Episode 201 - A Real Gum Job

From arsenic to antifreeze, we're diving deep into the dark world of deadly doses. Get ready for tales of twisted intentions and silent killers. This episode is toxic!

You can check out Murder and Such here!

Research links below!

The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law - "Arsenic, Familicide, and Female Physiology in Nineteenth-Century America"
Alexandria Gazette - "A Terrible Confession"
Morning Journal and Courier - "A Modern Borgia's Deeds"
The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer - "A Woman Executed"
"Periodic Insanity as Illustrated in the Case of Sarah J. Whiteling, and Others" by Alice Bennett, MD
Murderpedia - "Sarah Jane Whiteling"
Medium - "Sarah Jane Whiteling: The Wholesale Poisoner"

BBC News - "Patricia Dagorn: France's 'Black Widow' jailed for poisonings"
The Guardian - "France's 'black widow' jailed for 22 years after killing two elderly men"
Pulse - "France's 'Black Widow' has prison term cut on appeal"
South China Morning Post - "'Perverse' woman who seduced and murdered old men is jailed for 22 years in France"
The Guardian - "France's 'black widow' on trial for killing two old men for their money"
Getty Images - "Files in the case of Patricia Dagorn"
New York Post - "How 'black widow' became the femme fatale of the French Riviera"
The Times - "Black Widow of Côte d’Azur robbed and poisoned lonely men"
RFI - "'Black Widow' gets 22-year jail term for poisoning wealthy old men"

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Their arrivals unspeakable. I'm not doing.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
They did want bother. It's the living. You gotta worry
about something.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
If I couldn't keep them there with me whole, at
least I felt that I could keep their skeletons.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hello and welcome to the Bad Taste Crime Podcast. I'm
VICKI I'm Rachel, and we're back. They're very exciting. A
couple of episodes, Oh my gosh, it has been a jery.
It has. We have not stopped believing, Oh my gosh.
But now we are back to our regular programming. Yeah,
just the average you know, average every day murder, normal

(00:57):
true crime stuff. Yeah, you're here for single stories. This
is it. You'll be wed. Yeah, this one's for you. Yeah.
I'm gonna apologize in advance because we are currently recording
in a thunderstorm. Apparently.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, so if you hear any of that in the background,
we're sorry. It's probably my stomach, yeah or that.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah. How are you today, Rachel? I'm doing good. I'm
a little damp. Yeah. Oh yeah. You had to run
outside in the pouring rain a second ago. I had
to move my car. The things we do, I'm just sacrifice,
of course for the art for the art. Yeah, how
are you doing. I'm you know, I'm fine. I'm ready
for summer. Absolutely, I've been thinking I can't wait to

(01:36):
get on that lake, any lace, just any lake Yonder
on the Chattahoochie. Yes, yes, yeah, but I'm pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
We're putting smack dab in the middle of what Chicagoans
call fools spring. Yes, where it's like, oh, it's super
warm one day. In the next day there's snow. There's
snow warnings for tomorrow night.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Oh I know. Yeah. That makes me so mad, of course,
always coming to day that I have to actually drive
into the office.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
I know, serious, like goddamn it, it's like never yeah, nothing, yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
All right, Well we are going to head over to
the news rail.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Let's go there watching local news US.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Today we had fifty this week. Our news comes from
the Independent, it comes from well, Washington, d C. I think, well,
it comes from a couple of places. Okay, so this
is the headline that drew me to this piece of news.

(02:39):
And Atlanta Bagpiper died while scuba diving. The skeletal remains
of his missing son were then found on his property. Okay, yeah,
so on March tenth, a guy named Henry Franz Junior
died while scuba diving in Maui, Hawaii, and so his

(03:00):
family is like going to settle all of these affairs
at his estate and they discover inside of a treehouse
on his property the remains of who they believe to
be his missing son. My god, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah,
his missing son. Wow, twenty eight year old Hank France.

(03:20):
They say that he went missing four years ago. Police
are like, we don't really have a missing person's report
for this person, but they have gone and let's see
the remains are indeed Hank's okay, So the medical examiner
has said, yeah, they're confirmed to be head but they
luckily like because it was it was basically bones, but

(03:41):
there were some hair still left, so they were able
to run some DNA testing. And this honestly leaves more
questions than answers. Yes, that's crazy. You never checked the
tree els, I guess not. I to know, like when
he went missing, but they didn't report him missing. That's weird.
So yes, weird. Yeah, I don't know that. That's a

(04:05):
crazy headline. Yeah, they there isn't anything really i'mlike, whether
there is a connection or is a connection it's probably yeah, yeah, yeah,
because they just found these remains. But like, wow, pretty weird.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
That sounds like a documentary in the making.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
It's pretty weird. Yeah, be interested to see if they
update me see. But I'm curious, like how much investigating
they're gonna do with two parties dead and the owner
of the property dead, well, the property dead.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
I guess it'll depend on what the family wants to do. Yeah,
I'm sure if they want to push forward then it will. Yeah,
and they and they're going to have trouble determining like
cause of death, yeah, because they've been here for four years.
So like anyway, Yeah, so that's interesting. We're gonna move
on to Netflix and kill this week. We're talking about
honestly something that I when I was watching it, I
was like, you, particularly Rachel would really like this. It

(04:57):
is documentary called American Conspiracy The Octopus Murders. What It's
on Netflix?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Good? It looks at the death of It was in
nineteen ninety one writer Danny Cassillaro, and when he died,
he was doing an investigation into conspiracy theories of this
supposed international cabal that he called the octopus.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Oh, he's very like Hydra from Marvel kind of yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
And so the guy who is making this documentary then
sort of finds his He has this friend who sort
of has become obsessed with Danny Cassileiro over the years
and like his research and has kind of like picked
up the mantle of his research to see if you
can find out what was actually going on. Now, what

(05:53):
this has to do with is the US government and
the talks about this software called Inslaw. It was from Inslaw,
but it's the Promise software, which was kind of like
the first software that they had that was for let

(06:14):
me see if I can remember this. I think it
was like a case management like evidentiary type of softy
to track stuff for like Department of Justice. And then
they like screwed the guy out of payment for the
software and they just said, like where the government were
taking this, and they became the whole thing. But Castillo
was finding connections between Iran Contra, this Inslaw Promise thing,

(06:40):
the nineteen eighty October Surprise theory, and so there's been
a lot of questions around whether his death was actually
a suicide. I was just yeah, it got octopus, right
if he got activist exactly. Honestly, it was really really
interesting and like the connections are crazy because it spans

(07:01):
many years. It spans a lot of big, sort of
controversial things. Yeah, but it's heavy on conspiracy, which I know.
I know you love you love a good conspiracy. I
do too, Honestly, I do, as long as it is
somewhat believable. Right. There are some that I'm just like, no, okay,

(07:22):
that sounds absurd, but like, yeah, get down on a
good conspiracy. I like the one where they think Avri
Lavine's been dead for years and now she's like, I'm
here to tell you I'm still alive. Yeah, why would
they bother to do that? Or that Leah Michelle can't
read I like that one too. I think that one's
probably that one crags me up. It's my favorite one.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
I love that videos about her and they're like, well,
it doesn't matter if she can't read it. Yeah, she
just doesn't. But that I love because it's so absurd.
That's like okay, and like you know, it's not nice,
but it doesn't really hurt anymore, right, Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
I love it.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
So love those definitely check it out. It's called American Conspiracy,
The Octopus Murders. It's on Netflix's Good Good, Good Time
Waster and there's only four episodes. Oh that's good. That's
like a perfect This is that part of the show
where we say content may not be appropriate for our listeners.
This week we'll be talking about some murders. I have

(08:22):
some discussion of suicide. I don't know anything.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
I have some not the most brutal thing in the world,
but right I have, like I just vaguely touch upon it.
But there's a little bit of child abuse. There's a
little sexual abuse and child death. Yes, yeah, absolutely So
if you're not feeling up to any of those things,
okay this one.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
But that's okay. If you're still here, then today we're
talking about poisoning. Poison That girl was poison Yeah, so
we are talking about poisonings.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Why.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
I don't know. I just felt it, felt it called
to me. It's a good topic. It's pretty good. I
mean there's lots of them. Yeah, there is a lot.
And we talked One of the things we talked about
on one of our last episodes was that poisoning was
a very like feminine crime. Back in the day.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, the women's weapon. Yeah, aquatofauna. Do you know about that? No,
So there was an old I'm not sure of like
the time period, I think medieval, but an old like
Italian lady who would make this poison for women that
she would call aquatafana because women had no rights and
they could be divorced or whatever. So she would give

(09:31):
them these little tiny bottles and be like, yeah, here
you go, this will solve your problem. And they would
poison their husband, their abusive husbands. Yeah, and so she's
known as like kind of like a like a feminist
icon because it's like, what else are they.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Going to do? I mean, you know, you gotta work
the system, mirr In, I guess absolutely.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
So.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, we're talking about poisonings today, and I want to
start off with the tale of Sarah Jane Whiteling, aka
the wholesale Poisoner. Ooh, So, Sarah Jane Whiteling was originally
born in Germany. This is according to her. And oh,
I see a lot of people point that out, like,
according to her, she was born in Germany. So I

(10:10):
don't know if there's a question as to she's a
lot for nationality or like maybe she wasn't a very
truthful person. So they were like, hmmm, well, and this
is all happening in the eighteen hundred, so like, oh,
for the records and stuff are not all completely totally
solid and frankly, if you were born in Germany and
brought over as a child as a baby, like yeah,

(10:31):
then maybe you probably would have sounded like American, totally
spoke English without like an accenter you know what I mean, Like, yes,
who knows. But a lot of people were like, well,
that's according to her mm hm, a legendly neither here
nor there. Yeah, allegedly, but at some point she ends
up in the United States. Don't know if it was
with her family, if she like came over as an adult.

(10:51):
It was not totally clear. She's like I'm here, here,
I am us take me in, yes, ready, eat your
heart out in the United States. But in eighteen sixty eight,
Whiteling married Tom Brown in Iowa or yeah, Tom Brown
before moving to Chicago. They stayed there until a very

(11:15):
major event rock Chicago. Do you know what would have
been happening?

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Would it have been a warm and toasty you would
have certainly been a certain cows certainly, Yeah, that would
Beginning on October eighth, eighteen seventy one, a fire which
broke out at a barn belonging to the a Leary
family began rapidly burning, spreading for three days.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Crazy. The legend goes that it was a cow in
the barn kicking a like a lantern, like a lanternover. Yeah.
If that is true or not, will never know. But
it did start at the Oleary burn but yeah, literally
burned like, yeah, a shit ton of the city of Chicago.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
I went on the dog and they still have like
the buildings they'll show you that have been damaged, the
stones and stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
It's crazy. It was hairy, and it changed the landscape
as far as architecture goes, because like everything was made
of fucking wood at the time, and they were like, right,
and it was an incredibly dry season, and they were like, oh,
I guess we shouldn't make our buildings out of all
this flammable material. But maybe not advancement. That's how we

(12:26):
get technological advancement. Thanks large fires, Thank you fire. Yeah.
So this became known as the Great Chicago Fire, of course,
and right after this event, they had been living in
Chicago at the time that happened, and following this, they
were like, we're going to go We're going to get
out how you get it? Yeah, to do a more
fire retardant, and they moved to Philadelphia, which is primarily

(12:48):
made of brick. Great, there you go get us knocking
on all the buildings, like, oh okay, this is even
now if you go to Philadelphia, they still have the
original neighborhoods and a lot of it's still like the
brick paved right love and brick houses and buildings like
the original buildings and stuff. So like pretty, you know,

(13:10):
I feel like less fire.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Let's if it works, you don't fix it.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Now. This is when like the first little bit of
crime enters the family. So while they were in Philadelphia,
Brown White Whiteling's husband was rested and convicted of highway robbery.
Oh my god, don't do that. He was sentenced and
sent to Eastern State Penitentiary where it's the it's the

(13:36):
first penitentiary built in the United States. It's in Philadelphia.
If you are like an og lister. In episode ten,
we did an entire episode if you want to learn
more about it. I actually this is when like whoa
Wannie first moved to Philadelphia. Oh yeah, and I had
gone out there. That was one of the first places

(13:56):
we visited was Eastern State, penn And so I took
and did some recordings at the prison. It's very very cool.
I've since been back there because they were in a
hunted house. Yeah that I want to go out of
the penitentiary. It was very very cool. Been there for
that ghost tour. It was cool. It was It's a
very very very cool unique structure and the way that

(14:17):
they set it up because they set it up like
a like spokes on a wheel basically, so they had
like a central tower and all the jail halls right
like kind of thing. Yeah, so you could just look
down one and see what was going on. I've seen
so many like ghost investigations there. Yeah, like no, I
know it. They definitely I know. I've definitely done it
on ghost Hunters for sure. That was like the first

(14:39):
one that they that was a really good investigation. Actually
they are good. Yeah, like you have to admit they
are good investigators. Yeah. I was in the Ghost Uners
when it first came on TV. Absolutely make that so. Yeah,
so he gets sent to Eastern State penitentiary. Unfortunately for Brown,
he would die there also from I don't know, eighteen hundreds, yeah,

(14:59):
from the eighteen hundredths. But Whiteling was not a nun
and she was not gonna sit around absolutely, so she
went out. She met another man named Thomas Story, who
owned an oyster saloon, which we now call an oyster bar,
the same thing, you know, I love that oyster sister saloon.

(15:21):
They had the two of them had a daughter named Bertha,
but they never got married, which is adal very scandalous,
very so she was born out of wedlock. At some point,
they break up and Whiteling is forced to move again.
This time she meets a man named John Whiteling, who

(15:42):
she would eventually marry in eighteen eighty and at the
time of their marriage, Bertha was already nine months old,
which is very scandalous. Oh wow, Like just.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Like, is she showing her ankles too? I mean, maybe
that's how she got the man, you know what a
man catching.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Ankles, But I mean that would have been like the
fact that she was a single mom right and had
a child out of what I heard of, and that
a man, another man would be like, sure, I'll take
care of your kid from another die like that man
that stepped up so sweet. Yeah. Six years later, the
Whitelings had a son named William Willie C. Whiteling Willy.

(16:23):
The family continued on happily for another two years when
tragedy strikes. On March thirtieth, eighteen eighty eight. John Whiteling
dies suddenly. Oh my god. Initial reports from the attending physician,
doctor G. W. Smith, said the cause of death was
inflammation of the bowels. Now, these are all going to
be very like old time. He diagnosed right, just so

(16:43):
everyone's away, So inflammation of the bowels. Luckily for Whiteling,
her husband had taken out two insurance policies, I know,
one with John Hancock Financial and one with the Benevolent
Order of the Buffaloes, netting her awaping two hundred and
thirty dollars. And that would be it's around seventy six

(17:05):
hundred dollars today. Okay. Now they were living in like
extreme poperty. I was gonna say that was an extreme
post she could get. I mean he could get yeah,
And you know, it's hard to say like when he
took those policies out right, but the fact that it
was only seventy six hundred. I remember I was like, oh,
this has got to be so much money when I
put it into the thing, and I was like, like

(17:26):
two separate policies. Yeah, Seria's hundred is not that much,
but they were like living in extreme.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Poverty, so she probably got all they could get.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Wiling was questioned about her husband's sudden death,
to which she claimed that he had committed suicide.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Oh, it was by inflaming his own powels.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
I guess how you do it. Yeah, I mean it
was the eighteen hundred's and that was like sufficient enough
for an investigation. They were like, okay, if you say so,
oh bye, all right, thank you, Sorry to bother you man,
We'll let you get back to the kitchen.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah. That was the That was basically the length of
the d which is to go, yeah, yeah, do you
mind making me a tea before I leave?

Speaker 2 (18:09):
A very specialtyeah. Now. A little less than a month later,
Whiteling's daughter Bertha died. This time it was claimed she
had typhoid fever, as she had been in and out
of seeing the doctor in the days prior. Okay, Although sad,
Whiteling again was able to dry her tears on her cash.
Because Bertha also had a life insurance possibly to know

(18:33):
it administered by John Hancock Financial. It paid out one
hundred and twenty two dollars. She was about four thousand
dollars on a baby. Well, actually, I'm sorry, she would
have been like seven, eight nine somewhere in there at
the time of this. I think she was nine years old. Okay,
it seems like Whiteling's family is cursed at this point.

(18:53):
They are just like dropping like flies. What could it be?
And there is no possible way that they could be
any unluckier. Oh my god, Well then you have been
paying attention because another month later, her remaining son, Willy,
also died, this time having been diagnosed with congestion of
the bowels. Oh uh huh, lots of bowels. Yeah, they're
always like, oh, heavy pooch lately, that's probably it. Once again,

(19:18):
Whitley was able to collect on the life insurance policy
on Willie, which paid out forty seven dollars, which is
about fifteen hundred dollars today. That that was the baby baby,
so fifteen hundred dollars. Again, this was through John Hancock
Financial and Prudential Financial. Now having this many family members
die suddenly in rapid succession was pretty strange, even by

(19:44):
eighteen hundred standards. They're like, this is on and especially
when there is not like I mean, yes, they said
the daughter had typhoid fever, but it wasn't like definitive right,
and it didn't seem like there you know, was like
influenza going around the house, you know, like a transmittle
virus or something. They just these people were just like
suddenly dying. So police made a request to look at

(20:06):
the bodies. Now, this is from medium quote. When authorities
requested permission to examine the bodies, Sarah refused, citing a
previous incident where doctors allegedly began a post mortem examination
on her child, only to discover the child was still alive.
What So she was like, I'm not gonna let you
look at my Well then wouldn't you want them to?

Speaker 1 (20:29):
That's a really good point, just to be sure, Yeah, yeah,
what if they're still alive?

Speaker 2 (20:34):
What do you want doctor? But it was so traumatizing
to find out that somebody was still alive.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Right, She's like, that's not what was my plan? My plan,
I mean, that's not what I thought.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
What are you talking? What are you talking about? Who
are you talking about? I can't say anything. So yeah,
so she was like, no, you can't look at the bodies.
But police were not the only person only people suspicious.
The multiple deaths also raised the eyebrow of the corner,
who officially ordered an investigation at that point, but detectives
immediately exhumed the bodies and sent them to a man

(21:05):
named Professor Kffman, who examined the bodies and determined that
they all contained large amounts of arsenate. Ah, there you go. Obviously,
faced with a poisoning, authorities immediately arrested Whiteling and placed
her on a suicide watch once in custody, because she
was like, I'm gonna kill I have nothing to look for.

(21:26):
I'm gonna kill myself, right understandable.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
They're like, nah, you're gonna go to this trial girl.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah. In some places, Whiteling was said to have had
a physician visit her in prison due to quote nervous prostration.
Oh she is a very old timey diagnosis used to
describe symptoms of profound fatigue, weakness, insomnia, headache, irritability, anxiety, depression,

(21:53):
difficulty concentrating and physical eggs and pains.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
That sounds like my every day That literally just.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Sounds like being alive. I am likely so you're just
describing like existing during a day life. Well, good news.
You have nervous prostration. Oh thank god. Yeah, go take
that to your doctor and be like, listen, someone told
me I had nervous prostration.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Can about nervous? They'd be like, I'm not the doctor
for that, So you probably don't have one of those, yeah, doc,
because I got it removed.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, right now. This is often attributed to chronic stress, trauma,
over work, lack of sleep, poor diet, or substance abuse.
Also again, just every day, right, just being alive. Now,
I want to read you this short article from the
June twelfth, eighteen eighty eight issue of the New Haven

(22:46):
Daily Morning Journal and Courier about what happened next because
I love an old timey article. Absolutely, it's a journey
like they're always really good. It's titled a Modern Borgia's
Deeds Sensational Disclosures of Poisoning made by a wife and
mother m it's title of the article.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
I almost did the borgeous girl. That's funny.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
There's a list of people who are like nicknamed Borgia. Yeah,
like that's that was like a category.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
On wiki God Forbid of women.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
I was like, wow, okay, yeah, right right, Oh my god,
what else did she have to do? There wasn't a cable,
So this is the article quote. A sensation was created
in the coroner's office today when Missus Sarah Jane Whiteling
confessed that she had poisoned her two children, a girl
and a boy aged two and nine years, and had
furnished her husband with the poison, with which she declares

(23:39):
he took his own life. Missus Whiteling's victims were her husband,
John Whitelang, her daughter Bertha, and her son Willie. The
family lived in poverty in the rear of number twelve
twenty seven Cadwallader Street, and the husband died on March twentieth,
the girl on April twenty fourth, and the boy on
May twenty fifth. Oh wow, Missus Whitelan detailed with my

(24:00):
newtness how she had poisoned the children. I gave Bertie
the first dose of the poison on April twenty firth first,
said she and on April twenty fourth she died. I
put one spoonful of the stuff in a glass of water,
and called the child to me and said, now, Bertie,
here's some medicine. You must take it like a good girl.
And I gave her a spoonful. It made her sick.

(24:20):
And when the doctor prescribed some powders to be given
in water, I bought the medicine, but gave her a
spoonful of the poison every half hour. It made her
so sick, and she suffered so much that I felt sorry.
And the day before she died, I stopped giving her
poison and gave her the medicine. But it was too little,
too late. Little Willie dies the same way. I had

(24:40):
the insurance placed on each child a short time before
they died. When asked if she had given poison to
her husband, the woman maintained that he had taken his
own life. I did not tell the doctor that he
had swallowed poison, she said, because the insurance policy said
the money would not be paid if the person committed suicide.
I killed Bertie. I was afraid to grow up in
sin as she was a bad child that had stolen

(25:03):
pennies from the neighbors and had stolen her teacher's pocketbook.
The boy I killed because he was in the way.
I am sorry now for what I have done and
want people to pray for me. Miss Whiteling's actions with
the result of an examination which proved conclusively that poison
had been the cause of deaths led to her arrest
on Sunday. There were several policies of insurance on the victims,

(25:25):
each being for a small amount, but a mounting in
the aggregate of three hundred and sixty nine dollars, all
of which she collected at quo, Wow, what a bitch. Yeah.
First of all, she was like, my nine year old
is evil, right, She's like stealing, She's taking people pennies again,
She's like, she's fucking nine, right, Like she's nine years

(25:47):
old and the boy was in the way, but in
the way of what her happiness. Get out of here,
I don't know. I'm gonna kick her ass. Whiteling would
later explicitly state the poison used was a and of
rat poison called rough on rats. She also admitted to
contemplating taking her own life, but decided against it as
she believed taking her own life would deny her admission

(26:09):
into heaven. Oh. She would also continue to maintain that
her husband took his own life.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Oh okay, so you think that they're just gonna be like, oh, yeah,
you killed your two children, but.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Like, mommy, we've been waiting for you. Yeah, fuck you.
Yeah right, push her off the edge. Also, yeah, even
if you get there, what makes you think they want
to see you? Yeah, they're gonna be like, get out
of here, like yeah, wild, no, dude, I know, lady sucks.
Wiling's trial began shortly after her arrest. At her trial,
her attorneys attempted an insanity insanity defense, claiming due to

(26:43):
her mental state, they would have to give her a
sentence of life in prison. The argument was pretty much
you in a laterally rejected by the jury, and she's
found guilty of first degree murder of Bertha. This is
the only one that she was tried with due to
lack of evidence on the other two case. This got
her death sentence, something that at the time was very controversial,

(27:05):
considering she was a dainty little woman like yeah, and
there were people who were like, you know, we fully
know that she did this, but you can't kill her,
Like we want you to release her because she's a woman.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Oh my god, that makes me.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Mad because she's a woman. Basically, yeah, stupid. Yeah. There
was this huge public outcry, particularly from women, to commute
her sentence, I know, which is wild to me, a
bid that was rejected by Pennsylvania's governor, who instead signed
the death warrant. Good. Just to add insult to injury,

(27:40):
Whiteling even inherited a small fortune from a deceased relative
in Iowa while she was in prison. What she couldn't
even get it, but she would have been rich.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Oh my god, I hate her. Oops, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
It's nothing ever happened with her husband or kids. She
would have like that relative probably would have still died.
All girl, she did it all for the money. Did
it all for the nookie man? That's stupid. Yeah. On
June twenty fifth, eighteen eighty nine, Whitelan was executed by
hanging at ten am. Before her execution, it was noted
in many places her calm demeanor as she believed God

(28:17):
would forgive her sins and she'd be reunited with her
children in heaven.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Blamp Blamp.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Sarah Jane Whiteling would become the first woman ever to
be executed in Philadelphia County. Wow, that's a good one.
That's the story of Sarah Jane Whiteling and her poisoning
whole fucking family. She sucks, she does such aversial opinions.
I don't like that, lady. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
So your topic was poisoning.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yes, very good. I like it.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
So for mine, we travel to the chic and sexy
country of France. Okay, according to my ancestry DNA report,
I'm six percent French. Okay, so I'm sure that explains
so much, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
I know so well. I mean I think it does.
I like cheese.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I yeah, but that's living in the Midwest. Okay, that's fair.
I was gonna say I like cheese and bread, but
that really is just it's just living in the Midwest.
That's fair. But I also, I will say I like
the skillful way that the French dealt with their billionaire
ruling class.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Love it, oh, yes, very efficient? Yes, yeah, I agree.
I agree.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
You know, maybe a resurgence is in order tree magna
fique France. They also love a good protest, I guess
do they love a good Have.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
You been seeing the farmers just like shoveling manures? That's
the best. Yeah, that is the French protest.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Yes, they do easier when you police don't have guns. Yes, magnetic.
France seems to be known worldwide as kind of a
nation that is, for lack of a better phrase.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Kind of fancy.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yes, fancy clubs, fancy food, fancy thin cigarettes, fancy bee.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Fancy thin mustaches. Yes.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yes, the Franche seem to have a special fondness for
the finer things in life, and today's subjects seems to
be no exception. I think it's cool that we both
picked women. Yeah, I'll be covering the case of France's
so called black widow, Patricia daygorn.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Ooh yeah, I mean poison is a women's game, right.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Like yup, it's I was kind of laughing because I
was looking up like the history of poisoning, and uh,
there was an article that alleged.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Like a really good like historical article that.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Was like, yeah, that was probably the first form of murder,
was poisoning of like not hitting people on the head.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
With you right, not literally killing Yes, people.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Makes sense, that's stupid picture somebody off her cliff like
hidden way of murder where it's like I didn't.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Do that, yeah, but I did. Yeah, maybe I don't know.
There's partly it's like there had to have been instances
of people out in the wild, like pushing people off cliffs.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
One percent with each other. He fell to each other
down the Holy Mammoth. Yeah, exactly, exactly, That's what I thought.
I was like, hello, yeah, so, yeah, Patricia clearly liked
the finer things.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
You know, she's French. In fact, she's gone with the flow. Okay.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
In fact, one of her sons, who is estranged from
her since she surrendered him and his brother over to
foster care when they were children, so they're both estranged
from her, described her as being quote obsessed with money.
There are many pictures of Patricia. Yeah, literally, there are
many pictures of Patricia that seems to validate his remark,
posing on board of a nice boat, for instance, with

(31:54):
a ryan toned Ryanstoned T shirt bearing the image of
Miss Marilyn Monroe. What time this this is in the
two thousands?

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Okay? Okay, oh my gosh, all.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Right, diamonds or girls best friends? Okay, Yes, Patricia liked money.
She also liked placing personal ads, suggesting that after her
divorce from the father of her two children. I mentioned
earlier that Patricia was looking for that special someone. When
I picture a romantic trip to France, I'm imagining long
walks along the river side, of course, revisiting the bread

(32:26):
and cheese idea from Rare right, And well, okay, honestly,
whenever my husband and I get to travel, we have
to squeeze in a ghost tour everywhere we go, so
you know, would be all up in those catacombs.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
But like, oh, I've wanted to see those catacombs for sure.
That'd be crazy.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
People who like break in there are crazy and like
just go on the regular tour.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
I'm scared. Did you have like fucking raves down there?
I know? Crazy? Not for me.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Well, with the types of men that Patricia was seeking,
a walk by the river might not have been her style.
A game of Canasta or a prune juice tasting.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
She's into the oldies, yeah, rich old guys, Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
She would specifically put out the personal ads saying that
she was a woman in her fifties who was alone
and who was looking for an elderly soulmate, a father
figure if you will. Well, yeah, but not for her
children who she abandoned. No, but just I mean, like
her for like daddy, she said, c Eddie, which she had, yeah,

(33:29):
which she had in space. She would describe herself in
these ads, asking for this I need an old man
to spend my life with, saying that she was a young, blonde,
successful business woman, which the last part wasn't exactly true
unless scamming old men out of their money is a
respectable business model.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
In the early twenty tens, the fifty year old Patricia
would meet at least twenty older guys through these ads,
so she would place personal ads on the paper. She
also used like a dating agency, and there were even
men who say that she just like approached them on
the street. Yeah, like, what's a hood, old guy? Okay,
your teeth out all right? She would be a real

(34:12):
gum job exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Oh all of that. This is the gum job Report.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, so at least twenty older guys, some of whom
would be in their wow nineties. Oh my god, I know,
and that's what I said too. But then I was like, okay, well,
who are we to judge? You know, maybe she likes
the company of older guys. Some of my celebrity crushes
are at least twenty thirty years old for sure.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Jeffrey Dean Morgan is fifty six, Matt Michelson is fifty seven,
Shaymar Moore is fifty two.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
I was kind of like, okay, girl, I kind of
get it. I think we should just let Patricia date
her way through France's nursing homes.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
And that's that.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Oh well, it would be if this were a different podcast.
This is the true crime podcast, not the dating podcast.
Why are we focusing on Patricia's dating habits because she
is murderer?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Of course? Of course.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
In twenty eleven, Francisco Philippone ooh, I knows the name,
eighty five year old retired bricklayer, which means he has
muscles as well, like, well had muscles, I'm into. Francisco
was found dead from a valium overdose, which at first
they were like, oh, he's you know, he's just passed

(35:23):
away because he was pretty old. One of them was
found like like pretty decomposed in their bathtub, so they
assumed they slipped and fell, and then yeah, check on them.
But then when they eventually did autopsy, wasn't right away. Yes,
then they determined that there was a ton of valium

(35:44):
and then one of Daigorn's other lovers, Michael Kneffel, was
found five months later in a nice hotel, also with
a ton of valium.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Oh jeez, what dead? And where was she getting this
consistent supply of valuume? You know why? I want to know.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
That's what I wanted to too. I don't know how
France works, but I looked into it a lot, and
it was just like, I don't know she had it.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
I don't know cool.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
I was like, okay, So I don't know if like
France is one of those where it's like I'm just
buying valume and it's fine. Or maybe she was doctor shopping,
which is what I assumed, and she would mess with
like their paperwork and stuff. So maybe she got them
prescriptions for value, you.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Know, and then overused it.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, with these international crimes, I find little things like
that a little difficult to track down. So I'm not
exactly sure. I would assume she was doctor.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Sure. Sure.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Even though Patricia was known to have been involved with
both men, initially there were no charges brought against her
because again, they were like, okay, it's natural causes. That's
kind of run in the mill. When you're dating old
ass dutes. Sometimes they die, but they found So there
was a man who she was dating who was at

(36:56):
one point talking on the phone with his daughter, and
she was kind of asking him about like, oh, you're
like dating this girl and there's like what's going on.
He's like, oh, yeah, she's helping me with all kinds
of like financial decisions, and she was like.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
That sounds bad. It sounds really sketchy.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, So she went to the house and found her father,
who was in his like late eighties, totally like confused,
super out of it. She knew something was wrong, and
she ended up taking it to the police. And by
this point the two bodies had already been found okay,
but she was not. The police were kind of like
looking at her, but they couldn't charge her with anything.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
There was something like directly correct it.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
They hadn't gotten the toxicologist stuff a suspicious relationship with these.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Right, okay exactly.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
So, But once the daughter came forward and was like
she's and he says that she's giving him drugs, like
what is going on, then they were like.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Oh, okay, yeah, got it. Okay, So they searched, they.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Did like another check into all of the properties where
the two dead men were found, and then where she
was living with this older gentleman who was found super confused. Yeah,
they found a ton of evidence, including IDs from the
two men who had passed and other IDs okay, health
insurance cards, medical and legal paperwork, all belonging to her

(38:14):
past lovers. Oh want a shit ton of value of course, now,
pat cardboard.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Box of value in her back closet.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Exactly, skin into little bangies now, patty girl, that's suspicious.
H But okay, maybe she was just like handling her
dates finances for them, That's exactly what she claimed. But
of course it turned out that she was certainly stealing
from these men, and not small amounts either.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Oh God.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Before Philippone's death, Daigorn had cashed a check from him
for the equivalent of like twenty five thousand, six hundred
dollars or twenty one hundred thousand euros. Okay, And when
they were like, why did he give you so much
money before he died? Like for what, she was like,
I was going to own a jewelry shop. That it's alone.

(39:03):
He's just so nice. Oh okay, Like yeah for sure, yeah,
for sure, Okay, that's weird. Like I said, they also
found a shit ton of valium.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Right, which is like an immediate red flag.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, oh that's the drug.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
According to the apptly named drug abuse dot Com, trademarks
of a valium overdose include dizziness, vertigo, uncoordinated movements, blue
lips or nails, blurry vision, and a confused mental state,
among other many unpleasant symptoms. Eventually you go into a
coma and you die.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, but you.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Can see how like she got away with it because
a lot of that sounds like sort of the typical
hallmarks of age.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
You're a little chic, You're That's what I was just thinking,
Like it would be very easy to just pass that
off as like, oh, he's got dementia at Alzheimer's.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Especially when you have a beautiful young woman to.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Speak for you, right right, Oh my goshh Yep.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Turns out Patricia was spiking her Wrinkly Lovers cocktails with
an excess of valium, which, as I stated earlier, would
leave them sickly and confused.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, they didn't even know.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
All the butter to steal tens of thousands of dollars
from them, she must have reasoned, probably Robert Vough ninety one,
a widower from Fragis Prase I don't know, said close
enough whatever, said that he nearly died after a brief
affair with Daygorn. When she went to trial, he came
to testify her. He's so cute. I have a picture

(40:37):
of him. Look how cute he is? So cute?

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, so cute, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, he's got like a cute little face. He kind
of reminds me of the grandpa from up.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah. I thought he looked like that too, little glasses.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
He just looks so sweet. So he made the forty
minute trip to come and testify at court. This is
a direct quote from him. He says about Patricia, she
was like a ray of sunshine in winter. When you
are with a younger woman, you know it won't last,
but you don't deny yourself the moment unless you are
a masochist. Interesting, I mean fair, I was like, fair, Like,

(41:15):
it's just so sad because it's like, wouldn't you just
hire a sex worker? Wants a fake relationship. Everybody wants
to do that, and sometimes those relationships are not fake, No,
totally totally, but it's just like.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Well, yeah, into that no, I totally Hey I'm not
I'm not going and I don't. I think most older
gentlemen would not, would not share turn away the company
of a younger woman. Understandable, understandable, but so as he
was living with her. He lived with her for three
months and he started to know this guy who came
to touch.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
By yes fox or vaw. He started to notice that
he felt sick and disoriented, and he was like kind
of watching her do all these financial things, you know, like, oh,
you're handling all my f I didn't really ask you
to fucking do that. Yeah, okay, maybe I should be concerned.
So and she kept telling him, Oh, don't go to
the doctor. Yeah, like yeah, you're fine whatever, And so

(42:09):
he secretly went to the doctor. The doctor tested him
found that he was like, you have a shit ton
of volume in your system.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Dude.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
He's like, I don't take vamium. He's like, yes, you
do so well apparently yeah, you're getting from somewhere. The
pharmacist was like, hey, this is what's going on, because
he was like, who do you live with? Oh my
fifty year old girlfriend. Oh what she doing right now?
Oh she's like going over my will dude, she's poisoning
you right, Like he was like, bro, and the pharmacist
joked that if he survived, he could write his.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Own romance noir. Horrible.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
I'm like, don't tell him to write a romance novel.
Tell him to call the cops.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
I mean also that. Yeah, but like after you call
the cops, then write a romance novel.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Well that's true, but just like call the cops first, yeah, first, son,
start writing your memoir this whole time, like this whole romance.
She had faxed like his lawyer to get all of
his assets, and even during court, she was still trying
to get money from him. Wow, Like he wasn't responding
to her, but she was calling like his like offshore baker,

(43:12):
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, isn't that messed up? That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
So she was initially sentenced to five years in prison,
which seems like it seems like they didn't have enough
evidence to convict her like of everything. Yeah, so they
just took everything they could get got her in for
five years and then eventually they did another trial and
she would be convicted of four poisonings, including the two deaths. Okay,

(43:38):
So there was Va who came and testified, And there
was another elderly man who show but did not kill
because he got away. They came and testified. So she
was convicted of those two and the two gentlemen who died.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Do you know if the two who survived, did those
happen after the two that had died one before, one after,
Because I'm kind of if she had one, even one
unsuccessful attempt at this, that she would keep going.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
So she is suspected of at least twenty to thirty
that's poisonings. But they can't prove it because how many
elderly people have died and their family would just go.
Maybe they didn't know that he had a young girlfriend.
Maybe he didn't tell them, and it's like, oh, he
just died in his sleep. Yeah, oh I thought he
had some money and it turns out he didn't. Oh Well,
that happens every day.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
It's kind of the like, I don't mean any offense,
but it's kind of the perfect crime, right to be honest, Like,
she really worked it out to where it would work.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Wow. So wow. I think probably quite a few of
them escaped. I'm just I'm just surprised that, like after
even if you have one or two people that are like, oh,
I found out you're trying to poison me, I'm gonna
go now, why would you keep going?

Speaker 1 (44:51):
So none of them went to the police.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, but even still, I don't know, maybe I'm too
rational for this kind of crime.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
I completely agree a lot of the like.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I don't have that criminal mentality to be like not
it's gonna work, it's gonna work. But like she was
a messed up lady. Yeah, I just think that like
after that, you'd be like, well, maybe somebody's gonna find
out and I should probably stop, you would think, But
I mean, this is this is just what she she's been.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
I didn't go to into I said earlier that I
had like a trigger warning for child abuse, and then
I didn't really go into it. But her her past
is pretty horrible. There's theories that her because she had
a mother and a father, the father abandoned her, and
then she had a foster father who it's almost certain
that he abused her. There's this weird thing and again

(45:36):
France is a different country, but he took her to
a nude beach when she was eleven, and there are
photos of her like that he took on the nude
beach that are suggestive. And then after France, that's very
That's what I think too, like and I'm not saying
like that's okay or anything, but I know, like they
have nude beaches and it's cultural there, but it's different

(45:56):
when you're like sixteen, right, and eleven years with your
foster father who you're not related to. Even frankly, even
sixteen is too young, but I know it's a culturally
different thing in like France and Germany, like saying countries, yeah, yeah,
they like to be in the buff, but like, hey,
there's a line. And then after right after that, he

(46:17):
abandoned her and she had to live on the streets.
She had a criminal life. She met her future husband,
the father of her two children, when she was like
twenty one, had pretty much been on the streets the
whole time. I think she kind of just jumped at it.
He abused her for many years. He was horrible, horrible
to her. She abandoned the children and just kind of
was like, I think this was the only thing she

(46:39):
knew how to do. It was like I'm just gonna
there's theories because a bunch of these men who they
found were named Robert, which was the name of her
foster father. I almost wonder if it was like a
like a physical thing too, like like they looked like him,
or it.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Was just old men in general. That's some major daddy issues.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Absolutely, okay, band fuck this guy in particular. One has
to wonder how many other elderly men fell into the
web of France's signature.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Black widow. Did you say that they when they found
the stuff at our house, that it had like multi
It wasn't just like the two that they correct. It
had like multiple people correct insurance information ideas.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
And they said like that kind of another like frenchy
cultural thing is like that. A lot of these men
who could have come forward were like embarrassed and they
were like a woman took advantage of me.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
That's just honestly, that's a man thing. It is a
man thing that is very much like a.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Male like you don't want to be masculated by women
take advantage of you. And a lot of the like
I read a bunch of like translated articles because there
are some like American articles about it translated some in French,
and a lot of them are pretty misogynistic. It's very like, oh,
could they woman do this sort of thing? And oh, well,
the men can't be that upset, like very that like very.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Massagistic, like this is what you get for dating a
younger woman.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
Yeah, there was one of these, and one of the men,
not the man who I showed you the picture of
the other man who testified a trial, had said that
he didn't he suspected that she was poisoning him, but
because they were having a sexual relationship he figured it
was worth it because he was old anyway. Wow, And
like I understand that, but that's such a misogynistic point

(48:21):
of view of like this is what this woman is for.
It's very gender rollsie, like you know what I'm getting
at completely, but.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
I mean kind of because really he's the one getting
taken advantage.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
No, no, no, I completely agree with you. But like the
way they were framing it, oh yeah backwards, yeah care
like yeah, so that's she's still in prison. I she
had an appeal like kind of recently, but she's still
in prison. Her whole defense was like nah, so they

(48:56):
were like no.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Okay, yeah she really don't like, yeah, I didn't do this.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
She was like I loved them and I don't know if.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
They took that. I don't know where that volume came from.
I don't know. I didn't have that. All that volume
you found in my house. That's not the same valume.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Those are tic TACs idiots.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
And of course she's also crying police, conspiracy and right stuff,
which normally I'm all over, but I'm like, no, girl, yeah, no, girl,
that she is still in a French prison and.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Yeah, fucking bug up here. Sorry. I was like, she
is a bug. No, she is a bug.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
That bugaboo, she's a parasite. Literally, yeah, yeah, well if
you uh.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
I mean, I guess, just don't poison people. Yeah, poison people.
That's not nice. Maybe instead listen to this podcast.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
My name is Hunter and I'm Haley, and we're your hosts.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Of Murder and Such, a podcast about true crime, serial killers,
and other dark subject matter. Join us while we fill
your ear holes with some craft, comedy and disgusting tales.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
You can now find us on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Pody.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
And all of your podcast or services.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
You can like us on Facebook, Instagram, and follow us
on Twitter at Murder as Such.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Hope to hear from you guys.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Sou bye bye all right, Rachel, that has been our episode. Yes,
another one in the books. In the books, so exciting.
I'm ready for an app man me. I'm good to
take one, but I'm ready for it.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
It's raining, It's time to snug it up.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Definitely don't poison people and if you need money, killing
people with poison is not like the.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Route I would go, like, just me personally, No, get bitcoin,
you know, I'm just kidding. Yeah, for sure, scam live
your life. On that note. Our sounded editing is by
tip Fulman. Our music is by Jason Zakshevski. Do you Enigma?
This has been the Bad Taste Crime Podcast. We will

(51:03):
see you in two weeks. Goodbye night.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
We left their.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Bodies over the hillsides along the highway head to see
still wearing.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
It was as if a wave of people washed over
West Town.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Wegether shoe heart Allow.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
People were wearing in some form or another