75. RE RELEASE Martha Wise & The Double Initial Murders

This week, Sarah goes old timey and tells us about a lady who just wanted more funerals in her life. Then Talysa ruins everyone's lives and covers the Double Initial Murders from Rochester, NY.
 
**TRIGGER WARNING** Talysa's case is about child murder. If you don't want to listen to that, no worries! Come back next week! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, I'm t Lisa and I'm Sarah. Welcome to the ship.
Show A half asked your grand podcast. So sorry about
that mouth noise. Did you hear it? I did have
been taking that one. You just say it more perfect
the first of the episode, Ladies and Gentlemen, Sarah.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I think I'm getting better at taking them out though,
so like we keep talking about them and then I
don't take that part out sometimes because I do the
same thing and then just like so we're talking about
somebody sing, but then.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
The ALM's nut there. I've done the same thing. Sometimes
we do say I'm a lot. It's very hard. If
you think that we say I'm a lot, just remember
that we take probably sixty five percent of them out. Yeah,
so you're welcome, quite welcome. It's like an English accent.
It's just my voice. It's just what I did with

(00:55):
my voice. How's your week?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
It was good last Thursday? I actually, like, I feel
I felt very successful because I had a whole day
without Connor, like Kenton wasn't home, Like I had a
whole day to myself. I got the house clean, I'm
off the floors. I finished a whole case in one day.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Whoa yeah, like soups.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Well, but yeah, and then Friday wee Kent and I
did a bunch of stuff around here, so another like,
so it just feels so good to be able to
get shit done without a child.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
In the way. Terrible that No, I mean it's true,
and you kind of forget how Yeah, I forgot how
nice it is like to be able to just do
stuff right and not have to worry about like what
he's doing and all of lunch and he's getting into
like yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
So and then Saturday was also a super nice day,
so we went kayaking and it was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
I saw those pictures. Yeah, we've had some fucking awesome
We have weather for upstate New York and November that's
definitely not normal.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
I know, Like we had that one snow and I
was so fucking miserable I was last week.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah it was. Yeah, it was like we had snow
and now it's like seventy four degrees out today. Yeah,
it's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I'm so freaking excited if I could just stay like
this for like ever, at like Christmas, like a good snow,
like one snow. I went a nice, pretty no white Christmas.
But other than that, she can go away. I don't
need no more.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Like that Christmas Eve. I would like it to all
be gone by the day after Christmas. Thank you, Mother Nature,
please and thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah. Other than that, we really haven't done. I mean
just yeah, I feel I feel very refreshed by having
like some time to myself. Like last week, I felt
super like just drained and tired. And I know I
broke you during you cake broke me. I don't even know,
like I don't understand. I don't know what part of it.

(02:51):
But at one point, for some reason, I just broke
and I could not handle it.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
And it was when you realize it, it was completely unsolved.
I think I saw I saw the change your face,
and I was like, oh shit, And I wasn't expecting
that because it wasn't like a terrible I mean, well right,
it was a murder case, but it was a little
bit older, and I was just like, you know, Sarah
will enjoy this case, and you did.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
It, and I was like, I mean I did, but
then like I don't know, like I really did enjoy it. It
was a really interesting case. But then at the same time,
I'm like, what the actual fuck just happened? Like it
was just a big mind fuck.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
It was. It was just fuck, fuck, fuck all the fuck. Anyways,
that was your week. I well, I didn't really do
anything exciting during my week. We've been enjoying the weather
outside and like you know, having fires at night as
if it's summertime. Oh yeah, we did that too. It's
been nice. We watched a movie in my neighbor's barn.

(03:42):
They like have a projector and stuff. Yeah, it got
kind of cold out during that, but it was fun.
I'm kind of hitting the wall though, because Tony's been
gone for ten days on stormy in the Gulf Coast
because they were hammer but I mean, we're doing it.
It's yeah, it's fine. I feel like I sound like
the dog in the meme fire all around them. It's fine. Fine, Yeah,

(04:09):
it's been good. No, I mean I say that, but
we have lots of people around that help with the
kids and stuff. So right, I don't know. We had
a good week. Good, nothing bad happened. You're sad to
send them to school four days a week. It's nice too. Second,
it is Why don't we talk about merch since I

(04:30):
forgot what I was gonna say. Okay, so we have
merch that's a goodbye done there. If you go to
shop dot Spreadsure dot com, forward Slash the Ship Show TCP,
you can go check out all of our ship Show ship.
You would think we would have something typed out for this,
right Yeah, but no, no, I mean I think it's better,

(04:51):
you know, off the coffee, yeah, whatever, whatever. So if
you go on there and check that out and perhaps
order something. Sarah has a list of stuff she's gonna
talk about.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, there are a couple dates that have discounts going on.
November thirteenth through the seventeenth. There's a fifteen percent off discount.
November twenty seventh, which is Black Friday, there's a twenty
five percent off discount, and November thirtieth there is free
shipping free shipping.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Those are the November sales. So oh yeah, I couldn't
think of the word. That's why I said a list
of things to talk about. So I was like, there's
a word for this.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
We are We're gonna rock this episode.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah. I've gotten like four hours of sleep in the
last five days, so it's fun.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Another great way to support the show is to go
over to Patreon and you can get some exclusive content
shit shows shows episodes, some exclusive Patreon content. That's the
paid it's not the Patreon, Patreon, dot com forward slash
shit Show DC. We've got some how many I don't
know how many episodes we have on there now, but whatever,

(06:06):
and we're going to do more so obviously because you
want to be pointless more than this awkward stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, there's a two dollars level, five dollars level, and
a ten dollars level, and you can get our regular.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Episodes ad free on there as well. So go look
at that true fat after this. Check it out right now,
because you can multitask. Yeah, I mean in theory, maybe
I'm not great at it, but do that. Sometimes what
I'm trying to add, my goodness, All of a sudden,
my brain's like malfunctioning.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think it's because we normally, like have more chit chat.
I don't know, I feel like I have you ever,
Like you get to the point where you're so tired
that you all of a sudden reached like this like
hype level again, and then you crash.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yes, I'm in the hype level right now. I'm in
the crash level right now.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
So I'm gonna crash eventually today during my case probably probably.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
I feel like you're probably gonna break me again. I
broke myself. Oh fuck. Okay, that's the third big alma
of the episode shit show. It's us, that's what we do.
So I think that's it for talk, that's it for talking.

(07:26):
Good night.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
I guess I'll go ahead and start my case and first, right, Yeah,
I mean that's what we're here for. I think so. I,
like I said, I finished researching and doing this case
last Thursday on my free day. I haven't looked at
it since. Good So this is gonna be a fun
adventure for all of us. It's like I it's like

(07:49):
I'm gonna be telling myself this story as well.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
It's as if somebody else wrote it for you and
then you're gonna read it because it was past Sarah. True.
President Sarah doesn't remember that. Nope, she's changed our day.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Okay, So I am going to tell you about Martha
Wise hashtag old timy case.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yay, we really should have switched to the cases around. Okay,
are you old timey too? You told me that right? No,
I'm not. Do you want to go first? Go ahead?
Too late? We're already doing it. Okay.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So Martha Wise was born Martha hassel Ooh in eighteen
eighty four in Hard Scrabble, Ohio Oh to a poor
farming family.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
I feel like anytime, like if I feel like proven
probably everybody in eighteen hundreds was if you're a farm Yeah,
if you're a farming family, you're probably a poor farming family.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
I get to tuck this in my boot hold on. Okay,
WHOA got that part?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
She was the daughter of Sophie Hassle. I struggle so
hard with Sophie and Sophia, Okay, and so if I
call her Sophia, I will touch you. I'm not gonna
do it on purpose, but after I get past the
pH I just kind of throw whatever ending comes out
of my mouth on it.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Because they're so close. We're really a research oriented podcast,
and you can bet on these facts and names being correct.
I mean, her name is Sophie, but Sophie and Sophia
are so close that I always get them confused. Prince
She's not Princess Sophia from that show.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Maybe I'll keep telling myself that and then maybe that'll help. Anyways, So,
like I said, Martha was her daughter and her husband's daughter,
because I couldn't find his name, which I fucking love
because it's always am. It's always like the man and
his wife, but this time it.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Was Sophie, like John Smith, John Smith and his wife
farm and nine kids, Like, well, who the fuck gave
birth to those nine kids? Right? What's their name? We
don't have his name? I love it. He's irrelevant.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
I mean, yeah, he's not mentioned after this, I don't
think anyways. She had three brothers and one sister, okay,
to to fucking many kids.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
I was like, that's not that many, not really. I
mean it's especially for the time. Five kids, but.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
You know, okay, yeah, I guess you just nobody has
birth control at that point and time they did.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
We already talked about it. Oh that's right. They just
needed a ton of kids to work on the farm.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
I would be fucked if I was a farmer back
in the day. Me and my one kid who does
not like to do anything, Me and my one not
very helpful child. So later sources only ever mentioned the
one brother, whose name is Fred. So again old time,
you can't find the Fred others names. I know, I

(10:57):
love it. So it was said that her teacher found
her to be simple, rude, aka not very smart. She
was also always running to the doctor for ailments that
they could find no cures for.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
So kids used to do that back in the day too,
like go to the nurse to get out of class.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
It didn't say like if it she was. It implied
that she was doing it when she was younger. But
I don't know, like exactly how young old timey. I'm
just gonna keep saying that every time. I have no
solid back feel. So they also said that she didn't
possess many of the charms needed to catch a husband, let.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Alone a good one. Just I know, but they were
there was, oh, what was the show that was a gross? Nice?
That was a really gross deadly women had it? I
like how you were, like, what was that show? Hmmm?
Not my favorite one that I mentioned every episode or

(12:00):
or anything like that I wanted.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
They say snapped, and I knew that wasn't right, Okay,
but yeah, so just the way they talked about her
on this show, like I get into it later because
it really pissed me off. Anyways, in nineteen oh six,
Martha met a much older man, and by much older,
I mean like twenty years older.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Gross at a box social? What's that? You say? I
don't know. My next line is, what is a box social?
You ask? I?

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Did you know?

Speaker 1 (12:33):
You know the questions I'm going to ask her.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
So it is when a woman duck reads a box
and fills it with lunch or dinner for two, then
mid men not mid, Then men bid and make those
two together on the boxes, not knowing whose it was or.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
What.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
So like basically a bunch of and decorate a box,
put food in it, put it up on display. Then
men come in and bid on whichever box they Oh,
they don't know what's in it either. They just know
that there's food in it, but they don't know what
kind of food. And then they bid on a certain
box that they fancy.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
I guess, and and uh, then they get to go
on a go have dinner with whose ever box it was?
Was that your stomach? That was my stomach?

Speaker 2 (13:24):
But that is.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Very I've never heard of that at all ever.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
I apparently it used to be like a super popular thing.
They like they did it as like fundraisers for different things.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Weird.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, I'm like, I don't know how I feel about
being auctioned off for a date. Wait, but don't they
do like that, Like, don't they do that sometimes as fundraisers?

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Like I've literally only seen that in like it shows
the same from the nineties. Yeah, I don't think that.
I don't. I doubt that that. I mean, maybe it
does exist because this is in your story so obviously. Yeah.
So anyways, that's so weird. Okay, that's how she met
what was in our box? It didn't say we were

(14:13):
twelve year olds, No, absolutely not. We're both telling each
other to edit, like we edit it together. Oh yeah,
we just we haven't decided to do is doing what
this week? Oh? Good lord?

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Anyways, but we don't know what she packed in the box.
We don't know what's in her box. Just she cooked
and had food in her box. You shouldn't put that
in your box. I'll do something with the pH levels.
You'll have to see a doctor. I'm so sorry. Yeah,

(14:49):
our show was canceled.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Sorry I went a little tiny bit too fer and
we're going to offend the people who put food in
the box. Now, don't put food in your box. Does
not belong there. Yeah, okay, I'm breaking Sarah for the
second week in a row. Okay, hold on, I need
to regroup now. But where did I leave off her box? Okay?

(15:12):
We are a professional podcasters, so get it together and
stop talking about Martha's box. That's her name, right, Her
name was Martha, Okay.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Martha met Albert wise that much older me and I
mentioned after this the two got married even though Albert,
I said Albert, right, did I fuck his name up already?

Speaker 1 (15:36):
I think you said Albert? Okay. Albert didn't give Martha
a wedding ring, Okay, so I don't know it pointed
that out, and I guess I don't know if it
was a bigger deal back in the day, like if
you didn't present them with a it must be because
I don't have one either.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
So sadly it wasn't a happy marriage because you know,
he was eight thousand years older than her and whatnot.
So Martha moved on to Albert's fifty acre farm, and
there is when she realized that all he really wanted
was like a farm hand more than a wife. That's
rude as fuck, because apparently you can't just I mean,

(16:14):
I guess smart. You don't have to pay somebody if
you're Marriam.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
But they get half of your shit maybe or all
of your shit? True back in the day. Did they
still get that though, God, if you murdered him? Oh sorry.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Then when Martha was pregnant, she was still made to
do like farm work at the time, which at the
time was more of a male oriented sure field, she
was flown up fields, Sarah, I'm sorry, it's a bad one.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
I had to say it.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
So yeah, like I said, she still had to do
like the farm labor, so she was having to like
plow fields, slap the hugs. What slapping hogs?

Speaker 1 (17:02):
I don't know. That's what it said, is slapping, slopping, slapping,
that's just feeding them slaps. Okay, I thought, so, I
think you said slapping right as fucked me So as
I said, and probably repeating myself.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
My dog barked, got me distracted. I don't know where
you left off if he had to pass. She was
slapping hogs, not slapping them. And she was also expected
to do like all of the household chores like as well,
like the baking and the cleaning and whatnot. So literally,
dude just got married so like he could just have

(17:40):
somebody to do all of the ship for him and
produce babies. Produce baby, and I mean basically that's I
feel like that's all she was there for, because she
was still forced to like do all of this hard
labor while being pregnant. So another hard blow for Martha
was that her first born child, Albert, didn't survive infancy,

(18:03):
so they named the first one after the asshole husband. Okay,
and we all know how you feel about, yeah, naming
children after yourself. Yeah, uh huh, very I can't think
of the word.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
I can't remember what you said.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
But I have a junior, so I know, and my
brother does to. My cousin does too, like literally a
lot of people. My cousin's a junior, like literally a.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Lot of people. And you all are ridiculous getting to
come up with your own names or a new name.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Because that is your own name obviously. Anyways, anyway, I
think you were. And now I'm gonna have to edit
out anyways because I keep saying it.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
That one.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
That one is in my notes, all right. So, like
I just said, she's having a shitty like married life,
and according to the Deadly Women's episode, her family treated
her like shit prior to being married too, so like
she just had a not so good life, like they
rode really hard.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
How Like she just was never treated really well because
humans are garbage and always has been facts. Go buy
a sticker or shirt. We're both a little weird awkward plug.
Why like I literally just keep I shouldn't. I'm gonna
stop going off like leaving my notes because I'm okay. Focus.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
So the couple did, however, go on to have four
more children, and they were named ever Ever.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Everett, Everett, I don't know what I like.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I stopped it ever when I first started it, and
then I just couldn't like figure out the ending Everett Ever, Gertrude,
oh God, Kenneth Okay, and Lester. I don't know when
Lester became a name but never made I'm going to
offend people again. It's just it's it's just one of
those names, okay. So sadly, even after giving birth to

(20:09):
four more kids, Martha was still treated just like a
lowly farm hand and if she didn't do the work,
she would be beaten for it.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
What the fuck? Albert I said he was an asshole?
He did her eldest son, Lester, said that there were
would be times that he would see his mom wandering
the field that night, as if she was out looking
for something. Oh so, Lester's not the youngest one. You
said their names out of order. That's how they were
on murder Pedia. Come at me, okay, tactor whoever wrote

(20:41):
in murder Pedia? Who is in charge of that? Do
you think somebody who's fantastic? I love them, I'd say anyway,
I said, now you said it. So.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Another thing that stood out about Martha is that she
had a weird obsession. She would almost never miss a
funeral that was taking place in her around town, whether
she knew the person who died or not.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
So they probably didn't have a lot of entertainment back then.
So I don't know. I don't know why I'm trying
to defend that, but that is odd. When she was
asked about this, she simply said that she likes funerals.
That was my stomach, I thought it was mine. That's really,
funerals are so sad. I hate going like it's like ugh, I.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
I mean I've been to like family member of funerals,
and I've been to like like when I was in
high school or in school, Like there was two different
funerals in over a course a few years of kids
who had passed away.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, and I like, it's just full of like crying
and like I don't I like, I can't handle it emotionally,
no matter how close or not close I was to
the first I'm like, oh, yeah, it's fucking sad. Yeah,
No one wants to go to a funeral. No, besides Martha.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Martha is very okay, very interested them. So then in
nineteen twenty three, Albert suddenly died.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
That's not suspicious. Oh wait, he was like old as
fuck right, Let's see, she was forty when I died.
He was twenty years old or so he was sixty.
Is that old for the time? Kind of fish? Maybe not?
I mean yeah, no, either way. I never said how
he died, not like none of the articles I read Personic.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
And the Deadly Woman didn't say how he died, just
that he died suddenly heart attack, leaving Martha a widow
with four children.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Okay, that sucks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
So the weird night nightly outings that I her sounded
her son mentioned before were sent after Albert's death, and
some of our neighbors said that she would show up
at their homes, wide eyed, foaming at the mouth, barking,
like a dog.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
So she just had rabies. Do you bark like a dog?
If you have? I think you make like weird noises
and shit, I'm I'm going off from one episode of
Criminal Minds where the person hearing people rabies. I watched
a few shows through people got rabies in it, and
I don't ever prefer some to you they like barking.

(23:35):
I feel like you just might make weird noises. I
don't know. Okay, anyway, she doesn't have rabies. She's just
I mean, foaming at the mouth. She would have died
from that. True facts. So there's a fact. There's you
die from rabies if it's untreated. There you go. So fact.
And now we know she did not have that for
sure because she didn't die from rabies. This is the

(23:56):
most tangent I know, what are we doing? See?

Speaker 2 (23:59):
I told you I'm in the hype mode and I'm
just all over the place, all right. Her obsession with
funerals also became much more noticeable. She even began crying
and like acting out at strangers funerals, so like wailing
and whatnot. Just sure anybody's funeral the fuck?

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah. So a year or so after Albert died.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
The Deadly Women's episode episode said two years murder, Padia said,
like within a year, So okay, withinny a year or so,
I guess Martha found a new love even though she
was foaming at the mouse and barking at people and
intending funerals.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Did she decorate a really nice box? So I did
say anything about putting anything in a box, Sarah, don't
look at me like that. She did. She What she
did was she decorated the box and then put it
on so that they just knew who they were picking
this time.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
I'm going to say something and then I'm gonna take
it out. No, don't say it, No, say it, but
don't take it.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
She was in her own box again.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Even though Martha was not considered to be a good
or attractive catch. Like I said, she found new love
and that was with Walter John's, who was a farm
hand at the farm adjacent to Martha's. But Martha's family
did not approve of the relationship. Her mother Sophie and

(25:35):
aunt Lily Lily, they don't know.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
I don't know what happened to me and her aunt Lily.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Her mother Sophie and her aunt Lily Gink didn't hide
the fact that they didn't approve either.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Why didn't they approve? I think I get into that
hold your sees and be loud, just smash overly after
the table. Tell me now.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
By the end of nineteen twenty four, though, Martha had
reluctantly accepted that the relationship was over, and Walter then
moved to Cleveland.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Fuck Cleveland? Cleveland? Okay? In least contact.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Or the Deadly Women's version is that he died mysteriously
was that Martha's family didn't approve because Walter Walter was
married and had five kids. Choose your own adventures murder
Pedia and any articles I said nothing about that.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Deadly Women said that his family of a bunch of
kids was in Cleveland. I don't know, just no. See
murder Predia is the one that said that he moved
to Cleveland after they split or broke up or whatever
the old timey split.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
But it was the Deadly Woman episode that said that
her family didn't approve because he was married and had
five kids.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Didn't mention that.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Well, if that's the case, what right? So that's ay,
choose your own adventure. I want to go with what
either goes away dramatized show likes to do or says
or murder Pedia Hahaimi. According to the Deadly Women's episode

(27:24):
that I just mentioned, Martha struggled from mental illness her
whole life, and it seemed that it had worsened after
Albert Albert's death, so they mentioned things like she was
like yelling in the streets, that she had burned on
a barn or multiple multiple barns. Oh, that she would
steal things from people. Murder Pedia did not mention any

(27:48):
of that. Okay, you know, Okay, I feel like if
it's they put it in the show, like they had
to have some grounds to it. I don't know, because
I know, like the dramatized stuff, but I don't do
they add in like fake shit.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
I don't know if that could be, Like I don't
know what the words are that I'm looking for. So anyways,
So and it's hard in these old, older cases too, right,
you know, So either she burned down burns or she didn't, right,
and it doesn't really affect the story that much.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Right, Yeah, So well, see in what I think, I
can't remember I think one place that even mentioned a church,
but I feel like that would be like put I
feel like murder Pedio would put it in there. Yeah anyways,
fuck you said it again. So it was also applied
that she had bipolar disorder, which they blame her actions on.

(28:46):
So this is the murder uh the Deadly Women's episode,
like they heavily taught. Like I said, they heavily went
hard on the mental illness, like just blaming all of
her actions and everything she did. Like remember because she
was wandering around at night and barking people apparently, which
I don't doubt that she probably did have a mental illness, right,

(29:08):
and like her teacher said, she was quote simple, so
like maybe she just wasn't all there and she or
she did have some sort of issue. But like the
whole like idea of blaming it on having a mental illness,
like the fucking just it trains me insane, because you
can have a mental illness and not murder people. Millions

(29:32):
of people me included, have some sort of mental disorder,
illness or whatever. Right I have anxiety, Like I'm not
out murdering somebody because of it.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
They do that, but I just I don't know.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Just the way they talked about her is like they
talked about her her and like such a like, obviously
she's not a great person. I'm getting to the murder part.
But at the same time, like stop talking about mental
illness that way, that's okay.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Moving on.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Martha invited her immediate family over for Thanksgiving dinner in
nineteen twenty four. Several of those family members fell ill
with severe stomach ailments. Everyone except one who had fallen
ill recovered, Sophie Hassel, Martha's mother, got sicker and eventually
died on December thirteenth, nineteen twenty four. Sophie was thought

(30:25):
to have gotten influenza, so her death wasn't really questioned. Okay,
you know you could easily die from the flu back
in the day, because sure, less medicine and whatnot.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
So Martha wailed and warned at her mother's funeral. I wrote,
Martha waaled and mourned her mother.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Oh that's right, at her funeral, just as she had
for many strangers whose funerals she had attended.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Okay, but no, fuck me.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
On New Year, you're gonna start taking that out tail.
But on New Year's Eve of nineteen twenty five, Martha.
More of Martha's family members had fallen ill. Her uncle Fred,
her aunt Lily, and several of their children all started
to have similar stomach pains as Sophie had before dying.
Many of them were hospitalized.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Sadly, Lily and Fred kink is that how I said?
At sure?

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Both died in February. February February nineteen twenty five. Seventeen
of Martha's immediate relatives had fallen ill with the mysterious
stomach illness and the fall slush winter of nineteen twenty
four nineteen twenty five. Okay, four of the Gank children
were left partially paralyzed.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
But with only one family in the area being hit
so hard with this illness, it obviously caught the attention
of like police and one that because super sketchy, because
if it's an illness that's going through the area, everybody's
gonna get It's not just going to be this one family, right.
Sheriff Fred Rashan found that Martha had signed at the

(32:18):
local pharmacy for a series of purchases.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
You want to guess what it was? Arsenic? Very kind.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Martha bought large quantities of arsenic. Martha obviously said she
was buying the arsenic for the same reason that everybody
else did at the time.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Rats. I was trying to think of what Lizzie Borden
said when she was I think literally everybody says rats.
I don't know if she said rats, but I think
it was something with the boiler or cleaning hats or something. Oh.
I think you're right anyway, But.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
I feel like some of the other cases I've covered
with Arsenic, it's mostly rats, right, yeah, because didn't one
of them have something specifically called rat something? Yes? God damn,
I'm not going back through all what I want to
remember it. Sorry, No, that's my fault, all.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Right, back from the break while Stara's finding your spot,
it was rough on rats, and it was Tilly Climac Climaca,
but that used rough on rats. So if you're gonna
listen to more rat poisoning stories, go back to that.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
I don't know which episode it is, my bad anyhow So,
and then like starting like sometime in starting in the
nineteen twenties, I think is when they started to have
to like actually signed for purchases for Arsenic. So that's
how they easily traced it back. They finally figured out
like people be poisoning, but also like maybe just don't

(33:43):
hand it out freely.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
What are you gonna do about your rats? I mean,
just go buy the stuff specifically for it rough on
rats that also has oursenaga. You kept signing for that too,
I think, I mean yeah or idd or whatever, like
when you have to buy pseudofaed they have to. So uh.
There was an autopsy performed on Aunt Lily and they

(34:05):
found Arsnick and her digestive trep. Oh my god, I
cannot believe it, said how how on earth this is?
What is the TikTok sound? This is shocking and devastating. Okay.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
They obviously questioned Martha, and she held out for some time,
you know, while she's being questioned. But when it started raining,
the sheriff's wife, the sheriff's wife Ethel because she was
being questioned by the sheriff, who was also present, said
to Martha, listen, Martha, the rain. It is the voice

(34:44):
of God. It says you did you did?

Speaker 1 (34:48):
You did you did.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Within just a few moments of listening to the rain,
Martha shrieked, oh God, yes, I did it.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
The devil told me to.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
And then the sheriff was like, hey, honey, you want
to drive right. No, he probably said, should get to
your because I'm taking credit for this because I have
a dick. Sorry, sorry, meal, listeners, We not really, she oh,
just we are.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
We do appreciate you. You know, that's just how it
historically is, right, yes, and the old timeys they were
not always nice to women, just like in today time.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Fuck, Okay, this wasn't supposed to be a long case.
And it's been forty five minutes probably, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
So. Eventually Martha confessed to putting the arsenic and the
water bucket and coffee pot that her family had drink
out of. So okay.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
The Deadly Woman episode implied that she was able to
continue poisoning her family because she was one of the
ones caring for them when they were sick.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
So like, okay, I mean I feel like that happens
right in these scenarios. Anyways, all right, sorry, my kid
came down. It's fine. I don't need to know that.
Oh just kidding. I'm not sorry, sorry, not sorry.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
So. One news headline on March nineteenth of nineteen twenty
five stated, brain monster warped souls of Medina killer.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
I'm sorry, did you just have a stroke?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Nope, that's what they said, brain monster warped souls of
Medina killer, saying the killer or saying the murders were
a result of Martha's craze for funerals because.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
She wanted more funerals. Yeah, but I don't understand. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
I only added it because it made literally no fucking sense.
It was on murder bda.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
I'm like, what is this? Why did they why did
they think this was something to say? It was like
they just picked a couple of random words out and
they were like, we're going to use this old timey
word generator. And I mean, I think this is another
opportunity to yell at the media, the media for we're

(37:08):
yelling right at the media for just picking some random
thing to get attention. That's old, tiny clickbait.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
I'll give you a quarter for the newspaper. It's probably
worth a penny back then. So even though Martha confessed,
she pled not guilty on the charges of murdering Lily
Gink in front of a grand jury on March twenty third,
nineteen twenty five, Martha told the grand jury that she
was irresistibly attracted to attending funerals and when there were

(37:43):
not enough in the community. She was driven to create them,
you know. As one of the defense she told the
grand jury that, so so like she I feel like
that's not fleeting not guilty, right, But again, unless they're
going for like not guilty by reason of insanity or something,
right which, Martha was indicted on first degree murder on

(38:06):
March seventh, nineteen twenty five. They only ever charged her
for her aunt's murder. They for some reason didn't decide
to charge her for her mom and uncle, even though
I maybe as like I fail safe. So if she
was found probably not guilty, they could still charge her
with the other ones.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah. So Martha's trial began May fourth, nineteen twenty five,
and she was represented by Joseph Pritchard. The defense tried
to claim that Martha was criminally insane and that her
former lover Walter, ordered her to commit the murders. So,
I but Walter pieced out, like right before, why would

(38:49):
he tell her?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
I mean technically, if they're going on off of the
fact that she was upset that her family didn't want
them to be together, I guess that could maybe make sense.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, but he might be dead at this point, like
he just left. True, he's gone.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Yeah, he doesn't exist anymore because he left. He's out
of the picture. But the defense had some major setbacks
in this case.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Uh yeah, I would say.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
On May sixth, Martha's sister in law, Edith Hassel, completed
suicide in Martha's brother, Fred, Edith's husband subsequently collapsed in
like you know, yeah, pretty much fell apart after that
for obvious reasons. Right.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
The reason this effected the defense was that they were
both supposed to testify on Martha's behalf. Then there was
a recantation of a man named Frank Matskirts of his testimony.
There's a recantation of his testimony. He had told Joseph

(39:53):
Seymour the prosecution that the defense had asked him to
perjure himself to support the claim that Martha was insane.
So that didn't help them either for obvious reasons. And
then three of the gink kids paralyzed by the poison
were brought in to testify. They were aged so I think,

(40:14):
I don't know, I don't put in here, but they
were like from ages nine to like twenty five, I
think is what the age gap or age group was
for the kids that were also.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Poisoned. They had to carry one in on a stretcher.
I don't know if I said that, Oh you didn't,
but that's really sad.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
So even Martha's son, Lester at this time he was fourteen,
testified that he had overheard his mom talking about poison
with a male friend. Lester also said that Martha told
her kids never to drink out of the water bucket
at the gink at their house because that's the water
bucket that she was poisoning. Okay, like you know, I said,

(40:54):
she put in their water bucket and their coffee pot. Right,
don't fuck with the coffee though, I know it's not nice.
I would literally die like in one day because he
drank so much coffee.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Really well, that was only supposed to make her a
little bit sick, but she guzzled the whole class. She's
out of coffee.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
So after just one hour of deliberation, the jury found
Martha whye Is guilty of first jury murder for obvious reasons.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Right. The jury did ask for mercy though on the sentencing,
because she's a woman.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
They didn't say why, just that maybe they did think
that she was not like she had something wrong mentally right,
So maybe that's why it didn't say why, just that
they did.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
The judge sends Martha to life in prison under the
terms of which she could only be freed by executive clemency.
But in nineteen sixty two, at the age of seventy nine,
nineteen sixty two Jesus, at the age of seventy nine,
Martha had her sentencing commute commuted due to good behavior.

(42:07):
Ohio Governor Michael the Sale this sure commuted her sentence
to second degree murder, and because of that she was pearled.
So like it went, he bumped it down from first
degree murder to second degree murder, which I guess you
don't serve.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
I'm assuming you don't serve life in present for second degree.
So but like I'm willing to bet she got zero
like help mentally right, the deadly I don't know if
I say it, let me finish, and then I say
what I'm gonna say, let me finish, I'll say what
I'm gonna say.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Okay, But as you can imagine, none of her remaining
family wanted anything to do with her. Gee, why, I
don't know, right, are you gonna poison my water bucket, right,
they probably don't have a water bucket, my water bucket.
She also couldn't find a rest home for the elderly
that would take her either, so she was just like
nobody wanted her.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
She can't be shocked about that, I mean yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Within a few days, Martha had returned to the prison,
not having anywhere else to go. Her parole was her
parole and commutation was revoked, and Martha died in prison
on June twenty, nineteen seventy one, so two years after
she got over, more than two years, nine years mad math.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
So she did not like get out. The Deadly Women's episode, well,
you can't have someone in prison for like their whole
life literally, yeah, well, I mean from forty to yeah,
for that long they did something like that, give them
zero help, like you know, mental health wife, right, and

(43:56):
then just say good luck out there. Fun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
So the Deadly Women episode played it much more dramatic
as they do, saying that Martha preferred being locked up
because she was treated much better in prison than she
ever had been in her regular life, and that she
liked the monotony like just doing like you know, she
good behavior, so she was able to like do cleaning

(44:21):
services and stuff like that. Like they said that she
liked it, which quite possibly not being a abused farm hand,
right and raising four kids and being told who you
can and can't be with by your family.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Right, Yeah, I mean that very well could be. So
was she just a funeral crazy woman or do you
think she really suffered from untreated illness? Both? It can
be both, right, I think so.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
So her reasoning behind it, it's never really said why.
Like I said, the Women episode really played into the
fact that she wanted to be with Walter and her
family didn't approve of that, so she did it because
of that. Then you could also go down the lane

(45:18):
of she wanted more.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Funerals to do it. I think she just wanted more funerals.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Yeah, And also I mean he could plead together because
she could be pissed at them, be like, oh, I
also want a funeral to attend, So like here we are.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
I'm winning either way. Yeah. So, so she's not the guy. No,
not that the guy told her to do it, but
just that she wanted to be with him.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
He already left though, all right, But things about how
many people murder because they want to be with somebody,
even if they can't be with somebody to.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Okay, fine, eave me a little bit of both. But
she definitely wanted those funerals, right for sure. I mean
she said it herself in front of the grand jury.
My defense is I just really wanted more funerals, and
this town was lacking the funerals.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
And it was too far to walk to go to
a different one anyway, So that was the there's my
last one. That was the old timey case of Martha Wise.
As I said multiple times, I used a Murderpedia and
the Deadly Women's episode which was on season two, episode
two called Fatal Attraction and Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Okay for my sources, thank you and goodbye, thank you
and goodbye. Okay. So at the beginning of my story,
I'm gonna go ahead and say, like trigger warning for
everyone but Sarah because she has to listen to this me.
This case is about a string of child murders. I

(46:49):
know that's really hard to listen to. And honestly, like
I almost couldn't cover this case, but I know I
was reading about it and I was like, man, I
don't know, this might be too much, but it is unsolved,
and I just feel like if everyone's too uncomfortable to
talk about it and keep it like out in the

(47:09):
right air, I don't know on the view or whatever,
that it might never get solved. And I think those
families deserve for sure. Yeah. So if you can't hang
for this case, I totally get it. Just come back Friday. Yeah,
I guess whip for my quikie on Friday. Yeah. I
don't why out, Okay, all right, So I'm just going

(47:34):
to do it. I am. I hope I do it
justice and I don't go into any crazy detail with anything.
It's just it sucks a lot. I'm already having heart
publications and I'm avoiding starting. Okay. So, on November eighteenth
of nineteen seventy one, two young teenage boys were riding

(47:56):
their bikes along Stearn's Road I'm not far from Interstate
for in the village of Churchville, New York, when they
spotted a tiny body in a ditch. At first, they
said that they thought it was like a doll, but
instead it was the body of ten year old Carmen Cologne,
who had disappeared two days before after she left a

(48:17):
drug store on West Main Street near her Brown Street home.
So this is like the Rochester area. According to eyewitnesses,
Carmen entered the pharmacy that her grandmother had told her
to visit on West Main Street, but left the store
when she learned that the prescription that she was supposed
to pick up was not processed. The store owner, Jack Corbin,

(48:38):
said that she just said, I got to go, I
got to go a bunch of times, and then she
left the store. She was then seen entering a car
parked close to the pharmacy, and Carmen was reported missing
to the Rochester Police Department at seven fifty pm. So.
An autopsy revealed that, in addition to being sexually assaulted,

(49:02):
Carmen had suffered a fracture to her skull and one
of her vertebrae before she was apparently manually strangled to death.
She also had like scratches on her body and stuff.
Once media count circulated about her murder, another really unsettling
report came out into the open that dozens of drivers
may have seen Carmen running semi nude along Interstate four

(49:27):
ninety so yeah, like several drivers came forward and said
that they had seen her running with a car backed
along the shoulder of the road towards during the afternoon
of her disappearance. One article that I read, they were like, well,
in defense of the drivers, they were going like seventy
miles per hour and once they passed her, they were

(49:49):
like unsure they actually saw what they saw. And cell
phones weren't a thing back then, right obviously, but like
no one stopped. No one was like, when I get
to my destination, I'm going took all the police, right,
I think I just saw no one banged a yui
and went back, like did I see that? What the fuck?
Because it's a fucking half new child running down a highway,

(50:11):
So what the fuck?

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Guys seventies where everybody just keeps to them fucking cells, right,
did I feel like we've talked about that in.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
One of her others in the fucking seventies. Okay, So
I forgot to bring tissues and I know I'm gonna
need them for this one. Yeah. Okay, So you know,
policehead scoured Carmen's neighborhood as well as the area that
she was found. They went door to door and like
everyone in her neighborhood knew her but didn't know anything

(50:39):
about her abduction or murder. Or you know, didn't know
of any like weird things going on in the neighborhood.
In the beginning of nineteen seventy two, far five large
billboards were put up along all the major Rochester highways
and each of them had a eight foot picture of

(51:01):
Carmen and the headline that said do you know who
killed Carmen Cologne. These billboards were donated and there was
a six thousand dollars reward for information leading to the
arrest of her murderer or murderers. During the investigation, police
did come up with several suspects. Former Monroe County Sheriff's
detective Nicholas DeRosa traveled to Puerto Rico to try to

(51:24):
find Carmen's uncle, Miguel, who left the area shortly after
her murder, and in his car police discovered a doll
that was Carmen's and the car also appeared to have
been scrubbed clean. Miguel later returned to New York and
was questioned but never charged with the murder, and DeRosa

(51:44):
said that he was disappointed that it was never sent
to their grand jury to see whether or not he
could be indicted. Yeah In nineteen ninety one, Miguel completed
suicide inside his Radio Street home after a domestic dispute
where he had shot and when his wife and brother
in law, and then when police responded, he yelled at

(52:05):
them to shoot him, and then he ultimately shot himself. Afterwards,
police questioned relatives on whether or not Miguel had ever
admitted to killing Carmen, and none of them said that
he had, and his family insisted that he was innocent
in the killing.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
So I mean I could see that, and I see
why he did what he did because he had just
shot his wife and brother in law. So then, yeah,
I felt no doubt with that.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, I don't think that it was a suicide because
he right felt guilt in this case. I had other
things going on, right, That's what I was thinking too. Okay,
So another investigator focused on a different suspect named James Barber.
So okay. So James Barber left the area quickly after

(52:50):
Carmen's disappearance, and he left like all of his belongings
in his apartment, which is weird. Sus Yeah, he worked
in the bulls Head area and appeared to have penciled
in information on his time card instead of punching it
in in the automated system. James Barber also on top
of that, was wanted for an outstanding warrant for assaulting

(53:14):
a fifteen year old girl in Ohio. And that's where
the leads for Carmen's disappearance kind of ended. Almost seventeen
months later, on April second, nineteen seventy three, eleven year
old Wanda Walkowitz disappeared. So Wanda was a sixty five pound,

(53:34):
red haired tomboy and was just described as you know,
having a ton of energy and as one does as
a kid. Well, it was just like notable in multiple
articles like that's how the family remembered her. Her younger sister,
Rita said that, you know, she remembered Wanda being more

(53:56):
into tussling and joking with the neighborhood boys than playing
with Barbie. Yeah. So she lived with her sister Rita,
her baby's sister Michelle, and her mother, Joyce, in an
upper apartment of a home on Avenue d Their father
had died earlier previously of a heart attack Jesus. So

(54:19):
after school on April second, Joyce, Wanda's mother sent Wanda
to a conky Avenue supermarket for groceries. So I guess
the sisters would often walk down to the supermarket to
get groceries for whatever evening meal, Yeah, walk them back
home or whatever. When she didn't return, her mother reported
her missing at eight pm. And like, you have to remember,

(54:42):
this is back when, I mean, in my notes, I'm
gonna say this is back when an eleven year old
could walk to a story. I was going to say that,
but then like I literally just said, people saw a
naked ten year old running down and didn't you anything.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
So yeah, I mean that's a parents real life, more
heavily young kids to do those types of chores and things. Yeah,
back then, I couldn't fathom sending an eleven year old
into to get groceries. In today's world, I don't think
that they would. I mean, I guess some are obviously
more mature than others, but some year olds, they just

(55:21):
don't think we would be able to go in and
get their family's groceries.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Right. Well, so it wasn't like a big grocery hall.
So at the store, Wanda bought eight dollars and fifty
two cents worth of groceries. So it was tuna, fish,
some milk. She had some cupcakes and cat food. No cupcakes.
You know, I feel like lend into the fact that
it's right. Yeah, Okay. She left the store and that
was the last she was seen alive. Police immediately launched

(55:48):
an intent search to locate Wanda. Almost fifty detectives searched
several square miles around her home, you know, the supermarket,
the areas around the Genesee River where she was known
to play, and these searches failed to locate her. Several
neighborhood residents said that they saw Wanda struggling to carry

(56:09):
a bag of groceries, and three classmates specifically said they
saw Wanda bracing the bag against a fence so that
she could improve her grip. Okay on the bag, you know, Keneleena,
and use your body to And they also said that
they saw a brown vehicle drive by. The next day,
a state trooper found Wanda's body in Webster, near the

(56:31):
bottom of an embankment at the rest area off Route
one oh four. Like Carmen, she had been strangled, this
time possibly with a belt, and sexually assaulted. She had
several defensive wounds, which indicated that she fought her attacker
and her body had been redressed after she was killed,
and autopsy revealed several traces of semen and pubic hair,

(56:52):
and also some strands of white cat fur were found,
and her family didn't have a pet that had interesting so,
just like with Carmen's disappearance, investigators established an anonymous, anonymous
tip line. They the flyers were put out there was

(57:14):
a reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to
the arrest and conviction of Wanda's murder. The tip line
produced an eyewitness that told investigators that as Wanda had
walked home from the deli on April second, he had
seen her standing alongside the passenger door of a large
brown vehicle talking with the driver. Okay. This eyewitness was

(57:36):
unable to get a clear view of the driver, but
did say that it was only two tenths of a
mile from her home. Oh no, sweet baby, I know
not that made the difference if it was two tenths
or two miles. But still, you're so close you could
almost like you could probably see the re building, you

(57:58):
know what I mean. Okay. Another individual contact investigators with
the tip line, saying that she had seen a man
forcing a red haired girl matching Wand's description into a
light colored Dodge Dart on Conky Avenue between five point
thirty and six pm on the evening of her disappearance.
This car didn't seem to match the one seen on

(58:19):
Interstate four ninety in Carmen's disappearance, and as with Carmen's murder,
police could not make an arrest in this case. But
I want to go back and just say how mad
I am about someone seeing a man forcing a little
girl into a car, right, I don't, like, I don't

(58:41):
have the words to express how like what the fuck
I get? Like, so as a woman, like interjecting yourself
into that situation might be fearing for your own safety,
but like you can do other things about it, like
call the cops, yell there you know, other people in
the street. I don't know, Like what the fuck? Yeah,
I don't know. So that makes me real mad. I know.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
It always goes back to like there's my chair the
I like because everybody like it's always just mind your
own business. Everybody thinks just to mind your own business
no matter what's happening around them, or see like they
see like like it drays me and see sometimes that
people are just so like, but.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
I think, Okay, for the most part, Yeah, I mind
my own business. I don't I don't want to be
in your drama. I don't want anything to do with
it or whatever. But when it comes to like children, right,
like who's who's supposed to be protecting these kids? Not
just their parents? Like adults, like do better. I don't know.
I'm so mad at all of this because anyway, months

(59:41):
pasted in this murder is also no rest were made, Okay.
Then seven months later, someone grabbed eleven year old Michelle
Manza off the streets near her Rochester home on Webster Crescent,
and the community's fear once again skyrocketed. It was, yeah,
you think that kids just wouldn't be allowed out alone

(01:00:06):
as much as the seventies and also even now, people
have the mentality of that won't happen to me, right
when you have no clue what's going to happen? Right.
Michelle's mother, Caroline, reported her missing after she did not
return home from school, so she walked home from school
typically so, Michelle was last seen by her classmates at

(01:00:29):
approximately three twenty pm, walking alone to a shopping plaza
located near the school and she was going there to
get a purse that her mother had I guess left
inside the store earlier that day, So she was just
stopping in there on her way home from staying there
and for her mom. Right, which is a running theme here.
I noticed that, Okay. So approximately ten minutes later, a

(01:00:53):
witness saw Michelle sitting in the passenger seat of a
beige or tan vehicle traveling at a high speed on
Ackerman's before turning on to Webster Avenue. According to this witness,
the child had been crying. Michelle's uncle had seen her
at the plaza, walking at you know, in the plaza,
and offered to give her a ride home, but she

(01:01:15):
declined and said, no, I'm fine walking. I can just
walk home, sweet baby. So her brother Stephen said, it
must have been shortly after he left that the guy
picked her up. My uncle was kind of upset with
himself for many years because he didn't pick her up
and go ahead and bring her back to the house.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
So, but I mean, it's not like, right, It wasn't
his fault. Again, it's no fault, and you know she
typically walks home. Yeah, he stopped after her ride, and
she said, no, I'd rather walk and but that's it,
you know, but just like so fucking heartbreaking. Yeah, I mean,
I still I understand why he would has the feeling, yeah,
because right, it's something you couldn't change or right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
So yeah, so there were some actual thought leads in
Michelle's disappearance. Later on the day that she went missing,
a woman saw a young girl resembling Michelle in a
car at a fast food restaurant in Penfield. A man
was walking towards her with a bag of food, and
Michelle's autopsy would later show that she had eaten a
Hamburger shortly before her death, so this was an actual, like,

(01:02:25):
you know, an actual sighting of her. Also that evening,
a man stopped along Route three point fifty in Walworth
after he saw a car stopped with a flat tire
onside the road and was like offering to help. He
says that a girl resembling Michelle was in the car,
and he said that the man with a flat tire

(01:02:45):
made it very apparent that he wanted no help, so
he was like, fuck off, I don't need help, and
see what the man looked like at least. Yeah, So
this guy that stopped to help was like Okay, fuck
you and left right, because what are you going to do?
Both witnesses gave similar descriptions of the man they saw,
and police developed a composite sketch that the media displayed

(01:03:05):
for weeks. Okay. Michelle's fully fully clothed body was found
in massed on, New York, which if I'm seeing that wrong,
I don't know whatever. I'm not from here on November
twenty eighth, nineteen seventy three. Her autopsy revealed that in
addition to receiving forced trauma to her body, she had
also been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with the ligature.

(01:03:27):
This time, they said, possibly a thin rope. Okay, so
this dude's just using library has on hand, right. Numerous
strands of white cat fir were discovered on her clothing,
and there was leaf samples that match the foliage where
her body was discovered in her clenched hands, which indicated
that she had been killed at or near the location

(01:03:47):
that she was found. Investigators were able to get a
partial palm print from her neck, and they also found
traces of semen on her body in underwear. Forensic analysis
of the semen samples deter that she had been raped
by one person, so before they were like, is this
more than one person doing this?

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
I know back then they probably couldn't. Could they at
least compare the two seamen samples that they hadn't off
the two separate. I don't know how, I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
I don't know. I don't I don't know. I don't
know the timeline of right, how advanced? Right, That's what
I was thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
I don't know the fact timeline either, so for DNA
and analysis and whatnot, right, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
So the autopsy also showed that the contents of her
stomach had traces of hamburger and onions, which had been
consumed approximately one hour before her murder. So this is
where police were able to take the eyewitness description of
the Manchu is with and make it into the composite sketch.

(01:04:49):
So it was a Caucasian male with dark hair who
was between twenty five and thirty five, about six feet tall,
weighing around one hundred and sixty five pounds, and was
seen at the restaurant at approximately four thirty and then
alongside Route three fifty about an hour later. So investigators
are looking at all of the similarities of the three murders.

(01:05:11):
All three girls were around the same age. They both
had double initials, interesting, and their bodies were found in
a town that started with the same initial as their names.
Carmen was found in Chile, Chile, that's how you say
it from here, but whatever. Wanda was found in Webster,
and Michelle was found in Macedon. Interesting. The girls were

(01:05:34):
all from poorer families and did not have a father
in their household. I think one of them lived with
their grandparents. Okay, oh, I'm sorry, processing, So it's just so,
it's not even it doesn't now it's not a random
like before it just seemed like he was seeing a

(01:05:54):
random girl and picking her up. But now so I
have something similar to that. I'm down here. Sorry, it's okay.
Your brain was just like short circuit I did. The
body of each girl had been discovered either fully or
partially clothed, close to a highway in a location that
is was accessible by vehicle, and each victim had been

(01:06:16):
either like tossed from a vehicle or carried away from
the vehicle to where her body was found. So like,
they weren't I don't want to say posed, but right,
they were just kind of discarded there and then left. Right.
It's terrible. God, I know only cases. Okay, Okay, I'm

(01:06:37):
breaking myself with this case. Okay. So each girl had
been sexually assaulted and strangled. And so while I'm reading,
I was reading about this case, and I was writing
out this, writing out my notes and doing what you
just did processing. I was like, the killer had to
have known the girls beforehand, right, like to know their initials,

(01:07:00):
and then it would be even easier to kidnap them
because you're a familiar face and kids trust familiar faces. Yeah,
I'm giving myself like word goose bumps. That's just like
at the same point that you did. That was when
I was like, well, I mean, right, it has to
be it would have to be someone who right, it's

(01:07:22):
not it's not at random, It's okay. So calls and
tips came in by the thousands, and many of them
were not very helpful. When tips and calls started tapering off,
they still came in at about a pace of seventy
five an hour during the daytime hours. Wow, because the
community is like panicking and thinking, now it's anything I saw, yeah,

(01:07:47):
which is good calling your tips. I don't want to
make this sound like, don't call on your tips. You
never know what the little little thing that you think
is stupid it doin lead them to. Right, it doesn't
always have to be that you saw a child running
down the road, right, It can be something very small.
So police even went back and picked up debris along

(01:08:10):
the likely path from the restaurant to Eddie Road where
Michelle was found, and the amount of possible evidence that
they got filled up the beds of several pickup trucks well,
which says a lot about the trash in the area.
But yeah, don't do that the seventies, Okay. So the
investigation was ongoing when on January first of nineteen seventy four,

(01:08:33):
a Rochester fireman named Dennis Termini tried to rape a
teenage girl in a garage. Police intervened. It was unclear
like if someone saw it going on and called police,
if police were just like patrolling the area or what.
But they intervened and Dennis ran. So police chased him

(01:08:54):
like over fences and down the street and they closed
it on him, and Dennis pulled out a handgun and
then he shot himself Jesus and he died. Wasn't expecting
that no, I wasn't neither one. Police decided that decided
or found evidence that Dennis had raped another teenage girl

(01:09:15):
in the garage as well in both victims. While both
victims were older than the girls in the double initial murders,
which is what this is known as. Investigators thought that
he might be a prime suspect because his match, his match,
his car matched the description of the car seen in
the abductions, and there was a map in his car
that was folded like in a way that highlighted Wayne County,

(01:09:37):
which is where one of the girls was found. Okay. Also,
Dennis kept his firefighter uniform in his car, and police
thought that that might, you know, make him seem like
more of an authority figure that the girls would talk to,
talk to, trust even get into the vehicle for a
ride without like a fight, you know. And after talking

(01:10:02):
to investigators, Joyce, Wanda's mother became really convinced that Dennis
Termini murdered her daughter, but with him dead, no definitive clues,
saying way, the case couldn't be closed for that it
was just everyone's thinking and maybe it's like an easier
to think like this one rapist is the person you know,

(01:10:22):
because otherwise you have more than one rapist and about them. Yeah.
So the four law enforcement agencies that were involved, the
State Police, the Rochester Police Department, Monroe and Wayne County
sheriff's offices keep open files of the abductions and killings
and regularly discuss possible new leads, like they all kind

(01:10:42):
of work together, which I think for the time was
I'm surprised the CI wasn't involved. I don't know when
the FBI started getting involved in kidnappings and shit. You know,
like now they do, right, But that's a good point, okay.
And so now through technology that wasn't wasn't available to
the original investigators, police can use genetic evidence DNA evidence

(01:11:05):
from the crimes and ask possible suspects for you know,
swabs to determine whether or not there's a match. So
they are pretty tight lipped on who they have swabbed, okay,
and and other specific physical evidence that they have.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Right, which would assume that they probably have already run
it against the National data race too. Yeah, that's what
I literally this whole time, I'm like, please tell me
that they're gonna like run DNA now like they've run
it but then no, I know, but in my head I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
Still thinking, like, rerun it, yeah, just keep rerun it. Okay.
So police even exhumed the body of dunnis HERMANI in
two thousand and seven to compare his DNA to what
they had from the crimes, and weeks later they would
get the word back that it did not match. I
didn't think it would be him, honestly, I'd neither. I

(01:11:56):
was like, it's wishful thinking, right, you know what I mean?
And I understand why people, you know, we made which
we just said. Okay. So they had some other leads
to go on that were checked out. So they got
a tip about a man who acted suspiciously at the
time of the killings, and they found police found old
reports that said they saw that he had even been

(01:12:17):
questioned about the murders. But he's like unnamed, So just
this man. Yeah. After one killing in particular, this man
acted overly emotional about the death, even though he was
not close. He was not like a close friend of
the family, Okay. Police also indicated that the man had
told friends about his desire for sex with young girls,

(01:12:40):
and it's like, don't be that is a red flag
but maybe he was questioned because his friends were like,
my weirdo ex friend just told me this. This guy
died in nineteen seventy four, though, Okay, another tip came
in from a woman that alleged that a friend of
her brother had won said he was responsible for the

(01:13:01):
double initial killings. Police checked their reports and could find
no mention of him, but his name did turn up
in a funeral log for one of the victims. Investigators
determined that the man had once lived in the same
apartment building as that same victim, so that could be
why he was at the funeral. Right. This man also
died in nineteen seventy four, and in both of the

(01:13:23):
unnamed man leads, police found biological children of the men,
and they provided DNA swabs for potential matches and nothing matched. You,
just a couple of real weirdos. Well, I mean the
guy at the funeral might not have been a weirdo. Yeah,
I meanest does that makes sense if he lived in

(01:13:44):
a building, you know, he might have had some interaction
with the family, right, And honestly, in what I read,
I didn't put anything about the funerals in here. Hundreds
and hundreds of people showed up to these funerals because
it's heartbreaking for the community. Yeah, all right. So police
also received tips through crime staffers that they should look

(01:14:04):
into Arthur Shawcross, the Genesee River killer. And when I
first started reading about this case, I had to go
look at when exactly he was active in the Rochester area. Yeah,
because I covered him.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
When you said the Genisi River, that was my first, Yeah,
thing that popped up in my end. Yeah, So I
covered him a while back, and he murdered to listen,
Go listen, go back and listen. If you haven't, that
guy's fucked up.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
Oh yeah, that fucked up another case that uh yeah,
So okay, So he did murder two children in nineteen
seventy two in the Watertown area, and that's about two
hours from Rochester. And then he went on to kill
eleven sex workers in the Rochester area between nineteen eighty

(01:14:49):
and nineteen eighty nine. I don't know why. My brain
just stopped working for a second. Okay. So another suspect
in these murders is serial killer Kenneth Bianki okay, who
at the time of the murders worked as an ice
cream vendor in Rochester. He was known to have worked
at the locations close to the first two murder scenes.
So Biance had relocated from Rochester to Los Angeles in

(01:15:13):
January of nineteen seventy six, and then between nineteen seventy
seven and nineteen seventy eight, he and his cousin Angelo
Buono Junior committed the Hillside strangler murders of ten girls
and young women between the ages of twelve and twenty eight.
Okay Bianki was never charged with these double initial murders, obviously,
and he really like denied any culpability in the murders.

(01:15:36):
He repeatedly attempted to have investigators officially clear him of suspicion,
but while residing in Rochester, he was known to have
driven a vehicle the same color and model as the
vehicle seen near one of the abduction sites.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
I mean, it's not like he was going to be
getting out whether he had those charges on him or not.
So like, it's weird that he'd be so adamant about
getting them off of him, right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
And I was thinking, well, maybe he doesn't want to
be known as a suspect in the murder of children.
But the age rage was twelve to twenty eight, so,
and I don't know enough about that. I don't know
enough about the Hellside strangler case to speak further on it, right,
you know, as far as like what they had going on.
But it's interesting that he was living in the area, yes,

(01:16:20):
as an ice cream vendor, which would be a familiar face,
and he would know the kids' names, right, he could
just be like you would know like at least a
first name basis maybe, And then if you ask a
little kid with their name, I know, what's your last name?
I don't know. Then. In April of twenty eleven, a
seventy seven year old man named Joseph Naso was arrested

(01:16:40):
in Reno, Nevada for the murders of four women in
California committed between nineteen seventy seven and nineteen ninety four,
all of which were believed to have been sex workers,
in all whose last name began with the same letter
as their first name. Joseph Naso was a New York

(01:17:01):
native who lived in Rochester during the early nineteen seventies,
and he was known to have regularly traveled between New
York and California. So like when you type in the
alphabet murders or even the double initial murders. He will
come up because of this case in California, it's known
as that. But for there so he was So he's

(01:17:22):
got this going on shortly after the double initial murders
in Rochester and through ninety four all first and lessons
but not I believe they were all adults. So he
was initially described by authorities after he was arrested in
twenty eleven as a person of interest, but DNA testing

(01:17:44):
confirmed that his DNA did not match samples recovered from
the victims. He was brought to trial on June eighteenth
of twenty thirteen and charged with the murder of the
four California Alphabet murder victims, and was convicted of each
murder on August twentieth and formally sentenced to death. Okay,
so Rochester in the seventies was just straight up full

(01:18:07):
of fucking creeps who went on to do like some
of the worst, most heinous things. Seriously, liver what in
the flying fuck? Yes? That right. So if you have
any information, if you've been holding onto something for whatever reason,

(01:18:27):
or you have a family member who was in the
area or knew something, whatever, you possibly knew something, you
can contact the Rochester Area Crime Stoppers that's roc crimestoppers
dot com or call five eight five four two three
nine three zero zero. Late I said at the beginning
of this, I like almost couldn't cover this case. I

(01:18:49):
have a nine year old daughter right her best friend
is ten and is in my house every day. One
of my best friends has a daughter that's eleven, So like,
while researching this, my brain kept like going back to
them fucking breaking, but I felt like it needed to
be covered. I felt like it needed to be covered.
So if you know anything, just reach out, because I
feel like the families have just gone way far too

(01:19:11):
long without any answers. It's just such a fucking it.
Honestly kind of surprised me that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
Because normally, if somebody is committing crimes like this, they've
committed other crimes that they've been arrested for or whatever.
So it kind of surprises me that their DNA wasn't
and there isn't in the system already.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
And I didn't find anything that said won the last
time it was ran. Yeah, but they I did read
in multiple places that newer detectives or investigators that are
looking at this case frequently contact the retired original investigator.
The four agencies that were on the case all frequently
still work together on it. It's still open and still

(01:19:54):
being looked at. So I don't know. I just.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
I hated this so much, understandably. So there was that
I used ABC thirteen w h A m ae TV
dot com. There was an article by Robert Kahn murder
Pedia for all the fuckheads that lived in Rochester in
the early seventies. The Democrat and Chronicle had several articles.
Gary Craig wrote a couple of them, and then the
other ones just didn't have an author. Yes, they do that,

(01:20:22):
and I did look at Wikipedia for it. So, and
that is the Rochester double initial murders that sucked up
hashtag no thank you, please go solve that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
So, now that I've been talking about it for a while,
I kind of think that the ice Cream Day did that.
I see there's familiar face. Yeah, similar car. It would
be very easy for him to know the first and
last name. Very easy. Yeah, you know, yeah, I agree.
And I didn't see anything where they took any of
his DNA. Okay, interesting, So tell me something funny your

(01:20:55):
kid did so I won't cry.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
Can my fuck there funny thing be that my kid
is obsessed that we ordered a new air filter or
pure fire filter, because the fuck he just delivered it
to us. Oh okay, so my So, yesterday we were
sitting watching a movie and I don't remember what it
was they were somebody in the movie was talking about
like their their kids reading level or something like that,

(01:21:19):
and we just received Connor's reading level from school because
you know, they do the star testing to know their
math and reading levels and whatnot.

Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
And I'm like, I turned to Connor and I said,
I think I'm gonna start.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
Taking into the library if they're open, so that we
can pick more age appropriate books because we have millions
of books, but they're all like under his reading level
now right, he needs more advanced books. And Connor, like
with the most serious face, turns to me and is like,
I Am not going to the library with everybody's COVID
germs and and somebody probably put their penis all over

(01:21:55):
the books. And I'm like, what in the fuck are
you talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Oh? So, I mean, okay, have you not heard like
stories of people being real big gross creeps in libraries?
Though he knows, but how does he instinct apparently, but yeah,
so I mean, yeah, people there are creeps that do
go to the library, but like, are they I don't

(01:22:21):
want to touch the books? Now? Are they putting their
penises on the books? What does he know that we
don't know?

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
And I asked him, wy he would say that, and
he's like, because people are gross. He's like, obviously, Mom, Jesus,
so that's mine. You know, my funny kid thing also
involves a penis. So it was my neighbor's birthday this week,
and so Friday we had like a spay dinner and
some cake burderer over there and the kids drew made

(01:22:48):
her cards and.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
In all this whatever, she really loves dragonflies. So Russell
hands me the card that he made and it's got
a dragonfly on the front of it. Okay, but it's
like a peanut shape dragonfly and then he drew lines
on it for like decoration, so it just looks like
a big veiny dragonfly.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
Yeah, yes, yes, I sent you a picture. I think, great, Yeah,
you was dead and I can't confirm it looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
A the amount of joy that I had watching val
my neighbor whose birthday was received that card. Oh my god,
she lost it. Well, she tried really hard not to
lose it because Russell was like, right, look at this
pretty She's like, oh my gosh, I love dragonfly. That's right.
It was just real funny kids they say and do this,

(01:23:37):
And Malory said, it seems like they are doing that
on purpose, you know, because Riley, whenever she drew butterflies,
they would always look like boobs. Yeah, you your kids
have drawn a lot of phelic things, phelic looking. I
don't know. I don't know why kids. Thankfully, my kid

(01:23:59):
doesn't like to dress. I don't receive penises. I don't
that's a quote from Sarah. I don't receive penises.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
This is my melt down stage of the tired. This
is me being happy that I'm done done with Yeah, that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Was that was a rough one. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
So you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
at the Hit Show TCP, or you can email us
at Ship SHOWTCP at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
I don't know why I ended it that way. I
don't know either. We do still want your kids stories, Yes,
please send those so I don't have to remember to
do it and send us. Oh yeah, Sarah staring at
me because I was supposed to remember what I'm saying
without notes. We want like spooky stories, funny stories, your
kid just being a weirdo will take it. My kids

(01:24:48):
just talked about a penis. You know, we're not receiving
PENISESR doesn't receive. Yeah. But you can find us on
All Everything Entertainment Network, All Everything Entertainment dot com mm hmm.

(01:25:09):
And if you're looking for other things that aren't like murdered,
they've got some comedy, weird news shows, the Paranormal Show
that Sarah clabbed with, some gaming stuff. There's a music show,
and there's also like one for every sport plus all
of the wrestling. Yeah. Yeah, they do lots of sports
and wrestling stuff there too, So so you go check those.

(01:25:30):
Go check those out, Check check that out, go check
it out. You can find us on every platform for
podcasts except Pandora. Still come Onora. I think I haven't.
We haven't gott an email, but whatever, Yeah, So find
us everywhere. Please like, subscribe, share us with your friends,
Please leave us a review, love us, love the reviews,

(01:25:52):
And I think that's all we have for this one.
Thanks for listening. Kay bye, kay bye