Speaker 1: In our last episode, we began telling the story of
Speaker 1: Earl Nelson, aka the Gorilla Killer, so be sure to
Speaker 1: listen to part one and join us today as we
Speaker 1: carry on with part two. So with that being said,
Speaker 1: my name's Ben, I'm.
Speaker 2: Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked and Grim, a true
Speaker 2: crime podcast. Warning.
Speaker 1: The following podcast and material intended for matial audience. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna need a recap. It's been a long week.
Speaker 1: Okay, Part one The Gorilla Killer. There you go, there's
Speaker 1: your recap.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean you're ready, just like that. That name
Speaker 2: alone does like make you recall a lot of things,
Speaker 2: because it really does.
Speaker 1: It's a bit unique, it is, honestly, it's it's a
Speaker 1: very interesting name, but of course it comes because of
Speaker 1: his physical feature. Yeah, I do have a recap for you.
Speaker 1: Do you want to just dive into it and get
Speaker 1: right into it. I can do that, or do you
Speaker 1: have anything you want to start with first?
Speaker 2: I don't know. We just did a pre show or
Speaker 2: on Patreon and we were literally just talking about food
Speaker 2: because we've been healthy eating. So I think we should
Speaker 2: just dive right in.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we start talking about fried chicken and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Yeah, all right, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get right into the recap. Then here we go.
Speaker 1: So up until this point, we've followed Earl Nelson from
Speaker 1: the very beginning of his life, from a troubled childhood
Speaker 1: to a serious head injury, two years of instability, arrests,
Speaker 1: and time spent in and out of different institutions showing
Speaker 1: it his life never really found any kind of solid structure,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen twenty five he was on his own,
Speaker 1: moving between cities, using different names and blending into wherever
Speaker 1: he went. Then by nineteen twenty six, that's when everything shifted.
Speaker 1: Women renting out rooms began turning up dead in their
Speaker 1: own homes, all under nearly identical circumstances. He would show
Speaker 1: up looking for a place to stay, gain their trust,
Speaker 1: and then get them alone, and when that occurred, then
Speaker 1: he attacked, strangling them to death. Now, at first, investigators
Speaker 1: treated each case as isolated events, different cities, different investigators,
Speaker 1: no clear connection. But as the murders continued in the
Speaker 1: pattern became harder to ignore. That's when it started to
Speaker 1: become clear that some of these things were not random.
Speaker 1: They soon realized they were dealing with someone who was
Speaker 1: moving from city to city, staying ahead of their investigation
Speaker 1: and leaving behind just enough to suggest there could be
Speaker 1: a connection between these events, but never enough to stop
Speaker 1: him in time, and by the end of nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: six the situation was only getting worse. But in November
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty six, someone would survive an encounter with
Speaker 1: Earl aka the Gorilla Killer and was able to tell
Speaker 1: police all about it. And that is where we left off.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, he did have a very unique but rough upbringing,
Speaker 2: Yes he did. That was, Yeah, that was interesting to
Speaker 2: listen to. But still that's no excuse to be this
Speaker 2: kind of monster that he had totully turned into.
Speaker 1: For sure, And outside of the head injury he sustained,
Speaker 1: there's no like one specific thing that you can say
Speaker 1: that was the indicator for what you become. Even the
Speaker 1: head injury, you can't fully blame that. So it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like this culmination of so many things and potentially
Speaker 1: who he was to start with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I had forgotten that this happened in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties or around there, So very difficult for
Speaker 2: you know, solving any type of thing like this exactly.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of this story because nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: you know, the communication between cities and everything identifying patterns
Speaker 1: is a big, massive, glaring hole in society, and it
Speaker 1: allowed him to actually go through with many of these killings.
Speaker 2: It makes sense how it was, I guess able to
Speaker 2: do all this, which sucks.
Speaker 1: Yes, And even in part one, as investigators started to
Speaker 1: like put the pieces together, it's like, okay, some of
Speaker 1: these are related. Many of them were not connected until
Speaker 1: like much later still, because there's just too much to
Speaker 1: go with, okay. So even so they were starting to
Speaker 1: slowly kind of catch on, much of it was still
Speaker 1: just wide open and unknown.
Speaker 2: Cal I am very interested to hear about this person
Speaker 2: that survives, Okay, so come on, Well, you made us
Speaker 2: wait long enough. Well.
Speaker 1: It was in San Jose, California, where a woman named
Speaker 1: Miss Murray, who had been several months pregnant at the time,
Speaker 1: would encounter a man who approached her in the same
Speaker 1: sort of way that others had described. He presented himself
Speaker 1: as someone who was looking for a room and was
Speaker 1: allowed to take a look inside at the accommodations being offered.
Speaker 1: The situation started off normally enough, but it didn't end
Speaker 1: the same way as all the others. At some point
Speaker 1: during their interaction, well, he attempted to attack her. However,
Speaker 1: instead of being overpowered immediately, she fought back fiercely, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, she managed to leave visible scratch marks
Speaker 1: on his face during the struggle. Yeah, this scratches were
Speaker 1: deep enough and done hard enough to actually drawn blood.
Speaker 2: Okay, and she was also pregnant.
Speaker 1: She was pregnant.
Speaker 2: Wow. So yeah, Well, I mean she had a lot
Speaker 2: to fight for I guess right for sure, Not that
Speaker 2: the others didn't, but you know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, the attack broke down quickly after that, and he
Speaker 1: fled the scene before could escalate any further her. So,
Speaker 1: for the very first time, there was a victim who
Speaker 1: had survived an attack from the Gorilla Killer, and they
Speaker 1: could describe not just the man's appearance, but the interaction
Speaker 1: itself with him. Now, her account added something investigators hadn't
Speaker 1: had before. See, it wasn't just a description of someone
Speaker 1: entering a house or being seen leaving like the other cases.
Speaker 1: In this case, she was able to confirm how he
Speaker 1: approached the victims, how he behaved once he was inside,
Speaker 1: and how quickly the situation shifted from normal conversation into violence.
Speaker 1: She also told investigators that she had in fact injured
Speaker 1: him with those scratches.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and an injury that you couldn't really hide exactly.
Speaker 1: So now there's this chance that the culprit is moving
Speaker 1: about through the public with visible injuries on his face.
Speaker 1: Someone might notice that and could hey point it out
Speaker 1: to investigators or police. Now this was a small shift,
Speaker 1: but it mattered a lot, and the investigation had its
Speaker 1: first real break, But it still wasn't enough to identify
Speaker 1: him or even stop him. In fact, they were always
Speaker 1: working backwards up until this point, trying to understand what
Speaker 1: had already happened, rather than stopping what was about to happen.
Speaker 1: But that began to shift with the new information they had,
Speaker 1: and as new cases appeared towards the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. On November twenty third of that year, in Seattle,
Speaker 1: Florence Monks was found dead inside her home. Like the
Speaker 1: early victims, she had been renting out rooms and had
Speaker 1: allowed someone inside. The attack followed the same structure of
Speaker 1: being in private. It was very controlled and it was
Speaker 1: over quickly, which meant by the time her body was discovered,
Speaker 1: the man responsible was already long gone. However, something stood
Speaker 1: out about this case, and it was that something was missing. See,
Speaker 1: some of her personal belongings, including pieces of jewelry, had
Speaker 1: been taken. Now, some theft had actually been noted in
Speaker 1: some of the earlier cases as well, but it hadn't
Speaker 1: been treated as anything more than a secondary detail. But
Speaker 1: now it started to take on a bit more importance
Speaker 1: in this story. Also around the same time, another case
Speaker 1: began to offer something more concrete. In Portland. During the
Speaker 1: investigation into the killing of Blanche Meyers, investigators were able
Speaker 1: to recover fingerprints from the scene. Now, at the time,
Speaker 1: fingerprinting was still becoming a standard tool in criminal investigations,
Speaker 1: but it had already proven useful in identifying suspects when
Speaker 1: a match could actually be made. In this case, the
Speaker 1: prints were clear enough to be preserved and documented, but
Speaker 1: they still had no match to them without an existing
Speaker 1: record to compare it against. The fingerprints didn't lead anywhere immediately.
Speaker 1: They were stored, cataloged and held as evidence, waiting for
Speaker 1: future moments when they might be useful.
Speaker 2: So super cool, but it's not like they have much
Speaker 2: of a database.
Speaker 1: Exactly, so they have something that it might be useful
Speaker 1: later on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, taken together, these developments began to change some things.
Speaker 1: For the first time, there was a combination of elements
Speaker 1: that could potentially move things forward. You have a surviving witness,
Speaker 1: You have stolen property that could maybe be traced, and
Speaker 1: physical evidence that could one day identify a person responsible
Speaker 1: if they had prints to compare. None of it solved
Speaker 1: the case on its own, but it was something Even Still,
Speaker 1: the same problem remained. Though every new piece of evidence
Speaker 1: came from a place that he had already left. They
Speaker 1: were still following a trail, and he still wasn't done.
Speaker 1: On December twenty third, nineteen twenty six, in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
Speaker 1: Almira Barrard, a woman who rented out rooms in her home,
Speaker 1: was found dead. Just as in the earlier cases, she
Speaker 1: had allowed someone inside. There had been a struggle and
Speaker 1: she had been strangled, and of course by the time
Speaker 1: anyone realized what had happened, the person responsible was once
Speaker 1: again gone.
Speaker 2: I'm very unhappy because I was thinking the fact that
Speaker 2: you were, like, yes, someone survived, that we were done
Speaker 2: with all these all all of these victims. Just how
Speaker 2: many has he killed at this point? Like so many?
Speaker 1: We'll get to numbers at the end. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's tough to listen to you though, because it's
Speaker 2: and it's so easy of how he just gets in
Speaker 2: there and figure it out this way. So I don't
Speaker 2: love that. Well.
Speaker 1: Only a few days later, the same pattern appeared again
Speaker 1: in Kansas City, Missouri. There, Bonnie Pace, a young woman
Speaker 1: who also took in borders, was killed under nearly identical circumstances.
Speaker 1: She led a man into her home and the interaction
Speaker 1: turned violent. Once they were alone, she was strangled and
Speaker 1: items were taken from the house before the attacker left.
Speaker 1: In the same city, within that same period of time,
Speaker 1: two more victims were connected in the same sequence. Jermania
Speaker 1: harpin another landlady was found dead along with her young son.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Now, this child had also been killed, making him the
Speaker 1: only male victim connected to this series of murders. But
Speaker 1: each victim had been approached in the same way that
Speaker 1: didn't immediately raise suspicion. Each allowed a man inside. Each
Speaker 1: had been attacked quickly, in private and without a witness present.
Speaker 1: Now what stood out just as much as the method
Speaker 1: now was also the pace of the attacks. There was
Speaker 1: very little time in between these incidents. He wasn't staying
Speaker 1: in one place, and he wasn't slowing down by any means.
Speaker 1: He moved from city to city, committing a killing and
Speaker 1: then leaving before the investigation had even fully begun where
Speaker 1: that killing just occurred. He was on a full out spree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's out of control.
Speaker 1: And by the time authority started working on one scene,
Speaker 1: he was already somewhere else, repeating that same pattern and
Speaker 1: staying one step ahead.
Speaker 2: You have to wonder, too, I'm betting anything as he's
Speaker 2: going into houses to other houses and there's like a
Speaker 2: husband there or something, or he's or someone there, that
Speaker 2: he's not able to commit the crime. So I bet
Speaker 2: you there's a lot of potential victims too that he
Speaker 2: just had to move on from one hundred percent. You're right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guarantee, which is really scary too.
Speaker 1: Now, by early nineteen twenty seven, the investigation had reached
Speaker 1: a point where none could deny the pattern, but authorities
Speaker 1: were still working with fragments and trying to communicate back
Speaker 1: and forth between all these jurisdictions. California had its cases
Speaker 1: Oregon had its own cluster. Washington, Iowa, and Missouri each
Speaker 1: had incidents that fit the same structure, but those connections
Speaker 1: they needed to take a lot of time to form.
Speaker 1: Information moved extremely slow, and finally, by the time one
Speaker 1: department began to suspect a link, well, he was already
Speaker 1: just moving on to the next place. In fact, in
Speaker 1: April of nineteen twenty seven, a woman named Mary McConnell
Speaker 1: was found dead in Philadelphia. She'd been living in a
Speaker 1: home where rooms were rented out, and she allowed someone
Speaker 1: inside and it ended in strangulation. There were signs of
Speaker 1: a struggle and items from miss from the scene. Once again,
Speaker 1: a month later, on May thirtieth, nineteen twenty seven, in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: New York, another woman, Jenny Randolph, was killed under nearly
Speaker 1: identical circumstances. Once again, the details match, but they'd already
Speaker 1: seen across multiple states. The method, the setting, and the
Speaker 1: approach were all consistent with the earlier cases. Then within
Speaker 1: days the pattern appeared once again. In early June of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, killings were reported in both Detroit and Chicago,
Speaker 1: each following the very same sequence. A man looking for
Speaker 1: a room, a private interaction an attack, and then just
Speaker 1: as quickly he was gone. Investigators across several different cities
Speaker 1: were now working with descriptions that matched very closely, and
Speaker 1: they were desperately trying to bring this reign of terror
Speaker 1: to an end. Now he was a stocky man, often
Speaker 1: described as being in his late twenties or early thirties,
Speaker 1: with large hands and a quiet demeanor, the same kind
Speaker 1: of man that had been seen in San Francis, in
Speaker 1: Portland and Seattle and now cities across the Midwest and
Speaker 1: the East. However, as difficult as it was, there had
Speaker 1: been a bit of a break coming into this case
Speaker 1: regarding evidence from earlier cases. See, as we know, there
Speaker 1: were items that had been taken from victims, things like
Speaker 1: jewelry and other personal belongings. They were beginning to be
Speaker 1: traced through pawnshops, okay, and through that witnesses recalled seeing
Speaker 1: a man or selling and carrying items that didn't belong
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 2: Okay, because this is how he is affording life, basically
Speaker 2: stealing people's jewelry or.
Speaker 1: Whatever, Yes, exactly, so, then he's pawning it off and
Speaker 1: using it for food, room board, all these sort of things,
Speaker 1: and travel to the next city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no kidding, okay, And though.
Speaker 1: Looking back in this case from our perspective now, it's
Speaker 1: very easy to understand that this was one man committing
Speaker 1: all of these acts. I mean, we have all the
Speaker 1: information right now. But as for authorities learning the description
Speaker 1: of this man being the same in the pawn shop,
Speaker 1: all learning all this in real time, basically, that's where
Speaker 1: they began to really understand that they were not dealing
Speaker 1: with multiple offenders or even a loosely connected group of crimes. Like, sure,
Speaker 1: these situations might seem similar, but this is the moment
Speaker 1: where they learned that they were in fact dealing with
Speaker 1: one individual who's connecting them all together, and he was
Speaker 1: in fact moving across the country, repeating the same method
Speaker 1: city after city, because not only do you have the
Speaker 1: same description from multiple locations, but you also have the
Speaker 1: same description from pawnshops when items from these places are
Speaker 1: turning up. So it was kind of the final check
Speaker 1: mark on the list to say, holy shit, this is
Speaker 1: the same man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, us sitting here listening to all the details.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like, how did you not figure that
Speaker 2: out sooner?
Speaker 1: But well it was.
Speaker 2: It's it's time too, yeah, the fact that he is
Speaker 2: in a different area. Almost every murder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have different county in different states and
Speaker 1: different cities. How can you be sure of a murder
Speaker 1: occurring in this one is the same in that one.
Speaker 1: They probably don't even know the murder occurred in the
Speaker 1: other state until like a month or two later when
Speaker 1: reports finally come across or newspaper articles talk about it
Speaker 1: and someone happens to see it.
Speaker 2: Well, and yeah, and these poor souls too aren't even
Speaker 2: don't have social media or ways of even realizing that
Speaker 2: they're probably in as much danger as they are too,
Speaker 2: Like the women who are renting out rooms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the civilians and stuff, how do they really know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So authorities are trying to warn cities and stuff and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this guy's in the area. But by the time they're
Speaker 1: warning that city, he's late. He's already in a whole
Speaker 1: new city where people you're not warning are being targeted.
Speaker 2: Just so brutally sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so this whole realization that it was this
Speaker 1: one culprit, it changed the whole scope of the case.
Speaker 1: It was no longer about solving a single murder or
Speaker 1: even a cluster of them. It was about identifying and
Speaker 1: stopping someone who was clearly traveling, freely, crossing all these
Speaker 1: jurisdictions and leaving behind a trail of death in his wake.
Speaker 1: The investigation had finally caught up to the idea of
Speaker 1: what was happening, but it hadn't caught up to the
Speaker 1: man responsible. By early June of nineteen twenty seven, after
Speaker 1: moving through cities across the United States, Earl Nelson made
Speaker 1: a different move. He crossed the border and arrived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada,
Speaker 1: sometime in the first week of June. As he had
Speaker 1: done in every other city, he presented himself as an
Speaker 1: ordinary man looking for a place to stay. He used
Speaker 1: an alias and began approaching boarding houses asking for available rooms,
Speaker 1: and on June eighth, nineteen twenty seven, a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old girl named Lola Cohen suddenly went missing.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so he's just finding a new area entirely.
Speaker 1: Exactly a whole new country even.
Speaker 2: Oh, I hate this so much now.
Speaker 1: Lola had worked as a flower girl selling flowers on
Speaker 1: the street, and she'd been last seen going about her
Speaker 1: usual routine. When she didn't return, concern grew fast. At first,
Speaker 1: it wasn't immediately connected to anything. Larger missing persons cases,
Speaker 1: especially involving young people, were not unheard of at the time,
Speaker 1: but as time passed, the situation began to feel a
Speaker 1: lot more serious, and two days later, on June tenth,
Speaker 1: another incident brought everything into sharper focus. Emily Patterson, a
Speaker 1: woman who also rented out rooms in her home, was attacked.
Speaker 1: Like the others before her. She had allowed a man
Speaker 1: inside under the assumption that he was looking for a
Speaker 1: place to stay, but that interaction suit followed the same
Speaker 1: horrific pattern. But Emily fought back now because of that.
Speaker 1: During the struggle, she managed to resist long enough to
Speaker 1: leave physical evidence behind. She pulled hair from her attacker
Speaker 1: and created enough disruption that the encounter didn't unfold the
Speaker 1: same way it previously had in other situations. Now the
Speaker 1: attack was still very much so violent and aultimately Emily
Speaker 1: was still killed as a.
Speaker 2: Result, oh seriously, but.
Speaker 1: Unlike most of the earlier cases, there was something tangible
Speaker 1: left behind that investigators could use.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: By this point in time, the connection between the individuals
Speaker 1: in Winnipeg and the earlier cases in the United States
Speaker 1: was beginning to occur. The method in Canada was the
Speaker 1: same as it was in the USA. The approach was
Speaker 1: the same, and now within the same area, you have
Speaker 1: two events that police had seen before. The connection was undeniable,
Speaker 1: and so police quickly began searching the boarding houses in
Speaker 1: the area, knowing the pattern of this individual, and at
Speaker 1: one of those houses, investigators were led to a room
Speaker 1: that had been recently occupied by a man using an alias,
Speaker 1: a man who fit that description. And when they searched
Speaker 1: that room, they found what they were looking for. Lola Cohen,
Speaker 1: the missing fourteen year old girl, was found dead and
Speaker 1: shoved under the bed. I was not expecting that she
Speaker 1: had been strangled to death.
Speaker 2: Holy shit. And he's just hiding her where he's staying.
Speaker 1: Yep, well he's not staying there anymore. He's already gone,
Speaker 1: but he stayed there.
Speaker 2: And he left behind the souvenir of a body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, whoo okay.
Speaker 2: I also just have to say that is like so
Speaker 2: badass of that one woman to like pull a clump
Speaker 2: of hair out of someone's head. You gotta fight, Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that is like she really did put up a fight.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that's these victims, some of them
Speaker 1: were not fighting. All I'm saying is, if all you
Speaker 1: have is to rip out hair, do it. If all
Speaker 1: you have is to bite, do it. If all you
Speaker 1: have is to grab hold of flesh and dig nails in,
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean, each scenario is just so different, right.
Speaker 2: It depends how caught off guard the victim is and
Speaker 2: exactly the size difference and stuff.
Speaker 1: So for sure, just do anything you can. It's important.
Speaker 1: It could be your survival could mean catching someone. Even
Speaker 1: if you unfortunately do not survive.
Speaker 2: They're gonna save other people exactly. Now.
Speaker 1: For investigators, this officially meant her story wasn't just a
Speaker 1: local case anymore. It was in fact a part of
Speaker 1: the same pattern that had been appearing across the United States,
Speaker 1: and it was now unfolding in their own city. The difference, however,
Speaker 1: this time, was the person responsible hadn't completely disappeared before
Speaker 1: the connection was made. There was in fact still a window,
Speaker 1: small but very much so real. He might still be
Speaker 1: in the city, He might still be within reach. They
Speaker 1: caught up to him fast enough, so police began moving
Speaker 1: quickly through the information they had, and investigators started retracing
Speaker 1: his steps, speaking to anyone who might have interacted with
Speaker 1: him in any sort of the days leading up to
Speaker 1: this discovery.
Speaker 2: This is good because this has been a rarity, right.
Speaker 1: Exactly, So this is good. They had this one chance,
Speaker 1: this one shot, one opportunity. Sorry, I'm in an eminem reference,
Speaker 1: but oh, I was like, that is from something else,
Speaker 1: legitimate though, that is the case. A barber came forward
Speaker 1: recalling a customer who had recently come in with noticeable injuries.
Speaker 1: He had scratches on his freight, on his face, fresh
Speaker 1: enough in fact, that they stood out to him immediately. Now,
Speaker 1: he didn't think too much about it at the time.
Speaker 1: When you look at it in hindsight, well, there was
Speaker 1: a bit of a different meaning. This person who had
Speaker 1: just killed while they were attacked, their victim fought back.
Speaker 1: Those scratches were most definitely left behind in that scenario. Now,
Speaker 1: around the same time, more items began to surface, more
Speaker 1: stolen items jewelry that had been taken from victims in
Speaker 1: earlier cases was traced through local pawnshops again, and pawnbrokers
Speaker 1: and store owners described a man who had come in
Speaker 1: to sell or exchange items that didn't quite fit his
Speaker 1: appearance or situation. Now, with each new piece of information,
Speaker 1: the description of the suspect became more and more specific.
Speaker 1: It wasn't anything so broadly described anymore as just a
Speaker 1: stocky man. It was a man with recent facial scratches,
Speaker 1: moving under an alias, carrying stolen items, and renting rooms
Speaker 1: and boarding houses shortly before violent incidents occur. Now police
Speaker 1: issued descriptions to surrounding areas and began coordinating with nearby towns,
Speaker 1: something that hadn't been done effectively in early stages of
Speaker 1: this investigation. And by the middle of June nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: the search had officially extended beyond Winnipeg and into the
Speaker 1: surrounding region, with attention focused on the possibility that he
Speaker 1: might try and leave the area, and on June fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, that possibility became a reality. Now, near
Speaker 1: the town of Wacopa, Manitoba, close to the United States border,
Speaker 1: a man was stopped by local authorities. He identified himself
Speaker 1: as a man named Virgil Wilson, which was one of
Speaker 1: the aliases that had begun to surface during the investigation. Now,
Speaker 1: he was calm, cooperative and didn't give the impression of
Speaker 1: being someone trying to avoid arrest, and that calmness worked
Speaker 1: in his favor. The officers who detained him were not
Speaker 1: immediately certain they had the right person that they were
Speaker 1: looking for, but still he was taken to the Killarney
Speaker 1: Town Hall lock up, where he was placed in a
Speaker 1: holding cell while the officers attempted to try and confirm
Speaker 1: who he was and contact authorities in Winnipeg. Now, at
Speaker 1: that point it seemed like the situation was finally about
Speaker 1: to come to an end. However, we have to remember
Speaker 1: early patterns in Earl's behavior early when he was in institutions.
Speaker 1: Because while officers stepped away briefly to make contact to
Speaker 1: verify the arrest, the man they had taken into custody
Speaker 1: began to work his way out. Using a piece of wire,
Speaker 1: he managed to manipulate the handcuffs and free himself, And
Speaker 1: when officers returned to the cell, the door was open
Speaker 1: and the man they had just arrested was gone. Earle
Speaker 1: had escaped custody.
Speaker 2: Oh you're fricking kidding me. They were that damn close.
Speaker 1: They were that close now, rightfully, so what followed was
Speaker 1: immediate panic. Word spread quickly through the Clarney area and
Speaker 1: surrounding areas too. If this was in fact the man
Speaker 1: they believed it was, and he was not just a suspect,
Speaker 1: he was someone who had already been linked to multiple
Speaker 1: murders at this point, and the idea that he was
Speaker 1: now just loose again, aware that authorities were close to
Speaker 1: catching him, well, it triggered a massive response. Residents were
Speaker 1: warned and many gathered together in central locations for safety. Also,
Speaker 1: men organized into search groups and began moving through the countryside,
Speaker 1: making sure they were armed, checking buildings, barns, and open
Speaker 1: land looking for him. It was no longer just a
Speaker 1: police search. It had become a community effort to find
Speaker 1: someone who had already proven how quickly he could move
Speaker 1: and how easily he could disappear. Now that night, while
Speaker 1: search efforts were underwe, Earl found shelter in a nearby barn,
Speaker 1: avoiding detection as people searched the area around him. By
Speaker 1: the next morning, he was on the move again, headed
Speaker 1: towards a train station with the intention of leaving the area,
Speaker 1: but this time the movement he relied on for so
Speaker 1: long worked against him. When he boarded the train, he
Speaker 1: believed he was headed back towards the United States, but
Speaker 1: instead the train took him in the opposite direction, towards
Speaker 1: Crystal City, where authorities had already been alerted and were
Speaker 1: waiting for him.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: When the train arrived, officers were prepared and as he
Speaker 1: stepped off, he was met by police. This time there
Speaker 1: was no confusion, there was no delay, and no opportunity
Speaker 1: to slip away. He was taken into custody, and this
Speaker 1: time he remained there. After more than a year of
Speaker 1: moving from city to city, entering homes, committing murders, and
Speaker 1: leaving before anyone could ever stop him, the man investigators
Speaker 1: had been trying to identify was finally in cuffs. He
Speaker 1: was transported back to Winnipeg, and the focus of the
Speaker 1: investigation soon shifted to proving who he was and going
Speaker 1: through the evidence that had been building across all of
Speaker 1: these murders.
Speaker 2: Well, and yeah, at this point too, it's two countries
Speaker 2: where he's committed crimes for sure.
Speaker 1: Now, if you might remember, one of the pieces of
Speaker 1: evidence that they had on him was fingerprints. Right at
Speaker 1: the time they were taken, there was no identity to
Speaker 1: attach them to. But now with a suspecting custody, well,
Speaker 1: there was finally something they can compare it against, and
Speaker 1: when they compared it, they had a match.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first concrete links that officially
Speaker 1: tied him to the earlier killings, but other details began
Speaker 1: to align as well. Witnesses from different cities were brought
Speaker 1: in or consulted with, and their descriptions of that man
Speaker 1: that they had seen began to match more closely now
Speaker 1: with what there was as a person in front of them.
Speaker 1: The stocky bill, the large hands, the quiet demeanor, all
Speaker 1: of it lined up with what had been reported. There
Speaker 1: was also physical evidence that supported those connections to injuries
Speaker 1: that had been noticed earliers. The scratches on the face,
Speaker 1: for example, it fit with accounts from victims who had resisted.
Speaker 1: But still at the center of it all was the
Speaker 1: question of his identity. Who was he now? Eventually, through
Speaker 1: fingerprint records and prior arrests, investigators were able to track
Speaker 1: him down for his real name. This was Earl Leonard Nelson,
Speaker 1: and with that his history began to surface, with it
Speaker 1: his time in San Quentin, his multiple arrests, his institutionalization,
Speaker 1: and the earlier violent incident in nineteen twenty one. Well,
Speaker 1: he now had a name, a history and a record
Speaker 1: that could be followed. Cases from across the United States
Speaker 1: were now being reviewed in light of his arrests, because remember,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of them. They had pieced together many,
Speaker 1: but there were still finding all these different ones that
Speaker 1: were possibly aligned with him. Now, some could be tied
Speaker 1: to him more direct than others, but the similarities were
Speaker 1: very consistent enough that authorities began linking him to many
Speaker 1: of these larger number of killings. Still, despite the evidence,
Speaker 1: Earl did not confess. He simply denied responsibility for his
Speaker 1: crimes that he was being connected to. But by that point,
Speaker 1: the combination of physical evidence, witness accounts, and the pattern
Speaker 1: that was already established. While it was enough to move
Speaker 1: forward even without his cooperation, and they had enough to
Speaker 1: take the case to trial. Now, despite the number of
Speaker 1: killings that had been linked to him across the United States,
Speaker 1: he was going to first stand for his crimes on
Speaker 1: Canadian soil in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and only for the murder
Speaker 1: of Emily Patterson. It was the case they had the
Speaker 1: strongest evidence on and they decided only to pursue it
Speaker 1: to try and secure their conviction. Okay, and Emily was
Speaker 1: the fourteen year old. Right, No, Emily was the one
Speaker 1: who had fought back but still died, one who had
Speaker 1: pulled hair.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, that seems surprising to me that they feel
Speaker 2: like they had more evidence there when the other one
Speaker 2: they had the body like under the bed.
Speaker 1: Well, she had fought back, she pulled hair, like there
Speaker 1: was a bit more. Whatever their reasoning was, they had
Speaker 1: more evidence on the Emily case and they figured it
Speaker 1: was stronger, so that was the one they were going
Speaker 1: to pursue.
Speaker 2: Okay. Now.
Speaker 1: The trial officially began on November one, nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: inside a Manitoba courtroom, presided over by Judge Andrew dissert Now.
Speaker 1: The prosecution was led by R. B. Graham, while the
Speaker 1: defense was handled by James H. Did it Now. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the proceedings, the prosecution laid out the
Speaker 1: case in its entirety. It was built on a combination
Speaker 1: of physical evidence, witness testimony, and the sequence of events
Speaker 1: leading up to the arrest. They presented details of Emily's death,
Speaker 1: the condition in which she had been found, and the
Speaker 1: evidence recovered from the scene itself, for example, the hair.
Speaker 1: They also introduced items that had been traced back to
Speaker 1: Earl from pawnshops, and this has played a very significant
Speaker 1: role too. People who had encountered him in the days
Speaker 1: leading up to the murder. They described his behavior and
Speaker 1: his movements. The barbershop who noticed the injuries on his face,
Speaker 1: testified about the condition that he was in at the time,
Speaker 1: aligning with earlier accounts of a struggle. Others described seeing
Speaker 1: him in possession of items that had been taken from victims,
Speaker 1: all placing him within a clear timeline that led directly
Speaker 1: to the crime. When it came time for the defense,
Speaker 1: they didn't attempt to argue that Earle had been misidentified
Speaker 1: or that he had no connection to the events in question. Instead,
Speaker 1: their strategy focused on his mental state. They argued that
Speaker 1: he was not legally responsible for his actions, pointing to
Speaker 1: his long history of instability and institutionalizations and documented health issues.
Speaker 1: Testimony also introduced suggestions that he was suffering from a
Speaker 1: condition that impaired his ability to understand or control his behavior,
Speaker 1: and among those who spoke on this was doctor Alvin Mathers,
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist who had evaluated him and offered insight into
Speaker 1: his conditions. There were also attempts outside the courtroom to
Speaker 1: influence the outcome. Appeals for clemency were made supported by
Speaker 1: affidavids that described his mental instability and argued that execution,
Speaker 1: which is what the prosecution was after, was not appropriate.
Speaker 2: For this case.
Speaker 1: They brought up whether he was even someone who should
Speaker 1: have been punished in a traditional sense at all, or
Speaker 1: someone who should have remained confined in a medical setting instead.
Speaker 1: But inside the courtroom, the jury was focused on the
Speaker 1: evidence in front of them, and after hearing the testimony
Speaker 1: and reviewing the case, the deliberations were extremely brief. In
Speaker 1: less than an hour, the jury returned with their verdict.
Speaker 1: They found Earl Nelson guilty of the murder of Emily Patterson,
Speaker 1: and Earle was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: Oh just like that, but honestly the what the defense
Speaker 2: was wanting. Like he would have just been in there
Speaker 2: and it would have just been the same old He
Speaker 2: would have escaped and he would have continued doing the
Speaker 2: freaking brutal shit that he's been doing.
Speaker 1: Well, not necessarily, because with this sentence, this meant Earle
Speaker 1: would never be tried in the USA. He would have
Speaker 1: to serve his sentence in Canada first before heading back
Speaker 1: to the States to be tried, So if he didn't
Speaker 1: get the death sentence, he could have served a sentence
Speaker 1: and then been moved over to the States. Would have
Speaker 1: probably been locked up indefinitely, probably keeping a close eye
Speaker 1: on him, knowing his history. Okay, interesting, but considering that
Speaker 1: he was getting the death penalty, he never got tried
Speaker 1: on American soil, which means, technically speaking, he is only
Speaker 1: guilty of one murder, which.
Speaker 2: We very much so know and that he wasn't And
Speaker 2: I guess this is so far back in the day
Speaker 2: that when you git the death penalty, you actually get
Speaker 2: the death penalty.
Speaker 1: Basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So early in November of nineteen twenty seven, Earl Nelson
Speaker 1: was transferred to death row in Winnipeg. The legal process
Speaker 1: had moved quickly, his arrest in June, the trial in November,
Speaker 1: and now a sentence that was left well with little
Speaker 1: uncertainty about what was to come. There were attempts to
Speaker 1: intervene in the weeks that followed, but none of them
Speaker 1: changed what had already been decided. During his time in custody,
Speaker 1: he continued to deny any sort of responsibility for the
Speaker 1: crimes that he had been connected to. He did not
Speaker 1: offer a confession, he did not provide any broader explanation
Speaker 1: for the pattern of the killings that he had been
Speaker 1: tied to, why, or anything. What remained was the evidence
Speaker 1: that was presented in court and the verdict that followed.
Speaker 1: Efforts were also made to have his sentence reconsidered, but
Speaker 1: they were ultimately denied and the original sentence stood. On
Speaker 1: the morning of January thirteenth, nineteen twenty eight, acution was
Speaker 1: carried out at the Vaughn Street Jail in Winnipeg. The
Speaker 1: time was set for seven thirty am. Earl Nelson was
Speaker 1: brought to the gallows, where he was prepared for hanging.
Speaker 1: In the moments before his execution, he spoke briefly. Accounts
Speaker 1: vary slightly on the wording, but the message is still
Speaker 1: the same. He expressed forgiveness towards those who he believed
Speaker 1: wronged him and maintained that he was innocent for his crimes.
Speaker 1: There was no admission of guilt even in the very end.
Speaker 1: The execution proceeded as scheduled, and when the trap door
Speaker 1: in the gallows was released, the drop did not immediately
Speaker 1: result in a clean break of his neck, which was
Speaker 1: the intended outcome of a hanging, and that is what
Speaker 1: they were meant to do, break the neck, not strangle, yep.
Speaker 1: But instead Earl's death came much more slowly, as he
Speaker 1: was strangled by the full weight of his body, being
Speaker 1: tangled in the rope around his neck for several minutes.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, you almost I don't know if I'm alone
Speaker 2: to say this, but something was making that him suffer.
Speaker 1: Well. My next sentence goes like this. This wasn't something
Speaker 1: that was unusual for the time. A hanging can go
Speaker 1: wrong easily, but it added a final twist of ironic
Speaker 1: fate to his end. He strangled his victims, and ultimately
Speaker 1: he endured the same demise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I feel like something of higher
Speaker 2: power was like, nobody, your neck's not getting broken. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're dragging this on for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who necessarily believes in fate or necessarily
Speaker 1: believes in karma either, but it's hard to think otherwise
Speaker 1: in that situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, with Earl Nelson's execution, the immediate threat he posed
Speaker 1: was finally gone, but the full scope of what had
Speaker 1: happened didn't resolve quite as cleanly. He had been convicted
Speaker 1: of only a single murder. The killing of Emily Patterson
Speaker 1: in Winnipeg that was the charge of court could prove
Speaker 1: the one that fell within its jurisdiction and the one
Speaker 1: that ultimately led to his execution. But by the time
Speaker 1: the trial was concluded, investigators on both sides of the
Speaker 1: border were already looking far beyond just that one case.
Speaker 1: Across the United States and Canada, authorities began reviewing unsolved
Speaker 1: murders that matched the very same pattern. Some of those
Speaker 1: cases could be tied to him more directly through evidence, timing,
Speaker 1: or witness accounts, but others remained a lot less certain,
Speaker 1: connected through pattern and circumstance alone rather than definitive proof.
Speaker 1: As a result, the number of victims attributed to Earl
Speaker 1: Nelson the Gorilla Killer has always carried some degree of
Speaker 1: uncertainty and a lot of debate. The most commonly cited
Speaker 1: figure along his name is at least twenty two victims,
Speaker 1: though some estimates they suggest the number may be much
Speaker 1: higher than that.
Speaker 2: I was honestly expecting the number to be higher than that.
Speaker 2: That is still a huge number, yes, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: bet you anything.
Speaker 1: Is it likely is?
Speaker 2: Yes? Just because of how quickly was murdering people like
Speaker 2: it would sometimes be one each day, like there wasn't
Speaker 2: very much time in between some of these frickin' murders.
Speaker 1: You're right, it was quick, fast, and constant. Now, twenty
Speaker 1: two is not a number to scoff out. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's a profound body count in all honesty. But what
Speaker 1: makes this case stand out isn't just that number alone,
Speaker 1: but how it unfolded. Earle moved across multiple states and
Speaker 1: into Canada at a time when there was no effective
Speaker 1: system for tracking a single offender across jurisdictions, and as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, it was fast, day after day, and each
Speaker 1: police department worked its own case, often without knowing what
Speaker 1: had happened elsewhere until much later. They're focusing on their day,
Speaker 1: their victim, their murder, their case, not seeing the broader picture,
Speaker 1: because how could they. The idea that one person could
Speaker 1: be responsible for a series of murders spreading across such
Speaker 1: a wide area was not something investigate were even equipped
Speaker 1: to recognize immediately, and by the time those connections were made,
Speaker 1: the events had already taken place. The case would later
Speaker 1: be looked at as one of the earliest examples of
Speaker 1: what would come to be understood as a serial killing pattern,
Speaker 1: one individual operating over time, targeting similar victims and repeating
Speaker 1: the same method across different locations. But in the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties that framework didn't exist in the way it does now.
Speaker 1: Investigators were learning it as they went, basically building an
Speaker 1: understanding of the pattern only after it was already developed.
Speaker 1: Because of that severe disconnect, we still do not know
Speaker 1: the full story behind what had happened. Even after his arrest,
Speaker 1: so many questions still remained. He never confessed to the
Speaker 1: crimes that he was accused of. There was no final
Speaker 1: statement that explained his actions, no account that filled in
Speaker 1: the gaps between cities or clarified how he chose victims
Speaker 1: or why he did it in the first place. What
Speaker 1: was left instead was the record where investigators tried to
Speaker 1: catch up. So in the end, the case didn't close
Speaker 1: with the complete explanation. It closed with a name, a timeline,
Speaker 1: and series of connections that stretched across an entire continent. Though,
Speaker 1: and for those who had been directly affected, the families
Speaker 1: the victims, and the communities where the killings took place,
Speaker 1: the impact was huge for investigators too. It became a
Speaker 1: reference point and a textbook example of an not the
Speaker 1: beginning of this kind of violence, but one of the
Speaker 1: first times it had been seen so clearly and across
Speaker 1: enough distance in time to recognize for what it really was.
Speaker 1: A serial killer. And that's the story of Earl Nelson,
Speaker 1: the Gorilla Killer.
Speaker 2: Such a savage mofo. Yeah, it was very serial killers
Speaker 2: are just very disturbing, I know, And one of the
Speaker 2: things that disturbed me so much about this.
Speaker 1: I almost believe Earl that he truly thought he was innocent.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he knew what he was really doing.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: I kind of.
Speaker 2: Feel I think he was just very mentally unstable.
Speaker 1: I do think so, oh what though?
Speaker 2: You I don't to just not remember killing twenty two
Speaker 2: people though, and thinking you're an innocent man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a massive claim, trust me, I get it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I believe my own opinion on
Speaker 1: this one, but I just have this gut feeling in
Speaker 1: me that something was going on in his head that
Speaker 1: he didn't even know was going on, and whether he
Speaker 1: actually blacked out like many people claim they did or not,
Speaker 1: or there was something different going on. I truly believe
Speaker 1: that Earle was not the gorilla killer. I believe that
Speaker 1: something else in Earl was the Gorilla killer, if that
Speaker 1: makes any sense.
Speaker 2: I mean, Earl had a terrible life. His whole life
Speaker 2: was a shit.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm not saying.
Speaker 2: Like he made a lot of other people's life very shitty.
Speaker 2: But if this was nowadays, yeah, I don't think he
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't have been. What's like, he wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: able or fit for trial is probably what the outcome
Speaker 2: would have been.
Speaker 1: Probably wouldn't have been. I don't think he would have been.
Speaker 1: And I want to clarify, I'm not saying that Earl
Speaker 1: was a good guy. I just think there is a
Speaker 1: separation between the killer in him and Earl.
Speaker 2: I like how you had your hands up like, don't
Speaker 2: come at me.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Earl is a piece of shit. Yea, but
Speaker 1: he is a piece of shit. But I do think
Speaker 1: that he was not fully aware of his actions, and
Speaker 1: I do not think he was fit to stand trial.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit frustrating to I mean, just I'm
Speaker 2: struggling because you don't really get to know his motivation
Speaker 2: or anything. Was it just that like was I guess
Speaker 2: was he meant seriously mentally ill? Was it sexually motivated?
Speaker 2: Was he did, he just like actually killing people, you know,
Speaker 2: like you don't really know.
Speaker 1: No, we don't. And that's another disturbing part of this
Speaker 1: story is we do not know those answers, the in betweens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because yeah, that's one thing that's very interesting about
Speaker 2: serial killers is you know, figuring out their motivation and
Speaker 2: why they're doing this and stuff. But sometimes it's such
Speaker 2: a fucked up reason that it's just they like killing people,
Speaker 2: which is yeah, weird.
Speaker 1: Which you can't understand. There's been stories before where you know,
Speaker 1: I like to play the devil's advocate here, right, and
Speaker 1: there's stories where I can't even do that because it's
Speaker 1: just like, what the fuck was that? Like I can't
Speaker 1: defend that, Not that I want to defend it, but
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: The idea, well, I read something today. If you can
Speaker 2: literally not understand or comprehend why someone is doing something,
Speaker 2: it's because you would yourself never be able to do that.
Speaker 1: That's a good way. I love that.
Speaker 2: So I think that's kind of like the reasoning.
Speaker 1: Wow, And maybe that's why I sympathize with Earle, because
Speaker 1: the only way I could ever commit that something like
Speaker 1: that is if there was a detachment and it was
Speaker 1: not me. Yeah, and maybe that's why I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like seeing that because I have a feeling there's that
Speaker 1: in him, and that could be the only way I'd
Speaker 1: ever do it myself. Not that I would do it,
Speaker 1: but you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean, right, Wow, But like, but it
Speaker 2: is hard to understand too that a switch just flips,
Speaker 2: you know, and then I don't know, but he does
Speaker 2: put himself in the scenario too, to be alone with
Speaker 2: a female in these boarding houses and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh, one hundred percent. So that's why I think he's
Speaker 1: still a piece of shit. He's still putting himself there.
Speaker 1: He's still following this pattern. But is he like as
Speaker 1: soon as their backs like something switches in him and
Speaker 1: then he just kills and then he walks out and
Speaker 1: comes to and doesn't know what happened, and off to
Speaker 1: the next place.
Speaker 2: Yes, maybe, I mean both scenarios are terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't it so dark as fuck no matter how
Speaker 1: you look at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But well, on that note, have a great day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for being here. Hopefully enjoyed the story
Speaker 1: of the Gorilla Killer. As I mentioned last episode, We're
Speaker 1: gonna go and go down the rabbit Hole and a
Speaker 1: few more serial killers here for the next little while.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you're ready for that, because there's going to be
Speaker 1: some dark stories coming, but for now, thank you for
Speaker 1: being here. Don't forget to check out the description of
Speaker 1: this podcast. We have our links, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: We have a new website that's coming up pretty soon,
Speaker 1: so watch out for that. Shoot us a message, let
Speaker 1: us know your opinion, and of course, as always, until
Speaker 1: next time, stay wicked thing. Oh oh,