Speaker 1: With the Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just
Speaker 1: about anywhere.
Speaker 2: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 2: weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here a
Speaker 2: while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 2: just these cash prizes add up quick, So I suggest
Speaker 2: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 2: start getting lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at Lucky landslots dot com. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 1: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 1: With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 3: Nearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 3: the bride and groom?
Speaker 2: Ri?
Speaker 4: Sorry we're here.
Speaker 2: We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost
Speaker 2: track of time.
Speaker 5: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 5: quicker than a guess registering.
Speaker 2: In that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at Lucky landslots dot com. Daily bonuses
Speaker 1: are waiting. No purchase necessary boid. We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 1: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. Seetail Loop to Canadian.
Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 3: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. San Francisco, a city founded in part by criminals,
Speaker 5: was once one of the most dangerous cities in America.
Speaker 5: It's barbary coast was called a unique fromminal district that
Speaker 5: was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but it
Speaker 5: possessed more glamour than any other area on the American continent.
Speaker 5: San Francisco Notorious brings back the glamorous, depravity and noir
Speaker 5: atmosphere that made it the premier location for murder thrillers
Speaker 5: like the Maltese Falcon, Vertigo and Zodiac. This book contains
Speaker 5: more than twenty compelling tales of serial killers, deadly women,
Speaker 5: con men, masters of escape, and unsolved mysteries. San Franciscan
Speaker 5: criminals were as colorful as the city they inhabited. Take
Speaker 5: William Thornson, a murderous millionaire who hid the nation's largest
Speaker 5: private armory in his Specific Heights mansion. Then there's Isabella Martin,
Speaker 5: the murderous Queen of Grudges, who tried to poison an
Speaker 5: entire town. Or Ethan McNabb and Lloyd Samsel, the yacht
Speaker 5: bandits who used a luxurious sloop as a getaway vehicle
Speaker 5: for their dozens of bank robberies. Most of these unusual
Speaker 5: cases are largely unknown and have never appeared in book form.
Speaker 5: Included our cases that are still mysteries today, including the
Speaker 5: mysterious tale of the Zodiac Killer, complete with a new
Speaker 5: analysis and a startling new theory on the murder. The
Speaker 5: book that we're featuring this evening is Notorious San Francisco,
Speaker 5: True Tales of Crime, murder and Passion, with my special
Speaker 5: guest journalist and author Paul Drexler. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 5: Paul Drexler, huh, yes, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: It's nice to be here.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for joining us. And incredible collection
Speaker 5: this certainly is. Now. Tell our audience a little bit
Speaker 5: about your background and true crime and how you came
Speaker 5: to write Notorious San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Oh, sure. I have been writing about true crime for
Speaker 4: a long time, and I came to San Francisco in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four, and through one of my pieces, I
Speaker 4: got to be good friends with Kevin Mullen, who was
Speaker 4: the ex Deputy police chief of San Francisco, and he
Speaker 4: wrote a number of books and he had been collecting
Speaker 4: these things for decades. Uh. We collaborated on a number
Speaker 4: of things. He probably knew more about San Francisco crime
Speaker 4: than anyone else. And I have inherited his collection and
Speaker 4: his files, which has been a big help in terms of,
Speaker 4: you know, finding cases. And I've been doing a lot
Speaker 4: of interviewing of ex cops and things like that. So basically,
Speaker 4: the Bay Area has been my main area of focus.
Speaker 4: And it's a great uh, it's a great area to
Speaker 4: collect interesting crimes.
Speaker 5: Right now, let's get right into the collection here with
Speaker 5: a story about Earl Nelson. And you talk about the
Speaker 5: background of Earl Nelson. He born and eight young twenty seven.
Speaker 5: Tell us about this as you write it. You talk
Speaker 5: about there couldn't be a more apt recipe for basically
Speaker 5: for disaster. You say he was born in eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 5: Tell us about his mother and his father and his
Speaker 5: earliest upbringing.
Speaker 4: Sure well, his mother died of syphilis when he was
Speaker 4: ten months old. A few months later, his father also
Speaker 4: died of the same disease, and you know, in terms
Speaker 4: of creating a serial killer or a psychopath, veneeral disease
Speaker 4: can definitely add to that. Then he lived with his
Speaker 4: grandmother and aunt, and they were very strict Pentecostal Christians
Speaker 4: and they were always, you know, railing about the evils
Speaker 4: of sex. And Earl was kind of a psychotic prodigy.
Speaker 4: He was expelled from primary school at the age of seven,
Speaker 4: and he had this kind of strange behavior. He would
Speaker 4: talk to invisible people. He would quote Bible packet passive
Speaker 4: is about the Great Beast, and then he would also
Speaker 4: peek at his cousin Rachel, whilst het dressed. Now he developed.
Speaker 4: He wasn't the big man, but he had large hands
Speaker 4: and tremendous upper body strains. In fact, he could walk
Speaker 4: on his hand for blocks. Now, when he was ten,
Speaker 4: he was hit and dragged by a street car, which
Speaker 4: cracked his skull and put him in a coma. A
Speaker 4: doctor didn't think he'd survived. And now that's another surprisingly
Speaker 4: high percentage of psychopaths have experienced serious head injuries as
Speaker 4: they were growing up. So he left school at fourteen.
Speaker 4: There are a number of manual jobs. He also acquired
Speaker 4: veneerial disease in the brothels of the Barbara Coast. And
Speaker 4: by nineteen he had been in San Quentin, he'd been
Speaker 4: in the Navy, and he'd been in Napa State Mental
Speaker 4: Hospital and Napa State he kept escaping and then he'd
Speaker 4: go back to that estate, and finally the doctors there
Speaker 4: just threw up their hands. He hadn't improved at all,
Speaker 4: but they said, oh, he's better, and they just you know,
Speaker 4: let him go. And they said he was improved. And
Speaker 4: you know, he spent the rest of his life proving
Speaker 4: his doctor's wrong.
Speaker 5: Right you write that. In nineteen twenty five they finally
Speaker 5: discharge him, saying he was, as you write, improved for
Speaker 5: lack of better a better prognosis, they said he was improved.
Speaker 5: Now in nineteen twenty six, February twentieth, a woman named
Speaker 5: Clara Newman is sixty years old. And you right as
Speaker 5: well that after he got out of this prison pardon me,
Speaker 5: out of the hospital, he married, you know, strangely enough,
Speaker 5: he married this woman that was fifty eight years old.
Speaker 5: This tentacles Undel Spinster. He had these unusual sexual desires
Speaker 5: or needs. She was not interested. He left that relationship.
Speaker 5: Now we get to February twenty sixth, the twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty six Tell us what happens where this Earl Nelson
Speaker 5: is in that he's in a position to meet Clara Newman.
Speaker 4: Sure well, there was a landlady named Clara Newman who
Speaker 4: was showing her attic apartment at her house, and he
Speaker 4: came in to look at the place. Now, two hours later,
Speaker 4: her nephew came back and found her strangled and violated
Speaker 4: body in the basement near the oil furnace. And also
Speaker 4: a few weeks later, the same thing happened to Laura,
Speaker 4: who was a sixty five year old landlady in San Jose,
Speaker 4: and both of the in both of the cases, the
Speaker 4: women were sexually attacked after death. So Earl was an
Speaker 4: acophiliac and this was these were the these killing started
Speaker 4: what ended up being a nationwide panic, and he was
Speaker 4: at known as the Strangler at this point and by
Speaker 4: a few weeks later he killed his third person on
Speaker 4: Dolores Street in San Francisco, and they started to see
Speaker 4: the headlines whether they say that San Francisco police have
Speaker 4: had no one like him to contend with in the
Speaker 4: whole history of the city. So he strangled another woman
Speaker 4: in Santa Barbara a few weeks later and took her jewelry,
Speaker 4: and you know, more descriptions of him surfaced. I mean,
Speaker 4: people saw him, but no one was really you know,
Speaker 4: looking carefully, and they knew that, you know, he was
Speaker 4: kind of average size. He had his watery blue eyes,
Speaker 4: a piercing stare, and what they called a ghastly smile
Speaker 4: on his face. And the newspapers call him the dark
Speaker 4: strangler or the dark fiend.
Speaker 5: At this time, you write about a break in the
Speaker 5: case in August and again this yes here has gripped
Speaker 5: his community. And then they find a person named Philip Brown.
Speaker 5: They pick him up as a vagrant in Needles, California.
Speaker 5: What happens and why do they think this is a
Speaker 5: break in the case.
Speaker 4: Well, they think it's a break in the case. And
Speaker 4: you know, it's really hard when the serial killer is
Speaker 4: killing people he doesn't know and just sort of appears
Speaker 4: and disappears. But they had a witness this time, this
Speaker 4: guy William Frainey, who was a fireman, and he identified
Speaker 4: as a strangler as that he saw him attack this woman,
Speaker 4: Missus Russell. It was a kind of unusual situation because
Speaker 4: he saw the attack on Missus Russell as he peeked
Speaker 4: through a keyhole in the door. So to reproduce those conditions,
Speaker 4: they put Brown in a room and they had Frainey
Speaker 4: peer through the keyhole and that's how he identified Brown.
Speaker 4: And you know, Brown had a history of epilepsy and attacks.
Speaker 4: The police chief and district attorney were convinced they had
Speaker 4: the right guy, but the guy did not meet the
Speaker 4: physical characteristics. And then more and more they talked to him,
Speaker 4: the more they wondered about his mental condition. As the
Speaker 4: days went on, his whole story unraveled and he was
Speaker 4: sent to a mental hospital. And you know, the search continued,
Speaker 4: and it became anyone who moved into town or had
Speaker 4: a dark complexion, was from another country, who was just unknown,
Speaker 4: was automatically a suspect. A few weeks later in Santa Cruz,
Speaker 4: they arrested this stocky foreigner and they were the lynch
Speaker 4: mob was threatening him and told Martin Newman, who was
Speaker 4: the guy who was the nephew of the first woman
Speaker 4: killed came down and said, no, that's not the guy.
Speaker 4: So these continued. Nelson returned to San Francisco. He strangled
Speaker 4: this woman who had a house for sale, and he
Speaker 4: left her naked body under the bed. The next day though,
Speaker 4: there was another woman, missus Murray, who was eight months pregnant,
Speaker 4: was approached by him, and there's something about him that
Speaker 4: put her at just made her nerve. So this is also,
Speaker 4: you know, a good thing to remember that if you
Speaker 4: have a bad feeling about someone, listen to it. So
Speaker 4: the whole time she was showing him through the house
Speaker 4: and he was asking all kinds of questions about its construction,
Speaker 4: but she stayed six to eight feet away from him.
Speaker 4: And then finally he was going to leave, she turned
Speaker 4: to open the door and he attacked her, and she
Speaker 4: fought back. She raked her nails against his face and
Speaker 4: made it to the street. He fled, but she was
Speaker 4: able to give the police a very, you know, clear
Speaker 4: description of him. And you know, one of the reasons
Speaker 4: that he was asking all about the house. Part of
Speaker 4: his method of operating was he would start asking about
Speaker 4: the house so he could get the landlady downstairs away
Speaker 4: from anyone else. You know, he'd ask about the furnace
Speaker 4: of this and that, and once he got her into
Speaker 4: the furnace room, that was it. That's when he'd kill her.
Speaker 5: You right about and sorry, shoot me? So are you're
Speaker 5: writing about them? You read about the media being very
Speaker 5: confident once they had that description. Oh yeah, this woman
Speaker 5: that escaped his clutches.
Speaker 4: The San Francisco Chronicle. Not one of their better predictions.
Speaker 4: They they said, description of strangler now complete arrest certain
Speaker 4: they were, let's say it was overly optimistic. It took
Speaker 4: about fifteen more bodies and a year and a half
Speaker 4: for this to happen. And then he started going east.
Speaker 5: Where did he go? You talk about Oregon and Washington, Yeah,
Speaker 5: was the.
Speaker 4: They went to our killing and killed a woman in
Speaker 4: the city, I'm sorry. And then he started going east.
Speaker 4: He killed a woman in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He killed
Speaker 4: a woman in Kansas City, and then the next day
Speaker 4: he killed and raped a woman and her eight month
Speaker 4: old son. Then he disappeared again, and by this time
Speaker 4: the press had come up with a new name for him,
Speaker 4: which was the gorilla killer, because he had very large
Speaker 4: hands and kind of his posture was kind of ape like,
Speaker 4: and he was in all the newspapers. In fact, in Philadelphia,
Speaker 4: where he also struck, they featured a three page, you know,
Speaker 4: column entitled how to escape from the Strangler with photos,
Speaker 4: you know, instead of showing you what to do. Then
Speaker 4: he started going west. He went to Buffalo, killed someone,
Speaker 4: killed two women in destroyed, and he killed a woman
Speaker 4: in Chicago. And by this time police were after him
Speaker 4: everywhere he you know, remember that pretty much every city
Speaker 4: he did this there would be this huge search of
Speaker 4: the entire a populace. But by this time it was
Speaker 4: getting pretty hot for him, so he decided to go
Speaker 4: into Canada when she did.
Speaker 5: Now you write about June fifth, You write about June fifth,
Speaker 5: because this acceleration, his frenzy is killing frenzy. May thirtieth,
Speaker 5: June first, June third, now June fifth. He hitchhikes to Winnipeg, Canada,
Speaker 5: and as you're right, it's the third largest city in
Speaker 5: Canada at that time, gets a job as a construction laborer.
Speaker 5: What's his alias? And again, what does he do once
Speaker 5: he's in another country and on the run from the
Speaker 5: US officials.
Speaker 4: Sure, he had a number of bailisas this one was
Speaker 4: Roger Wilson. And the other thing to remember is that
Speaker 4: he knew the Bible, and he posed, that's a very
Speaker 4: religious man. And in fact he told this woman, I
Speaker 4: want quiet surroundings where I can of reflect. A man
Speaker 4: with Christ in his heart need to worry about nothing else.
Speaker 4: She was very impressed. Missus August killed with his piety.
Speaker 4: But two days later, this fourteen year old girl who
Speaker 4: was telling art artificial flowers on the street disappeared. The
Speaker 4: next day, Nelson went to another rooming house and he
Speaker 4: asked for a room. He said he didn't have any money,
Speaker 4: but that he'd do odd jobs to pay. Now. When
Speaker 4: her husband came back, she was missing. Emily was missing,
Speaker 4: the landlady, and a few hours later he discovered her
Speaker 4: body underneath their bed. And this was really when police
Speaker 4: really started mobilizing. They realized that he was in the
Speaker 4: city and they knew more about him, so they they
Speaker 4: started checking every boarding house and when they reached Missus Hall,
Speaker 4: she described her tenant, Roger Wilson as a short, dark
Speaker 4: religious man, and they searched his room and found the
Speaker 4: decaying body of Lowell Cowan under his bed. So this
Speaker 4: really kind of exploded everything.
Speaker 5: You talk about the national response in Canada to this,
Speaker 5: and the news of this broadcast throughout the country. But
Speaker 5: you write about that the strangler heads west to the
Speaker 5: capital of the neighboring province, which is Regina, and he
Speaker 5: rents a room from Missus Rowe. What does he do
Speaker 5: in Regina while authorities still think he's somewhere in Winnipeg
Speaker 5: and they're looking everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean it's a big country, so
Speaker 4: he's moving around.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: Missus Rowe had a nine year old daughter and the
Speaker 4: next morning he bought her an ice cream cone and
Speaker 4: he tried to lure her into going into the side
Speaker 4: street with him, and she made definitely the greatest decision
Speaker 4: of her life by refusing to do that. Obviously that
Speaker 4: did save her life. But by this time he had
Speaker 4: been tracked into Regina and searchers were pouring into the city.
Speaker 4: So he went back to Manitoba and he headed south.
Speaker 4: They figured that he was going to head back to
Speaker 4: the United States and try to get a trained.
Speaker 5: So he's sighted about forty miles north of the border
Speaker 5: by a constable. And you described that it's just a
Speaker 5: little small town and he's alerted that there's a stranger
Speaker 5: in town. What happens in this exchange between this constable
Speaker 5: and Earl Nelson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this constable there was this guy, Constable Gray,
Speaker 4: of Killarney, which is a town of a thousand, very
Speaker 4: close to the border, and there was a train station
Speaker 4: in the town. So Constable Gray talked to this guy
Speaker 4: who gave his name as Virgil Wilson. He agreed to
Speaker 4: come to the police station, and he was so relaxed
Speaker 4: that Gray could hardly believe he was the wanted man.
Speaker 4: But Gray took away his belt, shoes, it socks and
Speaker 4: locked them in the cell and handcuffed him to the bars.
Speaker 4: And then he went to the next room to get
Speaker 4: a phone and he called Inspector Smith was in Winnipeg,
Speaker 4: was heading was the overall head of the search. He
Speaker 4: called Wilson and he told him the name is Alias,
Speaker 4: and Wilson said, don't let him out of your sight.
Speaker 4: I'll be there tomorrow morning. And Inspector Smith assembled fifty
Speaker 4: police to go with him on a special train. So
Speaker 4: when Gray gets back, he found the cell door open
Speaker 4: and handcuffed dangling from the bar. Nelson had picked the
Speaker 4: locks with a mail file that he found on the floor.
Speaker 4: So you know, the town was gripped by panic. Most
Speaker 4: of the women and children spent the night in a church,
Speaker 4: guarded by dozens of armed men. It was the five
Speaker 4: hundred men posse going from house to house. But he
Speaker 4: spent a peaceful night hidden in the loft of a
Speaker 4: farmist barn just a block from the police station. Incredible
Speaker 4: and yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 5: So the next morning you say that they had been
Speaker 5: staking out train stations because they felt that that's the
Speaker 5: way he would get back into the US. Where they
Speaker 5: correct and what happens at this train station the next morning?
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, you know, he gets out of his hiding
Speaker 4: place and he makes a break for the train station
Speaker 4: and the train is pulling into town and a mob
Speaker 4: of people see him. They chase him, a guy grabbed him,
Speaker 4: but he broke free. The train doors opened and he
Speaker 4: ran in. Unfortunately for him, the train was the train
Speaker 4: commandeered by Inspector Smith. There were fifty police who poured
Speaker 4: out of the train and they engulfed him. They took
Speaker 4: him back on the train and headed back to Winnipeg.
Speaker 4: And you know, there was a crowd that would very
Speaker 4: much have liked to Lynchion. But they did get back
Speaker 4: to Winnipeg and after some question he admitted that he
Speaker 4: was Earl Nelson.
Speaker 5: You read about the extraordinary search for the Dark Strangler.
Speaker 5: You say it occupied more police in more cities than
Speaker 5: any other case in history. San Francisco, San Jose, Portland,
Speaker 5: Kansas City, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, and then Winnipeg. What was
Speaker 5: his fate in nineteen twenty eight in Winnipeg, what was
Speaker 5: his Oh?
Speaker 4: Well, they finally got him and he was hung in
Speaker 4: Winnipeg after killing about twenty three women, most of them landladies.
Speaker 4: So I would say after that, the land ladies all
Speaker 4: over the Western hemisphere were very grateful.
Speaker 5: Absolutely absolutely. Now let's talk about another story from this collection,
Speaker 5: The Grandma from Hell and yeahs opened with this with
Speaker 5: the detective John Kaufman investigating the experiance of a Santa
Speaker 5: Rosa motel owner. Mildred Arnason tell us about John Kaufman's
Speaker 5: encounter with the Grandma from Hell, iyber Kroger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, iber Kroger was. I would call her a
Speaker 4: psychopaths psychopath. She was, you know, she looked very unsuspicious.
Speaker 4: She was sort of middle age, short very dowdy clothes,
Speaker 4: squint In and I. But she loved to talk. There's
Speaker 4: this cascading stream of words and sentences. She talked about
Speaker 4: a psychic, she's very into spiritualism. She talked about how
Speaker 4: good she was a business, and also her health. She
Speaker 4: was always thing wrong with her. At this time, she
Speaker 4: was talking about he was in a bus accident in
Speaker 4: San Francisco and she was crippled. You know, So if
Speaker 4: you talk to her, you think, you know, here's this
Speaker 4: woman practically on her left legs, and she'd say these
Speaker 4: crazy things, but you know, you sort of think she
Speaker 4: was a harmless person. It's like, you know, the scariest movies,
Speaker 4: at least that I've seen, are the ones that move
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, everything's normal, and then the next minute,
Speaker 4: your uncle Tom, who seems like such a nice guy's
Speaker 4: growing fangs, you know. And this was Iva Kroger. You know,
Speaker 4: she'd be very sweet, and then the next minute she's
Speaker 4: got a gun pointing at your heart and she's threatening
Speaker 4: your life, and you know that she means it. So
Speaker 4: Coffin talks to her. He was investigating the disappearance of
Speaker 4: a motel owner in Santa Rosa, and this woman, Mildred Armsen.
Speaker 4: She was a real estate investor who owned this motor
Speaker 4: home called the Rose City Motorhome with her ex husband,
Speaker 4: and Mildredy was a Rosicrucians and she told her family
Speaker 4: that she was going to South America with another spiritualist
Speaker 4: named Ivy Long. So when Kaufman went to the motel,
Speaker 4: he found iv Along was running it, and she denied
Speaker 4: that she was ever going to accompany Mildred. She said
Speaker 4: that Mildred somewhere in South America, and you know, she
Speaker 4: claimed to be a psychic. He was suspicious, but she
Speaker 4: showed the deed that transferred the motel and it was genuine.
Speaker 4: So there was nothing much to do at that time.
Speaker 4: But Mildred hadn't had a family of sisters and brothers,
Speaker 4: and they kept calling police and they kept they were
Speaker 4: very suspicious. They got a letter supposedly from Mildred that
Speaker 4: that appeared to them to be like a phony. And
Speaker 4: I've a her, Jay, who was Mildred's husband, disappeared a
Speaker 4: few months later, so and Iva had this wild story
Speaker 4: about where he went. And they continued to investigate, but
Speaker 4: they really couldn't do much until I've had a dispute
Speaker 4: with a guy trying to collect an overdue bill. And
Speaker 4: this this really revealed a lot about here he was.
Speaker 4: He was a guy who sold water softening sistence, and
Speaker 4: she convinced him to loan her money, and finally he
Speaker 4: asked for his money back, and she took him on
Speaker 4: a wild goose chase to all the places where she
Speaker 4: said she had money, but whenever she got there, there
Speaker 4: was some other reason. So finally he goes back to
Speaker 4: the motel and he did a very smart thing. He
Speaker 4: was with his wife, and he told his wife, wait
Speaker 4: about ten minutes and then come in and get me.
Speaker 4: So he goes into her office and she puts a
Speaker 4: gun from under the desk and points it at his heart,
Speaker 4: and she says, sign this receipt that says paint and full.
Speaker 4: And you know, if you don't, we'll carry you out
Speaker 4: of here feet first, and no one will ever know
Speaker 4: what happened to you. At that point, his wife knocked
Speaker 4: at the door and he was able to get away,
Speaker 4: and police recalled, but she just disappeared. And they learned
Speaker 4: that I Belong was not her real name. Her real
Speaker 4: name was Iva Kroger, and she's been married three times.
Speaker 4: She had been a grifter, So that's that's who she was.
Speaker 4: And you know, she was just a real con artist.
Speaker 4: She would tell people she had lakmis, she'd go and blind,
Speaker 4: she'd get you know, she'd get money for various things,
Speaker 4: and she was suing the bus company.
Speaker 1: Wait, the Lucky land slots. You can get lucky just
Speaker 1: about anywhere.
Speaker 2: This is your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and
Speaker 2: the weather's five. But we're just going to circle up
Speaker 2: here a while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 2: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 2: and start getting lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at Lucky landslopes dot com. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 1: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 5: You right about that. She was on the run from
Speaker 5: insurance and investigators and their creditors and so they were
Speaker 5: taking out racehorse tracks and astrologers to try to find her,
Speaker 5: and they finally tracked down her son in Fort Myers, Florida.
Speaker 5: What did her son tell police about his mother?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a scary story. He said his mother
Speaker 4: came to him and she hadn't contacted him in years,
Speaker 4: and she said that she was a wealthy widow and
Speaker 4: she owned a motel in San Diego, and she offer
Speaker 4: her son a job at his motel, and then she said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, when I take your kids, who we're two boys,
Speaker 4: three and four, for a little overnight trip, and he agreed,
Speaker 4: and then she and the boys disappeared, and there's this
Speaker 4: nationwide search, and her husband had no idea where she went.
Speaker 4: You know, one of the things about the book is
Speaker 4: I have a lot I talk about the addres us
Speaker 4: as the places where these crimes happened, and most of
Speaker 4: those places are still there, and most of the people
Speaker 4: who live in those places have no idea what happened
Speaker 4: because so long ago. So the police were suspicious. They
Speaker 4: heard that she had hired someone to dig a hole
Speaker 4: in the basement of her house, and they got a
Speaker 4: search warrant and they began excavating the basement and they
Speaker 4: discovered the body of Major Arnsen, and next to him,
Speaker 4: they discovered the body of Mildred Arnsen, and that's when
Speaker 4: they arrested ralph On suspicious and murder, and then her
Speaker 4: grandchildren were found wandering in the streets in Oakland. She
Speaker 4: just abandoned them. So there was an all points bulletin
Speaker 4: out for her. And there was a couple in San Diego,
Speaker 4: a couple of Jehovah's witnesses who met her, and they
Speaker 4: noticed her resemblance to the photographs in the newspapers about
Speaker 4: this case, and they told the FBI, who captured her.
Speaker 5: When they do arrest her, despite all this evidence, despite
Speaker 5: the bodies buried in the home, and Ralph's insistence that
Speaker 5: he didn't know anything about this whatsoever, him being a
Speaker 5: much older seventeen years older than her, what did she
Speaker 5: say in response to these charges? What was her excuse?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, this is the thing you could never you know,
Speaker 4: she had an answer for everything. You know, she says, Oh,
Speaker 4: a blackmail was responsible somehow, you know, a black man
Speaker 4: that broke into the house and buried these two people. Obviously,
Speaker 4: it didn't it didn't convince the police. And you know,
Speaker 4: she and her husband were charged with murder and it
Speaker 4: you know, it's really hard to claim that you're innocent
Speaker 4: when the bodies are burying your basement. So the defense
Speaker 4: was going with that she's not legally guilty because she's crazy.
Speaker 4: And she once told someone, if you act crazy, you
Speaker 4: can get away with anything because people will think you're eccentric.
Speaker 4: And that became her courtroom strategy. I mean, I don't
Speaker 4: know there's ever been such a crazy trial, you know,
Speaker 4: because normally, you know, the judges in charge and people
Speaker 4: talk when they're spoken to. She just said whatever she
Speaker 4: wanted whenever she wanted. She interrupted, she argued with witnesses,
Speaker 4: she threw things, she sang, she fell asleep in the
Speaker 4: middle of the trial. She did all these crazy things
Speaker 4: to convince the jury that she was crazy.
Speaker 5: You're right that in nineteen sixty six, the press she
Speaker 5: had some attention. In nineteen seventy one she got some
Speaker 5: attention again for writing poetry from prison. What about parole
Speaker 5: and nineteen seventy five, yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, she was originally sentenced to death and
Speaker 4: then it was changed to life imprisonment, and the judge said,
Speaker 4: I don't this person should never be released, but she was.
Speaker 4: You know, she is in prison. She convinces people that
Speaker 4: she's legally blind, she's you know, she writes poetry. She
Speaker 4: does all these things and to endear herself and after
Speaker 4: about fourteen years in nineteen seventy five, because of good
Speaker 4: behavior in the California sentencing laws, she was paroled. She
Speaker 4: became a scientologist and took classes in sociology. She said
Speaker 4: that she wanted to be a nurse. That was always
Speaker 4: she used to pose as a nurse. That was her
Speaker 4: favorite dodge. So she goes to nursing school and she
Speaker 4: used to visit her brothers in Florida. Now in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty six, she meets this nurse on a bus and
Speaker 4: she steals the nurse's identification and get the series of
Speaker 4: jobs in Florida.
Speaker 5: She did have. Her criminal career did not end there
Speaker 5: as well. You talk about threats to her nephew's business
Speaker 5: partner as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, her nephew's her nephew's son drowned in a
Speaker 4: swimming pool, and I have a you know, she was
Speaker 4: uh psychotic really, and she blamed that the son's death
Speaker 4: on her nephew's business partner, you know, on the grounds
Speaker 4: that if he hadn't been to work, he would have
Speaker 4: prevented the death. And she called her husband's business card
Speaker 4: her her nephew's business partner, and threatened to kill him.
Speaker 4: And she said, if you don't believe me, check the records.
Speaker 4: I've killed before. So she even conned a cop into
Speaker 4: giving her a lift. When the when the police finally
Speaker 4: realized who she was, she had already left the area
Speaker 4: and she was She was sighted in Santa Rosa years later,
Speaker 4: but no one. She really pretty much disappeared. Uh and
Speaker 4: they only found about her death. She died in Massachusetts
Speaker 4: in the year two thousand and they only found out
Speaker 4: about that after she died. So who knows what she
Speaker 4: did before she died, but she was quite an extraordinary
Speaker 4: criminal in person.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Let's use this as an opportunity to stop for
Speaker 5: a second talk about our sponsor, which is Honey. Do
Speaker 5: you ever buy something online only to find out later
Speaker 5: you missed a discount? I don't spend overspend anymore thanks
Speaker 5: to Honey. Honey's a free browser add on that finds
Speaker 5: me the best deals online. The app magically auto applies
Speaker 5: the best deal to my car to check out, and
Speaker 5: Honey finds discounts and coupons across thirty seven thousand sites Amazon, Sephora,
Speaker 5: Best Buy, Nordstrom, and more. I just use Honey the
Speaker 5: other day to order a book called Chaos from Tom
Speaker 5: O'Neil about Charles Manson and the CIA. It was twenty
Speaker 5: six dollars with Honey, I say, four dollars, almost fifteen percent.
Speaker 5: I was impressed with this being the very first thing
Speaker 5: that I ordered. I'm excited about my next purchase. Honey
Speaker 5: has saved it's ten million members an average of twenty
Speaker 5: eight dollars and sixty one cents. Honey members have already
Speaker 5: saved more than eight hundred million dollars. Not bad for
Speaker 5: something that's completely free and takes just two clicks to install.
Speaker 5: Honey is over one hundred thousand five star reviews on
Speaker 5: the Google Chrome store. Time Magazine calls Honey basically free money. Look,
Speaker 5: there's no reason not to use Honey. It's free to
Speaker 5: use and easy to install on your computer and just
Speaker 5: two clicks. So shop with confidence. Get Honey for free
Speaker 5: at join Honey dot com slash murder. That's join Honey
Speaker 5: dot com slash murder. Honey the smart shopping assistant that
Speaker 5: saves you time and money when you're shopping online. Another
Speaker 5: incredible story in your collections of stories from San Francisco
Speaker 5: is one called Manhunt the Joe Tankle story and this
Speaker 5: is go back in time a little bit to September
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty three and a couple guys Joe Tanco twenty
Speaker 5: four years old in Floyd Hall twenty one tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about their backgrounds and how they eventually
Speaker 5: meet up and then begin this incredible crime spree.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, at this time they were robbers and they
Speaker 4: fatally shot the police chief of San Bruno and they
Speaker 4: were caught later when Tanker wrote a later to his
Speaker 4: brother in which he admitted to doing forty robberies into
Speaker 4: killing the police chief. Now, his brother, as a good citizen,
Speaker 4: gave this to the police, told police his life Floyd
Speaker 4: Tanko who threatened his brother's life. But they were very
Speaker 4: young guys and they pled guilty, so they weren't given
Speaker 4: the death pendant. They received a life sentence instead.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about them en route to San Quentin,
Speaker 5: they made their first escape attempt. Tell us about that
Speaker 5: first escape attempt and if that just waded them from
Speaker 5: pursuing escape again.
Speaker 4: No, there was a sheriff saw what they were doing
Speaker 4: and stopped them. Now, you know escape artists are you know,
Speaker 4: it's they're very glamorous because they're doing things that are
Speaker 4: so difficult and being foiled did nothing to deter them.
Speaker 4: In fact, a year later, they picked a lock. This
Speaker 4: is in San Quentin, and they slid down the jute
Speaker 4: rope and while police and posse searched for them, they
Speaker 4: broke into a number of stores in Petalum and Hillsburg.
Speaker 4: They got food, guns, supplies, and then they went on
Speaker 4: this wild crime spring. So they carjacked Santa Rosa rancher.
Speaker 4: On April fourteenth, they held up a Sacramento cab driver.
Speaker 4: They had a big shootout with Sacramento police. And then
Speaker 4: a few days later, while police were staking out the
Speaker 4: highways around Sacramento, they robbed this guy's store, killing him
Speaker 4: in the process, and police from the neighboring communities fluttered in,
Speaker 4: but they couldn't be found. They robbed a couple of
Speaker 4: cab drivers. They kidnapped this guy and his four year
Speaker 4: old daughter and got into a gunfight with the police,
Speaker 4: and they severely wounded a police officer. And then they
Speaker 4: drove on to the car ran out of gas and
Speaker 4: they fled on foot and there was a massive man hunt.
Speaker 4: It was I think the largest man hunt in California history.
Speaker 4: A thousand armed men following them.
Speaker 5: Wow. Now, what's the next thing they do in May?
Speaker 5: Involving a carjacking? Again? What do they carjack this time?
Speaker 4: Well? This time, yeah, I mean, this time they carjacked
Speaker 4: a US mail truck in the town of gold Run
Speaker 4: and they made this drive down the mountain to its
Speaker 4: Sacramento and they got a flat tire and they abandoned
Speaker 4: the truck and they disappeared into the mountain area. Two
Speaker 4: hundred deputies surrounded the area. I mean, the police are
Speaker 4: going crazy because they have put so many resources. They
Speaker 4: couldn't understand how these guys kept slipping through them. But
Speaker 4: Tank one Hall stole another car and they came back
Speaker 4: to Sacramento on May fourth.
Speaker 5: There's a big reward to say, six thousand dollars at
Speaker 5: that time in the twenties. What do Hall and what
Speaker 5: do they decide to do? Hall in Tanco to avoid Well.
Speaker 4: I decided, you know that they probably should split up.
Speaker 4: You know, the chances would be better they were single.
Speaker 4: And what happened to Hall was, you know, he was
Speaker 4: looking for a place to hide. He talked to a guy,
Speaker 4: an ex con he knew, and he was hiding in
Speaker 4: that CON's room. But the con turned him in to
Speaker 4: the police for the reward money. Tanco disappeared, and by
Speaker 4: this time they were just, you know, almost heroes. They
Speaker 4: certainly were celebrities. And Hall was going on trial, got
Speaker 4: all this great press, you know, captured desperado sobs that
Speaker 4: mentioned of his family is one of the subheads, and
Speaker 4: they keep searching every rooming house in Sacramento. But Tanco
Speaker 4: goes to San Francisco. He carjacks, he kidnaps a guy
Speaker 4: in Golden Gate Park. The guy juves to North Beach
Speaker 4: and Tanko jumps out and disappears again. But meanwhile Hall
Speaker 4: is indicted for the murder. For the murders, he's committed,
Speaker 4: He's convicted and sentenced to death, but the case is
Speaker 4: appealed and he gets a new trial, and somehow, in
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty six he's acquitted of the shooting of Nun.
Speaker 5: Wow. Now you talk about the time David manhunt for
Speaker 5: Joe Tanco. Yeah, and you say he was living in Denver.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's living in Denver. He's got a girl friend
Speaker 4: there who doesn't know his real identity. He's telling her
Speaker 4: that he's a San Francisco businessman. And I suppose you
Speaker 4: could say that's true, only his business is robbing and murder.
Speaker 4: You know that fear. I mean, there's a whole headline
Speaker 4: about Canko invades, like one person invades the whole city.
Speaker 4: But after living in Denver and doing all these criminal things,
Speaker 4: he decides to go back to San Francisco in October
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty six to see his other girlfriend who knows
Speaker 4: who he really is. And in November, on November thirteenth,
Speaker 4: there was this police sergeant Vernon van Maitre. He's got
Speaker 4: this order to arrest this guy, Willie de Bartlin with
Speaker 4: a Lucky landslide.
Speaker 1: You can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 2: This is your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and
Speaker 2: the weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here
Speaker 2: a while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 2: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 2: and start getting lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at Lucky landslipes dot com. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 1: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 4: This guy in as a gang had committed assault on
Speaker 4: a man and his wife and This is at thirteen
Speaker 4: seventy three in the Callish Discreet, which is still there.
Speaker 4: So he didn't, you know, expect a lot of trouble,
Speaker 4: but he brought along a few other cops to block
Speaker 4: the other EXIX in case they decided to make a
Speaker 4: run for it. So Maitre raises the window. He comes in.
Speaker 4: He tells the bartman, you know, hands up, the building
Speaker 4: is around it. Come up with your hands out, and
Speaker 4: department stands up and says I can't. He's got me covered,
Speaker 4: and as Van Matro, the cop, enters the room, he
Speaker 4: gets shot by Joe Tanko, who has been hiding in
Speaker 4: the apartment, and Tanko runs up the stairs. As he
Speaker 4: comes up the stairs, he comes face to face with
Speaker 4: Detective Sergeant Rooney, who asks him to surrendered. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: have done that, but anyway, he asks him to surrender.
Speaker 4: Tanko's fires, he hits Rooney in the stomach, but Rooney
Speaker 4: fires back five times and he kills Tanko instantly. And
Speaker 4: when the news of the shooting got out, there were
Speaker 4: huge crowds and twenty thousand people visited the Carner's office
Speaker 4: to view Tanco's corpse.
Speaker 5: Wow, now you get back to Hall being acquitted at
Speaker 5: the second trial or a pardon me, he has that
Speaker 5: second trial. So what happens amazingly at this second trial
Speaker 5: and why.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you'd think, okay, this is it, but he
Speaker 4: is acquitted in the second trial. They decide not to
Speaker 4: retry humph because he's already serving a life sentence for
Speaker 4: the first murder. Right, So for the next ten years
Speaker 4: in the nineteen thirties, he tries to escape every few
Speaker 4: years and he's caught, but gradually is we'll get to
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty six. Now this is thirty years after the
Speaker 4: robbers and killings. He's finally let out of prison on parole.
Speaker 4: And you know these he had a lot of charisma,
Speaker 4: and that's often true these guys. So he gets out
Speaker 4: of jail and amazingly enough, this guy Hall, who killed
Speaker 4: the police chief, killed an other guy, shot, committed a
Speaker 4: hundred robberies, armed robberies. He gets a full parton in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy two, with the help of the lobbyist who
Speaker 4: fell under his charm and was Ronald Reagan who gave
Speaker 4: him the pardon. I'm sure Reagan knew, you know, didn't
Speaker 4: know really his background, but you know, he went to
Speaker 4: this this place called the Brass Rail, which is a
Speaker 4: hangout the lobbyists, and he gets to know everyone and
Speaker 4: within an hour and everyone really likes him, and very young,
Speaker 4: he gets a full partner and dies, you know, without
Speaker 4: a record.
Speaker 5: Quite extraordinary, incredible. You talked about too, that incredible the
Speaker 5: exchange where he goes to that brass Rail for an
Speaker 5: hour and charms these people enough to get incredibly a
Speaker 5: full pardon from Governor Ronald Reagan. Incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's yeah, I wonder what he said, but you know,
Speaker 4: there CoP's a great storytellers and so a criminals, so
Speaker 4: I'm sure he had great presence. He's a good looking guy,
Speaker 4: and you know, I think he just wowed them and
Speaker 4: they were I think they found him so interesting and
Speaker 4: really didn't think about what he had done or it
Speaker 4: was so long ago. You know, this is like a
Speaker 4: different person facing him. But whatever he said, it certainly worked.
Speaker 5: M HM. Tell us a little bit about Ethan McNabb
Speaker 5: and Lloyd Samsel, the yacht Bandits, and what was it
Speaker 5: about this story that was so remarkable for you to
Speaker 5: include in this. Tell us a little bit about this pair.
Speaker 4: Sure, McNabb and Lloyd Samsel. They were two of the
Speaker 4: most extraordinary men that i've a criminal that have ever
Speaker 4: read about it, because they were brilliant, they were talented.
Speaker 4: They could do you know, they were expert sailors, they
Speaker 4: were expert riders. They could pretty much do anything. They
Speaker 4: could even make a gun out of spare parts. But
Speaker 4: there are these two guys who would never go straight.
Speaker 4: They liked that life. They liked the craziness that went
Speaker 4: along with them. In fact, Ethan McNabb at the age
Speaker 4: of nine, he was living in Deadwood, South Dakota, and
Speaker 4: he was already playing hooky. He was living in a cave.
Speaker 4: He was, you know, committing little burglaries, you know. At
Speaker 4: the age of nine, he gets sent to the reform
Speaker 4: school and he and Samsel meet in nineteen twenty two
Speaker 4: when they're both sent to San Quentin for a number
Speaker 4: of bank rubberies, and they decide to partner up when
Speaker 4: they get out, which is about nineteen twenty six. And
Speaker 4: they are very good at what they do. They are
Speaker 4: bank robbers, and they bought a yacht with some of
Speaker 4: there they robbed well over one hundred banks and they
Speaker 4: bought a yacht with some of the money. They made
Speaker 4: and then they pretended to be these wealthy yachtsmen and
Speaker 4: they knew how to sail the yacht and they would
Speaker 4: take thee out to a city, rob the bank, get
Speaker 4: back on the yacht, sail down to Pacific. They rob
Speaker 4: banks from Vancouver to San Diego.
Speaker 5: What was what was part of the lure or part
Speaker 5: of me the charm of these two people. Once the
Speaker 5: media caught wind of this entire this duo's adventures, well.
Speaker 4: They were they were very suave, they were great dressers.
Speaker 4: It was well, you know, Lloyd Samcil had something. He
Speaker 4: had real charisma because one of the people he robbed,
Speaker 4: This is around nineteen twenty two. In fact, the president
Speaker 4: of the bank that he robbed that he personally held
Speaker 4: a gun to, wrote to Samsel's father and said, well,
Speaker 4: I don't think, you know, I don't think he's really
Speaker 4: a criminal. He seems like, you know, if he gets
Speaker 4: a break, I'm sure he'll go straight. And you know
Speaker 4: that takes a lot of charisma to to get someone
Speaker 4: on your side who you've pointed a gun at. So
Speaker 4: they definitely had something, and they were also very very smart,
Speaker 4: and they immediately you know, decided to escape. They were
Speaker 4: not going to stay in jail. And Lloyd Samsel came
Speaker 4: up with one of the most amazing plans that I
Speaker 4: have ever heard of, as what he did was he
Speaker 4: designed a hiding space. It was about eight by ten
Speaker 4: feet that had food, water, even had a battery powered flashlight.
Speaker 4: And his idea was that they were going to hide
Speaker 4: in the prison. And then they figured, okay, the you know,
Speaker 4: the guards are going to search like crazy for a
Speaker 4: few days. Then they'll figure, okay, these guys got out
Speaker 4: of prison, and they were looking everywhere else for them,
Speaker 4: and then kind of when the heats off a little bit,
Speaker 4: they will get out of their hiding place and escape.
Speaker 4: And to add to their odds, they bribed a couple
Speaker 4: of the prison officials to let them out. But they
Speaker 4: were double cross by these prison officials, and after nine days,
Speaker 4: the prison officials led you know, the warden to where
Speaker 4: they were. Of course, they never said they had been brought.
Speaker 4: They said, oh, we just discovered this, and they were
Speaker 4: just in time because they were almost dead from lack
Speaker 4: of air. But they were still there and they were
Speaker 4: you know, of course beaten and putting solitary for a
Speaker 4: long time, but that did not stop them After that,
Speaker 4: they there was a plot that they had to someone
Speaker 4: to smug a lot of guns, and finally, after about
Speaker 4: three attempts, the warden decided to separate them and they
Speaker 4: sent McNabb to San Quentin and Samsell estate in Fulsom.
Speaker 5: Now that but that didn't stop them from trying to
Speaker 5: escape separately.
Speaker 4: Did it, No, it didn't. In fact, they the first
Speaker 4: It was Samsol in the machine shop. I don't know
Speaker 4: how he did it, but he actually manufactured a working
Speaker 4: firearm and ammunition. I don't know if he made the
Speaker 4: ammunition and where he got it, but he did definitely
Speaker 4: made two working firearms, and he and this other guy decided,
Speaker 4: you know, to escape, and they had this plan to
Speaker 4: lure the warden into the building where they told him,
Speaker 4: and the warden felt that something was wrong and he
Speaker 4: refused to come in and he surrounded the place and
Speaker 4: when they were about to be captured, Samson's partners just
Speaker 4: shot himself, killed himself with the weapon that they had manufactured. Now,
Speaker 4: a year after that, McNabb did exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4: He had actually more guys. He made a gun, made
Speaker 4: a number of guns. He had about ten people involved
Speaker 4: in the break and while he was doing the break,
Speaker 4: he accidentally shot and killed a prisoner, and this was
Speaker 4: also foiled. They was a foggy night and they were
Speaker 4: carrying this ladder and he was dressed in the guard's uniform,
Speaker 4: but the guard up in the tower didn't believe him,
Speaker 4: and they were captured. And because of there was a
Speaker 4: law that if you are involved in an escape and
Speaker 4: someone dies, it's a capital offense, right, and he was
Speaker 4: sentenced to death. But in his last week he wrote
Speaker 4: he wrote a book that he gave to his lawyer
Speaker 4: and very cool character. And you know he he read
Speaker 4: a poem before his executed and that was that's how
Speaker 4: he went. Lloyd lived on for years after that.
Speaker 5: M you say that and they write that he you write.
Speaker 5: The night before his execution, Samsel talked to reporters and
Speaker 5: they said, they say, I've led a wasted life, but
Speaker 5: I have a son. He's six foot three and one
Speaker 5: hundred and seventy pounds, he's married, got two kids, he's
Speaker 5: in the service. So I have left something good. And
Speaker 5: he turned to the nearly one hundred witnesses. What did
Speaker 5: he do at that execution? That was interesting?
Speaker 4: He winked, you know, they had style if nothing else,
Speaker 4: and you know, they were quite extraordinary people. He there's
Speaker 4: a lot more than he did. He managed to get
Speaker 4: out of the road when he was on during the
Speaker 4: war and visit his girlfriend. But yeah, they had a
Speaker 4: lot of guts and they had a lot of style.
Speaker 4: But they both were executed by the state. He and
Speaker 4: Carol Chessman actually running the death row at that time.
Speaker 5: They certainly didn't.
Speaker 4: Sure the will.
Speaker 5: It's incredible you write too about the skill sets of
Speaker 5: both of these people. And again when we mentioned earlier
Speaker 5: about how some people theorized well that if they would
Speaker 5: have just had some opportunities, they would have led a
Speaker 5: life on an alternative to their criminal life. But as
Speaker 5: it chose in this case, they had quite a bit
Speaker 5: of skill set. And despite that, Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 4: This guy Willie Sutton, who was very famous bank robber
Speaker 4: and escape artists, said that, you know, I was never
Speaker 4: more alive than when I was robbing a bank. I
Speaker 4: loved everything about it. And even even if he got
Speaker 4: a big a few weeks later he'd start casing the
Speaker 4: next one. It was a thrill, you know that they
Speaker 4: were that they were after and there was no way
Speaker 4: that they were going to uh stay law abiding. It
Speaker 4: wasn't didn't give them enough kicks.
Speaker 5: MH. I want to thank you Paul for coming on
Speaker 5: and talking about Notorious San Francisco True Tales of crime,
Speaker 5: murder and passion. Uh. Do you have a website that
Speaker 5: people might take a look at their Facebook page? Tell
Speaker 5: us about that.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's a website. It's called Crook's Tour. And then
Speaker 4: my book has a website, it's called San Francisco Notorious.
Speaker 4: You can get it on Amazon. And I actually do
Speaker 4: occasional crime tours of San Francisco, so you can check
Speaker 4: the website for any future ones.
Speaker 5: Also, just want to ask you about the fantastic trading cards.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well I've I've created these trading cards. I
Speaker 4: figured it would be you know, nice to have cards
Speaker 4: like you know, like baseball cards, but also to do
Speaker 4: the stats. So, for example, I have a guy named
Speaker 4: Chicken Divine who looking at his police record, he was
Speaker 4: arrested seventy nine times in five years. Wow. And I
Speaker 4: figured out how many times he was arrested, how many
Speaker 4: times he was convicted, you know, and came out with
Speaker 4: a criming average and all of that. They're in this
Speaker 4: These cards are half of the cards are people who
Speaker 4: I write about in the book. There's a total of ten,
Speaker 4: and you definitely learn about a lot of interesting people.
Speaker 4: And I would say I think three or four of
Speaker 4: them are women. So San Francisco has a great tradition
Speaker 4: also women murderers. We're of course very proud of that. Also, yes, yes.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Again I want to thank thank you very much
Speaker 5: Paul Drexler for coming on and talking about notorious San
Speaker 5: Francisco true Tales of crime, murder and passion. You have
Speaker 5: a great Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Okay, thank you, good night here