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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening in January eighteen eighty nine, as London constables
Speaker 2: hunted for Jack the Ripper and theaters around the world
Speaker 2: presented theatrical renditions of the Jacculine Hyde story. Jackson, Michigan
Speaker 2: Police Captain Jack Boyle search for the murderer of Mary Latimer.
Speaker 2: This book follows Captain Boyle to the bordellos of gaslight
Speaker 2: era Detroit, populated by Madam's pimps, prostitutes, and gamblers. It
Speaker 2: describes the investigation that led him to a pharmacist that
Speaker 2: prowled the streets, akin to a real life Jacqueline Hyde. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: the book delves into the mind of Robert Irving Latimer,
Speaker 2: known as the most dangerous prisoner in Michigan and the
Speaker 2: man who inspired talk about resurrecting the state's long dead
Speaker 2: death penalty. The book they were featuring this evening is
Speaker 2: Pardonable Matricide Robert Irving Latimer from Michigan's Most Dangerous Inmate
Speaker 2: to Freeman, with my special guest journalist and author Tobin T. Booch.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 2: agreeing to this interview. Tobin T. Book.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Dan, thank you very much. We're going to go way
Speaker 2: back in history to the late eighteen hundreds here, and
Speaker 2: first off, tell our audience how you came to want
Speaker 2: or come to be in a position to write this book,
Speaker 2: Pardonable Matricide.
Speaker 4: I have been writing about historic true crime, primarily from
Speaker 4: my base in Michigan for a long time, for a
Speaker 4: number of years, and that began with from investigation work
Speaker 4: that I did as a volunteer in the Kent County
Speaker 4: MORG which was research for my first two books, which
Speaker 4: were a Cause of Deaths and Skeletons in the Closet,
Speaker 4: and they were a way for people to take a
Speaker 4: look at see what really happens inside of a moork
Speaker 4: as opposed to the kind of televised reality that you
Speaker 4: see about borgs on TV. And I love history and
Speaker 4: so they kind of came together, and in there are
Speaker 4: a couple of cases that are just delightfully delicious. It's
Speaker 4: probably the wrong word to say in this context, but
Speaker 4: they're really twisted and interesting. And one of them was
Speaker 4: the Irving Latimer case. And I had read some paragraphs
Speaker 4: here and there about the case, but nothing book length.
Speaker 4: And when I started to look into it, as often
Speaker 4: happens with my writing, I discovered that there was a
Speaker 4: much more to the story than had been told before.
Speaker 4: So I started digging, and the rocks that I uncovered,
Speaker 4: the story that I found underneath there is pardonable Mattress side.
Speaker 2: Now, this story centers around a place, Jackson, Michigan, that
Speaker 2: we introduced, So first tell us a little bit about Jackson,
Speaker 2: Michigan and its location, and then talk about a case
Speaker 2: that influences this case and also introduces pretty well all
Speaker 2: the main characters, especially in law enforcement and prosecution, the
Speaker 2: Jacob Crouch case. So in eighteen eighty three, in November,
Speaker 2: you talk about that case. So tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about Jackson, Michigan and this case that sets up
Speaker 2: this very very infamous case in eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4: In the eighteen eighties, Jackson was a mid sized midwestern
Speaker 4: town that was located. It's in southeastern Michigan, located between
Speaker 4: Detroit and Chicago, so any other early traffic that was
Speaker 4: going from east to west or vice versa would have
Speaker 4: passed by that area, so it became kind of a
Speaker 4: major stop for training. Its significance in our area's history
Speaker 4: is that it housed the state's first maximum security penitentiary,
Speaker 4: and that would be the only facility for long term
Speaker 4: inmates until I believe it was eighteen eighty nine or
Speaker 4: eighteen ninety when they opened up a second branch of
Speaker 4: Michigan's up. So Jackson is an interesting situation because it's
Speaker 4: a city within a city. Most of the I wouldn't
Speaker 4: say both. Many of the industries that were at work
Speaker 4: and Jackson were collateral to or supported by the prison itself.
Speaker 4: What's interesting about this and how it's different from today
Speaker 4: is that prisoners, when they were sentenced to prison were
Speaker 4: sentenced to work at hard labor. Someone was given a
Speaker 4: sentence of twenty years at hard labor, and hard labor
Speaker 4: was supplied by manufacturers who essentially purchased labor through the prison.
Speaker 4: So a lot of like Jackson Wagon Company, which made
Speaker 4: wagons for nationwide had a factory literally inside the walls
Speaker 4: of the prison. So Jackson State Penitentiary is actually called
Speaker 4: the Michigan State Penitentiary. Jackson State Penitentiary at various times
Speaker 4: in its history was the largest wall prison in the world,
Speaker 4: and part of the reason for that is because inside
Speaker 4: the walls they had all these prison industries which were
Speaker 4: really run by private firms in and around the Jackson area.
Speaker 4: So it's happened because it's a city within a city.
Speaker 4: Was a family that was murdered in cold blood and
Speaker 4: the case has never really been solved. How it's relevant
Speaker 4: to pardonable matricide and the Irving Latimer case is that
Speaker 4: most of the major players, it's not all of the
Speaker 4: major players, right down to the prosecutor and the defense attorneys,
Speaker 4: had played some type of role in that case. And
Speaker 4: what's fascinating is that the world was so different back then.
Speaker 4: When these investigators went to take a look at the
Speaker 4: crime scene, they allowed the public full view of the
Speaker 4: crime scene, and so you had reporters and members of
Speaker 4: the public who were just morbidly curious wandering in and
Speaker 4: around the Crouch farmhouse, and that led to a little
Speaker 4: bit of a backlash because there was some criticism that
Speaker 4: the crime scene had been spoiled by all of the
Speaker 4: feet that had gone through that. So when the Latimer
Speaker 4: case came up and Mary Latimer was found playing in
Speaker 4: her bedroom, they closed off the crime scene to everybody
Speaker 4: but a reporter. I think there was one lone reporter
Speaker 4: in the house at the time during the time of
Speaker 4: the investigation.
Speaker 2: So now we fast forward to eighteen eighty eight. Tell
Speaker 2: us about the background of Robert Irving Latimer and his mother.
Speaker 2: Tell us about his family background. As you write, they.
Speaker 4: Were natives of Jackson. His dad was the business as
Speaker 4: a pharmacist, and he had dreams of something bigger, and
Speaker 4: they moved out to the East Coast for a while
Speaker 4: where his dad opened up the factory. It ultimately folded.
Speaker 4: Irving Latimer spent his formidable teen years there and he
Speaker 4: acquired a reputation very early on as a lady's man.
Speaker 4: If we call him a skirt chaser today, a rue
Speaker 4: whatever term you want to use. They were all kinds
Speaker 4: of phivious, rumored going on about an affair he might
Speaker 4: have had with an older woman. The family relocated back
Speaker 4: to Jackson when Irving Latimer was I believe in his
Speaker 4: late teens and his dad went back into business as
Speaker 4: a pharmacist, and eventually Irving Latimer followed in his dad's
Speaker 4: footsteps and purchased the West Side Pharmacy after his dawn
Speaker 4: unexpectedly passed away and he became he went into the
Speaker 4: family business, so to speak, and became a pharmacist. The
Speaker 4: family itself was very well known in Jackson. They were
Speaker 4: very well respected. They were not what you would call
Speaker 4: upper class. You'd call them more like middling class or
Speaker 4: middle class. The house was a kind of a standard
Speaker 4: sized eighteen eighties eighteen nineties style house, not real big,
Speaker 4: but it was real close to a part of Jackson
Speaker 4: where the Uppercross families did live in their Victorian mansions.
Speaker 4: And I think that Latimer had a little bit of
Speaker 4: an eye for that lifestyle. Now he became I think
Speaker 4: that there's essentially public Vlatimer in a private Latimer. He
Speaker 4: You mentioned in the introduction that he was very much
Speaker 4: a Jackel and Hide character, and I think that's really
Speaker 4: a great comparison, because the Jackal was the guy that
Speaker 4: everybody liked. He was the boy next door. He was
Speaker 4: the guy who dated the ex sheriff's daughter. He was
Speaker 4: the guy who the families at the church, at the
Speaker 4: family Church wanted, wanted their boys to emulate. The hide
Speaker 4: was the guy that came out at night. He was
Speaker 4: the one who got high on his own supply. He
Speaker 4: was the one that took regular trips to Detroit where
Speaker 4: he spent his time gambling and taking drugs and spending
Speaker 4: time in the red light district with the prostitutes. The
Speaker 4: mother and the father were really well respected, but I
Speaker 4: think that Latimer's reputation eventually caught up to him. He
Speaker 4: got involved in a couple of scandals that pretty much
Speaker 4: ruined his reputation when he was in his twenties.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about Mary Latimer and this West End pharmacy,
Speaker 2: and of course looks like for all appearances that Robert
Speaker 2: has learned something from his father about running a business,
Speaker 2: and this is the West End pharmacy. But tell us
Speaker 2: what the conditions are that he gets the money for
Speaker 2: the pharmacy. That's not how that comes to be.
Speaker 4: What the conditions are that he could Oh, the father
Speaker 4: passes away unexpectedly. The father's insurance is split between the
Speaker 4: mother and the son, and the son uses his share
Speaker 4: to buy the West End pharmacy. And the pharmacy was
Speaker 4: a small pharmacy, and it was one of only several
Speaker 4: in the area, but it was real prosperous. So theoretically
Speaker 4: the book should have been written in nothing but black ink,
Speaker 4: but they were written in red. Acquired all kinds of
Speaker 4: debt because of the hide in him. He was spending
Speaker 4: his money at night gambling and womanizing and visiting browels
Speaker 4: in Detroit. So the pharmacy itself would have been a
Speaker 4: really good business for him, but he had a lot
Speaker 4: of vices that sort of gotten the way of that.
Speaker 4: So I think he learned the business from his father,
Speaker 4: but I don't think he really learned business since from
Speaker 4: his father.
Speaker 2: You talk about the pharmacy too before we get into
Speaker 2: January twenty fifth, eighteen eighty nine. But you talk about
Speaker 2: the pharmacy and the availability of narcotics at that time.
Speaker 2: As you write, tell us some of the drugs that
Speaker 2: were available to a person like Latimer, if so inclined,
Speaker 2: If so.
Speaker 4: Inclined and ratt Latimer could have gotten his hands on
Speaker 4: any or all of the following substances. Cocaine, and that
Speaker 4: is I think his drug of choice. He was spotted
Speaker 4: at one point walking around the other pharmacies trying to
Speaker 4: get his hands on it. Heroin could have been gotten
Speaker 4: over the opium morphine, and then mixtures of them like latum,
Speaker 4: which is a mixture of opium and alcohol, and then paregoric,
Speaker 4: which I believe is a mixture of pinster of opium
Speaker 4: and alcohol, which is even stronger than laudinum. And people
Speaker 4: didn't really understand the concept of addiction like they do today,
Speaker 4: so these substances would have been available over the counter
Speaker 4: for people as headache remedies. I have a drug label
Speaker 4: from a Michigan pharmacy just for example, that is paragoric
Speaker 4: and it's listed as forty seven point five percent alcohol
Speaker 4: spiked with one point nine grains of opium, So it
Speaker 4: would be like an ninety four ninety three proof glass
Speaker 4: of whiskey spiked with the opium. And on the drug
Speaker 4: label it give the dosages and the youngest is three
Speaker 4: months old and they get a couple of the drops
Speaker 4: of this, and then as ten months old, gets a
Speaker 4: few more drops, and then we go all the way
Speaker 4: to an adult who gets a full tea spoonful. So
Speaker 4: people took the stuff for it for headaches and wow,
Speaker 4: it felt pretty good. So they started to use it
Speaker 4: without really a concept of addiction. And you don't have
Speaker 4: to go that far back in history, like like my
Speaker 4: grandfather predated penicillin, and you know, they got sick, they
Speaker 4: gave the kids a shot or wrong, and it really
Speaker 4: didn't do anything except treat the symptoms, I think. But
Speaker 4: we even go back to generation earlier than that they
Speaker 4: used even harder stuff. And in addition to this, he
Speaker 4: could have gotten substances beyond that. Substances such as chloroform
Speaker 4: was available. If the count ride no idea what people
Speaker 4: used it for. Maybe if they had stepped on a
Speaker 4: nail or something and they wanted to take it out
Speaker 4: put somebody out. People could have gotten their hands on
Speaker 4: strypt nine and arsenic and strict nine, which is a
Speaker 4: heavy metal poison, is a rather interesting substance because it
Speaker 4: was used as a rodent side to kill rats in
Speaker 4: the granary. But believe it or not, strychnine and fall
Speaker 4: doses at the time was used as that era's version
Speaker 4: of value or diazopin. It was a well, it was
Speaker 4: an anti anxiety medication, so you could have gotten if
Speaker 4: we had lived in that era, we could have gotten
Speaker 4: all kinds of stuff over the counter whatever a carrier caier.
Speaker 2: Right, sure. Now, let's get to January twifth, twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine. And as you write, Mary Latimer is
Speaker 2: fifty three years age fifty three years of age at
Speaker 2: that time, and her son, Robert Irving Latimer, is her
Speaker 2: only child, and he has a keeps a bedroom at
Speaker 2: the family home, but as you write, he's rarely there,
Speaker 2: and he spends nights at the pharmacy as a cot
Speaker 2: at the pharmacy. Now her Mary's friend is someone named
Speaker 2: Kate Burrows. Tell us what Kate Burrows does when she's
Speaker 2: concerned about Mary being alone. Tell us what happens.
Speaker 4: She's concerned about Mary being alone because Mary, at this
Speaker 4: point in time is a widow and she's got a
Speaker 4: weak heart, and Kate's concerned about her health. And one day,
Speaker 4: one very early morning, she sees that the groceries have
Speaker 4: been dropped by the side dwarf, and usually Mary would
Speaker 4: have been there to accept the groceries and bring them in,
Speaker 4: so right away she thinks that something might be wrong,
Speaker 4: so she goes to the house and she runs into
Speaker 4: a paper hanger so a wallpaperer who was doing some
Speaker 4: work for the latter of her family. And they go
Speaker 4: in through the basement up into the kitchen and there
Speaker 4: they find the dog gyp and I think the dog
Speaker 4: had bloody footprints that he was tracking around the house.
Speaker 4: But they go up the staircase to her bedroom and
Speaker 4: that's where they find her kind of a bloody mass.
Speaker 4: She had been beaten, she had been shot, She had
Speaker 4: been slumped over for a chair, and it looked like
Speaker 4: what happened was she was trying to get to the window,
Speaker 4: perhaps to open it and call out, when she collapsed
Speaker 4: and died.
Speaker 2: Now you say right away, there's a response from police
Speaker 2: Chief Eugene D. Winnie and Captain Jack Boyle. What do
Speaker 2: they find in terms of, right away, what might be
Speaker 2: the motive for this killing? And what do they find
Speaker 2: in terms of any other physical evidence present.
Speaker 4: So the physical evidence that they find, some interesting physical
Speaker 4: evidence that they didn't entirely understand at first, was in
Speaker 4: the Latimer bedroom where Robert sometimes slept. They found a
Speaker 4: blood spattered handkerchief that they thought perhaps the killer had
Speaker 4: gone in there to wipe his hands. They also found
Speaker 4: some blood spots on the pillow itself. Now, one of
Speaker 4: the theories was is that the dog had taken the
Speaker 4: the handkerchief off of the floor and jumped up on
Speaker 4: that bed and carried the blood with it, but it
Speaker 4: didn't quite seem to fit. They also found some blood
Speaker 4: stains on a gas jet, but probably the single most
Speaker 4: compelling piece of evidence that they found would have been
Speaker 4: Mary's dentures, which is essentially then, I think, blown and
Speaker 4: sprinkled across the floor like marbles. I think is how
Speaker 4: I described that in the book. Now, what I mean
Speaker 4: by being important is that she essentially bit down in
Speaker 4: her attacker, they thought. And when they did narrow down
Speaker 4: the field, they it turned out that the attacker had
Speaker 4: to damage thumb, and that the damage on the thumb
Speaker 4: would have perfectly fit her bite had he attacked her
Speaker 4: from behind.
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Speaker 4: They were able to, I think use that to pair
Speaker 4: up to kill their with with the victim. Now. Kind
Speaker 4: of an interesting thing about this, though, is the way
Speaker 4: they handled evidence is a little bit different, and their theories,
Speaker 4: their underlying theories is a little bit different than it
Speaker 4: was today. And in part this is why I enjoy
Speaker 4: letting about historical crime so much. It's because it's so
Speaker 4: different than it is today now. When we get through
Speaker 4: the crime scene hit a pretty good example of a
Speaker 4: piece of evidence they really wanted to find, which they
Speaker 4: thought would be like a smoking gun type of proof,
Speaker 4: but they never did find because the science doesn't support it.
Speaker 4: And that's something called forensic optography. It was assumed at
Speaker 4: the time that the human eye functioned just like a camera.
Speaker 4: I think the optics are somewhat similar. The physical process
Speaker 4: behind how a camera took the picture and how the
Speaker 4: eyeball work were somewhat similar, and that led to the
Speaker 4: conclusion that a person captured on their eye an image
Speaker 4: of the last thing they saw in a murder case,
Speaker 4: that would inevitably be the killer. So in cases like
Speaker 4: this this era, they would take a camera and they
Speaker 4: would prop it up over the body and they would
Speaker 4: try to take photographs of the eyes and analyze that
Speaker 4: for the possible image of the killer, which as there's
Speaker 4: no scientist science behind this, it's maybe a pseudoscience, is
Speaker 4: what we call that today. But it's a really interesting
Speaker 4: example of how they did things differently than they did today.
Speaker 2: You also talk about that they questioned neighbors, and they
Speaker 2: are the mystific or mystified that the dog doesn't bark
Speaker 2: for this supposed intruder, and no one hears any any
Speaker 2: but as soon as they come to the crime scene,
Speaker 2: the dog barks. So that's put in their in their
Speaker 2: little book in terms of notable things about this crime scene,
Speaker 2: doesn't it?
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, absolutely, because the dog is capable of It's
Speaker 4: an old aged dog that's on its last legs, so
Speaker 4: to speak, that it's capable of barking in a does
Speaker 4: in fact bark when others are around, when strangers are
Speaker 4: around people, the dog isn't quite familiar with why the
Speaker 4: dog doesn't bark because the person who came in and
Speaker 4: killed Mary Latimer wasn't a stranger, at least not to
Speaker 4: the dog Jip. So again, that's an interesting piece of
Speaker 4: evidence that suggested it tended to show that the killer
Speaker 4: may have been intimately equated with Barry Latimer in some
Speaker 4: shape or form. Brought Robert to He was in Detroit
Speaker 4: at the time, and he came back to Jackson and
Speaker 4: he was interviewed in the house with the body still
Speaker 4: slumped over the chair in the next room, and curiously
Speaker 4: he had no interest whatsoever in seeing his mother's body.
Speaker 4: His affect was off, he didn't seem like he acted
Speaker 4: like a man who had just lost his beloved mother.
Speaker 4: And even more suspiciously, he offered up an alibi that
Speaker 4: just seemed a little too perfect. Combined with the fact
Speaker 4: that Jip knew the killer and that Robert Irving Latimer
Speaker 4: had had an injured thumb, they started to put one
Speaker 4: and one together, and they didn't necessarily like what they
Speaker 4: came up with, but he seemed like the most logical suspect.
Speaker 2: Now, how do they go about investigating and proving or
Speaker 2: disproving this perfect alibi?
Speaker 4: So they sent Jack Boyle to Detroit on It's a
Speaker 4: basically backtrack, to follow in Latimer's footsteps and find out
Speaker 4: what he was doing. And they interviewed the personnel at
Speaker 4: the hotel that he stayed in, and basically Ledimer's alibi
Speaker 4: was that he had checked into the Griswold Hotel in
Speaker 4: downtown Detroit and during the hours of the crime he
Speaker 4: was fast asleep in his bed. Well, they interviewed some
Speaker 4: of the hotel personnel. The maid in particular was of
Speaker 4: was of importance here, and they were all convinced that
Speaker 4: Latimer never slept in the bed, although he attempted to
Speaker 4: make it look like he slept in the bed. So Boyle,
Speaker 4: so there's a missing period of time, and it's that
Speaker 4: missing period of time which he sends you asleep in
Speaker 4: the bed that they tried to find out where he
Speaker 4: actually was. Now they go to Boyle goes and identifies
Speaker 4: a barber who shaved Latimer the next day, and the
Speaker 4: barber tells him that Vladimer's got all this blood spots
Speaker 4: on his shirt and on his clothes, and he even
Speaker 4: wants to go and use the washbasin the basin to
Speaker 4: clean up, So that's suspicious. Then Boyle starts looking at
Speaker 4: the train timetables and interviews train personnel, and it turns
Speaker 4: out that train personnel for they saw Latimer on a
Speaker 4: train that was headed to from Detroit to Jackson around
Speaker 4: midnight and saw him return on a train sometime around
Speaker 4: four o'clock in the morning. So it appeared that what
Speaker 4: he attempted to do was set up a perfect to Detroit,
Speaker 4: checking into a hotel, sneaking out of the hotel, jumping
Speaker 4: onto a train for Jackson, doing the dirty d and
Speaker 4: then getting back on a train for Detroit and going back,
Speaker 4: sneaking back into the Griswold Hotel and telling everybody that
Speaker 4: he had slept during the timeframe of the crime. And
Speaker 4: it's kind of interesting because he had given himself a
Speaker 4: little bit of an out. And I don't know if
Speaker 4: he had intended to do this when he engineered the
Speaker 4: perfect alibi, but his out was when they told him, look,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't think you know, we think you're
Speaker 4: on these trains. We think he came back to Jackson.
Speaker 4: He had a kind of a pocket story that he
Speaker 4: was looking for this woman named Trixy and he thought
Speaker 4: he saw her go on to a train headed east,
Speaker 4: and he followed her on the next train and wound
Speaker 4: up in Jackson and he didn't find her, so he
Speaker 4: wandered around so he could catch the next train and
Speaker 4: never did go home. So when he finally faced up
Speaker 4: to that story, he'd put himself in Jackson during the
Speaker 4: timeframe of the murder.
Speaker 2: There are searches of the home wield that yield some
Speaker 2: surprises and some evidence. There are further investigations to find
Speaker 2: out some financial dealings that Robert had with his mother.
Speaker 2: Tell us how it comes to be that they find
Speaker 2: out this new support of evidence.
Speaker 4: They have a man who was responsible for looking into
Speaker 4: taking care of Mary Latimer's estate, and he was responsible
Speaker 4: for putting the house up for sale when Robert Irving
Speaker 4: Latimer was being tried for the crime during investigated jail
Speaker 4: and tried, and he was going through some drawers and
Speaker 4: he found some evidence, some papers that indicated that Robert
Speaker 4: Irving Latimer had borrowed a significant sum of money from
Speaker 4: his mother, and so she was his creditor and the
Speaker 4: payment was coming due. I think it was coming due
Speaker 4: in January of eighteen eighty nine, and so there was
Speaker 4: a fiscal motive for killing Mary Latimer because that way
Speaker 4: he could get himself out of having to make the
Speaker 4: payment and inherit her money and pay off his other creditors.
Speaker 4: So he had some financial motives for doing for the
Speaker 4: form of the crime. So not only was he in
Speaker 4: Jackson at the time, but he also had the means
Speaker 4: of the opportunity.
Speaker 2: You talk about the media's role in this case, and
Speaker 2: you also talk about the media's role with the judiciary.
Speaker 2: You talk about there being at the crime scene, at
Speaker 2: the Crouch crime scene, where not only did they let
Speaker 2: the publicans to see things like the body still there,
Speaker 2: but also that the media had let's say, a bigger
Speaker 2: responsibility and at least more privileges when it came to
Speaker 2: the judiciary and the courtrooms. So what was the take
Speaker 2: on this? And again, this is called matricides, So how
Speaker 2: serious did the press take this and what was the
Speaker 2: public's response.
Speaker 4: The press took this really seriously. This became headline headline
Speaker 4: news of course in Jackson, but also throughout Detroit. All
Speaker 4: the Detroit papers ran with it and covered it front
Speaker 4: page news for a long time, right up through the
Speaker 4: trial and the conviction. And not only that, but the
Speaker 4: case filtered outward and made headlines in the big rags
Speaker 4: throughout the United States. So this was something that the
Speaker 4: press kind of he's done. And I think the reason
Speaker 4: for that is because of the matricide element. It's extremely
Speaker 4: uncommon to commit to commit matricide for a mattress side
Speaker 4: to occur. You wouldn't think that would be the case,
Speaker 4: but it is. Usually when it's done, it's a man
Speaker 4: killing killing the mother, and usually it's done in a
Speaker 4: bedroom in a location that they're both very familiar with.
Speaker 4: So that there's a been enough cases over the last
Speaker 4: hundred years to create a profile, and it's amazing how
Speaker 4: closely he fits the profile, right down to the age range.
Speaker 4: But there hasn't been that many cases. Mattricide is really
Speaker 4: really uncommon now. The murder of one's lover or spouse
Speaker 4: is called uxoricide, and that's much much more common. But
Speaker 4: the fact that it was a mattress side in this
Speaker 4: era in particular, really I think triggered off sort of
Speaker 4: a media storm about the case itself. That was something
Speaker 4: that the media in most cities had never never heard of,
Speaker 4: are even conceived of before, was the killing of one's mother.
Speaker 4: And then there were other interesting facets of the two.
Speaker 4: The Jeckel and Hide aspect, I mean, the strange case
Speaker 4: of doctor Jeckylin and Hide I think was first published
Speaker 4: in the eighteen mid eighteen eighties, I want to say,
Speaker 4: without looking eighteen eighty five perhaps, and so they used
Speaker 4: the term jackelone Hide to refer to him. So here
Speaker 4: you have a case of a real life Jaqueline Hide
Speaker 4: that fit the fictional version pretty well, which people had
Speaker 4: pretty much known by this point because it had been
Speaker 4: performed in the theaters all over the place. So the
Speaker 4: media not only took it seriously, but they tended to
Speaker 4: really investigate. They had reporters who were running around and
Speaker 4: following his footsteps. They had reporters who were on the creeks,
Speaker 4: interviewing people, trying to find angles, trying to figure out
Speaker 4: what's going on, interviewing the women in his life. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't say that they were incredibly intrusive with mamal suspects
Speaker 4: in this era. They often didn't have access to them
Speaker 4: once they went behind bars, which wouldn't been true for
Speaker 4: females because of the possibility of a scandal. Female suspects
Speaker 4: were almost always interrogated in full view of the press,
Speaker 4: and press were even allowed to ask questions, which creates
Speaker 4: an interesting layer for a researcher that isn't there for
Speaker 4: male suspects. So in this the thig days, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: say it was necessarily inclusive, But probably the most insidious
Speaker 4: factor of the media attention in this case was their
Speaker 4: inability to secure a jury. The defense lawyer during their
Speaker 4: wayear basically eliminated everybody he could that had heard about
Speaker 4: the case, and that was pretty much everybody because it
Speaker 4: had been published so widely in the press.
Speaker 2: You talk about the preliminary attracting all kinds of attentions,
Speaker 2: so they didn't wait till the trial was the preliminary
Speaker 2: that created all kinds of interest and interestingly too, even
Speaker 2: though this was a rogue and you talk about his
Speaker 2: character really not having any use for any of his friends,
Speaker 2: there were people that he had encountered and acquaintances and
Speaker 2: business partners I guess are business acquaintances that really firmly
Speaker 2: believed that he could not have done this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was a hard I think he if he
Speaker 4: was alive today, I think he'd be the life of
Speaker 4: the party. He'd be the guy that always got a
Speaker 4: circle of people around him at a party, went in
Speaker 4: in particular, they're laughing, he's telling jokes. He'd be an
Speaker 4: extremely charismatic individual to a degree. But I think getting
Speaker 4: to know the real Robert Irving Letter he was a
Speaker 4: hard man to get to know. And I think he
Speaker 4: tended to use people and dispose of them like they
Speaker 4: were kleenex. So again that's that part of that JaQuel
Speaker 4: and Hyde type of vibe that he had. The interesting
Speaker 4: thing about that I find about trials of the era
Speaker 4: is you have to keep in mind the context This
Speaker 4: isn't an era before there were reality TV shows, before
Speaker 4: there was shows like Law and Order and those type
Speaker 4: of things. And the press. I think in the eighteen
Speaker 4: eighties they had pretty much explagated anything that was really spicy.
Speaker 4: And I mean you have to kind of read between
Speaker 4: the lines when I mean, when when they talk about prostitutes,
Speaker 4: they don't use the word prostitute very often. They use
Speaker 4: a series of synonyms that are a little less a
Speaker 4: little less racy, you might say. I mean, after all,
Speaker 4: this is an era where tablecloths go right to the floor,
Speaker 4: and because they didn't want guys looking at the legs
Speaker 4: of the table because or later they're gonna start looking
Speaker 4: at the real thing. I mean that kind of that
Speaker 4: kind of conservatism, you know, that affected all aspects of life.
Speaker 4: I mean, people coined the term drumsticks, so they didn't
Speaker 4: they didn't use an anatomical term. I mean, it went
Speaker 4: to excise. I saw a picture of two women who
Speaker 4: were dragged off to a patty wagon in a patty
Speaker 4: wagon of the Chicago land because they weren't wearing their
Speaker 4: bathing suits. They went right down to the ground. And
Speaker 4: what's crazy about that is that photograph they're wearing skirts
Speaker 4: and they have bobby socks on and the only skin
Speaker 4: that's exposed to their kneecaps, and that was enough to
Speaker 4: get them a jail. Stin people go to trials, and
Speaker 4: in trials, the testimony isn't expurgated, so they can get
Speaker 4: the very best of reality TV, so to speak, and
Speaker 4: they can get it unadulterated, unedited. And so at the
Speaker 4: Latimer trial, because he had tried to alibi himself by
Speaker 4: saying that he was at a bordello, they actually called
Speaker 4: the matam and some of the prostitutes up to testify.
Speaker 4: And the just the existence of these ladies, having them
Speaker 4: right into the public into the daylight, would have been
Speaker 4: utterly scandalous, let alone what they had talked about. And
Speaker 4: so for people, this was the very height of drama,
Speaker 4: and particularly the part of the community that particularly loved
Speaker 4: this were the ladies. I've done a tremendous amount of
Speaker 4: writing about trials that take place in that era SA
Speaker 4: eighteen eighty to nineteen twenty, and invariably you hear the
Speaker 4: line that the audience is made up of eighty percent women,
Speaker 4: and the women in the audience have overflowed the aisle.
Speaker 4: The seats in the courtroom for them. You even hear
Speaker 4: a news reporters who are angry because they have to
Speaker 4: try to crane their necks to see over the women
Speaker 4: who are sitting there with their big brimmed hats on.
Speaker 4: So right away, as you mentioned from the preliminary hearing,
Speaker 4: you've got because of all of these facets, and what
Speaker 4: makes this case even more interesting to people is the
Speaker 4: bordeuble aspect and the mattress side aspect. So and added
Speaker 4: to which he was a really really popular fellow in Jackson.
Speaker 4: Very well.
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Speaker 2: Now we talked about the trial of basically you call
Speaker 2: it a trial of the century. The anticipated interest in
Speaker 2: this trial, never mind from the preliminary it continued to
Speaker 2: the actual trie While you say, with all the people
Speaker 2: that were anticipating this, especially the women, but let's talk
Speaker 2: about what the prosecution, who for the prosecution is and
Speaker 2: talk about the defense, which is an attorney named Barkworth.
Speaker 4: Barkworth in Parkinson, I believe is the prosecuting attorney. To
Speaker 4: go back and actually look through the book. So they're
Speaker 4: both well known lawyers in their area. Both of them
Speaker 4: played a role in the Crouch case. They would go
Speaker 4: on to Parkinson would go on to become a judge,
Speaker 4: a really well known judge, and Barkworth would go on
Speaker 4: to become a member, I believe, of the Michigan House
Speaker 4: of Representatives. So we're talking about some pretty good legal
Speaker 4: minds here. And Parkinson was handed a pretty good case.
Speaker 4: He had motive, he means opportunity, and he has a
Speaker 4: forensic evidence and he always proceeded on what they would
Speaker 4: call the mercenary motive, and that was Robert Irving Latimer
Speaker 4: killed his mother for no other reason than to stay
Speaker 4: clear of the debt and to where her money so
Speaker 4: that he could pay off his other debts and continued
Speaker 4: to do live the life of Riley if you will
Speaker 4: do what he wants to do. In Detroit, Barkworth had
Speaker 4: a little bit harder job. Barkworth had to try to
Speaker 4: explain how in the world his client had come to
Speaker 4: be in Jackson at the same time that the crime
Speaker 4: was taking place, why he lied about it in the
Speaker 4: first place and tried the best to try to keep
Speaker 4: his client out of that room, out of that house
Speaker 4: at the time. And this is where we get into
Speaker 4: a woman named Trixie Beatrice LaRue was her real name,
Speaker 4: and she was essentially held up as his alibi, except
Speaker 4: no one could find her, and I think she might
Speaker 4: have headed west and they perhaps changed names. But one
Speaker 4: thing is certain. She never made an appearance at the trial.
Speaker 4: And what's interesting is that the anticipated women who knew
Speaker 4: Latimer anticipated that he was going to try to pull
Speaker 4: one of them in as an alibi, and there were
Speaker 4: several reputations I think that were ruined as a result
Speaker 4: of their relationship to a known rue, because he was
Speaker 4: looking for somebody who could be convenient, and ultimately he
Speaker 4: picked kind of it concreted an interesting scenario because whereas Beatrice,
Speaker 4: did she exist, did she not exist? Did she exist
Speaker 4: in pseudonym only? It's kind of a fascinating story, and
Speaker 4: it kind of a fascinating sub story really.
Speaker 2: You talk about meanwhile, at the same time this is
Speaker 2: going on, there's a dynamic in terms of in the
Speaker 2: court and in the public and of course just starting
Speaker 2: to read the media in terms of the death penalty
Speaker 2: bill explain.
Speaker 4: That Michigan is a state doesn't have, hasn't had a
Speaker 4: death penalty for state crimes. The last man hanged for
Speaker 4: state crimes in Michigan terre was Michigan Territory in the
Speaker 4: eighteen thirties. His name was Stephen Simmons. He was a
Speaker 4: tavern owner who slugged his white He came home drunk
Speaker 4: one night, he slugged his wife because she wouldn't dring
Speaker 4: with him. She fell back here her head died skull fracture,
Speaker 4: I think. And he was sentenced to death, and no
Speaker 4: one wanted to hang him, so the hanging was done
Speaker 4: by proceeded was done by a fellow tavern owner and
Speaker 4: a long term rival with Stephen Simmons. As the story goes,
Speaker 4: Simmons was a bit of a brute, but he was
Speaker 4: a real soft spoken and eloquent man. And on the
Speaker 4: scaffold he got up in center prayer and then he
Speaker 4: sang him in a beautiful baritone, and people in the crowd,
Speaker 4: even those who were pro death penalty, and that instant
Speaker 4: turned against it. And when the State of Michigan came
Speaker 4: into being, one of the first things that the legislators
Speaker 4: did was ban the death penalty for state crimes. Now,
Speaker 4: I have to clarify that there have been people who
Speaker 4: have been put and currently put on death row and
Speaker 4: even executed for crimes that occurred within Michigan's borders, but
Speaker 4: they would be crimes that were done in territory overseen
Speaker 4: by the federal government. So there is an individual on
Speaker 4: death row in Tarahoe, Indiana today for a crime that
Speaker 4: was committed in Manistee National Forest, which is the part
Speaker 4: where the crime was committed is overseen by the federal government.
Speaker 4: But state crimes, we don't have one. Now. Over the
Speaker 4: course of our history, the death penalty comes up from
Speaker 4: time to time and a debate, and usually it's triggered
Speaker 4: by some type some type of really nasty crime or
Speaker 4: series of crimes or crime wave. Latimer and his crime
Speaker 4: and a crime of a fellow named Justice Tonto basically
Speaker 4: led to a very vigorous debate as to whether a
Speaker 4: death penalty should be enacted in the state of Michigan.
Speaker 4: And it came very close to passing. What a lot
Speaker 4: of people don't know when I speak about this kind
Speaker 4: of fascinating that they don't know this is that that
Speaker 4: death penalty build that was triggered by the matter side
Speaker 4: was going to involve three different types of executions. One
Speaker 4: would have been hanging, which would have made Michigan consistent
Speaker 4: with the other states at the time, hanging being a
Speaker 4: penalty that was the most common electrocution, the electric chair
Speaker 4: it started to be installed in mistake prisons around the country.
Speaker 4: And the third one was the guillotine. They were going
Speaker 4: to bring a guillotine to Michigan and behead at people
Speaker 4: as the ultimate punishment, and that would have been inspired
Speaker 4: by the crimes of Latimer. Obviously, it didn't get passed,
Speaker 4: but every now and again through our history, ever dozen
Speaker 4: or so years, it comes up again. I think Latimer
Speaker 4: inspired three different conversations about a death ponly, and some
Speaker 4: of them got to be very very very close, very
Speaker 4: close in voting. Part of one of the second instances
Speaker 4: that he influenced the talk, I think Barkworth with one
Speaker 4: of the voices against it, and the problem they had
Speaker 4: was they didn't want to execute people who are convicted
Speaker 4: solely uncircumstantial evidence, and he certainly had in my Latimer,
Speaker 4: because Latimer was convicted on circumstantial evidence. Now, while that
Speaker 4: sounds may sound really bad in the twenty first century,
Speaker 4: at the time, I think that was considered not so
Speaker 4: much problematic because they didn't have the type of forensic
Speaker 4: science that we have today, so they couldn't conceive of
Speaker 4: something like a DNA match or even a fingerprint. A
Speaker 4: lot of the evidence and murder trials or the case
Speaker 4: was in fact circumstantial.
Speaker 2: Let's get to this. You call it the theater of
Speaker 2: the absurd. We're talking about April eighteen eighty nine. You
Speaker 2: talk about the things that were raised at this trial,
Speaker 2: but one of the most I guess visual things was
Speaker 2: the appearance of missus Johanna Young behind her nephew. This
Speaker 2: is her nephew at trial. Tell us this a little
Speaker 2: bit about her appearance there and as you write some
Speaker 2: of the things that happened that also talk of his
Speaker 2: demeanor at trial.
Speaker 4: Irbie Latimer's demeanor at trial was odd. I mean, his
Speaker 4: affect was off, just like his affects seemed to be
Speaker 4: off when he when he gave his alibi and when
Speaker 4: he first came to his house with and talked to
Speaker 4: Boyle and Sheriff Winny about where he was, and you
Speaker 4: didn't want to see his mom's body. His aspect was
Speaker 4: off like that too. He spent a lot of time
Speaker 4: reading the newspaper as if he was a man that
Speaker 4: didn't have a care in the world. He either had
Speaker 4: convinced himself that he was going to get out of
Speaker 4: it or he really didn't didn't care or understand the
Speaker 4: gravity of it. And that seemed completely odd and indifferent
Speaker 4: to everybody in the courtroom, who is sort of expected
Speaker 4: him to be, you know, maybe tearful about the fact
Speaker 4: that his mother was ben shot. Now, the interesting thing
Speaker 4: about about Irving Latimer in the Affect is when he
Speaker 4: was in jail, he asked to he seemed completely indifferent
Speaker 4: about his mother being being dead, and he asked to
Speaker 4: be let out to build her funeral, and they believed
Speaker 4: they let him. They were going to let him go
Speaker 4: to his mother's schedule, and he had the last minute
Speaker 4: change his mind, and they thought that basically what he
Speaker 4: was trying to do was trying to drum up some
Speaker 4: support by looking to be devastated by his mother's loss.
Speaker 4: But when they actually called the bluff and said, okay,
Speaker 4: we'll go escort you get to the funeral, he didn't go.
Speaker 4: So part of the theater of absurd is his entire
Speaker 4: demeanor in this entire play, if you will, this is
Speaker 4: kind of a tragic comedy.
Speaker 2: You talk about the brought in the Madam Pinkerton into
Speaker 2: the courtroom, and of course this helped out the media
Speaker 2: and the public. But what did she bring in terms
Speaker 2: of evidence for the prosecution or was she an effective
Speaker 2: for the defense? Which was she?
Speaker 4: Therefore, I think that in the long run she probably
Speaker 4: was not affected at all. I think that she was
Speaker 4: brought in basically to say that she had known Latimer
Speaker 4: and that he had been at her establishment but had
Speaker 4: left it a certain period of time. And here's where
Speaker 4: we get to the train timetables. He left it a
Speaker 4: certain period of time, Detroit time, and it was enough
Speaker 4: for him to get back to the hotel and then
Speaker 4: get to the train and get to Jackson. So if
Speaker 4: he had attempted at one point in time to aliby
Speaker 4: himself by saying that he was there, but I think
Speaker 4: that her presence really really harmed him, and it wasn't
Speaker 4: just in that way, it was proof that she knew him,
Speaker 4: that he was a known associate of a well known
Speaker 4: Bravo owner, and that he had run up you know,
Speaker 4: he had spent a lot of time there. I mean,
Speaker 4: in order to be intimately associated with him, he would
Speaker 4: have had to spend time there. And that is I
Speaker 4: think for the community who wanted to indemnify him, who
Speaker 4: were convinced of his good boy image, this was like
Speaker 4: pulling back the curtain to see the person really, even
Speaker 4: the real Robert Irvy Latimer and a guy who was
Speaker 4: intimately associated not just with Madam Pinkerton, but her what
Speaker 4: they would have called inmates at the time, and not
Speaker 4: just one of them, but several of them. He had
Speaker 4: spent time in a Bravo, he had spent money in
Speaker 4: a Bravo, and that proof that he had run up debts,
Speaker 4: he was a luay, you know, a womanizer, and that
Speaker 4: he was intimately associated with the Red Light district. And
Speaker 4: I think that just kind of just helped make Parkinson's
Speaker 4: motives come to life and put a face on it.
Speaker 4: Because Parkinson, the whole time his case was predicated in
Speaker 4: the idea that Robert Irving Latimer murdered his mother a
Speaker 4: get out of the debt and b to acquire her
Speaker 4: money so that he continued to do these type of things.
Speaker 4: So I think that whatever the purpose of her going
Speaker 4: to the stand was, it was devastating for Robert Irving
Speaker 4: Latimer's defense.
Speaker 2: Every move that Barkworth did on behalf of Latimer in
Speaker 2: terms of trying to find an alibi witness, someone that
Speaker 2: he was with. There was a couple of attempts, and
Speaker 2: there was somebody that they found that was on a deathbed.
Speaker 2: They took an Affidavid tell us briefly about these attempts
Speaker 2: and what is made of them.
Speaker 4: I think, first of all, I think that Latimer probably
Speaker 4: was stringing around along his lawyer. I do not think
Speaker 4: this is a situation where Barkworth knew the truth that
Speaker 4: Latimer had confessed to him and he was grabbing for
Speaker 4: straws reaching for straws. I think that he was actually
Speaker 4: quite frustrated with this continually evolving story that Latimer told.
Speaker 4: But as a defense attorney and a very good lawyer,
Speaker 4: he also understands that he's got to do his best
Speaker 4: to try to prepare defense, and so he goes and
Speaker 4: he interviews people. I think Latimer had brought up a
Speaker 4: number of names with people who would give him an alibi,
Speaker 4: and so he goes to Detroit and interviews this woman,
Speaker 4: as you mentioned, that was on her deathbed, and of
Speaker 4: course she said that she wasn't even home at the
Speaker 4: time he came knocking, and she was with a friend
Speaker 4: and at that exact period of time. And what's kind
Speaker 4: of fascinating about this, though, is I wonder how truthful
Speaker 4: she really was. I mean, he was a bit of
Speaker 4: a virus for anybody at this point in time. Anybody
Speaker 4: to be associated with him was going to have a
Speaker 4: reputation killed, especially given the fact of how people were
Speaker 4: in the era, with the way they handled sexuality and
Speaker 4: things like that. So respectable woman in Detroit as an
Speaker 4: affair with a very good looking younger man. Maybe she's
Speaker 4: even with him that night, Maybe she's even with him
Speaker 4: earlier in the night. She's not going to say it publicly,
Speaker 4: She's can probably even say it in inaffidated. So I
Speaker 4: think that there's a little bit of wiggle room there
Speaker 4: to a little bit of reasonable doubt to suspect that
Speaker 4: she and maybe several others knew him. And I mean,
Speaker 4: like in the biblical sense, knew him and at this
Speaker 4: point in time, wanted to just distance themselves as best
Speaker 4: as they can, and he kind of wonder whether one
Speaker 4: of them actually was with him that night or part
Speaker 4: of that night. Doesn't mean he didn't do it, doesn't
Speaker 4: mean he didn't have time to sneak back to Jackson.
Speaker 4: But he certainly knew these people. He didn't just pick
Speaker 4: them out of the hat. And so part of the
Speaker 4: interesting part of my research was trying to reconstruct Laddimer's
Speaker 4: Little Black Book, if you will, in an era where
Speaker 4: people didn't want to talk about this type of thing
Speaker 4: and it was really, really, really tricky. So anyways, that's
Speaker 4: what that was all about. Barkworth was trying to find,
Speaker 4: trying to find witnesses that I think his rather troublesome
Speaker 4: client was bringing up as a desperate attempt and trying
Speaker 4: to get him out of Jackson or at least away
Speaker 4: from the house at the time the murder occurred.
Speaker 2: You talk of about Latimer again, this is rare in
Speaker 2: a core in a murder trial that he took to
Speaker 2: stand what was his demeanor and tell us what are
Speaker 2: some of the highlights of moments at trial when he testified.
Speaker 4: I think that some of the highlights of the trial
Speaker 4: were some of the back and forth with the man
Speaker 4: that cross examined him. I think that would probably be
Speaker 4: if there was a climactic moment in the trial, that
Speaker 4: would probably be it. It was Parkinson's second cheer, and he
Speaker 4: had characterized Latimer as being one of the swiftest, slyest
Speaker 4: criminals he had ever had come across, and he was
Speaker 4: just chomping at the bit to try to pull Coles
Speaker 4: and Latimer's story. And I think that that bit of
Speaker 4: testimony is probably the most fascinating. And again, this idea
Speaker 4: that he was hunting for this woman that no one
Speaker 4: was able to locate, no one was able to find,
Speaker 4: with nowhere in sight. That the sheer lunacy is the idea,
Speaker 4: the incredibility of the idea that he had taken a
Speaker 4: trained definder and just happened to be in Jackson at
Speaker 4: the exact same time that his mother was, and that
Speaker 4: he was using this as a defense. And of course
Speaker 4: you have the ever evolving story that he first said
Speaker 4: he had been in the Griswold hotel and he hadn't
Speaker 4: been in the hotel. And what's really when your research
Speaker 4: cases like this. This is where newspapers can really be
Speaker 4: a vital aspect of the research because what happens too
Speaker 4: often is the trial transcripts, if you can even find them,
Speaker 4: are just Q and A. That's generally how they are,
Speaker 4: just Q answer a answer. But to really get to
Speaker 4: the aspect, you go to the reporters who sat in
Speaker 4: on the testimony, and this is where you can hear
Speaker 4: the voices in the tone. So the lawyer loses his
Speaker 4: temper and he raises his tone. That's not something that's
Speaker 4: going to come through the trial transcript, but that comes
Speaker 4: through the newspaper for articles. So on a side note,
Speaker 4: the real key is a researcher is to try to
Speaker 4: find the most accurate newspaper articles, and the best way
Speaker 4: to do that in an era where they sensationalized everything
Speaker 4: is provide a trial transcript and compared the two. So
Speaker 4: you become as a researcher very much like a detective.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. You talk about this cross examination by Parkinson's
Speaker 2: partner Conley or Conley, and he he basically hacks away
Speaker 2: at every bit of this alibi, and also he asks
Speaker 2: them things like how did you cut your thumb? And
Speaker 2: he can't quite really answer, and you, like you say,
Speaker 2: he's chompion at the bit to really cross examine him hard,
Speaker 2: and you say that he said I don't recollect two
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty nine times. In that exchange you also
Speaker 2: talk about though, also the show is psychopathology. Here you
Speaker 2: also talk about a woman that he sees in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, So at one point in time Latimer
Speaker 4: sees a pretty lady who happened to come and watch
Speaker 4: the trial, and he makes a remark about how pretty
Speaker 4: she is, And so what the psychopathology is really the
Speaker 4: affect again is really off because here's a guy who
Speaker 4: is on trial for I wouldn't say his life because
Speaker 4: we don't have a death helty, but he's on trial
Speaker 4: for life in prison for the murder of his mother.
Speaker 4: His ratation is destroyed basically, and ever the Ladies man,
Speaker 4: his mind is focused on a female attendee who he'd
Speaker 4: like to meet and date. And I think that to
Speaker 4: a certain degree, he was actually under the impression that
Speaker 4: he was going to beat this thing and be able
Speaker 4: to go out and date like that again. And either
Speaker 4: he's completely fooled himself or you have an individual who
Speaker 4: has a real break with the idea of what reality is.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: In some trials, particularly in later trials, say twenty years,
Speaker 4: they would have you would suspect that that might be
Speaker 4: a that might be a put on, that might be
Speaker 4: a stratagem to try to prove that he is insane
Speaker 4: or mentally deficient in a way that would not make
Speaker 4: him culpable for a crime. But I don't think that's
Speaker 4: the case. I think that's the real Robert Irving Laddimer
Speaker 4: that you're seeing there, a man who is so utterly
Speaker 4: self centered, somebody who is so the word would be narcissistic.
Speaker 4: I think that he's only interested in the things that
Speaker 4: interest him at that moment, and those that would be
Speaker 4: a characteristic of what we call a sociopath today, I believe,
Speaker 4: And that's kind of a fascinating question. Was Robert Irving
Speaker 4: Latimer a sociopath? They would of course had to like
Speaker 4: that they wouldn't apply to them. So for me to
Speaker 4: talk about him being a sociopath, there's a bit, a
Speaker 4: bit like being a Monday morning quarterback. But if you
Speaker 4: look at the characteristics, somebody who lies and lies really well,
Speaker 4: somebody who is narcissistic, sexually uninhibited. These are all characteristics
Speaker 4: of that that condition. So it's really fascinating now. I
Speaker 4: think commonly, at one point in time was so involved,
Speaker 4: so emotionally invested in that cross examination that he hammered
Speaker 4: his hand on the table to the point where it
Speaker 4: looked red like steak. So you could imagine the situation
Speaker 4: in the courtroom where he's thundering away at robbery Vladimer.
Speaker 4: Every time Latimer says I don't recall, he gets angry
Speaker 4: or anger at the point where he's just bashing his
Speaker 4: hand on the table, on the lawyer's table to make
Speaker 4: the point, and the end of the table is hoy,
Speaker 4: he's a horse, and his hand is red, it looks
Speaker 4: like hamburger, and he's I don't recall two hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty nine times.
Speaker 2: You also talk about the flippant attitude by Latimer and
Speaker 2: that he's reading a newspaper and even when he's sentenced
Speaker 2: or the verdict is coming down, pardon me, he's he's
Speaker 2: again pretending to read a paper, but as you say,
Speaker 2: he's crying behind that newspaper. Tell us about the verdict
Speaker 2: and how long it took for the jury to determine
Speaker 2: that verdict.
Speaker 4: I believe that the verdict. You know, I don't remember
Speaker 4: now offhand how long it took to take to make
Speaker 4: the verdict. I'd have to go back and look at
Speaker 4: the book again.
Speaker 2: Twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: I thought it was real. I thought it was a
Speaker 4: really really quick verdict. In fact, now I remember what
Speaker 4: happened was people left the courthouse because they assumed that
Speaker 4: it was going to be a lengthy verdict, a lengthy deliberation,
Speaker 4: I should say, And they had headed down down the
Speaker 4: street to go dinner, their dinner. They were checked into
Speaker 4: various restaurants and hotel cafes, and they were going to
Speaker 4: have dinner. All of a sudden they have dropped their
Speaker 4: forks and their spoons and run back to the courthouse
Speaker 4: because because the verdict had come in so soon, and
Speaker 4: I people crowded into the courtroom to the point where
Speaker 4: I think that the lawyers had to crawled through the
Speaker 4: windows because there was there was so much interest in
Speaker 4: what was going to what was going to take place.
Speaker 4: And sure enough they sided with the prosecution and slammed
Speaker 4: the cell door. In early Latimer life in prison at
Speaker 4: hard Labor.
Speaker 2: Now you would think that this story as you write
Speaker 2: that eventually this story this is yesterday's news, but this
Speaker 2: story is still very, very big. And you talk about
Speaker 2: that right after this sentence that by mid May, there's
Speaker 2: this Latimer case becomes a headline exhibit in the Chamber
Speaker 2: of Horrors at Detroit's Wonderland Theater. We say, Vaudeville performances,
Speaker 2: circus sacks, freak shows, and the most ghastly crimes of
Speaker 2: the era were preserved for posterity in wax. Very very interesting. Now,
Speaker 2: tell us about Latimer's stay in prison, just briefly. What
Speaker 2: happens as he goes to prison.
Speaker 4: Well, the previous prison administration was draconian and their treatment
Speaker 4: of prisoners. They used the whipping post. They had something
Speaker 4: called riding the horse, where they had like a like
Speaker 4: a hobby horse with a back that came to a
Speaker 4: like a square like back that they made prisoners sit on.
Speaker 4: So they treated people really harshly. And when that prison
Speaker 4: administration came to an end, the next incoming warden was
Speaker 4: a little bit too loose with the criminals, and so
Speaker 4: prisoners were allowed privileges and they had a lax administration
Speaker 4: that either turned a blind eye or were just negligent
Speaker 4: on the things that prisoners were bringing in. And what
Speaker 4: do you do with a pharmacist when bees behind bars
Speaker 4: while you let him sell medicines to the other inmates.
Speaker 4: Of course, as the lattermer started to pedal patent medicines
Speaker 4: to the other inmates that he was allowed to free
Speaker 4: be bring into the prison. How far do you want
Speaker 4: me to go with what happens next?
Speaker 2: Well, needless to say that he is not content with this.
Speaker 2: He's filed appeals. The appeals don't work, But needless to say,
Speaker 2: he doesn't consider doesn't want to stay in prison, so
Speaker 2: he hatches a plan to escape. Yeah we'll tell us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go ahead, Sorry, no, go ahead. He walks up
Speaker 4: a batch of Prussic acid, which is sainny night, and
Speaker 4: he prepares some spike lemonade for a couple of prisons personnel,
Speaker 4: and his plan is is to poison them and in
Speaker 4: the ensuing commotion open up some of the cell and
Speaker 4: flood Jackson with a bunch of inmates to basically cover
Speaker 4: his own escape, and then just basically does appear gently
Speaker 4: into that good night. But it goes wrong because one
Speaker 4: of the keepers that he poisons drops a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of fishes as he collapses onto the floor, and that
Speaker 4: alarms the other keepers and Latimer has to sort of
Speaker 4: do an audible. He never gets to release the rest
Speaker 4: of the inmates, but he does get out of the prison,
Speaker 4: and his grand escape, which ultimately costs the life of
Speaker 4: one of the keepers, lasted about two days, I believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from that escape with the death of one of
Speaker 2: the keepers, the jailers, what is now the response from
Speaker 2: the media and from the public, and then what is
Speaker 2: a response towards this, as you say, lackadaisial attitude of
Speaker 2: this Warden Davis at the Jackson Prison.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the prison started to typing up, taking up
Speaker 4: how it handled allowing prisoners to bring stuff in from
Speaker 4: the outside. The prison clerk and a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: other people got in trouble and a couple of them
Speaker 4: were actually tried four crimes for for negligence. As far
Speaker 4: as Latimer's concerned, He's put into a solitary cell for
Speaker 4: quite some time. I think months. He's put into a
Speaker 4: solitary cell. The media calls for another discussion about the
Speaker 4: death penalty, and this time I think that the death
Speaker 4: penalty cases that they wanted the death penalty. Of all
Speaker 4: they wanted to enact would include cases of inmates who
Speaker 4: kill prison personnel. So the media now all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: Robert Irving Latimer because front page News. Again, this is
Speaker 4: quite rare. I mean, this is not something that in
Speaker 4: the state of Michigan happened a lot and inmate well,
Speaker 4: it never happened. It never happened, just a person anywhere.
Speaker 4: I mean, think about think about this, an inmate acquiring
Speaker 4: a deadly poisoned cyanide and using it to poison to
Speaker 4: prison officials. It's it's really a kind of a bizarre,
Speaker 4: shocking case when you think about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, it changed everything with this escape and the
Speaker 2: murder of these two guards. Now we have to talk
Speaker 2: about when we mentioned in the introduction we talk about
Speaker 2: the most dangerous inmate to Freeman. So let's just sort
Speaker 2: of jump ahead here. How on earth and how many
Speaker 2: years does it take for this person and underwent conditions
Speaker 2: in terms of how it is that they're able to
Speaker 2: let this person out? How many years does it take?
Speaker 4: So he goes in in eighteen eighty nine, I believe
Speaker 4: the trials may or the verdict of may and he
Speaker 4: comes out in nineteen thirty five, I want to say,
Speaker 4: And so he's in for thirty five forty six years,
Speaker 4: and I believe at the time, I'm sure at the
Speaker 4: time that life in prison was essentially a twenty year
Speaker 4: prison sentence with the possibility of parole. But what changed
Speaker 4: things for Latimer were two factors. He only murdered one guard,
Speaker 4: the other one recovered, and actually wanto on trial himself
Speaker 4: for negligence. The things that caused him to be rejected
Speaker 4: for parole slash pardon by governor after governor after governor
Speaker 4: after governor were those actors, the murder of the keeper
Speaker 4: and the mattress side. Now what's interesting about this is
Speaker 4: these governors had pardoned all kinds of murderers mail and
Speaker 4: femail over the years. There was a governor named Woodbridge,
Speaker 4: Nathan Ferret cet a record for the number of students
Speaker 4: and paroles he gave around Christmas nineteen sixteen, and Latimer
Speaker 4: was not one of them. And the reason that most
Speaker 4: people believed was the mattress side. It was the nature
Speaker 4: even more so than the murder of Keeper George. It
Speaker 4: was the mattress side itself, with such an appalling crime
Speaker 4: that just didn't want to let him out. They got
Speaker 4: to be so out of hand, so the justice thought
Speaker 4: to be alongsided because they had let out other people
Speaker 4: who had murdered, murdered people, and sometimes less than ten years,
Speaker 4: sometimes ten fifteen years they did in prison and let
Speaker 4: them out. Vladimer's in prison forty six years and why
Speaker 4: because of the nature of his crime the Mattress side,
Speaker 4: so it led. He had some crusaders that were on
Speaker 4: his side and to characterized his prison sentence as a
Speaker 4: political crime. Eventually, after pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, Robert Irving,
Speaker 4: Latimer was let out. But he was an old old
Speaker 4: man in side note about his story is that when
Speaker 4: he was let out, he was the only inmate left
Speaker 4: in the old Jackson State Penitentiary. They had opened up
Speaker 4: a new facility and he didn't want to move, so
Speaker 4: he wound up being the old effect. They called him
Speaker 4: the warden of the old prison, and he basically had
Speaker 4: free use of the grounds. He could come and go
Speaker 4: when he wanted to. As are is that he's a
Speaker 4: lifer murdered guard and he's free to come and go
Speaker 4: in the prison that he wants to. He became very
Speaker 4: a depth at landscaping around the prison, but not a
Speaker 4: free man, not till nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 2: You right, And I think it's fitting that this institutionalized
Speaker 2: person spent forty six years that kept protesting his innocence
Speaker 2: in this that when he was released he reached out
Speaker 2: to those unlikely people to help him. What was his
Speaker 2: state of affairs once he was released, I say fittingly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was essentially impoverished, and he didn't he didn't
Speaker 4: really know anybody. I mean, he was quite old, and
Speaker 4: I think that there were a couple of people of
Speaker 4: these crusaders that were basically prison reformers. But I didn't
Speaker 4: think he knew the real well in some of his
Speaker 4: long term champions that preceded him in depth. So Robert
Speaker 4: Irvy Latimer was kind of destitute. Now he did have
Speaker 4: some options. I think he very briefly went to work
Speaker 4: for Ford Motor Company. He did get a chance to
Speaker 4: fly a plane for the first time, and he took
Speaker 4: a trip. But this is the height of the Great
Speaker 4: Depression nineteen thirty five, and so he fell into a
Speaker 4: state of utter despair. He wanted to be a homeless
Speaker 4: on apartment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very interesting. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 2: for coming on and talking about Pardonaval Mattreside, Robert Irving
Speaker 2: Latimer from Michigan's Most Dangerous Inmate to Freeman. For those
Speaker 2: that might want to check this out, can you tell
Speaker 2: us if you have a Facebook page, website, or how
Speaker 2: they might find out more about this incredible case.
Speaker 4: And yes, the publisher is McFarland and McFarland has a
Speaker 4: page devoted to the book. Of course, it is for
Speaker 4: sale in Amazon, Barnes and Noble targets. I believes it
Speaker 4: for sale online. People can contact me through my website
Speaker 4: at www. Tobinbook dot com and they can find information
Speaker 4: about my various publications and my speaking schedule to speak
Speaker 4: around the state. I also run a blog called Dark
Speaker 4: Corners of History where people can go if they want
Speaker 4: to trade around the darker Corners of History and China,
Speaker 4: flashlight in there and see what they can see.
Speaker 2: Absolutely sounds great. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 2: for this interview, Tobin t but thank you very much
Speaker 2: for this and you have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Good night, Dan, thank you so much for having me
Speaker 4: this evening.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good night, all right, good night.
Speaker 4: Hello,