:50):
And, and even like I'm went on ancestrya number of years ago
because I was like I want to find outabout my past and all my relatives.
They're all Southern farmersand almost every family
in the 19th century that I'm related to,they all had like 12 kids.
And you look at it
and it was really confusing at firstbecause you'll see the same name pop up
twice and you'll think, Oh, there'sthis is because census records are bad

(24:12):
and birth records are bad.
It's like,
Oh no, it's because babies are dying andthey just use the same name over again.
I can't be bothered to think of a new man.
I already got 12 kids.
I don't want to think of another one.
Exactly. Yeah. So there's athere's a lot of deaths.
And even when marriages would endbecause of death, people
would remarry quickly because you neededto have somebody to help you survive.

(24:35):
So people are like wivesand husbands are dying all the time.
So, again, kind of a perfect situationfor somebody that that is a killer
to kind of get away with it.
So we're going to talk about MaryAnn Cotton.
She is people that followthese kind of stories
have probably heard her namebecause she is one of the famous names,
Mary Ann Cotton.
Oh, hello.

(24:56):
Her birthday was Robson
and which is not as pleasant of a name.
And apparently in a documentaryI watched about her, the Robson family.
She's from northeast Englandand the Robson family was actually a clan
in Scotland for like 100 or 200 yearsbefore this, that were they were raiders.
They were like basically raid peopleand steal things.

(25:20):
So that is potentially her heritagebecause of that name, which is really.
Kind of thugs.
So she, as you can guess, livingand she was born in 1832.
She did not have the best childhood.
She grew up in a mining town.Her father was a miner.
Her father died when she was,I think, ten in a mining accident.
People didn't have money hard again.

(25:42):
Hard, hard life. Hard life.
She moves out
when she's 16 years oldand she actually tries to do something
a little different with her lifethan just be a miner miner's wife.
She tries to become a nurse and this isin the area of South Hetton or Heaton.
I apologize for listeners in the UK.
I don't know how to say that name,
but the family she worked for,she wasn't a nurse in like a hospital.

(26:04):
She was a nurse for a family,like a well-to-do family
that had 12 children.
My God. Big old family.
And a lot of people that studyMarian Cotton story
think that this is probablywhen she started to hate kids is working
which I do not blame her at allI do not blame her at all.

(26:25):
She ended upgetting married and kind of left that work
and she allegedly got pregnantfive times and none of her children lived.
And some people, again,that have like studied their case,
some people assume that there's,
you know, mental illness and depression,which can happen after that.
Yeah.
And that that may have influenced her,her psyche as well.

(26:49):
She ended up moving backto northeast England after all of this.
And her husband, William,who did I write down his last name?
I did William Mowbray.
Her husband became a minor.
And I actually read two different things.
He either became a mineror he became a fireman on a steam vessel.
I would like to say, having read a lotof old record things before in my life.

(27:09):
Yeah, it could both could be true
because he could have been a miner
for a time and also,you know, those kind of things
and people just mistake one for the other.
And they had more childrenthat she had a daughter
named Isabella, born in 1858,but then she died when she was two.
She had another daughter named MargaretJane, who was born in 1861,
a son named John RobertWilliam born in 16 three.

(27:31):
And Margaret,Jane and John both later died.
Who know Margaret Jane lived.
So I get very confused because there'sa lot of kids in this story.
A lot of kids,a lot of similar names, adults.
And we're not even done yet.
Oh, dear.
Are there more to come withall similar names and a lot of them die.
But John does die and he diesfrom what they say is gastric fever.

(27:55):
1865 comes along and the William,
her husband diesof what they call typhus fever.
And you should say what they call
that is a real saying,but they're not fever.
Yeah, yeah.
But they're notthey're not really investigating it.
They're just like,oh, this person died. How?
He died? Oh, he had typhus. Okay.
And he died of typhus. Fever.
Oh, sometimes it's also readas intestinal disorder.
So again, it depends on what you readthere. That's really interesting.

(28:17):
Well, that'sthat's quite a thick intestinal disorder.
Now, turns out William's lifeand the life of their children
were insured by the Prudential InsuranceCompany, the Pru, as they called it,
which, if anybody listen to my firsttwo episodes of a study of strange
William Herbert Wallace in those episodesworked for the Pru.

(28:37):
So it's the same insurance company.
But decades before.
So yeah, they were insured.
William was insured for £35,which is half a year's wages at the time.
So that is a good chunk of change.
And this might have
gave Mary some ideas.
I'm just I'm just going to call that out

(28:57):
so I don't need to go throughall of her children in Oliver Husbands
because this is going to betoo long of an episode if I do.
How many husbands were there?I think four.
Okay. No, maybe three.
Her last husband, this is jumpingahead in the story, but her last husband
and apparently she never got divorcedfrom a previous husband who did live.
He actually left her, thank goodness.

(29:20):
No kidding.
He found out that she was stealingmoney from him and they had already
they had lost like two of their kids.
But he left her so he didn't die.
And I don't thinkshe ever formally got divorced.
So her husband after that may havetechnically legally not been a husband.
That's why it's kind of like threeor four husbands somewhere around there.
So, yeah,she she basically for a period of time,

(29:41):
she only has one surviving childafter many, many die.
And she sends her daughter, Margaret Jane,
no, sorry, her daughter Isabellato live with her mother, Margaret.
Jane ended up ended up dyingbefore that. Sorry.
Again, you're going to get confusedwith all the kids
for a period of time when her her daughterIsabella, is living with her mother.
She is free from children and a husband.

(30:01):
But this doesn't last long.
She moves on quicklyand she marries a patient of hers
because she doesn't nursefor a little while to to make ends meet.
She meets a guynamed George Ward in the hospital.
He is sickly,which is already good for her,
but not sickly enoughthat he should die very quickly.
And yet he diesvery quickly after getting married.

(30:23):
Weird. How weird.
And the doctors even notatedthat they were like, oh, he died.
But well, we weren't expecting that.
We thought he would livea little bit longer.
So then she startsworking for a man named James Robinson.
And this is the guy I mentionedthat actually survived.
She works for him for a while,but her mother gets sick,
so she leaves his house, she goes, stayswith her mother, but her mother

(30:45):
then dies just like weeksafter she moves in with her mother.
Good lord.
And then her daughter ends up dying.
Soon after she moves back in withthe Robinsons, she ends up marrying Mr.
Robinson, and he had actually lost a childbefore she started working for him.
So a lot of people are like, oh, well,he he needs to get comfort from somebody.

(31:05):
And the person working and livingin his house at the time is Mary.
So they end up striking it off.
And again, you get married back thenbecause you need the help.
So it's like, Hey, you're a lady, I'ma man, you're here.
Let's do this. Right, right, right.
Because they get married. Yeah,so they get married.
They have a couple of kids.A fertile woman.
Oh, yeah. And Mr.

(31:28):
Robinson, he starts to notice
as they're married that there's two thingsthat kind of stand out to him.
One is that Mary keeps pressuring himto ensure his family, their kids,
and she talks about it a lotand he's like, Now, why would we do that?
And she pressuresand pressures and pressures.
And he thinks that's kind of odd.
And then he starts noticing,like in his receipts and things, he starts

(31:49):
noticingthat numbers aren't quite lining up
and he realizes she's been likeskimming money and taking money.
She's also been selling some valuablesaround the house, so he gets fed up
with her and he takes their son, George,their only surviving child in time
and leaves her and it, which is avery smart man, get get out of there.
When you're breaking up, these ads run.

(32:10):
She moves on and she marries someone else,a guy named Frederick Cotton,
which is where she gets the nameCotton from.
He was brothers with a friend of hers,and they marry in 1870.
And while they're married,she hooks it up with an old
an old boyfriend of heris named Josephine.
Yes. And so she's getting around and

(32:31):
yeah, I don't need to go
through all the details here again,this is a cliff notes of the day.
Yeah.
Essentially, she's killing everybodyand she's using arsenic.
So you were dead onwhen you brought up arsenic earlier.
And no one, again,a lot of people are dying back then.
No one's doing our taxes.
So people aren't really suspectingsuspicious of her behavior.

(32:53):
It's just kind of like that a lot. A lot.
Like it's a lot.And then she ends upstream.
She ends up hurting herself
because she tries to take her son
to a like workhouse and she tries
to give him away to the workhouse
and when she does it, she's like,You should take him.

(33:15):
Don't worry, he won't be here long.
Because quoting this is a quote from her.
His name was Charles, by the way.
Charleswould go like the rest of the cotton.
And so the the guy at the workhouse
thought that was really odd.
So he actually told investigatorsabout it.
They don't reallythey can't really do anything at the time.

(33:36):
But then, sure enough, Charles dieswhen he's back home, like very quickly.
And this puts her like in the target,so to speak.
I guess it seems super extreme becauseright now we're looking at it in a chunk.
But I guess when it's happening over years
and over time and the situation,the environment, like you said, of people
dying pretty regularly,it's easy to explain things away.

(33:57):
Yes, yes, 100%.
Yes. And so what was interesting
at this time is her plankind of backfired on her
because she had been ensuring as manyas many of her victims as she could.
Right.
And because the police suddenly
have a target on her
and they're investigating her insurancepayout for her son, Charles

(34:18):
isn't going throughbecause they're investigating it.
So she ends up, long storyshort, gets arrested, goes on trial.
But before she goes on trial,she gets pregnant again.
Yeah.
And this was a typical tactic
at the time for women on trial,because it's a way to sway some
some opinions about youfrom the jury and sympathy.

(34:40):
It also delays the trial because they waituntil after you have birth.
So she has to go througha whole pregnancy.
She gives birth, then she's on trial.
She's having to hold the babyand take care of the baby on trial
and there are some people that were like,Oh, look, it's
so sad that she's got a baby.
But luckily not everybody kind of fellfor it and she was convicted and was hung.

(35:02):
It is assumed that she killed between 16to 21 members of her family.
You're like, Oh my God.
I don't even have 16to 21 members of my family.
Yeah, I don't either. I don't either.
Oh, yeah.
And it's a little interesting thingbecause I'm researching this as
what's her name from.
Sarah knows Elizabeth's.

(35:23):
Home. Oh, yeah. Holmes is pregnant.
While she was getting her sentence read.
Just,you know, this week or last week, whenever
that was very recently,she's pregnant again with her second baby.
And so part of me is like, oh,I wonder if I wonder
if that's a bit of a tactic to, like,take it easy on her.
Yeah, it's an interesting,interesting thing.

(35:43):
I don't knowmuch about the fairness story.
I did watch that miniseries about her,but I haven't like got into that too much.
Seeing it yet.
But I'm definitely interested in it.
Again, that's not, you know, murderand killing, but it's definitely as well.
I just don't get it.
Yes. So, lady, court in here.
16 to 21 members of her family,Holly Farm.

(36:05):
Yeah. Wow, that's and that's.
Go ahead.
I mean, you would think like like I said,yes, it's obviously a perfect storm,
but after a while, don'tother people in the family start
to look and be like, okay, you've got sixpeople around, you have died.
That seems extreme.How does it get that big?
How does it get that big?
And especially I don't know if she just

(36:27):
you know,you can't Google search somebody.
So like when she's hooking upwith these dudes or getting married.
That's true.
I don't I mean, there's got to be enoughpeople around that know her and like,
can, like, run into somebodydown at the local coffee shop and be.
Like, I think.
You're getting married again, huh? Like,I don't know.
It's it's definitely really interesting toto think about that.

(36:48):
Yeah, it is. Really, really. Weird.
So our last solved crime will dois talk to her
doctor Thomas Neal Cream.
And this is one of the people for thosethat follow true crime and serial killers.
You may have heard him because a lot ofpeople suspect that he is Jack the Ripper.
Okay. I do not.
He was in prison in Illinoisat the time of the Ripper killings.

(37:09):
So it's it's a little far away.
It's pretty far away.
And also, serial killershave very distinctive modes.
They have very specific ways that
the emotional and psychological reasonsthey're killing are very specific to them.
So when someone's outside of that M.O.,it really doesn't make sense.
And he's very different
this it
Thomas Cream is also known as the LambethPoisoner is a nickname.

(37:32):
Some people call him,and he's a Scottish Canadian doctor
and he would use strychninepoisoning usually to to kill people.
And it's said he killed up to ten peopleand three countries.
I actually I don't personallythink he killed that many, but
lot of people put that on him.
He also had a very big mustache,which I know is the style of the time,
but I just don't trust a doctorwith a giant mustache.

(37:54):
So what I want to be writing?
Yeah. What are you hiding?
So his family immigrated to Canadawhen he was a kid.
They lived in Quebec.
He goes to medical schoolat McGill University in Quebec.
He there's a this story has
nothing to do with the serial killing,so it only takes up time today.

(38:15):
But I really loved it.
While he was at medical school,he had a skeleton in his room.
He's a medical student.I'm not going to judgment for that.
Back then, though, skeletons were realskeletons.
They didn't use plastic stuff.
He, his house or apartmentbuilding caught fire and burnt down.
And for a while people thought he diedin the fire because they found this

(38:36):
like, burned up skeletonthat was in his room, but that wasn't him.
So anyway,I just thought that was interesting.
And that's still weird.
I'm sorry.
Yes, you're you're
you're a student, but does everybodyreally have their own skeletons
that they take home with them?
That's a that's a good point. Yeah.
So he he ends up he gets a girlfriendnamed Flora Elizabeth Brooks.
And she's the daughter of a hotelkeeper in town.

(38:57):
And she becomes pregnant.
And this is where Dr.
Karim's future sort of clinical workcomes.
Begins, I should say,because he becomes an abortionist.
So he he performs a procedureon his girlfriend.
Meanwhile,her girlfriend's father is super upset
that her daughter got pregnantand forces Dr.

(39:19):
Karim to marry herand he didn't want to get married.
So as soon as they get hitched, Dr.
Karim is like, am I got to go?
I'm going to go studymore medicine in London.
So he high, high tells it out of townto get away from his wife.
Oh, and yes.
And so he's studying medicine in London.

(39:39):
And then, you know, for a few yearshe comes back to Canada
and he finally founded a clinicthat performed abortions.
And so in May of 1879,this is considered his first victim.
A woman named Kate Gardner is found deadoutside the back of his clinic.
A bottle of chloroform is found nearbythe body.

(40:00):
Police go to Dr.
Crane and they're like,do you know this woman?
And he's like, yes,she came to me for an abortion,
but I didn'tI did not provide an abortion, nor
did I give her chemicals to kill herselfwith and and sort of puts it off.
But because he's being investigatedand this is behind his clinic,
people in townstart to talk, the rumors start to swirl.

(40:21):
It kind of hurts his reputation.
So Dr.
ends up inthis becomes a common thing for him.
He writes a forges a letterthat is supposedly
from Kate Gardner and it's a suicide note.
And she claims this,like local businessman
is the father of her, the childthat she wants to have an abortion for.
And and she's going to kill herself.

(40:44):
Meanwhile, all her friends,all her family, look at the letter
and they're like,that's not her handwriting.
That's not that's her signature.
And so it's an interesting thingbecause Dr.
Cream ends up using he didn't get awaywith it like the letter did not work.
But yet he he actually uses letters againand again and again.
We'll find out.
But this still,while he's being investigated,
it hurts his reputation enough

(41:05):
that even though he wasn't arrested,he did flee town.
He moved to Chicago in his 1879.
I forget if I ever gave any dates in this.
So it's important.
No, thank you.
In 1880, he performed an abortionon Julia Faulkner.
Sometime in some of the articlesshe's listed as Mary.
And so I, I don't, I don't know if that'sjust some where there's a mix up.

(41:25):
Her records are weird from backthen which they are. Yeah.
And he gets arrested because of her death
but he gets acquittedbecause of lack of evidence.
But he, he ispeople do investigate him right away.
That's what's interesting about himas a serial killer.
What doesn't what led them to himthat time?
Yeah,I did not dove in deep enough to find out,

(41:47):
but I do think it's probablybecause she had an abortion.
People probably know where she wentfor the abortion, you know, like
that kind of thing.
And thenthere was a woman named Ellen Stack
who died from essentiallyan overdose of a prescription.
And cream is the one that provided herwith that prescription.
But he blamed the pharmacist.
He was like, no, no, it's not me.

(42:07):
He's a pharmacist, messed up the chemicalsand blah, blah, blah, of course.
And so no
charges are ever brought forward in thatbecause there's just not enough evidence.
Right.
Just clearly it's just a shitty doctorat this point and everyone's.
A shitty doctorand then goes little too far
because he ends up killing a husband ofa woman that he's having an affair with.
Oh, and yeah.

(42:28):
And you can read about this.
The Chicago Tribune articles
they wrote about it,so you can actually read about this still.
So, yeah,
this in 1881, thegentleman name was Daniel Scott and Dr.
Graham was having an affairwith Julia Scott and he is arrested.
He is sentenced and goes to prison.
And this is duringhe's there for ten years.
That's when the Ripper murders happenedis while he's

(42:48):
very,very well recorded in prison in Illinois.
So as soon as he gets out of prison,he moves back to London,
kind of has to get away, reinvent himself.
And he lives on LambethPalace Road in London.
And he met a woman named Ellen Don Wurst,who was a prostitute.
And she got poisoned and Dr.

(43:12):
Thomas Cream,instead of just trying to somehow
not be associated with these victims,he just starts blaming other people,
kind of like he did with the pharmacist,kind of like he did with the Fords letter.
He blames a local businessmanand says he's the killer.
And then he wrote the coroner anonymously,who wrote a letter to the coroner
claiming that he could tell the coronerwho killed the girl for a reward.

(43:34):
A fee?
Yeah. And
around this time as well, Dr.
Karim was supposed to go on a datewith a woman named Elizabeth Masters,
and he never showed up on his date
because he met a prostitutenamed Matilda Clover.
And he went to Clover's homeand then left.
And later that night,someone found Clover screaming.

(43:55):
She's in a ton of pain in her house.
And the person that found her calls fora doctor, a doctor comes and treats her.
And being very much the 18what is this, 1890 now around there,
the doctor said, oh, she's been drinkingtoo much, she's a prostitute,
so she's going to diagnosis,drinking too much.
And so that's that's why
they claim that she dies that eveningis because she drank too much.

(44:16):
Well, a few dayslater, doctor cream starts asking
his landlady is like,Oh, did you hear about this Mrs.
Clover that died the other night?What do you know about it?
He starts talking to peopleand asking around.
He accuses another doctor
like the doctor that found herand helped her of killing her.
And he writes writesa letter under the pseudonym Eliot Malone.

(44:36):
To the doctor isn't not workingwell for you so far.
He's he's
basically tried to blackmail the doctorand saying, like, I know you killed her.
I can prove that you killed herbecause you poisoned her.
But what's interesting about this is,
remember, the doctorthought she died of drinking too much.
Right? Didn't think she was poisoned.
But here's a letter claiming hethis person cannot prove she was poisoned.

(44:59):
So it becomes very evident to the thisdoctor takes the letter to the police.
The police begin investigating becausethey're like, wait, if she was poisoned,
then whoever wrote the letter killed herbecause they're the only person who know.
Excellent detective work.
Again, long story, CliffsNotesversion, version of this short.
They actually look at the body,they exhume it, they study it.
She was poisoned from strychnine. And

(45:24):
yeah, the authorities begin
to realize that it could bethis doctor cream fella and.
And and at that point, are they ableI mean, he's so far from home,
basically, are they able to connect him?
Like he'sgot a history of doing something?
He's got a history.
And I think they arebecause there is a story.
I don't know how true this story is,but I think

(45:45):
just by the nature of the storydoes make me think that in reality,
they were able to connect that this guy
has been in prisonfor murder and stuff like that,
because there's there's thisinteresting story about a New York police
officerwho comes to London for holiday and Dr.
Cream gives him a tourof all the poisoning killings
going on and has tons of detaillike over here on the left.

(46:06):
This is where the woman, like,gives her way too much detail.
And so the police officer
talks to local police officersand it's like, oh, this doctor cream
guy, he's he's really cool.
He knows all these detailsabout these cases.
And there's a local investigator nameby the name of Tunbridge,
who is the one leading the case,and he basically figured out
it was cream right away.

(46:26):
So he was just putting all the evidencetogether.
They didn't have enoughto really get them for murder right away,
but they did have him enough for blackmailbecause of the letter he wrote.
So they arrest him for blackmail
and they did this strategically thinking,okay, well, he's arrested for that.
We'll have enough timeto start putting together
the pieces of the murder trial,and then we can get him for the murder.
So it's kind of like arrestingMafia members for tax evasion.

(46:49):
It's like, let's just arrest him for taxbecause we know we can do that.
Get him off the street. Yeah,they arrest him for blackmail.
They're able to actually, during that timepiece together enough information
and enough evidenceduring with the murders to to
then send him to trial for murder.
And he's arrested.
And that's the end of it.
I think he was hung.

(47:09):
I didn't write that down.
But I do imagine because that'swhat they did back then with murderers.
So you think he was probably hung backthen? Yeah.
So there's a round five poisoningswhen I was counting it.
That's like for sure him.
But again with a lot of these peoplecould be a lot more.
Could be a lot more.
But Dr. Karim,I don't think was the smartest guy.
So he's going to be a doctor.

(47:30):
So you assume he's an intelligent person,but then damn, really dumb.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the lack of logic.
We were talking about before.That's right. Yeah.
Sign the proper way to behave.
It's crazy,you know. You you. You say that.
And it makes me also realizeI don't think the women were never robbed.

(47:50):
They weren't.
So I think the motivation behind hiskillings had to purely be for the killing.
There's there's some kind of thingthere, psycho.
There's psycho.
And again, the M.O.,if you know Jack the Ripper,
because some people claim he's Jackthe Ripper, the Ripper obviously had
a great emotional distress
related very specifically to womenbecause he would butcher the sexual organs

(48:13):
were like completely butchered,whereas this guy's just poisoning.
There's such a drastic differencein the way that these people operated
that, yeah, I am not I'mnot one of the people that takes
takes credence in thethe Jack the Ripper doctor credo.
Plus like the most basicthing is the timeline doesn't add up.
Yeah, he was obviously incarceratedwhen that was happening, so.
Exactly. All right.

(48:36):
So now we're going to some unsolved cases.
Let's solve a murder. Let's solve them.
You know, I wish I actually had a noteat the beginning of my notes.
I was like, maybe I'll say this becauseI do try to come up with like theories.
In most of the cases I have,
these are more like I don't evenhave theories on some of these cases.
I feel like it's so farremoved with time I'm

(48:56):
that it's like theories in terms of like,oh, it had to be this suspect.
Like, I can't do that.
I can have theories aboutsome other aspects of it, but not today.
Maybe some other ones.
You'll come when there's one.I can. I can break open.
You'll have to come backon. Oh, my. God. Please.
That's really. Amazing.
So we're going to start with the AustinAX murders, also sometimes

(49:17):
called the servant girl Annihilator,sometimes the Midnight Assassin.
I know there's amazing namesfor some of these.
They sound like Brit horror movie titles.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I have a girl, an Annihilator,which is even a little bit
better than assassinated,I think, in terms of movie titles.
So this one is relatively famous,I would imagine.

(49:37):
I haven't looked it up yet.
I would imagine there's other podcast
specifically about this casebecause it is really interesting
and maybe some of these as wellI might do deeper dives on to do bigger
episodes in the future.
So yeah the
next murder is this took place in
did I did I just think that I wouldremember the date because I do that
sometimes don't write it downbecause I'll be like

(49:58):
oh no when this happened, 1884, thereI go, 1884
or into 85, because I think it started outon New Year's Day 85.
Yes, January 1st, 18.
Even so, the Austin ax murdererclaimed the lives of eight people,
seven women and one man and injuredat least eight other people.
And most of these were servants.

(50:20):
That'swhy it's the servant girl Annihilator,
who lived in the home that they worked in.
And this person would comein, attack them while they were in bed.
Some of the victims he would drag outside
and either sexually assaultor beat or bludgeon and mutilate.
And yes,they're just not not good things at all.
This is not a familyfriendly episode, by the way.
I don't knowif anybody's figured that out yet.

(50:43):
So I I've read a little bitabout this case in the past,
and I used to think that this wasonly targeted African-American servants.
Like, that's what I in my mind, that'swhat I always thought this case was.
But actually, two of the victimswere white, so it wasn't specific to race.
It may still have been targeted
at black people and maybejust accidentally found white victims.

(51:05):
But there could be a racial motivationin these murders as well.
And I'm sure somebody is looking into thata lot more than I have.
And Austin was not the city it is now.
I know it's still not a huge city,but back then it was even much smaller
at a populationaround this time of around 11,000
people,all of the streets were dirt at the time.
Nothing had sort of been paved with rocksor stone or early, early street asphalt.

(51:29):
I don't know what they used backthen. Well.
It was still just still dirt.
They were building that the statecapitol building at the time.
This is interesting to note.
They had a state insane
asylum that had 500 patients in it,which is a lot of patients.
For a better percentage of them.
Yeah. Yeah.
But they would like people to, to be fair,because mental hospitals in that

(51:50):
era are probably one of the mostfrightening places in the world.
But they would put people in therefor just like having a headache.
It's like,Oh, I've got to go to the asylum.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
My wife won't have sex with me enough.
So centered on the asylum. Yeah.
So on January 1st, 1885, a servant namedMolly Smith was found in the backyard.
Her head was split into aand she also had stab wounds.

(52:14):
Her boyfriend, who live withher, was also attacked.
He survived,but he was attacked and badly injured.
They were African-American.
And the police, as you can imagine,African-Americans in Texas in 1885,
the police did not doa very thorough investigation. No.
And what they would do at the timeto investigate murders

(52:35):
is they would bring in bloodhounds.The bloodhounds would try to get a scent.
And then they just follow the bloodhoundsand be like wherever the bloodhound
goes, there's our killer.
But the bloodhounds couldn'treally pick up a scent.
They couldn't do anything.
So the police can do a lot.
However,they were still able to arrest somebody.
They basically just said, Oh, MollySmith's ex-boyfriend, he's black
because it had to beit had to be a black person.

(52:56):
And I'm saying that as a cop at the time,that's not me saying that.
That's me and character.
And they arrested himeven though he could not have done it.
So this is where our second scenecomes in.
Bridget Oh, this is a yeah, yeah.
So this is justif you scroll down further on that page.
Yeah. Got it.
So you can why don't you read Grooms.
He's the the police and the citymarshal lead investigator.

(53:20):
And I'll read everybody else becausethere's a bunch of people on this thing,
okay? I don't do accents,but I should try.
I should try. Yeah. Go for it.
All right.
This is this takes place in theI did not write down his name.
So when I wrote the scene,I just call him boyfriend.
So this is Molly Smith,the recent victim of the murder.
This is her ex-boyfriend's home.

(53:43):
So MollySmith's ex-boyfriend is eating lunch,
surrounded by familyand friends in his home. When the police
bust through the door, GrimsleyThe city marshal leads the charge.
Officers push boyfriend to the groundand handcuff him.
You're under arrest.
What did I do?
You murdered Molly Smith.
Take them away, boys.
A friend stepsin front of the arresting officer.

(54:05):
He couldn't have killed Molly. Sir,we read the paper.
He was with us when she was killed.
Blackley Story.
Another friend steps forward.He was. We had a party.
The whole neighborhood was with himthe entire night.
A police officereven jumps into the conversation.
It's true, boss.
I was there. It was a good party.
Does it matter if everybody was with himthe whole night?

(54:25):
Everyone says we were.
Because we know he did it.
I'll prove it. Mr. Ex-boyfriend? Yes.
Did you know Miss Molly Smith?
Yes, of course.
There you have it.
That's as good as a confession,in my opinion.
So there you go.
There's a very dorky scene that I wrotejust earlier today that's.

(54:48):
Brutally like spot on, I'm. Sure.
Yeah.
So he and I look, it's a it'sa dorky scene, but I'm not exaggerating.
He had so many witnesses that he wasat a New Year's party the whole evening.
And if he had killed her,he would have had to leave the party.
He would have been covered in bloodand come back to the party.

(55:08):
But he was a he was surrounded by people.
I don't think he was probably ever alonebefore police even came to him.
And yet they still really,really targeted him.
I don't think he was everconvicted of anything.
Thank goodness I could be wrong with that.
And nobody knows they did.
I think they arrested him.At least they brought him in.
And I didn't write down again Cliff Notes.
I was just kind of moving quicklythrough it.

(55:30):
But yeah, so if anybody wants to clarifythat, right, in a study of stranger
dot com,let me know what happened to the boyfriend
and what his name wasbecause I totally forgot to write it down.
I'm so sorry about that.
So by March of that year.
So do you know what, three or fourmonths later there are more victims.
The next two, some people claimto be probably from different attackers,

(55:52):
but they do get lumped into itbecause it could be the same ax murder.
It's Christine Martinson and Clara Strand.
They were both severely woundedby similar attackers but not killed.
They survived.
And they this is wherea lot of diverse accounts of what
the killer looks likecome into play because they describe him.

(56:14):
Basically, everybody describes a differentsome people call him a white man wearing
black face.Some call him a black man wearing a scarf.
Some call him a white dudewith a cowboy hat.
And like the descriptions of the killerare so varied,
it just makes it even harderto kind of even come up
with an ideaof who who likely could even be assassins.
Start with that.

(56:35):
You can't start anywhere. It'sjust so hard.
The city, meanwhile,as you can tell from the earlier scene
we did, they claim that African-Americansdid it because, of course,
good, honestwhite folk don't do anything bad ever.
So it's a purely, you know,
racist driven investigationwhen it starts.
So on on May 6th, Eliza Shelley

(56:57):
was the next victim and she was killedthat she did not survive.
Days later, Irene Cross
was stabbed and bled to death.
And where she worked and lived.
And then in June, Clara Dick was attackedbut survives.
This is one of those basicallywhen they're survivors, a lot of people

(57:17):
don't always lump theminto the murder victims.
They think it could have beensomeone else.
But for the.
Sake, it's a big concern to likehow many people how many people.
Are going. Arrest.
Yeah sound stabbing and I think peopleyeah absolutely.
There's another victim killed by an ax
and then an ice pickwas shoved into her ear as well.

(57:37):
So there's there's definitely an overkill
aspect to this serial killerthat's personal. Yes.
And then a woman named Rebecca
Rainey was laterattacked with along with her daughter.
I think they were sleeping in the same bedtogether when they were attacked.
Rebecca survived, but her daughter didnot make it, which is just devastating.
And then there was a largergroup were attacked in September,

(58:00):
I think it was four people.
Two of them did not make it.
And then on Christmas.
So it's about a year that this hasall been taking place on Christmas, Susan
Hancock was attacked while sharing a bedwith her daughter as well.
That same night.
Eula Phillipsand her husband are attacked.
Eula does not surviveand because her husband survives,
he gets arrested and he gets convictedjust for her killing,

(58:24):
not for all the others.
The police are just able tomanipulate their case into just his wife.
This is also that's an interesting thingbecause this is also
these are the white victims, the Phillips.
That was going to be my next question.Yeah.
So there is a difference.
There is a difference to thiswhere maybe people thought he blamed it on
the on this famous ax murder going aroundand he just attacked his wife.

(58:46):
I don't have all the details on that,but he is convicted.
It is later overturned,so he does not get it all pinned on him.
There are rumorsin the African-American community
at the time that the killer was a white
man that had supernatural powersand could turn himself invisible.
Okay, that many people are getting it.
Yeah, but if I get it though, likeif that many people are getting attacked

(59:08):
and you're trying to create reasonsfor how it's happening
and why this person's not getting caught,like I can easily see that happening.
This city.
A brutal bloody crime scene.
I mean, attacking somebody with an ax.
You're not walking out of therewithout blood on you. You're just not.
And to do that repeatedly, overand over again and nobody sees anything.
Even with survivors.

(59:29):
No, it could be like that. It'sso bonkers.
So by my count, I think it's ten victims
being attacked with an ax out of 12that were likely killed.
So that's that's why it's the axmurderer of Austin is an ax was used for
if not all of them. Most of them.
Most of them. Yeah.
Now, during the attacks, this is the thingthat actually creeps me out the most

(59:50):
when you think about it.
During the attacks, the the killer
actually interacted with two young boysand they were fine.
They were left without being attacked.
One was eight,
a guy named Douglas Brown,and he actually called the killer
a big, fat African-American manas the way he described them.

(01:00:11):
But again, there's people are describingthis guy in so many different ways
and the killer covered up.
The kid with a blanket was like coveredhim up with a blanket before the killings.
The other child was Eula and JamesPhillips, two year
old Thomas,and he was sleeping with his parents.
When it happened.
The killer came in and gave him an apple,
kind of like distract themand occupy his time.

(01:00:34):
Yeah, that that's so freaky.
That that's so bizarre.
And the fact that they're both boys.
So he's clearly targeting women. Women.
Yeah.
And younger women to two of themwere daughters, right?
Presumably they were young.Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
And then it just stopped.
The attacks just stopped.
Yes. So they stop. There is.
There's a show on PBScalled History Detectives.

(01:00:57):
And this is, I don't know, ten years ago,something like that.
Someone that was working forthat show has a theory that it's a guy
named Nathan Elgin, who was a 19thAfrican-American cook in town.
And the reason the if it is him,
the reason they the attacks stoppedis because
I think it was in Januaryof the following year in 86,

(01:01:18):
that he was actually caughtattacking a woman with a knife.
And the police were there.
They chased him and there was a kerfuffleand they actually shot him and he died
the next day.
I don't know how true that is.
I would like the reasonthis is still unsolved
is because he can't100% pinpointed on this guy.
Some of the local
investigators just claim he's justhe was just drunk and a bad guy.

(01:01:42):
He wasn't. It's not,you know, a different M.O. again.
Yeah.
Somebody that's strategically targetingpeople as a serial killer
and someone that's
just a very aggressively violent personthat loses his temper and whatever.
Still a very bad guy,but it's just a different scenario.
So that's why some people don't don't 100%say it's him.
But it could have beenand that may be a reason.

(01:02:04):
And they do kind of say that somebodythat does
this really only stopswhen they get caught or they die, right?
Get shot or die. There are
there are some people, though, that claim
that there is this psychological thingthat does happen with some serial killers
where they just reach a pointand it's like they that the gratification
they're getting out of it changesso they no longer do it.

(01:02:26):
So there are some killers in history.
There are very specific examples of somethat just stop.
They don't like slow down, they just stop.
So it's I would say it's three things.
I would say they get killed,they die, or the rare ones that just
mentally something triggers in themthat's a little different they stop.
I guess that's kind of what happenedwith the Golden State killer, right? Yes.

(01:02:46):
Yeah. Got to just stopjust stopped and lived his life. Yeah.
And some people,depending on what your theory is
on like the Zodiac Killer,because it's not someone that
some people think it is,it could have also stop.
Yeah, there's a number of examplesout there of that. That's crazy.
So Austin, the city of Austin
was basically terrified even afterthe killing stopped for decades.
And this is just a nerdy history thingthat is so me

(01:03:08):
but something I came across that I loveis Austin
bought these things called moon towersfrom the city of Detroit.
They're hundredsand hundreds of feet high.
They're basically just big lights.
That light a city pre,you know, street lights being everywhere.
And I think some of them are still aroundAustin
as like historic monument kind of things.

(01:03:30):
But they bought some moon towersfrom Detroit and they would turn them on
and there's actually like local newspaperstuff from the time,
even though this is ten yearsafter the killings when they did it,
but even still, ten years later,a lot of people would comment
in the newspapers of womennow feel comfortable to walk outside.
So because there's light. There's light.
That is fascinating. It is. It is.

(01:03:52):
And as as per my guess, I'mgoing much longer than I expected today.
So I apologize.
Don't apologize.
This is so cool, so fascinating to mebecause I've honestly,
of all the stuff that I have readand no, I have not heard of any of these.
Oh, good, good. Oh, that's fine.
That's what I love.
I wish, you know, I yeah, some of theseI will have to do longer episodes

(01:04:14):
about one day just because they arethey are so fascinating.
You know, like Mary Cotton rings a bell,but yeah.
Yeah.
You know,not to the extent of all of that.
Yeah, yeah.
And hers.
I had to,
I had to skip like most of my notes,as you could tell, because I was like,
I should married other kids because I waslike, we'll be here all day if I read
that report.

(01:04:34):
Yeah.
So our next unsolved case is the Denver
Strangler of 1894.
And this is this is so sad to say, but
and maybe have had only killed
three people, which seems like,oh, this is basically like a good guy.
After everybody we've talked about today.
Getting really low body count,he's practically like, yeah.

(01:04:58):
A saint.
So the Denver strangler, this took inthis all happened pretty quick.
This is a matter of like two,two and a half months.
And Denver was a pretty big city for 1894.
In the West,there was 100,000 people in it.
And the the first victim was a womannamed Lena TAPPER,
who is a French, quoteunquote, sex servant.

(01:05:22):
So, yeah, I would the way
I kind of explain this to myselfanyway is like a very high end escort,
like more than just like a Jackthe Ripper woman
wandering the streets hopingshe can pay for a room for the night.
Is this is like a high end escortkind of stuff.
She's not on Craigslist, as it were.

(01:05:42):
Right? Right.
And she's a mistress to a local guynamed Richard Dimity,
which I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.
So peopleI know this case better let me know.
And she was found strangled to death
in her bed, in her house,a 1911 Market Street in Denver.
She was part of a groupcalled the Macro or,
I don't know French so level killerdeal more.

(01:06:07):
That was believable.
Oh, goodness.
Believable.
And yeah.
So she's she's a sex workerstrangled in her bed.
And this is around September 3rd.
And I don't know muchabout the investigation, so I don't know.
It's a sex worker.
And historically, policedon't put too much effort into those.

(01:06:29):
So but I can't say for certain.
The next victim was Marie Conti.
So she was a member of the samesort of sex group, high end sex workers.
I could not find her address anywhere.
But a newspaper had found fromthe time said that her house
was in the same row of housesas the other victims.

(01:06:50):
So think all the victims I know two ofthem at least are on the same street.
So she might have also been on the samestreet or nearby, so all in the same area.
And she lived with her boyfriend,Tony Sandor.
And Tony, the story goes thathe fell asleep and he was
when he awoke, he found in the bedroomthat she was dead, strangled
and a cord was founddug into her flesh around her neck.

(01:07:15):
Yeah.
And she was a lot of money was missing.
Like apparently they only found likeless than a dollar in her entire house.
And she was well-off.
She was a high end sex, which she had.
She was doing well for herself.
So the fact that they didn't find money,they think theft is part of the
the motivation to these murders.

(01:07:37):
Police started just arresting people.
They were like, hey, you, come here.
You might be the person I get.
So I think they arrested five men total,
including the first victim's lover,Richard Dimity.
Okay.
And all men ended up getting releasedbecause there's not enough evidence.
It definitely has the feeling of like,yeah, you.
You're nearby.

(01:07:58):
You're right.
Something I'll stick.
Yeah, maybe they'll stay.
The third and final victim is a Japanesewoman named Kiku Yama.
And again, she lived on the same street.
I think she lived at 1925.
There it is, 1925 Market Street,so very close to Lena TAPPER,
the first victim.
She had only lived in Denverfor about a year.
She moved to the U.S.

(01:08:18):
to go to the world's fair in Chicago.
The famous, famous World's Fair.
Oh, yeah, that was.
And yeah, she stuck in the States andthen eventually moved to Denver that year.
And on November 13th she went to bedwhen her boyfriend Amy took a walk
and Amy came home from the walk and foundKiku on bed with a towel around her neck.
But she was still she was like gaspingfor breath so he didn't know what to do.

(01:08:42):
So he runs outside.
He grabs neighbors.He's trying to get somebody to help.
A police officer is nearby, overhears themso he the police officer comes to
they go inside.
And by the time they're back inside,she's dead.
They noticed that everythinghad been rummaged through.
Like drawers are open, doors are open,closets are open, everything's so again.
There could be a motivation of theftinvolved with these killings.

(01:09:03):
And Amy, the boyfriend, gets arrested.
Of course, there's. No evidence, though,
so I don't think any of that sticks.
Of course, thethere are some kind of usual suspects,
the people that write about thiscase, Richard,
the boyfriend of the first victim,I don't know enough about this
to really say whether or not, however,he felt that is the right person.

(01:09:27):
I was going to say the right thing.
Richard actually was prosecutedfor the crimes.
Oh, he was acquitted.
There's not enough evidence there.
But the strange thing about his caseis he moved to Brazil immediately
after he was acquitted.
That's a red flag.
It's a red flag.
But what I tried to look upand I could not find to listeners

(01:09:49):
if anybody out there has the information,a study of change at gmail.com.
I wanted to find outif he had already moved away
while the other murders took placebecause they happen to. Be
named in question.
It may not have been because they happenedkind of quickly together.
So he there may not have been enough timefor the trial or whatever,
but it still is something worthlooking into in terms of like,

(01:10:10):
was this after everybody died or not?
There was also a guy named H.
Mellor who was cut stranglinga woman and was about to cut her
similar to the previous casewe talked about.
Police didn't even pinall the murders on this guy
because there's like nowhe's just a bad dude.
Is he just a bad dude?
I don't. It's like a different M.O.

(01:10:31):
Like he was drinking a lot,you know, just a
violent, obnoxious dudethat should be arrested for other things.
But he kill other women,
especially because he was about to cut hercutting was not involved.
Not a part. Of his murders.
So, yeah, that's that's just my thoughts.
So to wrap up this evening,we're going to move on.
This is actually a case I do want to doa bigger deep dove and a story on,

(01:10:53):
but it's the Tims torso murdersalso called the Embankment murders.
Everything has multiple names on today'sepisode.
Tim's torso murder.
Yeah. And Tim's.
This is the Thames River in London, so.
T got it? Yes. Yeah.
And what I have always loved aboutthis case
is it happens at the exact same timeand in the same area of Jack
as Jack the Ripper.

(01:11:13):
So this is where Jackthe Ripper makes a comeback.
In our case,
some people put the two things togetherlike, Oh, there's dismembered
women in one hand and cut upand mutilated women on the other.
They're the same killer. It'sall in the same area.
I don't believe that.
Same as even in investigators at the time.
You know, the props that they should get,they didn't even put the two together

(01:11:34):
because they're so drastically differentguys so near the same time,
but they're very different.
Well, it's easy to think whypeople would want to put them together.
Oh, yeah.
As disturbing as it isto think about the fact
that there's somebody out therebutchering prostitutes and, whatnot,
it's even more disturbingto think that's happening.
And there's somebody else out there.
There's somebody else doing itat the same time,
in the same fucking place like that brutal

(01:11:57):
man man got London.
And in Victorian England there's a place
and it was all smoky and terrible backthen.
Da sleazy and.
Yeah, not, not,not a good place to live at the time.
At the time. I love London. It'skind of my favorite scene. But yeah. Yeah.
So I don't want to

(01:12:17):
go too much down the rabbit hole in thisbecause I don't have all day.
But yeah, the killings that are happeningat the same time as Jack the Ripper,
the there are four common
that are like almost like Jackthe Ripper has the canonical victims.
This is similarly like four canonicalvictims of the Tim's torso murders.
Only one body was ever identified.
Oh, so the Tim's torso killer,

(01:12:41):
he dismembered his victimsand dismembering.
Because I'm a nerd.
Nerd enough person that I was like,let me get my definitions straight.
So actually. Exactly. Does that entail.
So it's the act of cutting,ripping or tearing or pulling or otherwise
disconnect limbsfrom a living or dead body.
Okay. Yes.
And there is a psychological differencewith killers that dismember versus

(01:13:05):
like the severe mutilationwith Jack the Ripper.
So, again,just kind of different different imposed.
Right.
Also, none of the like sexual organswere cut up and stuff with the Tim's
torso murders, which is basically whatJack the Ripper did like that.
That was his that was his target. Yeah.
So these cases are so strangeand disturbing on their own

(01:13:26):
that they all kind of have their ownnames, like each victim's killer.
So there's the reign him mystery,the Whitehall mystery,
the murder of Elizabeth Jacksonin the Pynchon Street torso murder.
And they're all likely the same killer.
Well, Whitehall was the area of Jackthe Ripper. Yes.
That was Whitechapel.But I think. It's. Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah.
These all not far from

(01:13:46):
Whitechapel in my under my, my very L.A.
brain understanding of London.
They're all in the same area. Right.
So the first I think this is the firstit's the random mystery.
This is 1887, and the remains of a bodywere found in the Thames River
and it was found by workers.
So they were likely like factory workers.
They were all like along the riverand they found the body.

(01:14:06):
No cause of death could be determinedbecause even though they found other body
parts later on they found the torso.
First they found other body parts overlike the next month or two in the river.
And they were all connected,like surgically.
They were a surgeon, not surgically,but a surgeon was able to say like, Oh,
these are all the same body.
Yeah,they couldn't figure out what killed her.
I know she was dismembered, but like,she could have been killed before that.

(01:14:29):
And that helps in investigating.
But they couldn't tell
because they're so cut upit was just hard and time had passed.
It was really. There was no head.
No head. That is correct. Yeah, no head.
So then there is the Whitehall mysteryin 1888
and I think this began in September
where dismembered remains are found.
This time it'sthree different locations in the city.

(01:14:52):
The famous part of this story
is that I think it's the left legthat was found not in the river,
but actually on a plot of landthat was about to become Scotland Yard.
So it was found a placethey build. Scotland Yard.
Yeah, that'show I actually found out about this.
I think I heard that in a Jackthe Ripper documentary.
So pretty, pretty ironicthat the famous police headquarters

(01:15:12):
would be builtright on top of where this leg was shot.
And then other parts of the
body were found along the riverthrough like September of that year.
And these. Still early? No head?
I don't think so.
I didn't write that down,but a pretty sure no head.
And again, these were able to be matched.
It's like all one victimand Elizabeth Jackson is next.

(01:15:34):
Obviously, they identified herbecause there's a name to the story. Yes.
And this is on June4th, 1889, the following year.
And her torso was found in the ThamesRiver.
More body parts are found along the riverthe next week.
And this one's like in my understandingof the case
cut, up and dismemberedmore than the other ones
because they found like a liver,a leg, a part of a torso,

(01:15:56):
like there's lots of partsthey end up finding.
And even though they couldn't find head,
they were still able toID her through other various methods and.
Replaced her liver.
Some would say, Yeah, I know that liver.
She this is the really terriblepart of this story is she was pregnant and

(01:16:17):
she was a homeless prostitute.
So again,
this is where a lot of the connectionswith like Jack the Ripper come.
And saw.
Next is the pension st torso murders.
This is in September of 1889,the same year and a policeman actually
found a torso under a railway archat Pigeon Street in Whitechapel.
The sinking, which makes perfect sense,is that whoever this was

(01:16:40):
was killed somewhere else,
and then this part of her body was dumpedin that spot. Mm.
Genitals, not wounded, anything like that.
Again, just to.
Not connect it directly to the Ripper,because this is Whitechapel
where this is found there.
This one has a lot of rumorsand speculations,
a lot of like locals are like,I know who did it. It's funny.

(01:17:00):
Like, everybody's, like,pointing fingers at people.
None of them are confirmed or
deceived.
Disproved, like
they're all just local speculationwhere can read about a lot of those?
There are two other victims that happened
before 1872 ish.
There's a dismembered womanfound in London.
Oh, also in 1884, another woman

(01:17:21):
and then some modern writersconnect it to a murder in Paris.
That happened in like 1902 or 1903.
I don't have enough to have an opinionone way or the other.
Yeah, it does seem like a big jump,but that is the story of the torso.
Tim's murder.
So happening at the same timeas Jack the Ripper.
Man, you may not know this,but I'm wondering something.

(01:17:42):
You know, the dismembering ones alwaysare intriguing because a lot of them,
for example, the Black Dahlia,which was never solved
per officially there is a surgical.
Yes. Element to it. Right.
It's like somebody that knows how to dothat.
Has a level of knowledgethat your average murderer does.

(01:18:03):
Yeah. Is that the case with these?
That is the case with this one,specifically with this one.
And I buy that more, especiallythe third victim who was so cut up like,
yeah, it doesn't seem likethey're hacking and slash it.
It seems methodical and like if I had thisa weird thought to have very macabre,
like if I had to dismember a body,I literally wouldn't know what to do.

(01:18:25):
I'd be like, exactly. Things.
So I do think this one is very trulysomeone had to know
either medical knowledge or it
my brain jumps to like a butcher,but even then, like
you're not dealing with human bodiesall the time, so there is a difference.
So in the tools.
The tools see the Jackthe Ripper case, people always talk about,
like a lot of the investigators would say,it's got to be it.

(01:18:47):
Even one of the prominent theories of Jackthe Ripper is that, doctor,
I don't I've never even when I was a kidlearning about Jack
the Ripper, I was never like, Oh, yeah,it had to be a doctor because of all that.
Because that just seemedthat seems more slash and crazy.
That's what I would say.
Yeah. Again, that's just me.
I'm not an investigator.
I'm not a medical person, so I don't know.

(01:19:07):
But like, yeah, I have never really.
But I knew that with Jack the Ripper.I think it could be anybody.
But yet these I think someonesomeone had to have knowledge
about how to dismember a body,I would think, you know.
I mean that's intense.
Very intense. So intense.
So interesting.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so that is all our cases today.

(01:19:27):
And I just want to, again,kind of reiterate what I said
before we get into the unsolved ones is
I didn't come in todaybeing like I have theories on these.
It was more about these arethese are just fascinating cases
that I think get overlooked
that I think should be looked atby not just fans of true crime,
but even like criminologists
that do like to go investigatehistorical murders and crimes

(01:19:51):
because there may be enough thereto actually start to pinpoint
some of the suspectsfor the unsolved ones.
You never know what can happen.
So I do think they need more attention.
Jack the Ripper gets all all theall the credit.
Gets all the glory.
It gets all the glory.And I agree with you.
Like lookinglooking at something like this last one.
Okay. Yes, there's 100.

(01:20:12):
No, Denver was 100,000 people.
London was at the time. Oh, yeah,oh yeah, yeah.
It's large.
Oh yeah.
But you have to be able to weed,weed some things down.
Right.
Like look at who are the who would havethe knowledge, who was in the area.
Obviously this isn't something that we do,but it seems like somebody now
whose mind thinks differently,who can track things differently,

(01:20:34):
there's got to be a wayto come up with some viable.
And you never know nowadays with,you know, DNA and all of that stuff.
Some of these cases may and againI just did cliff note kind of stuff
for these some I've I've investigatedor researched more than others today
but I haven't gone in
deep enough to find outlike are there still bits of clothing

(01:20:55):
or potential murder weapons?
I know some of the bloody bender one
because that's the one I'm diving in for,for future episode.
That one, they still have some ofthe potential murder weapons in museums.
So it's like, is there anything we can doto find DNA with any of these things?
Is there old newspaper articlesthat connect something
that the newspaper hasn't been found?

(01:21:16):
So it has been digitized and it's on some,
you know, back in a filing cabinetand a city record somewhere.
Absolutely.
A Lot of the Jack the Ripper stuffbecause it is such a popular case.
A lot of the old lettersand things are saved.
So like, what about some of these others?
But some stuff exists. There has to be.
Yeah, yeah, you would.
But who's got the timeand the resources? Right.

(01:21:37):
And somebody has to really dedicatethemselves to that.
It's sort of Elon Musk buying Twitter.
He should, it's my opinion,but he should just, you know,
put a lot of that money of his stuffsolving cold cases.
Stew, I'd be way more interested.
It would be.
Think of all he could do so well
on all the documentariesthat would be made after all right.

(01:21:58):
Yeah, I would watch every single one.
Yeah. To Netflix and go back.
Yeah man. It would be it would be amazing.
It's fascinating.
Yeah, it is. It's very fascinating.
And these are these also show
the variety of the crazysort of psychotic nature of humans.
Like all of thesehave very different motivations.
All of these have very differentpotential mental illnesses

(01:22:22):
that either weren't diagnosed or can't bebecause it's been too much time.
And and also investigatorseven investigators,
I think, get influenced by,you know, politics and bureaucracy.
And we got to make surethe whole city is calm
and they don't think someone'sgoing to kill them.
So they make decisions that aren't

(01:22:43):
always in the best interestof actually solving the case case.
And I do think back then,
I think
were harsher on investigatorslooking back into the past.
Because they.
Really didn't knowwhat they were doing back then.
Like you really did have to catchsomebody red handed back in those days.
Yeah. They didn't have tools.
No No, but it isit still is disappointing that

(01:23:05):
some of these investigators weren'teither more open minded
or more aware of it just taking bettercare of crime scenes and stuff.
Like they,you know, they weren't great at that.
So anyway, I'mrambling on about the stuff, but.
I think it's fascinating though,in comparing the way you did it with
comparing the solved cases versusthe unsolved cases.
I mean, even the solved cases,they just took people's word

(01:23:27):
and they're like,Oh yeah, I did that a couple hours ago.
The dead people. Great.We're going to hang you now. Yeah, yeah.
The end closed the book. That's it.Yeah. Yeah.
That would never happen today.
No, and nor should it as much as I dothink the Kelley's all probably should
been,
you know, sentenced and everything elseterrible should have happened to them.
It's like,yeah, mob mob justice is not a good thing.

(01:23:48):
And study them, find out why they did it.
Yeah, I know why they did it.Let's make sure no one else.
And heading west stops by some cabinwhere they can get murdered so easily
because there's literally no law outwhatsoever.
But like, find out what's going on.
Yeah, and it's interesting.
The Bender episode.
Yeah. Everybody listening, please.
If you want to hear that,it'll either be next week

(01:24:10):
when hearing this episodeor two weeks from now
because it's the holidaysand I've been sick
and my whole family's been sick,so I'm just moving slow.
So subscribeto make sure you get caught up on that.
But the Bender one,I'm doing a massive deep dove on.
I can't wait. And it's it's fascinating.
And one of my favorite little talesI came across
is and it relates to this withwhy I'm bringing it up now.

(01:24:32):
But when the benders they escapedand people
are investigating the crime scene,their cabin,
there was a neighborthat was kind of friends with the benders,
kind of, I should say, even friendly,like not even like a good friend.
But he was also German.
The benders were German, so they hung him
because he's and knew themand was like friendly with them.

(01:24:52):
So they're like blaming him forall the murders and they didn't kill him.
Luckily he did not die.
But it's just like that mob justicekind of stuff.
It's like you can go down some bad,bad places.
That it I.
Like that
that is an innocent manthat you're just hanging
because you're mad and he's also German.
So yeah, it is.
There's some terrible stuffthat can happen.

(01:25:14):
Oh, humans, aren't we?
Great Britain is wacky,wacky, wacky humans.
I will say that also of the reasonsthat I like to read about this
stuff and study this stuff is it reallymakes me feel good about my own life.
Yeah, yeah.
When I feel like I'm messedup, I'm like, Oh, no, I'm.
Yeah, I'm fine.
I'm so much better than some other people.
Yeah. Yeah, it is really sad.

(01:25:35):
Well, thank you for coming on this journeywith me and to thank.
You crazy.
Serial killers.
Yeah. And I'll.
I'll keep you informedbecause you should come back
for some other ones that I'm tryingto, like, piece things together with.
Like, I invite people
on what I think they'll like somethingor have insight into a topic.
So I'll have to
get you back for some some future,because I'm going in the right choice.
Oh, thank you.

(01:25:56):
But I am going intoI did like scary things over Halloween
just because of the nature of wheremy brain is at right now,
which is not a dark place.
I just went into research on Bender, sonow I'm just thinking of serial killers.
But It's like
I feel like the next six or seven episodesare all going to be serial killers.
So there's so many to go through.
There's so many different avenuesthat you can go right.

(01:26:18):
You can like you,you can do the solve, the unsolved.
You can do what's the guy,the iceman, the crazy person.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. He is mind blowing to me.
Oh, absolutely. I mean so many.
Yeah.
And even I want to do some
because similar to like the 1800s,the 19th century murders today.
Part of that is,you every now and then you come across

(01:26:40):
when there's a modern day serial killerthat gets caught,
there's going to be some article or blogor comment from somebody being like,
this didn't happen in.
The old days like this is, you know,they blame it on everything from
not enough Jesus in your lifeto too much Jesus to like video games.
Video games they blame all stuff.
And it's like no serial killershave always been around.

(01:27:02):
Human nature has not changed.
And there are terrible peoplefrom the past
and they're terrible people today.
We shouldn't just flag it with that.
We need to study these people
so we can understand this,and that is the best thing we can do.
And that is one of the reasonswhy I like looking at 19th century century
killers is like people think Jack theRipper kind of started the whole thing.

(01:27:23):
It's like,no, no, no. Yeah, no, he did it.
They've always been around.
So I want to do some episodesabout serial killers in sort of far off
countries, either in like Asia or Russia,like like get out of the Western
civilization world and do somebecause they're too they're everywhere.
They're everywhere.
And I think it's an interesting thingthat you can study at some point
the evolution of how people were ableto get away with things in the early days.

(01:27:48):
Oh, yeah.
The seventies was ripewith serial killing.
Right.
And how that's changed into now,how it's like more difficult
because of being on the gridand you know, there's cameras everywhere
you look and just scienceand technology has changed so much.
Just the evolution of of how peoplecan get away with evil things.

(01:28:11):
It's so interesting.
And on autobiography, my TV show,we did an episode about the murders
because they had a bunchof a bunch of cars.
It was all the carswith with the Manson's. And
again, I'm going on a tangent here,but one of the things,
because I've always been fascinatedwith serial killers, I went and filmed
and walking around like their ranchand like where they lived in the ranch.

(01:28:32):
I went to Spahn Ranch and went all aroundit, filmed all around it.
I even like went into the rock.
There's a famous pictureof the Manson family, like on this rock.
And like, I have picturesand video of me under the rock.
And I got to say, as I'm of thosepeople was like, Oh, this is so cool.
Like, I like dark stuff.I'm going to have so much fun.
Being there was unbelievably like,depressing like I did.

(01:28:54):
Like, I definitely kind ofwant to do more of that.
There's, there's an interesting part of methat's like, Oh, this is fascinating.
But like,
yeah, being there was not as quote unquotefun as I thought because I'm well.
I think that's the empathetic partof like, yeah, fangirling out in front of
the cameras now. It's
like, that is
my honor that the fucked up illnessthat actually came from that place.

(01:29:16):
Absolutely. Yeah. No crisis anyway.
Yeah. So you got to count,you got to come back on its way.
When I will.
Ask me any time.
I'll even do homework if you need.
Oh yeah. Yeah. And thank you.
Yeah, of course.
Going to go like doom scrollsome puppies and kitties or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was fascinating. And I did.

(01:29:36):
I took notes and nice looking intosome of these a little bit more too.
So thank you so much.
Thank you, Bridget. Thanks, Michael.
And that'll do it for today's show.
Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.
This is the week of Thanksgiving.
I hope everybody is enjoying the holiday
and I am very thankful for all of you,our listeners.

(01:29:58):
This is still a brand new showand something they just started from
from the pure joy and fun of wantingto share these kind of stories.
And I am I'm just so thankful and grateful
for the feedback and the attentionthat I'm already getting.
I cannot thank you enough.
I can't confirmsince I hung up with Bridget
that our next episodeis going to be two weeks from today.

(01:30:20):
It will be a deep dove on the bloodybenders, the bloody bloody benders,
which I'm very excited about.
So to stay up to date
to make sure you don't miss that episodemake sure to subscribe, rate review
or follow us on Instagramat is study of strange
and as usual,if you have comments, ideas, things
you want to share with me,reach out a study of strange at gmail.com.

(01:30:40):
I would love to hear from you.
And also I've mentioned in the last fewepisodes I am compiling personal stories,
personal personal accountsfrom people that have witnessed
or seen an unidentified flying objectfor a future episode.
So please reach out to me, send mean email, a study of strange at gmail.com.

(01:31:00):
I would love to hear about it.
I will leave it for that tonight.
Make sure to check out our show notes,our website stage, strange dotcom patriot.
And there's going to be some new contentat the beginning of December on there
and happy Thanksgivingand thank you and good night,
everyone.
I wanted to take a secondto let you know about Audible.
This is an advertisementthat I may make a tiny commission,

(01:31:23):
but I'm only going to promote
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I use it literally every day.
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Audible membership gives all membersa chance to discover new shows,
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(01:31:45):
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