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Speaker 5: Lad you are now listening to True Murder, The most
Speaker 5: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 5: have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous.
Speaker 4: Killers in true crime history.
Speaker 5: True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening. Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive
Speaker 4: addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it
Speaker 4: into the tabloids in the nineteen thirties. Skyscraper slayer be
Speaker 4: slain in bathtub read the headlines on Easter Sunday. In
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty seven, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide
Speaker 4: at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again and
Speaker 4: enthrall the nation. The young man who had committed the
Speaker 4: murders would come to be known in the annals of
Speaker 4: the American crime as the mad Sculptor, the charismatic Perpetrator.
Speaker 4: Robert Erwin was a brilliant young sculptor who had studied
Speaker 4: with some of the masters of the era, but with
Speaker 4: his genius also came a deeply disturbed psyche. Erwin was
Speaker 4: obsessed with sexual self mutilation and was frequently overcome by
Speaker 4: outbursts of violent rage. Erwin's primary victim, Veronica Gideon, was
Speaker 4: a figure from the world of pulp fantasy, a stunning
Speaker 4: photographer's model whose scandalous seminude pin ups would titillate the
Speaker 4: public for weeks after her death. Erwin's defense attorney, sat
Speaker 4: Will Leebowitz, was a courtroom celebrity with an unmatched record
Speaker 4: of acquittals and clients ranging from Al Capone to the
Speaker 4: Scottsboro Boys, and doctor Frederick Wordham, psychiatrist and forensic scientists
Speaker 4: befriended Irwin years before the murders and had predicted them
Speaker 4: in a public lecture months before the crime. Based on
Speaker 4: extensive research and archival records, The Mad Sculptor recounts the
Speaker 4: chilling story of the Easter Sunday murders, a case that
Speaker 4: sparked a nationwide manhunt and endures as one of the
Speaker 4: most engrossing American crime dramas of the twentieth century. The
Speaker 4: book evokes the fated glory of post depression New York
Speaker 4: and the singular madness of a brilliant mind turned against itself.
Speaker 4: The book they were featuring this evening is The Mad Sculptor,
Speaker 4: the Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the
Speaker 4: Nation with my special guest, journalist and author and professor
Speaker 4: Harold Scheckter. Welcome back to a program, and thank you
Speaker 4: for a green in this interview. Harold. Check there. Good evening, Harold,
Speaker 4: Good evening, Harold, welcome to the program. Hello, good evening, Harold.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the program.
Speaker 6: Dan, I'm very glad to be here.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. We just had a little difficulty,
Speaker 4: technical difficulty connecting with you. Yes, I can thank you. Good.
Speaker 6: Well, my pleasure to be here. I appreciate your inviting
Speaker 6: me back.
Speaker 4: Well, it's my great pleasure, and I'm sure the audience
Speaker 4: is great pleasure. You've out tun yourself again with another great, great,
Speaker 4: fascinating and incredible story. So let's get right to this.
Speaker 4: This is you harken back to nineteen thirty seven in
Speaker 4: New York, and we go back to the time nineteen
Speaker 4: thirty five. We alluded to it in the synopsis of
Speaker 4: the book itself. The description of the book tell us
Speaker 4: about Manhattan at that time and Beakman Place, And you
Speaker 4: give us a background to describe the time, the post
Speaker 4: depression era. So take us back to that time and
Speaker 4: describe for us what it was really like.
Speaker 6: Well, I, you know, initially became very very interested again
Speaker 6: in the Robert Irwin case, which happened in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 6: But when I began my research, I discovered that several
Speaker 6: other very very sensational murders had occurred in that particular
Speaker 6: neighborhood within a two year span. Beakman Place, which now
Speaker 6: is a very very exclusive, expensive address on the East
Speaker 6: side of Manhattan, had back in the late nineteenth early
Speaker 6: twentieth century descended into a kind of poverty, and because
Speaker 6: it's located on the water, starting in the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 6: all these very wealthy people began to colonize the area,
Speaker 6: and by the mid nineteen thirties, Beakman Place was this
Speaker 6: kind of odd combination of extremely luxurious residences and some
Speaker 6: still slummy areas. And there was a famous place that
Speaker 6: was written at the time called dead End, which was
Speaker 6: made into a Humphrey Bogart movie, and that introduced the
Speaker 6: dead End Kids, who later became the Bali Boys and
Speaker 6: the movie had to do with this odd juxtaposition of
Speaker 6: extreme wealth and poverty that that neighborhood represented back then.
Speaker 6: So but starting in nineteen thirty five, there was a
Speaker 6: series of extremely sensational murders that occurred in the neighborhood,
Speaker 6: and the tabloids, which at that time were at their height,
Speaker 6: you know, exploited these murders to the fullest. So I
Speaker 6: ended up writing, and you know, the book, I ended
Speaker 6: up writing about three murders. I mean, the main one
Speaker 6: I focus on is the Mad Sculptor murders, but there
Speaker 6: were these two earlier murders that I begin by talking
Speaker 6: about the book, right, And the first of them was
Speaker 6: a woman named Vera Stretz who shot and killed her
Speaker 6: well what the tabloids called her Nazi lover boy, who
Speaker 6: was a very very prominent German businessman who was actually
Speaker 6: in line to become the German ambassador to the United States.
Speaker 6: His name was Fritz Kebhart. Vera had gotten involved with
Speaker 6: him on a Mediterranean cruise and become his mistress. And
Speaker 6: then at some point when he apparently announced, after having
Speaker 6: promised that he was going to leave his wife and
Speaker 6: marry her, that he renegged on that promise, she shot
Speaker 6: him in the Beakman Hotel, which was a very very
Speaker 6: luxurious residential hotel at that time. Became this hugely sensational story.
Speaker 6: And then one year later, another very very grizzly murder
Speaker 6: happened in Beakman Place. A young woman named Nancy Titterton,
Speaker 6: who was an up and coming novelist and whose husband
Speaker 6: was an executive at NBC Radio at that time, was
Speaker 6: raped and murdered in her home on Beakman Place. So
Speaker 6: there were these two again previous very sensational murders that happened,
Speaker 6: and you know, at that time was already being considered
Speaker 6: to be this enclave of privilege and safety and so
Speaker 6: on and so forth.
Speaker 4: So in nineteen thirty five, very much like our own
Speaker 4: time and in our not so or just our recent past,
Speaker 4: there was certainly the elements that made for the media
Speaker 4: frenzy and made for good tabloid press.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And also when you say that you also include these stories,
Speaker 4: do you also include these stories? Because you can talk
Speaker 4: about the defense attorneys at that time, and you can
Speaker 4: also talk about the media. And it almost seemed like
Speaker 4: they were doing a dress rehearsal for this Easter Sunday,
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you know, I mean, one of the things
Speaker 6: that always interests me as a true crime writer, and
Speaker 6: I guess, you know a student of a subject is
Speaker 6: the way in which you know human beings, going back
Speaker 6: for as long as certainly there's been anything like a
Speaker 6: news media, you know, the way the public has always
Speaker 6: been fascinated by certain kinds of crimes, you know, and
Speaker 6: again they're you know, very obviously crimes that involved a
Speaker 6: certain amount of sexual scandal and a certain kind of
Speaker 6: gruesome violence. You know, obviously when they involve somehow, when
Speaker 6: they involve people of a kind of a higher or
Speaker 6: more privileged social class, you know, they tend to stimulate
Speaker 6: public interest more, you know. So, you know, there's always
Speaker 6: been this fascination with lurid, sensationalistic crime stories that the
Speaker 6: tabloid press has been very, very eager to exploit. And
Speaker 6: again in the night, you know, the nineteen thirties was
Speaker 6: the heyday of tabloid journalism in America. So you have
Speaker 6: these papers in New York, like the New York Daily
Speaker 6: News and the New York Daily Mirror, which are always
Speaker 6: on the lookout, you know for some particularly juicy kind
Speaker 6: of sex and violent story that they could exploit to
Speaker 6: sell papers. So, you know, in the case of these
Speaker 6: Beakman Place massacres, you had this combination of you know,
Speaker 6: again presumably very safe and upper class and secure kind
Speaker 6: of enclave in New York City that had suddenly been
Speaker 6: visited by these very very lurid sex crimes. And again
Speaker 6: there was this trio of crimes that happened really with
Speaker 6: it an eighteen month span, and that in itself added
Speaker 6: to the fascination of it.
Speaker 4: Now, before we get into some of the principal characters here,
Speaker 4: and they are a fascinating collection of characters, certainly right
Speaker 4: out of fictional novels. But let's get to Samuel Leibowitz
Speaker 4: and a little bit of his career because it's he's
Speaker 4: a very important character, and so tell us some of
Speaker 4: the kind of clients that he had, and what type
Speaker 4: of lawyer attorney he really was, and what was the
Speaker 4: really famous.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, one of the things that attracts me
Speaker 6: to the particular stories that I write about, you know,
Speaker 6: or you know, the cast of characters. And I feel
Speaker 6: that what makes a great crime story is not just
Speaker 6: the particular crime per se, but the kind of characters
Speaker 6: who are involved in the story, and Leebowitz was a
Speaker 6: very very larger than life figure. He was considered to
Speaker 6: be the most famous and celebrated defense attorney of his time.
Speaker 6: He was known for his very very colorful and theatrical
Speaker 6: courtroom performances. In one case, very famous case for example,
Speaker 6: which was known as his Eskimo Pie defense, he was
Speaker 6: defending a gangster, well it was mad Dog Call. Actually,
Speaker 6: mad Dog Call had been arrested and accused for having
Speaker 6: killed in an innocent bystander in this kind of drive
Speaker 6: by shooting. And one of the people who came to
Speaker 6: testify against him was sort of this paid, you know,
Speaker 6: paid stooge who claimed that he had been out on
Speaker 6: the street selling Eskimo pies. You know Eskimo pies were
Speaker 6: these Well they still sell them. I don't know if
Speaker 6: you're that had been on the street on this summer
Speaker 6: day selling Eskimo pies, and he had he had seen
Speaker 6: mad Dog Call in this car, machine gun in hand,
Speaker 6: spring bullets out the window, and uh and and killing.
Speaker 6: And Leebutz had this guy in the stand and he
Speaker 6: asked his assistant to go out and buy a dozen
Speaker 6: Eskimo pies. And they Leebwitz handed out these Eskimo pies
Speaker 6: to the jury and judge, and while they were eating them,
Speaker 6: he began to question this witness about Eskimo pies. And
Speaker 6: the guy knew nothing about Eskimo pies. You know, he
Speaker 6: had no idea what the labor looked like, he had
Speaker 6: no idea how you would actually go about selling them
Speaker 6: on a hot summer day in the middle of the city.
Speaker 6: And so he exposed this guy as like a total fraud.
Speaker 6: So that was the kind of thing he did. I mean,
Speaker 6: he was known for these very very theatrical performances, and
Speaker 6: he had this unmatched record of winning at either acquittals.
Speaker 6: I can't remember the exact number, but you know, by
Speaker 6: the time he was defending their a stretch, he had
Speaker 6: something like he had defended something like seventy eight clients
Speaker 6: who were accused of murder and he had won seventy
Speaker 6: seven acquittals and one hung jury. So and he figures
Speaker 6: in all of these different cases that I write about
Speaker 6: in my book. And he began, you know, by representing
Speaker 6: very small time criminals and then worked his way up
Speaker 6: to defending people like al Capone. You know, all these
Speaker 6: very very very celebrity gangsters of the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 6: ultimately he became most famous for his defense of the
Speaker 6: scottspur Boys, you know, in one of the signature civil
Speaker 6: rights case of the twentieth century.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, so all the players are are in a
Speaker 4: certain position. We'll say, for all of this to happen. Now,
Speaker 4: tell us about Robert So go ahead.
Speaker 6: No, no, I'm just saying. You know, again, one of
Speaker 6: the things that was very fascinating to me about the
Speaker 6: Robert Irwin case was a number of extremely prominent figures
Speaker 6: who were somehow connected to it. Again, there was Samuel Leebowitz,
Speaker 6: who ended up being Irwin's defender. They were these very
Speaker 6: very famous sculptors of the time, like Laredo Taft, who
Speaker 6: was one of America's most eminent sculptors, who you know,
Speaker 6: became the mentor of Robert r. When there was Frederick Wortham,
Speaker 6: who later became a very very notorious figure for leading
Speaker 6: a crusade against comic books during the nineteen fifties. You know,
Speaker 6: who is the primary psychiatrist who was treating Robert der
Speaker 6: when so again, I mean, you know, one of the
Speaker 6: one of the elements that's very important to me when
Speaker 6: I start looking for a case to write about. He
Speaker 6: has to do with a kind of not only the
Speaker 6: story that's involved, but the kind of characters who are
Speaker 6: part of that story.
Speaker 4: Right well, keeping with that, why don't you uh introduce
Speaker 4: our audience to doctor Wortham, because his his background before
Speaker 4: he gets to this point, before he encounters even before
Speaker 4: he starts treating uh Robert or when tell us about
Speaker 4: what what noted or what w what could note his
Speaker 4: career and tell us a little bit more about doctor Wortham.
Speaker 6: Well Worhythm's a you know, a very interesting figure. I mean,
Speaker 6: I yer have known about Worthm you know, from many, many,
Speaker 6: many years, and my er m my earliest impression of
Speaker 6: Worthm uh as is true of certainly many people of
Speaker 6: my baby boomer age. I I you know, I always
Speaker 6: sort of wore them as a kind of boogeyman because
Speaker 6: in the nineteen fifties worth Them wrote a best selling
Speaker 6: book called Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic
Speaker 6: books with the primary cause of juvenile delinquency. You know,
Speaker 6: back in the nineteen fifties, juve no delinquency was this
Speaker 6: you know, great you know, considered to be this you
Speaker 6: know great national scourge, and and you know, and were
Speaker 6: them again spearheaded this crusade against comic books that almost
Speaker 6: succeeded in driving the entire comic book industry at a business.
Speaker 6: You know, it did put all these great classic ec
Speaker 6: horror comics like The Vault of Horror and Tells from
Speaker 6: the Crypt out of business, and it led to this
Speaker 6: congressional investigation of the comic book industry and ultimately to
Speaker 6: the creation of this Comics Code. But it turns out
Speaker 6: Wrethm was, you know not. My impression of Worthm for
Speaker 6: many years was that he was kind of this McCarthy
Speaker 6: era witch hunter and cultural watch dog, you know, sort
Speaker 6: of like the people now who are constantly leading these
Speaker 6: crusades against violent video games and so on. But it
Speaker 6: turns out he was actually quite a liberal individual who
Speaker 6: you know, had very very prominent training in psychoanalysis and Germany,
Speaker 6: you know, had known briefly Sigmund Freud, came over to
Speaker 6: the United States and was a very very very prominent
Speaker 6: figure in Johns Hopkins Medical School, opened the first psychiatric
Speaker 6: clinic in Harlem, offering very very very low price. Well
Speaker 6: I think they charged twenty five cents per session. You know,
Speaker 6: therapeutic treatment.
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Speaker 6: Minorities in Harlem and so on and so forth. He
Speaker 6: was actually quite an admirable figure. And he he became
Speaker 6: quite interested in basically the social roots of violence and
Speaker 6: became he really became convinced that crime, and particularly murder,
Speaker 6: you know, could could ultimately be eliminated through this kind
Speaker 6: of enlightened social psychological treatment. Anyway, he became he was
Speaker 6: appointed the senior psychiatrist of Bellevue Hospital, and in that capacity,
Speaker 6: you know, was frequently called upon to testify at criminal
Speaker 6: trials about the mental capacity of people accused of various crimes.
Speaker 6: And so he became early on a very very important
Speaker 6: forensic psychiatrist. And it was that capacity that he got
Speaker 6: to know the subject of my book, Robert Irwin.
Speaker 4: Right, well, let's segue into Robert Irwin. Now he is
Speaker 4: an interesting background with his father and his mother and
Speaker 4: his upbringing. So tell us about the upbringing of Robert Irwin.
Speaker 6: In his background, Well, Irwin was, as it turned out,
Speaker 6: I mean, he was a child of two Well you'd
Speaker 6: have to say they were religious fanatics. His father, Benjamin Irwin,
Speaker 6: was actually the founder of a evangelical church called the
Speaker 6: Fire Baptist Church Holiness Church. His mother, who was also
Speaker 6: very very involved in the Pentecostal movement and various evangelical
Speaker 6: Christian movements. I mean, they were both people who really completely,
Speaker 6: completely well their lives were both consumed by this religious zelotry.
Speaker 6: Irwin's father, Benjamin was almost a kind of stereotypical kind
Speaker 6: of character, a very very charismatic preacher who would spend
Speaker 6: his Sundays railing against the evils of the modern world,
Speaker 6: which included everything from wearing neckties, which apparently was considered
Speaker 6: in his particular sect to be some kind of terrible,
Speaker 6: sinful symptom of modernity. He said he'd rather wear a
Speaker 6: rattlesnake around his neck than a necktie, to drinking coca cola.
Speaker 6: So he would go around, as I say, every Sunday
Speaker 6: giving these very healthfire and brimstone sermons against sin and
Speaker 6: corruption and so on and so forth, and then use
Speaker 6: all the money that he had collected, uh to go
Speaker 6: spend his time in whorehouses, and was ultimately you know,
Speaker 6: excommunicated from his own church in disgrace, and the mother
Speaker 6: again was again totally totally absorbed in her particular religious activities.
Speaker 6: So this was a sort of background that uh Erwin,
Speaker 6: whose actual name was not Robert Erwin but Fenelon Arroyo
Speaker 6: Seco Erwin, Fenelon being a reference to Uh, a very
Speaker 6: famous French Protestant preacher, and Arroyo Seco being a reference
Speaker 6: to the particular park in California where er Erwin was
Speaker 6: born during a tent meeting that his mother was attending.
Speaker 6: So again that was a it was an ex dream
Speaker 6: fanatical religious background that he sprang from.
Speaker 4: What the relationship with he and his father wasn't good obviously,
Speaker 4: But when did his father band in the family.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean his father band in the family when
Speaker 6: Erwin is a very very young boy. I mean he
Speaker 6: had very few connections to him. I mean one of
Speaker 6: his few memories of his father was his father coming
Speaker 6: to visit him when he was a young kid, and
Speaker 6: his father taking him off and they're going to some
Speaker 6: house where there were these as Erwin remembered it, you know,
Speaker 6: nice women and you know, and Erwin basically sitting and
Speaker 6: waiting in the parlor while his father disappeared into the
Speaker 6: bedroom with a couple of these women. So you know,
Speaker 6: that was you know, one of the few memories he
Speaker 6: had of his father. So basically, Irwin and his two brothers,
Speaker 6: all of whom ended up, you know, being career criminals. Well,
Speaker 6: the two brothers ended up being career criminals, were raised
Speaker 6: quote unquote by their mother. All of their mother was
Speaker 6: primarily spending most of her time, you know, pursuing her
Speaker 6: religious activities.
Speaker 4: Now, in terms of this often happens, and like you
Speaker 4: say that the father was a zealot and preached against
Speaker 4: things like neckties and uh, coca cola, What was the
Speaker 4: mother's attitude towards sex and religion and what did she
Speaker 4: have to say to the boys, especially or Robert included.
Speaker 6: Well, apparently she had read some kind of book, according
Speaker 6: to Irwin's later recollections, which advised parents and mothers, you know,
Speaker 6: to be fairly open about sexual matters with their children.
Speaker 6: But somehow she interpreted that as walking around nude, or
Speaker 6: at least letting the kids seeing her nude. I mean,
Speaker 6: Irwin's you know, had very very very vivid memories of
Speaker 6: seeing his mother bathing naked in front of him and
Speaker 6: his kids. So you know, I mean there's a there's
Speaker 6: a whole rich and I think largely unexplored area having
Speaker 6: to do with the connection between certain kinds of religious zelodry, zealotry,
Speaker 6: and sensational crime that you know hasn't been fully explored.
Speaker 6: So but but you know, Irwin is one of a
Speaker 6: fair number of American killers, you know, who have some
Speaker 6: relationship maybe too extreme religious upbringings and backgrounds.
Speaker 4: So now, at this time, I know it's early. I
Speaker 4: know it's you know, it's early in terms of America
Speaker 4: and recognizing mental health or even even having a term
Speaker 4: for some of the mental illness I guess, or recognizing
Speaker 4: it in anyone or symptoms. So was there anything odd
Speaker 4: or peculiar in his behavior other than what might be
Speaker 4: dismissed as a sort of truancy or you know, bad behavior.
Speaker 4: Was there anything unusual or out of the ordinary that
Speaker 4: might be later looked at in retrospect as some psychological problems? Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean Irwin was a very very bizarre I mean,
Speaker 6: Erwin was a very very fascinating figure because he was
Speaker 6: very very he was a voracious reader. He at his
Speaker 6: best moments, you know, had a very very winning personality.
Speaker 6: And uh, you know, had this ability to uh win
Speaker 6: over all kinds of people. You know, he was just
Speaker 6: again a very very personable and charismatic individual, but at
Speaker 6: the same time, you know, he was seriously uh psychologically unstable,
Speaker 6: probably even psychotic. From a very early age, he developed
Speaker 6: this obsession with this process he called visualization. Again, he
Speaker 6: was a he was a gifted sculptor and and and
Speaker 6: displayed this aptitude from a very very earth early age.
Speaker 6: But he also became convinced that he could acquire the ability,
Speaker 6: through very rigorous discipline and practice, to somehow mentally visualize
Speaker 6: a particular image and then by sheer force of will
Speaker 6: power transform this mental image into a physical object, so
Speaker 6: that all he would have to do, for example, was imagine,
Speaker 6: let's say, a portrait of Napoleon, who is one of
Speaker 6: his heroes, and if he concentrated hard enough, he would
Speaker 6: somehow be able to produce a material, three dimensional sculptural
Speaker 6: representation of Napoleon sheerly by again thinking of it. And
Speaker 6: again he called that that theory he called a theory visualization.
Speaker 6: And from a very early age he devoted himself to
Speaker 6: somehow cultivating this power, and this became you know, the
Speaker 6: obsessive pursuit of his life developing this power of visualization,
Speaker 6: and ultimately it sort of expanded into this whole notion
Speaker 6: that you know, not only would he be able to
Speaker 6: produce this great art sheerly by willpower, but somehow he
Speaker 6: would be able to conquer space and time. He would
Speaker 6: be able to travel through time, he would be able
Speaker 6: to project himself through space. So again he developed this
Speaker 6: very very very elaborate delusional system over the years. And
Speaker 6: again what was interesting with Irwin was that there were time,
Speaker 6: I mean much of the time again he appeared to
Speaker 6: people to be very very lucid and very very rational,
Speaker 6: but again, at the same time, you know, he was
Speaker 6: very obsessed with this very of visualization. The other thing
Speaker 6: about Irwin was he had a hair trigger temper and
Speaker 6: was constantly that there was this recurrent pattern in which
Speaker 6: he would find himself in a certain situation and having
Speaker 6: made friends and being a success professionally and so on and
Speaker 6: so forth, and then inevitably something would happen that would
Speaker 6: trigger some really kind of homicidal outburst in him, and
Speaker 6: he would lash out at a friend or a benefactor
Speaker 6: or whatever and end up uh, you know, and ended
Speaker 6: up being fired from a job or or or whatever.
Speaker 6: So so there was you know, again he was he
Speaker 6: was a very very very psychologically volatile personality.
Speaker 4: Let me ask this question, uh Harold, of the the
Speaker 4: visualization that he wanted to be able to render images
Speaker 4: in three dimensions and be able to again like you say, uh,
Speaker 4: basically transmit Uh yeah, I guess very very star star
Speaker 4: trek like matter and and and and time travel and
Speaker 4: those sort of sorts of things. But in this delusion,
Speaker 4: what did the self mutilation and his idea that he
Speaker 4: had a certain energy and what did his sex organs
Speaker 4: and his penis have to do with any of that
Speaker 4: in his delusion?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean he again, I say said. Erwin was
Speaker 6: sort of a promiscuous reader in the sense that, you know,
Speaker 6: he was not a systematic reader of any particular kind
Speaker 6: of philosophy or whatever, you know, whatever came to hand,
Speaker 6: he would read and become fascinated by, and at one
Speaker 6: point he read what was at that time, back in
Speaker 6: the nineteen thirties' best selling book on the history of
Speaker 6: philosophy by a guy named will Well, a couple named
Speaker 6: Will and Ariel Durant, and in that book, the Durans
Speaker 6: talk about Schopenhauer, and you know, in Schopenhauer's whole theory
Speaker 6: of this universal will which is the source of all
Speaker 6: energy in the universe. And you know, Irwin got it
Speaker 6: into his head that if he could somehow channel or
Speaker 6: sublimate all his sexual energy into this effort to visualize,
Speaker 6: you know, this would enable him, you know, to achieve
Speaker 6: this power. You know, he began to feel that his libido,
Speaker 6: his sexual energy, was somehow dissipating this power. So he
Speaker 6: decided that the best way to redirect his sexual energy
Speaker 6: towards this project of visualization was to casture it himself, basically,
Speaker 6: to cut off his penis. And he at one point
Speaker 6: decided to go ahead and do that, and you know,
Speaker 6: he tied some rubber bands around his penis and wrote
Speaker 6: around the New York City subway system until you know,
Speaker 6: he felt he had anesthetized his penis, and you know,
Speaker 6: then went back to the boarding house he was staying
Speaker 6: in and took a gilt raizor blade and started to
Speaker 6: saw off his penis at its base. And that's how
Speaker 6: we ended up in Bellevue Hospital and under the care
Speaker 6: of Frederick Wortham.
Speaker 4: So sure now What we did skip over, and this
Speaker 4: is quite important, is how he came to have this,
Speaker 4: to know and others know that he had this affinity
Speaker 4: for sculpture, and how he met Laredo Taff, which was
Speaker 4: he was the man in terms of the artist that
Speaker 4: was most I guess known at that time for sculpture
Speaker 4: at that time, and how that relationship developed between Irwin
Speaker 4: and Taff. So tell us tell us about that.
Speaker 6: Well. At some point Irwin left home, left his mother,
Speaker 6: started kind of bumming around America. He first went to
Speaker 6: Los Angeles and was working for a guy named Carlos Romanelli,
Speaker 6: who was a well known sculptor and who actually had
Speaker 6: done a lot of work for the movies, including creating
Speaker 6: the statues of the Amphitheater for the Silent movie version
Speaker 6: of Ben Her And then again, inevitably, Irwin had some
Speaker 6: explosive episode with one of Romanelli's other assistants and he
Speaker 6: ended up being fired, And then he made his way
Speaker 6: to Chicago and ended up being taken under the wing
Speaker 6: of Laredo Taft, who was one of the country's most
Speaker 6: eminent sculptors who had worked on the eighteen ninety three
Speaker 6: Chicago World's Fair and created many of the civic statues
Speaker 6: that still stand throughout Chicago. And you know, again Taft
Speaker 6: was very very impressed with Irwin's skill, really kind of
Speaker 6: treated him as a surrogate son, and Irwin worked in
Speaker 6: Taft's workshop for really a fairly extended period of time
Speaker 6: for him. But then again, you know, his own psychosis
Speaker 6: ended up undermining him and he ended up again having
Speaker 6: some very very explosive fights with other of Taft's assistants,
Speaker 6: and you know, that ended that aspect of his career,
Speaker 6: and he made his way to New York City. At
Speaker 6: this point, the depression was well underway. Erwin worked for
Speaker 6: a while for a famous taxidermist, and then you know,
Speaker 6: found himself basically unemployed and having to who you know,
Speaker 6: really reduced to these extremely menial jobs as a dishwasher
Speaker 6: and an elevator boy. And at some point he ended
Speaker 6: up living with a boarding with a family called the Geddeons,
Speaker 6: who consisted of a mother, father, and two grown daughters,
Speaker 6: one of whom Veronica Gedeon, was this very very beautiful
Speaker 6: quote unquote artists model who made her money by posing
Speaker 6: nude for these amateur camera clubs, you know, where guys
Speaker 6: would pay five dollars an hour to snap photographs of
Speaker 6: beautiful naked women, and she would also pose for one
Speaker 6: of the many, many, well several of the many many
Speaker 6: pulp detective magazines that flood of the news stands at
Speaker 6: the time. And Veronica had a sister named Ethel, who
Speaker 6: was an tractive woman who worked as an editor for
Speaker 6: Vanity Fair, and Bob became very infatuated actually with Ethel
Speaker 6: because he felt partly because of her intelligence and sensitivity,
Speaker 6: she was a kind of woman who would relate to
Speaker 6: his artistic aspirations and also somehow maybe a system in
Speaker 6: his efforts to achieve this visualization that he was always
Speaker 6: striving after.
Speaker 4: Was there any kind of reciprocation from her? Was there
Speaker 4: any kind of interest? Did she have any even initially
Speaker 4: have any interest in Robert Irwin at all?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean Ethel, I think she was kind of
Speaker 6: fascinated by Erwin. Again. Irwin could be you know, was
Speaker 6: a very very articulate and well read young.
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Speaker 6: Webs retails man and often did have the ability to
Speaker 6: you know. And again he was also very good looking
Speaker 6: young man, and he had a very charismatic personality. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean she Ethel was certainly sympathetic towards him, but
Speaker 6: I don't believe she was ever really romantically attracted to him. Again,
Speaker 6: Bob got it into his head, you know, that Ethel
Speaker 6: was perfect woman for him, and began to indulge in
Speaker 6: all kinds of fantasies about their leading this perfect life together.
Speaker 6: Of course, in his particularly you know, bizarre worldview of
Speaker 6: perfect life meant that they would spend their time together
Speaker 6: practicing visualization until he had perfected it. Anyway, he did
Speaker 6: actually propose marriage to her, which she very sanely turned down.
Speaker 4: So now at the time, she soon dating someone else,
Speaker 4: and what is Robert's reaction.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean Ethel, and when he proposed to her,
Speaker 6: Ethel informed him that she was actually engaged to another
Speaker 6: person a name Joe Kudner who is a lawyer, and
Speaker 6: Irwin was really plunged into this incredible suicidal depression. You know, Irwin,
Speaker 6: from the time he first attempted to emasculate himself was
Speaker 6: in and out of various mental health facilities. You know,
Speaker 6: that became a very big issue later on when he
Speaker 6: committed this triple murder and it became public knowledge that
Speaker 6: he had been again committed to various mental health facilities
Speaker 6: prior to the murder and then been released.
Speaker 4: And we're talking about tell our audience how long U stay?
Speaker 4: We're talking about very surprising the stays in these mental hospitals.
Speaker 4: What kind of duration we talking about?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean altogether, you know, from the time that
Speaker 6: he first took the razor blade to his period to
Speaker 6: his penis until he committed the murders, you know, was
Speaker 6: probably I can't remember the precise amount of time, but
Speaker 6: it was four or five years anyway, Yes.
Speaker 4: Very long, or like a year at a time. Two years.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 4: Now, what I wanted to try to get you to
Speaker 4: explain to the audience because this is just seems at
Speaker 4: first when I'm reading a very very odd contrast that
Speaker 4: he's this society guy and of course he's a noted
Speaker 4: artist and he is articulate, he's good looking, athletic, you know,
Speaker 4: he's he's a he's a catch. But he does have
Speaker 4: this idea of visualization. So how crazy and how if
Speaker 4: at all dangerous do people like Ethel look at Robert
Speaker 4: at that time?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, Ethel I don't think ever really saw
Speaker 6: him as dangerous. In the fact, you know, after her
Speaker 6: sister and mother were murdered and the police identified Irwin
Speaker 6: as the prime suspect of the case, you know, it
Speaker 6: took her a very long time to acknowledge, you know,
Speaker 6: that Bob actually might have been the perpetrator. She really,
Speaker 6: for a very long time, never saw him as terrible
Speaker 6: of that kind of violence. Of course, there are other
Speaker 6: people who had been the victims of some of Irwin's
Speaker 6: very very extreme violent outbursts, you know, who had seen
Speaker 6: that part of him. When when Bob was living in
Speaker 6: Chicago and lodging at the home of Laredo Taff's mother,
Speaker 6: you know, Taft had taken such a shine to Bob
Speaker 6: that he arranged to have him live with his Laredo
Speaker 6: Taft's mother. There was another boarder there, a young man
Speaker 6: that Bob just suddenly one day got offended at some
Speaker 6: fairly innocuous remark that this guy made, you know, and
Speaker 6: Bob almost killed this guy in one of his very
Speaker 6: very very violent outbursts, you know. So there were certain
Speaker 6: people who had definitely seen that side of Bob, but
Speaker 6: Ethel and but the Gedeons had never had never seen it.
Speaker 6: So yeah, it came as a very very big shock
Speaker 6: to Ethel when the police identified Bob again as the
Speaker 6: person who had strangled her sister and mother.
Speaker 4: Before we get that, get to that, let's go back
Speaker 4: to Robert Irwin ending up in Bellevue trying to castrate
Speaker 4: himself and his first counter and subsequent encounters with doctor
Speaker 4: Wortham and his assessment of Robert in the beginning and
Speaker 4: further on. So tell us a little bit about that
Speaker 4: meeting and the subsequent treatment by Dr Wortham.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, it was fascinating about you know. Wortham's
Speaker 6: papers were donated to the Library of Congress following his
Speaker 6: death years and years ago, and they only recently, well
Speaker 6: a couple of years ago, became accessible to scholars. I
Speaker 6: guess there was like a twenty five year spend where
Speaker 6: there were kept private. And one of the interesting things
Speaker 6: to me when I looked at that material viber of congress.
Speaker 6: We're just seeing, you know the amount of correspondence that
Speaker 6: went back and forth between Bob and Irwin. You know
Speaker 6: where I mean, between Bob and Worre them. You know
Speaker 6: where them recognized from the start that in many ways,
Speaker 6: Bob Irwin was a very very exceptional human being, a
Speaker 6: person of again unusual intelligence and sensitivity and great artistic talent.
Speaker 6: Worth Of himself was married to a well known sculptor,
Speaker 6: so he was particularly appreciative of Bob's talent in that regard.
Speaker 6: And again, you know, Bob had this gift, you know,
Speaker 6: for eliciting this kind of fatherly feeling among these older
Speaker 6: guys who would take him under his wing. You know,
Speaker 6: to some extent, Worthom was one of those people. And
Speaker 6: and and wor them had developed a kind of theory
Speaker 6: at that time called the cataphimic crisis.
Speaker 4: It was his.
Speaker 6: Belief the phimic crisis was Wortham's theory of the source
Speaker 6: of a certain kind of homicidal violence. And uh and
Speaker 6: and and Bob Irwin seemed to epitomize to him this
Speaker 6: particular kind of syndrome, which he felt was curable. You know,
Speaker 6: where them had this very very great, I think, probably
Speaker 6: naive and now kind of outmoded faith in the ability
Speaker 6: of psychoanalysis ultimately to rid the world of violent crime.
Speaker 6: And you know, and and he saw, you know, I
Speaker 6: think he saw Bob Irwin as a kind of perfect
Speaker 6: test case, you know, somebody who you know, again was
Speaker 6: very intelligent and very talented, you know, but owing to
Speaker 6: certain kinds of circumstances in his upbringing and his relationship
Speaker 6: with his mother, you know, is prone to these outbursts
Speaker 6: of homicidal violence, but could ultimately be cured of them.
Speaker 6: And so you know, he establish this very very close
Speaker 6: relationship with Irwin, you know, which lasted really until Erwin's death.
Speaker 4: Now, as we alluded to in the in the book description,
Speaker 4: the synopsis is that months before the murders itself, he
Speaker 4: makes that prediction in public. Now after Ethel rebuffs him
Speaker 4: and he gets is there is there a real dramatic
Speaker 4: and notable spiral. Tell us what what doctor Wareham noted
Speaker 4: at that time, and tell us what happens that he goes.
Speaker 6: Where them gave you know where them was invited to
Speaker 6: give a talk at Johns Hopkins University on the particular
Speaker 6: anniversary of what was called the fifths Clinic, which was
Speaker 6: a psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins where they had worked
Speaker 6: that for many years. And he used the occasion, you know,
Speaker 6: to introduce the world to his theory of the Catafine
Speaker 6: mccli crisis. And although he didn't mention Irwin by name,
Speaker 6: you know, he used Irwin as an example in the
Speaker 6: speech of a patient who had reached a particular stage
Speaker 6: in this again, you know, were them believe that with
Speaker 6: a certain amount of treatment, individuals who are suffering from
Speaker 6: this syndrome could ultimately be cured of their homicidal impulses.
Speaker 6: But again, they had to go through the entire process.
Speaker 6: And in his view, Irwin had reached a particular stage
Speaker 6: in the process, but hadn't quite gotten to the point
Speaker 6: where all of these conflicts were resolved. And so in
Speaker 6: this particular talk, he used Erwin, again without mentioning him
Speaker 6: by name, you know, his example of someone who had
Speaker 6: arrived at a particular stage but had not reached the
Speaker 6: point of resolution, and so it was very very likely
Speaker 6: in the future to harm either himself or someone else.
Speaker 6: And you know, very very shortly thereafter, in fact, Irwin
Speaker 6: did have this very very lethal explosion, you know, and
Speaker 6: ended up killing these killing these people, you know, so
Speaker 6: where them always felt you know, very very vindicated in
Speaker 6: having foreseen, you know, the inevitability of word of uh
Speaker 6: Irwin having you know, some other homicidal episode.
Speaker 4: Now for our audience, tell us what happened that fateful
Speaker 4: day of the Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday in
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty seven. Tell us what happened? What did Robert
Speaker 4: Irwin do and what did he end up doing?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, Irwin again was you know, became very
Speaker 6: very obsessed by Ethel Gedion and in his spiraling madness,
Speaker 6: he decided that the most appropriate way to express his
Speaker 6: love and devotion for Ethel was to murder her. And
Speaker 6: so he came to Manhattan on the day before Easter Sunday,
Speaker 6: nineteen thirty seven, and you know, decided to show up
Speaker 6: at the apartment of her mother, where Ethel had formerly
Speaker 6: lived but actually at the time was no longer living,
Speaker 6: and he was going to kill Ethel. And when he
Speaker 6: showed up, the mother was there, as well as a
Speaker 6: border named Frank Burns that the mother had taken in.
Speaker 6: And the mother explained to Bob that Ethel was no
Speaker 6: longer living there. She had gotten married and was living
Speaker 6: in Queen's. Bob refused to accept that fact and kept
Speaker 6: hanging around and hanging around, And when the mother, whose
Speaker 6: name was Marian you know, finally lost her temper and
Speaker 6: demand that he'd leave, Bob went crazy and left at
Speaker 6: her and wrapped his very very powerful hands around her
Speaker 6: throat and strangled her to death, which by his later
Speaker 6: account took a full twenty minutes, And then he took
Speaker 6: her corpse and shoved it under the bed in the
Speaker 6: main bedroom, and then decided that he would wait around
Speaker 6: for Ethel to show up, and he stayed around for hours,
Speaker 6: and finally, at about three o'clock in the morning, the
Speaker 6: door opened and in walk not Ethel, who again was
Speaker 6: living in Queen's with her husband, but Ethel's for a
Speaker 6: beautiful younger sister, Ronnie, who had just gotten back from
Speaker 6: a date. And Ronnie disappeared into the bathroom for a
Speaker 6: long time and then finally emerged, and once she did,
Speaker 6: Bob attacked her and ended up ultimately strangling her to death.
Speaker 6: And then through all this, by the way through the
Speaker 6: double murder, the border Frank Burns remained completely asleep and
Speaker 6: Irwin stabbed him to death with an ice peck, punctured
Speaker 6: his skull about a dozen times with an ice peck
Speaker 6: that he had brought along, and then very very calmly
Speaker 6: returned to his border house. And the next day, Easter Sunday,
Speaker 6: Mary Geddyon's a strange husband, Joseph, who had been invited
Speaker 6: for Sunday dinner, showed up, as did Ethel and her
Speaker 6: husband who arrived from Queen's and they discovered that, you know,
Speaker 6: they went up to the apartment expecting to have Easter
Speaker 6: Sunday dinner, and they discovered this apartment with three corpses
Speaker 6: in it. Mary Geddyon shoved under the bed Ethelgedy i
Speaker 6: mean Ronnie Getty and naked and lying on top of
Speaker 6: the bed which her mother's corpse was shoved beneath. And
Speaker 6: then in the other bedroom Frank Frank Burns with his
Speaker 6: skull punctured a dozen times. And this became known, you
Speaker 6: know again as a Deakman player massacre, you know, very
Speaker 6: very very horrific triple murder, and largely because well, no
Speaker 6: sooner had the crime occurred than all of these guys
Speaker 6: who had taken naked pictures of Ronnie Geteon at these
Speaker 6: amateur camera clubs, crawled out of the woodwork, offering these
Speaker 6: photographs for sale to the tabloids who are only too
Speaker 6: happy to purchase them. And you know, within hours, really,
Speaker 6: I mean the Daily News, the Daily Mirror, the Evening Graphic,
Speaker 6: and these other tabloids running constant photo. You know, they
Speaker 6: had all these naked photographs of Ronnie geddyon which they
Speaker 6: would airbrush, covering up her breasts and other areas with
Speaker 6: these airbrushed veils, and you know, just became this incredible
Speaker 6: sex and murder scandal.
Speaker 4: Now now we know who the perpetrator is, but police
Speaker 4: are not initially aware. Tell us why initially they I
Speaker 4: mean today it seems to be routine. But why did
Speaker 4: they initially think it was possibly the ex husband? And
Speaker 4: how did police proceed initially?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, you know, they well they found Ronnie's
Speaker 6: little black book. I mean, Ronnie had been leading, you know,
Speaker 6: a fairly promiscuous life, so it seemed very likely at
Speaker 6: first that she had been the victim of one of
Speaker 6: her many lovers past or present. Should also, as you say,
Speaker 6: been married at a very young age, should run off
Speaker 6: with a guy named Robert Flower, and when she was
Speaker 6: only sixteen years old, and that marriage, you know, had
Speaker 6: quickly been annulled. So you know, you always look first,
Speaker 6: you know, to the husband or ex husband or boyfriends.
Speaker 6: So you know, there's certainly no lack of potential suspects,
Speaker 6: although the primary person, you know, who the police focused
Speaker 6: on for quite a while was Ronnie's own father, Joseph,
Speaker 6: you know, who was portraying the tabloids, you know, as
Speaker 6: a sexual degenerate, largely because he had cheesecake photographs into
Speaker 6: the walls of his apartment. So yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: there's no lack of suspects. You know, the Gedeons had
Speaker 6: various male boarders who fell into suspicion. So yeah, it
Speaker 6: took a while before the police finally pinpointed the actual perpetrator.
Speaker 4: Did they find anything at the crime scene that would
Speaker 4: later point to Robert Orwin at all? Is there anything
Speaker 4: that they could conclude from that crime scene when they
Speaker 4: looked at it in detail or anyone reviewed it. Was
Speaker 4: there anything at all?
Speaker 6: Well, there are a few things. I mean, one thing,
Speaker 6: you know, they found Ronnie Gedeon's diary and there are
Speaker 6: various references to well, there are various references to a Bob,
Speaker 6: and of course she had been married to a guy
Speaker 6: named Bob, which is one of the reasons that her
Speaker 6: former husband fell into you know. Eventually, as the police
Speaker 6: began to study the diary more closely, they came across
Speaker 6: these various references to a Bob who had been obsessed
Speaker 6: with Ronnie's sister and you know, who had been making
Speaker 6: a kind of nuisance of himself. It gradually dawned on
Speaker 6: them that there were two Bobs that Ronnie was referring to,
Speaker 6: her former husband, Bob Flower and the person that they
Speaker 6: ultimately identified as Robert Irwin. And when they began to
Speaker 6: look into Robert Irwin's background, you know, they realized that
Speaker 6: they were dealing with, you know, a very very unstable person.
Speaker 6: You know, they began to dig up his psychiatric records,
Speaker 6: you know, his having tried to emasculate himself for years,
Speaker 6: he had spent in a psychiatric institution and so on.
Speaker 6: And there were other clues. Erwin, for example, had left
Speaker 6: a glove at the crime scene which they were later
Speaker 6: able to trace directly to him.
Speaker 4: Now, how does so the police are announced or there
Speaker 4: is a decision to make this arrest, What happens with
Speaker 4: Robert Irwin? What does he do?
Speaker 6: Well? After committing the murder, Irwin returned to his boarding house,
Speaker 6: which overlooked actually the police precinct, and basically just hold
Speaker 6: up there for a week. Finally, he absconded from New
Speaker 6: York and made his way first to Washington, d c.
Speaker 6: And then to Philadelphia and eventually to Cleveland, where he
Speaker 6: took a job at a hotel under a pseudonym. In
Speaker 6: the meantime, the New York City Police had launched what
Speaker 6: was at that time the largest manhunt since the search
Speaker 6: for the kiddemp or the Lindberg Baby. And you know,
Speaker 6: is as true in all of these very sensational cases.
Speaker 6: You know, there were false sightings of Irwin all throughout
Speaker 6: the country. The police, New York City police themselves, you know,
Speaker 6: seemed convinced that he had still been He was still
Speaker 6: in New York, possibly living under disguise. You know, there
Speaker 6: were all kinds of weird theories that since he was
Speaker 6: such a skilled sculptor, he had possibly fashioned some kind
Speaker 6: of mask for himself, you know, is moving around New
Speaker 6: York City under this mask and so on and so forth.
Speaker 6: But in fact, you know, he was living in Cleveland
Speaker 6: under this new identity Bob Murray and working in the
Speaker 6: Hotel Statler, which was a very well known hotel in
Speaker 6: downtown Cleveland.
Speaker 4: And and someone noticed him.
Speaker 6: I mean he had befriended. He had befriended a pantry
Speaker 6: girl named Henrietta, and Henrietta one evening retired to her
Speaker 6: room and was perusing a true crime magazine called Inside Detective,
Speaker 6: which was one of the pulp magazines that Ronnie had
Speaker 6: post for. And yeah, an Inside Detective, the editor of
Speaker 6: Inside Detective had offered was offering a one thousand dollars
Speaker 6: reward to anybody who could aid in the capture of
Speaker 6: Robert Irwin. And the magazine published a photograph of Irwin
Speaker 6: that had by that time been widely disseminated by the police.
Speaker 6: And Henrietta noticed a very striking resemblance between the photograph
Speaker 6: of Irwin and her co worker Bob Murray, and the
Speaker 6: next day when she saw Bob, she asked him if
Speaker 6: he had ever heard of Robert Irwin, and Bob said no,
Speaker 6: and then immediately disappeared from the hotel. And Henrietta showed
Speaker 6: the photograph to other people, and anyway, it soon became
Speaker 6: clear that Bob Murray was in fact Bob Irwin. By
Speaker 6: that time, however, he was long gone from Cleveland and
Speaker 6: was making his way to Chicago.
Speaker 4: Now it's I think one of the most fascinating aspects
Speaker 4: of this most fascinating story. And what we're going to do,
Speaker 4: which is unusual, is that we're not going to give
Speaker 4: the entire story away. We're going to leave something for
Speaker 4: those people that are going to just have to go
Speaker 4: get this book and read the rest of it. But
Speaker 4: what I found incredible, I mean, especially given the time,
Speaker 4: everybody thinks this stuff happened in this even these or eighties,
Speaker 4: we're all the real heyday of these incredible killers and
Speaker 4: credible cases. But not so he is almost identified, he's
Speaker 4: almost caught here as almost like America's most wanted. He escapes,
Speaker 4: but what does he do. He calls one of the
Speaker 4: newspapers and I don't know if it's a tribune, but
Speaker 4: he calls one of the newspapers, and what do they do?
Speaker 4: And then what does he do? Tell us about the
Speaker 4: phone calls.
Speaker 6: Well, he calls a tribune, you know, offering to stew
Speaker 6: himself in and they just think he's a crackpot. So
Speaker 6: he calls another Chicago paper and they take him seriously,
Speaker 6: and you know, they negotiate with him. They agree to
Speaker 6: pay him five thousand dollars if he will give them
Speaker 6: an exclusive confession, and they put him up in a
Speaker 6: hotel room and get this confession from him and then
Speaker 6: publish it on the front page of the paper. Again.
Speaker 6: It's uh, it's it resembles to an uncanny degree, a
Speaker 6: very very famous play by Ben Hect and Charles MacArthur
Speaker 6: called The Front Page, which was made into a very
Speaker 6: very famous movie starring Carrie Grant, in which a a
Speaker 6: Chicago newspaper reporter hides a wanted criminal and gets an
Speaker 6: exclusive story from him. You know, this is again this
Speaker 6: kind of rollicking golden age, you know of tabloid journalism.
Speaker 6: You know, these papers are just you know, well performing
Speaker 6: or committing you know, these sendi legal acts, you know,
Speaker 6: in order to get these incredible scoops. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 6: so the newspaper you know, puts their one up in
Speaker 6: this hotel suite, you know, and brings in a stenographer
Speaker 6: and gets this very very long, detailed confession from Irwin
Speaker 6: that they then trumpet on the front page of their paper.
Speaker 6: And you know before and then finally, after they've gotten
Speaker 6: their scoop, you know, they turn them over to the police.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And we won't give any more away from this
Speaker 4: story because it's just we'll have to let the audience
Speaker 4: discover the rest on it. I mean, this is just
Speaker 4: a beginning of another, you know, another chapter of this
Speaker 4: book that will go on and explain the incredible and
Speaker 4: really one of the biggest media circuses, like you say,
Speaker 4: in the twentieth century. So we won't go any further.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to to ask as well, what has
Speaker 4: been the reaction this this was published a few months ago.
Speaker 4: I gathered what has been the reaction of of of
Speaker 4: those in the public that have read this book? And uh,
Speaker 4: and and you chose choosing to cover this story. What
Speaker 4: is there has been any notable reactions?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, the book has gotten you know, very
Speaker 6: gratifying press. I'll tell you one of the really fascinating things,
Speaker 6: what are the really fascinating things happened only within the
Speaker 6: last week, which is I heard from somebody who and
Speaker 6: I haven't gotten all the details yet, but I have photographs.
Speaker 6: I heard somebody who had uh, a wooden box that
Speaker 6: had been carved by Robert Irwin, and it's lid and
Speaker 6: all each of the four sides had an an image
Speaker 6: of Ronnie Getty and naked carved onto it. And this
Speaker 6: person had and Irwin had done this while he was
Speaker 6: consigned to a mental institution after having tried to slice
Speaker 6: off his own penis. I still haven't learned from the
Speaker 6: owner of the box how she came into possession.
Speaker 4: Of it, But.
Speaker 6: I'd always wondered what happened to all of these creations,
Speaker 6: you know, that Bob Berwin had been responsible for, you know,
Speaker 6: then suddenly out of the blue, you know, I hear
Speaker 6: from somebody who actually is in possession of one. So
Speaker 6: that's been kind of fascinating to me. I mean, one
Speaker 6: of the things that's happened to me repeatedly in doing
Speaker 6: the books that I've done, you know, is after they've
Speaker 6: been published, you know, in many cases, I've heard from
Speaker 6: people with some kind of connection to the case. And
Speaker 6: that's always very very interesting to me, you know, partly
Speaker 6: because it just makes the whole thing seem so real.
Speaker 6: So yeah, so that's been one of the one of
Speaker 6: the fascinating things.
Speaker 4: What I found really fascinating with this book is that
Speaker 4: if you didn't really concentrate on the time that it
Speaker 4: really was and just ignored a few of those things
Speaker 4: or just didn't focus on them. You would think you
Speaker 4: were today because of just the same motivations by the
Speaker 4: same kinds of people under the same kinds of circumstances.
Speaker 4: It's an incredible again, a true crime story that's timeless,
Speaker 4: you know, and.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean that's an interesting point. I mean, I
Speaker 6: think it's very very you know, it's like one of
Speaker 6: those things where, like, you know, when you're a certain age,
Speaker 6: you think like your generation invented sex, and it comes
Speaker 6: as a shock to discover that, like, you know, people
Speaker 6: in the Victorian era were actually engaging in the same
Speaker 6: kind of sexual activities that people are engaged in now,
Speaker 6: you know. I mean, you know, the fact of the
Speaker 6: matter is that, you know, horrific crimes and the exact
Speaker 6: kinds of horrific crimes. You know that we somehow think
Speaker 6: of as being symptomatic of the modern age, you know,
Speaker 6: just a perennial age, old part of you know, human existence.
Speaker 6: You know that there have always been psychopathic sex killers.
Speaker 6: I mean, they weren't necessarily called psychopathic sex killers, but
Speaker 6: you know, there really is, as the Bible says, nothing
Speaker 6: new under the sun, you know, in terms of you know,
Speaker 6: the only thing that might change again is in a way,
Speaker 6: really the only thing that might change, you know, is
Speaker 6: the is the technology through which the public learns about
Speaker 6: these crimes, you know, so that again you know, the
Speaker 6: Robert Irwindnesdays, you know, it would be through these tabloid newspapers.
Speaker 6: You know, now we will get you know, we get
Speaker 6: them through twenty four seven cable news programs. You know,
Speaker 6: back in the seventeenth century, you might hear about them
Speaker 6: through you know, oral murder ballads, you know, but the
Speaker 6: crimes and selves never change.
Speaker 4: So what I thought too was an interesting connection through
Speaker 4: this that people might not recognize too as the pulp
Speaker 4: fantasy in terms of at in the day, it was
Speaker 4: a very popular magazine, you know, type of magazine with
Speaker 4: a certain subject matter. And again the semi nude photo
Speaker 4: of the woman on the detective magazines. Even I'm old
Speaker 4: enough to remember those. So they had those detective magazines,
Speaker 4: and Ronnie uh Was was one of those women. When
Speaker 4: the case made it, you know, the media grabbed it
Speaker 4: and the frenzy then it was again on a the
Speaker 4: same type of magazine again, and then when Robert Erwin
Speaker 4: was on the run, that woman recognized the case and
Speaker 4: his photo again from the pulp fantasy magazine. So and complete, Uh,
Speaker 4: that's irony that you can see.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very very I'll tell you one of the one
Speaker 6: of the Again, another really interesting thing to me, you know,
Speaker 6: was that part of in part of my research, I
Speaker 6: went on eBay, you know, was looking for and found
Speaker 6: a number of these the pulp magazines that Ronnie getting
Speaker 6: and posed for, and that Ronnie's and that after her murder,
Speaker 6: you know, published photographs of Ronnie. And one of the
Speaker 6: things that was what's kind of astonishing to me was
Speaker 6: that I found in some of these magazines completely nude
Speaker 6: photographs of Ronnie, including a couple of like full frontal
Speaker 6: new photographs of Ronnie that had been published on newsstand
Speaker 6: magazines in the nineteen thirties. You know. Again, I'm a
Speaker 6: baby boomer, so you know, when I grew up, you know,
Speaker 6: Playboy you know was about as racy as you could get,
Speaker 6: you know, and that was like in the you know,
Speaker 6: my early sixties and stuff, you know, and again you
Speaker 6: would basically have you know, they were totally airbrush and
Speaker 6: so it was kind of astonishing to me to discover
Speaker 6: that in the nineteen thirties you could purchase a magazine
Speaker 6: on a newsstand and discover like photographs, you know, of
Speaker 6: naked women that were at least as explicit, you know,
Speaker 6: is what Playboy was publishing in the nineteen sixties. So yeah,
Speaker 6: that whole that whole area of American you know of
Speaker 6: sort of sleazy American popular culture back in the thirties.
Speaker 6: I mean, that was very eye opening to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is surprising to me too. I know that
Speaker 4: they had a like sort of a golden age that
Speaker 4: lasted quite a couple of decades, two and a half
Speaker 4: or so, where there was this censorship and clamped down
Speaker 4: and yeah, yeah, but yeah, I'm surprised too. Then in
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty seven you could get something at the newsstand
Speaker 4: like that, and and you know, the media was not
Speaker 4: shy for exploiting this victim for all at well.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, you read the tabloids back then,
Speaker 6: you know, you look at the Daily News again, the
Speaker 6: Daily Mirror. I mean, they were so sensationalistic, you know
Speaker 6: that they really actually make a lot of you know,
Speaker 6: contemporary stuff seemed very, very very and mild by intimidate,
Speaker 6: by comparison. I mean they were. I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: you know they would have well, you know, I'm sure
Speaker 6: you know, like the photograph photographer Ouiji and stuff. You know,
Speaker 6: they would show crime scene photographs on the front pages
Speaker 6: of the New York Daily News. You know, there were
Speaker 6: incredibly shocking and graphic in terms of their violence. You know,
Speaker 6: nothing like that would be permitted nowadays. You know, again,
Speaker 6: people have a very very distorted idea. You know, it's
Speaker 6: a very natural human tendency to romanticize the past, you know,
Speaker 6: to always imagine that somehow, you know, things were less
Speaker 6: gruesome and so on. But it's not true at all.
Speaker 6: I was just looking at some early editions, for example,
Speaker 6: the National Inquirer, you know, back in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 6: and back then, I mean the National Inquirer was just
Speaker 6: you know, publishing stories and photographs. You know that no,
Speaker 6: you know that that no newspaper would touch. So so yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean I think a lot of people Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I was going to I was going to say
Speaker 4: that too. It was my grandfather. He had a stack
Speaker 4: of stuff that was previous to the Inquirer, but it
Speaker 4: was the same people was called the Midnight News. We
Speaker 4: have these photo where they threw a baby out of
Speaker 4: you know, they they'd have they'd say, well, here's the
Speaker 4: photo of the guy that burnt his baby in another
Speaker 4: and so it had all those kinds of stories, but
Speaker 4: with either stage doctored or actual photos of the scare
Speaker 4: the hell out of me.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, when I was a kid, I used to
Speaker 6: have to avert my eyes when i'd walk past the newstand,
Speaker 6: you know, because there'd be these horrific front page photographs
Speaker 6: on the National Enquirer.
Speaker 4: It was scary stuff, for sure. I remember that very
Speaker 4: vividly had a big stack of him, and I would
Speaker 4: read him and scare the heck out of myself. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: we haven't come a long way, baby, yep. Well, I
Speaker 4: want to thank you Harold for coming on and talking
Speaker 4: about your latest The Mad Sculptor. Congratulations on another incredible
Speaker 4: and fascinating and thoroughly enjoying, enjoyable books. So I want
Speaker 4: to thank you very much for coming on and talking
Speaker 4: about that The Mad Sculptor.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you, Dre. And it's for my pleasure and
Speaker 6: I really appreciate, yeah, really appreciate your appreciation of my book.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much. It's tailor made for this
Speaker 4: program and we always get great responses from the audience
Speaker 4: once you've appeared, and I'm sure we will have that again.
Speaker 4: So I want to thank you very much and hope
Speaker 4: to hear from you again soon. And thanks, thank you,
Speaker 4: good night.