The Easter Sunday Massacre : James Ruppert

Season 22 : Family Annihilators Part 2

On Easter Sunday in 1975, the police in Hamilton, Ohio were faced with the deadliest mass murder in the state's history. An entire family was wiped out by a single man, who was related to the victims.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
At nine thirty pm on Easter Sunday in nineteen seventy five,
police in Hamilton, Ohio responded to reports that a person
had been shot. When officers looked inside the house, they
noticed uneaten meals and half finished cups of coffee sitting
on the table alongside brightly wrapped Easter eggs. The only

(00:20):
thing that was out of place were the eleven bodies
lying on the floor covered in blood. This is monsters.

(00:54):
James Urban Rupert was born on March twenty ninth, nineteen
thirty four, in Hamilton, Ohio, the younger of two children.
Hamilton is a quiet Midwestern town nestled alongside the Great
Miami River twenty miles or thirty two kilometers north of Cincinnati.
The town was once a thriving industrial area which was

(01:15):
renowned for its steel, paper, and manufacturing plants. It gained
the nickname the City of Sculpture for its appreciation of
the arts and public monuments crafted from locally refined metals.
To this day, it's known for its nineteenth century architecture
and historic neighborhoods. But back when James arrived in the

(01:36):
early nineteen thirties, the soul of Hamilton had been decimated
by the Great Depression. Many of the once booming factories
had slowed down or shut completely, and many of the
city's families were plunged into poverty. James's parents, A Leonard
and Charity Rupert, were barely making ends meet with one child,
and when their youngest came along, things only got worse.

(02:00):
Leonard lost his job and turned to alcohol to numbus feelings.
He was already a strict disciplinarian, and the alcohol only
made him meaner. Charity was the main caregiver for the children,
but she was emotionally cold and distant, particularly when it
came to her youngest son. She often targeted James with
belittling comments like calling him useless, a failure, and stupid.

(02:25):
His father was no kinder, often telling James that he
would never have a job or live independently. James was
a small, sickly, and awkward child. He suffered from bronchi elasthma,
which started at age two, which meant he had a
lot of trouble breathing. His symptoms were especially bad when
it was cold or damp, which happened often in Hamilton's

(02:47):
temperamental Midwestern climate. Winters were long and wet, and spring
came with heavy humidity. While other kids ran and played outside,
James was often kept indoors To make matters worse, so
Leonard began raising chickens in the backyard of their family home.
The dust and feathers triggered James's asthma, and yet his

(03:08):
father regularly made him clean out the coup. James would
often wheeze through the night and wake up barely rested.
His condition also meant he was unable to participate in
sports or gym class. Combine that with the frequent doctor's
visits and various treatments, James missed out on plenty of
school days, all of which made him feel exactly like

(03:31):
the weak and worthless child that his parents reminded him
he was. Even though James was intelligent, with an IQ
just over average and a gift for mechanics, he was
awkward around other kids his age. No matter how hard
he tried, he didn't seem to be able to make friends.
The illness and constant coughing mean James walked with a hunch,

(03:53):
and he never fully matured physically. That made him an
easy target for school yard bullies. While kids in the
neighbor hood called him a sissy. No matter how hard
James tried or what he achieved, nothing he did ever
seemed to measure up to his big brother, Leonard Junior.
Junior was everything James wasn't. He was tall, athletic, social,

(04:16):
and a natural leader. Teachers raved about him, and girls
threw themselves at him. But most painful of all, their
mother didn't try to hide that he was her favorite.
She would often ask James quote, why can't you be
more like Leonard? Beyond Leonard's senior and Charity's cold and
distant parenting, they were also strict Roman Catholics, as were

(04:39):
many of the residents in Hamilton. Charity attended Mass every
day and the boys were expected to follow suit. There
were rules and rituals to their daily lives which left
no space for negotiation or emotion. Things were bad for James,
but they got much worse after his father died from tuberculosis.

(04:59):
When James he was twelve years old without a husband,
Charity told Leonard Junior that he was the man of
the house. She doubled down on her expectations of complete
obedience and success, but she wasn't going to get that
from James, not because he wasn't capable or didn't behave,
but because nothing was ever good enough. When she made

(05:22):
him clean, he would miss the tiniest spot and then
be shamed and chastised for being lazy and naughty. When
he got a bee. At school, he was punished for
being stupid. James and Leonard Junior attended Hamilton Catholic High School,
which meant there was no relief from the strictness of
religious teaching. It followed them from the home to the

(05:44):
classroom and back again. There were only two hundred students
at the school, and everyone seemed to know everyone, which
meant everyone knew that James was a weirdo. He was
the kid who sat alone at lunch and who didn't
have any friends. That reputation made Leonard Junior keen to
keep his distance at school. He didn't bully James, but

(06:06):
he didn't stick up for him or try to make
his life easier. Anyone who made fun of Junior for
his brother's awkwardness was reminded that they were nothing alike.
Friends would later say that Leonard acted as a surrogate
father after Senior died, but James didn't see it. That way.
James would later say that after his father died, Charity

(06:27):
became physically abusive towards him. She also encouraged Leonard to
take part in the beatings in order to teach him
a lesson. On one occasion, they dragged him to the
basement and beat him with a rubber hose after he
threw a dinner plate on the floor. Things got so
bad that James attempted to run away from the home
several times. Each time, he would return home more depressed

(06:51):
than when he left. Things got so bad that he
attempted to end his life. When that didn't work, he
felt even more stupid for not being able to accomplish that.
When James was eighteen years old, he was hospitalized for
spinal meningitis, which is a serious and potentially life threatening
infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal gord.

(07:15):
He spent weeks in the hospital while life carried on
as usual for everyone else. When he recovered, he was
even weaker and more miserable than before. He would later
say that during that time he spent a lot of
time contemplating ending his own life. His mother complained that
he was a burden, and she wished he had never

(07:35):
been born. She never spoke like that to Leonard. It
was clear that Leonard Junior could do no wrong, while
James could only do wrong. When Leonard finished high school,
he joined the military and got a degree, Charity reminded
James that those were achievements he would never have. When

(07:56):
James finished school in nineteen fifty two, he enrolled to
study a life electrical engineering at Xavier University and later
the University of Cincinnati. He was an average student, with
mostly B and C grades, but Charity's self fulfilling prophecy
came true and he dropped out after two years. He
managed to get a good job at General Electric, which

(08:18):
gave him enough money to move out on his own,
but it didn't last. After leaving GE, he got a
temporary position as a draftsman, which meant he had to
travel frequently around the Midwest. When James wasn't on the road,
he would visit the local library every day. He particularly
enjoyed it reading the financial section of the New York Times,

(08:40):
Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Another part of his
daily routine was to walk from the library to the
bank to check on his investments and stocks, then he
would wander over to his favorite local bar called the
Nineteenth Hole. By the time James was thirty, he was
living in the spare bedroom of his mother's house. His

(09:02):
traveling draftsmen work had dried up, and with no job
and no money, he was forced to move back home.
After that, he floated between dead end jobs and took
to drinking heavily, just like his father before him. He
still went to the library every day and still kept
track of the stock market, but after making a string
of bad investments, he eventually lost it all. But James

(09:26):
had another solitary hobby to keep him busy, target shooting.
He had a growing collection of firearms that he would
take down to the river to practice. His favorite trick
was to walk ten cans along the ground with his pistols.
That required precise aim in control in order to hit
just below the can to make it jump forward with

(09:48):
each shot. Like drinking and investing in stocks, shooting required money,
which James didn't have. Whenever he ran out of cash,
his mother or brother would give him alone, but he
quickly drank the money away at the bar and had
to beg them for more with each new loan, he
became more resentful. He blamed his mother, his father, and

(10:10):
his circumstances for the position he was in, but most
of all, he blamed Leonard Junior. Not only was James's
older brother everything he was not, Leonard had also stolen
James's one shot at happiness. At least that's how he
saw it. Back when James was in his early twenties,

(10:31):
he met a woman named Almah. She was warm, outgoing,
and kind, which made her the polar opposite of the
only other woman in his life, Charity. Almah and James
spent a lot of time together, often as a trio,
with Leonard joining them on activities. James loved Almah and
he knew she was the one, but Almah wasn't too

(10:52):
sure and didn't make any promises. Just when things were
beginning to get serious, Almah told James that Leonard had
given her and ultimatum. She needed to choose one of
the brothers to be her boyfriend. You probably see where
this is going, so you won't be surprised that she
chose Leonard. Having Almah leave him for someone else was

(11:13):
bad enough, but having that other person be his brother
left James utterly broke in. Of course, she would choose
the tall, charming and successful Leonard over him. Almah had
tried to let James down gently by downplaying the seriousness
of their relationship and saying they had just been friends,
but that betrayal was the ultimate humiliation. Within months, Almah

(11:37):
and Leonard announced they were getting married. Leonard asked James
to be his best man. The couple played the part
of a happy family and moved on with their lives,
but James never would. Over the coming years, James's resentment
towards Leonard deepened. With every Birthday, Christmas, and Thanksgiving dinner

(11:58):
he sat across the table from Leonard and Almah. He
felt robbed of the life he could have had and
should have had. Almah was meant to be his. Even
though Almah had chosen Leonard, he saw her as stolen property.
His brother could have had anyone else, but instead he
chose to steal the one person which meant so much

(12:19):
to James. The younger brother had spent his whole life
trailing behind Leonard in school, in his mother's eyes, and
in every milestone, and now the one good thing he
thought he had for himself had been taken too. Almah
became the symbol of all his failures, the woman he
couldn't keep, and the life he never got to live.

(12:40):
As the years passed, James became a constant bystander to
the joys and celebrations of Almah and Leonard's lives together.
Every time they announced they were expecting another child, it
was like a knife straight to his heart. Once was bad,
Twice was worse, But then came a third, and a fourth,
then on and on until the couple were announcing their

(13:02):
eighth child. The more kids they had, the more perfect
their little world appeared, and the more James resented them
for it. James never confronted his brother or sister in
law outright, but deep down the wound of their betrayal festered,
and the longer it went untreated, the deeper it spread,
until it consumed every waking moment of James's life. Soon

(13:27):
there would be a reckoning. On Easter Sunday in nineteen
seventy five, Charity celebrated Mass at her local parish, just
like she did every year. When she returned home, she
prepared a simple meal in preparation for Leonard, Alma and
the children to join her for dinner at around four pm.

(13:47):
They gathered at her home on Minor Avenue on the
southeast side of Hamilton. Charity had organized an Easter egg
hunt for the kids, which was something she had never
done for her own children. When the fun was over,
the family shared their meal and listened as the parish
bells rang out across the township, signifying the end of

(14:07):
the holiday mass. James didn't join the family for the meal.
One day earlier, he had turned forty one, which he
celebrated by drinking at his favorite bar into the early hours.
He was barely awake when his family arrived for their
annual Easter family dinner, and in no mood to sit
by and smile politely while they went on and on

(14:28):
about how perfect they all were. As the family took
the last bites of their meal, James walked into the
dining room. In his hands were three loaded handguns and
a rifle. At nine thirty PM, two local patrol officers
received word that a person had been shot at six
thirty five Minor Avenue. When they arrived at Charity's home,

(14:52):
they met James at the front door. He was clean
cut and dressed in a tidy shirt and pants. He
calmly told the office that someone had been shot inside.
The officer asked a couple of questions about what had happened,
and when he mentioned going inside to see if someone
needed help, James shook his head and said, quote, no,

(15:12):
nobody's alive. The officer pushed past James into the small
living room directly beyond the front door. Other than the
normal furniture and Easter decorations, all they could see was
red red up the walls, on the ceiling, and all
over the kitchen. After taking a breath, the officer connected
the red to the bodies. They were everywhere. Some were

(15:36):
on the floor and some slouched over the living room
furniture or next to the dining table. One was right
near the rear door of the home, and then the
officer noticed on the table with several guns. The next
thing the officer registered was that most of the bodies
belonged to children. He counted once, then again, and then

(15:57):
again for good measure, children, three adults. When the officer
backed out of the house to the front door where
James was standing, he asked him if they needed to
look for another perpetrator. James shook his head and said
no Before being taken from the scene, James asked if
he could go back inside to get his coat. The

(16:20):
officers declined. Throughout the interaction outside Charity's home, James remained
calm and polite, like eleven members of his own family
weren't dead. Just inside the front door, the eight children
were between the ages of four and seventeen. Next to
them were the bodies of his mother, his brother, and

(16:40):
his sister in law. At the police station, James was
read as Miranda Rights and asked if he wanted a lawyer.
If you want to learn more about Miranda Rights, you
can check out the video I recently made about the
history of the Miranda Warning. A link is in the description.
James declined the offer of a law Within half an hour,

(17:02):
the prosecutor arrived and asked the same question again. James
said he was happy to talk so long as it
wasn't about the circumstances surrounding the shooting, as if they
might be there to chat with him about something else. Instead,
James was asked about his own movements that day. He
told the officers that he'd gone out drinking the night

(17:23):
before and slept until three pm. He heard his brother
and his family arrive at Charity's home around four pm.
He explained that he hadn't left the house at all
that day until the officers brought him to the police station.
When he was asked about the guns on the table,
James affirmed they belonged to him. He was asked about

(17:44):
alcohol and said his last drink had been in the
early hours of the morning. He denied using any drugs
or prescription medication that day. After chatting a bit more,
the officers asked James to give them the names of
the shooting victims in his mother's house. There was Charity
Leonard Junior, Alma Leonard, the third, Carol, Michael, Tom and Dave.

(18:11):
That made eight, but James couldn't give them the names
of the other three children. He tried for a while
to bring their names to mind, but didn't seem to
be able to That seemed to upset him as the
minutes passed, and he became more agitated and began to
shut down. Eventually, James told the officers that he wanted
to speak to a lawyer. He was handed a phone

(18:33):
book and called a lawyer who he recognized as a
student he went to school with. But the man didn't
deal with criminal cases. After being recommended another lawyer, he
made a call and stated that he was a suspect
and a homicide. Note the words suspect and a homicide
not eleven. Finally, he made contact with someone who agreed

(18:56):
to represent him. While James spoke to his lawyers, the
prosecutor headed to the scene at Minor Avenue. It was
ten thirty pm and there was little in the way
of lighting except for the dim bulbs inside the house.
The darkness only made the scene grimmer. Five of the
victims were in the living room and six were in

(19:16):
the kitchen, which doubled as the dining area. The youngest
victim was four years old. He was found on the
floor of the living room with a gunshot to the
side of his head. In his hand was an Easter
egg wrapped in pink tinfoil. Back at the station, James's
clothes and shoes were bagged and paraffin casts of his

(19:38):
hands were taken to detect the presence of gunshot residue.
His fingernails were scraped and his wallet was emptied. The
only sign of anything untoward at that point was a
small amount of blood spatter on James's shoes. The prosecutor
discussed the case with the officers who were at the scene.
James said he hadn't left the house all day, which

(20:00):
meant he was home at the time of the shootings.
He also claimed ownership of the guns on the dining table,
which would be examined to determine if they were the
weapons used in the shooting, but James had not confessed
to being the shooter, and beyond the blood spatter on
his shoes, there was nothing definitive to indicate he was
the person who pulled the trigger. Despite the limited evidence

(20:23):
available at the time, the prosecutor didn't want to take
the chance that a person who had potentially killed eleven
members of his own family, including children, would walk free.
Not long after the clock struck midnight, James Rupert was
charged with eleven counts of aggravated murder. After the scene
examination was completed the following day, the bodies were removed

(20:45):
from the house. By then, the media had caught wind
of a shooting and turned up to take photos at
the scene. None of them knew that there were eleven victims.
One by one, the bodies were brought out of the
house on gurney that was later referred to as a
parade of death, which lasted for more than fifteen minutes.

(21:07):
The autopsies of the victims took three days to complete.
In total, there were forty bullet wounds, with twenty six
of those bullets recovered from the bodies. Thirty eight of
the hits were lethal, which confirmed the person who fired
them was a competent marksman. There seemed to be no
rhyme or reason for the number of bullets each victim took.

(21:28):
Two of the victims had a single wound, but all
of the others had multiple wounds. There was twelve year
old Anne who had four shots in her head, each
one of them fatal on its own. Charity's most significant
wound was a bullet right through her heart. Leonard Junior's
major wound was through his head. Almah was shot just once.

(21:51):
The trajectory of some of the wounds was thirty to
forty degrees, which indicated the killer had stood over the
victims and shot them at a downward angle. One of
the children was more than six feet or one hundred
and eighty two centimeters tall, and he had been shot
twice in the chest at an upward angle that indicated
that he had been shot while standing up, which was

(22:11):
the same finding for the bullets recovered from Leonard. The
types of bullets used in the shooting were hollow points.
Unlike standard rounds, hollow points are designed to expand on impact,
which causes maximum internal damage. They also minimized the chance
of the bullet passing through the body. The time of

(22:33):
death for all eleven victims was around six pm on
the day of the shooting, give or take one hour.
When the autopsies were over, the family were farewelled at
a funeral, which was attended by more than six hundred people.
At the end of the formal proceedings, the eleven coffins
were arranged in the shape of a cross. James was

(22:53):
given the option to attend, but he declined. Meanwhile, investigators
had some us in questions they needed answered. First, why
had none of the victims been able to get away?
And why had no one heard anything? When officers canvassed
the neighborhood, they couldn't find a single person who were
called hearing a commotion or any gun shots on the

(23:16):
night of the murders. That was exceedingly strange because the
scene examination indicated that at least forty four shots had
been fired. Forensics determined that an Astra twenty two caliber
nine shot pistol found at the scene had been fired
twenty six times. That meant it had been reloaded twice
during the course of the shooting. Consider how long it

(23:39):
takes to shoot nine rounds, reload, shoot nine more, reload,
and shoot nine more, and that's in between all the
other rounds. And yet no one outside heard anything. There
were no reports of screams or gun shots, and no
one inside was able to get away. One of the

(23:59):
children his bodies was found within a couple of feet
of the rear door, and another close to the front door,
but they had been killed before they could make it out.
That indicated the shooting had happened very quickly and all
of the victims had been incapacitated within a couple of minutes.
James had a long history with weapons. On applications for
jobs he had applied for over the years, James listed

(24:22):
his hobby as guns. There was no doubt James owned
the weapons found at the scene. He had admitted as much,
but aside from his fingerprint being found on the barrel
and trigger guard of the Astra, as well as a
box of twenty two caliber ammunition. There was nothing to
prove he had pulled the trigger. The Sentinel revolver, and

(24:44):
a three point fifty seven magnum recovered from the scene
did not have any fingerprints. James had admitted he never
left the home that day, which meant he was at
the home during the shootings, but he had never come
close to confessing that he was responsible for the murder
of a lie even of his family members. Investigators found
a potential answer about why no one had heard anything

(25:06):
when the owner of a local antique store came forward.
His business also sold guns and ammunition, and the Thursday
before the shooting, he recalled having a discussion with James
about silencers. Another member of the community recalled several discussions
with James about shooting a weapon through a pillow to
dull the sound. Just a couple of days after the shooting,

(25:31):
a grand jury indided James on eleven counts of murder,
with the specification that it was a purposeful killing involving
the death of two or more persons. That meant James
was eligible for the death penalty, which at the time
was the electric chair less than a week later, the
prosecutor received a call from James's attorney to say his

(25:51):
client was paranoid, extremely depressed, and suicidal. He asked that
James be put under a twenty four hour watch to
ensure sure he was safe while in custody. The lawyer
said the assessment of James's condition had been made by
doctor Mechanic, who was a renowned psychiatrist and professor at
the University of Pennsylvania. He had been retained by the

(26:14):
defense team to assess James's state of mind in order
to inform their case going forward. The prosecutor spoke to
the psychiatrist to understand more about James's condition. He asked
if James had offered any inside into how the massacre occurred.
That version of events offered the first explanation for what
might have happened inside six thirty five Minor Avenue that night.

(26:39):
According to James, he had come into the living room
while his family was eating dinner. James was carrying his
guns because he intended to go target shooting, which is
something he did most weekend evenings. As he walked through
the room, Leonard asked him, quote, will the rebate help
the economy. He was referring to a test credit the

(27:00):
government was offering to middle class Americans to help boost
the economy. James replied, quote, not much. Then Leonard asked
him about his car. James drove a gray Volkswagen Beetle,
which had been having a lot of trouble over the
previous few years. James believed his big brother had been
intentionally damaging his car in minor way so that it

(27:24):
was unreliable and annoying, but not enough that he would
replace it. James suspected that he had been adding too
much oil to the engine and fiddling with the plugs.
On another occasion, Leonard had touched the bumper with his
foot and it broke off completely a couple of weeks later,
which only deepened James's suspicions. So when Leonard asked James

(27:47):
about his car, it immediately triggered a response. He knew
that Leonard would often make those kind of jibes in
front of others so that James couldn't react, but that
time James saw red. He didn't care who saw what
he did next. According to the psychiatrist, James used one
of the guns to shoot Leonard point blank. Right there

(28:08):
in the living room. Charity saw what happened in a
lunch towards James, but she fell short and he shot
her too. Then he shot Almah. All of the adults
were dead, and James registered that the people who had
slighted him and caused him so much pain over the
years were gone and the only ones left were the children.

(28:28):
James began shooting at them randomly, right where they sat.
He would later say that he incapacitated them all immediately,
but several of them survived their initial wounds. James told
his psychiatrists that he went back and shot them again,
some of them multiple times, to quote end the moaning
and put them out of their misery. Before ending the

(28:50):
conversation with the psychiatrist, the prosecutor asked to meet with
James's lawyer in person the next day. Then he called
to jail and asked that a guard be posted out
side James's cell at all times. The next day, doctor
Mechanic told the prosecutor that James was grossly psychotic and
suffered from persecution complex and paranoia. His opinion was that

(29:13):
James had been that way for at least ten years.
When James was done with shooting his entire family. He
had thought about killing himself, but in the end he
decided that he couldn't bring himself to do it. Of course,
James had also told the doctor that the youngest victim
was on the toilet when he shot him, which didn't
line up with the scene. The four year old boy

(29:36):
was the one found lying on the floor of the
living room holding an easter ragg There is an expectation
of doctor client privilege, especially when it comes to the
kind of information the psychiatrist was discussing, but the doctor
told the prosecutor that he was sharing that level of
detail because they intended to enter a plea of not
guilty by reason of insanity. It was his professional opinion

(29:59):
that je James was insane and unfit to stand trial
and should be held indefinitely at a psychiatric institution. He
requested that the prosecutor arrange for the necessary psychiatric evaluations
to happen as soon as possible so that the case
didn't drag on for months, which would only worsen James's condition.
The prosecutor listened to all of the points the psychiatrist

(30:22):
had outlined, but the claim of insanity didn't so well
with them. Detectives had spoken to hundreds of people who
knew James, from acquaintances to colleagues and his ex employers.
Each one of them agreed that although James was a
bit of a loaner, he appeared to be a perfectly
normal guy. He was polite and unassuming, and he never

(30:42):
made a scene or stood out in any way. He
was the kind of person who faded into the background
of life, not someone who had been on the edge
of psychosis for ten plus years. The only thing people
pointed out as particularly unusual was that James never went
out with women. From their perspective, there had never been
another woman in James's life since Alma. No one knew

(31:05):
if that was because James wasn't interested or that women
weren't interested in him. His previous employers also had nothing
to say about James. They noted that he was extremely
detail focused, which meant that his work was slow. He
was so meticulous that he often couldn't move on until
he had examined every small component of a task, even

(31:27):
when it wasn't necessary. With that in mind, the prosecutor
had two choices. The first was to concede that James
was insane and therefore unfit to stand trial. He would
still be locked away, and that option would mean no
lengthy trial. The second option would be for him to
pursue James for murder on the grounds that he knew

(31:48):
exactly what he was doing when he murdered eleven people
in the living room of his mother's house. The prosecutor
chose the latter sure enough. On the day of James's arraignment,
and his lawyers entered both a not guilty plea and
a not guilty by reason of insanity plea. In simple terms,
James was saying that he didn't do it, but if

(32:09):
he did do it, he was insane at the time.
The judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation to be conducted within
thirty days, and because it was a death penalty case,
he ordered that James beheld without bond. A month later,
James appeared in court again for his competency hearing that
would determine whether he was fit to stand trial. Before

(32:32):
I go over their testimonies, I want to point out
that I often relay information about someone's medical diagnosis or
treatment on this show, and I want to make it
clear that I'm just repeating what the details were at
that time. Often, when I cover a case that took
place decades ago, the names of conditions or the types
of treatments have since changed. So if I were to

(32:54):
explain that someone was diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome or Aspergers,
those condition have since been changed and renamed, but those
were the diagnoses at the time of the respective cases.
A lot of information about mental health has changed since
the nineteen seventies, but these were the opinions of the
psychiatrists at the time of this trial. The first expert

(33:18):
for the prosecution testified that James had signs of a
paranoid psychotic state, which he said might have been caused
by brain damage from the spinal meningitis he had as
a teenager. A second expert stated that James was fit
to stand trial even though he had a paranoid personality.
The third expert said James was a loner who couldn't

(33:39):
relate to people. He assessed jamess having a paranoid personality
with schizoid traits. Yet another expert testified that James had
paranoid psychosis, feelings of persecution, and a misinterpretation of reality.
While their findings were different, all four experts agreed that
James was fit to stand trial. He was a surprise then,

(34:03):
that the defense did not call any experts of their own,
even the psychiatrist who had initially assessed James and met
with the prosecutor. According to his defense lawyers, while James
was in jail, he had written letters to various people
stating that he didn't trust his lawyers. He felt they
were conspiring against him and they wanted him to take

(34:24):
a deal and admit he was guilty rather than fight
the charges in court or support his claim of insanity.
For that reason, the defense lawyers argued that because James
didn't trust them, he was unable to participate in his
own defense, all of which made him incompetent to stand trial.
After hearing both sides of the argument, the judge came

(34:45):
down on the side of the prosecution. He ruled that
James was competent to stand trial. During his ruling, the
judge stated that having a mental illness does not mean
a person is insane. All the prosecution had to prove
was that the the evidence demonstrated James was capable of
understanding the nature and objective of the proceedings against him.

(35:06):
And was capable of assisting the defense. The judge felt
that that threshold had been met. James was offered the
option of either a jury trial or a three judge panel.
He took his chances with the judges, and James Rupert's
murder trial began on June sixteenth, nineteen seventy five. Before

(35:28):
opening statements, the three judges left the courtroom to visit
the scene of the crime. At the time of the murders,
it was determined that, due to the severity of the crime,
the scene would be preserved until any potential trial had concluded.
That meant that three months after the Rupert family was
wiped out, the judges would still be able to see

(35:49):
the dried blood and brain matter which had stained the
walls and floorboards since that night. Right next to those
stains were framed family photos, partially drunk cups of coffee,
Easter egg wrappers, and other everyday items found in a
normal family home. By June, the weather had changed and

(36:09):
it was warm and humid. All the windows and doors
on the house had been boarded up to deter vandals
from breaking in and having a look around the massacre house.
That meant by the time the judges walked in, there
was no way to avoid the stench of death and decay,
which had been stagnating since the day of the murder.

(36:29):
The dinner Charity had prepared for her family was still
on the bench, and the food in the fridge had
long since spoiled. When the judges were done, news reporters
who were covering the story were given five minutes to
look around the home as well. Inside, they noticed that
there had been so much blood from the slayings that
it had seeped through the floorboards and into the basement below.

(36:53):
They also learned that forensic technicians had found tiny fingernails
embedded into some of the walls that proved that several
of the children had survived long enough to try and
escape from their uncle after he murdered their parents. The
reporters could see where they had clawed away at the walls.
Many of them were shocked by just how many bullet

(37:14):
holes there were throughout the living room of the home.
It seemed like no surface had remained untarnished by death.
Back at the court room, the prosecution gave their opening statement.
They had one hundred and one exhibits to support their argument,
including photos of the victims, crime scene diagrams, fingerprint evidence,

(37:36):
and the guns found at the house. They also had
expert testimony from psychiatrists, testimony from previous colleagues of James,
as well as his bar mates who had discussed guns
and silencers with them. The prosecution intended to paint a
picture of an intelligent but bitter man who killed his
family not in a moment of madness, but because he

(37:58):
wanted to get his hands on their catsh Leonard Junior
was a successful engineer with a good job, a nice home,
rental properties, and money in the bank. He also had
substantial life insurance policies in place for himself and Almah.
According to the prosecution, James had basically nothing to his name.

(38:19):
While he had twenty six hundred dollars in assets, he
owed his mother and brother forty five hundred dollars for
all those small loans he had taken out over the years.
Any money James once had had been lost in the
stock market, and the prosecution argued that he wanted the
three hundred thousand dollars in insurance money for himself. That

(38:39):
number didn't include the value of charities or Leonard's homes
or their stocks and bonds they knew. The defense's main
argument would be that James had intended to go target
shooting that day, but had been set off by Leonard's questions,
which triggered a psychotic rage, But the prosecutor believed evidence
would prove that James had been plodding to Massacres family

(39:01):
for months. There were the conversations with bar mates and
the antique store owner about using a silencer. There were
also bank records showing James's financial position, and witnesses who
testified about his knowledge of the value of Leonard and
Charity's assets. The prosecutor also directed the judge's attention to

(39:23):
photographs taken in James's bedroom during the crime scene investigation.
In the corner of his room was an open rifle
carrying case, and on top of the dresser was a
gunbox for the astra. The prosecutor argued that if James
was going target shooting as he claimed, he wouldn't have
carried his weapons downstairs out of their boxes and bags.

(39:44):
Did James expect them to believe he tucked a loaded
handguns into his pockets and casually walked downstairs cradling a
loaded rifle everyone who ever watched James target shoot by
the river remembered him carrying his weapons in their cases
and loaded them at the site. Also in James's bedroom
was a pair of bloody pants and a shirt which

(40:06):
had been tucked inside his dresser underneath other clothing. According
to the prosecution, that indicated an attempt to conceal what
he had done. According to James, after shooting his family members,
some of them several times, he laid on the couch
for three hours before calling the police. The prosecution believed

(40:27):
that was so he could make sure his victims were
all definitely dead. Scene investigators also found several books on
psychology and paranoid schizophrenia inside James's room. According to the prosecutor,
the only way James would be entitled to his mother
and brother's estate would be if he was found not
guilty by reason of insanity. All he had to do

(40:50):
was make people believe he was insane, get sent away
to some low security asylum, and bide his time until
he was determined not to be a threat to society anymore.
Then he would walk away three hundred thousand dollars richer.
It was a simple plan, and it was a two
for one deal. Not only would he have the money,

(41:10):
he would also be free of the two people he
blamed for ruining his life three if you count Alma.
Other evidence presented by the prosecution included that James's hands
tested positive for gunshot residue, and that the blood type
on the pants in the drawer didn't match James, but
did match several of his victims. They also noted that

(41:33):
no silencer damaged pillows were ever found at the scene,
and that the rifle found in the kitchen hadn't been
fired at the time of the shootings. The prosecution went
on to argue that although James had never come outright
and confessed to pulling the trigger forty four times, the
evidence overwhelmingly proved that any claim of insanity, paranoia, and

(41:55):
detachment from reality simply didn't hold up. His actions pointed
to a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
During the witness testimony, the prosecution called Charity's sister to
the stand. She had visited James in jail not long
after he was arrested. When she asked him what had happened,

(42:15):
he broke down, crying and said, I don't know, and
that the whole incident was a blank. She shared that
there was a long history of mental illness on her
side of the family, including institutionalization, suicides, and depression. Despite
knowing that her nephew was likely responsible and culpable for
the deaths of so many people, she declared that she

(42:37):
supported James. After giving her testimony, she attended every day
of the trial. When it came time for the defense
to give their opening statements, they immediately moved for an acquittal.
They were entitled to make that motion on the grounds
that they believed the case against their client was insufficient
to sustain a conviction. They argued that the prosecutor didn't

(43:00):
prove James knew what his brother was worth, that they
hadn't proved a motive or proved intent to kill, and
that they hadn't even proved James was the shooter. After
the prosecution rehashed their entire argument, the panel of judges
unanimously decided there was sufficient evidence to indicate aggravated murder.

(43:21):
The motion for acquittal was denied. As anticipated, the defense
presented James as legally insane and so mentally unwell that
he was incapable of stopping himself from carrying out the
slaughter of eleven family members. According to his lawyer, that
wasn't just their opinion. Nine private psychiatric and two court

(43:42):
appointed experts all found him to be mentally ill at
the time of the killings. They shared that the root
of James's psychosis stretched back to childhood, when he was
apparently forced to spend time locked inside the chicken coop
behind the family home. They also stated that Charity often
told James she wished he was a girl, and dressed
him in feminine clothing and spoke to him like a baby.

(44:06):
James told the psychiatrist that Charity would make him sleep
naked next to her, and on at least one occasion
he woke up to find himself in a compromising position
with his mother. His feelings towards Charity got worse in
adulthood when he discovered he was impotent. As an adult,
he had at least one homosexual encounter, and besides Almah,

(44:27):
there were no other romantic relationships in his life. Being
emotionally cast aside by his mother, combined with a lifetime
of living in Leonard's shadow, formed the foundation of a
mental collapse which was decades in the making. It all
culminated in the moment he killed eleven people who the
defense asserted were so dear to him. Three of them

(44:49):
were so dear to him that he couldn't even remember
their names. Several of the psychiatrists were called to testify
in court. One told the judges quote, his ego was
just completely overwhelmed by his rage. This suppressed rage he'd
been accumulating over ten years or more actually since childhood.

(45:12):
According to the defense, the three hours James spent on
the couch after the murders were to contemplate suicide, which
he decided against only because it was considered a mortal
sin and Catholic doctrine. Here's yet another person who committed murder.
In fact, he murdered eleven members of his own family,
but suicide was where he drew the moral line. Okay,

(45:38):
The defense painted a picture of a deeply paranoid person.
Not only did he distrust his own lawyers, he was
convinced that the FBI had bugged his jail cell. He
also told his lawyers that his brother had reported him
to the authorities for being a communist. According to the defense,
all of that combined to make James incapable of distinguishing

(46:00):
right from wrong or resisting the urge to annihilate his
entire family. He lived in a distorted version of reality
where he routinely misinterpreted ordinary events as evidence of a
vast government conspiracy targeting him. His paranoia was deeply rooted,
and his lawyers claimed it was so profound and so

(46:21):
consuming that there was no way it could have been faked.
It was anyone's guess which way the judges would decide,
especially with the testimony about James's mental state. But at
the eleventh hour, the prosecution caught wind of a person
they hadn't known about when preparing their case for trial,
a person whose testimony could call James's insanity defense into question.

(46:47):
Wanda Bishop had worked as a bar maid at James's
favorite bar for just four days. During that time, she
met James, and after she stopped working there, they met
up several times a week over the next eight months.
They fell in love. When the prosecutor met with Wanda
to discuss the relationship, she told him she knew James

(47:09):
wasn't gay because he couldn't keep his hands off her,
but she did acknowledge that through all of their intimate encounters,
they never had intercourse. Wanda recalled that she met with
James on the evening of his birthday. Before leaving that night,
he told her he needed to go home to sort
out a problem with his mother. When she asked what

(47:30):
the problem was, he told her she wanted him to
pay back the money he owed, and she had said
something along the lines of, if you have enough money
to go out drinking every night, you have enough to
pay me rent or the debt you owe, and if
you don't, you can get out of my house. James
left the bar that night, but came back half an
hour later. When Wanda asked if he had sorted out

(47:53):
the problem with his mother, he said, quote, not yet.
They stayed together, drinking until the earth early hours of
the next morning. The prosecution interpreted Wanda's story as a
clear demonstration that James had planned to kill his mother
and probably Leonard, as he owed his brother money. Also,
the day after telling Wanda he needed to sort out

(48:15):
a problem with Charity was Easter Sunday, the same day
James murdered his entire family. But Wanda's testimony also proved
something else. James had told his lawyer that he had
never been in a romantic relationship since Alma. That tied
into his projected image of being a loner and emotionally detached,

(48:36):
which were the foundations of his insanity defense. Having a
relatively normal relationship with a woman and discussing his mother
being a problem suggested that James was not as socially
cut off or mentally disturbed as the defense wanted the
court to believe. By the end of the trial, more
than ninety one witnesses had testified. During closing statements, the

(48:59):
two sides repeated their cases, and the three judges left
the courtroom to determine James's fate. Just four hours later,
they announced that they had reached a verdict. James Rupert
was found guilty of eleven counts of aggravated murder. The
judges specified their decision was a two to one finding,
with two of the judges agreeing he was guilty and

(49:21):
one dissenting. Because the verdict was not unanimous, James cannot
be sentenced to the death penalty. The defense team immediately
stated that they would appeal the conviction on the grounds
that the decision needed to be unanimous at the time.
Under Ohio law, a verdict in a capital murder case
required a full agreement of all twelve jurors, but the

(49:44):
verdict in this case had come from a three judge panel.
The defense argued that a unanimous decision was still required
in a capital case, even among judges. Before the appeal
against James's conviction could be heard, the judges had to
determine his sentence. They listened as the defense pleaded for leniency,

(50:05):
arguing that he was a mentally ill man in need
of treatment. Then came the prosecution's insistence that he was
a cold blooded killer who deserved no mercy. In the end,
they sentenced him to eleven life terms. In August of
nineteen seventy five, James was transferred to a psychiatric facility
after a prison psychiatrist found him to be delusional and depressed.

(50:29):
Two years later, Ohio's First District Court of Appeals reversed
James's conviction on the grounds that he was not given
proper advice about waiving his right to a jury trial.
According to their twenty two page decision, James had believed
there was a requirement for unanimous verdict whether he chose
a jury or a panel of judges. A year later,

(50:51):
a retrial was ordered, but it was delayed by James's
claim that he was facing double jeopardy, which he wasn't
double jeopardy he is generally for anyone who is acquitted
of a crime. An acquittal does not prove someone is innocent.
It just means the prosecution could not prove their guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt. The law was put into place

(51:13):
so a prosecutor can't try someone over and over until
they get a guilty verdict. Unless some major new evidence
is found, a person cannot be tried for a crime
they have previously been acquitted of. James was not acquitted.
He was found guilty, and that conviction was reversed, so
it was as if he had never been tried the

(51:34):
first time. If James's case was an example of double jeopardy,
then that would mean no person whoever won an appeal
would ever be able to be retried, which isn't the case.
When that was settled, the second trial got underway in
nineteen eighty two. James was back in court, that time
in front of a jury of his peers. The second

(51:57):
trial was held in the town one hundred and twenty
five miles or two hundred kilometers away from Hamilton. James's
lawyers had successfully argued that he couldn't receive a fair
trial in his hometown thanks to the national attention the
case had gained, Hamilton had become synonymous with the massacre,
and the defense claimed that public opinion was so deeply

(52:17):
entrenched for an impartial trial. By then, James had been
incarcerated for nearly eight years and had no funds to
pay for his lawyers. However, the lawyer who represented him
during both trials so strongly believed James was insane that
he personally funded the defense. The evidence in the second
trial was much the same, except Wanda wasn't called as

(52:40):
a witness in her place. Another bar mate recounted conversations
with James, including one where he talked about faking insanity
to get away with murder. Another key difference in the
prosecution's case was their assertion that James had timed the
murders to coincide with the ringing of Hamilton's church bells
on Easter Sunday. The bells were loud and predictable, and

(53:04):
he used them to mask the sound of forty four
gun shots echoing through the house. The Easter toll goes
on for ten minutes, which they argued was long enough
to wipe out his entire family without anyone noticing. When
it came time for the defense to present their case,
they had no new evidence to add. They referred back

(53:24):
to their original argument that James was illegally insane at
the time of the killings, and that his actions were
the result of a long standing and untreated mental illness.
He did not know the difference between right and wrong
and had acted under the influence of a delusional state.
The second time around, James was found guilty of the
murders of his mother and brother. He was found not

(53:47):
guilty by reason of insanity for the murders of Alma
and her eight children. For the guilty convictions, he received
two life sentences, which were to be served consecutively. James
never testified in his own defense. He also refused to
give any interviews about the case from inside prison, although

(54:07):
at one point he did consider a book offer. In
June of nineteen ninety five, when James was sixty one,
he appeared before the parole board for the first time.
He refused to take any accountability for his crime, and
parole was denied. He was also denied in two thousand
and five. In twenty fifteen, with the Parole Board noting quote,

(54:29):
the Board has determined that the inmate is not suitable
for release at this time. The inmate has not completed
any recommended programming and does not appear to be willing
to do so. The inmate's record notes negative institutional conduct.
The inmate took the lives of multiple victims. There has
been strong community objections to his release. The release of

(54:52):
this inmate would not be in the best interest of justice.
James's next parole hearing was due to take place in
April of two, twenty twenty five. However, he died of
natural causes in June of twenty twenty two at the
age of eighty eight. After the initial trial, all of
the personal items from inside Charity's home were sold off

(55:13):
at a macabre public auction. The house was cleaned and
rented out, and to this day still stands. The Easter
Sunday massacre remains the deadliest single shooter murder in Ohio history.
It's unfortunate that James's parents treated him like he wouldn't
amount to anything, but it's even more unfortunate that he

(55:33):
became a monster who perfectly lived up to his parents' expectations.
If you're the victim of domestic abuse, please reach out
to someone for help. Please talk to your local shelter,
call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at one eight hundred
seven nine ninth safe that's one eight hundred seven nine
nine seven two three three, or you can go to

(55:55):
the hotline dot org to chat with someone online. If
you're having feelings of harming you or sell or someone else,
or even just need someone to talk to, please contact
your local mental health facility call nine one one, or
call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline by simply dialing nine
to eight eight in the United States. They're available twenty
four hours a day, seven days a week, and we'll

(56:15):
talk to you about any mental health issue you might
be facing. If you're a member of the LGBTQ plus
community and suffering from discrimination, depression, or are in need
of any support, please contact the lgbt National Hotline at
one eight eight eight eight four three four five six four,
or go to LGBT Hotline dot org. Thanks so much

(56:36):
for letting me tell you this story. If you're a
fan of true crime, you can subscribe to this show
so you don't miss an episode. My other show, Somewhere
Sinister is no longer getting new episodes, but you can
check it out if you like interesting stories from history
that aren't necessarily true crime, but true crime adjacent. It's
available anywhere that you listen to podcasts. You can also

(56:57):
check out my personal vlog, Giles with a J which
is sporadically updated with stuff about my personal life, travel
and music. It's available on YouTube. If you'd like to
support the show, check out our merchandise at thisismonsters dot com.
A link is in the description. Thanks again, and be
safe