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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. What do Wyatt earp Bill Gunnis, Bigfoot, the Renegade, Billy,
Speaker 6: the Kid and Doctor H. H. Holmes and the Black
Speaker 6: Hand have in common? They were all subjects of true
Speaker 6: crime newspaper reporting in the eighteen hundreds, and now these
Speaker 6: stories and that of many others, are brought together in
Speaker 6: their original form in a two volume set True Crime Chronicles,
Speaker 6: Serial Killers, Outlaws and Justice, Real crime stories from the
Speaker 6: eighteen hundreds, compiled and commented on by New York Times
Speaker 6: best selling author Mike Rothmiller. These classic works of journalism
Speaker 6: resurrect astonishing stories that will take the reader back to
Speaker 6: when these horrific tales mesmerized the nation. Some may find
Speaker 6: these articles and their descriptions of people in crimes shocking
Speaker 6: by today's standards, but they are representative of the most
Speaker 6: colorful true crime stories of the day. True Crime Chronicles
Speaker 6: Volume one includes stories about Bell Gunnis, who had a
Speaker 6: pensiont for killing men and feeding them to her hogs,
Speaker 6: Doctor Holmes and his Murder Castle, the Bloody Benders, and
Speaker 6: Amelia Dyer, the Baby Farmer, the Darker Side of Wyatt Earp,
Speaker 6: and the forerunners of the American mafia, the Black Hand.
Speaker 6: Imagine yourself accompanying these reporters, visiting the crime scenes, interviewing witnesses,
Speaker 6: and penning the stories of murder, lynchings, evil and swift
Speaker 6: frontier justice True Crime Chronicles. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 6: this evening is True Crime Chronicles Volume one, Serial Killers,
Speaker 6: Outlaws and Justice, Real crime stories from the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 6: with my special guest journalist and author and historian Mike Rothmiller.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for
Speaker 6: this interview. Mike Rothmiller.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's pleasure to be here. You're quite welcome.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Just give us a little bit
Speaker 6: of your background as a detective and tell us what
Speaker 6: was the impetus and for this True Crime Chronicles, and
Speaker 6: maybe tell us a little bit about your background as
Speaker 6: an author as well.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was a police officer in Los Angeles for
Speaker 2: ten years. I worked patrol as a training officer, I
Speaker 2: was a field supervisor, watch commander, and I worked undercover
Speaker 2: vice in Hollywood for eighteen months, which was very real
Speaker 2: eye opener. And then I worked undercover excuse me, on
Speaker 2: organized crime and intelligence for five years, and that was
Speaker 2: working on the traditional old Italian mafia, the Russian mafia,
Speaker 2: Israeli Mafia, and any other organized crime group that came along.
Speaker 2: I left the PD, it became a TV reporter, ended
Speaker 2: up being exec producer and hosting my own show on ESPN,
Speaker 2: and then along the line, I wrote. It's over twenty
Speaker 2: five books now and almost all of them, except for
Speaker 2: just a handful, are all true. And that's been my background.
Speaker 2: It's just fascinating looking into true crime and other issues
Speaker 2: that the government doesn't want you to know about secrets.
Speaker 2: So this particular book, these two volumes, I came across
Speaker 2: that I was researching an incident for another book, and
Speaker 2: I got into the archives across the country and into
Speaker 2: the national archives and the archives in Britain and so forth,
Speaker 2: and I start coming across stories that were written about
Speaker 2: serial killers, murderers, and bizarre crimes that occurred in some
Speaker 2: to the seventeen hundreds and then into the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: And I was fascinated by the stories because they were
Speaker 2: written by journalists. They appeared in newspapers, but the way
Speaker 2: they wrote the stories, they got into great detail. They
Speaker 2: were without question, the most knowledgeable people at the time
Speaker 2: investigating these let's say murders, because they would go out
Speaker 2: a lot of times with the detectives and they would
Speaker 2: find evidence a lot of times, and so they wrote
Speaker 2: very graphically about it, very well detailed, and so it
Speaker 2: is without question they were the best accounts of those
Speaker 2: crimes from the time, because court records are non existent
Speaker 2: anymore from the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds in most cases.
Speaker 2: So these were the best sources of evidence and stories
Speaker 2: of those crimes at the time. So anyway, I went
Speaker 2: through it, and I kept finding more and more interesting stories.
Speaker 2: Then I contacted the publisher Wildly Press and said, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got these wonderful stories. What do you think And
Speaker 2: they said, immediately, let's do it. These things are just
Speaker 2: too interesting not to put out in print. So that
Speaker 2: was the genesis of the books and they're doing extremely well.
Speaker 6: Oh absolutely, so deservedly. So let's talk about the summary
Speaker 6: that you have right at the beginning of what is
Speaker 6: in these true crime chronicles and this came out in
Speaker 6: October twenty twenty, this book. Can you just go through
Speaker 6: what's containing as you do with the serial killers and
Speaker 6: who's mentioned and the baby Farmers? Can you go through
Speaker 6: that for us?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, yeah. The serial killers that starts the book.
Speaker 2: There are three true serial killers, Bell Guinness, Doctor Holmes
Speaker 2: and the Bender family. Then I get into what was
Speaker 2: called the baby farmers, which are primarily in England. But
Speaker 2: people just didn't understand what they worry Even people in
Speaker 2: England didn't realize they had a history of this and
Speaker 2: they were for better term. Women would advertise in the
Speaker 2: seventeen eighteen ten to say, if you can't take care
Speaker 2: of your child or you want to give it up secretly,
Speaker 2: you give me at the time, like say equivalent to
Speaker 2: twenty dollars which would be several hundred several thousand, and
Speaker 2: I'll take care of your child, I'll raise it, or
Speaker 2: I will put it out for adoption and don't worry
Speaker 2: about it. So these women would do it as soon
Speaker 2: as these people were paid. The woman left left a
Speaker 2: child there, they would kill the baby and throw the
Speaker 2: baby in the Thames River. And I've got stories of
Speaker 2: three women who were doing it and at best guests,
Speaker 2: they probably killed close to a thousand babies in that fashion.
Speaker 2: So that's one there were. I also have a chapter
Speaker 2: about lynchings that went on in the US, and that
Speaker 2: really struck me interesting because most people believe, and rightfully so,
Speaker 2: that the vast majority of lynchings were conducted by white
Speaker 2: mobs on African Americans. They'd break them out of jail,
Speaker 2: they would capture them, they would hang him so forth.
Speaker 2: Well that was true. But also I have in their
Speaker 2: articles regarding African American groups who got together and went
Speaker 2: out and lynched African Americans for the same crimes, and
Speaker 2: so that's something that has really been forgotten in history
Speaker 2: that this occurred. So I have the stories about that.
Speaker 2: I have stories about some women and a man who
Speaker 2: were basically accused of being a witch, which is in England,
Speaker 2: and how they were killed. Then I get into the
Speaker 2: Old West regarding the Irp family, Doc Holliday other ones
Speaker 2: like that, and primarily talking about the dark side of
Speaker 2: the York family the Dalton Gang. And then what I
Speaker 2: found was really intriguing was Bigfoot. The Renegade was a
Speaker 2: guy that led some piutes on raiding parties and he
Speaker 2: was just he was amazing. He was a giant for
Speaker 2: the time. Physically they said he weighed over three hundred
Speaker 2: pounds solid muscle, was like six foot they guessed like
Speaker 2: six ft eight maybe a little bit larger, but just
Speaker 2: phenomenal story about him. And then the Black Hand, they
Speaker 2: were the forerunners of, if you want to say, the
Speaker 2: mafia when they really kind of changed names, that got
Speaker 2: into other crimes in America. Soorry have that. I have
Speaker 2: the assassination of President Garfield in there, from what happened,
Speaker 2: how it went down, and the person who was caught
Speaker 2: and eventually executed. Then I have a good number of
Speaker 2: short stories that I found were truly fascinating. They're probably
Speaker 2: about twenty of them in there, of just various bizarre
Speaker 2: crimes and the way people were treated back then. There's
Speaker 2: a dentist refused to be horsewhipped because he wrote a
Speaker 2: letter to a girl in another town that she thought
Speaker 2: was kind of embarrassing off color. So that was a crime,
Speaker 2: and so they decided to horsewhip this dentist and he
Speaker 2: wouldn't go. Ford says no, and he barricaded himself in
Speaker 2: his office, and then they finally parlayed and the girl said, Okay,
Speaker 2: if he comes down and apologizes me public, we won't
Speaker 2: horsewhip him, but he's got to leave town. And so
Speaker 2: that was the deal that was cut. He came out
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry for the letter, and he left town.
Speaker 2: The very strange things and then some very strange murders
Speaker 2: that occurred back during the eighteen hundreds. There's one in
Speaker 2: particular that sticks out my mind is that a girl
Speaker 2: caused the boy to be murdered. She was walking by
Speaker 2: a small encampment of basically Mexican woodcutters. She got home
Speaker 2: tells her dad that one of the is some boy
Speaker 2: there made some comment to her that was unseemly. They
Speaker 2: go back there and they forced the people there to
Speaker 2: whip this boy, and they whip him to death. And
Speaker 2: then the girl says, well, you know, he really didn't
Speaker 2: say that to me. I lied about it and just
Speaker 2: went on. Nothing happened. There was a wholesale slaughter of
Speaker 2: thirty four Chinese miners along the river that have their
Speaker 2: story in there and the people who were caught and
Speaker 2: why they did it. Interesting one about two teenage female
Speaker 2: outlaws that were very young and they take off and
Speaker 2: they were selling alcohol to the Indians, which was illegal,
Speaker 2: and when the posse started going after them, they had
Speaker 2: to shootout with the posse and the only reason they
Speaker 2: surrendered because they ran out of AMMO And it was
Speaker 2: kind of looked at as a crime shooting out with
Speaker 2: the deputies, but it really wasn't handled that way. They
Speaker 2: just basically took him in sent him to a reform school,
Speaker 2: you know something. Yeah, they're just very very strange stories
Speaker 2: in there, and one's about other people. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of axing going on, people being axed to death, and
Speaker 2: so there's stories about that. And then an interesting editorial
Speaker 2: I closed book with where the newspaper said, don't make
Speaker 2: heroes out of criminals, and that was based on a
Speaker 2: fellow that shot his girlfriend through the head and left
Speaker 2: her out next to a road. And they were kind
Speaker 2: of planed it up like they do today in some respects.
Speaker 2: You know, they get a lot of coverage and they're
Speaker 2: kind of turning them into a hero and so forth.
Speaker 2: So there's just a lot a lot of stories like.
Speaker 6: That what I would you mentioned too as well, But
Speaker 6: lots of these stories with the media, there wasn't a
Speaker 6: legal barrier at that time, so it did allow them
Speaker 6: to have access to detectives. And like you say, they
Speaker 6: often went along with detectives in some of these stories
Speaker 6: and were instrumental and discovering evidence as well. So this
Speaker 6: is unique aspect of these stories. Tell us some of
Speaker 6: the other things that were evident when you went through
Speaker 6: this information that really bring these stories to life like
Speaker 6: no other way.
Speaker 2: Well, one is that they are very detailed. When I'm
Speaker 2: talking about that, they'll say that the person took an
Speaker 2: axe and split their skull open and the brains were
Speaker 2: scattered throughout the room. And so for the very graphic
Speaker 2: and very detailed where today, well, when I was a
Speaker 2: cop investigating things like that, you would never release those
Speaker 2: details of one. You'd never let a reporter into a
Speaker 2: crime scene to look around. And there's certain things that
Speaker 2: you would always keep confidential because only the killer would know,
Speaker 2: so then you can eliminate people who are giving false confessions.
Speaker 2: But in these cases, in these stories, the reporters in
Speaker 2: most cases were there. They accompanied the detectives or the
Speaker 2: shriff or whoever was to the scene. They many cases,
Speaker 2: they found the evidence, some of the evidence, and they
Speaker 2: examined it, and then they went to a lot of
Speaker 2: the people who were arrested and they would get an
Speaker 2: interview from them fairly. Fascina, why did you kill so
Speaker 2: and so? Well, you know, he healed me five dollars
Speaker 2: and he went pay it back, So I took an
Speaker 2: axe and cut his head off, and they would just
Speaker 2: lay it out where today, well, for the last forty
Speaker 2: to fifty years, it said you got to mirandize people.
Speaker 2: You can't do this, you can't do that. If they
Speaker 2: say they want an attorney, that ends everything, even if
Speaker 2: they say they want their mother. A lot of times
Speaker 2: the investigation, with the interrogation and so it brings back
Speaker 2: what an investigation was conduct how it was conducted in
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, what went on before mirandizing, before you know,
Speaker 2: attorney's really got involved, how the cops would operate, and
Speaker 2: in many cases, the suspects of the arrest, thee they
Speaker 2: would just absolutely come out and just confess proudly. And
Speaker 2: then when they were being taken to the gallows to
Speaker 2: be executed. You know, a lot of them just walked
Speaker 2: up there said hey, this is part of the game.
Speaker 2: Now I'm going to be hung. And they were very
Speaker 2: cool and collected, and they confessed once more before they
Speaker 2: were hung. So it's just it brings that history to
Speaker 2: life by reading this, the words and the quotes that
Speaker 2: are in there, and the interrogations and so forth, it's
Speaker 2: just it's just a fascinating look at crime from over
Speaker 2: a century ago, how they were investigated, how people were
Speaker 2: treated as far as criminals. In most cases, there was
Speaker 2: very few appeals. If they were convicted in the say
Speaker 2: a county court and they were sends to death in
Speaker 2: most cases there was no peel. That was it. And
Speaker 2: in many cases they had to hang them within thirty
Speaker 2: days or within three months, and that's what they did.
Speaker 2: They just waited and said, Okay, that's it, we're going
Speaker 2: to hang you now. And so it's just it's a
Speaker 2: real eye opener to see how things have changed.
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Speaker 6: Let's talk about the serial killers that you do do
Speaker 6: cover here, because of course they're some of the most
Speaker 6: famous and the coverage of it is absolutely fascinating as
Speaker 6: well that you include in this book. Let's start with
Speaker 6: a little bit of what you did learn about probably
Speaker 6: a killer that you knew someone about, Bell Dunnis, through
Speaker 6: these articles that you present in this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Bell was a very interesting woman, needless to say,
Speaker 2: very cold, very deliberate in the way she murdered people.
Speaker 2: She was for a better term. She had like a
Speaker 2: B and B and she would invite men over and
Speaker 2: sometimes she would marry them, sometimes she wouldn't, And when
Speaker 2: they would go to bed, she would chloroform them and
Speaker 2: if that didn't kill them outright, she would just sometimes
Speaker 2: use an eye for using axe and behead them, and
Speaker 2: then she would take them out to her garden and
Speaker 2: bury them. In many cases, from all the stories I
Speaker 2: read about it is that she would generally plant something
Speaker 2: over where she buried the person, a small tree, some
Speaker 2: other plant, and that way she would know not to
Speaker 2: bury the next one there, because she would dig up
Speaker 2: the one that she buried the day before or the
Speaker 2: month before. So she was interesting. And then it appears
Speaker 2: once some people got on to her what she was doing,
Speaker 2: she had for a better term, a helper that would
Speaker 2: help her now. And then Ray Lampierre and her house
Speaker 2: was burned down, and in the basement, once you know,
Speaker 2: everything was settled, they found three children, and she had
Speaker 2: three children. They found the body's three children. They found
Speaker 2: the body of a woman that was beheaded, and they
Speaker 2: didn't find the head, and so they were guessing, said, well,
Speaker 2: this might be Belle because the body size is about
Speaker 2: the same, but it may not because she was so ruthless.
Speaker 2: She would have killed her three kids and also found
Speaker 2: somebody else killed that woman, took her head so she
Speaker 2: couldn't be identified, and it just took off. And so
Speaker 2: the mystery remains is that Bell was that her body
Speaker 2: or not in the basement of that burned out house.
Speaker 2: And so when you get into the details how she
Speaker 2: operated and how she was discovered, it's truly fascinating. The
Speaker 2: detailed work that some other people did back then looking
Speaker 2: for relatives that they knew went past her house and
Speaker 2: then they started coming back to wait a minute, we
Speaker 2: think she may be the person involved. And when it
Speaker 2: started closing in on her, that's when the house went down,
Speaker 2: and some believed at the time that it was her
Speaker 2: farm hand who held bury the bodies, basically killed her
Speaker 2: and burned the house down with the kids because there
Speaker 2: was a deal that went down and he didn't believe
Speaker 2: he was paid enough for it from this one killing.
Speaker 2: So it's just a fascinating look at a female serial
Speaker 2: killer from that timeframe. And frankly, there aren't that many
Speaker 2: serial killers, as you know, most of them are males.
Speaker 2: So it takes you into the psychic of this woman
Speaker 2: and the way she brutally murdered people and just went
Speaker 2: about her business like she's slaughtering a hog. You know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes she would go out and feed them to her
Speaker 2: hogs in the Little Wallow area. And when the police
Speaker 2: finally were there looking around one of the hogs came
Speaker 2: up and had a human bone in its mouth it
Speaker 2: was gnawing on. So yeah, she was pretty cruel.
Speaker 6: Yes, you talk about next Bender family, which you call
Speaker 6: the most intriguing serial killer family during the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 6: Oh well, most intriguing serial killer family period, but operating
Speaker 6: during the late eighteen hundreds, family of four and again
Speaker 6: sort of not a bed and breakfast, but inviting travelers
Speaker 6: to have a meal and spend the night, very similar
Speaker 6: to I guess a bed and breakfast. Tell us what
Speaker 6: this ends up being, the legend of where these people went.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about what these articles inform
Speaker 6: people about the Bender family.
Speaker 2: To these articles, well, the articles talked about the beginning,
Speaker 2: how they were, what they were doing, and how they
Speaker 2: were killing people, and how was discovered, and then how
Speaker 2: the Benders vanished and basically what they would do. They had,
Speaker 2: like you said, they had a small for a better term,
Speaker 2: a small room that was a store in their house.
Speaker 2: And they had a house out in the middle of
Speaker 2: nowhere along this traveled dirt road, and when people are
Speaker 2: going by, primarily they'd invite men in to spend the night,
Speaker 2: single men if they thought they had any money with them,
Speaker 2: many valuables, and the daughter she would engage the person
Speaker 2: in the conversation. They had a table where they sat
Speaker 2: down deep. They'd always put the person's back to the
Speaker 2: window that was opened directly behind them. And as the daughter,
Speaker 2: who was like early twenties, would engage the person in conversation,
Speaker 2: either the father or husband would come up behind them
Speaker 2: hit him in the back of the head with a
Speaker 2: hammer or an axe. There was a trap door just
Speaker 2: below them. They'd pull the trap door, the person would
Speaker 2: fall into the basement, and if they were still alive,
Speaker 2: the mother was down there with a large knife for
Speaker 2: an axe, and she would behead the person, and then
Speaker 2: they would go ahead and take the valuables and so forth.
Speaker 2: And once again they would take the body out and
Speaker 2: bury them at night somewhere on their property, generally in
Speaker 2: there near the gardens and so forth. And this went
Speaker 2: on for some time, and it was like an early
Speaker 2: version B and B. So it was very bloody. And
Speaker 2: when they were basically being detected what they were doing,
Speaker 2: they took off one night, all of them. And over
Speaker 2: the next few years there would be a story about
Speaker 2: a bender or somebody they thought was a bender. One
Speaker 2: of the men or one of the women were apprehended
Speaker 2: in North Carolina, and then they'd find out, no, that
Speaker 2: wasn't one of the Benders, and then there'd be another
Speaker 2: one apprehended someplace else. No, that wasn't them. So the
Speaker 2: whole family just vanished, and to this day, nobody knows
Speaker 2: where they went. They split up or they stayed together,
Speaker 2: but they were never caught. And so it was again
Speaker 2: a very interesting story that you would see on forty
Speaker 2: eight Hours or something like that, but they escaped, and
Speaker 2: it's one of the great mysteries what happened to the Benders.
Speaker 2: So it's a very detailed story, and it goes through
Speaker 2: a number of the people they killed, and how the
Speaker 2: bodies were found, in the condition of the bodies when
Speaker 2: they were discovered on the property, and a good number
Speaker 2: of bodies, and they probably did not find all the
Speaker 2: bodies if they buried them away from the house, because
Speaker 2: they just primarily looked around the house in that area
Speaker 2: when they were searching for bodies. So it's an interesting
Speaker 2: situation where it was a family that were serial killers.
Speaker 2: They killed together and generally a single individual or two,
Speaker 2: and in this case it was a family, a husband
Speaker 2: and wife, their daughter and son in law. So it's
Speaker 2: kind of shocking when you read the story about the
Speaker 2: entire family.
Speaker 6: Absolutely what I commented I want to comment is that
Speaker 6: unlike reporters today, these articles are written very much like
Speaker 6: in depth, like an author that would have access to
Speaker 6: court transcripts and evidence and the kind of information that
Speaker 6: police departments would have. That being said, one of the
Speaker 6: most fascinating stories in this incredible collection happens to be H. H.
Speaker 6: Holmes and headlines like turns out to be a veritable
Speaker 6: factory for murder, a sealed chamber, a steel vault, a crematory,
Speaker 6: and quickline gray A dark chaft found to run from
Speaker 6: the sealed room into the house built at Chicago by
Speaker 6: HH Holmes, who is charged with at least eleven murders
Speaker 6: and suspected of many more. I wanted to say, or
Speaker 6: at least have this story demonstrate the power of the
Speaker 6: articles to not only just inform people of the details,
Speaker 6: but also what I thought was interesting is that there's
Speaker 6: so much difference between the folklore and the mythology of
Speaker 6: HH Holmes and how many victims, specifically in wild claims
Speaker 6: about ovaries and young Maidens in this place. But I
Speaker 6: think with these articles, what I found was a very
Speaker 6: very much like a journalist today, a very grounded, non sillacious,
Speaker 6: detailed account of HH Holmes, his elaborate murder castle, but
Speaker 6: also lending credence to that he killed many more people
Speaker 6: than there was evidence for the police to prove of
Speaker 6: his murderous bent. And so can we talk about JH.
Speaker 6: Holmes and some of these fascinating articles.
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah. HH Holmes was operating in Chicago regarding about
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five. His true name was Herman Webster Mudget
Speaker 2: and he went by HH Holmes in a couple other names,
Speaker 2: and he was a serial killer. He had some medical training,
Speaker 2: it looks like he probably graduated from medical school. And
Speaker 2: he was a pharmacist. And he was a swindler. He
Speaker 2: was a con man. And what he did in Chicago
Speaker 2: was he built his castle. And the dimensions were it
Speaker 2: was one hundred and sixty two feet long and fifty
Speaker 2: feet wide, three stories high, and in it, if you've
Speaker 2: ever seen the like the Winchester Mystery House, you have
Speaker 2: doors opening the walls, stairways to nowhere. That's how this
Speaker 2: house was built. And he oversaw it. He swindled most
Speaker 2: of the work and bricks and so forth from people,
Speaker 2: so he didn't pay a lot for it. But it
Speaker 2: was built and there were rooms that led nowhere. There
Speaker 2: were sealed rooms, there were mazes. It would be just
Speaker 2: think of a corn maze going through it. But it's
Speaker 2: all enclosed with various doors. And he knew how these
Speaker 2: secret passages worked through the house, but the detectives didn't
Speaker 2: when they first went in there. And also the workers.
Speaker 2: What he would do. He would hire some for a
Speaker 2: while and then he would fire them. He turned them
Speaker 2: over constantly because apparently he didn't want anybody to know
Speaker 2: how this house really functions, the secret passages, the trap doors,
Speaker 2: the wiring, the vats to dissolve bodies and so forth.
Speaker 2: So he's a very strange, very cunning, and he knew
Speaker 2: a lot about law enforcement techniques at the time investigations,
Speaker 2: and he certainly knew how to dissolve bodies because in
Speaker 2: his basement he had two vats. They found one had
Speaker 2: quicklime in it and the other, they're surmising it had
Speaker 2: some sort of oily acid in it. And he would
Speaker 2: put the bodies in there and dissolve them, and through time,
Speaker 2: they would even dissolve the bones. Then he was so bizarre.
Speaker 2: He had one guy articulate three the skeletons that he
Speaker 2: basically probably put him into the vat quicklime, and once
Speaker 2: all the skin and muscle tissue was gone, it was
Speaker 2: just a skeleton. He removed him and he had the
Speaker 2: guy articulate them, so they were standing in different poses.
Speaker 2: And why he did that, you know, there were obviously
Speaker 2: trophies to him, but some of the other bodies were
Speaker 2: completely dissolved. He also had his own crematorium in his basement,
Speaker 2: and they found some human remains in there, some bones
Speaker 2: and so forth, but they have no idea how many
Speaker 2: people he cremated in his basement, how many people he
Speaker 2: dissolved in his vats of acid in quicklime. But they
Speaker 2: did find some bones buried in his basement, human bones,
Speaker 2: and he was so cunning. He also took animal bones
Speaker 2: and mixed them with the human bones, and so he
Speaker 2: told them those were suit bones. If the police ever
Speaker 2: found them some of them, they did find that they
Speaker 2: were suit bones, but then they identified human bones in there.
Speaker 2: He also traveled around the country, mainly on the east coast,
Speaker 2: and there was always somebody dying near him generally had
Speaker 2: something to do with him kids, or excuse me, somebody
Speaker 2: hired as a servant or to work around his castle.
Speaker 2: So he was very, very strange. But the way the
Speaker 2: house was set up is that he had a pharmacy
Speaker 2: on the first level that went out onto the street,
Speaker 2: and he had the entire second third floor wired so
Speaker 2: when somebody walked down the hall, it would set off
Speaker 2: for a better term, and alarm in his office, so
Speaker 2: he knew where people were at at all times. In
Speaker 2: the house, they found rooms that had no ventilation whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Once the person was in there, they would suffocate, or
Speaker 2: there was a pipe that he would pump in natural
Speaker 2: gas and the people would die that way. So he
Speaker 2: was very cunning. He had a number of ways that
Speaker 2: he would kill people, and the estimates go from eleven
Speaker 2: up to several hundred that he killed. And the reason
Speaker 2: it's so high is that he was set up for
Speaker 2: the World's Fair in Chicago, and the idea was to
Speaker 2: get people to come in there and they could spend
Speaker 2: the night in a room very inexpensively, and there were
Speaker 2: several hundred people who attended the World's Fair in Chicago
Speaker 2: that never returned home. They never found the trace of them.
Speaker 2: So that's where the high number comes. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's anybody's guess, it really is. It was anybody's guest,
Speaker 2: then it's anybody's guests today the exact number that he killed.
Speaker 2: But he was extremely cunning, and you know, I guess
Speaker 2: he would be one of the top serial killers as
Speaker 2: far as being cool and collected during his time what
Speaker 2: he would do because these people would be obviously be
Speaker 2: seen going into his castle by some on the street,
Speaker 2: but they never see them again. And so it's very
Speaker 2: well detailed. The way it's written is the stories. The
Speaker 2: reporters went through the house and interviewed the detectives that
Speaker 2: was who are involved in it, and they get into
Speaker 2: great detail about these secret rooms and the staircases and
Speaker 2: the vaults that he had, and how people were overcome
Speaker 2: when they went into the basement when they found this
Speaker 2: one vat that they said was oily, how they were
Speaker 2: overcome with it. And then they talked about how he
Speaker 2: set up a fake gas company natural gas and so forth,
Speaker 2: and that he ran a natural gas line underneath for
Speaker 2: better term, a big vat of water hue, throwing some
Speaker 2: chemicals and then started up and he'd go look boom.
Speaker 2: He would set the gas a fire that was coming
Speaker 2: up out of the water, and he convinced these people
Speaker 2: he was a swilller, that he had these chemicals, whatever
Speaker 2: they were, and he could turn water into gas and
Speaker 2: burn it. And so doesn't mean he was a con
Speaker 2: man and a mass murderer at the same time. And
Speaker 2: obviously he was extremely intelligent, but he was very, very deadly.
Speaker 6: And what's most fascinating is the reporting showing how very
Speaker 6: much that he was set up to dispose of bodies
Speaker 6: and mass They said that he found it hard to
Speaker 6: believe he could kill anywhere else because he really had
Speaker 6: this veritable factory set up where he could incinerate, dispose
Speaker 6: of in various ways people at will, exactly.
Speaker 2: And you think about it, well, the next century, what
Speaker 2: the Nazis were doing in concentration camps, the creematoriums, so forth,
Speaker 2: disposing of mass amounts of people, and that's what he
Speaker 2: was doing on a smaller scale. But for an individual,
Speaker 2: he was very very active.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, we gonna use this as an opportunity to stop
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Speaker 6: we last spoke of HH Holmes and the incredible articles
Speaker 6: that really demonstrated the access that these reporters had at
Speaker 6: that time. Fascinating articles about one of the most fascinating
Speaker 6: killers and subjects of all time, AHH. Holmes. You also
Speaker 6: talked about the baby baby farms and the reason why
Speaker 6: people would utilize these baby farms, and tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit more about this baby farming in terms of
Speaker 6: the numbers that were you know, if records can be believed,
Speaker 6: what kind of numbers are we talking about. Tell us
Speaker 6: more about baby farming.
Speaker 2: The baby farmers were primarily operating in England at the time, England, Scotland,
Speaker 2: some in Ireland. There were a few in the United States,
Speaker 2: but very few. But the ones that operate in England
Speaker 2: have stories of three women and sometimes a young girl
Speaker 2: or a woman couldn't couldn't afford to raise the child,
Speaker 2: or it was out of wed lock, and back then
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds, you know, that was a huge thing.
Speaker 2: And so these baby farmers, they would advertise in the
Speaker 2: papers in London and other areas that for whatever the
Speaker 2: fee would be a nominal fee, they will take your child,
Speaker 2: no questions asked, and they will raise the child as
Speaker 2: their own, or they will see that it is adopted
Speaker 2: into a good family. So there was no shortage of
Speaker 2: women at the time willing to give up their child,
Speaker 2: and so they would meet with them, generally at their
Speaker 2: homes and they would hand over the child, most cases
Speaker 2: they were infants, with some whatever clothing they had, which
Speaker 2: was limited, and pay the fee, and then they were
Speaker 2: assured that the child would be adopted or raised, and
Speaker 2: just when they would leave, sometimes within a matter of
Speaker 2: an hour, if not sooner, these women would strangle the baby,
Speaker 2: put it into a sack, put a rock in the sack,
Speaker 2: and then throw it into the river. And the way
Speaker 2: they were discovered is that sometimes they didn't tie the
Speaker 2: sack and the body would float out. And so down
Speaker 2: river from this area they start finding baby bodies floating
Speaker 2: up along the shore and so forth, and the police
Speaker 2: start backtracking and that's how they came across these people.
Speaker 2: In most cases, as they backtracked and they start going
Speaker 2: from how the house and it wasn't like a major city,
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of a rural area. And so
Speaker 2: they finally determined who the people were, the women, and
Speaker 2: they have the interrogations in there in many cases, in
Speaker 2: some of the interrogations from the trial, and most of
Speaker 2: the women ended up they were hung for their crimes.
Speaker 2: And body count they would guess was well into the hundreds,
Speaker 2: if not thousands, because these were only three of the
Speaker 2: women that they were able to arrest and try. Other
Speaker 2: ones were never detected. From other articles I read, they
Speaker 2: were just you know, bodies turned up. But they couldn't
Speaker 2: determine where the child came from. It just washed up
Speaker 2: on the bank or somewhere. So these women were very diabolical,
Speaker 2: and for a woman, it was kind interesting because they
Speaker 2: were very cruel. They would just take this baby in
Speaker 2: and without that instinct that most women would have about
Speaker 2: a child, they just strangle them. They looked at them
Speaker 2: as a little farm animal. They were just slaughtering and
Speaker 2: they just would slaughter them and toss them away. And
Speaker 2: in one person, this one baby farm or having there.
Speaker 2: When the police finally arrested her went to her house,
Speaker 2: she had over three hundred pounds of baby clothing. And
Speaker 2: now you have to think about that, how many babies
Speaker 2: that would represent, because in most cases they didn't have
Speaker 2: a lot of outfits. They had maybe one or two
Speaker 2: that they would give to the woman when they turned
Speaker 2: the baby over. So three hundred pounds of clothing and
Speaker 2: baby clothing adds up to a large number. So it's
Speaker 2: just shocking when you read the stories that these women were.
Speaker 2: They were serial killers at the time, and there were
Speaker 2: more than one. There were quite a few in England
Speaker 2: that we're doing it, and so you look at it
Speaker 2: was an industry that was run on murdering babies, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's just it's a shocking and fascinating story and
Speaker 2: it's certainly an eye opener to the cruelty of a
Speaker 2: lot of people.
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Speaker 6: One of the most fascinating things in this book too,
Speaker 6: as well, is that you talk about the Old West,
Speaker 6: and you talk about the Erp family. Why at Earp
Speaker 6: and his family and Doc Holiday So books like you say, books, papers,
Speaker 6: movies have portrayed him as an honorable lawman bringing desperadoes
Speaker 6: to justice. But you say that there's a very very
Speaker 6: interesting backstory found in newspaper articles of the day and
Speaker 6: as well as law enforcement at that time and at
Speaker 6: other times consider them that they were a gang of
Speaker 6: thieves and bandits. So tell us a little bit more
Speaker 6: about these fascinating articles and the backstory about the Erp
Speaker 6: family and dalk Holiday.
Speaker 2: Sure, when I was researching the book, I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to do something about the wild
Speaker 2: West then, because the eighteen hundreds and late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: that's what was really going on in the Indian Wars
Speaker 2: and so forth. And I thought, okay, whiater, I've seen
Speaker 2: the movies or read the books. You know, I know
Speaker 2: that I thought I knew the general story. Well, as
Speaker 2: it turned out, the IRBs warn't that clean. And you know,
Speaker 2: dating way back when Wyatt was younger, I have his
Speaker 2: an arrest warrant that was issued for Wyatt because he
Speaker 2: was a horse thief and what he did. Instead of
Speaker 2: being prosecuted, he took off and ran in the Indian territory.
Speaker 2: They never caught him. But they would go from town totown,
Speaker 2: as the story goes that most people know that they
Speaker 2: would go from town totown. They were lawmen and you know,
Speaker 2: fighting the bad guys all the time, and then there
Speaker 2: was a shootdown Tombstone and so forth. Well, a lot
Speaker 2: of that's true. Sometimes when they went to a new town,
Speaker 2: it's because they got chased out of the last town
Speaker 2: because of criminal activity, and so they'd take off and
Speaker 2: in many cases the jobs that they could find that
Speaker 2: were open immediately was being a marshal or a share
Speaker 2: for deputy so forth, and so to earn some money
Speaker 2: while they got the lay of the town, they would
Speaker 2: take a job as a sheriff, marshall, whatever. And what
Speaker 2: their main gig was is that they were into robbing
Speaker 2: stage coaches where the other ones is the people were
Speaker 2: cattle thieves, orce thieves and so forth, and so they
Speaker 2: knew who the other criminals were. And when they were
Speaker 2: in Tombstone, yeah, they one was acting as a marshall
Speaker 2: and so forth, but they were also going out during
Speaker 2: the day. If they would learn that a stage was
Speaker 2: coming in, primarily a Wills Fargo stage that had cash
Speaker 2: or gold on it, they would go out and rob it.
Speaker 2: Then they would come back to town and the stage
Speaker 2: would come in and they basically say, hey, we were robbed,
Speaker 2: and the IRPs would say, well, let's put together a
Speaker 2: posse and go out and find those esperadoes. So they
Speaker 2: put together posse. They would go out look for themselves.
Speaker 2: They never found themselves and they'd come back. And the
Speaker 2: way that that scheme was broken is that the agent
Speaker 2: they had at Wells Fargo who would tell them when
Speaker 2: a load was coming in a load of gold or
Speaker 2: something finally broke down and start talking, and that's when
Speaker 2: the towns start going after the IRPs. And the IRPs
Speaker 2: left Tucson along with not Tucson, you know, they left, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Tombstone with the doc Holiday. And another story that I found,
Speaker 2: which just surprised me, is that early on, prior to this,
Speaker 2: the younger sister of the Herbs married. She basically eloped,
Speaker 2: and they did not approve of this, so they took
Speaker 2: out after her. And they found her in the next
Speaker 2: town with her husband and Ike Clanton which you remember
Speaker 2: that name from the Ok Corral, and they just start
Speaker 2: shooting into the hotel where they were at. Well, they
Speaker 2: missed Ike and they hit the sister. She was wounded,
Speaker 2: so I grabs her, runs out the back, gets on
Speaker 2: the horse holding her, carrying her, takes off. They're in
Speaker 2: pursuit of them, and he gets up to a mine
Speaker 2: which is supposed to have been a load of Irish
Speaker 2: miners there, and he runs in the mine carrying his
Speaker 2: wounded wife and tells them these guys are chasing me.
Speaker 2: They want to kill me. They shot my wife. So
Speaker 2: the Herbs arrive with Holiday. The miners come out anywhere
Speaker 2: between twenty and thirty miners come out their arm and
Speaker 2: say we want him, and they say no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you're not taking him. You're not getting her. So they
Speaker 2: chat for a while and they decide to have a
Speaker 2: duel ike Clanton against one of the younger irt brothers,
Speaker 2: and whoever wins for a bed term gets the girl.
Speaker 2: So they the one IRB brother fires at Clanton, misses,
Speaker 2: Clanton fires at him, kills him, and the miners say, hey,
Speaker 2: fair fight. That's the end of it. And so the
Speaker 2: IRPs get out ready to leave, and unfortunately Clanton's wife
Speaker 2: she died from that gunshot wound. So that goes on,
Speaker 2: and so there's after that, there's always some obviously animosity
Speaker 2: between the two. And then they end up down in
Speaker 2: Tombstone where Ike is running basically some cattle thieves the Clantons,
Speaker 2: and then the IRPs are doing their stagecoach robberies, and
Speaker 2: then they end up shooting out at the Ok Corral,
Speaker 2: and at that stage everybody kind of takes off. So
Speaker 2: the whole thing about the IRBs, the story that most
Speaker 2: people know, is just it's not accurate. And then Wyatt
Speaker 2: eventually ends up in San Francisco and he's basically the
Speaker 2: referee in this heavyweight boxing match, and there's no doubt
Speaker 2: he threw the fight for twenty five hundred dollars for
Speaker 2: this guy that basically knocked out the other guy, and
Speaker 2: the crowd went crazy, they're throwing things up on the stage.
Speaker 2: Everybody believed and probably still to this day, that Wyatt
Speaker 2: was paid off and that he threw the match to
Speaker 2: this one guy. And so Wyatt's long history was tarnished
Speaker 2: all the way along from day one when he was
Speaker 2: young until his death. But it was never it's never
Speaker 2: really been reported in current media or relatively new media,
Speaker 2: or in movies or in books about him. All of
Speaker 2: that has been left out. And so when I read this,
Speaker 2: I found it so interesting and it rewrote history. I said,
Speaker 2: these stories of the Europs have to be put into
Speaker 2: the book. Then there's some questions said, well the stories
Speaker 2: accurate and not. Well, yeah, you have to look at
Speaker 2: the accuracy because that's where all historians would be getting
Speaker 2: their informations from these old articles. And then Wyatt actually
Speaker 2: sued a newspaper and I've got a quote. It's very
Speaker 2: funny because he talks about it was a fake story,
Speaker 2: it's fake news and so he sued that newspaper. And
Speaker 2: so if a lot of these stories were not true,
Speaker 2: he probably would have sued them at the time, but
Speaker 2: instead he would always take off him and his brothers
Speaker 2: and go to the next town for the next state.
Speaker 2: So fascinating story about the Irk family that people are
Speaker 2: completely unaware of.
Speaker 6: Another story. You say, that's you discovered it, and I've
Speaker 6: never read it anywhere else, And you say it's an
Speaker 6: original story too. Is this Bigfoot the renegade? We touched
Speaker 6: on it a little bit, This six foot eight and
Speaker 6: a half three hundred pounds consummate warrior and killer with
Speaker 6: a headline, a gigantic and bloodthirsty renegade who led the
Speaker 6: Piote band of the Snake Indians in their raids upon
Speaker 6: immigrant trains along Snake River in early days. Yes, a
Speaker 6: little bit more about what you found he was I
Speaker 6: never knew about.
Speaker 2: Tri came across these articles and they called him Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: and the reason being because his foot measured over seventeen inches.
Speaker 2: And when they would find like wagon trains on the
Speaker 2: immigrant trail and so forth where the people were slaughtered,
Speaker 2: they always found these huge footprints in the dirt, and
Speaker 2: so they started calling him bigfoot, and what he was.
Speaker 2: His father was black, his mother was probably the thinking
Speaker 2: an Indian or a white woman. And he was just
Speaker 2: a giant, as you described in six foot eight three
Speaker 2: fifty pounds, and he was just a giant of a man.
Speaker 2: And this story is so fascinating because he led a
Speaker 2: group of a band of Payoute Indians along that area
Speaker 2: and they were conducting raids all the time, and they
Speaker 2: were slaughter people. So in some ways he was a
Speaker 2: serial killer too. But he would slaughter the people. He
Speaker 2: would take their riches, him and his band of Piutes,
Speaker 2: and then they would take off and he'd come back.
Speaker 2: And what was so fascinating about is that he didn't
Speaker 2: write a whole They said there was no horse that
Speaker 2: was large enough for him, and so he would run
Speaker 2: where his other the Piu band, they were on horses
Speaker 2: in many cases, but he would run and he would
Speaker 2: keep up with them, or he would outpace them. And
Speaker 2: in the story one of these guys who actually they
Speaker 2: killed him, they ran him down a conning. He would
Speaker 2: just stay well ahead of them. They were on horseback,
Speaker 2: they're on his track. But he would just run and
Speaker 2: run and run and outrun them. And when they finally
Speaker 2: found him, cornered him. They shot him a number of
Speaker 2: times with rifles and didn't kill him. And so they
Speaker 2: start talking to him and they get his story, and
Speaker 2: so the guy is relating the story that Bigfoot was
Speaker 2: telling them about. But it was Bigfoot the renegade, operating
Speaker 2: up in that area around the Snake River. A huge,
Speaker 2: giant man and relatively intelligent when you read his statements
Speaker 2: what he was talking about. He was fairly intelligent. But
Speaker 2: he was a brutal killer and in many cases he
Speaker 2: would just kill with his bare hands. He didn't need
Speaker 2: a gun, he didn't need anything else. He would just
Speaker 2: kill the people with his hands. So it's a fascinating story.
Speaker 2: And when I first came across it, I read the
Speaker 2: headline Bigfoot, and I said, what's this? You know, I
Speaker 2: was thinking of something in Washington State. Instead it was
Speaker 2: this renegade, and it actually was a more interesting story.
Speaker 2: So Bigfoot the Renegade his entire stories in there, and
Speaker 2: it is quite fascinating because it's somebody who was a
Speaker 2: in some respects a major part of history, but nobody's
Speaker 2: ever heard about.
Speaker 6: I wanted to talk to before I let you go
Speaker 6: about the Abbeville, U. S. And Banner eighteen eighty five
Speaker 6: a needed law. And you have a commentary too, perhaps
Speaker 6: the most insane editorial you located during your research. Tell
Speaker 6: us about this article and this is contrary to just
Speaker 6: I mean, you don't see any other indication in this
Speaker 6: book from these reporters of again, like you say, sort
Speaker 6: of an insane reporting. Tell us a little bit about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was shocked when I came across because it
Speaker 2: was an editorial by this newspaper. And basically what they're
Speaker 2: talking about, how there should be a hunting season for
Speaker 2: a better term on the blacks Native American not African
Speaker 2: Americans back then, that should be in line with deer
Speaker 2: season and turkey season. Things like that there's a season
Speaker 2: where you can hunt them, and that during this hunting
Speaker 2: season it would be okay and understandable to kill a black.
Speaker 2: And the reason being was that they were upset because
Speaker 2: some of the people that were for better term farming
Speaker 2: and had these African Americans as hands and slaves there
Speaker 2: and so forth, that they would kill them year round
Speaker 2: if they were upset about something. And they said that no,
Speaker 2: this is wrong because it impacts the harvest season. That
Speaker 2: you should not be able to kill blacks, even though
Speaker 2: it's understandable and it's justified. They said, you should not
Speaker 2: be able to kill blacks during certain months when the
Speaker 2: harvest that's coming in, because that would impact the economy
Speaker 2: of that region. And at first when I read it,
Speaker 2: I thought, well, wait a minute, is this some kind
Speaker 2: of weird, bizarre, sarcastic humor. And then I went back,
Speaker 2: I said, no, this from the editorial board at the newspaper,
Speaker 2: and they're dead seriously. And then I pulled other editorials
Speaker 2: from the same newspaper, and I realized that now they
Speaker 2: weren't joking. They're dead serious, that there should be a
Speaker 2: hunting season like there is on other game animals for
Speaker 2: blacks during that timeframe. It's just it's beyond shocking when
Speaker 2: you read it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, what as well? You talk about the editorial
Speaker 6: about not making criminals famous or heroizing these criminals, tell
Speaker 6: us about that editorial.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was a one. A guy broken with his
Speaker 2: girlfriend and they were walking. She was walking home with
Speaker 2: the mother another person, and he jumps out of the bushes,
Speaker 2: drags her into the off the road, kills her and
Speaker 2: shoots her through the head. And so as he's going
Speaker 2: to trial, they were the various newspapers in that area
Speaker 2: were running articles about it, well, gee, he is really
Speaker 2: a nice guy, and some of them that he was
Speaker 2: handsome and you have to understand his position and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. And this editorial board had enough of that
Speaker 2: and they said, which was interesting, they said, hey, this
Speaker 2: guy is a criminal. He murdered this girl, and we
Speaker 2: have to quit making heroes out of criminals. They're criminals.
Speaker 2: So the community stopped talking about him like he's a
Speaker 2: great guy and fascinated by him. And they wrote this
Speaker 2: editorial back in eighteen hundreds, and it was rather interesting
Speaker 2: reading it because it also applies to today. You see
Speaker 2: how people, well any serial killer like Charlie Manson the
Speaker 2: rest of them, and a nightstalker, when they're in prison,
Speaker 2: they receive love letters and offers to marry them and
Speaker 2: so forth, and it's the same sort of thing said,
Speaker 2: don't make these people heroes and don't give them the notoriety.
Speaker 2: And so that's how I finally, that's how I ended
Speaker 2: volume one of these true crime chronicles.
Speaker 6: Absolutely tell us about volume two and when that was released,
Speaker 6: and tell us also how people might take a look
Speaker 6: at your other work. You talked about twenty five other books,
Speaker 6: most of those nonfiction. Tell us about the there's a
Speaker 6: Facebook page or website where they might take a look
Speaker 6: at your other work. And oh, tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about Volume two.
Speaker 2: Okay, Volume two was released this month and it's already
Speaker 2: hit number one in its category. But in it, I
Speaker 2: have the stories many more serial killers, Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 2: Lizzie Holiday, the Servant Girl Annihilator, which is a very
Speaker 2: bizarre serial killer, another gal who was in Europe. Her
Speaker 2: pension was for poisoning people. Then you had the Atlanta Ripper,
Speaker 2: which was kind of like Jack the Ripper out of England.
Speaker 2: Then you had the New York Ripper, which was the same.
Speaker 2: And then I have stories about Butch Cassidy's Sundance Kid,
Speaker 2: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 2: and the execution of his conspirators, and then other ones
Speaker 2: regarding some really interesting short stories about various crimes, and
Speaker 2: the two of them are really strange. One is they
Speaker 2: talked about the deadly blue gum Negro and it was
Speaker 2: believed then that African Americans who had blue gums were
Speaker 2: as venomous as a rattlesnake, And there are a lot
Speaker 2: of stories in this how people got in fights, they
Speaker 2: were bitten by somebody of blue gums and they died
Speaker 2: a short time afterwards. And some of these people who
Speaker 2: bit other ones were executed. So it's a fascinating look
Speaker 2: at what people believed at the time, the craziness of it,
Speaker 2: and how people were treated. But I ended the book
Speaker 2: with something that is a story that is just as
Speaker 2: well as strong today as it was when it was written.
Speaker 2: And it was during the Civil War, and this woman
Speaker 2: she was acting as a Civil War spy. She was
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. She ad dress up as a
Speaker 2: man and she would take supplies to the Confederates and
Speaker 2: she was caught several times by Union troops as she
Speaker 2: was trying to go across the Potomac, or she got across,
Speaker 2: and they knew she was a spy, and so they'd
Speaker 2: arrest her as a spy. And spies at that time
Speaker 2: were hung or they were shot. And every time she
Speaker 2: was caught, a letter would come down, a message from
Speaker 2: the Secretary of War somebody else in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: To release her. And the general that had her in
Speaker 2: custody was always what the hell's going on here? This
Speaker 2: is strange. She is a spy. They kept releasing her. Well,
Speaker 2: I did a lot of research on her and came
Speaker 2: up with the reason why is that she was running
Speaker 2: a whorehouse in Washington, D C. And an abortion clinic
Speaker 2: at the time, which was illegal, And so her girls
Speaker 2: and she they were servicing many of the politicians in Washington,
Speaker 2: D C. And they were also providing abortion services. When
Speaker 2: these senators and cabinet members, when their girlfriends mistress would
Speaker 2: get pregnant, they would perform the abortion. So this is
Speaker 2: why she was released all the time because they were
Speaker 2: trying to keep this quiet and it went on. But
Speaker 2: what was so bizarre about that is that in court
Speaker 2: she was put on trial for murder and she went
Speaker 2: after the sky that she was blackmailing, and he was
Speaker 2: setting on for better term of a little street car
Speaker 2: and she walks up and she shoots at him, She
Speaker 2: misses him, kills the guy next to him, had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with him, and she wounds this other guy.
Speaker 2: So she goes on trial for that, and the attorney
Speaker 2: brings up in court and the judge talks about is that, well,
Speaker 2: my client was basically mentally ill and just says, well,
Speaker 2: how how ill was she? And he says ill enough
Speaker 2: to get off any criminal charges. Yeah, So yeah, it
Speaker 2: just told me that's what happens today. You know, the
Speaker 2: insanity please a lot of time, because when I was
Speaker 2: a cop, I saw diminished capacity and stuff in a
Speaker 2: lot of horrendous cases, you know, trying to get the
Speaker 2: person off and that's how the game is played. It's
Speaker 2: theater in court in most cases. And so it was crazy.
Speaker 2: But the bottom behind was is that she was servicing
Speaker 2: probably a lot of captain members, maybe some senators herself,
Speaker 2: and not to hear girls. And so that's why she
Speaker 2: was always released when she was actually a Confederate spy
Speaker 2: and she was caught. So it's a story that is
Speaker 2: as strong today as it was then because as most
Speaker 2: people know in Washington, d c. If you can, it's
Speaker 2: good to have a politician in your pocket, but ultimately
Speaker 2: it's better to have a politician in your bed, you know,
Speaker 2: for some woman like that to control them.
Speaker 6: Absolutely that's the way it's done.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Well, we will look forward to having you back on
Speaker 6: and talking about True Crime Chronicles Volume two because it's
Speaker 6: been a fascinating interview with you today. Thank you so
Speaker 6: much for this interview. True Crime Chronicles, Volume one, Serial Killers,
Speaker 6: Outlaws and Justice, Real crime stories from the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Mike Rothmeller.
Speaker 2: You're welcome, you have you're welcome, you have a great evening.
Speaker 2: Good news to