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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 him Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. 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 Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good evening from veteran true crime master Harold Scheckter comes
Speaker 6: a unique look into the history of crime gold through
Speaker 6: the dark objects left behind. The false teeth of a
Speaker 6: female serial killer from nineteen oh eight, the cotton paste
Speaker 6: confession of the Black Dahly, the newly cracked cipher of
Speaker 6: the Zodiac killer, the shotgun used in the Clutter Family murders,
Speaker 6: which were made famous by Truman Capoti's true crime classic
Speaker 6: in Cold Blood. These are more than simple artifacts that
Speaker 6: once belong to notorious murderers. They are objects of fascination
Speaker 6: to the legion of true crime obsessives around the world,
Speaker 6: and not merely for fleeting dark thrills, but because they
Speaker 6: represent a way to better understand those we typically label
Speaker 6: monsters in lieu of learning how they actually became one.
Speaker 6: In murder Abelia, veteran true crime writer Harold Scheckter presents
Speaker 6: one hundred murder related artifacts spanning two centuries eighteen oh
Speaker 6: eight to twenty fourteen, with accompanying stories of various links
Speaker 6: a visual and literary journey, It presents a history unlike
Speaker 6: any previously told in the true crime genre, one that
Speaker 6: speaks to the dark fascination of true crime fans, while
Speaker 6: also presenting a larger historical timeline of how and why
Speaker 6: we continue to be captivated by the most sensational crimes
Speaker 6: and killers among us. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 6: evening is Murderabilia, A History of Crime in one hundred Objects,
Speaker 6: with my special guest, American crime historian and author Harold Scheckter.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the program, Harold Scheckter.
Speaker 2: Very pleased to be here. Good to talk to you again. Dan.
Speaker 6: It's always a great pleasure. Harold, thank you so much
Speaker 6: for coming on the program and talking about your latest book,
Speaker 6: murder Abelia.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. Very proud of the book. The murder
Speaker 2: Abelia subtitle A History of Crime and one hundred Objects,
Speaker 2: And I've been very interested in the phenomenon of murder
Speaker 2: abelia for quite a while. I've kind of mentioned it
Speaker 2: in other books I've written. Yes, this is the first
Speaker 2: time I've devoted a whole book to it.
Speaker 6: Now, you right, you're a historian American crime. You have
Speaker 6: long been intrigued by this phenomenon, but some people have
Speaker 6: decried it as a symptom of modern culture of degeneracy.
Speaker 2: You defend this well, first of all, to define the
Speaker 2: term for listeners who potentially might not know what it means.
Speaker 2: Murder abelia refers to collectible items, mementoes, souvenirs related to
Speaker 2: very sensational murder cases. And the term was actually coined
Speaker 2: by a guy named Andy Kahan who works He's in
Speaker 2: Houston and he's kind of a victim's advocate who works
Speaker 2: with a police department. And years ago John Walsh, you
Speaker 2: know John Walsh, Yes, very well known for the program
Speaker 2: of America's Most Wanted. You know, he got involved with
Speaker 2: all this crime stuff after suffering this horrendous tragedy where
Speaker 2: his son Adam was abducted from a shopping mall and
Speaker 2: ended up being murd by one of the countries most
Speaker 2: loathsome serial killers. It's honest, tool companion of Henry ly Lucas.
Speaker 2: But for a while John Walsh had a afternoon talk
Speaker 2: show and I was invited to be on it with
Speaker 2: a few people, including Andy Kahan and Andy when I
Speaker 2: talked about seeing murder abilia is a symptom of the
Speaker 2: degeneracy of contemporary culture, you know, that's kind of the
Speaker 2: way Andy Cahn's right, was very antagonistic, and of course,
Speaker 2: you know, from his point of view and from the
Speaker 2: point of view of the victims of these crimes, you know,
Speaker 2: there is something obviously kind of reprehensible about this. But
Speaker 2: I was there to point out that it wasn't really
Speaker 2: in any way just a contemporary phenomenon that if you
Speaker 2: look back, there have always been. There's always been this
Speaker 2: appetite among people who own suvars that are connected to
Speaker 2: these very sensational murders. You know, some of the examples
Speaker 2: I gave, I had given the introduction. There was a
Speaker 2: very very famous British murder called the Red Barn Murder,
Speaker 2: in which this young woman named Maria Martin was seduced
Speaker 2: and impregnated by a guy who promised to marry her.
Speaker 2: This is kind of a common, all too common kind
Speaker 2: of crime. Yeah, and we did somewhere and he killed
Speaker 2: her and he buried her in this barn. I was
Speaker 2: known locally as the Red Barn. And part of what
Speaker 2: made the story so sensation was that Maria's mother had
Speaker 2: a dream that her daughter had been killed. You know,
Speaker 2: she just disappeared Maria, Yes, and supposedly, you know, the
Speaker 2: guy who murdered her told everybody that you know, he
Speaker 2: had taken it off and made an honest woman of
Speaker 2: her and married her, and she was living somewhere else.
Speaker 2: After a while, when Marie's mother didn't hear anything from her,
Speaker 2: her daughter became suspicious and then she had a dream
Speaker 2: that the Maria had been killed and was buried in
Speaker 2: this barn, and they when some people went to look,
Speaker 2: and sure enough, they dug up her body. And you know,
Speaker 2: as is often the case, I mean it remains the case,
Speaker 2: huge crowds to send it on the side of the
Speaker 2: murder and you know, started breaking apart pieces of the
Speaker 2: barn and taking back as souvenirs. And then when they
Speaker 2: finally hung the murderer, guy named Quarter. One of the
Speaker 2: perks of being a hangman of those days was you
Speaker 2: got to keep the rope and you know, these executions
Speaker 2: would cut the ropes into little pieces and sell them
Speaker 2: to spectators as souvenirs. And also quarter was dissected, which
Speaker 2: was one of the punishments those executed murders. And some
Speaker 2: of his skin was flaid off his body and it
Speaker 2: was tent and made into tobacco pouch. You know. Stuff
Speaker 2: like that happened. There's another famous case, these two William
Speaker 2: Burke and William Hare. Burke and Hair the sort of
Speaker 2: known as grave robbers, but they didn't they actually rob graves.
Speaker 2: This was in Scotland and Edinburgh and it was a
Speaker 2: big center of medical schools, and again there was a
Speaker 2: shortage of cadavers for anatomy classes and a lot of
Speaker 2: these physicians would pay grave robbers to provide them with corpses.
Speaker 2: So Burke and Hair, you know, discovered that it was
Speaker 2: easy just to murder people and pass them off is
Speaker 2: the corpses of the newly dead, and get paid for them.
Speaker 2: And when they were finally captured and Burke was executed,
Speaker 2: the same thing happened with Burkey. Somebody flayed off some
Speaker 2: of his skin, tanned it and made it into a pocketbook.
Speaker 2: Not a pocketbook in the sense of a purse, but
Speaker 2: a pocketbook and the sense of little notebook that people
Speaker 2: carried in their doctors carried in their pockets. There's actually
Speaker 2: a photograph of the Burk notebook in my book. So anyway,
Speaker 2: point being, you know, this is a phenomenon that, as
Speaker 2: far as you know, has always existed. And in the
Speaker 2: introduction of my book, you know, I kind of speculate
Speaker 2: a little bit about what the attraction of owning this
Speaker 2: kind of macabre artifact might be, and you know, I
Speaker 2: kind of see it in some way as being related
Speaker 2: to saints relics, sort of the flip side what a
Speaker 2: youngion would call the shadow side of a Saints relic,
Speaker 2: And just as a Saint relic, you know, contains this
Speaker 2: resonates with this holy power. The murder Abelia resonates with
Speaker 2: this unholy power which exerts its own kind of dark attraction.
Speaker 2: So you know, sure there are other other factors involved,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I mean, that's that's what I that's what
Speaker 2: I try to establish in the introduction, that the phenomenon
Speaker 2: has always existed. Now it days, of course, you could
Speaker 2: go online. There are these sites where you can buy
Speaker 2: a sock puppet made by Charles s billins in order
Speaker 2: you can buy all this stuff. You know, that's really
Speaker 2: the only difference between now and then is the easy
Speaker 2: accessibility of this stuff. But the desire to own these
Speaker 2: kinds of artifacts goes way way, way way back, and
Speaker 2: again the impulse that leads somebody to want to own it.
Speaker 2: And I think it's complicated, but I think for these deep,
Speaker 2: most superstitious reasons that people want to own these things.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: You say too that before crime scenes were contained by police,
Speaker 6: people just carted off valuable evidence and also what they
Speaker 6: might consider souvenirs.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, As I said with the Red Barn,
Speaker 2: also with the case of the Vendor family in Kansas
Speaker 2: and the late nineteen hundreds also covered in my book.
Speaker 2: You know, this family that around this little kind of
Speaker 2: roadside tavern in Kansas. When travelers would stop off there,
Speaker 2: they would end up getting murdered and robbed and their
Speaker 2: bodies buried in the apple orchard. But when the bender
Speaker 2: atrocities were discovered again, the crowds descended on the place
Speaker 2: and basically tore down the whole house, you know, taking
Speaker 2: away pieces of wood as souvenirs. So that happened a
Speaker 2: lot in the old days you talk about.
Speaker 6: Another dramatic example is Anton Probes in eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 6: The barn in which the slaughter took place was overrun
Speaker 6: with sightseers who made off with again the wooden splinters
Speaker 6: from the blood spattered floorboards.
Speaker 2: Well, they made off with, you know, the bodies of
Speaker 2: that case. Probes was this very very very notorious mass
Speaker 2: murderer who methodically slaughtered of the seven members of the
Speaker 2: family that he worked for. Farm family treated them very
Speaker 2: very well, you know, to hid their corpses, bloody corpses
Speaker 2: in the barn and cover them with hey. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: again with those crimes were discovered and boards of people
Speaker 2: descended on the crime seed. You know, there are people
Speaker 2: making away with little pieces of hay that had bloodstains
Speaker 2: on them. Yeah, you know, again, anything they could get
Speaker 2: their hands on. That was a MacB souvenir of this atrocity.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and prost himself. When he was hanged again,
Speaker 2: his body was dissected and somehow, slowly unclear how, but
Speaker 2: his preserved arm and hand ended up in a New
Speaker 2: York dime museum, you know, dime museums or these kind
Speaker 2: of sleazy exhibitions which Lord patrons, you know, by exhibiting
Speaker 2: just all kinds of bizarre things, you know, freaks, there
Speaker 2: were remains of different kinds of freaks and medical oddities.
Speaker 2: There was a pornographic peep show element to it because
Speaker 2: they would have wax models showing female genitalia and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth. But in this one museum of
Speaker 2: the New York Anatomical Museum, the owner, some of the
Speaker 2: propriety somehow got hold of Anton Probes arm and at
Speaker 2: newspaper advertisements touting, you know, this amazing artifact which people
Speaker 2: could come see for twenty five cent admission.
Speaker 6: You mentioned these you call them CD dime museums proliferating
Speaker 6: in the first half of the nineteenth century. But you
Speaker 6: also had this, and you mentioned Anton Probe was part
Speaker 6: of that twenty thousand Objects of Wonder advertised by one
Speaker 6: of these establishments. And you say even the Venerable P. T.
Speaker 6: Barnum got in the act.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean Barnam was always Barnum was very, very
Speaker 2: very well aware of the to which you know, these
Speaker 2: crime things could attract customers. You know, there was a
Speaker 2: guy named Albert Hicks. It was a very sensational crime
Speaker 2: of the early eighteen hundreds who shipped aboard because I
Speaker 2: remember was like an oyster boat. Anyway, he ended up
Speaker 2: killing the entire crew. And when he was hanged Barnum,
Speaker 2: before Probes went to his death, Barnum made a deal
Speaker 2: with him and persuaded Probes to leave him the clothing
Speaker 2: that he was going to be hanged in. And then
Speaker 2: Barnum made a kind of wax replica of Anton Probes
Speaker 2: and dressed him in those clothes. And again true enormous cross.
Speaker 2: Of course, Madame Tussau, you know, was doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: and originally in France and then in England in her
Speaker 2: wax museums, you know what they call the Chamber of Horrors,
Speaker 2: which were sections of her museums that contained relics and
Speaker 2: wax recreations of notorious urners, you know, always attractive the
Speaker 2: greatest number of paying customers.
Speaker 6: So you talk about all P. T. Barnum's Broadway Museum,
Speaker 6: but you also say that there was a Museum of
Speaker 6: London exhibit in twenty and sixteen. They displayed scores of
Speaker 6: objects from Scotland Yards legendary collection properly known as the
Speaker 6: Black Museum.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The London police, you know, they have all these
Speaker 2: amazing objects connected with very very sensational British crimes. I
Speaker 2: can't remember all of them. Maybe there have been books
Speaker 2: published on the subject, kind of weird art books. They
Speaker 2: did do an exhibition of that in London, of you know,
Speaker 2: you're talking about artifacts from Jack the Ripper, you know,
Speaker 2: artifacts from that. There's several of these things. I covered
Speaker 2: my book. There was a British murderer of the brides
Speaker 2: of the bathtub murder. You know. This guy was like
Speaker 2: a Bluebeard killer who would marry one woman after another
Speaker 2: and then drown them in the bathtubs and somehow persuade
Speaker 2: the police that they had died by accident and so forth.
Speaker 2: You know, So they would have his They might have
Speaker 2: one of his bathtubs in the show anyway, that's kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. They would have what's called the Black Museum.
Speaker 6: You right, that the ominous significance of some of the
Speaker 6: objects in this volume, Lizzie Borden's hatchet, for example, and
Speaker 6: the luger used by mass murderer Howard Unra is obvious.
Speaker 6: But you say that other items like the ladder used
Speaker 6: in the Limberg baby kidnapping and Augusta Guynes gains crucifix
Speaker 6: are everyday objects that acquired sinister meaning through the association
Speaker 6: with notorious homicides.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure Lindbergh's the ladder that was used
Speaker 2: in the Lindberg's kidnapping would qualify. Ordinary object is every day?
Speaker 2: I mean, everybody knows Lizzie Borden, you know, delivered supposedly
Speaker 2: forty wax forty one, or mother or maybe vice versa,
Speaker 2: you know. Again, So Howard Underrow, who's considered to be
Speaker 2: America's first modern mass murderer, went on a shooting spree.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say nineteen forty eight, forty seven, I
Speaker 2: can't remember the execu day, and in his New Jersey hometown,
Speaker 2: shot and killed thirteen of his neighbors very methodically with
Speaker 2: a World War two luger he had brought back from
Speaker 2: the war. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious, you know, it's
Speaker 2: obvious that that's a weapon that was used by this killer.
Speaker 2: But yes, there are some other objects. For example, there's
Speaker 2: a pair of eyeglasses. And if you just look at
Speaker 2: this pair of eyeglasses, you know, you wouldn't think there
Speaker 2: was anything particularly special about them, but they turned out
Speaker 2: to be the pair of eyeglasses that were worn and
Speaker 2: owned by Richard Nathan Leopold, of Leopold and Lobe, and
Speaker 2: they were the glasses that led to their arrest, because
Speaker 2: after Leopold and Lobe abducted and murdered this young boy,
Speaker 2: they brought him out to this kind of wilderness area
Speaker 2: and stashed his corpse in a culvert, and in the
Speaker 2: course of that body disposed, So somehow Leopold lost his
Speaker 2: eyeglasses which had been in the breast pocket of his jacket,
Speaker 2: and those were in the you know, that ultimately led
Speaker 2: to their arrest. They thought they'd committed the perfect crime.
Speaker 2: So yes, there are a number of objects that in
Speaker 2: and of themselves don't seem to be particularly extraordinary, but fact,
Speaker 2: you know, do have this important connection to the crimes.
Speaker 2: You know the book. What I do is I have
Speaker 2: one hundred different objects, each one of which I use
Speaker 2: is kind of a springboard to talk about the crime
Speaker 2: that it's related to.
Speaker 6: You write also that some of this some of these
Speaker 6: items also include what you write is the oldest form
Speaker 6: of true crime literature is the one folklore is called
Speaker 6: murder ballads.
Speaker 2: So murder ballads, you know, which go back before Shakespeare's time,
Speaker 2: and let's say in sixteenth century England, when a sensational
Speaker 2: murder happened, there would be I won't quite dignify them
Speaker 2: with the name of poets, but they were sort of
Speaker 2: would be poets, you know. It would turn these crimes
Speaker 2: into ballads, and these things were sometimes set to music,
Speaker 2: sometimes not, but that's how information about these crimes would
Speaker 2: be transmitted, would be through these ballads. And then later
Speaker 2: on after the invention of printing press, well, I mean
Speaker 2: printing press had already been invented. I mean, initially these
Speaker 2: are murder ballads would have been just transmitted orally, and
Speaker 2: of course all of those would have been lost to time.
Speaker 2: But once the printing press was invented, these printers would
Speaker 2: print up these ballads on what we're called broadsides, which
Speaker 2: are sheets of paper of a certain size, and sell them.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that became the earliest form of true crime literature,
Speaker 2: and murder ballad continued to exist really well into the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. In fact, you know, or there are seventy
Speaker 2: eight records, one of which at least one of which
Speaker 2: I have, of a book recording a contemporary ballad. And
Speaker 2: you know, once in you're way too youngtermember, this is
Speaker 2: my time. Let in the oak song boom of the
Speaker 2: late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties. You know a
Speaker 2: lot of these old murder ballads, you know, were sung
Speaker 2: and recorded by all these folk groups or people like
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan. So yeah, so the murder ballad is a
Speaker 2: very very very centuries old form of true crime narrative.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you write that. You say it was called little
Speaker 6: onmi and was based on the actual crime. You say
Speaker 6: they took some considerable liberties with the truth, but was
Speaker 6: concerning Naomi Wise and that Bob Dylan and also Elvis
Speaker 6: Costello among other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tomi Biso very very interesting. Well again Onmi Wise
Speaker 2: another example of the Maria Martin quarter phenomenon I mentioned before.
Speaker 2: You know, only another young woman impregnant by some scoundrel
Speaker 2: and you know, demanded that he marry her, and instead
Speaker 2: he murdered her. And that that crime got turned into
Speaker 2: this ballad is all genre of ballads. They're called murdered
Speaker 2: girl ballads that have all basically all of which have
Speaker 2: the same tell the same story. And usually in those ballads,
Speaker 2: as an Obie Wise, I mean from you know, the
Speaker 2: little that's known about the historical obi wise. You know,
Speaker 2: she was a fairly loose living young woman. But typically,
Speaker 2: as in that case, you know, in the ballad, these
Speaker 2: victims are turned into virtuous young women who are seduced,
Speaker 2: you know, by these diabolical lovers, then murdered. So yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: that's the first you know, that's that's as far back
Speaker 2: as my book goes chronologically, is the obi wise.
Speaker 6: You talk about too that you use a term, I
Speaker 6: guess at the time eraser killer.
Speaker 2: Well that's the same thing. Yeah, well, somebody who's in
Speaker 2: my book, but there was a woman who wrote a
Speaker 2: book called The Race years ago, which talks about help.
Speaker 2: That whole phenomena, you know, that's still going on, right,
Speaker 2: you know, you see it. For example, the case of
Speaker 2: Scott Peterson. You know, his wife's pregnant. You know, it
Speaker 2: gets involved with his other, you know, hot young woman
Speaker 2: who doesn't realize he's married, and instead of getting a
Speaker 2: divorce and having to a alimonium child support, you know,
Speaker 2: it gets rid of his pregnant wife. So you know,
Speaker 2: that's the kind of crime that is all too common.
Speaker 6: Yes, we talked about the ballads, but also this it
Speaker 6: turns into this popular sheet music, and you cited again
Speaker 6: another dramatic example with the little Charlie Ross who was
Speaker 6: kidnapped and a very interesting story about the father of
Speaker 6: buying his whole life to find his son with the
Speaker 6: Noah Vail. But this becomes a popular popular beat music definitely,
Speaker 6: and it was called bring Back Our Little Darling. I
Speaker 6: believe bring Back Our Darling.
Speaker 2: Well, think about the Charlie Ross kidnapping. That makes it
Speaker 2: significant historical is that it was the first kidnapping for
Speaker 2: ransom in US history. You know, there's been other children
Speaker 2: who'd been snatched, you know, way before, but this time
Speaker 2: it was the first time that his abductors, you know,
Speaker 2: that a child abductor demanded some money, and yeah, again
Speaker 2: became a very sensational case. There are always you know,
Speaker 2: people around were happy to exploit these things. And as
Speaker 2: you say, yeah, somebody wrote a little song printed a
Speaker 2: sheet music, so you know people probably went in for
Speaker 2: the most part, you know, could take it home and
Speaker 2: play it on the piano in the evening. You know,
Speaker 2: it's obviously a kind of tear jerking song. But yes,
Speaker 2: I mean you know whereabouts of Charlie were never were
Speaker 2: never discovered and remained this person.
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Speaker 6: to some of these items and a little bit of
Speaker 6: the story, just a little bit of the story behind it.
Speaker 6: What's interesting is that I cite your number twelve, and
Speaker 6: that's Harper's Weekly illustration of Alfred Packer's victims. You call
Speaker 6: the Colorado or they were. He was called the Colorado Cannibal.
Speaker 6: But it significance this Harper's Weekly. Tell us what was
Speaker 6: the significance?
Speaker 2: Well, I've actually written the whole book about Packer man Eater.
Speaker 2: So Packer was part of a group of silver miners
Speaker 2: who headed into the Colorado Rockies. There was a kind
Speaker 2: of gold rush and silver rush in the area, you know,
Speaker 2: hoping to strike it rich. And he and his companions
Speaker 2: became snowbound, and Packer was the only one to emerge,
Speaker 2: and he claimed that he had gotten frostbit and the
Speaker 2: other guys. I forget if there were five or six
Speaker 2: of them had left him, you know, but he had
Speaker 2: managed to excuse me somehow survive and emerge. The people
Speaker 2: were immediately suspicious of his story, partly because he looked
Speaker 2: unusually well fed for somebody who had Yeah, anyway, what
Speaker 2: happened was that I can't remember how much time elapsed,
Speaker 2: but it was some months later in the spring that
Speaker 2: an illustrator. Harper's Weekly at that time was a very
Speaker 2: very popular magazine. And you know, this is obviously free
Speaker 2: electronic Europe, no TV, no radio, nothing else, you know,
Speaker 2: where people bought lots of magazines to keep them informed
Speaker 2: and entertained. And Harper's Weekly was a very very popular
Speaker 2: one that featured a lot of illustrations. And an artist
Speaker 2: for Harper's Weekly was doing a piece on the Colorado
Speaker 2: Rockies and he came upon this bruesome site which where
Speaker 2: these decomposed skeletal remains of these miners, and you know,
Speaker 2: quickly became clear that they had all been murdered, and
Speaker 2: there was evidence as well that flesh had been stripped
Speaker 2: from their skeletons and consumed. So Packer was arrested. People
Speaker 2: sometimes say that he was first person ever tried for
Speaker 2: cannibalism in the Unit States. But that's actually an accurate
Speaker 2: because cannibalism is actually you know, wasn't and me not
Speaker 2: still of itself remained illegal in the United States. It
Speaker 2: certainly was, and I mean, you know, mutilating a corpse
Speaker 2: was illegal, but no laws about cannibalism per se. But
Speaker 2: you know, he was arrested in charge with murder. He
Speaker 2: entered into the folklore of the West. I was I
Speaker 2: taught for a year at the University of Colorado and
Speaker 2: the student cafeteria was known as the Alfred Packer Cafe.
Speaker 2: So he's the guys who did South Park. They did
Speaker 2: a great movie about Alfred Packer before they became famous
Speaker 2: and rich from South Park. I think it's called Alfred
Speaker 2: Packer the Musical total word pretty accurately except for all
Speaker 2: the musical and common diludes. Yeah, but I reprint that
Speaker 2: very famous Harper's Weekly illustration as one of the one
Speaker 2: of the objects of my book. And it's very the
Speaker 2: illustration even to modernize, I mean, we're used to all
Speaker 2: kinds of very very graphic images from slash and still
Speaker 2: a very very disturbing image and imagine the impact I
Speaker 2: must have had on people back, you know, back in
Speaker 2: the when it was published.
Speaker 6: You have some other examples similar to that. You're number eighteen.
Speaker 6: You have the front page of the National Police. Is
Speaker 6: that early example U side of a serial killer groupie?
Speaker 6: A woman named the sweet Pea Girl.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that was her actual name, but yes,
Speaker 2: that was from the case of Theodore Theodore Durant. This
Speaker 2: is San Francisco in the late nineteenth centuries. Durant was
Speaker 2: a very handsome, intelligent, church going medical student who was
Speaker 2: also a serial sex killer who lured a couple of
Speaker 2: his women acquaintances he knew from church to his church
Speaker 2: and murdered them and raped their bodies after death, and
Speaker 2: then stashed their bodies inside the church. She brought one
Speaker 2: of them up to the belfry and his crimes were discovered.
Speaker 2: He became known to the press as the Demon of
Speaker 2: the Belfry. But it was an early example of a
Speaker 2: phenomenon again that has become very familiar. You know, we
Speaker 2: now call serial killer groupes. As I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: no matter how loathsome and reprehensible a serial killer is
Speaker 2: seems to attract a number of women romantically some of
Speaker 2: who actually end up marrying him. So yeah, So there
Speaker 2: was a very attractive young woman who every day of
Speaker 2: Durant's trial would bring him a little bouquet of sweet
Speaker 2: tea flowers, and she became known, as you say, of
Speaker 2: the press, as the sweet pea Girl. And I reproduced
Speaker 2: the front page the National Police Gazette was the sensational
Speaker 2: tabloid newspaper at the time that reported different notable crimes
Speaker 2: that were happening throughout the country, include you know, various
Speaker 2: graphic illustrations. So yeah, that's another of the objects.
Speaker 6: You have everything from Bell Guinness's false teeth, and that
Speaker 6: might be questionable if they are, but that be Guinness
Speaker 6: is false teeth.
Speaker 2: There's no question. By the way, they're definitely her. They're
Speaker 2: definitely her cheek. It's actually a piece of bridge work
Speaker 2: that of the local dentist in Lapoor testified that he
Speaker 2: had made for Bell and installed in her mouth. So
Speaker 2: there's no question about the authenticity of the teeth. The
Speaker 2: question was did Bell remove that bridge work and leave it?
Speaker 2: You know, when your house burned down, they found for
Speaker 2: your listeners, I mean Belgunnis, known as the Lady Bluebeard.
Speaker 2: Was this woman the Norwegian immigrant who had murdered a
Speaker 2: couple of husbands for their insurance money and then bought
Speaker 2: a big farm and the farming community of Laport, Indiana,
Speaker 2: and started putting matrimonial ads as Scandinavian newspapers, luring lonely
Speaker 2: Norwegian bachelors who instructed to bring all their money with
Speaker 2: them to farmhouse, where she would murder them and chop
Speaker 2: them up and bury their bodies in her yard. And
Speaker 2: when the law was closing in on her, her house
Speaker 2: mysteriously burned down, and investigators found in the remains of
Speaker 2: the seller her charred corpse, but there was no head.
Speaker 2: But they brought in a Yukon gold miner to sift
Speaker 2: through the ashes, and he's ont of discovered that bridge work,
Speaker 2: which is I say the dentist testified belonged to Bell
Speaker 2: But they never found a head. So a lot of
Speaker 2: people believed, and some continued to believe that in fact
Speaker 2: the body in the basement and the seller was not
Speaker 2: in fact Bells, that she had somehow word a woman
Speaker 2: of her approximate stature to the farm and murdered her
Speaker 2: and used to as a decoy and left her teeth
Speaker 2: there to convince people that you know that it was
Speaker 2: in fact her and she had escaped.
Speaker 6: You have a page from Carl pans Rams handwritten confession.
Speaker 6: You also have number eighty seven Ivan Malatt action figure.
Speaker 6: This guy's notorious Ossy mass murderer and this is an
Speaker 6: action figure from Ivan Malatt.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I wanted to include Leasewell. You know,
Speaker 2: for better or for worse, I have come into possession
Speaker 2: of a number of such action figures. I have like
Speaker 2: an Albert Fish action figure and others. Again, there is
Speaker 2: this I wouldn't call it an indust she maybe a
Speaker 2: cottage industry. You know. There can go online and find
Speaker 2: these very very but I'm sure maybe people regard as
Speaker 2: very inappropriate collectors the You know, there are different action figures,
Speaker 2: different serial killer action figures. So I wanted to at
Speaker 2: least the one in the book, and the Malat one
Speaker 2: was the one I chose. But yeah, Mallatt was a
Speaker 2: It's kind of a very good Australian horror movie called
Speaker 2: Wolf Creek, which some of their listeners may have seen,
Speaker 2: which was based on Malot. You know, he was he
Speaker 2: would pick up these hitch hikers in Australia and do
Speaker 2: horrible things to them and yeah, bird of them.
Speaker 6: So you have some other dramatic examples, obviously here Danny
Speaker 6: Rowling's artwork for Gainsville Ripper, Robert Pickton's chainsaw to take
Speaker 6: Farmer Killer. Very interesting number ninety Susan Smith's self portrait.
Speaker 6: Why is this so interesting? This self portrait?
Speaker 2: Well, when you look at the self portrait, you think
Speaker 2: it's done by a five year old, but in fact
Speaker 2: it was done Susan Smith, you know, as the woman
Speaker 2: who was dating a guy. She had two kids from
Speaker 2: a previous marriage. She was dating a guy who didn't
Speaker 2: want to raise her kids, so she took her kids
Speaker 2: for a drive and strapped them to the back seat
Speaker 2: of her to the to the kid's seats in the
Speaker 2: back of the car, and sent the car into a lake,
Speaker 2: drowning her children, and then claimed that the car had
Speaker 2: been carjacked by some black guy. So yeah, she ended
Speaker 2: up in jail. And she does these in her correspondence.
Speaker 2: She'll often include a little self portrait of her looking
Speaker 2: it's a you know, smiley face stick figure. Again that
Speaker 2: looked it might have been done by a five year old.
Speaker 2: And there's something especially when you realize that it was
Speaker 2: done by this middle aged woman who had cold bloodedly
Speaker 2: and horribly murdered her own two children. You know, it
Speaker 2: achieves a special kind of creepiness.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely. Speaking of creepiness, you have number ninety three,
Speaker 6: the wooden rail fence, the one that Matthew Shepherd was
Speaker 6: scrapped upon.
Speaker 2: Sure, you know many of your listeners know the story
Speaker 2: of Matthew Shepherd, this young guy who has taken later
Speaker 2: two mal acquaintances beat him up, well, you know, beat
Speaker 2: him mortally and left him tied to this fence to die. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so there's a picture of that fence. You know, Shepherd
Speaker 2: has become a kind of Marder Whites movement, you know,
Speaker 2: very very very horrific poul crime.
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Speaker 6: You have some very interesting other exhibits or items here
Speaker 6: number ninety four the weapons belonging to Eric Harris and
Speaker 6: Dylan Claybold for the Columbine massacre. We also have Armin
Speaker 6: mews probably mispronouncing his name, but a shirt swatch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm sure how to pronounce I think you
Speaker 2: did it as good a job as I would pronounce
Speaker 2: it his name. You know that object is the kind
Speaker 2: of thing again you can buy all these murder of
Speaker 2: billion websites. Now, I'm not sure how they obtained these
Speaker 2: kinds of objects, but you know they package on the
Speaker 2: little cards. Yes, but Mewis was uh interested in eating somebody.
Speaker 2: You put an ad on some weird website looking for
Speaker 2: somebody who wanted it to be eating that body. The
Speaker 2: guy you know came and stayed with us and allowed
Speaker 2: himself to be mutilated, uh and devoured apparently, you know,
Speaker 2: parts of him were eaten while he was still alive,
Speaker 2: but even partook in some of the meals while ultimately killed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you know that people like Mew has become
Speaker 2: these very very very very dark celebrities and certain kinds
Speaker 2: of subcultures. Sure.
Speaker 6: Sure, you have a number ninety six, very very interesting item,
Speaker 6: Scott Peterson's boat of all things.
Speaker 2: You know, we're just talking about Scott Peterson a little
Speaker 2: while ago. You know, another example of what the author
Speaker 2: whose name I forget calls an eraser killer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so sure, that's apparently how he disposed of his wife's
Speaker 2: pregnant body was taken around of this boat, dumping her
Speaker 2: in the ocean.
Speaker 6: Yeah, ye, incredible. You have on Alan Muhammad's Bushmaster rifle.
Speaker 6: Very interesting case, of course, the sniper and number ninety
Speaker 6: eight I fought very very interesting. Was this grim Sleeper
Speaker 6: billboard being one of the other than the Long Island
Speaker 6: serial killer. Grim Sleeper was the last known serial killer
Speaker 6: of any I guess importance tell us about this grim
Speaker 6: Sleeper billboard again.
Speaker 2: Grim Sleeper, the so African American guy who had a
Speaker 2: very long and unfortunately prolific career as a serial killer,
Speaker 2: you know, praying on women, many of them sex workers.
Speaker 2: And you know, when it became clear that there was
Speaker 2: a serial killer at large, became clear that all these
Speaker 2: women had gone missing. Los Angeles County put up these billboards.
Speaker 2: Have you seen these women? If you know anything about
Speaker 2: these women, you know, please come forward. There is a
Speaker 2: reward for information. I think the billboard that I reproduce
Speaker 2: in the book was one that was put up after
Speaker 2: the grim Sleep boys finally captured, you know, and now
Speaker 2: it's segment that you know those disappearances had been solved.
Speaker 2: I think, Cara Brouchi. What's in the book.
Speaker 6: You have items like the Scotland Yard diagram of the
Speaker 6: Blackwell bathtub, the bride's and the bath murders. We mentioned
Speaker 6: also number twenty eight, Peter Curtin's mummified head, the Vampire
Speaker 6: of Dusseldorf, a subject of a Fritz Lang famous movie
Speaker 6: m You have this Henry Landrell's oven you call the
Speaker 6: blue Beard blue Beard of Paris, sheet music to Gallows
Speaker 6: song sung by Carl Wanderer, The Ragged Stranger. You have
Speaker 6: Nathan Leopolds. You mentioned this, his eyeglasses that fell at
Speaker 6: the crime scene. This Reverend Hall's calling card. You have
Speaker 6: this very interesting number thirty six, Tom Howard's ankle camera,
Speaker 6: the Double Indemnity murders. Yeah, what was the photo he
Speaker 6: was able to take very very fascinating item.
Speaker 5: This one.
Speaker 2: So that's related to There were three very very sensational
Speaker 2: murder cases in the nineteen twenties. It was Leopold and Lowe.
Speaker 2: There was one of the ones just mentioned, the Hall
Speaker 2: Mills murder case, where this episcopalian minister and his choir
Speaker 2: girl lover were murdered in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And
Speaker 2: then there was what is sometimes called the Double Indemnity
Speaker 2: murder because it was the inspiration for James M. Keine's
Speaker 2: famous noir novel Doublin Demnity, which was then made into
Speaker 2: what's often regarded as the first film noir, Billie Wilder's
Speaker 2: Dublin Dembity. That case involved a queen's housewife named Ruth Snyder,
Speaker 2: who embarked on an affair with this kind of mousey
Speaker 2: married little birdle salesman named jud Gray, and they conspired
Speaker 2: to murder Ruth's husband. You know, it is a little
Speaker 2: bit of a brute, and you know Ruth was eager
Speaker 2: to get away with him anyway. The case became this huge,
Speaker 2: huge national obsession, partly because Ruth was seen by so
Speaker 2: many people at the time as representing the free wheeling,
Speaker 2: sexually liberated nineteen twenties. Flabber Type was a threat to
Speaker 2: all the traditional standards of domesticity and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth. And when she was found guilty, the public
Speaker 2: really demanded that she be executed. So the New York
Speaker 2: Daily News brought in this well known photographer named Tom
Speaker 2: Howard from Chicago newspaper photographer and managed to get him
Speaker 2: like a front row seat at the execution. And he
Speaker 2: came in with his little camera strapped to his ankle
Speaker 2: with a cable running up the pants leg, and there
Speaker 2: was a little switch in the pocket. And at the
Speaker 2: moment that the executioner threw the switch on the electric chair,
Speaker 2: Tom Howard snapped this photograph, which became Mad's most famous
Speaker 2: photograph in tabloid history. It appeared on the front page
Speaker 2: of the next day's Daily News headlined and enormous type
Speaker 2: is dead above the photograph of Ruth of a moment
Speaker 2: that the electricity hit her. I believe that. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: of the book too, that photograph, Yes it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He actually made a mad movie kind of based on
Speaker 2: Tom Howard called Picture Snatcher, a movie with Jimmy Cagny
Speaker 2: which is very very very good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting. The camera is about the size of
Speaker 6: a GoPro camera strapped to his ankle.
Speaker 2: Right, and of course, you know nobody could see it
Speaker 2: back then. Then we're he logged in baggic, so he
Speaker 2: just he just pulled up his pants lag and the
Speaker 2: snapped that picture.
Speaker 6: Yeah, incredible. You have number thirty eight. Another item, very
Speaker 6: very interesting for people that know a little bit about
Speaker 6: Albert Fish. This pelvic X ray where it shows all
Speaker 6: of the things he shoved into his body and he
Speaker 6: didn't swallow them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, actually saw I was doing some research
Speaker 2: in the Library of Congress about a year ago in
Speaker 2: the archives of the psychiatrists who examined Fish before his trial,
Speaker 2: and they had the actual came across the actual X ray,
Speaker 2: which is life size. But yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: Fish who was, as the psychiatrist said, practiced every known
Speaker 2: perversion to nobody, along with some that nobody had ever
Speaker 2: heard of. It was this incredible sadist and massachist. You know,
Speaker 2: Fish said he just enjoyed everything that hurt. After his arrest,
Speaker 2: his guards noticed when he sat on the edge of
Speaker 2: his cot and his cell, he seemed very uncomfortable, and
Speaker 2: he said was because he had all these needles shoved
Speaker 2: up between his legs, and nobody believed him, so they
Speaker 2: took him to the prison infirmary, took that X ray,
Speaker 2: which was twenty seven needles, varying sizes, voting around his
Speaker 2: bladder region. You know, fish again, one form of his
Speaker 2: very very very depraved pleasure was to insert these needles
Speaker 2: into his paraneum and just leave them in his body.
Speaker 6: You have a few items that people would recognize as well,
Speaker 6: very very interesting al capones, rap sheet, Bonnie and Clyde's
Speaker 6: death car, all bullet ridden. Also have we mentioned Wyneth
Speaker 6: Ruth's The Trunk Murders, the actual baggage. You have John
Speaker 6: Dillinger's wooden gun, and also the death mask of the
Speaker 6: mad Butcher Cleveland Torso Killer.
Speaker 2: It's not the death mask of the mad butcher because
Speaker 2: nobody knows who he was.
Speaker 1: It's the victim.
Speaker 2: Yeheah, it's one of the victims. Yeah, yes, me, yeah.
Speaker 6: You also have number forty eight, the hand car of
Speaker 6: Wooden Box by Robert Irwin. Another one of your book subjects,
Speaker 6: the Mad Sculptor.
Speaker 2: Well that actually I own. There are a couple of
Speaker 2: items that I own in the book. But that is
Speaker 2: what I own. Yes, So Robert Irwin, who committed this
Speaker 2: very very notorious triple murder in New York City on
Speaker 2: Easter Sunday nineteen thirty seven, I was a very very
Speaker 2: talented sculptor. He was also totally crazy, but when he
Speaker 2: was in and out of mental institutions, he would make
Speaker 2: a pocket money, you know, to spend a foot concession
Speaker 2: by selling different art objects to the nurses, to the attendance,
Speaker 2: to the doctors. Sometimes he would make sculpted busts of them.
Speaker 2: After my book came out, I got contacted by this
Speaker 2: very nice woman from down South who said that she'd
Speaker 2: read my book and that her husband had been a
Speaker 2: guard at one of these facilities and had purchased from
Speaker 2: Irwin this hand card box that he had made, and
Speaker 2: she sent me pictures of it. It's a beautiful object. Yes,
Speaker 2: every side of at the top and all four sides.
Speaker 2: Irwin had carved this bas relief image of this naked woman,
Speaker 2: who turns out was this woman named Ronnie Gideon, who
Speaker 2: was one of the people he ultimately strangled to death. Anyway,
Speaker 2: she said, oh, you know, I think my husband wou
Speaker 2: wants her to have this, so you know, I rage
Speaker 2: to buy it from her. Flubert to New York purchased
Speaker 2: it from her. So yeah, I have a photograph of it.
Speaker 2: Although the photograph doesn't do it fully justice. It's actually
Speaker 2: quite quite large box, and you know, when you see
Speaker 2: an actual wood, it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 6: Yes, you have one hundred items. We didn't mention one
Speaker 6: of the more famous items, John Wayne Gacy's the clown
Speaker 6: self portraits. But all of these items are discussed in
Speaker 6: your new book, murder Bilia. You say we still continue
Speaker 6: to be captivated by the most sensational crimes and killers
Speaker 6: among us, and that is the subject of your book,
Speaker 6: murder Billia, A History of Crime in one hundred Objects.
Speaker 6: I want to thank you very much Harrold for coming
Speaker 6: on and talking about murder Bilia and for those that
Speaker 6: might want to take a look. The kids probably go
Speaker 6: to Amazon and see your vastory of books that you've
Speaker 6: written for the last I won't say how many years, forty.
Speaker 2: Years, yeah, done right, thirty something.
Speaker 6: Anyway, Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for
Speaker 6: coming on and talking about murder Bilia, A History of
Speaker 6: Crime in one hundred Objects. Thank you so much Harold
Speaker 6: Checkter for this interview and you have a great evening.
Speaker 2: Well. Thank you, always good talking to you, always great
Speaker 2: talking tonight.
Speaker 6: K