Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening.
Speaker 3: This latest collection from true crime master Michael Benson looks
Speaker 3: at some of the ghastliest murders in Rochester, New York's history.
Speaker 3: One of them takes place in Genesee County, but it's
Speaker 3: a good one. Stories include the Davis Street Fiend, the
Speaker 3: murder of Tesse Keating Shallow Grave at Holy Sepulcher, the
Speaker 3: murder of Anna Schumacher, the Lyndon Lunatic, the murders of
Speaker 3: Ruth Francis Kimball, George and Hattie Walley, and Benjamin Phillips,
Speaker 3: of Bondage and Bullets, the murder of Gertrude Smith, Trail
Speaker 3: of Blood, the murder of George Hickey and the j
Speaker 3: Street Axe Man, The murders of Millie Marcucci and Francesca Kotogno,
Speaker 3: plus updates on three cases. Benson has written about in
Speaker 3: the past cold cases that are cold no More. Kathleen Krauzneck,
Speaker 3: Wendy Jerome, and Victoria Johnson. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 3: this evening is Shallow Graves, Ghastly Murders, Rochester, New York,
Speaker 3: with my special guest, best selling author Michael Benson. Welcome
Speaker 3: back to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 3: this interview. Michael Benson.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this latest book,
Speaker 3: Shallow Graves, Ghastly Murders, Rochester, New York.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Thanks, it's a good one. It'll keep you awake in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: Tell us about just a little bit about the origins
Speaker 3: of this book and the stories that you chose for
Speaker 3: this Well, sure.
Speaker 2: I think one of the sad things about this book
Speaker 2: is that it takes place some of the stories at
Speaker 2: least take place at the beginning of the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: when the naivete of Rochester citizens was such that they
Speaker 2: didn't really know that danger was out there. We have
Speaker 2: one of the first murders of a young woman ever
Speaker 2: in the city of Rochester. She walks alone into a
Speaker 2: dark area in the inner city after you know there
Speaker 2: are no street lights, has no sense that she's walking
Speaker 2: to a dangerous situation because nothing bad had ever happened
Speaker 2: to a woman walking alone at night before. Another story
Speaker 2: takes place in a cemetery during broad daylight on a Sunday.
Speaker 2: You know, bad things could happen anywhere at any time.
Speaker 2: And these were all hard, hard lessons for citizens, for
Speaker 2: civilized people to learn. Today. Of course we take it
Speaker 2: off for granted. Back then you had to learn one
Speaker 2: murder at a time, what not to do.
Speaker 3: We spoke earlier, and we're going to discuss three particular
Speaker 3: stories in this book and then also talk about something
Speaker 3: you call the updates. Let's talk about the first story
Speaker 3: that we want to discuss, the David Street fiend, the
Speaker 3: murder of Tessie Keating, and also your connection to Davis
Speaker 3: Street in Rochester. Tell us about that fascinating connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, when I was a kid, my paternal grandmother,
Speaker 2: Naomi Lopez, owned a bar in the inner city of
Speaker 2: Rochester with her then husband, Gregory Lopez, and it was
Speaker 2: on a seedy little street called Davis Street, which had
Speaker 2: no major outlets on either end. It dead ended at
Speaker 2: one end and at the other end it ran into
Speaker 2: another side street, so it was a back back street,
Speaker 2: and to have a bar that functioned there meant that
Speaker 2: you were going to get some sketchy clientele. And when
Speaker 2: I visited as a little kid, there was always the
Speaker 2: worry that I would see or hear something I shouldn't.
Speaker 2: I remember that feeling, although I don't remember seeing and
Speaker 2: hearing anything I shouldn't, just the worry that that would happen,
Speaker 2: and the clientele worked kind of bummy. So when I
Speaker 2: was doing research for this book and I found out
Speaker 2: that really the first spectacular murder in Rochester history took
Speaker 2: place on Davis Street, I said, you know that kind
Speaker 2: of figures. It didn't prize me at all. It had
Speaker 2: never been a nice section of town, and back at
Speaker 2: the turn of the century it was known as a
Speaker 2: place where gangs hung out.
Speaker 3: Tell us about this huge billboard at the corner of
Speaker 3: Smith Street and Union Street and what that board was
Speaker 3: conveying at that time.
Speaker 2: Well, if you go there today, there's a building there,
Speaker 2: so it confuses the issue. And plus the railroad tracks
Speaker 2: that run alongside Davis Street now are on a bridge
Speaker 2: that goes over Union Street. But at the time there
Speaker 2: was a railroad crossing there. They didn't have electronic railroad gates.
Speaker 2: They would clang klang, klang, klang. So there was a
Speaker 2: guy there with a flag. And at the corner of
Speaker 2: Smith and Union Union was a main drag. There was
Speaker 2: a huge billboard that advertised whatever it was advertising at
Speaker 2: the time. But there was an area behind the billboard,
Speaker 2: away from the main street, where it was pitch black,
Speaker 2: dark and possibly the most secluded and dangerous spot in
Speaker 2: the entire city.
Speaker 3: What was this little vacant lot known for a haven
Speaker 3: for who?
Speaker 2: I mean? There were ruffians I guess that that was
Speaker 2: the word for teenage gangs. There was a gang called
Speaker 2: the Goat Hill Gang that was in charge there. They
Speaker 2: weren't serial killers or anything like that, but they would
Speaker 2: rob you and beat people up and have fights with
Speaker 2: other gangs. And it was certainly if it had been
Speaker 2: even nineteen fifty, a young lady would have known not
Speaker 2: to go there after dark. But our heroine here, Theresa
Speaker 2: tesse Keating, she's twenty six years old. She's not a kid,
Speaker 2: but she has no clue that she's running an errand
Speaker 2: for her sister, has no sense that this is probably
Speaker 2: something they would best wait till morning.
Speaker 3: You described a stretch of Dava Street as especially dark
Speaker 3: for some reason.
Speaker 2: Well, they had just started putting in electric street lights
Speaker 2: and they had not gotten around to Dava Street. In fact,
Speaker 2: I would wager that Dava Street would want to It
Speaker 2: would have been one of the last streets to get
Speaker 2: street lights. I'm guessing that that was moved up after
Speaker 2: the murder. Generally that you know, these things are done
Speaker 2: one life too late. They were switching from kerosene to
Speaker 2: electric and the guys who lit the kerosene lamps were
Speaker 2: being laid off because there were electric lights coming in
Speaker 2: and the electric lights hadn't got to Dava Street yet,
Speaker 2: So Dava Street was completely dark.
Speaker 3: What was the reason for Tessie Teresa venturing into this
Speaker 3: area in the first place.
Speaker 2: Well, she was She worked at a camera works manufacturer
Speaker 2: for Rochesterians. The place was at the current side of
Speaker 2: the Kodak Tower. Everybody knows where that is. And she
Speaker 2: lived in a quiet residential neighborhood. And she lived with
Speaker 2: her widowed father and two sisters, and a third sister
Speaker 2: had recently moved to Rochester and was looking for a housekeeper.
Speaker 2: TESSI read an ad in the paper on her own
Speaker 2: and to do her sister a favor, she went to
Speaker 2: visit the prospective servant of missus Alice Herbert at her
Speaker 2: home in her rooming house on Davia Street. It was drizzling.
Speaker 2: She put on her rubbers and grabbed an umbrella on
Speaker 2: her way out the door. She left the house at
Speaker 2: seven ten or seven fifteen, somewhere in that neighborhood. It's
Speaker 2: November twentieth, nineteen hundred, technically nineteenth century, I guess, and
Speaker 2: unaware that her destination was dangerous. The walk should have
Speaker 2: taken seven to ten minutes, but at first everybody thought
Speaker 2: that that witnesses were lying because they said she arrived
Speaker 2: at eight thirty, which left a missing hour. And we
Speaker 2: never get a good answer for why there's an hour
Speaker 2: missing in the story. I was talking to my cousin
Speaker 2: over the weekend, and she had read the book, and
Speaker 2: she said she thinks that she just stood on Union
Speaker 2: Street and looked down Davis Street and spent a good
Speaker 2: forty five minutes saying do I really want to go
Speaker 2: down there? Do I really want to go down there?
Speaker 2: And eventually decided that she shouldn't be scared of the dark.
Speaker 2: She was an adult and decided to go down there,
Speaker 2: and that's that would explain that the missing time.
Speaker 3: This missing time. One of the people that says that
Speaker 3: the time that she sees Tessie was eight thirty and
Speaker 3: that's the owner of this, oh, the landlady at this
Speaker 3: at one twenty seven Davis Street, and that's a Missus
Speaker 3: Norah Crowe. So tell us about this landlady and the
Speaker 3: house that she controls.
Speaker 2: Well, Missus Crow as a rooming house, she doesn't she
Speaker 2: has new background checks on her clients, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of ne'er do wells living there, and I
Speaker 2: think the idea was to protect them from a police
Speaker 2: interrogation because who knows what they'd done recently or what
Speaker 2: the police were looking for. As it turned out, nobody
Speaker 2: who lived in her house had anything to do with
Speaker 2: the murder. But the instinct to not talk to the
Speaker 2: police and to maybe lie to help her tenants was automatic,
Speaker 2: and I think she got herself in a little bit
Speaker 2: of trouble for that. But it was the house where
Speaker 2: the prospective housekeeper lived, and Tessy did make it there.
Speaker 2: She was told that Missus Herbert was not in, so
Speaker 2: she turned around and started walking home. And she never
Speaker 2: made it back to Union Street.
Speaker 3: So who was first alerted to her disappearance and what
Speaker 3: do they do and who do they speak to?
Speaker 2: Well, at ten thirty the next morning, seven year old
Speaker 2: Philip Spuck of Union Street. He's looking for scrap metal
Speaker 2: in the abandoned yard behind the billboard. Tends to be
Speaker 2: a little bit of a dumping ground, so he's scavenging
Speaker 2: around there. He ran across a woman's hat, and then
Speaker 2: an umbrella, and then a woman's rubber overshoe. She picked
Speaker 2: up the He picked up the items and took them
Speaker 2: home and showed him to his mom, and she was
Speaker 2: most impressed by the rubber, so she sent him back
Speaker 2: to see if he could find the other one and
Speaker 2: instructed him to take his older brother, Edward with him. Now,
Speaker 2: they waited out a brief downpour, which which turns out
Speaker 2: to be a little bit important. There's a huge downpour.
Speaker 2: They wait for the rain to stop, and then they
Speaker 2: returned to the spot behind the billboard. And once they
Speaker 2: get there, Edward, the older brother, who's nineteen, I think
Speaker 2: something like that, he sees something in the weeds and
Speaker 2: he immediately sends his brother home, you know, go home
Speaker 2: to mom. Now he could tell it's a young woman,
Speaker 2: and he's hoping, against hope that she's only so it
Speaker 2: goes over there to see if she's okay. He sees
Speaker 2: blood in white froth coming from her nose and mouth.
Speaker 2: Her tongue's protruding, so he knows her. Her face is bruised,
Speaker 2: her thighs are open, there's finger marks on her throat.
Speaker 2: She's dressed in a brown bicycle skirt, a pink shirtwaist,
Speaker 2: and a brown fedora hat. Registering the horror, he starts
Speaker 2: to scream and runs down Smith Street, runs until he
Speaker 2: finds a cop walking the beat. It turns out its
Speaker 2: detective William Maguire from nearby Hartford Street, and together they
Speaker 2: returned to the body. Police combed the area. Body's taken
Speaker 2: to the Morgan autopsy. She had been raped, a word
Speaker 2: that didn't appear in the newspapers back then. They said
Speaker 2: she was outraged. Cause of death with strangulation, and it
Speaker 2: was the twenty ninth murder in Monroe County history, but
Speaker 2: the first to be a woman killed by a stranger.
Speaker 2: Most of your murders were guys working on the Erie
Speaker 2: Canal who got drunk and somebody hit somebody, they fell
Speaker 2: in the water, that kind of thing. So the previous
Speaker 2: twenty eight murders are less newsworthy. This one's shocking. This
Speaker 2: one just shocks the city, the surrounding area. That probably
Speaker 2: it made the news around the country because this was
Speaker 2: just too awful to even think about Chris today. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's still considered really awful, but it's not it's not
Speaker 2: mind boggling anymore. Police rapidly identified the body. Tessie's family
Speaker 2: had reported her missing at one am. Police wanted to
Speaker 2: know what type of girl tests he was, and they
Speaker 2: said she was never the kind to cause any worry,
Speaker 2: which meant she was a good girl. Police went to
Speaker 2: the roaming house and they talked to Missus Crowe. Missus
Speaker 2: Crow told some resemblance of the truth. She said that
Speaker 2: that tess He'd arrived and been sent away. Missus Crow
Speaker 2: could not answer the questions without seeming like she was
Speaker 2: hinky as the as the cops like to say now.
Speaker 2: It took police many man hours to sort it out,
Speaker 2: but they eventually figured out that all of the people
Speaker 2: Missus Crow was lying to protect had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the murder. Their whereabouts, once pieced together, was just
Speaker 2: a mad jumble of I went to one bar, had
Speaker 2: a couple of drinks, went to another bar, had a
Speaker 2: couple of drinks. I got to fight with this guy
Speaker 2: and that I want to do another bar, had a
Speaker 2: couple of drinks and it was like and that. Came
Speaker 2: home and I fell asleep. Nobody was in any condition
Speaker 2: to rape and murder a woman down by Union Street. Now,
Speaker 2: the case was sensational, and it brought out the loonies,
Speaker 2: oddballs confessed to things they didn't do. And that was
Speaker 2: another thing I think we take for granted today that
Speaker 2: a if a murder is horrible enough, people will confess
Speaker 2: to it even though they had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: For reasons that escape me. It's a form of mental illness.
Speaker 2: It was very, very frustrating. And to give you an
Speaker 2: idea of how sensational, I guess is the word. The
Speaker 2: murder was the first attempt at a requiem mass for
Speaker 2: Tessie at Corpus Christi Church on East Main Street, still there,
Speaker 2: big church in downtown Rochester. It had to be canceled
Speaker 2: because of an inability to control the crowds, so Tessie's
Speaker 2: remains were buried in Holy Sepachal Cemetery, which we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking more about later, without a ceremony, and
Speaker 2: the mass was not offered until December fourth. Enough time
Speaker 2: had passed that the funeral was peaceful, but there were
Speaker 2: still one hundred strangers there quietly paying their respects to
Speaker 2: a young woman they only knew because of her notorious death.
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, it was two and a
Speaker 2: half years before police figured out what had happened to Tessie.
Speaker 3: But there were arrests along the way, and there was
Speaker 3: a suspect named Fuller, and they believed that one of
Speaker 3: the crucial principal clues that was found in among the
Speaker 3: body and other items was this silver Bengal. As you
Speaker 3: explained later, it was not such an important clue.
Speaker 2: No, No, As it turns out, it was one of
Speaker 2: the first responders to the scene had dropped it there
Speaker 2: and it didn't have anything to do with the crime whatsoever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for two and a half years, it's nothing but frustration.
Speaker 2: But on June ninth, nineteen oh three, a fellow named
Speaker 2: August Russell, forty year old guy lived on Henrietta Street
Speaker 2: in the city, was arrested on a tip from his wife.
Speaker 2: And this is another quote. It strikes me as something
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't find today. She said he was beating
Speaker 2: me one day, and I said, you must be the
Speaker 2: man who killed the Keating girl. And he stopped hitting me,
Speaker 2: and he thought him at it, and he said, yes
Speaker 2: I am. After that, I wormed the whole story out
Speaker 2: of him, bit by bit. Missus Russell said, this is casual.
Speaker 2: He was beating me one day. There's a certain amount
Speaker 2: of wife beating was socially acceptable back then. Killing your
Speaker 2: wife that was crossing the line. But they were supposed
Speaker 2: to obey like dogs. It said so right in the ceremony,
Speaker 2: so it was okay to whack him every once in
Speaker 2: a while. Anyway. Russell was arrested at the corner Broadway
Speaker 2: in Monroe Avenue, and as one policeman engaged Russell on conversation,
Speaker 2: pretending he could get him work on a farm mountain
Speaker 2: in the country, the other sneaked up behind Russell and
Speaker 2: clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. I arrest you
Speaker 2: for the murder of Teresa Heating, and Russell bowed his
Speaker 2: head and said I didn't mean to kill her. As
Speaker 2: it turned out, Russell was a physically peculiar man. The
Speaker 2: upper portion of his skull was perfectly round, a fact
Speaker 2: later confirmed by a doctor's calipers, and he loved to
Speaker 2: adorn that billiard ball head with ladies hats. He was
Speaker 2: five to five slight, with deep creases in his forehead,
Speaker 2: a nervous, fidgety disposition, and freakishly long arms that hung
Speaker 2: to with an inch of his knees. He had one
Speaker 2: light blue eye and white dark brown eye, one dark
Speaker 2: brown eye, and walked through life with a perpetual squint.
Speaker 2: Of course, they suspected this guy is another false confessor.
Speaker 2: This guy's he even looks like a screwball. So Chief
Speaker 2: Hayden of the Rochester Police introduced erroneous details about the crime,
Speaker 2: but Russell always corrected him. Russell led the policeman to
Speaker 2: the billboard on Davis Street, pointed out the different spots
Speaker 2: with unfailing accuracy, and he showed them the place on
Speaker 2: the sidewalk where he confronted the victim. He made the
Speaker 2: young woman he said an indecent proposal, and according to Russell,
Speaker 2: she replied, go away, you dirty loafer. That's a strong
Speaker 2: language from a young lady.
Speaker 3: Back then, Absolutely, he.
Speaker 2: Lost his temper, hit her on the temple and choked her,
Speaker 2: and when she was unconscious, he dragged her off the
Speaker 2: sidewalking into the vacant lot, and he said he remained
Speaker 2: in the lot with Tessi for three hours and left
Speaker 2: her around midnight. He was indicted day before Halloween nineteen
Speaker 2: oh three, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. A
Speaker 2: commission was appointed to doctors and a lawyer to inquire
Speaker 2: about whether or not he understood the quality and the
Speaker 2: wrongness of his crime. The hearings involved calling witnesses. Some
Speaker 2: men who knew Russell thought he was demented. Others, especially
Speaker 2: when discussing Russell's handling of money, thought him as sane.
Speaker 2: As the day was long, all agreed that Russell was
Speaker 2: at his weirdest, went around women. On New Year's Eve
Speaker 2: nineteen oh three, the insanity panel declared Russell insane. He
Speaker 2: was taken to Madijuan State Insane Asylum, then new Facility,
Speaker 2: where he was confined until he would be confined until declared, saying,
Speaker 2: of course, there was no guarantee that that would ever happen.
Speaker 2: He said, Well, in Madiwan, he said, I am the
Speaker 2: magic man. I hear music when you do not some
Speaker 2: guy screamed in terror all night or yelled angrily in
Speaker 2: that place. But Russell was a laugher. He would laugh
Speaker 2: all night, and he did eventually get out, and some
Speaker 2: say he relocated to the Catskills and died in Ulster County.
Speaker 3: That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 3: the next story we were going to discuss is shallow
Speaker 3: grave at Holy Sepulture. If that's the right pronounciation, A
Speaker 3: sepulchercur yes for me. This is August nineteen oh nine,
Speaker 3: Anna Catherine Shoemaker, sixteen years old, found in a crudely
Speaker 3: constructed graview right at the Holy Sulfitture Cemetery. And tell
Speaker 3: us the reason why she went to the cemetery in
Speaker 3: the first place, and how she was found eventually there.
Speaker 2: You know this case as the most the richest and
Speaker 2: yet most horrible ironies. Here's a story of a young
Speaker 2: woman who is murdered in a cemetery. She's buried in
Speaker 2: the cemetery by her killer in a shallow grave, and
Speaker 2: then she's dug up from her shallow grave, and when
Speaker 2: she's finally buried for real, she's buried in the same cemetery,
Speaker 2: not only hundreds of yards from the scene of her murder.
Speaker 2: And I cannot think of another case like that. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that there are may be others out there. I
Speaker 2: can't even think of another case of the murder in
Speaker 2: a cemetery at the moment, but certainly not in a
Speaker 2: murder in a c in which the victim was then
Speaker 2: buried at the same spot. It's Saturday, August seventh, nineteen
Speaker 2: oh nine. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. The temperature
Speaker 2: is ninety two degrees. Humidity is uncomfortable and as preps.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows by now ninety two degrees is the temperature
Speaker 2: at which most murders are committed. Ninety one degrees, everybody's
Speaker 2: a little bit calmer. Ninety three degrees, everybody gets a
Speaker 2: little bit too hot to do anything physical. Sixteen year
Speaker 2: old Anna Catherine Schumacher she leaves her home on Katie Street.
Speaker 2: Her mission is to groom and place sweet peas and
Speaker 2: asterniums from the flower garden behind her family home upon
Speaker 2: the graves of her father and sister. Her father recently
Speaker 2: passed away. She had a sister who died as a baby.
Speaker 2: As babies often did back then. And its Holy Sepago's
Speaker 2: Sepulcher Cemetery. They've got me doing it. Anna walked to
Speaker 2: a streetcar stop from her house. She caught a car
Speaker 2: downtown at the four Corners. She transferred to a shalot
Speaker 2: car that took her to the cemetery. And we know
Speaker 2: that she did this because a family friend and Missus Graham,
Speaker 2: saw Anna get off at the cemetery. And after that
Speaker 2: we don't know when she didn't return. On Saturday night,
Speaker 2: her mother called police reported or missing, but very little
Speaker 2: attention was paid to the report. And his mother and
Speaker 2: sister went to the sixth Precinct and told the officer
Speaker 2: Anna's missing, but they didn't take her seriously. They said,
Speaker 2: a lot of sixteen year old girls are out that
Speaker 2: late time was ten forty pm and Anna had been
Speaker 2: gone for less than ten hours. Cop wanted to know
Speaker 2: if Anna was in the habit of staying out late. Now.
Speaker 2: The question greatly upset the women. He was questioning the
Speaker 2: reputation the chastity of their baby. Anna. Sure, so they
Speaker 2: storm out. They get lanterns, get a carriage to drive
Speaker 2: them to the cemetery and they go looking for Anna.
Speaker 2: They found fresh flowers at her father and sister's graves,
Speaker 2: tufts of unsightly grass trimmed with the scissors she brought along.
Speaker 2: Another unsuccessful scouring in the cemetery occurred and they split up.
Speaker 2: They canvassed the neighborhood, and then they got a lucky break.
Speaker 2: One man, a stranger, answered the door, said he hadn't
Speaker 2: seen Anna, but he offered a word of advice. If
Speaker 2: I were in your place, I'd get Constable stall Hand
Speaker 2: Baker of the Greece Police town of Greece next to Rochester. Today,
Speaker 2: the cemetery's in the city that back then it was
Speaker 2: in the town. He won't give up the search if
Speaker 2: he dies in the attempt. If you can't find her,
Speaker 2: you might as well give up. If he can't find her,
Speaker 2: you might as well give up. The advice turned out
Speaker 2: to be very good, and Baker's first question was how
Speaker 2: many times had Anna gone to that cemetery alone. It's
Speaker 2: considering the possibility that she might have been using flowers
Speaker 2: on the grave as an excuse to meet a boy.
Speaker 2: This was the third time, and his brother John replied,
Speaker 2: Now first Monday morning, Baker grabbed his colleague Otto Friedman
Speaker 2: and and his brother John, and the three spoke to
Speaker 2: a groundskeeper who remembered seeing the girl at first in
Speaker 2: the section where she was decorating graves, and later all
Speaker 2: the way to the east along the edge of the
Speaker 2: river gorge, perhaps picking wildflowers in the bushes. Along the
Speaker 2: gorge's edge, Baker saw drag marks on the ground, and
Speaker 2: then a patch of loose earth only feet from the
Speaker 2: cliff the river two hundred feet below. The men had
Speaker 2: no shovels that began digging with their with their hands,
Speaker 2: and after a few minutes they found a ribbon, and
Speaker 2: then the corner of a woman's garment. So they stopped
Speaker 2: and notified the sheriff and the coroner, and within the
Speaker 2: hour the body of Anna Shoemaker had been recovered. It
Speaker 2: lay face down with the feet doubled back so that
Speaker 2: it fit in a four foot long excavation. The left
Speaker 2: cheek was bruised, and there was a fresh cut over
Speaker 2: the left eye. She was covered with bruises, most severely
Speaker 2: on her chest. One breast was black and discolored. She'd
Speaker 2: been raped and murdered. The condition of the body indicated
Speaker 2: that she'd put up quite a battle. One of the
Speaker 2: key things they realized immediately was whoever buried in in
Speaker 2: that spot had a shovel, which would seem to rule
Speaker 2: out people who just passing through unless you're walking along
Speaker 2: the edge of the river carrying a shovel, which seems unlikely.
Speaker 2: Last spring, I went to Rochester and I visited the spot,
Speaker 2: and it was not hard to figure out where it
Speaker 2: had the murder and the burying of Anna had taken place.
Speaker 2: You go down down the side of a little hill
Speaker 2: and you're on a flat spot right next to the
Speaker 2: river gorge. There's no fence or anything. Take one wrong
Speaker 2: step and you're gonna fall to your death. And there's
Speaker 2: no fence between that spot and the cemetery. You're supposed
Speaker 2: to know not to go there. But once you're down
Speaker 2: that little level, you can't be seen from anywhere else.
Speaker 2: You can't be seen from the cemetery certainly can't be
Speaker 2: seen by anybody down in the river, So you have
Speaker 2: complete privacy. And you know, once I got there, I said, well,
Speaker 2: this is this is clearly the spot.
Speaker 3: Now, when she's found, what do they find in terms
Speaker 3: of signs of struggle and just the state of her
Speaker 3: body when found, she.
Speaker 2: Had put up a tremendous fight. Her body was covered
Speaker 2: with bruises. Her hyoid bone was broken, which indicated she
Speaker 2: had been manually strangulated. She had been strangled with a
Speaker 2: man's hands. Her body was taken to the morgue where
Speaker 2: an autopsy was performed. She died from suffocation, and particles
Speaker 2: were found under the victim's fingernails, which might have been
Speaker 2: the key to the case now, but back then it
Speaker 2: just meant that she had scratched her attacker. So they
Speaker 2: were looking for a man with visible scratches, obviously no
Speaker 2: inkling that anything like DNA would ever be used to
Speaker 2: solve crimes. Three cemetery employer saw a man along the
Speaker 2: eastern edge where they found the girl, dressed in a
Speaker 2: blue suit and a straw hat, and when he saw
Speaker 2: that he was being observed, he ran away to the north.
Speaker 2: I walked fast at first, but then broke into a
Speaker 2: trot and a full fledged run. The suspicious man vanished,
Speaker 2: never to be found if he ever existed. Another the
Speaker 2: reason that police were skeptical is that these stories came
Speaker 2: from cemetery employees who have shovels and would be suspects,
Speaker 2: and if one of them was the killer. They may
Speaker 2: be covering up for him telling stories that weren't true.
Speaker 2: If they were telling the truth, I would have to
Speaker 2: think that the man who broke into a trot and
Speaker 2: then a full run once he was observed in the
Speaker 2: area of the murder is your guy. It's got to
Speaker 2: be your guy. The search for the shovel turned out
Speaker 2: to be successful. A deputy found a blood spattered shovel
Speaker 2: in the cemetery's boiler room, another indication this is an
Speaker 2: inside job. Shovel, as it turned out, had been left
Speaker 2: out by a worker that Saturday morning after he developed
Speaker 2: blood poisoning from poison ivy and had to go home.
Speaker 2: People died from poison ivy in nineteen oh nine, so
Speaker 2: in theory, anyone could have grabbed the shovel, and as
Speaker 2: the boiler room wasn't locked, anyone could have stashed it. Still,
Speaker 2: you would need to know it was there and where
Speaker 2: it was stored, so it's unlikely that anyone unfamiliar with
Speaker 2: the cemetery could have disposed of the shovel in that
Speaker 2: particular fashion. On Wednesday, August eleventh, and his funeral Mass
Speaker 2: was held at Saint Peter and Paul's Church, on West Maine,
Speaker 2: near Bull's Head against Center Town. The church was raised
Speaker 2: three years later and replaced with the church that still
Speaker 2: stands there. The pall bearers, heartbreakingly were sixteenage boys and
Speaker 2: his former classmates. After Mass, the young Paul black bearers
Speaker 2: carried the white casket to a horse drawn hearse for
Speaker 2: the trip to Holy Sepulcher, which meant that the the
Speaker 2: scene of her death and her final resting spot were
Speaker 2: to be the same. And during the weeks and months
Speaker 2: that followed, many suspicious men were arrested, grilled and cut loose.
Speaker 2: False confessor is always a problem in high profile cases
Speaker 2: needed to be debunked. Any poor soul with a scratched
Speaker 2: face or arm was dragged in and made to explain himself.
Speaker 2: Hobo's were yanked off freight trains. And then there was
Speaker 2: the epic pursuit of a man came to be known
Speaker 2: as swale Man.
Speaker 3: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 3: What is the theory behind the swale Man? What is
Speaker 3: exactly where is this man supposedly hiding?
Speaker 2: Well, the first sighting is of nothing more outrageous than
Speaker 2: a man acting wild do you know what that means.
Speaker 2: If he was drunk, he was having some sort of episode.
Speaker 2: We're maybe a mile away from the cemetery and he's
Speaker 2: last seen running into a thickly foliaged swal I had
Speaker 2: to look up the word swell We don't use it
Speaker 2: much anymore. It's just a large area covered with swampy weeds.
Speaker 2: So a mob, a combination of law enforcement and self
Speaker 2: deputized neighbors, tried to surround the swale so then starve
Speaker 2: him out like a siege, even though there was no
Speaker 2: known connection between the murder and Swaleman. Again, if swell
Speaker 2: Man was real, he was never captured, but he remained
Speaker 2: a phantom seen for years, lurking in the shadows of
Speaker 2: frightened residences, of imagination, a boogeyman that haunted that area
Speaker 2: for generations, and sadly, the unsolved murder of Anna Schumacher
Speaker 2: became part of Rochester's criminal history, the moment when Rochesterian
Speaker 2: women learned that they were never safe when alone, even
Speaker 2: on a Saturday morning with the sun shining, and not
Speaker 2: even on hollowed ground.
Speaker 3: Another story that we're going to discuss from this book
Speaker 3: is the attacks of the Linden lunatic search for a
Speaker 3: serial killer. And this occurs in Linden, New York. You write,
Speaker 3: a tiny village of about one hundred farmers and apple orchards,
Speaker 3: and November fifteenth, nineteen seventeen, a body of an unknown
Speaker 3: woman is found in the woods outside of town, her
Speaker 3: head bashed in some sort of large blunt object used,
Speaker 3: you say, likely a large rock. She's been dead about
Speaker 3: three days. So what happens You write that an eyewitness
Speaker 3: comes forward almost immediately tell us about.
Speaker 2: That a man is seen walking into the woods with
Speaker 2: a woman and coming out by himself. Again, it's from
Speaker 2: a distance, and nobody has any idea who The woman's
Speaker 2: eventually buried under the name Ruth, which the coroner gave her.
Speaker 2: She's a Jane Doe, as we'd refer to her today.
Speaker 2: They believe she was a sex worker, either from Buffalo
Speaker 2: or Rochester. This is little village of Linden is it's
Speaker 2: in western New York, ten miles south of Batavia, which
Speaker 2: is between Rochester and Buffalo. And don't look for it
Speaker 2: on the map today because, as we'll find out, it
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. Five years after Ruth is murdered, and we're
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty two. Now October nineteen twenty two, about
Speaker 2: a mile and a half from town. Justice of the Piece,
Speaker 2: Morris Neelan, is passing his next door neighbors home when
Speaker 2: he notices something odd. Miss Francis Kimball, seventy two years old,
Speaker 2: is nowhere to be seen, and her cow had not
Speaker 2: been milked. Now you can you could keep time by
Speaker 2: people milking their cows back you didn't miss a day,
Speaker 2: you didn't milk late. The cow would get uncomfortable if
Speaker 2: it wasn't milked. So there's a search for Miss Kimball,
Speaker 2: who was a staunch teetotaler known to scold men who
Speaker 2: wreaked a hard cider, and she was found dead in
Speaker 2: her basement, stuffed under an apple bin, head bashed to
Speaker 2: a pulp with a big rock, same way Ruth died,
Speaker 2: which was found nearby, covered with blood and hair. The
Speaker 2: killer struck her first with his fist, breaking her jaw,
Speaker 2: knocking her cold, and sending her false teeth flying. He
Speaker 2: then walked to the cellar window, reached from the inside
Speaker 2: and cut the telephone wires. Returned to the unconscious woman,
Speaker 2: picked up a large rock and pounded her skull to
Speaker 2: fragments at some point he'd discharged seamen upon her. The
Speaker 2: killer had little to fear from the woman, yet exhibited
Speaker 2: tremendous anger overkills the modern term, and police thought that
Speaker 2: perhaps he wasn't terribly bright, because cutting the telephone wires
Speaker 2: seemed completely unnecessary. If she lives alone, who who's going
Speaker 2: to call anybody? And if somebody does call in and
Speaker 2: they find out that the wires have been cut, that's
Speaker 2: going to alert somebody that's a problem, rather than to
Speaker 2: do the opposite. Anyway, a number of suspects are question again,
Speaker 2: all denied have anything to do with the murder, and
Speaker 2: the village was quiet until September twenty third, nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: when someone tried to burn down the house of Judge Neelon,
Speaker 2: the man who lived next door to Miss Kimball and
Speaker 2: realized that there was something wrong in her house. Then
Speaker 2: on March eleventh, nineteen twenty four. The following spring, there
Speaker 2: are three more murders in Linden, done in such a
Speaker 2: way that comparisons to Miss Kimball's murder and the arson
Speaker 2: at Justice Neelan's house were inevitable. The crime scene was
Speaker 2: about one hundred yards from the Linden Railroad station. The
Speaker 2: victims were Thomas and Hattie Whaley, both fifty five years old,
Speaker 2: and missus Mabel Morse was fifty whose husband ran the
Speaker 2: Linden Village store. The Whaleys were shot to death with
Speaker 2: a thirty two and Missus Morse was fatally struck over
Speaker 2: the head repeatedly with a pickhandle. The bodies were placed
Speaker 2: on top of one another and set on fire. Whaley's
Speaker 2: lived alone, about a five minute walk from the center
Speaker 2: of the village. Mister Whaley worked as a section foreman
Speaker 2: on the Erie Railroad. As a side income, Whaley kept
Speaker 2: two cows and sold the milk to the village grocer,
Speaker 2: George Morse, that was Mabel's husband, and on the evening
Speaker 2: of the murders, shortly after six o'clock, Missus Morse took
Speaker 2: her empty milk pail from the store and started for
Speaker 2: the Whaley home, and time passed and she didn't return
Speaker 2: back At the village store, Myron Smith, her employee, was
Speaker 2: concerned when she didn't come back. There was a radio
Speaker 2: radio was brand new in nineteen twenty before and the
Speaker 2: only radio station in Rochester was w h A m
Speaker 2: still on the air by the way, and they used
Speaker 2: to in the afternoons they would they would run a
Speaker 2: program at the Eastman School of Music, wonderful music being
Speaker 2: played by the students there, and Missus Morse had a
Speaker 2: son who was going to that school, so she never
Speaker 2: missed that show. And yet the show's on and she
Speaker 2: hasn't returned, so that raises a red flag, and he
Speaker 2: goes looking for her. He gets to the he gets
Speaker 2: to the Whaley home, raises a kitchen window and it's
Speaker 2: hit by a billow of smoke. So he and two
Speaker 2: passers by broke down the Whaley's rear door, put out
Speaker 2: the fire and found the bodies. The killer had placed
Speaker 2: hooked rag rugs over the bodies, poured kerosene on them,
Speaker 2: and set them out of fire, creating a smoldering lazy fire.
Speaker 2: Missus Morris's son Clyde, said that on the evening of
Speaker 2: May eleventh, perhaps minutes after the murders took place, he
Speaker 2: received a phone call at his home in Rochester from
Speaker 2: a man who refused to identify himself. You'll never see
Speaker 2: your mother again, he said, before hanging up. Now. Clyde
Speaker 2: told his neighbors about the call and traveled to Batavia,
Speaker 2: where he learned that the call wasn't a prank and
Speaker 2: may have been a taunt from his mom's killer.
Speaker 3: Incredible. How do they police proceed with this information?
Speaker 2: Well, everyone in Linden and the surrounding area had a
Speaker 2: theory as to who the killer was. Linda became a
Speaker 2: pressure cooker of tension and anxiety. Police could talk to
Speaker 2: everybody in town, and they did. One family moved away,
Speaker 2: then another and another. Apparently the killer must have moved
Speaker 2: away as well, because eventually Linden was no more. It
Speaker 2: was a ghost town which had been wiped out by
Speaker 2: a serial killer. But the way this is not like
Speaker 2: Anna in the cemetery. Police never did figure out who
Speaker 2: did it, but I think we have so we can
Speaker 2: get to that.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 3: these messages. Let's talk about this suspect, Andrew Michelle and
Speaker 3: why he became a suspect. What was his connection? Police
Speaker 3: felt to all of these victims, Well.
Speaker 2: Before they get hip to Andrew Michelle, and Michelle had
Speaker 2: been spoken to after each of the murders. So far, Yes,
Speaker 2: but he moves away with everybody else, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to get away from the killer. And in May nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four, a man named Benjamin Phillips, seventy six year
Speaker 2: old farmer on Buffalo Road in the town of Alexander
Speaker 2: on the other side of Genesee County, fights a home
Speaker 2: invader before succumbing to a horrible beating, and after the murder,
Speaker 2: his body is set on fire on his bed again
Speaker 2: with kerosene and the rugs, and death is caused by
Speaker 2: a badly fractured skull. Horrible scenes discovered by Missus Phillips
Speaker 2: and her son Joseph, were surprised to find that the
Speaker 2: house is completely dark when they arrived, and the house
Speaker 2: are the fires contained to the first floor bedroom where
Speaker 2: the body lay. At this point a name of a
Speaker 2: suspect becomes fairly obvious, although again the ability to prove
Speaker 2: someone as a murderer in nineteen thirty is very different
Speaker 2: from now. But the man was named Andrew Michelle, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, and he had a grudge against all of
Speaker 2: the Linden victims. Miss Kimball had once had him arrested
Speaker 2: for drinking. He was a drinking man. This was prohibition.
Speaker 2: She was the teetotaler that always got into the faces
Speaker 2: of drunks. She even testified against him in court. Thomas
Speaker 2: Whaley he earned Michelle's ire when he told people that
Speaker 2: he suspected Michelle was the arson at Judge Neilvillain's house
Speaker 2: and possibly the Kimball killer as well. He also reportedly
Speaker 2: refused to lend Michelle money. George Morse and by implication,
Speaker 2: his wife got onto Michelle's alleged list by cutting off
Speaker 2: his credit at the village store. Michelle was into the
Speaker 2: morses for one hundred and sixty dollars and was told
Speaker 2: in writing no more groceries until he paid that down.
Speaker 2: So at one time or another, Michelle made threats against
Speaker 2: all four of the Linden victims. Now he came close
Speaker 2: to being arrested after the Trim triple homicide. He was
Speaker 2: grilled for hours, but was eventually released for a very
Speaker 2: unusual reason. He had suffered a horrible accident in a
Speaker 2: sawmill when he was a boy and had sawt off
Speaker 2: four fingers on his right hand and to pick up
Speaker 2: the slack, and this is I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: a physical, physical thing that happens, but apparently it happened
Speaker 2: in this case to pick up the slack, his remaining
Speaker 2: forefinger grew in girth until it was twice the size
Speaker 2: of a normal finger. Wow, And we have a photo
Speaker 2: in the book which tends to suggest this is true.
Speaker 2: And that finger, it was argued, was too thick to
Speaker 2: have pulled the trigger on the thirty two revolver used
Speaker 2: to kill the Wales. Couldn't he just put the gun
Speaker 2: in his other hand? Nobody asked, and Michelle remained free.
Speaker 2: Shortly after the triple homicide, he moved to the town
Speaker 2: of Attica, not the prison, in the town three miles
Speaker 2: from the Benjamin Phillips crime scene in Alexander. His beef,
Speaker 2: if any, with the final victim, is unknown, But if
Speaker 2: he's the guy who's pouring kerosene on rag rugs at one,
Speaker 2: he's probably the guy pouring kerosene on ragrugs at the other. Yes.
Speaker 2: Was he the type of man who could kill humans
Speaker 2: by bashing in their heads? Indication is that he was,
Speaker 2: once having been arrested for beating a horse with a
Speaker 2: two by four so severely that the horse lost an eye.
Speaker 2: And as for Ruth, the first victim, the Jane Doe
Speaker 2: found in the woods in nineteen seventeen, she was probably
Speaker 2: a sex worker. He was a bachelor, not particularly swift
Speaker 2: with women. And it turns out that at that time,
Speaker 2: at the time of Ruth's death, he was working near
Speaker 2: the crime scene, clearing wood from the woods there. He
Speaker 2: died at the age of seventy seven in the Rochester
Speaker 2: State Hospital, a mental institution, in nineteen sixty. He'd been
Speaker 2: committed in nineteen fifty eight. Is mentally incompetent, so he
Speaker 2: was never punished for the murders. He did spend the
Speaker 2: last years of his life, however, in an institution, and
Speaker 2: because of the tremendous population increase since the murders, folks
Speaker 2: today do live where Linden used to be, but there
Speaker 2: is no village and their addresses say Bethany. So Linden
Speaker 2: was the town in upstate New York that was destroyed
Speaker 2: by a serial killer.
Speaker 3: Wow, you're right that author Rob R. Thompson, a retired
Speaker 3: mental health counselor and retired a FBI agent Mark Safferik
Speaker 3: have also researched the Linden murders as a cold case
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Right, and I am borrowing their diagnosis of what happened.
Speaker 2: He's there suspect and it seems like an open and
Speaker 2: shut case. There aren't that many suspects. It's a very
Speaker 2: small town. You could put them all in one room.
Speaker 2: And he was the maniac who beat horses with a
Speaker 2: two by four and all of his enemies are being murdered.
Speaker 2: Why they didn't move on him earlier, the excuse of
Speaker 2: he couldn't shoot a thirty two with his fat finger.
Speaker 2: It doesn't wash with me. I would be unhappy with
Speaker 2: that if I were a law enforcement person in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and the misplaced police reaction to Benjamin Phillips was
Speaker 3: initially that they thought that somehow he had burnt himself
Speaker 3: in his own bed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I think I made a comment earlier
Speaker 2: about how police were We're just as smart then as
Speaker 2: they are now, but not always. In the town of Alexander,
Speaker 2: near Attica, they found a man who had died of
Speaker 2: a fractured skull, lying on a bed on fire and
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion that the ceiling had fallen on
Speaker 2: his head and then he'd set himself on fire with
Speaker 2: a cigarette, which is just ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Just in closing with this interview, the last chapter
Speaker 3: is called Updates, and you say it three arrests since
Speaker 3: we last chatted. And it's regarding a few years ago
Speaker 3: a private investigator, Don Tubman and you worked cold case
Speaker 3: murder cases in the Rochester area. You had success with
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixty six Chili murders, and you felt that
Speaker 3: you had pushed the double initial investigation in the correct
Speaker 3: direction and that book was Nightmare in Rochester. Tell us
Speaker 3: about the good news regarding these three cases.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, and this makes me very happy. Kathleen Krauzenek
Speaker 2: was killed on February nineteenth, nineteen eighty two, in her
Speaker 2: Brighton home. Twenty nine year old woman found struck once
Speaker 2: in the head with an axe. She was slain as
Speaker 2: she slept. The axe had been left embedded in her
Speaker 2: head handle sticking up. She was home alone with her
Speaker 2: three year old daughter at the time, and her husband
Speaker 2: a barely been the last to see her alive when
Speaker 2: he left for work and found the body when he
Speaker 2: came home from work. The husband was thirty year old James.
Speaker 2: He said that he and his wife had dinner some
Speaker 2: wine together and then went to bed and they were
Speaker 2: asleep before midnight. CSI people went over the bed carefully
Speaker 2: and although there was plenty of evidence that Kathleen slept there.
Speaker 2: There was no indication of Jim, none of his hairs,
Speaker 2: no fingerprints. In fact, there are no fingerprints in the
Speaker 2: entire house, which meant that either somebody had wiped the
Speaker 2: entire house down or the Crossnex never touched anything. Now,
Speaker 2: the daughter Sarah was home during the attack. Who knew
Speaker 2: what she saw? Nobody really wanted to think about it
Speaker 2: was so horrible. The best note of reassurance authorities could
Speaker 2: offer was that the child was unharmed physically anyway. She
Speaker 2: dressed herself and was found wearing two sweaters backwards. Broken
Speaker 2: window was found on the door between the screened in
Speaker 2: porch and the kitchen, but nothing had been stolen. Now,
Speaker 2: after the murder, Dad acted very peculiarly. He stopped talking
Speaker 2: to his in laws entirely. He took his daughter and
Speaker 2: left town, hoping the whole thing would be forgotten, Which
Speaker 2: is not a normal way for a man to act
Speaker 2: when his wife has been murdered. It's more like the
Speaker 2: way he acts after a divorce after winning custody. So
Speaker 2: skipping ahead thirty seven years early in twenty nineteen, after
Speaker 2: the story appeared in my book Haunting, homicides which I
Speaker 2: wrote down TUBBN. I'd like to think this helped put
Speaker 2: the case on law enforcements front burner. Several months after
Speaker 2: the book came out, Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson teamed
Speaker 2: up with the FBI and evidence regarding the murder was
Speaker 2: presented to a grand jury. November eighth, twenty nineteen, Jim
Speaker 2: Krausinek was arraigned after an indictment was unsealed in court
Speaker 2: charging him with second degree murder. As his daughter Sarah,
Speaker 2: now all grown up, the only witness of the crime,
Speaker 2: her memory is still a mystery, stood next to him.
Speaker 2: The now sixty seven year old Jim pleaded not guilty,
Speaker 2: posted twenty five thousand dollars cash bail, torender his passport,
Speaker 2: and was released pending trial. And the trial but very smoothly.
Speaker 2: After a day and a half of a deliberation, the
Speaker 2: jury returned with a unanimous guilty verdict and the remains
Speaker 2: of Cathy were moved from the Krousenet plot to her
Speaker 2: own family's burial plot. Interesting, you know, we could talk
Speaker 2: forever about Sarah, who who knows what she saw on
Speaker 2: the day her mother was murdered, What she remembers she
Speaker 2: always insisted her father was innocent and stood by him
Speaker 2: right up until the moment that he was put in
Speaker 2: prison forever. Yeah, so the other updates. The second update
Speaker 2: is Wendy Jerome. I don't know if you have a
Speaker 2: specific question you want to ask about her, but.
Speaker 3: Well tell us a particulars of her case and how
Speaker 3: it went cold and how it was solved.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I first wrote about her in Nightmare in Rochester
Speaker 2: again with Don Tubman. And the reason I was interest
Speaker 2: in her case. First of all, she's a fourteen year
Speaker 2: old girl who's walking to her friend's house and never
Speaker 2: comes home, and she's she's found raped and murdered, so
Speaker 2: that that's one of the reasons why I caught my interest.
Speaker 2: But another reason was her body was found at the
Speaker 2: entrance to School thirty three on Webster Avenue, which happened
Speaker 2: to have been the exact same door that Michelle Maenza,
Speaker 2: the third of the double initial murder victims, came out
Speaker 2: of just before she was abducted. So there was a
Speaker 2: geographical connection that I couldn't get over. Although I knew
Speaker 2: even then that it was probably not the same killer,
Speaker 2: I still included the case in the book Now there
Speaker 2: was a four inch cut in Wendy's throat, her pink
Speaker 2: hoodie had been removed and placed over her beaten face,
Speaker 2: and between the rape and the murder, she'd been allowed
Speaker 2: to get dressed. Because of death was massive head injuries.
Speaker 2: She'd been beaten with a blunt instrument, possibly a hammer.
Speaker 2: Twenty eight years after Wendy's murder, police revealed to the
Speaker 2: public for the first time that an empty pack of
Speaker 2: cigarettes and a lighter were found near the body. I
Speaker 2: believe I think I knew this before the public did,
Speaker 2: but keptamasha. There were also hairs belonging to an African
Speaker 2: American male found at the crime scene and usable DNA.
Speaker 2: There was no hit on Cotis case went cold, and
Speaker 2: then in twenty twenty, there was a familial hit on
Speaker 2: the DNA profile the relative of a Florida man named
Speaker 2: Timothy Williams. Rochester police did a little research, learned that
Speaker 2: Williams had been twenty years old and lived in Wendy's
Speaker 2: neighborhood at the time of the murder, and knowing they
Speaker 2: had their man, Rochester Police Department investigators John Brennan and
Speaker 2: Gary Galletta went down to Florida to get him. Williams
Speaker 2: was all smiles until he heard that the cops were
Speaker 2: from Rochester. Then he knew it was over.
Speaker 3: Wow, happy ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if they can be.
Speaker 3: Tell us about the third success story.
Speaker 2: Well, this one's a little bit personal for me. I
Speaker 2: got to know the family pretty well. The third update
Speaker 2: comes from a murder I first wrote about in my
Speaker 2: book Killer Twins, which was about identical twins Stephen and
Speaker 2: Robert Spahalski, killed individually but identically, which is tremendous nature
Speaker 2: versus nurture experiment. On December seventh, nineteen ninety two, Victoria
Speaker 2: Jobson's decomposed body was found nude and filled with multiple
Speaker 2: stab wounds in a Rochester park along a row of
Speaker 2: thick trees. In response to the discovery of the remains,
Speaker 2: the first Rochester officer on the scene was Mark Marianna,
Speaker 2: who also wrote the initial report. A medical examiner determined
Speaker 2: that Vicky had been killed much earlier, perhaps around the
Speaker 2: time she disappeared, and had recently been moved to the
Speaker 2: spot where she was discovered. Years later, Marianna was promoted
Speaker 2: to squad leader in the homicide unit, and sometime in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, while reading through cold cases. He
Speaker 2: discovered Vicky's case file and reread it, and he went
Speaker 2: to work. He developed a confidential informant who had some
Speaker 2: interesting facts about Vicky's disappearance and subsequent murder. There was
Speaker 2: the usual give and take between the informant and Mariano
Speaker 2: about how the snitch would benefit from helping the investigation,
Speaker 2: and after that was worked out, Mariano learned some surprising facts.
Speaker 2: The informant said that Vicki was killed off of Emerson Street.
Speaker 2: She was picked up by a customer who brought her
Speaker 2: back to his residence, actually to a shed in the
Speaker 2: rear of his house. He was there with another mail
Speaker 2: and the three smoked crack. One of the males had
Speaker 2: sex with Vicki, and when Vicki demanded her money for
Speaker 2: the transaction, the males told her that her pay was
Speaker 2: in crack and she had smoked it with them. This
Speaker 2: led to a verbal argument over money, which ultimately led
Speaker 2: to the older of the two males striking and stabbing
Speaker 2: Vicky to death. Vicky was buried in a very shallow
Speaker 2: grave under the floor of the shed, where she remained
Speaker 2: for over a month, and then, in a scene right
Speaker 2: out of the movies. During a family dinner, the subject
Speaker 2: of Vicky being dead in the shed comes up. The
Speaker 2: patriarch of the family said, you gotta get that thing
Speaker 2: out of there now. So the men who put Vicky
Speaker 2: in the ground waited until dark to move the short
Speaker 2: distance to the spot where she was found, and two
Speaker 2: males walking in the area discovered the remains the next day.
Speaker 2: Years and years went by and the killers were never
Speaker 2: suspected in any way. The family kept the ghastly secret
Speaker 2: among them. I can't even imagine the frustration of losing
Speaker 2: a loved one to murder knowing who the killers are,
Speaker 2: as then that they remained free, just out of each
Speaker 2: seemingly taunting, and that frustration lingered until November twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: thirty two years after Vicki's murder, And that was when
Speaker 2: State Supreme Court Justice Judy Sinclair unsealed an indictment charging
Speaker 2: fifty nine year old Arthur Jason Junior of Cansis, New
Speaker 2: York with secondary murder. Then came news that there was
Speaker 2: a second arrest, no name only, that had been taking
Speaker 2: place in Canada, and the suspect's name would not be
Speaker 2: released until the indictment was unsealed in a Monroe Court
Speaker 2: County courtroom, which has not yet happened, and justice, it
Speaker 2: would seem, was well on its way to being served
Speaker 2: better late than ever. And if any of any of
Speaker 2: Vicki's families listening to this, I'm so happy for you guys.
Speaker 2: You know, they came to me as as a last resort.
Speaker 2: I'm so not a cop and so not a detective,
Speaker 2: but I was having success going over fact patterns and
Speaker 2: coming up with ideas regarding other murders. They begged me
Speaker 2: to do something, and as I would speaking with them,
Speaker 2: I had an inkling that Mark Marianno already knew the answer,
Speaker 2: and talked to him and he then, you know, he
Speaker 2: started talking to the family and everybody's buddies now, and
Speaker 2: that's it. The book ends on an extremely happy note,
Speaker 2: as happy as a murder case can be. Justice better
Speaker 2: late than never.
Speaker 3: Yes, justice prevails, absolutely incredible ending. Certainly, I want to
Speaker 3: thank you very much Michael Benson for coming on and
Speaker 3: talking about your latest and greatest, Shallow Graves Ghastly Murders, Rochester,
Speaker 3: New York. Again, I ask for people that might want
Speaker 3: to find out more about this book and your other
Speaker 3: books where will people look best.
Speaker 2: I think the key is to google at author Michael Benson,
Speaker 2: all one word, at author Michael Benson, all one word,
Speaker 2: and that'll take you to the various social media where
Speaker 2: you can find out about my books. And if that's
Speaker 2: too difficult, just go on Amazon. They're all on there.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of Michael Benson's who write books,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it would be confused. I'm the
Speaker 2: guy with the white beard that writes about psycho killers.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Thank you so much, Michael Benson. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Dan Zepansky, It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: It's always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Shallow Graves,
Speaker 3: Ghasoly Murders, Rochester, New York. Thank you so much. Michael Benson.
Speaker 3: Have a great evening, and good night, good night, good night,