Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen seventies, a Philadelphia shoemaker and father
Speaker 1: of seven embarked on a terrifying crime spree with his
Speaker 1: teenage son that left a trail of violence, psychological horror,
Speaker 1: and murder across multiple states. What began as strange hallucinations
Speaker 1: and twisted orthopedic experiments spiraled into sadistic assaults, arson and
Speaker 1: the killing of innocent victims that included his own child.
Speaker 1: This is the chilling true story of a man who
Speaker 1: believed he was chosen by God to either heal humanity
Speaker 1: or destroy it. This is the story of Joseph Collinger,
Speaker 1: aka the Shoemaker.
Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
Speaker 2: and Grim true crime podcast.
Speaker 1: The following material for a mature audience listener disction. I
Speaker 1: am tired today. I don't know why it's Tuesday, but
Speaker 1: it feels like a Friday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually it's been a week.
Speaker 1: It has been. It's been a whole week wrapped in
Speaker 1: only a couple of days. I honestly thought it was
Speaker 1: Friday for a moment there a couple of minutes ago,
Speaker 1: and it kind of blew my mind that it was
Speaker 1: only Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like, oh, we got to get our
Speaker 2: patrons or thank our patrons. You're like, huh yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's Friday though, and then it clicked, No,
Speaker 1: it's Tuesday.
Speaker 2: It's too.
Speaker 1: Well shit, Yeah, while we're on the top of patrons,
Speaker 1: let's thank our patrons. So shout out and thank you
Speaker 1: to Linda Wolstein, Carrie, Leanne Grange, Kristen Graves and super Grams.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for you know, supporting us over
Speaker 1: on the good old Patreons.
Speaker 2: No kidding, we're really in for it today.
Speaker 1: Hey, oh yes we are. This is actually a Patreon
Speaker 1: requested case. So what we did is we went over
Speaker 1: on Patreon. We were like, give us some cases. In
Speaker 1: the comments, they just you know, went off in a
Speaker 1: bunch of cases. We picked the ones with the most likes,
Speaker 1: top four, and then put it into a poll and
Speaker 1: then everyone voted on which one they wanted out of
Speaker 1: those top four. And this case has been on my
Speaker 1: list for a long time. I just never pulled the
Speaker 1: trigger on it. And we're overdue. And it is a
Speaker 1: doozy of a case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like this one. It almost just makes
Speaker 2: you you kind of you think, like, holy shit, Is
Speaker 2: this actually for real?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is this? Could this happen in our world?
Speaker 1: And it did well? And you don't even know the
Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg on this case.
Speaker 2: No, I know very little really, but it's a big one.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 1: There was a lot that I didn't know about this
Speaker 1: case when I went into researching, and wait that happened.
Speaker 2: Holy fuck, we're gonna be very disturbed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are so well, I'm already disturbed. If you
Speaker 1: guys know this case, you're with me, And if you
Speaker 1: don't know this case, you're with Nicole, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: be disturbed on the way. Trust me on that one,
Speaker 1: because ding dang, ding dang. This is a doozy. So
Speaker 1: you ready, I think so, you think? So, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it all right? Well, on the surface, Joseph
Speaker 1: Cullinger was no different than any other working class father
Speaker 1: in mid century America. He lived in a modest home
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, ran a small shoe repair business, and raised
Speaker 1: his children alongside his wife. Betty yabors knew him as
Speaker 1: a quiet man, bit eccentric. He had a fondness for
Speaker 1: tinkering with shoes and odd inventions, and kept largely to himself.
Speaker 1: To the outside world, he was unremarkable, but behind closed doors,
Speaker 1: something monstrous was stirring. By the time his story would
Speaker 1: come to light, Joseph Collinger would be responsible for a
Speaker 1: string of crimes so bizarre, brutal, and senseless they would
Speaker 1: leave one sorry, not one, several seasoned detectives absolutely stunned.
Speaker 1: His victims would include the innocent, the unsuspecting, and, most chillingly,
Speaker 1: his own flesh and blood. He would be described by
Speaker 1: psychiatrists as deeply disturbed, plagued by visions, and controlled by
Speaker 1: what he claimed were divine commands to destroy humanity. But
Speaker 1: none of that was visible from the beginning. There were
Speaker 1: no early newspaper headlines warning of danger, no police reports
Speaker 1: hinting at the darkness behind mind, the walls that were
Speaker 1: brewing inside. Just a man who fixed shoes for a living,
Speaker 1: a man who would eventually tell the world that God
Speaker 1: himself had chosen him for a terrible mission, one that
Speaker 1: would begin with one death and spiral into a surreal
Speaker 1: nightmare of violence and absolute madness. Now, what drove Joseph
Speaker 1: Collinger to kill wasn't greed, vengeance, or even hatred in
Speaker 1: the ordinary sense. Anyways, his crimes were fueled by something
Speaker 1: far more unsettling, but long before the world knew his
Speaker 1: name as a murderer, Joseph Collinger was a boy scarred
Speaker 1: by rejection, abuse, and a mine unraveling from within. He
Speaker 1: was born Joseph Lee Brenner II on December eleventh, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, in Philadelphia, to a young woman named Judith Renner.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Judith's life was full of hardship. She survived polio as
Speaker 1: a child, spent years bouncing betwe qween foster homes, and
Speaker 1: found herself in a failing marriage. She found herself pregnant
Speaker 1: by a married man and was terrified of losing custody
Speaker 1: of a current daughter, Muriel. She was barely able to
Speaker 1: make ends meet, so Judith made a desperate choice. She
Speaker 1: was to place her now newborn son into an orphanage,
Speaker 1: hoping a family somewhere out there could give him the
Speaker 1: life that she couldn't. That family turned out to be
Speaker 1: Stephen and Anna Cullinger, Australian immigrants who owned a modest
Speaker 1: shoe repair shop in Philadelphia. Outwards, they seem like a
Speaker 1: hard working couple, but inside the walls of their home
Speaker 1: a far darker reality. Played out. The Callingers were very
Speaker 1: deeply strict, emotionally distant, and prone to violence. They brought
Speaker 1: Joseph home at a young age, just three, not out
Speaker 1: of love, though, but as insurance against loneliness in old age, which,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is not a reason to.
Speaker 3: Have a child.
Speaker 2: Oh not at all. Here, Okay, I'm intrigued to hear
Speaker 2: this because I'm like, oh, man, did they just get
Speaker 2: a child that was pretty much born this way? Or
Speaker 2: you know, did they kind of create this?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of discrepancies and discussions in the
Speaker 1: mind of Joseph Cullinger as he got older and became
Speaker 1: who he was. So if you have some thoughts and opinions,
Speaker 1: love to hear it, because it is still something massively debated.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, from the very beginning, joseph life with his adoptive
Speaker 1: parents was one of cruelty and isolation. The Callingers believed
Speaker 1: in rigid discipline and harsh punishments, and that these were
Speaker 1: necessary to mold good character and individuals. They showed no affection,
Speaker 1: no warmth, and no understanding. Every misstep, no matter how small,
Speaker 1: was met with terrifying punishments. At times, he was even
Speaker 1: forced to kneel on sandpaper until his knees split open
Speaker 1: his skin was bleeding. He asked to attend some school
Speaker 1: outings even at one point, and his mother responded with
Speaker 1: beating him with a hammer. One particularly disturbing incident defined
Speaker 1: his early years. When Joseph was around the age of five,
Speaker 1: he was caught touching himself, an innocent act of childhood curiosity,
Speaker 1: you know what, learning about their body, that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Joseph he was also diagnosed with a hernia earlier
Speaker 1: that year, and his parents told him in this incident
Speaker 1: that the doctor who repaired his hernia also fixed his
Speaker 1: penis to stop it from ever becoming aroused because his
Speaker 1: genitals quote housed the devil.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, that's that's something.
Speaker 1: And they told him he had been cured of sin
Speaker 1: and sexuality at five, at five years old, okay. Now,
Speaker 1: That chilling lie planted a sea of confusion, fear, and
Speaker 1: obsession that would twist Joseph's relationship with his own body
Speaker 1: and with others for the rest of his life. As
Speaker 1: the abuse continued, Joseph withdrew further into himself. He even
Speaker 1: later began to steal his father's shoemaking knife, hiding it
Speaker 1: in his room late at night, using it in disturbing ways.
Speaker 1: He would slice holes in the walls, masturbating while fixating
Speaker 1: on knives and mutilating images. But even then he felt
Speaker 1: both exhilarated and disgusted by his own actions. At eight
Speaker 1: years old, Joseph endured yet another trauma that further shaped
Speaker 1: his fractured psyche. While running errands near the set of
Speaker 1: abandoned train tracks, a place where he often visited to
Speaker 1: escape his impressive home life, he stumbled upon a group
Speaker 1: of slightly older boys from his neighborhood. Now these boys
Speaker 1: were let's just say, engaging in quote mutual sexual acts
Speaker 1: with one another, okay, But rather than letting Joseph leave
Speaker 1: when he encountered them or ignoring his presence, the boys
Speaker 1: reacted cruel cruelly. At knife point, they forced Joseph to
Speaker 1: participate in the acts against his will, and in that moment,
Speaker 1: Joseph became a victim of sexual assault and was forced
Speaker 1: to perform oral sex on one of the boys. He
Speaker 1: was terrified, confused, and utterly powerless in the situation. It
Speaker 1: was a horrific experience for someone so young, let alone
Speaker 1: anyone of any age. But it combined overwhelming fear with
Speaker 1: feelings of helplessness, and it etched into him in a
Speaker 1: dangerous way for associating between sex, violence, and domination. By adolescence,
Speaker 1: Joseph's life had splintered into two worlds, the outer appearance
Speaker 1: of a quiet, isolated boy and an inner life dominated
Speaker 1: by dark fantasies. His obsessions with knives deepened, his fantasies
Speaker 1: turned violent. He would tear out magazine photos of women,
Speaker 1: stabbing the pictures before ejaculating and climaxing, only to be
Speaker 1: consumed by overwhelming guilt afterwards. And then came the voices.
Speaker 1: At age fifteen, Joseph heard what he believed would be
Speaker 1: the voice of God. It wasn't just a fleeting thought, though,
Speaker 1: it was a full on auditory hallucination. The voice told
Speaker 1: him he had a divine mission through orthopedic manipulation. By
Speaker 1: controlling the feet of people, he would control the mind.
Speaker 1: He was to heal mankind by altering how people walked.
Speaker 1: What began as an isolated delusion soon consumed him, and
Speaker 1: he would eventually even go on to conduct over forty
Speaker 1: thousand orthopedic experiments over the next two decades, creating strange
Speaker 1: heal inserts, meticulously documenting shoe altercations and alterations, becoming convinced
Speaker 1: that he was destined to either save the world or
Speaker 1: even at times destroy it. But while his mind focused
Speaker 1: on this imagined calling, the emotional damage and loneliness only deepened.
Speaker 1: The boy who had never been wanted, never been loved,
Speaker 1: and never knew safety was growing into a man teetering
Speaker 1: on the brink of madness. Now in his late teens,
Speaker 1: Joseph calling Or seemed on the surface to be pulling
Speaker 1: his life together. He dropped out of high school, but
Speaker 1: he found steady work in the only trade he knew, shoemaking,
Speaker 1: where he of course was building on this obsession. But
Speaker 1: more surprisingly, he fell in love. At age sixteen, he
Speaker 1: married a young woman named Hilda, and the two started
Speaker 1: a family together in Philadelphia. But Joseph's past wasn't something
Speaker 1: he could leave behind. The deep psychological scars and the
Speaker 1: growing mental illness that had taken root in his childhood
Speaker 1: followed him into adulthood. Early signs of paranoia, obsessive thinking,
Speaker 1: and explosive temper surfaced almost immediately. His relationship with Hilda
Speaker 1: was volatile. When she gave birth to their first child,
Speaker 1: she in fact showed little interest in motherhood, a reality
Speaker 1: that pushed Joseph further into despair, and by the time
Speaker 1: their second child arrived, Hilda was desperate to leave. In fact,
Speaker 1: she even sought an abortion, a decision Joseph, despite his
Speaker 1: own dark nature, completely opposed. The marriage collapsed soon after,
Speaker 1: and Hilda abandoned the children, leaving Joseph with them.
Speaker 2: Oh Man, those poor kids.
Speaker 1: Joseph, overwhelmed by the rejection, placed the children in temporary
Speaker 1: care and filed for di vorce. This pattern of abandonment, paranoia,
Speaker 1: and spiraling mental health would soon become a hallmark in
Speaker 1: Joseph's life. But before his most violent impulses took hold,
Speaker 1: there was one more attempt at some normalcy. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, Joseph met Betty, a young woman with whom
Speaker 1: he shared an immediate connection. They married not long after,
Speaker 1: and for a brief time, life seemed stable. They eventually
Speaker 1: had five children together, in fact, Michael, Joey, Mary, Joe, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: and little Bonnie. Joseph also reconnected with the two children
Speaker 1: from his first marriage, bringing the total number of children
Speaker 1: that he fathered to seven, but stability was more or
Speaker 1: less an illusion. Joseph's control over Betty quickly became oppressive.
Speaker 1: He grew jealous, paranoid that she would leave him as
Speaker 1: Hilda had, and he installed bars in the windows forbade
Speaker 1: her from leaving the house without him, and controlled every
Speaker 1: aspect of her life. His mental health, untreated and deteriorating,
Speaker 1: began to manifest in more alarming ways. He heard voices
Speaker 1: both divine and demonic. He spoke of visions. He developed
Speaker 1: bizarre compulsions, installing a homemade bowling lane in their bedroom,
Speaker 1: which honestly sounds fucking awesome to me.
Speaker 2: Also, like if someone wants to sleep and the other
Speaker 2: person wants to bowl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, don't even the voices, all that shit. Everything
Speaker 1: sounds horrible. But just a bowling lane in your house,
Speaker 1: I'm sold. I'm sorry, that sounds so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does sound cool. I also just have to say, though,
Speaker 2: the just like listening to his upbringing and like even
Speaker 2: him as like a young adult. Now, it's just it's
Speaker 2: quite a lot. Really, it is a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a lot for anyone to bear. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: burden that will be carried throughout someone's entire life experiences
Speaker 1: like that shape someone.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so I'm fully thinking like he was sort
Speaker 2: of developed into this. He may also have mental health
Speaker 2: issues that need to be treated, and back then, I
Speaker 2: don't really know if they had, you know, necessarily treatment
Speaker 2: for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Well, there are some things about some of his mental
Speaker 1: health things that may have come out of his upbringing,
Speaker 1: but there's also speculation on some of the things that
Speaker 1: he may have also just had.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you have some things where you know what,
Speaker 1: you're already being affected in your upbringing, then you're just
Speaker 1: born with certain things, and it makes this like soup
Speaker 1: of what the fuck? Maybe that's how he turned out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but try me.
Speaker 1: We'll discuss that near the end. Now, there were some
Speaker 1: other things he was doing other than you know, just
Speaker 1: building bowling alleys in his bedroom. He even forced Betty
Speaker 1: to make dozens of cups of tea in the middle
Speaker 1: of a night and obsessively bringing home junk for his
Speaker 1: orthopedic experiments that he was now progressing tea tea.
Speaker 2: Okay, like dozens of coups wanted or he just wanted
Speaker 2: her to make this.
Speaker 1: I I'm actually I'm not too sure if he was
Speaker 1: specifically drinking them all. But he's just like, yeah, go
Speaker 1: make some tea for me.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm assuming he was drinking them.
Speaker 2: Man, if we wake up at the same time we're
Speaker 2: in the middle of that, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be asking.
Speaker 1: For a bowling lane, No, for a cup of tea. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: as strange as these behaviors were, they weren't violent yet
Speaker 1: physically violent at the very least. There was some psychological
Speaker 1: stuff behind some of them, for sure, but the more
Speaker 1: violent things would come later. In nineteen sixty seven, financial
Speaker 1: troubles and Joseph's declining mental state forced the family to
Speaker 1: move into a home with his adoptive parents, the very
Speaker 1: people who had abused him as a child.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, and yeah, he's bringing his kids into that environment.
Speaker 1: Being back in that house reawakened some old traumas Joseph's erratic,
Speaker 1: volatile behavior, it just compounded. He would pace the halls
Speaker 1: for hours at night, dragging his children with him on
Speaker 1: midnight walks, convincing everyone around him or trying to that
Speaker 1: unseen enemies were watching them. The visions grew darker. He
Speaker 1: became obsessed with fire, In fact, multiple times he even
Speaker 1: set their home ablaze, claiming voices had commanded him to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: The family suffered repeated financial ruin from these arson attacks,
Speaker 1: but Betty, isolated, controlled, and very much so guaranteed to
Speaker 1: be afraid, she stayed. It was also during that time
Speaker 1: that Joseph began to involve his children, particularly his son Michael,
Speaker 1: and his twisted fantasies. He created what he called lessons,
Speaker 1: where he would take his children one at a time
Speaker 1: into the basement and expose them to disturbing rituals. While
Speaker 1: there's no indication that he sexually assaulted his children in
Speaker 1: these rituals, the psychological damage was profound. Let's say the
Speaker 1: lessons often involved nudity, knives, and acts that blurred the
Speaker 1: line between discipline and complete trauma. Yet despite everything, Joseph
Speaker 1: still maintained that double life. By day, he was the
Speaker 1: neighborhood shoemaker, a quiet man running his own business. By night,
Speaker 1: his mind was unraveling. The once innocent orthopedic experiments turned obsessive.
Speaker 1: He kept carving new inserts, convinced that by manipulating how
Speaker 1: people walked, he could cure diseases, control thoughts or bring
Speaker 1: about salvation. But Joseph's visions were beginning to shift. The
Speaker 1: command to heal the world through shoes was giving a
Speaker 1: way to something a little more darker.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, I have a quick question. Was he getting
Speaker 2: like a good or bad reputation with what he was
Speaker 2: doing to people's shoes? And like you almost wonder if
Speaker 2: he was getting complaints or anything, like people are getting
Speaker 2: their shoe back and being like this doesn't feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: I'm not too sure if he was doing things like
Speaker 1: that people would notice per se. Oh like maybe instead
Speaker 1: of like certain maybe put a certain type of wood
Speaker 1: in the heel for support, things like that. I'm not
Speaker 1: too sure exactly. I didn't dive into the things he
Speaker 1: was doing, Okay. I mean, if you're doing over forty
Speaker 1: thousand different experiments, I can only imagine how many different
Speaker 1: things you try different threads. Maybe it'd sprinkle certain types
Speaker 1: of sand underneath like who knows, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it could be very minor things that people
Speaker 2: may not even notice. I guess say I.
Speaker 1: Would assume it was things that people wouldn't really notice.
Speaker 1: At least most of them wouldn't be noticeable. That's my assumption,
Speaker 1: right in January nineteen seventy two, just a few years
Speaker 1: before his ultimate spiral, Joseph had actually been arrested for
Speaker 1: child cruelty and assault after two of his children, Joey
Speaker 1: and Mary joe fled their home and went to police.
Speaker 1: They told horrifying stories of years of physical and psychological torment,
Speaker 1: some of those things he was doing in the ritual rights.
Speaker 1: In one chilling example, Joseph had burned Joey's inner thigh
Speaker 1: with a heated metal spatula, supposedly to stop him from
Speaker 1: quote sinning damn. And then he had beaten his other
Speaker 1: son with a metal head of a hammer. The case
Speaker 1: went to court, and though he was convicted, Joseph avoided
Speaker 1: jail time, receiving psychiatric probation instead. But for some in
Speaker 1: law enforcement, the image of Joseph Kalinger as a dangerous
Speaker 1: and disturbed man had already taken root.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: It was at this point in the early nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: that Joseph Kalinger's descent into madness officially passed the point
Speaker 1: of no return. He was no longer a reluctant prophet
Speaker 1: seeking to save humanity. He was now a chosen individual
Speaker 1: or instrument to destroy it, and for that he decided
Speaker 1: he would need an accomplice. His oldest son with Betty,
Speaker 1: Michael Kallinger, became the focus of Joseph's new terrifying plan.
Speaker 1: Michael was just twelve years old when his father approached
Speaker 1: him in an unthinkable proposal. Together, they would carry out
Speaker 1: robberies and eventually murder. Joseph framed this as a divine mission,
Speaker 1: a father and sons bond sealed not by love but
Speaker 1: by blood and violence. Now, whether through fear, manipulation, or
Speaker 1: damage already inflicted upon him, Michael agreed to his dad's
Speaker 1: proposal without hesitation.
Speaker 2: I mean, he was twelve years old. I feel like
Speaker 2: almost any twelve year old would agree to whatever their
Speaker 2: dad was, yeah, you know, propositioning to them.
Speaker 1: Exactly, trusting in their father for what this could be.
Speaker 2: Right, so disturbing.
Speaker 1: Now. The first crimes were relatively small. In June of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, Joseph and Michael began committing a string
Speaker 1: of burglaries across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They still cash,
Speaker 1: jewelry and anything of value, but something darker was stirring
Speaker 1: beneath these petty crimes. Joseph's hallucinations were still escalating, and
Speaker 1: the voices were growing louder. They didn't just want theft,
Speaker 1: They've demanded a sacrifice. On July seventh, nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Joseph told Michael he wanted to kill someone that day.
Speaker 1: There was no discussion, no debate. Michael simply said, okay, Oh.
Speaker 2: My gosh, this is just so not okay.
Speaker 1: The pair set out into the streets of Philadelphia that afternoon,
Speaker 1: hunting for a victim. Near a playground, they spotted a boy,
Speaker 1: oh no, nine year old jose Colazo, playing alone with
Speaker 1: a cigarette lighter. Joseph approached him, kindly, striking up a conversation,
Speaker 1: and he told the boy that he needed help moving
Speaker 1: boxes and promise he'd be home by nine o'clock. Now
Speaker 1: jose likely hesitated, but, as children often do, and fronted
Speaker 1: by an adult for one reason or another, he agreed
Speaker 1: to help. Joseph led the boy to an abandoned building
Speaker 1: near G Street and Indiana Avenue, an old, crumbling factory
Speaker 1: with no power, no lights, and no one around inside.
Speaker 1: They bound the boy's hands and ankles with an old
Speaker 1: electrical cord. As jose began to panic, Michael, on his
Speaker 1: father's command, sodomized the young nine.
Speaker 2: Year old joh Okay, this is just the freaking start too,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: Then, with chilling calm Michael severed the boy's penis with
Speaker 1: a knife, and then the two left the boy to
Speaker 1: bleed to death in the dark, taking his clothes with
Speaker 1: them as they slipped back into the night.
Speaker 2: So he did die.
Speaker 1: Back at home, they ate dinner with their family as
Speaker 1: though nothing ever happened. It was Joseph's first real murder
Speaker 1: and had not brought the satisfaction that he had imagined.
Speaker 4: Oh man.
Speaker 1: He later confessed that he was disappointed by how dark
Speaker 1: it had been in the factory. He couldn't even see
Speaker 1: the blood.
Speaker 2: Clearly, Holy shit, like, oh like a nine year old boy.
Speaker 2: They just did this too correct, and it just like
Speaker 2: unleashed the beast. Really, I feel like of what's to come.
Speaker 1: That's the start. Yes, yeah, Now, the sickness was evolving,
Speaker 1: and that is a thing that's constantly going on with
Speaker 1: this is this battle, this illness, with these these inner
Speaker 1: demons or these voices, however you want to put it.
Speaker 1: It was constantly growing, constantly getting stronger, constantly getting darker,
Speaker 1: and two weeks later, on July twenty first, nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Joseph's visions turned inward. This time, the voices named his
Speaker 1: own thirteen year old son, Joey as the next sacrifice.
Speaker 1: He claimed to see Joey falling from a mountaintop, and
Speaker 1: the message was clear. To fulfill the MISSI, he needed
Speaker 1: to kill his own child. Joseph planned several failed attempts.
Speaker 1: He took Joey, Michael, and his youngest son Jimmy, to
Speaker 1: bus terminals, train stations, and even towards abandoned mine shafts.
Speaker 1: Each time Joseph's courage faltered, though it's obvious what he
Speaker 1: was planning, he would panic, make an excuse and abandon
Speaker 1: the plans, and at one point he even tried to
Speaker 1: set up an accidental fall from a construction site, positioning
Speaker 1: Joey for a photo near the scaffolding edge. But again
Speaker 1: you couldn't follow through. The pressure from the visions were relentless, though,
Speaker 1: and Michael, by now fully immersed in his father's warped world,
Speaker 1: urged him on.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I was going to ask if he knew
Speaker 2: this plan.
Speaker 1: Michael knew, and shockingly enough, no, he's he's pushing his
Speaker 1: father to actually go for the killing and make it happen.
Speaker 4: Damn.
Speaker 1: Then finally, on July twenty eighth, nineteen seventy four, Joseph
Speaker 1: made good on his prophecy. After another staged outing, they
Speaker 1: lured Joey into an abandoned construction site. They found a
Speaker 1: steel staircase that led underground to a partially flooded sub basement. There,
Speaker 1: Joseph and Michael handcuffed Joey to a metal ladder and
Speaker 1: submerged him into the water until he drowned.
Speaker 2: Oh whoa, Okay, that that's a terrible way to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They left his body there in the water, walked
Speaker 1: home in silence, and reported Joey missing later that night,
Speaker 1: as if nothing happened.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: You know, it's one thing to go about like hurting
Speaker 2: I guess people you don't really know, which is still terrible,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong. But then to actually do it
Speaker 2: to a kid that you like created is pretty messed up.
Speaker 1: It's it seems like, yeah, it's there's a lot more
Speaker 1: going on there. Yeah. Yeah, Like you say, it's terrible
Speaker 1: regardless of who, But there there's that attachment, there's that
Speaker 1: bond there, it's breaking something almost sacred in a real relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, like a father should be protective exactly and
Speaker 1: instead he's doing the exact opposite.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: Now, for two weeks, Joseph even pretended to search for
Speaker 1: his missing son, joining community efforts and police investigations. No way,
Speaker 1: and on August ninth, Joey's decomposed body was found, but
Speaker 1: the case of the death was was listed as undetermined.
Speaker 1: Police quietly suspected Joseph, but without evidence, the case was stalled.
Speaker 1: Now Joseph's mind was at this point no longer his own.
Speaker 1: After the murder of his son Joey in July of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, Joseph Collinger's descent into madness continued to
Speaker 1: accelerate at a much deeper level. The death of his
Speaker 1: son had broken something permanent, and the whispers he heard,
Speaker 1: the twisted commands, they were louder than ever before. The
Speaker 1: act of killing, which he believed was divinely mandated mission,
Speaker 1: didn't bring the relief of transformation he had imagined. Instead,
Speaker 1: the voices in his head, the ones that had come
Speaker 1: to identify as God's command, or so he said, only
Speaker 1: grew louder and more erratic. The next target in his
Speaker 1: twisted vision became his youngest child, fifteen month old Bonnie.
Speaker 1: Born with mysterious sores on her skin, Bonnie became a
Speaker 1: focal point of a new delusion. Joseph became convinced that
Speaker 1: the only way to heal her was through a grotesque
Speaker 1: ritual combining a woman's vaginal fluids with his own semen
Speaker 1: and perfume, which he believed would create a salve to
Speaker 1: cure her.
Speaker 2: Holy like, how can someone even come up with that shit?
Speaker 1: While in pursuit of this cure quote unquote, Joseph enlisted
Speaker 1: Michael once again. On November twenty second, nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: they traveled across the river to Camden, New Jersey. There,
Speaker 1: they selected a woman aimed Joan Cardi, posing as door
Speaker 1: to door salesman selling tie clips, which was a trick
Speaker 1: to confirm whether there was men present in the house
Speaker 1: or not. They gained entry to her home and once inside,
Speaker 1: they bound her, stripped her, and Joseph sexually assaulted her,
Speaker 1: not for gratification, but to obtain the bodily fluids he
Speaker 1: believed were key to saving his daughter. Then, returning home
Speaker 1: with what he collected. He followed the ritual meticulously. He
Speaker 1: mixed the stolen fluids with perfume and his own seamen
Speaker 1: and applied it to bonnie sores, but unsurprisingly, nothing happened.
Speaker 1: The child's condition remained unchanged, and another delusion was another failure.
Speaker 2: That is so fucked up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is wholly. With his frustration and despair deepening,
Speaker 1: Joseph's hallucinations again shifted his mission briefly shifted back to healing,
Speaker 1: but it was now no longer about that healing. It
Speaker 1: was now about pure destruction. To him. It was a
Speaker 1: matter of he couldn't save the world, so since that's
Speaker 1: the case, he now needs to tear it down. So
Speaker 1: on December third, nineteen seventy four, Joseph and Michael set
Speaker 1: out again, this time to Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. They broke into
Speaker 1: the home of sixty five year old Helen Bogan while
Speaker 1: she was out shopping. When Helen returned around eleven thirty
Speaker 1: am arms full of groceries, Joseph ambushed her. He pressed
Speaker 1: a butcher knife to her cheek and forced her upstairs,
Speaker 1: bound her to an overturned bed frame. He then doused
Speaker 1: cotton balls with lighter fluids and placed them on her eyes,
Speaker 1: his plan to burn her alive, igniting her face as
Speaker 1: the hallucinations were demanding. However, at the very last second,
Speaker 1: these hallucinations, these voices, the visions, they stopped. They vanished,
Speaker 1: just as he had with Joey. Joseph now was hesitating.
Speaker 1: The voices were gone, and with them, the will to
Speaker 1: kill did leave as well, And before he could decide
Speaker 1: what to do, the doorbell rang. Helen's Bridge. Friends were
Speaker 1: arriving for their weekly.
Speaker 2: Game, Oh thank goodness.
Speaker 1: So one by one Joseph overpowered each new arrival at
Speaker 1: the door, oh Ethel Cohen Thalmasudin and Anna Pearl Frankston.
Speaker 1: Each was tied up with makeshift restraints. Joseph maintained an
Speaker 1: eerie calm, even in fact, he was granting some small kindnesses.
Speaker 1: He let one woman keep her glasses. He honored another's
Speaker 1: request to not be gagged due to breathing issues. His
Speaker 1: delusions were selective. Some boundaries remained, others didn't. Meanwhile, Michael
Speaker 1: was growing increasingly restless. He viewed the hesitation as weakness.
Speaker 1: He wanted the killings to happen, not the elaborate games
Speaker 1: that Joseph seemed to trap him in, but once again
Speaker 1: the murders didn't material materialize. Instead, they robbed the house,
Speaker 1: stealing around twenty thousand dollars or so worth of cash, jewelry,
Speaker 1: and then left the victims physically unharmed.
Speaker 2: Okay, here, At first, I was like, oh, man, okay,
Speaker 2: they're gonna run off like someone's at the door. But
Speaker 2: then they started tying them up. I was like, oh shit, yes, but.
Speaker 1: With the with the delusions and voices and such, with
Speaker 1: them actually stopping, that will to kill was now gone. Okay,
Speaker 1: So he's sitting here in this situation, calmly taking care
Speaker 1: of it, calmly making sure he has the control he needs,
Speaker 1: and then resolving it with well, let's just rob the
Speaker 1: place and go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: On December tenth, just one week later, Joseph and Michael
Speaker 1: struck again, this time in another upper middle class neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They broke into the home of Pamela Jossich just Chi.
Speaker 1: There we go, Just Chi. Joseph forced her at gunpoint
Speaker 1: to perform oral sex while Michael ransacked the house. Once again,
Speaker 1: they left without killing, but each encounter edged them closer
Speaker 1: to the inevitable than On January sixteenth, nineteenth seventy five,
Speaker 1: they attacked again. This time it was Mary Rudolph, a
Speaker 1: woman in Dumont, New Jersey. The pattern was identical, home invasion, binding,
Speaker 1: sexual assault, robbery. Again, the hallucinations, though, were dictating the behavior,
Speaker 1: and when the visions dispatched, so did the resolve to kill.
Speaker 1: Michael was now barely a teenager. He was increasingly becoming
Speaker 1: eager for violence and to commit these crimes, and became
Speaker 1: openly frustrated with his father's restraint. Each time Joseph failed
Speaker 1: to follow through, the tension built. His belief was that
Speaker 1: he was destined to destroy humanity, pressed harder, and this
Speaker 1: already fragile mind was there and its cracking. Michael, for
Speaker 1: his part, was no longer just a willing participant. He
Speaker 1: was becoming a co conspirator with it all at this point,
Speaker 1: with his own dark desires and his own mind that
Speaker 1: was beginning to crack. The pace of their crimes were quickening.
Speaker 1: The escalation was coming, and this time, when the visions
Speaker 1: were turned, Joseph wouldn't stop, because he was officially hurtling
Speaker 1: towards complete psychological collapse. His hallucinations once sporadic, were then
Speaker 1: building and have now become constant companions always with him,
Speaker 1: and with thirteen year old Michael desensitized and eager for violence,
Speaker 1: it was all too much. He was willing to follow
Speaker 1: his father's lead, and on January eighth, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: the pair arrived in Leonia, New Jersey. Their target the
Speaker 1: home of the Kneller family. The home belonged to Rita
Speaker 1: and Randy Kneller, who lived there with their young son
Speaker 1: and bedridden elderly grandmother. When Joseph and Michael entered the home,
Speaker 1: they immediately took control, brandishing a gun and a knife.
Speaker 1: The women, terrified, complied as Joseph gathered them together on
Speaker 1: the main floor of the house. Now the grandmother, helplessly upstairs,
Speaker 1: was left untouched. The invaders began methodically tying up the
Speaker 1: hostages with whatever they could find electrical cords, coat hangers, belts.
Speaker 1: But as they worked, the front doorbell rang Visitors the
Speaker 1: Kneller's friends were arriving one by one. Joseph calmly answered
Speaker 1: the door and ushered each new arrival into the unfolding
Speaker 1: nightmare inside. A total of eight hostages were eventually brought
Speaker 1: under control, including a young boy and a woman by
Speaker 1: the name of Maria Fashing, a twenty one year old
Speaker 1: nurse and family friend who had come to visit. She
Speaker 1: was the last one to enter the home. For Joseph,
Speaker 1: Maria would become the symbol of everything the voice in
Speaker 1: his head demanded he destroyed. The atmosphere inside the house
Speaker 1: was tense but eerily controlled. Joseph seemed oddly polite at moments,
Speaker 1: even apologetic. He told his captives he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: hurt them, just rob them, he reassured. The women even
Speaker 1: follow following what he had done before, allowing small comforts.
Speaker 1: But underneath the surface, the hallucinations were still there. The
Speaker 1: supreme power, the dark figure Joseph saw on his visions,
Speaker 1: whispered that this wasn't enough. Blood needed to be spilt.
Speaker 1: This time, Joseph ordered the largest man amongst the captives
Speaker 1: to a pipe in the basement, where he was bound
Speaker 1: to it. The original plan, if it could be called that,
Speaker 1: was to mutilate the man's genitals, a twisted act Joseph
Speaker 1: believed was central to his new divine mission of destroying
Speaker 1: mankind by attacking sexuality itself. But Joseph's hallucinations in that moment,
Speaker 1: In that last moment shifted Now in his mind, it
Speaker 1: wasn't this man who he needed to start with. It
Speaker 1: was Maria instead, who became the target. See, she was
Speaker 1: vocal and defiant. Joseph had brought her into the basement
Speaker 1: and demanded that she assisted in the mutilation of this man,
Speaker 1: but she flat out refused, telling him she would rather
Speaker 1: die than do what he demanded. She didn't beg she
Speaker 1: didn't break nothing, and this was exactly the trigger that
Speaker 1: the visions demanded. In that moment, she was now the target.
Speaker 1: Joseph grabbed a knife and stabbed Maria in the neck.
Speaker 1: She tried to scream, but she could only gurgle as
Speaker 1: blood spilled into her airway. Joseph stabbed her again and
Speaker 1: again until her body crumpled to the basement floor, spilling
Speaker 1: blood onto the concrete. In that moment, the calling Air
Speaker 1: killing spree had finally claimed its first adult victim. The
Speaker 1: barrier Joseph had so often stopped short of crossing was obliterated,
Speaker 1: and that murder triggered chaos. Meanwhile, upstairs, one of the
Speaker 1: women managed to break free and she ran screaming into
Speaker 1: the streets. Neighbors heard the commotion, and sirens quickly followed.
Speaker 2: Okays, like quickly, I'm like this could turn into just
Speaker 2: a complete like bloodbath.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Panicking, Joseph and Michael fled the house on foot, abandoning everything, hostages, weapons,
Speaker 1: stolen goods, all of it as they ran. Joseph even
Speaker 1: discarded a blood soaked shirt that he wore that even
Speaker 1: bore his last name on the laundry tag holy. In
Speaker 1: his frantic state, he left caution to the wind. Maria
Speaker 1: fashion was dead. The rest of the hostages, including the
Speaker 1: young child, survived, but the horror they endured would haunt
Speaker 1: them forever. Within days, the police were now closing in
Speaker 1: on Joseph. A neighbor had seen two men washing their
Speaker 1: hands and faces in a puddle near baseball field not
Speaker 1: far from the Neller home, discarding clothing. Witnesses had partial descriptions.
Speaker 1: The investigators were already of where Joseph, callingear's history, his
Speaker 1: prior arrest for child abuse, his missing son, his erratic behavior,
Speaker 1: and when Maria's murder first hit the news, detectives quietly
Speaker 1: zeroed in on him. On January seventeenth, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: just nine days after that murder, Joseph and Michael would
Speaker 1: be arrested. Police arrived at the calling her home. Joseph
Speaker 1: was already known to law enforcement thanks to his prior
Speaker 1: arrest and those sort of things. What they didn't know,
Speaker 1: what no one could have predicted, was that just how
Speaker 1: dark his crimes had become. Joseph and Michael were sitting
Speaker 1: inside the modest home in Philadelphia when officers knocked in
Speaker 1: the front door. They were casually sorting through stolen coins
Speaker 1: from their recent robberies. Joseph's wife, Betty, answered the door.
Speaker 1: When officers demanded entry, She asked for a warrant, but
Speaker 1: in that moment, Joseph and Michael attempted to flee, reportedly
Speaker 1: trying to sneak out the back, but it was useless.
Speaker 1: The house was surrounded and they were quickly handcuffed on
Speaker 1: the spot. What followed was an unspooling of chaos as
Speaker 1: detectives across three states began piecing together with father and this.
Speaker 1: Father and son had done the bloodsoak chirk that Joseph
Speaker 1: clearly discarded carelessly and quickly recovered by police. The name
Speaker 1: tag had Callinger right on it and it removed any doubt.
Speaker 1: Multiple witnesses, including neighbors and surviving victims from various attacks,
Speaker 1: identified the pair and police lineups. The list of the
Speaker 1: offenses stretched across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and beyond home invasions, assaults,
Speaker 1: sexual assaults, robbery, and of course, murders. Investigators also uncovered
Speaker 1: something even more disturbing. Joseph had taken out a significant
Speaker 1: life insurance policy on his murdered son, Joey. The policies
Speaker 1: totlled nearly seventy thousand dollars, which in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: was a fortune. Yeah, and they were barely a few
Speaker 1: months old when Joey's body was found in the abandoned
Speaker 1: building Yang. The case was no longer just a string
Speaker 1: of robberies. It was a murder, her profit, sadism, and
Speaker 1: something far more complex because it was a man teetering
Speaker 1: on the edge of sanity dragging his own son into
Speaker 1: the abyss with him. Seeing these things, detectives quickly separated
Speaker 1: Joseph and Michael. Michael, who was only still thirteen, was
Speaker 1: placed in juvenile detention. Thirteen thirteen. Psychologists were brought in
Speaker 1: to evaluate him, and what they found was a boy
Speaker 1: who was hostile, rebellious, and disturbingly detached, but also someone
Speaker 1: who perhaps could still be saved. Michael, who had been
Speaker 1: a child under the control of a father who believed
Speaker 1: he was chosen by God to destroy mankind. Right, it
Speaker 1: was clear thebilitation process was possible, but how far it's
Speaker 1: only up to anyone to cass.
Speaker 2: He does have age on his side, right, so it's possible.
Speaker 1: Definitely now. Joseph, on the other hand, was something else entirely.
Speaker 1: During questioning, he denied murdering Joey. He denied any knowledge
Speaker 1: of Maria and her or murder the death that occurred
Speaker 1: in that house. He blamed everything on outside forces, on hallucinations,
Speaker 1: on mysterious voices, on divine commands. At times he rambled
Speaker 1: about being thousand years old and about talking to God directly.
Speaker 1: Psychiatrists were brought in. Some suspected schizophrenia. Others thought it
Speaker 1: might be something more physical, perhaps Huntington's disease, which can
Speaker 1: cause involuntary movements, paranoia, and even dementia. Joseph himself requested
Speaker 1: testing for this Huntington's disease, but the results came back negative,
Speaker 1: and Joseph continued In years later to keep requesting more tests,
Speaker 1: but it was never proven to be positive. There was
Speaker 1: no physical explanation for the way his mind worked. It
Speaker 1: was psychological and profoundly so when I say profound, I
Speaker 1: don't mean in a good profound way. Meanwhile, back in
Speaker 1: the Linonia, investigators worked around the clock to build their case.
Speaker 1: The surviving hostages from the Kneller home gave detailed statements.
Speaker 1: The physical evidence there was blood, fingerprints, discarded clothing. It
Speaker 1: was also overwhelming, and in Pennsylvania, authorities dug into Joey's
Speaker 1: suspicious death. However, without any direct witness, it was harder
Speaker 1: to prove. But suspicion fell heavily on Joseph, and while
Speaker 1: the surviving victims of the early robberies provided statements, many
Speaker 1: of the women Joseph had sexually assaulted were too traumatized
Speaker 1: to testify, complicating those charges across all jurisdictions, One fact
Speaker 1: became clear. Joseph Callinger wasn't just a killer. He was
Speaker 1: a man who had slipped so far into delusion that
Speaker 1: reality no longer governed his actions. The question remained, would
Speaker 1: the court see him as a criminal or as a
Speaker 1: madman beyond control? The first of Joseph Callinger's many trials
Speaker 1: began in June nineteenth. On nineteen seventy five, the charges
Speaker 1: were connected to the non lethal crime, things like robbery, burglary,
Speaker 1: false imprisonment, those sort of things, the home invasions and such.
Speaker 1: But the questions hanging over the courtroom wasn't just whether
Speaker 1: he committed these crimes, it was whether he was legally
Speaker 1: sane when he did them. From the onset, the defense
Speaker 1: focused squarely on Joseph's mind. His lawyers argued that he
Speaker 1: was deeply mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations so powerful and
Speaker 1: persistent that he couldn't distinguish reality from the bizarre visions
Speaker 1: commanding him to kill. They even suggested that years of
Speaker 1: exposure to toxic chemicals from working in a poorly ventilated
Speaker 1: shoe repair shop may have damaged his brain, contributing to
Speaker 1: that delusion as well. Prosecutors painted a very different picture.
Speaker 1: They pointed to the methodical way Joseph and Michael had
Speaker 1: planned their crimes, casing home, selecting victims, timing their break ins.
Speaker 1: They highlighted Joseph's deliberate disposal of evidence, burning bloody clothes,
Speaker 1: hiding weapons, even changing his story repeatedly during questioning. This
Speaker 1: wasn't madness, they argued, this was calculation. Joseph himself would
Speaker 1: take the stand in his own defense, which was against
Speaker 1: the advice of nearly anyone everyone on his legal team.
Speaker 1: What followed stunned the courtroom. He calmly informed the jury
Speaker 1: that he was one thousand years old. He said he
Speaker 1: had once been a butterfly. He spoke of voices from
Speaker 1: God commanding him to save humanity by killing millions of people.
Speaker 1: He described the Supreme Power an unseeing entity guiding his hand.
Speaker 1: Every word he spoke underscored the central argument of his defense.
Speaker 1: Joseph was not sane.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like his legal team was probably just
Speaker 2: sitting there like just I don't just we're fucked basically, right.
Speaker 1: Like potentially, But also his story is supporting their claim, yeah,
Speaker 1: of insanity to some degree, Right, yeah, I guess so. Now,
Speaker 1: despite that surreal testimony, let's put it that way. The
Speaker 1: jury deliberated for less than an hour, and they found Joseph,
Speaker 1: calling her guilty on all counts. Now, remember this was
Speaker 1: for the non violent crimes, the break ins and stuff, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say non violent, the non not murdering, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. The judge, visibly shaken by
Speaker 1: the details of the case, described him as quote utterly
Speaker 1: vile and depraved, and then sentenced him to thirty to
Speaker 1: eighty years in prison for those charges alone.
Speaker 2: Okay, but that was, of.
Speaker 1: Course just the beginning, because next came the more serious charges,
Speaker 1: the murder of Muria Fasting, which during the failed home
Speaker 1: invasion occurred right now. This trial, beginning in February of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, put Joseph's mental state even more firmly
Speaker 1: in the spotlight. Once again, his defense pleaded insanity. This time,
Speaker 1: court appointed psych chiatrist had examined him in greater detail.
Speaker 1: The findings were damning. Joseph exhibited signs of severe psychosis, schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: impossible organic brain damage. He was, they argued, unable to
Speaker 1: control his actions. But the prosecution wasn't swayed. They brought
Speaker 1: forward surviving victims from that day, ordinary people who looked
Speaker 1: Joseph in the face as he held them hostage at
Speaker 1: knife point. They described him as calm, deliberate as he
Speaker 1: tied up each and every person. They testified about the
Speaker 1: terrifying moment that he dragged Maria into the basement, about
Speaker 1: the screams, about the blood they saw, about the way
Speaker 1: he and his son had simply walked away. Afterwards, the
Speaker 1: jury found him guilty once again. Another thirty to eighty
Speaker 1: years was added to his sentence behind bars, Joseph's mental
Speaker 1: health continued to decline in prison. He was erratic and violent.
Speaker 1: He attacked another inmate, stabbing him toward twenty times with
Speaker 1: a pair of sewing scissors in nineteen seventy eight, another
Speaker 1: act he later said was commanded by unseen forces.
Speaker 2: No one is safe in that prison, really, hey with him?
Speaker 1: No, Well, he even did, like think of it this way,
Speaker 1: because he had multiple suicide attempts that followed, including setting
Speaker 1: his own cell on fire. So I mean, imagine being
Speaker 1: in the cell next to him and he's setting his
Speaker 1: cell on fire and you're watching this like burn down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm going to burn alive too.
Speaker 2: No kidding. Well, and that so that inmate survived that
Speaker 2: I'm assuming, Actually.
Speaker 1: I'm not too sure. I'm pretty sure that inmate actually
Speaker 1: died because I believe he also like he cut his
Speaker 1: throat in this action too, So I'm pretty sure he died. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I believe that would take the tally of murdered
Speaker 1: victims up to four if I'm not mistaken, Because there
Speaker 1: was the two children earlier, one being his own, then
Speaker 1: there was Maria and this other inmate. Court appointed doctors
Speaker 1: argued over his condition. Some claimed he was faking illness
Speaker 1: to avoid punishment, others saw genuine and terrifying signs of
Speaker 1: profound mental breakdown. Joseph himself continued to request testing for
Speaker 1: Huntington's disease, convinced it might explain his behavior, but still
Speaker 1: no diagnosis came. Further trials unfolded for additional crimes, but
Speaker 1: by this time Joseph's court room appearance were basically meaningless.
Speaker 1: His fate was sealed. He would die in prison, far
Speaker 1: from the streets where his reign of terror played out,
Speaker 1: and it was more about closure for the victims than anything.
Speaker 1: Right died of heart failure at the age of fifty
Speaker 1: nine inside a Pennsylvania state prison. As for Micah Callinger,
Speaker 1: his son, the courts took a different approach. He was
Speaker 1: just thirteen when the crimes were committed. Multiple psychologists assessed
Speaker 1: him as a child under extreme coercion, possibly salvageable with treatment.
Speaker 1: After serving his time in a juvenile facility, Micah was
Speaker 1: placed with foster parents relatives of his stepmother, who worked
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate him. By nineteen seventy nine, he pled guilty
Speaker 1: to robbery charges in exchange for the dismissal of the
Speaker 1: murder charge related to Maria Fassinger's death. He was released
Speaker 1: on probation under careful supervision until his twenty first birthday
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, and then after that, Michael vanished
Speaker 1: from public view. His records were sealed, his name disappeared
Speaker 1: from headlines, and to this day, no public records are
Speaker 1: to account for where he is today. Whether he rebuilt
Speaker 1: his life or descended further into darkness remains unknown.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can only hope that he's just living
Speaker 2: normal one hundred percent of life, you know, that's healthy.
Speaker 1: I hope he was rehabilitated and he got away from
Speaker 1: what his father did to him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, at the heart of Joseph Callinger's story lies a
Speaker 1: haunting question that has puzzled doctors, lawyers, true crime enthusiasts
Speaker 1: for decades. What was truly wrong with Joseph Kllinger's mind?
Speaker 1: Told you we'd go over this at the end. Here
Speaker 1: we are so Even before the murders, Joseph displayed behaviors
Speaker 1: that were bizarre, disturbing, and disconnected from reality. The hallucinations
Speaker 1: he described, the voices from God, visions of supreme powers
Speaker 1: commanding him to kill. They weren't fleeting thoughts. They are immersive,
Speaker 1: all consuming, and very persistent. He genuinely believed that he
Speaker 1: was on a divine mission tasks from or for saving
Speaker 1: the world and later destroying it, and he failed to
Speaker 1: live up to that imagined responsibility. These are real things
Speaker 1: that he firmly believed. This is not made up for
Speaker 1: his defense. This is fact. He believed these. But was
Speaker 1: this madness the product of trauma, mental illness, physical brain damage,
Speaker 1: or some tangled combination of these. Forensic psychologists who evaluated
Speaker 1: Joseph over the years often pointed to early childhood trauma
Speaker 1: as the seed bed for his psychosis. His adoptive parents
Speaker 1: were brutally abusive. They did things like burnt his fingertips,
Speaker 1: beat him with hammers, punished him for normal childhood behaviors
Speaker 1: like exploring his body. Sure maybe it disturbed them a
Speaker 1: little bit, but it's not their responsibility to be disturbed
Speaker 1: by someone learning about themselves or their sexuality, and exploring
Speaker 1: that the deep psychological scars of those years clearly shaped
Speaker 1: the man that he would become. At that same time,
Speaker 1: signs of schizophrenia were impossible to ignore. His hallucinations, paranoia,
Speaker 1: and elaborate religious delusions fit classic psychiatric definitions of the disorder.
Speaker 1: Schizophrenia often manifests in late adolescents or early adulthood, right
Speaker 1: around the time Joseph's visions began, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: not correlate those totally. But then there were the physical symptoms.
Speaker 1: He also had muscle spasms, He was very jerky with
Speaker 1: his movements, very much so. In many times he had
Speaker 1: inappropriate laughter, and some doctors suspected neurological conditions might also
Speaker 1: be in play. It's worth noting that Joseph's early crimes
Speaker 1: before murders, showed some faint traces of humanity. There were
Speaker 1: multiple occasions where he stopped short of killing. He retreated
Speaker 1: from violence at the last second. He wavered, He showed doubt,
Speaker 1: But as the hallucinations deepened, so did the detachment from
Speaker 1: the reality around him. The command these hallucinations had over him,
Speaker 1: as he described, he left him feeling trapped, as though
Speaker 1: his mind was no longer his own. His actions became
Speaker 1: increasingly erratic, brutal, and devoid of emotions. So was he
Speaker 1: legally saying. Some courts say no, others weren't so sure.
Speaker 1: And the truth is it may be impossible to ever
Speaker 1: fully know. Mental illness doesn't exactly excuse his crimes, but
Speaker 1: it does explain much about why his life spiraled so
Speaker 1: horrifyingly out of control. And then there came the other puzzle,
Speaker 1: his son, Michael. Unlike his father, Michael didn't appear to
Speaker 1: suffer from hallucinations or psychosis. Instead, he was raised inside
Speaker 1: the madness, exposed from childhood to Joseph's violence, control, and
Speaker 1: twisted worldview, in some ways very similar to how his
Speaker 1: father was even raised. Some psychologists view Michael as a
Speaker 1: classic case of traumatic bonding, a child so desperate for
Speaker 1: approval that he was willing to follow his father into
Speaker 1: unspeakable acts. Others warned that Michael showed signs of emerging
Speaker 1: psychopathy himself, cold, calculating, and eager for violence. Ultimately, Michael
Speaker 1: was considered rehabilitated or rehabilitate a bull, though his current
Speaker 1: whereabouts dew still remain unknown. In the end, the arrest
Speaker 1: of Joseph and Michael in January of nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: brought an abrupt end to their violent spree, but the
Speaker 1: echoes of their crime stretched far beyond that moment in time.
Speaker 1: For the families of their victims, the scars ran deep, permanent,
Speaker 1: and in many cases impossible to fully heal. The murder of
Speaker 1: twenty one year old Maria Fascing the only convicted homicide
Speaker 1: during their rampage, apart from Joseph's own son, I get well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's not convicted. That is confirmed because Joseph fully,
Speaker 1: flat out has admitted it in interviews, but Maria is
Speaker 1: the only convicted one. It left a profound wound on Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: In the community. Maria was not just a victim of opportunity.
Speaker 1: She was a woman known for her kindness, her activism,
Speaker 1: and her refusal to back down the face of, you know, adversity.
Speaker 1: It was that very courage, her refusal to comply with
Speaker 1: Joseph's demands, that cost her her life. She died on
Speaker 1: that cold basement floor of a stranger's house, well, not
Speaker 1: a stranger, a friend's house. Far from the life that
Speaker 1: she could have lived, but still with her own morals
Speaker 1: in person intact, her murder shook that small town leaven
Speaker 1: behind grief stricken family members and friends who would carry
Speaker 1: the weight of her loss forever. The survivors, the women
Speaker 1: who had been tied up, threatened, and assaulted in their
Speaker 1: own homes, carry visible scars. Though they escaped with their lives,
Speaker 1: the terror they endured could not be undone. Imagine the
Speaker 1: horror of sitting in your living room, expecting a quiet
Speaker 1: afternoon with friends, only to be held captive at knife
Speaker 1: point by a stranger who seems completely unhinged. The emotional
Speaker 1: trauma from such an experience doesn't just vanish. Many of
Speaker 1: these people were left deeply affected for years, if not
Speaker 1: for life. Some reportedly suffered from PTSD post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 1: chronic fear, and shattered feelings of their own safety and
Speaker 1: their own homes. And then there were the children, the
Speaker 1: Callinger's kids, his own flesh and blood, his sons, his
Speaker 1: daughters who had been pawns, and his delusions. Sometimes victims
Speaker 1: sometimes witnesses the psychological damage on those kids, especially Michael's
Speaker 1: young Michael's younger siblings. It's hard to quantify. To grow
Speaker 1: up in a home like this, it meant living in
Speaker 1: constant fear, caught between love, loyalty, and honestly absolute horror.
Speaker 1: You feel like you're probably living in a horror movie.
Speaker 1: Even decades later, the name of Joseph and Michael Collinger
Speaker 1: evoke unease in the city, in towns where they once prowled.
Speaker 1: Their story once national news faded into relative obscurity over
Speaker 1: the years, but for those directly touched by the violence,
Speaker 1: it never truly went away. While Joseph died in prison
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, taking many of his secrets with him,
Speaker 1: the ripples of what he did, what he and his
Speaker 1: son did continue to spread through the lives that they
Speaker 1: touched and the histories that they've altered. The story of
Speaker 1: the Calling Yers is one of the darkest and most
Speaker 1: disturbing in American true crime history. It's a case that
Speaker 1: leaves us grappling not only with the depths of human depravity,
Speaker 1: but also with uncomfortable questions about mental illness, responsibility, and
Speaker 1: the limits of rehabilitation. So much though, that in this
Speaker 1: episode today, I've only begun to scratch the surface of
Speaker 1: this conversation. Though Joseph calling Her died of heart failure
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, having spent over two decades behind bars.
Speaker 1: He remained a deeply disturbed man until the very end,
Speaker 1: reportedly continuing to experience these hallucinations, paranoiase, and suicidal urges
Speaker 1: till the very end. To this day, the question remains
Speaker 1: was Joseph calling Her evil, insane or a tragic collision
Speaker 1: of both. The case continues to be study in criminal psychology, psychiatry,
Speaker 1: and criminology circles. It's a haunting example of how untreated
Speaker 1: mental illness, childhood trauma, and distorted religious delusions can create
Speaker 1: a perfect storm of violence in the end. What makes
Speaker 1: this case linger is not just the brutality of the acts,
Speaker 1: but the profound sadness running through every single chapter of
Speaker 1: the story. It's about damaged people damaging other people. It's
Speaker 1: about the terror that unfolded in quiet neighborhoods, and it's
Speaker 1: about the lives lost, not just those who died, but
Speaker 1: those who live with the aftermath. The majority of the
Speaker 1: world may forget the name Callinger eventually, but for those
Speaker 1: who study the darkest corners of human behavior, this case
Speaker 1: remains absolutely unforgettable. And that's a story of Joseph Kellinger
Speaker 1: aka the.
Speaker 2: Shoemaker, damaged people, damaging other people.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Shit, now that just like I feel like, just nails
Speaker 2: it on the head right there.
Speaker 1: Right now. There is some documentaries and interviews with Joseph,
Speaker 1: and there's one it's gone viral on like TikTok and
Speaker 1: such like that. And I really want to play this
Speaker 1: for you because it really gives you a perspective of
Speaker 1: how how much is going on in this guy's head.
Speaker 1: He openly, openly talks about these things in an interview,
Speaker 1: and he's so cold about it.
Speaker 2: He's not hiding anything.
Speaker 1: He's not hiding anything. Even listen to how quickly he
Speaker 1: answers some of these questions. I'm going to play this clip.
Speaker 1: He even cuts off the interviewer at one point confirming
Speaker 1: that yes he did that and yes he will do
Speaker 1: it again. That sort of thing. So confident, so cold,
Speaker 1: and even listening to the audio, you only get a
Speaker 1: fraction Like, looking at this guy when he's being interviewed,
Speaker 1: he looks like a hungry dog looking at a meal.
Speaker 1: That's what he looks like when he's looking at this
Speaker 1: guy interviewing him.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, yeah, way to just make a scringe a
Speaker 2: little there.
Speaker 1: Right, So here, I'm going to play the audio for you.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: He murdered your own son, Yes, I did. Why did
Speaker 3: you do that?
Speaker 4: He was to sacrifice. I wish to murder it three
Speaker 4: million people the planet Earth, and he was sacrificed to
Speaker 4: see if I could murder the woman if I own
Speaker 4: at the end of murdering all the people on Earth,
Speaker 4: I was going to murder my own family and then
Speaker 4: take my own life and become God.
Speaker 3: What do you think of the death penalty.
Speaker 4: I'm opposed to it.
Speaker 3: The state has no right to take your life, but
Speaker 3: you can murder other people.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone has the right to take the
Speaker 4: life except you. When I'm under hallucination, I do.
Speaker 3: These voices from God, these hallucinations. Do you still experience them?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: I do often often. Do you ever feel violent?
Speaker 4: Yes? I do. What do you feel like doing killing people?
Speaker 3: Do you still feel like killing people?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Describe the feeling that you get when you feel like kill. Well.
Speaker 4: Last March eleventh, I was hallucinating and I took a
Speaker 4: razor blade and I cut a man's through.
Speaker 3: Here in the hospital, you're in the hospital. Do you
Speaker 3: think it murdered me Joe. Yes, that's gruesome, Joe, that's horrible.
Speaker 4: Yes it is.
Speaker 3: And you don't blame me if I say, I hope
Speaker 3: you never get out of this place.
Speaker 4: I hope I never do either.
Speaker 2: He's very quick, he has like on his feet to
Speaker 2: answer anything. There's no thought there, just like it's just fact.
Speaker 1: This as a matter of fact. I did that, I
Speaker 1: want to do it again. I will do it again. Boom.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's simple there, there's no hiding it with him.
Speaker 1: It's so mad fact, black and white.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I don't want to say lucky, but
Speaker 2: I feel like society, you know, it's amazing that he
Speaker 2: didn't end up killing more people. I guess right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well in that clip he says he was
Speaker 1: to kill three million people.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So like, okay, I just have to say
Speaker 2: one more thing. Would he not have been on medication,
Speaker 2: you know at the time of that interview.
Speaker 1: Probably potentially, I'm sure he was on some sort of medication.
Speaker 2: But then he's still having these hallucinations and stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he was having those hallucinations often right up
Speaker 1: to the very end.
Speaker 2: Huh. Well, it just kind of that kind of makes
Speaker 2: you think a little bit, you know, like because as
Speaker 2: far as I'm aware, like medication is supposed to help
Speaker 2: help with that a little bit, right, So they were
Speaker 2: also unsure exactly what he had and he could have
Speaker 2: had multiple things.
Speaker 1: Now, if he was having hallucinations and if he was
Speaker 1: on medication, I'm sure the medication was helping with those hallucinations,
Speaker 1: but to what degree it was helping. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have no idea. That's something that only is medical records
Speaker 1: I'm sure would actually show and I don't think those
Speaker 1: are public.
Speaker 2: No, Well, he's just I don't know that interview. It's
Speaker 2: it scares me.
Speaker 1: He is one of the scariest individuals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ever, like a very scary man.
Speaker 1: We've covered some some terrifying people, and don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there's some stories that we've covered where we've had some
Speaker 1: very terrifying people up there with him too, But he
Speaker 1: is He's near the top for sure.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then just also the potential I guess too
Speaker 2: that he that his crimes could have brought. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean what he did was already horrific, but like you know,
Speaker 2: like you just said, he had plans and for way more.
Speaker 1: Well, imagine in that house when he killed Maria, Imagine
Speaker 1: someone didn't escape. Imagine this on Michael was upstairs ensuring
Speaker 1: no one was getting out. That would have been an
Speaker 1: entire house massacre.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, I'm sure they probably would have been caught
Speaker 1: after that, because I bet you anything, there would have
Speaker 1: been some fingerprints and stuff like that. They weren't too
Speaker 1: careful with the crime scene. But even still, that was
Speaker 1: a house of what eight people, So there would have
Speaker 1: been eight people dead and gone in that house if
Speaker 1: that person didn't escape.
Speaker 2: And I just have to say, too, we've talked so
Speaker 2: much about Michael, right, yeah, and his rehabilitation, but like
Speaker 2: his other kids too, Oh, you have so much just
Speaker 2: like even knowing that that's her father and what he
Speaker 2: did and still the games that he played on them
Speaker 2: and stuff you know, growing up.
Speaker 1: Well, the things that, like you say, the games he
Speaker 1: played on them, the rituals, the things he put them through.
Speaker 1: Imagine being one of those child for a minute. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter which one, just think in the shoes of
Speaker 1: knowing that your father has these sort of hallucinations and
Speaker 1: as a result, you went through those things. And then
Speaker 1: he also convinced one of your siblings to murder with him,
Speaker 1: and he killed one of your other siblings.
Speaker 4: Holy.
Speaker 1: And then the manipulation you know he had on your
Speaker 1: mother to boot and then the other rituals you know
Speaker 1: that he did on your other siblings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you just have to go on live in
Speaker 2: day to day with all that, yeah, in your brain.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot to take on, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: to begin with, yeah, now imagine yeah, just imagine that,
Speaker 1: Like I can't imagine that. It's so fucked up it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah there, I mean, yeah, I mean his upbringing was
Speaker 2: so terrible too, right, So how I said earlier that
Speaker 2: I was like, was he born with this? But I
Speaker 2: don't know, Well is this kind of maybe some degree,
Speaker 2: but yeah, this was mostly created.
Speaker 1: I feel like, in many ways, I feel very bad
Speaker 1: for Joseph Kallinger. I feel horrible for the guy because
Speaker 1: he's not hiding who he is. He's saying, it's a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I want to kill you right now.
Speaker 1: He said this in the interview, Yes I would kill
Speaker 1: you to the interviewer. Guy, And he's like, I hope
Speaker 1: I never get let out of here. Oh yeah, he
Speaker 1: knows the monster he is and he doesn't. He's dangerous
Speaker 1: and he doesn't want to be. He just knows that
Speaker 1: I'm fucked m h. And I will kill people. I
Speaker 1: will hurt people, and that's the matter of fact. And
Speaker 1: don't let me go because it will happen. Don't be wrong.
Speaker 1: He should be locked up. He's a fucking monster. But
Speaker 1: there's many times where it's like you feel bad for
Speaker 1: the monster, you.
Speaker 2: Know a little bit well, and then yeah, just how
Speaker 2: the monster was created too, right, Yeah, like you said,
Speaker 2: he's gone through a lot himself. So oh my gosh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this one, this is a doozy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of psychological stuff behind this one.
Speaker 2: Too, no kidding. I can only imagine, like you said,
Speaker 2: the studies that go on with this one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyways, hopefully you guys got through this one. It
Speaker 1: was a heavy one. It was a big one. If
Speaker 1: you have heard of the story before, I'm sure this
Speaker 1: is nothing new to you and you've already thought of
Speaker 1: much of this. But if you haven't before, and you
Speaker 1: got some new thoughts. If you have heard it, you've
Speaker 1: got some thoughts. If you haven't heard it, let us
Speaker 1: know your thoughts. Shoot us a message and email whatever.
Speaker 1: Join us in the conversations on Patreon because oftentimes that
Speaker 1: we're talking about cases after the fact in the chat
Speaker 1: and overr on our discord as well. So join us there.
Speaker 1: We got links down below you can contact us, join
Speaker 1: us in these in these community areas. And even still,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you being here. If you're not going to
Speaker 1: go check those out, because you guys make our show
Speaker 1: what it is. We couldn't be here without you listening
Speaker 1: right now, So thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. And until next time, I think you
Speaker 2: need to say it. This time, I'm always saying it. Well,
Speaker 2: until next time.
Speaker 1: You never do the thing, you don't give me the opportunity,
Speaker 1: We'll take the opportunity until next time you no, no,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta plan this off better. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna do the little description you thinging again, okay,
Speaker 1: and then you you casually like pass it over to
Speaker 1: me for me to end it. Okay, okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: check out the description we got contact stuff. It's all awesome.
Speaker 1: Give us a review. We're an indie podcast, and we
Speaker 1: appreciate you. Now you're turned go ahead.
Speaker 2: We do really appreciate it. We really do we really do,
Speaker 2: so until Friday, stay Wicked