Speaker 1: Los Angeles in the nineteen forties was a sprawling city
Speaker 1: of nearly two million people. It was founded as a
Speaker 1: Spanish pueblo in seventeen eighty one and had grown from
Speaker 1: a dusty frontier town into a booming metropolis. The discovery
Speaker 1: of oil, the arrival of the railroads, and the birth
Speaker 1: of the film industry had transformed it into one of
Speaker 1: America's most dynamic cities. By nineteen forty three, World War
Speaker 1: II had raciaped Los Angeles into a massive industrial complex.
Speaker 1: Aircraft plants worked around the clock. Shipyards along the harbor
Speaker 1: built vessels for the Pacific Fleet. Women took jobs that
Speaker 1: were once reserved for men, building plain ports and welding
Speaker 1: ship hulls while their husbands, brothers, and sons fought over seas.
Speaker 1: The population had exploded. Workers flooded in from across the
Speaker 1: country seeking jobs in the defense industry. Housing with scarce
Speaker 1: resources were rationed. Everything felt temporary, uncertain, Yet life went on.
Speaker 1: People still fell in love, got married, had babies. Families
Speaker 1: still gathered around kitchen tables. Mothers still rocked their babies
Speaker 1: to sleep in the quiet hours before dawn. In early
Speaker 1: maren which of nineteen forty three, The weather in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles was unusually mild, spring was arriving earlier that year.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of weather that made everything seem possible, hopeful.
Speaker 1: Even on the morning of March eighth, nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: that hope was shattered. Los Angeles police received a phone
Speaker 1: call that would send officers rushing to an apartment in
Speaker 1: the city. It was a quiet residential address, the kind
Speaker 1: of place where young families were supposed to thrive, where
Speaker 1: the signs of a baby crying should have been nothing
Speaker 1: more than the normal rhythm of domestic life. But something
Speaker 1: had gone terribly wrong. What officers found inside that apartment
Speaker 1: exposed one of the most devastating and least understood medical
Speaker 1: crisis that could follow childbirth, a crisis that doctors in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties had no framework to recognize, no language
Speaker 1: to describe, and no tools to treat. It was a
Speaker 1: discovery that raised questions about how a mother's mind could
Speaker 1: betray her in the most catastrophic way possible, Questions about
Speaker 1: what happened when the very biology meant to protect new
Speaker 1: life instead destroyed it. Questions that in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: nobody knew how to answer twenty six year old Joseph
Speaker 1: Chalfo came from the kind of family that built Los
Speaker 1: Angeles one generation at a time. His father, Ross had
Speaker 1: been born in Italy in eighteen ninety two and made
Speaker 1: the crossing like millions of others, carrying little more than
Speaker 1: determination and the belief that American meant possibility. He settled
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, worked himself into the ground, raised his
Speaker 1: children in the Titan hit Italian community. Like so many
Speaker 1: young men. In nineteen forty three, Joseph worked the graveyard
Speaker 1: shift at a shipbuilding company, welding together the vessel that
Speaker 1: would carry the war effort across the Pacific. His wife, Rosary,
Speaker 1: was twenty two. She'd married young, like most women did
Speaker 1: back then. According to Joseph's sister, Mary Sodare, Rosary was
Speaker 1: a model wife. The couple lived in an apartment on
Speaker 1: a seventy ninth Street. On the twenty first of February
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, Rosary gave birth to a baby boy.
Speaker 1: They named him Ross, after Joseph's father. Rosary stad in
Speaker 1: the hospital for about a week. It was standard practice
Speaker 1: back then, giving new mothers time to recover under medical
Speaker 1: supervision before returning to the demands of home. Joseph went
Speaker 1: straight back to work the graveyard shift, didn't care that
Speaker 1: he'd just become a father. And Rosary came home the
Speaker 1: E seventy ninth street with a baby's son, entering that strange,
Speaker 1: suspended reality that every mother knows, the sleepless hours, the
Speaker 1: endless fading, the beautiful yet terrifying responsibility of keeping something
Speaker 1: so small alive. She should have been fine, she wasn't.
Speaker 1: Joseph Shelfer pulled up to the apartment on E seventy
Speaker 1: ninth straight, just as dawn was breaking. It just worked
Speaker 1: another graveyard shift, eight hours of welding in the shipyard.
Speaker 1: The apartment was dark. That stopped him cold. Rosary and
Speaker 1: baby Raw should have been inside. There should have been
Speaker 1: light switched on the ordinary chaos of early morning with
Speaker 1: a newborn. He sat in the car for a moment,
Speaker 1: staring at the darkened windows. Then he got out, cross
Speaker 1: to the front door, fitted his cane to the lock. Inside,
Speaker 1: the darkness was complete. It took Joseph's eyes a moment
Speaker 1: to adjust. Rosary was sitting in the living room, perfectly still.
Speaker 1: Baby Raw was on her lap. He asked his wife
Speaker 1: why she was sitting in the dark. She turned her
Speaker 1: head towards him. Slowly. Her eyes found his face that
Speaker 1: didn't quite focus, like she was looking through him, at
Speaker 1: something only that she could say. She remained silent for
Speaker 1: a few moments. Then she said she thought there was
Speaker 1: something wrong with Ross. Joseph crossed the room and lifted
Speaker 1: his son from her arms. The baby was fine, he
Speaker 1: was just fussing. Joseph said, he was probably just hungry.
Speaker 1: He told Rosary to get a bottle and feed him.
Speaker 1: He then handed Ross back to her and headed towards
Speaker 1: the bedroom. He needed sleep. The shift had been long,
Speaker 1: and he had to be back at the shipyard in
Speaker 1: less than twelve hours. He didn't know that this would
Speaker 1: be the last normal moment of his life. The next morning,
Speaker 1: Joseph woke up to find Rosary perched on the edge
Speaker 1: of the bed. Something in her posture made him go still.
Speaker 1: She was looking at him, but her face was strange,
Speaker 1: an expression he'd never seen before, blank and distant and
Speaker 1: somehow already gone. She spoke quietly, almost calmly, and said,
Speaker 1: I've just killed the baby. Joseph bolted from the bed
Speaker 1: and ran towards the kitchen. His mind racing, thinking that
Speaker 1: his wife had dropped Ross there'd been an accident, but
Speaker 1: what he found was no accident. As before warning, the
Speaker 1: next section contains graphic descriptions of violence against a newborn baby.
Speaker 1: Joseph's eyes swept the kitchen, searching until they locked onto
Speaker 1: the breadboard. On the counter. There was a small pick
Speaker 1: blanket lying on top of it. Ross's legs were poking out.
Speaker 1: Joseph reached out with shaking hands and pulled the blanket back.
Speaker 1: He recoiled instantly. I saw him escaping him. That wasn't
Speaker 1: quite a scream. The baby's head had nearly been severed
Speaker 1: in the sink. Beside the bread board lay a butcher
Speaker 1: knife with a nine inch blade. Next to that lay
Speaker 1: a bottle that was almost empty. Joseph tried to speak.
Speaker 1: He tried to ask Rosary what had happened, but she
Speaker 1: just stood there in silence. His hands were shaking so
Speaker 1: badly he could barely dial the phone. He called his
Speaker 1: father first, Roschelfo lived nearby. Together. When his father arrived,
Speaker 1: they called the police. Officer A. M. Young was the
Speaker 1: first to respond to the scene. He found Joseph, Chlfo
Speaker 1: and hysterics gesturing wildly towards the bedroom. Rosary was sitting
Speaker 1: on the bed, completely still, with her hands folded in
Speaker 1: her lap. Young approached her carefully and asked, what's wrong, kid.
Speaker 1: She then looked up at him with those same distance
Speaker 1: eyes and said, I killed my baby. The officer would
Speaker 1: later say that it nearly knocked him off his feet
Speaker 1: the camway, that she said it like she was reporting
Speaker 1: the weather. He then went to the kitchen, where he
Speaker 1: found exactly what she'd described. Rosary Shelf was arrested on
Speaker 1: the spot. Officer Young tried talking to Joseph, tried to
Speaker 1: piece together what could have led to this, but the
Speaker 1: young husband could barely breathe through a sobbing. He finally said,
Speaker 1: I can't understand why she did such a horrible thing.
Speaker 1: She'd been happy all the time, she wanted the baby,
Speaker 1: and seemed happy after it came, happy after it came.
Speaker 1: Those words would echo through the investigation, through the trial,
Speaker 1: through every attempt to understand what happened in that dark
Speaker 1: apartment on each set ninth Street, because that's what everybody remembered.
Speaker 1: Rosary had been happy, a model wife, excited about motherhood,
Speaker 1: and then, just two weeks after giving birth, she'd done
Speaker 1: the unthinkable. The question that nobody could answer was simple
Speaker 1: and impossible. Why. At police headquarters, Rosary Shelfer sat in
Speaker 1: a wooden chair, staring at nothing. She was in shock.
Speaker 1: The detectives tried to be gentle. What had happened? Why?
Speaker 1: Rosary didn't want to talk, But eventually something broke through.
Speaker 1: She said quietly, I was making baby clothes and I
Speaker 1: wanted a girl. Tears then started, her voice stead flat,
Speaker 1: mechanical as she continued, I got a butcher's knife, laid
Speaker 1: the baby on the bread, I cut its head off.
Speaker 1: She paused, and then said, I went into the bedroom
Speaker 1: and woke up my husband and told him I killed
Speaker 1: the baby. After that, Rosary said nothing. She retreated back
Speaker 1: into silence. Captain Nelson orders a psychiatric evaluation before filing charges.
Speaker 1: Even in nineteen forty three, with their limited understanding, something
Speaker 1: about this case didn't fit the usual patterns. This wasn't
Speaker 1: a crime of passion, It wasn't rage or jealousy or greed.
Speaker 1: It was something else entirely. Detectives could see that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Joseph was still talking to detectives, trying desperately to make
Speaker 1: sense of the impossible his story started to shift, or
Speaker 1: maybe he was finally saying clearly through his shock and grief.
Speaker 1: He had first said that Rosary seemed happy, but then
Speaker 1: his comments changed. He said that Rosary had actually been
Speaker 1: moody since they'd come home from the Hall Hospital with
Speaker 1: baby Ross. He said that she was withdrawn and she
Speaker 1: wouldn't eat her talk unless she was forced to. There
Speaker 1: was something else, something that had worried him, but that
Speaker 1: he'd dismissed his normal new mother anxiety. Rosary had become
Speaker 1: convinced that something was wrong with Ross, Joseph told them
Speaker 1: once she said she feared the baby was ill or
Speaker 1: abnormal because it didn't cry much. He said he tried
Speaker 1: to reassure her. He had even brought in a doctor
Speaker 1: to examine baby Ross, then a priest, hoping that religious
Speaker 1: authority might calm her fears where medical expertise had failed.
Speaker 1: They both assured Rosary that baby Ross was perfect, but
Speaker 1: the reassurance never took hold. The fear kept circling back.
Speaker 1: Joseph said she seemed perfectly happy right after the baby
Speaker 1: was born, but I remember she once said something about
Speaker 1: hoping it would be a girl. He was describing a
Speaker 1: mystery he couldn't name a transfer metion he had witnessed,
Speaker 1: but couldn't explain what he didn't know. What almost no
Speaker 1: one knew in nineteen forty three was that he just
Speaker 1: outlined the textbook progression of postpartum psychosis. The medical community
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties had virtually no framework for understanding
Speaker 1: what could happen to a woman's mind after childbirth. Pure
Speaker 1: peril insanity has been documented since the eighteen hundreds, mentioned
Speaker 1: in dusty medical journals and case studies, but by the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties that knowledge had somehow been lost or dismissed.
Speaker 1: There was no clear distinction between postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety,
Speaker 1: and the catastrophically dangerous condition known as postpartum psychosis. New
Speaker 1: Mothers who struggled were labeled hysterical, weak willed, bad mothers.
Speaker 1: The shame kept them silent, The stigma kept them suffering alone.
Speaker 1: Most women experienced the baby blues, that wave of sadness
Speaker 1: and overwhelming the days after delivery, when hormones crash and
Speaker 1: exhaustion sets in. Up the eighty percent of new mothers
Speaker 1: feel it, but it passes. Postpartum depression is different. It
Speaker 1: affects ten to twenty percent of mothers and goes far deeper.
Speaker 1: Persistent hopelessness, worthlessness, despair. Women feel disconnected from their babies,
Speaker 1: unable to bond convince their feeling. The guilt is crushing,
Speaker 1: the intrusive thoughts are terrifying. Postpartum anxiety often comes alongside it,
Speaker 1: overwhelming worry and fear that won't quiet. Mothers become hypervigilant,
Speaker 1: obsessively checking if the baby is breathing, convinces something's wrong
Speaker 1: despite all evidence to the contrary, panic attacks, raising thoughts,
Speaker 1: heart palpitations. Rosaries repeated fears that Ross was ill or abnormal,
Speaker 1: despite a doctor and a priest both confirming he was perfect.
Speaker 1: That was textbook postpartum anxiety. But what Rosary likely experience
Speaker 1: was something far more dangerous. Postpartum psychosis effects only one
Speaker 1: to two in every one thousand berths, but when it strikes,
Speaker 1: it's a psychiatric emergency. It typically develops suddenly within the
Speaker 1: first two weeks after delivery, exactly Rosary's timeline. It's not
Speaker 1: depression or anxiety, it's a complete break from reality. Women
Speaker 1: experiencing postpartum psychosis have delusions, hallucinations, and severe confusion. Their
Speaker 1: moods fluctuate wildly lucid one moment, completely altered the next.
Speaker 1: Joseph had seen exactly that Rosary seemed perfectly happy right
Speaker 1: after the baby was born, then suddenly moody and unreachable.
Speaker 1: Women with postpartum psychosis can hear voices commanding them to
Speaker 1: harm themselves or their baby. They develop bizarre beliefs about
Speaker 1: their baby, that the baby is possessed defective needs to
Speaker 1: be saved through death. Their thinking being becomes disorganized and irrational.
Speaker 1: They might go days without sleep, which further deteriorates their
Speaker 1: already fractured mental state. The condition requires immediate psychiatric hospitalization.
Speaker 1: The risk of infanticide or maternal suicide is significant, and
Speaker 1: what makes it particularly insiious is how it can escalate
Speaker 1: in ours, not days, and how a woman in its
Speaker 1: grip mepp here normal at times, making it nearly impossible
Speaker 1: for family members to recognize the dangers until it's already
Speaker 1: too late. A husband sees his wife acting strangely and
Speaker 1: thinks new mother tiredness hormones. It'll pass. By the time
Speaker 1: he realizes it won't past, the tragedy has already occurred.
Speaker 1: In Rosary's case, the science had been there all along.
Speaker 1: The moodiness that Joseph couldn't explain, the irrational conviction that
Speaker 1: something was wrong with a healthy baby boy, the need
Speaker 1: for repeated reassurance from both medical and religious authorities, reassurance
Speaker 1: that never stuck, never penetrated, whatever dark certainty had taken
Speaker 1: root in her mind. And then the comments about hoping
Speaker 1: for a girl in a healthy state of mind. That
Speaker 1: might have been a fleeting thought, one of those harmless
Speaker 1: what ifs that every parent has. I wonder what my
Speaker 1: daughter would have been like. But in a mind fracturing
Speaker 1: under the weight of postpartum psychosis, it con fester and
Speaker 1: twist become something darker and more dangerous. Rosary Chaffo needed help,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen forty three, that help didn't yet exist.
Speaker 1: The coroner's jury took less than a day to reach
Speaker 1: the conclusion Rochalfo's death was a homicide. During the hearing,
Speaker 1: Joseph took this and broke down completely. He tried to
Speaker 1: describe that moment his wife perched on the edge of
Speaker 1: the bed, telling him calmly that she'd killed their son,
Speaker 1: but the words kept dissolving into sobs. His sister, Mary
Speaker 1: testified next. She told the Chord about Rosary's obsession with
Speaker 1: the idea that something was wrong with Ross, how she
Speaker 1: had fixated on the fact that he rarely cried, as
Speaker 1: if his quietness was proof of some invisible defect. Doctor
Speaker 1: Roy Hooper, who had delivered the baby, confirmed what everybody
Speaker 1: already knew. Ross had been perfectly normal, perfectly healthy. The
Speaker 1: autopsy showed that there was nothing wrong, But then doctor
Speaker 1: Hooper revealed something that cast Rosary's mental state into sharper relief.
Speaker 1: In the two weeks after Ross's birth, Rosary had shown
Speaker 1: up at his office repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day.
Speaker 1: Each visit was the same. She said that something was
Speaker 1: wrong with her baby. I know that something's wrong, she said.
Speaker 1: No amount of medical reassurance could ever reach her. When
Speaker 1: Rosary was called at the stand, she appeared only briefly.
Speaker 1: She stared vacantly ahead, mumbled her name when asked, then
Speaker 1: covered her eyes with her hands, like a child hiding
Speaker 1: from something terrible. Nobody questioned her about what had happened.
Speaker 1: She wasn't there, not really. Judge Byron Walters charged her
Speaker 1: with murder and ordered her held without bail. After her appearance,
Speaker 1: doctor Paul de River provided an update on his psychiatric examination.
Speaker 1: He said he wasn't getting anywhere. Rosary sat in silence
Speaker 1: during their sessions, occasionally mumbling I don't know to question.
Speaker 1: She didn't seem to hear. She'd gone somewhere that no
Speaker 1: one could follow. The preliminary hearing came a month later.
Speaker 1: For the first time since her arrest, Rosary showed emotion.
Speaker 1: She cried as Joseph testified that she he hadn't she
Speaker 1: had a single tear since Ross was born, not during labor,
Speaker 1: not when she first held him, not in all the
Speaker 1: days that followed. It was as if something essential had
Speaker 1: been severed inside her and naw hearing Her husband described
Speaker 1: it an open court. Whatever dam had been holding everything
Speaker 1: together finally broke. Rosary was ordered to stand trial for murder. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Ross was laid to rest in Holy Cross Cemetery. His
Speaker 1: gravestone bore his name, with the word Junior carved above it.
Speaker 1: A small life briefly connecting one generation to the next,
Speaker 1: then gone. In April, Rosery returned to court to enter
Speaker 1: her play not guilty by reason of insanity. Rosary Shelf
Speaker 1: was escorted into the courtroom on the eighteenth of May
Speaker 1: nineteen four three. The trial was brief by design. Both
Speaker 1: the prosecution and defense had agreed to a bench trial,
Speaker 1: no jury, just Judge Charles Frick, serving as the sole
Speaker 1: arbiter of Rosary Chalfo's faith. He was sixty one years old,
Speaker 1: and he'd been sending people to their deaths for sixteen years.
Speaker 1: He presided over almost every major murder case in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles for two decades, earning a reputation as the judge
Speaker 1: who'd sent more convicts to California's guest chamber than anyone
Speaker 1: in the state's history. But it was his court demeanor
Speaker 1: that defined him. According to one prosecutor's son, Judge Frick
Speaker 1: would take his prosecutors aside over launch hours and educate
Speaker 1: them on how to introduce evidence. He continued, stating he
Speaker 1: prided himself in knowing criminal law better than anybody. He
Speaker 1: thought of himself as infallible, intended to look down at
Speaker 1: counsul and looked on at people that he didn't agree with.
Speaker 1: Just two months before Rosary shelf who appeared before him,
Speaker 1: Judge Frick had presided over one of the most controversial
Speaker 1: trials in Los Angeles history the Sleepy Lagoon case. After
Speaker 1: the murder of a young Mexican American man, Judge Frick
Speaker 1: sat all defendants together, isolating them from their lawyers. He
Speaker 1: denied their request to get haircuts or clean clothes before
Speaker 1: appearing in court. The trial became a symbol of racial
Speaker 1: injustice in wartime Los Angeles, occurring against the backdrop of
Speaker 1: the Zoots suit riots. Later, the Second District Court of
Speaker 1: Appeal reversed the convictions unanimously. They found that Judge Frick
Speaker 1: had conducted the trial in a biased manner, violated the
Speaker 1: defendant's constitutional rights, and that there was no evidence against
Speaker 1: any of them connecting them to the death. This was
Speaker 1: the man who would decide Rosary Shelfo's faith. However, when
Speaker 1: three psychiatrists testified that Rosary was insane, Judge Fick listened Parkin.
Speaker 1: Doctor Samuel Ingham, and doctor E. J. Van Meader had
Speaker 1: examined Rosary extensively. All three of them had reached the
Speaker 1: same conclusion she had been insane at the time of
Speaker 1: her son's death. Rosary sat through the testimony staring straight ahead,
Speaker 1: her face empty of expression. Whatever had animated her during
Speaker 1: the preliminary hearing was gone again. She'd retreated back into
Speaker 1: that unreachable place. Joseph sat in the gallery, looking shattered.
Speaker 1: Two months since that terrible morning, and the incomprehension was
Speaker 1: still written across his face. Judge Frick then announced his
Speaker 1: decision without fanfare. Guilty of second degree murder but insane
Speaker 1: Rosary Chauffeur would be confined to Camarillo State Mental Hospital indefinitely.
Speaker 1: Joe stood up as the bailiff's move to escort his
Speaker 1: wife from the courtroom. He was crying as he reached
Speaker 1: as he pulled her into an embrace. Joseph then kissed grocery,
Speaker 1: this woman who'd been his wife, who'd been a mother
Speaker 1: for two weeks, who'd done something unthinkable while her mind
Speaker 1: was breaking apart. When Camarillo State a Mental Hospital opened
Speaker 1: its doors in October of nineteen thirty six, it was
Speaker 1: the largest psychiatric facility in the world. The sprawling campus
Speaker 1: of Mediterranean style buildings sat on former Mexican land. Grant
Speaker 1: Territory designed a house up to seven thousand patients in
Speaker 1: over seven hundred staff. It looked like a college campus,
Speaker 1: manicured lawns, Spanish mission architecture, a bell car that would
Speaker 1: later become iconic. The facility was never completely fenced, giving
Speaker 1: it a deceptively open, benign appearance. But behind those picturesque
Speaker 1: facades Camarillo represented did both the promise and the horror
Speaker 1: of mid twentieth century psychiatry. The hospital's population exploded almost immediately,
Speaker 1: from just four hundred and ten patients in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six to one thousand and eighty two in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and then two thousand, five hundred and one in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, four thousand, one hundred twenty three in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, and over seven thousand by nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen fifties, crowding was so severe that patients
Speaker 1: were forced to sleep on mattresses and hallways and wait
Speaker 1: in line to use bathrooms or exercise areas. When Rosary
Speaker 1: arrived in nineteen forty three, the hospital was in the
Speaker 1: midst of what administrators considered revolutionary psychiatric treatment. Doctor Frostick,
Speaker 1: who had established one of California's first insulin therapy units
Speaker 1: the hospital, claimed that insulin could cure both schizophrenia and
Speaker 1: manic depression, as long as the conditions had not had
Speaker 1: enough time to get ahead start. The treatment was brutal
Speaker 1: by any measure. Patients were injected with massive doses of
Speaker 1: insulin to induce daily comas over several weeks, typically six
Speaker 1: days a week for a run two months. They remained
Speaker 1: comatose until doctors survived them with glucose solution. The insulin
Speaker 1: ward had white cabinets on rollers with emergency and big
Speaker 1: red letters filled with syringes of glucose, sedatives and adrenaline
Speaker 1: for when things went wrong. And things went wrong often
Speaker 1: some patients never woke from their comas. Many suffered fainting spells, sweating, restlessness,
Speaker 1: and rapid weight gain from wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels.
Speaker 1: Doctor Frostick also used metrisol, described as a powerful stimulant
Speaker 1: producing violent shock and convulsions, although he claimed that insulin
Speaker 1: was safer. But insulin's shock therapy wasn't the only treatment
Speaker 1: the Camarilloo offered. The hospital also performed lobotomy, electroshock treatments, hydrotherapy, isolation,
Speaker 1: and restraints, experimental therapies that would later be recognized as inhumane.
Speaker 1: They even injected non diabetic patients with insulin to cause
Speaker 1: shaking in the brain and injected syphilis patients with malaria
Speaker 1: in attempts to affect the cure. A nineteen forty Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times report stated that of California's twenty one thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and eighty four state mental hospital patients, fifty
Speaker 1: two percent were schizophrenics, ten percent were manic depressives, and
Speaker 1: the rest were alcoholics and syphilitics. Women like Rosary, who
Speaker 1: were suffering from postpartum psychosis weren't even a recognized category.
Speaker 1: They were simply lumped in with everyone else, subjected to
Speaker 1: whatever treatments the doctor's thought might work. In nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: the Ventura Condy District Attorney investigated more than one hundred
Speaker 1: deaths at Camarillo over a three year period, with charges
Speaker 1: of murder or manslaughter potentially being filed. The investigation focused
Speaker 1: on seventy nine deaths, including cases of drug overdoses, strangulation,
Speaker 1: and possible gross negligence by hospital staff. Electroshock therapy didn't
Speaker 1: end at Camarillo until the nineteen seventies, and the hospital
Speaker 1: finally closed amid grand jury investigations. This was where Rosary
Speaker 1: Shelfo would spend the next several years of her life.
Speaker 1: Records from this error are sparse and often sealed. However,
Speaker 1: evidence suggests that Rosary remained at Camarillo for several years.
Speaker 1: Whether she improved gradually or suddenly, whether she ever fully
Speaker 1: underso what she'd done, whether the hospital's treatment helped or
Speaker 1: simply allowed time to do its slow work of healing,
Speaker 1: these details are lost to history. What is known, how
Speaker 1: is that eventually Rosery was released, she returned to a
Speaker 1: world that had moved on without her. The war had ended,
Speaker 1: some of the men had come home. The city she'd
Speaker 1: left had transformed again, the temporary urgency of wartime giving
Speaker 1: way the suburban expansion and the long strange dream of
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Joseph had divorced her, an act of survival, perhaps,
Speaker 1: or simply an acknowledgment that the marriage had died on
Speaker 1: March eighth, nineteen forty three, along with their two week
Speaker 1: old son. Rocery eventually remarried a man named James Elliot.
Speaker 1: She built a quiet life far from Los Angeles, far
Speaker 1: from seventy ninth Street, far from the bread board in
Speaker 1: the pink blanket and the kitchen where her mind had
Speaker 1: shattered completely. She never spoke publicly about what happened. She
Speaker 1: never gave interviews, She never tried to explain the unexplainable.
Speaker 1: Some silences are far too deep for words. Rosary Shelfo
Speaker 1: passed away on the seventeenth of June nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: She never had any more children. She wasn't buried with
Speaker 1: her son. Today we understand postpartum psychosis as a medical emergency.
Speaker 1: We have protocols, warning signs, psychiatric interventions that can prevent
Speaker 1: tragedies like roth Shelfo's death. But even now, eighty years later,
Speaker 1: the condition remains dangerously underrecognized. New mothers suffering from disturbing
Speaker 1: thoughts often say silent, terrified that they'll be judged as
Speaker 1: bad mothers, or worse, have their children taken away. The
Speaker 1: stigma that Rosary Shelfo faced in nineteen forty three hasn't disappeared.
Speaker 1: It's just taken subtler forms. Every year, postpartum psychosis claims lives,
Speaker 1: infants and mothers, both because families don't recognize the symptoms
Speaker 1: until it's too late, because women suffering from delusions and
Speaker 1: hallucinations don't seek help, because we still, somehow expect motherhood
Speaker 1: to be purely joyful, purely natural. Purely safe. Rosery Shelf
Speaker 1: wasn't a monster. She was a twenty two year old
Speaker 1: woman whose brain chemistry betrayed her at the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: moment of her life. She was a casualty of medical ignorance,
Speaker 1: of a society that had no framework for understanding what
Speaker 1: was happening to her, of a moment in history when
Speaker 1: mental illness was shame rather than sickness. In another time,
Speaker 1: with proper care, she might have been hospitalized the first
Speaker 1: time she showed up at doctor Hooper's office convinced that
Speaker 1: something was wrong with a perfectly healthy baby. Ross might
Speaker 1: have been placed temporarily with family. Rosary might have received treatment,
Speaker 1: recovered an event, reunited with her son. Instead, a two
Speaker 1: week old baby died on a bread board in a
Speaker 1: dark kitchen in Los Angeles, and a young mother lost
Speaker 1: her mind, her son, her husband. In any chance that
Speaker 1: the life she had imagined when she chose the name Ross,
Speaker 1: honoring the grandfather who had crossed an ocean to give
Speaker 1: his family a future, the tragedy isn't just what Rosary did.
Speaker 1: It's that no one knew how to save her from
Speaker 1: doing it well. That is it. This episode of morbidology
Speaker 1: as always thank you so much for listening, and i'd
Speaker 1: like to say a massive thank you to my newest
Speaker 1: supporters up on Patreon, Jenny, Emma, Gavin, Jamie, and Nicole.
Speaker 1: The link to Patreon is in the show notes if
Speaker 1: you'd like to join. I upload ad free and early
Speaker 1: release episodes behind the scenes, and I also send out
Speaker 1: merch along with a thank you card. I also do
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Speaker 1: Remember to check us out at morebiology dot com for
Speaker 1: more information about this episode and to read some true
Speaker 1: crime articles. Until next time, take care of yourselves, stay safe,
Speaker 1: and have an amazing week.